The cries are already coming in from the purist wing of the conservative movement as President Trump signs an executive order forgiving student loan debt for permanently disabled veterans. They’re saying this is a precursor to student loan forgiveness across the board. They say this opens the door for a future Democratic President to do the same thing, only so widespread it’ll damage not only the country but forever change the way education is handled in America.

But there’s one important caveat about forgiving student loan debt for permanently disabled veterans that reactionary conservatives missed. It was already done. This isn’t introducing a new stance on student loans. It’s expediting the process because as of now, about 1/5th of the eligible veterans are taking advantage of it.

This is a political move that will affect thousands of Americans at a relatively low cost, especially when compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of loan forgiveness being proposed by many Democrats.

But the bigger reason nobody should be balking at this is because these are people who have served their country and are actually deserving of the “free stuff” offers being made to everyone by Democrats. And by “everyone,” I mean literally everyone. Democrats want free education for illegal immigrants, and some are balking because the President wants permanently disabled veterans to have their loans forgiven? Fiscal conservatives (of which I am one) need to find another battle to fight.

This is a smart move by the President and turns the chants of “free college for everyone” by Democrats on its head. Loan forgiveness for permanently disabled veterans is pittance compared to the sacrifices they’ve made for this country.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

Yesterday, Facebook was very proud to announce the results of a year-long review by former Senator Jon Kyl. The purpose of the review was to better understand the accusations of political bias, mostly from Conservatives, against the platform. According to Kyl’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal, the concerns of those he interviewed fell into six broad categories.

• Bias is baked into Facebook’s algorithms and they should not be in the business of separating fact from fiction
• That the platform’s community standards were constantly evolving and objections to the category “hate speech”
• Bias in the employees charged with enforcing the rules and the appeals process for smaller organizations
• Requiring advertisers to register as political organizations to run ads with a policy focus
• The drawn-out ad approval process due to the stringent ad policies
• Lack of viewpoint diversity at the company

In the announcement, there were several things Facebook planned to address which included how they handled political ads and the creation of an oversight board for how they handled the appeals of some high profile content removal decisions.

The announcement was supposed to ease tensions between the social media company and users on the political right. However, rather than getting out of the business of fact-checking content, the company committed to explaining newsfeed rankings. These algorithms and “fact checks” have already negatively impacted several Conservative sites. Not sure an explanation fixes that problem. They will also now tell you when they limit the distribution of a post because their “fact-checkers” give it a false rating. Again, why not just stop?

Probably because they are serving two masters in this fight. Facebook consented to a series of civil rights audits from a very left-leaning assessor. Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg released the commitments from that process on June 30, 2019. One action:

We’re taking steps to address this, including a US pilot program where some of the people who review content on Facebook only focus on hate speech instead of a range of content that can include bullying, nudity, and misrepresentation. We believe allowing reviewers to specialize only in hate speech could help them further build the expertise that may lead to increased accuracy over time.

Balancing the commitments made to both groups will be challenging to say the least. And within 24 hours of the announcement of what they would do to address Kyl’s assessment two high profile content decisions were made.

This morning, news hit that an ad from Women for Trump was removed. I confirmed this with one of the board members. Supposedly, because it assumed the gender of the women in the picture.

Can you say peak ridiculousness? Perhaps the assessment they received from Senator Kyl didn’t mention that many people on the right, as well as the vast majority Americans, assume the gender of almost everyone they see. I am also wondering how many posts Forbes Women and Women for Women International have had removed. Since they “assume the gender” of the person pictured on nearly every post.

The other content decision was not allowing the website started by popular Trump-supporting meme maker, Carpe Donktum to work.

I think this is #winning…

At launch, the https://t.co/uQTHWTzRni is already banned on @facebook pic.twitter.com/MY0AhOANKm

— Carpe Donktum🔹 (@CarpeDonktum) August 20, 2019

Now we all know the left can’t meme, but the right has some pretty good meme artists. And anyone who has spent any time on social media is aware of what a meme is. Satirical short videos or images that everyone knows are a creation, not news or a depiction of factual events. The website was even called “Meme World”. Saying satirical content violates their “Community Standards” is about as stupid as Snopes fact-checking the Babylon Bee. Or just an admission that having a sense of humor is not allowed on Facebook.

Until Facebook decides to employ a good faith approach to known creators, organizations, and campaigns, rather than allowing fringe left-wing zealots to flag content with abandon, nothing will change. Just because Facebook recognizes dozens of genders doesn’t mean most Americans do. Yet activists can use a ridiculous rule based on fringe political ideology to get a perfectly valid political ad pulled.

One that was shared by the President’s official Facebook account. Not the best kick off for a grand announcement about addressing bias. Facepalm Facebook.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

As socialists pivot from one failed example of socialism to the next failed example of socialism to the welfare state that decries claims of socialism, perhaps we should prepare ourselves for when the socialist reach the bottom of the barrel with examples of the collective ideology’s past successes. And before you say, “well that’s silly, there’s no way a pre-French enlightenment civilization could have practiced a successful form a socialism, sufficient enough to use as an example by the left” consider the fact that a French academic by the name of Louis Boudan penned an extensive treatise entitled “A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru” in 1962.

Now, this work does not appear to be an endorsement of communism, though the author seems to have a vested interest in the using the “no true Scotsman” fallacy given that this was written post World War 2 and in the Cold War with regards to true socialism. However, the very title, provocatively named, is certainly a sign that the political Left in contemporary times could refer to the Inca as a successful example of socialism, that only fell by the technologically advantaged Spaniards. But Louis Boudan is not the only one who has made this comparison, leaving us wondering why the Left has not seized on the Inca who seem to have had a more successful run than any contemporary Marxist regime. The likeliest reason that that Inca are not used as an example of successful socialism is likely that the proponents of socialism, to be blunt, are not historically informed. Still, this is a foreseeable argument in the imminent future and we best know what we are talking about when it inevitably comes because when the Left popularizes an example of alleged socialism practiced by non-whites they will pounce, but until then we await a Vox video.

The Inca Empire could prove to be the only example of socialism that did not self collapse, other than the Catalonia socialism which lasted only three years. But of course, all of this is conditional on the premise of whether or not the Inca Empire was truly socialist country. Perhaps it would be best to grant the Left that premise. Even if the Inca were a socialist empire, the ensuing result was a constant need for war, which is a commonality with the Stalinist ideology. Kings and Generals does a good job breaking down the Inca society for the laymen to understand. Key points discussed in the video are:

• The Inca were highly adapted to their living environment with regards to agriculture, construction, and irrigation
• The Inca had what appears to be a welfare state
• The Inca worshiped their dead
• The “corporations” of dead bodies accumulated disproportionate amount of wealth
• The wealth belonging to the dead bodies necessitated the Emperors accumulating wealth of their own through war. This cycle repeats.

As you can see, there were multiple flaws in the Inca society that had a trajectory of collapse because of the pyramid scheme the system creates for its ruling class. The inevitable demise was expedited by the Spaniards. But going back to the foundational premise as to whether the Inca were socialist or not, the contrasts are enough to fail a purity test; had there been an organic collapse, the modern socialist would deny this as true socialism. It’s a never ending fallacy, though the dead corporate estates of the Inca goes against everything socialist preach. However, as human history has shown, socialism has always led to the personal enrichment of those in the innermost circles of power. Socialist or not? You decide, but be prepared to argue that the Inca were not a successful example of socialism.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.