Well, this is the big story of the week, so I have to write something about it. Probably, no website has paid a higher price for reporting on inconvenient facts on topics like election integrity and pandemic deceptions than the Federalist. The Federalist is my first read every day. And they have a ton of articles about the revelations on pandemic handling found in Anthony Fauci’s diary. Thanks to Republican senator Rand Paul, we can all see the truth.

So, this article from The Federalist is the best one stop shopping for understanding the diary.

Here is the list:

1. Covid Fatality Rates
2. Lab Leak Theory
3. School Closures
4. Covid Vaccines
5. Gain of Function Research

I’m going to pick the first one to see details. This is what the Fauci Diary says:

In an entry dated Feb. 8, 2020, Fauci described a purported phone call he had with Tom Frieden, who served as President Obama’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director. According to Fauci, the two discussed “various aspects of the [Covid] outbreak.”

The then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director wrote that he and Frieden “are on the same page” in their assessment that the Covid-19 virus “is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator” of total diagnosed cases “is much greater than” currently reported figures. Fauci further noted that this would make the “case fatality rate (CFR)” — the proportion of people who die from a disease among the total number infected over a certain period of time — “more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.”

Put another way, the risk of dying from Covid among the general population is not as great as initially feared.

Under questioning from Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, the then-NIAID director said that “the seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1 percent,” and that “[t]he stated mortality over all of this when you look at all the data including China is about three percent. It first started off as two and now three.”

“I think if you count all the cases of minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic infection, that probably brings the mortality rate down to somewhere around one percent, which means it is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu. I think that is something that people can get their arms around and understand,” Fauci said.

I want to contrast the diary revelation with what was reported by FactCheck.org in 2022:

Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler made a series of false claims about Fauci in a January 2021 video titled “Fauci lied to you AGAIN.”

She claimed that he “lied” about the rate or ratio of people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 who had died, which we did not find to be the case.

Note that the author of that “fact check” has a worthless degree in journalism. Totally unqualified to report on medical or even scientific issues. But still relied upon by big tech corporations as a measuring stick for deciding who should be banned for “misinformation” in search engine results and social media. These big tech corporations routinely alter their products in order to benefit the Democrat party and hurt the Republican party.

Let’s just look at #2 on the list – the lab leak theory.

Here’s what’s in the Fauci Diary:

Fauci was notorious for pouring cold water on the theory that the Covid-19 outbreak came as the result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. But the newly released diary entries show Fauci himself acknowledged early on that the theory of the virus resulting from a Wuhan wet market — which he later appeared to parrot as the likely explanation, along with many others — lacked substantiation.

In a Jan. 26, 2020, entry, Fauci noted that recent “epi data and genomic data” indicated that “the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market.” He went on to recall how the Chinese government had claimed “that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market.”

“Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans,” Fauci wrote (emphasis added).

And here is what FactCheck.org reported around the time Fauci wrote that:

The latest conspiracy theories about the new coronavirus, which first led to an outbreak in Wuhan, China in late 2019, allege that the virus was man-made, rather than the natural result of people coming into contact with wild animals.

OK I have to stop there. I just want to say that I never got the peer-pressure-poke because I don’t take experimental products from manufacturers who have a “no liability” clause. That’s just common sense. But anyway, here are more articles from The Federalist. They are freaking pissed off about this. And so am I. The actions of the alarmists are undermining real science in the same way that false accusations of rape undermine the cause of real victims of rape. When these worthless degree clowns from the “fact checkers”, the corporate news media and the big tech corporations lie to the public, (for attention and coercive control), then they cause the public to distrust real science. The secular left is therefore anti-science. They undermine science for myths.

• Fauci’s Diaries Are A Media Scandal — That’s Why The Media Aren’t Reporting On Them Fairly
• Fauci Diary Revelations Prove Jake Tapper Was Never A Real Journalist
• 10 Questions For Congress To Ask Fauci About His Covid Corruption And Coverup
• The Sick Cultural Dynamics Behind Fauci Worship Haven’t Waned A Bit
• Here Are All The Media Hacks Who Got Shoutouts In Fauci’s Diary For Giving Him Tongue Baths
• 6 Years Later, Fauci’s Diary Confirms The Federalist Was Right About Everything
• If You Thought Anthony Fauci Was An Egomaniac, Wait Until You Read His Covid Diary
• Fauci Toadies Privately Called Lab Leak Theory ‘Highly Likely’ While Publicly Shutting It Down
• New Docs: Fauci Colluded With Intel Agencies On Covid Cover-Up And Then Lied To Congress About It
• DOJ Indicts Fauci’s Right-Hand Man For Allegedly ‘Circumventing’ Open Records Requests

Recently, I have been meddling in the parenting plan of a friend who has a bunch of children, ages 5-12. She has been watching a lot of scholars talk about scientific evidence for a Creator and Designer, like James Tour and Stephen C. Meyer, and getting more and more concerned about whether her own children are going to keep their own faith as they go through the education system into the workplace. And make a difference for the Boss.

I reflected on how best to influence children and concluded that we need a two-pronged attack: (1) excellent books that shape their thinking and character, and (2) structured real-world experiences that build practical knowledge. Since I’m in a different state, my role is mainly shipping good books and celebrating their progress with them. Even asking the mom to ask them about their progress helps. The mom is taking care of giving them useful things to do, like taking them to see “The Story of Everything” and “Young Washington”, teaching them to cook and build rockets, etc.

My plan is to build up their strength in testable areas, which will insulate them from the emotion-based arguments of the secular left in settings where peer-approval can easily overwhelm truth, unless truth is rooted in evidence.

I chose these areas:

1. 1. economic policy
   2. evidential apologetics
   3. military history
   4. classics*

* not the popular ones, but the ones with heroic characters and moral lessons.

Economic policy

For economics, I sent along a bunch of Tuttle Twins books. I don’t like Connor Boyack’s religion or politics, but he does a good job of teaching economics to children. And this is only a temporary measure until we can work our way up to Thomas Sowell, which will make them bulletproof against wokeness.

This is what I got them:

• Tuttle Rebuttals: 40 Responses to Popular Political and Economic Myths
• The Tuttle Twins Guide to Modern Villains
• The Tuttle Twins Guide to Inspiring Entrepreneurs
• Tuttle Twins Choose Your Consequence Combo
• Tuttle Twins Combo Pack (plus free workbooks!)

In economics, we look at other times and other places in order to learn what policies have worked and what policies have failed. So, all the pressure that kids will get from the culture to accept wokeness, socialism, social justice, etc. will roll right off them like water off a duck, because of the evidence.

I also recommend “The Millionaire Next Door” by Tom Stanley and William Danko – the best book on personal finances.

Evidential apologetics

And then I got them books on evidential apologetics for kids:

• God’s Crime Scene for Kids
• Forensic Faith for Kids
• Cold-Case Christianity for Kids
• Case for Christ for Kids
• Case for a Creator for Kids
• Case for Faith for Kids
• Your Amazing Body
• The Farm at the Center of the Universe
• The God Proofs: How Science Points to YOUR Creator
• Discovering Intelligent Design: A Journey into the Scientific Evidence
• Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism

And the mom has the oldest one registered in the Discovery Institute biology course that I blogged about before.

The point of these books is to avoid the common and predictable fate that awaits most “church-raised” Christians when they hit university. Most Christian parents put a lot of faith in the church community and social connections, but these things do not preserve faith in hostile environments like the modern university or the corporate workplace. A much better bet is to rely on hard evidence. Evidence that they’ve seen tested in formal. Academic. Debates.

Military history

And I got them a bunch of basic books on military history:

• Great Battles for Boys: WW2 Pacific
• Great Battles for Boys the Korean War
• Great Battles for Boys: WW2 Europe
• Great Battles for Boys The American Revolution
• Great Battles for Boys The Vietnam War

You can see that military history dominates my “What I am Reading” page. I wrote an entire separate post about why Christians should read military history.

Most of the children are girls, but military history does the job of increasing humility, patience, endurance, and gratitude for boys and girls. These are all character traits children need to counteract the victim mindset, the entitlement, and the lack of accountability that dominate social institutions. Especially the schools where teachers and administrators might be hostile to Christianity. And the big corporate workplaces, too.

Classical literature

Finally, the classics. I was able to resist the bad parenting and secular leftism I was born into by immersing myself in classical literature and classical movies as a child. The classics are basically “design patterns” (software architecture patterns) for making good decisions within the moral framework of the universe.

So, some of my favorite books and movies are laid out in my “About WK” page, but these are the books I chose for the kids so far:

• The Hobbit (“Alone and unaided”): Readers learn how heroism can be found in people who don’t look like heroes, and how to seize the initiative “alone and unaided” in order to solve problems without outside help.
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (“that part he played—the mask he wore… in order to throw dust in everybody’s eyes”): Readers see the power of humility and strategy when defying tyrannical regimes. As I often say in my gameplay videos: “is this shot worth revealing my position to the enemy?”
• Cyrano de Bergerac (“I stand… not high it may be… but, I stand alone!”): Readers discover the nobility of personal integrity, avoiding peer pressure, and valuing excellence in everything over worldly approval or success.
• A Man for All Seasons (“When a man takes an oath, Meg, he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then — he needn’t hope to find himself again.”): Readers are reminded of the importance of personal integrity and keeping one’s oath to God and conscience, even when it costs everything.
• The Screwtape Letters (“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”): Readers gain insight into the spiritual significance of everyday experiences and the game of cosmic chess that is being played out.

She already had the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis and The Book of Virtues by William Bennett in the house.

One reviewer (Tom) also suggested that I add the Anne of Green Gables series, but I have not read those.

For the early classics, I’m not choosing “popular” classics or anything tainted by modern ideologies like secularism, leftism, feminism, etc. I’m aiming for books with heroic characters who can serve as role models.

See this recent First Things article that the mother sent me:

The stories of heroes and their spectacular deeds are intended as a lesson, an exhortation, to the present. This is what the Greek word mythos (“discourse”) generally means in Homer: It is not a narrative in the abstract, but virtually always implies some sort of persuasive agenda, usually an exhortation… Indeed, the heroic story is a stand-in for the father figure.

This is what the classical is about, for Homer. It is not concerned with books as such, nor ideas in the abstract, critical thinking, or intellectual history. Great men are what is essential, not great books. The classical exists, in short, to produce people resembling the best of its characters.

Later on, I will send classics to warn them about flaws in human nature; Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, etc. Basically, I am trying to take away the modern world’s praising of narcissism, entitlement and lack of accountability with the left hand, while pushing forward heroic and self-sacrificial concern for others with the right hand. I’ll add in Shakespearean plays like Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, to get that theme of tragedy coming from the failure to distinguish appearance from reality. And Hamlet, of course, which is my favorite Shakespearean play. (By the way, Hamlet has nothing to do with “indecisiveness” – that’s just postmodern relativists trying to avoid the real theme, which is how adult selfishness destroys the lives of children).

One reviewer (Drew) asked me to add a quick summary of what lessons are to be learned from these classics, so here is that:

• Anna Karenina / Madame Bovary: Readers witness the personal and familial destruction that follows when passion and self-fulfillment are elevated above relationship obligations and self-sacrificial commitment.
• Mansfield Park: Readers learn the quiet strength of moral conviction and humility triumphing over charm, social pressure, and compromised principles.
• Pride and Prejudice / Sense and Sensibility: Readers see the wisdom of valuing character over first impressions or fortune in mates, and the long-term blessings of self-control and prudent judgment.
• Wives and Daughters / North and South: Gaskell explains the differences between the sexes and teaches best practices for relationships.
• Macbeth: Readers confront the corrosive cost of unchecked ambition, the self-deception of “the ends justify the means,” and the tragedy of abandoning moral order.
• King Lear: Readers learn how foolishness, vanity, and poor judgment in leaders and parents bring chaos and suffering, and the importance of choosing allies who have humility, loyalty and truth-telling ability.
• Othello: Readers are warned against the destructive power of jealousy, manipulation, and trusting appearances over truth and evidence.
• Antony and Cleopatra: Readers see the ruin that comes from prioritizing sensual passion and worldly glory over duty and self-mastery.
• Hamlet: Readers learn how adult selfishness and moral failure create chaos for the next generation, yet personal integrity and trust in divine providence offer a path out of despair.

Movies have a place, but books are required. I have a list of some of my favorite classical movies in the About WK page. I was able to find the non-Shakespeare books at the Librivox web site, which has public domain audio books.

The goal of sending the children classics is to give them the option of not acting according to the conventions of their culture.

Conclusion

So that is my plan. That is what worked for me in my own life.

One last point. I have worked with many natural-born Americans in the IT sector who were either homeschooled or attended Christian schools for many years and then left the faith (and their conservative views) in college. They had great church communities. They had big social networks. And this approach of valuing community and social networks did not prevent them from losing their faith in college or in the workplace. They just went from doing what worked at home and at church to doing what worked at the university and at the corporate workplace. Their habit of forming many social connections actually opened them up to even more pressure to change their Christian and conservative convictions.

Related to that last point, I wanted to mention that Cyrano had a particularly big effect on me. Cyrano explicitly says that he prefers not to be friends with many different people. He only has one close friend – Le Bret. He says that he prefers to have enemies. Its not just friends that can influence a Christian in the wrong direction, though, it’s popular culture, too. Many Christians are influenced by entertainment – popular books, movies and TV shows that teach false ideas. Cyrano strives to study the best topics like poetry, literature and fencing. He values truth.

Here is an example of something memorable from Cyrano that helped me to not want to make too many social connections (church, social groups) that would influence me to compromise my core convictions:

And in French:

It’s even better in the original French.

I know that everyone will be talking about Trump’s prime-time speech today (Friday), but I always write blog posts the night before! So in this post, I just wanted to talk about Marco Rubio’s amazing speech opposing communism, left-wing political violence, and far-left extremist terrorism. And I’ve got the best clip from the speech, so that you can get an idea of what was said without having to watch the whole thing.

This article from PJ Media talks about the left-wing political violence:

Rubio began his speech by saying that the number one responsibility of any government should be to protect the people it represents.

He went on to point out that for a long time, counterterrorism in the United States focused primarily on Islamist extremism, which was necessary, but that there had always been a blind spot when it came to extremist violence from the political left.

[…]Rubio went on to say that many people here in the United States dismiss acts of violence and terrorism if it benefits the left-wing cause and that it’s time to put an end to that. He pointed to the George Floyd riots from the summer of 2020 and how media outlets called them “mostly peaceful” despite all the obvious violence and crime we saw with our own eyes, as well as other more recent examples, like Charlie Kirk’s murder, assassination attempts on Donald Trump, violence against ICE officers, and a transgender individual shooting up an elementary school. He listed numerous examples from other countries as well.

And the writer says that this is the best part of the speech:

This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and cowardly against the strong and the good. It’s perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things, and take their revenge upon the world for their own inadequacies, by seeking to destroy those who can.

This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist, Marxist, but the fundamental character is always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality, justice, and liberation; an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built; to wreck what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer.

And the clip! I can’t believe I’m sharing something from the State Department Twitter account:

https://x.com/StateDept/status/2077753532409647185

And there was more in that clip – about communism. I found an article from Town Hall that had the words from that part of the speech:

In a speech Thursday announcing a global crackdown on left-wing terrorism, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made exactly that argument: communism does not even work in theory. Socialism and communism, by their very nature, require the centralization of power, the destruction of the individual, and the abolition of private property, the very institution that has been instrumental to the development of the West and the greatest nations on Earth. Even as an abstraction, communism is the antithesis of nearly everything Americans have historically believed in.

“One of the criticisms you sometimes hear of communism, for example, is that it sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice. That’s actually not true,” the secretary of state said. “Communism does not sound good in theory. The world it envisions for all of us is small, flat, grey, leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul. The world it envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity or ambition, a world without heroes or glory or great causes to strive towards, a world without miracles, without myths, without men who rise above the rest to do incredible and extraordinary things. And the world communism envisions is a world without God.”

Here is the whole thing:

If you want a good article about Trump’s Thursday night speech, the best I have on a Thursday night is this article from The Federalist by Brianna Lyman. Keep in mind that she is only talking about ONE of the 10 or so points that Trump made about election integrity in his Thursday night speech.

There was also this one from PJ Media that talked about the actual declassification of election meddling intelligence.

And another from PJ Media about China hacking the files on 220 MILLION American voters.

Here’s the full speech:

For more, you can probably find something about the de-classified reports Friday morning on Breitbart or The Federalist or PJ Media. As you can tell, I’ve completely given up on reading the corporate news media to find the latest news.

It’s nice to see Trump saying that he’s not signing the housing bill that Congress wants until he gets his Voter ID act passed. He’s playing hard ball, but there are good reasons to. And good for him for going straight to the American people – bypassing the corporate news media.

(Image Source: Marco Rubio’s Twitter account!)