From Crassus and Caesar to BLM and ‘Gays for Palestine’: How History Shows The Left’s Alliance Will Fail

Roman history can be quite illuminating.  The First Triumvirate lasted from 60 BC to approximately 53 BC. It was an informal — and largely secret — agreement between Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great, and Marcus Licinius Crassus to basically run the Roman Republic.  Although ostensibly a Triumvirate, it was, for all intents and purposes, a duopoly between the two great generals.  Crassus, by far the richest man in Rome, was mostly indulged because of his wealth.  Among other things, he became rich by forming a band of firefighters who would show up at a burning house and offer to buy it for pennies on the dollar.  If the owner refused, they’d just leave, while if he agreed, they’d go ahead and put out the fire. Nice guy.

Caesar and Pompey were adversaries but their partnership in the Triumvirate was sealed when Caesar forced his 17-year-old daughter Julia to marry the 47-year-old Pompey.  The marriage was reportedly a happy one, but when Julia died in childbirth in 54 BC, it was the beginning of the end of the Triumvirate.  The final stake came with the death of Crassus in 53.  The collapse of the pact led to years of civil war which ended with a triumphant Caesar being appointed dictator for life in February 44 BC.  And we all know how that turned out.

Caesar’s murder was followed by the Second Triumvirate with Mark Antony, Lepidus and Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son.  Once again, made up of adversaries and relatives, this Triumvirate had a similar trajectory and again ended with a Caesar in total control.

But you might ask… what does this have to do with America in the 21st century?  Well, let me tell you.  Both of the Triumvirates were a circumstance where men who basically disliked/hated one another worked together to defeat a common enemy, and then turned on one another.

I can’t but help thinking about this when I see images of leftists holding up signs that say “Gays for Palestine” or blue hair white liberals holding up BLM signs.  Don’t these people know that they basically hate one another and once they defeat “The Man” they’re not going to usher in some paradise with Kumbaya playing over the loudspeaker?

The left is made up of factions that, if left to their own devices, wouldn’t have anything to do with one another, or worse, would be at one another’s throats.

LGBTQXYZ and Muslims.  Hispanics and blacks.  Jews and blacks.  Feminists and Muslims. Liberal Jews and Muslims….  They are taking the adage “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” to the extreme.

This is of course the entire constituency of the Democrat party.  The funny thing, or not so funny, about all of this is that these “victim” groups are only able to work together to fight against white/Christian/heterosexual/capitalist oppression because they live in a country that was largely built by whites, Christians, heterosexuals, and capitalists. Remove those and you have absolute chaos and an utter lack of freedom with which to speak one’s mind.  Remove them and you have a lack of prosperity that allows one to focus on being a professional victim.  Remove them and you have a tyranny ruled by whoever has the biggest stick or least amount of morals.

Nonetheless, that’s where Democrats are, holding hands and singing Kumbaya, certain that they are going to overthrow the system.  But they’re wrong.  They’re not going to.

Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony et al. could, because they held all the power.  Between them they basically controlled or were aligned with every legion in the Roman Republic. They weren’t really fighting the power.  They were the power.  They were fighting against one another to split the Republic they already controlled.

Democrats don’t have such control.  Sure, they have some statehouses and sometimes the White House or Congress, but they don’t have a coherent message that would allow them to cobble together an actual ruling coalition.

But let’s imagine this coalition of victims did somehow triumph over the white, Christian, heterosexual, capitalist patriarchy, what would come next?

Who would be in charge?  How would they decide?  Would Muslims and women and gays rule equally together?  Would Jews and blacks come together to create a prosperous multicultural nation of freedom and equal opportunity?  Would blacks and Hispanics and Asians decide that they should have a society based on merit or color?  If color, whose would dominate?

None of those things are particularly likely, because the Western civilization (America) the left hates so much is the only one in history where they could have formed their coalition.  Indeed, in an Islamic civilization, gays would be far more likely to be thrown from buildings than be marching in gay pride parades.  This Democrat coalition is a paper tiger.

But here’s the thing the Democrats never want to admit, every one of those groups of victims that make up the party, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, LBGTQ blah, blah, blah, feminists, etc., have lives filled with more freedom, more opportunity, and more prosperity here in America than their compatriots have any place in the world.  Not sure?  Ask yourself, is there a Muslim nation where a Muslim could have more freedom, opportunity and prosperity than here?  Blacks in Africa?  Hispanics in a central or South American nation?  Gays anywhere?  Feminists anywhere?  No, of course not.

So somehow these geniuses have gotten it into their heads that they can somehow align themselves in a coalition to try and take down the white, Christian, heterosexual, capitalist patriarchy and create something even better.

They can’t.  But then they don’t really care about that.  With their tunnel vision, all they can see is the clan of victimization that binds them.  Democrats have no realistic vision for what a world will look like when they’ve destroyed the single most free and prosperous nation in human history.  Well, the Muslim wing of their coalition does, but that’s a different story.

And that is the hallmark of the left.  They create nothing.  They build nothing.  All they do is destroy things that others built.  From Marx to today, the left has never built a successful nation that values freedom and prosperity.  They have however cost the lives of tens of millions and kept billions more in abject poverty, in most cases with little or no freedom along the way.  When the left comes to power, it’s always the same… tyranny and a police state.

We almost had that under Biden, remember the Disinformation Governance Board and the J6 persecutions?  Say what you will about the Republicans, and there’s a lot to be said, but for the most part they don’t seek to destroy America for their own narrow self-interests.  They might want to change some things, but they generally don’t want to “fundamentally transform America” into a Victimization Industrial Complex.

Democrats, for all their focus on issues of victimization, never have a plan for fixing the country that doesn’t involve destroying or taking what others have built.  And that’s how you know the Democrats aren’t a serious party.  The only thing that unifies them is the hatred for the white/Christian/heterosexual/capitalists of the patriarchy. They have nothing else to offer.  Republicans should start shining a light on that truth now that we’re in the run up to November.

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Trump Should Make Senators Lives A Living Hell Until They Pass The Save America Act

It’s not often life showcases a problem in real time. It is now in the form of California and the Senate.

It’s become clear that California voting is designed to give Democrats the ability to cheat.  Aside from Ranked Choice Voting scam and a universal mail-out of ballots, the state allows 30 days for votes to be counted, a fraud facilitator if ever there was one.

We’re seeing it play itself out very much in real time.  Two weeks ago in Los Angeles in the battle for Mayor, at one point after an update of 24,000 votes, Spencer Pratt, a guy with 30% support, did not gain a single vote. I asked Grok for the odds and it was somewhere over 1 over infinity... basically, zero. In a city where only 43% of students can read, believing those vote totals would require you to think that when half the voters are practically illiterate, not a single one accidentally voted for Pratt. And now thanks to mail in voting, Pratt has lost the lead for qualifying for the runoff to someone who was polling 4 points behind him when voting started.

All of this makes me think of a quote by Elena Gorokhova when characterizing life in the Soviet Union: “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”  The Russians even have a word for it: Vranyo, a lie that everyone knows is a lie but pretends otherwise.

That’s exactly what’s been going on in America for decades. The Democrats have been using mail-in ballots, voting machines, and endless “recounts” to steal elections right in front of us.  It’s the theft that everyone is supposed to pretend is not happening. Christine Gregoire in 2004. Al Franken in 2008.  Joe Biden in 2020.

Then there’s the Senate. The same week the Senate took a shot at the SAVE America Act and it was defeated.  Voting with the Democrats were the four most despicable vermin in the Senate, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, and Thom Tillis. Even if they had voted with the GOP, it would have failed because the TDS afflicted John Thune refuses to get rid of the filibuster.

Congress’s failure to provide for secure elections has been a disaster for Republicans and the Republic. Not only is California an economic and cultural trainwreck, but a Republican hasn’t won a statewide race in 20 years — the year Democrat-in-RINO-clothing Arnold Schwarzenegger won reelection. But at least they have 7 House seats, out of 52 in a state with 25% GOP electorate. In New England the GOP’s 24% of the electorate gets them exactly zero of the region’s 21 House seats, and the one Senator out of twelve is another Democrat-in-RINO-clothing, Susan Collins.  She has a Liberty Score of 20, which is even with AOC and below Ilhan Omar at 22!  (That’s out of 100… while Thomas Massie had a 96!)

This failure is at the core of everything that is going wrong in America right now.  There is literally nothing more important in 2026 than getting the SAVE America Act passed. Donald Trump came to power promising to take on the establishment. In his first term he played by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, and much of his agenda was stonewalled.  Then the election was what it was, and Joe Biden rolled back most of the little he did accomplish.

Then in 2024 Trump ran again, and we expected that after years of being targeted, both literally and figuratively, he would take a wrecking ball to the Swamp.  But he hasn’t. Deficits have continued to grow, it’s practically impossible to eliminate even the most egregious of programs, and federal judges usurp Executive powers like kids in a candy store. From deportations to Pentagon decisions to the 1776 Fund, there’s barely an initiative that some leftist judge hasn’t stopped.  In the Senate, Republicans have actively stopped him from making recess appointments by gaveling in faux sessions so they never technically go on recess.  That’s never happened before. No president has ever had recess appointments blocked by a Senate controlled by his own party.

All of this is happening because Congress has shirked its constitutional responsibility.  Fair and free elections are not speed limits or property taxes or any of the other things that are constitutionally in the purview of states. Fair and free elections are core to the rights of every single American regardless of where they live. Yet we have 14 states, representing almost 40% of the population with no Voter ID, representing 73% of the Electoral College votes necessary to win the White House.  Add in the issues with voting rolls, machines, and chain of custody, and it’s clear cheating is the rule of the day when it comes to voting in Democrat cities and states.

The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution reads:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

This is not Congress spending billions on redistribution because someone discovered the power to do so hidden in the penumbra of the General Welfare Clause. This is not Congress deciding out of thin air that they could legislate “right turn on red” nationally because they controlled highway funds. No, this is explicitly in the Constitution and Congress has failed to utilize its power to provide Americans with free, fair, and timely elections.  All of the other problems in America today stem from that.

President Trump, if he wants to have even a chance of a successful legacy, needs to knock out the Swamp with the SAVE America Act. Force Congress’s hand. He needs to make a speech to the nation and perhaps do a modern version of FDR’s Fireside Chats chronicling its progress. He needs to name names of Senators obstructing it.  He needs to use every legal tool available to pressure those intransigent grifters to support it. How? By sending JD Vance to preside over the Senate and firing the Parliamentarian. By refusing to sign another bill until SAVE is on his desk. By influencing where the GOP spends its campaign cash. By deciding where the next military logistics depot goes. By calling Congress into special session every single time they seek to go home for a holiday or campaign for reelection. He should make their lives a living hell until they do what 85% of the American people want and which the Constitution empowers them to do, which is nothing more than force free and fair elections.

This is not business as usual. We’re at a tipping point and honest elections are the only peaceful way to fix it. Americans have historically used the ballot box to guide government. The last time that was taken away was in 1774 when Parliament passed the Massachusetts Government Act.  That didn’t end well for the tyrants in London, and it won’t end well for the Swamp in Washington. Americans — or at least 85% of them — demand their votes count, and want their elections to be honest. Standing in the way of the SAVE America Act while states openly manipulate their elections and lie while doing so is simply a step too far.  The Russians have a word for that too:  Poslednyaya kaplya. The last straw.

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Paris in 1853 Provides A Lesson For Trump in 2026

In 1853, Paris was far different from what it is today. While it had the Louvre, Notre Dame, and the Arc de Triomphe, it also had virtually no sanitation and was congested, rife with disease, and regularly struck by fires that consumed whole blocks at a time. It was also overcrowded, with narrow crooked streets that were often little more than bogs of mud and waste, both human and animal.

Another part of the problem was the revolutionaries. Since the French Revolution in 1789, Paris has experienced in no fewer than half a dozen revolutions/uprisings, during which protesters/rebels easily blocked streets by strategically setting fire to a few barrels and carts. The then-Emperor, Napoleon III, who had been elected after one such coup in 1848, understood that to fend off uprisings, troops needed to be able to go wherever they were needed, via robust roads that could not easily be barricaded.

Thus, in 1853, Napoleon III gave Georges-Eugène Haussmann carte blanche to remake the city from the existing dysfunctional chaos. Haussmann would spend the next 17 years doing exactly that, razing over 20,000 buildings and building 30,000 others. Entire neighborhoods were flattened, and thousands of families had to abandon the city for the suburbs. Simultaneously, he built the world’s most sophisticated sewer and sanitation system. The entire city was a giant construction zone for almost 20 years straight.

Haussmann didn’t actually build any of it. He wasn’t an architect or an engineer; rather, he studied law and music. But he was the architect who got it done, despite constant outrage and conflict.

The result of Haussmann’s work was simply extraordinary. Parks, grand boulevards, state-of-the-art buildings, and a sanitation system unlike any other. Go there today, and you’ll see signs of his influence on virtually every street and around every corner. Despite what we see in the news, the city remains one of the most beautiful in the world.

But here’s the thing: the Paris of 1853 would never have become the Paris of today had Haussmann not taken a wrecking ball to it.

Well, America in 2026 needs just such a wrecking ball.

Our country is fundamentally broken. There are an estimated 40 million illegal aliens living among us (if one is honest about the numbers), with taxpayers forced to finance them. From nullification-minded juries to woke prosecutors, we are failing innocents. We have out-of-control government debt, a majority of which is likely fueled by fraud. We have half the federal judges thinking that they, rather than the President, run the country.

We have a stultifying level of government regulation that’s strangling productivity and innovation while, at the same time, Big Brother harnesses technology to spy on and destroy the few vestiges of freedom that remain. Even more insidiously, we have schools, governments, and regulatory organizations actively seeking to destroy the basic merit system that has historically been the foundation of success in America.

 

And perhaps most infuriating of all is the fact that our “democratic” form of government is anything but. The truth is, Democrats have been stealing elections for decades, with 1960 and 2020 being the two most obvious examples. What’s worse, a handful of Democrats in RINO clothing—i.e., Thune, Collins, Murkowski, et al.—are working with Democrats to allow it to continue.

Together, these problems spell the end of the United States. They spell the end of freedom, capitalism, prosperity, and ultimately, the Republic. The reality is, Congress is a worthless yoke on the necks of the American body politic. Blue city and state governments across the country are a cancer within. An activist judiciary undermines the very purpose of an independent judiciary.

If only we had an Emperor Napoleon III and his architect Haussmann. Sadly, we don’t. Leftists call Donald Trump a tyrant or a fascist, but he’s neither. No, Donald Trump doesn’t act like a tyrant, but then he doesn’t act like a man on a mission either...but he should.

He should take a page from Teddy Roosevelt, circa 1907. Roosevelt wanted to send the Great White Fleet on a global goodwill and power-projection tour, but Congress didn’t want to pay for it. Roosevelt sent it anyway, saying he had the money to send it halfway around the world, and Congress could leave it there or pay for the return.

The challenges America faces today cannot be solved by timid governance. They require bold moves. President Trump should act like a leader and help save the country rather than allowing the judiciary, Congress, and the bureaucracy to barricade his every move like revolutionaries blocking the streets of 19th-century Paris.

First, he should send the Vice President to take the reins as the President of the Senate. Vance should use every tool at his disposal to eliminate the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act. The reality is, when a handful of Senators can stifle the longstanding desires of 85% of the population on the most important issue in generations, they’re risking becoming illegitimate…and that’s dangerous.

Next, Trump should ignore federal judges who think they run the country. Force Congress or the Supreme Court to do their jobs and rein them in.

He should immediately curtail all federal spending going to any state or city that acts as a sanctuary for illegal aliens or provides benefits to such individuals. He should arrest, for treason, any government official who carries out sanctuary policies and should put deportations on turbo.

He should sign an executive order nationalizing the notion of “three strikes, you’re out.” Using the Justice Department’s civil rights powers, the president should declare that all criminals convicted of three violent felonies are to be locked up for life.

Finally, Trump should shutter the Education Department. He doesn’t have to wait for Congress to act. He can simply stop spending a single dollar on the department. Leftist institutions, particularly schools, are where most of America’s problems began, and stopping federal involvement is a first step in fixing that.

American society is splintering between the left and…well…patriots, and Donald Trump doesn’t have much time to leave his mark on history. Thus far, he’s talked a good game, but accomplished relatively little because he’s allowed the entrenched powers to handicap him every step of the way.

Most Americans recognize that the Democrats are destroying the country and everything that made it great in the first place. They’ve literally voted for a man who promised to turn back that tide three times in a row. But sadly, very little has happened because the legislature, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, and their media/NGO allies have circled the wagons to keep an interloper from threatening their grift.

Fixing problems hurts. Haussmann may have been hated in his time, but Paris and the world are better because he had the stones to do what needed to be done. Similarly, Donald Trump needs to stop being a wimp and become the hero who takes a wrecking ball to America’s leftist cancer.

If he truly wants to be the man to Make America Great Again, he’s going to have to stop allowing those who literally and figuratively want him dead to twist the rules and run out his clock. He won’t get another chance. And if he doesn’t succeed, America likely won’t either.

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DHS says it costs $18,000 to deport an illegal. That's a crime, but worth every penny.

I saw a video a few weeks ago of Markwayne Mullin, the new DHS Secretary on Laura Ingraham’s show. He stated that it cost more than $18,000 per deportee to remove an illegal from the United States.  If you’re thinking that’s because we’re giving them swag bags and first class tickets home, you’d be wrong. At least that would be fast.  No, the $18,000 is what it costs to navigate an illegal through the justice system because of the labyrinth of laws and the hoops judicial activist “judges’ make the government jump through.

Mullins encourages us to imagine the cost of doing that to the twenty million illegals allowed in during the Biden administration.  That would be $360 billion!  And there would still be another 30 million illegals in the country.

All of this reminded me of a conversation I was having with a young person recently about the cost of illegals to the country.  In this case we were talking about housing.  I mentioned that one of the reasons that housing was so expensive is because there are 50 million illegals in the United States, and despite California’s insane Homeless Industrial Complex, most of them are not living on the streets, there or anywhere else.  They are living in homes. 

The population of the United States is approximately 350 million people, living in approximately 148 million housing units. That is an average of 2.4 people living in each house / apartment. Immigrants typically have a larger number of people living in their homes, according to Pew, 3.5.  Using that number, the 50 million illegal aliens in the United States live in 14 million homes / apartments. If those 50 million illegals were not here, the housing stock available for American citizens and other legal residents would increase by almost 10%.  To put that in perspective, on average the net number of new homes / apartments to hit the market each year is about 1.5 million. 

Needless to say, if an inventory of 14 million units was freed up over a 3-5 year period, the cost of housing across America would drop significantly.  There would of course, be consequences to that given that real estate is a key element of so many Americans’ net worth, particularly older individuals.  But it would be only one of the effects of removing 50 million illegals.

Others include education, healthcare, welfare and of course criminal justice and jobs. 

Let’s take education. Schools spend on average $16,500 per pupil educating their charges. There are approximately five million children of illegals living in the United States and going to school. Five million students times $16,500 equals $80 billion for education.  That number is actually conservative because the majority of illegals live in urban areas, where governments spend far more than average on schooling.

FAIR, the Foundation for American Immigration Reform, a relatively anti-illegal immigration organization estimates that the United States spent $41 billion in 2023 on healthcare for illegal aliens and their children. For some unknown reason that number is based on the laughably low 15 million illegals.  But we’ll keep it to give them the benefit of the doubt.

According to CIS, the Center for Immigration Studies, the average number of immigrant families receiving welfare is extraordinary. For perspective, 27% of the US born households receive some sort of welfare spending.  Among immigrants it’s… slightly higher.  Among Afghan families it’s 87%, Dominican Republic families 78%, Guatemala 77%, El Salvador 75%, Honduras 75%, Ecuador 70%, Mexico, 67%, etc.  As bad as these numbers are, in reality they understate the problem. Ostensibly illegal aliens are not supposed to receive benefits, but they do, and do so at higher rates than legal immigrant families, which are included in the above numbers.  As such, the above numbers are averages of both and therefore are lower than the percentages of illegal alien families on welfare. CIS estimates that taken together, illegal aliens cost American taxpayers $42 billion annually. 

Then there’s crime.  Not even thinking about the psychological and physical harm / damage violent crime does to victims, both individuals and businesses, illegals cost Americans tens of billions of dollars per year.  FAIR – again using their laughably low illegals numbers – estimates that at the federal level alone Americans spend $25 billion a year dealing with illegals in the justice system. Elsewhere they assert that states spend an additional $22 billion per year dealing with illegal aliens in their respective justice systems. 

All of that taken together, $80 billion for education, $41 billion for healthcare, $42 billion for welfare, $47 billion on justice equates to $210 billion per year spent on illegals by American taxpayers. 

All of the above are explicitly government expenditures. But there are also billions of dollars of additional NGO spending on illegals. Although no doubt with significant overlap as many NGOs are funded by the government. Then there are caveats, of course.  Some illegal aliens work and pay taxes, which would reduce that number.  Schools would be operating in most  places even if there were no illegal aliens, so that might reduce that number.  At the same time, most organizations and government agencies have a vested interest in keeping the reported number of illegals far below the actual number.  Plus, of course, the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars of additional housing costs Americans face because there are 50 million illegals competing for the same housing stock.

Assuming that we stick with just the $210 billion number and divide it by 50 million illegal aliens in America, that would work out to about $4,200 per illegal per year. Compared to Mullin’s $18,000 per illegal deported, it sounds like we would save money by letting them stay.  But we wouldn’t, of course. And we shouldn’t.  Given that April 15^th was just a few days ago, all of this resonates as one is sitting down to write the IRS a check.  And if we had to include in that the impact of illegals on the housing market and wages, it no doubt would be much bigger. 

But illegal immigration isn’t just about money.  It’s about right and wrong and whether Americans are in control of our country and whether our laws mean anything.  If we allow some groups to get away with breaking the law with impunity, (and getting subsidized once they arrive) what message does that send to the rest of the people in America, and more importantly, what message does it send to the rest of the world, particularly the 3^rd world where most illegals come from?

Mullins is right to point out the cost associated with sending illegal home because it’s always helpful for people to visualize where their tax dollars are going and how the out of control judicial system is making it worse.

But, at the end of the day illegal immigration is far bigger than just dollars. It’s justice. It’s safety. It’s right and wrong. And sadly, it’s control of Congress! As grifters like Maria Salazar try to pass amnesty by calling it “Dignity”, we shouldn’t let them. She and other Democrats in RINO clothing would replicate Reagan’s worst mistake, on steroids. Although far too high, that $18,000 is worth every single penny. 

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Maggie Thatcher’s Timeless Wisdom: She could see America Circa 2026 From the Last Century…

Maggie Thatcher, easily one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, was a no-nonsense woman.  She became Prime Minister of the UK in 1979 and would rescue her nation from the economic quagmire created by the policies of her leftist predecessors.

Maggie was the daughter of a merchant. And as one might expect as the daughter of someone who had to deal with customers and vendors and regulators and all the while make sure there was something left in the bank at the end of the month, she was a straightforward and pragmatic leader.

For someone born almost exactly 100 years ago, she had a vision of government and culture that we could use more of today.  She was something of a combination of Nostradamus, Mark Twain and a Cassandra rolled into one. 

Her thoughts and observations provide an extraordinary insight into many of our problems today.

And the clarity began even before she was Prime Minister. On the day before her historic election she said this: “If a Government can't protect citizens and their property against violence, vandalism and theft, there is little point in having a government at all.” If anything resonates with Americans today it’s the fundamental failure of government to do exactly that.

In blue cities and states across America we see examples of career criminals regularly unleashed on their communities only to later kill or rape innocents. From suddenly being found not competent to stand trial to having their sentences slashed because of their age or background, American blood is spilling because Democrats care more about the “rights” of criminals than they do about the lives of innocent citizens. Thatcher cared about innocent citizens:  “I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live.”

She also had a clarity on the economics of leftism, saying “Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay - that 'someone else' is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money.”

Maggie clearly understood what most American politicians don’t, which is that government can spend only as much as citizens produce.  Only through taxes or IOUs, can the government spend a single penny.  Given that our national debt is almost $40 trillion and our unfunded liabilities are approaching $100 trillion financed by a GDP of $30 trillion, another of her quotes drives home the reality: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

As a merchant’s daughter, Thatcher understood what so many of our career politicians don’t, because so many of them have never had jobs or been part of an enterprise that actually created wealth – and just to be clear, lawyers rarely if ever actually create wealth or anything else of value.  “We have been ruled by men who live by illusions ... the illusion that there is some other way of creating wealth than hard work and satisfying your customers.” She hit the bullseye with: “The patronage state is an arrogant state. It assumes it can spend your money better than you do. Yet it expects you to work for it in the first place.”

Her observations went beyond just justice and economics however.  She recognized a moral cancer when she saw one. “Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.” Her prescience presaged the cancer of DEI a generation before it began wreaking widespread damage on the American Republic.

Along those same lines, she anticipated the evolution of the left’s political MO beginning with the ascent of Barack Obama, where every critique, criticism or disagreement was labeled racism, then expanded to every element of American politics:  Homophobic, Islamophobic, Sexist, etc. She clearly recognized the tactics: “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”

The Iron Lady addressed what would become one of America’s biggest problems when someone like Donald Trump, who is not a creature of the Swamp and wanted to upset the apple cart, came into office: “Whether it is in the United States or in mainland Europe, written constitutions have one great weakness. That is that they contain the potential to have judges take decisions which should properly be made by democratically elected politicians.” If there’s anything that characterizes America in 2026 it’s the army of black robe clad judicial activists who think they have the power to transform themselves into the Executive.  These leftist judges are making a mockery of our Constitution, and sadly, Congress and the White House are allowing them to do so.

She also understood the treachery of the elites that has been going on in America for decades. “There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it.” From tedious Oscar speeches and championing of illegal immigrant criminals to the pillorying of men like Daniel Penny and Nick Shirley, the left does nothing so much as spit on fundamental American values and elevate those of deviants and the lawless. 

And she understood that the left was not only a danger at home, but was an equally dangerous threat on the world stage: “To the extent that the West is to blame at all for the ills of the Third World it is to the extent that the West created Marx and his successors, among whom must be numbered many of those who advised the Third World leaders in post-war years”. From the UN to the EU to the Democrat party, Marxism has probably caused more death and destruction across the country and around the world than probably any other philosophy in all of human history. 

And particularly resonant today is the fact that Thatcher understood what it meant to be an ally, saying this after allowing Reagan to use US bases on the UK to strike Gaddafi while other European allies wouldn’t allow him to use their airspace: It had the effect of cementing the Anglo-American alliance. What's the good of having bases if when you want to use them you're not allowed to by the home country. It made America realise that Britain was her real and true friend, when they were hard up against it and wanted something, and that no one else in Europe was. They're a weak lot, some of them in Europe you know. Weak. Feeble.”

There were many other jewels of course:

“Many of our troubles are due to the fact that our people turn to politicians for everything.”

“The price of freedom is still, and always will be, eternal vigilance.”

“Being powerful is a lot like being a woman: If you have to tell someone that you are, invariably, you are not.”

“Why in the world anyone in America is allowing another language (other than English) to be his first... I don't know”

Maggie Thatcher had a clarity of vision and an understanding of the nature of man and the nature of government that few Americans appreciate today and sadly, even fewer politicians. 

Most of these quotes were found on this site: 

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Hero or Traitor: From Benedict Arnold to John Thune and the writing of history

Dear Leader Thune,

From 1776 to today the total number of Americans is estimated to have been around 600 million.  That’s about twice what the population is today.  One wonders how many historical figures most Americans can name.  There are of course the obvious ones like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and MLK who are probably at the top of the list for most Americans.  They were all known for having done great things. 

Most of the rest no one remembers.  According to Grok “The average American can likely freely name 10–30 historical figures without much prompting—mostly U.S. presidents, Founding Fathers, major civil rights icons, and a few global names like Einstein, Hitler, or Napoleon—depending on education, age, and interest in history.”  Sure, guys like Victor Davis Hansen and Al Franken could probably rattle off thousands, but for the mere mortals among us, a hundred or two probably tops us out. 

There is one name however that, while it likely doesn’t come up in the first go around for most Americans, is certainly known by a majority:  Benedict Arnold.

Arnold was a brilliant general and a true American hero.  In fact, the United States may never have succeeded in defeating the British had it not been for him.  He was the second in command to the feckless and incompetent General Horatio Gates at Saratoga in September of 1777.  At the time the Americans were on the ropes, they had lost New York, had just taken another beating at Brandywine and were in the process of losing their capital, Philadelphia, for the second time in less than a year. 

What’s more, their pleas for assistance across Europe were falling on deaf ears.  No one wanted to waste resources on some bedraggled rebels who didn’t have enough munitions, supplies or experience to take on the most powerful military in the world.  Giving them money was a great way to go broke while antagonizing an enemy. Things were looking very bleak indeed.

So this was the background in mid-September when General Gates wanted to take a cautious approach at Saratoga, despite having the British General John Burgoyne’s troops outnumbered 9,000 to 7,000. Arnold was vociferous about being more aggressive and eventually Gates relented.  The battle ended as a draw, but the patriots had held their ground and survived. Nonetheless, Gates’ and Arnold’s relationship had deteriorated to the point that Gates dismissed him. 

Three weeks later the second of Saratoga’s battles would take place and Arnold wasn’t about to stand around and do nothing. Without authorization he rode out into the battlefield, led the men on horseback and played a pivotal role in the decisive assault that resulted in the British surrender and the capture of 6,000 of Burgoyne’s men.

The victory at Saratoga, something of a shot heard round the world, was very possibly the single most important engagement in the war. That battle signaled to the rest of the world that the rebels just might be able to beat the British and convinced European powers, particularly the French, to support the Americans with men and money.  And without Arnold, it’s possible that none of that would have come about. We can’t know for sure, but Arnold, was hailed as a hero.

But that’s not how he’s remembered. No, the hero who played what might have been the most critical role in the most important battle of the American revolution is instead remembered as a traitor. 

Unhappy with the way he was treated by Congress and highly in debt, Arnold allowed his loyalist wife to lead him to betray the country by attempting to give the British the fort at West Point, which was strategically located above the Hudson River.

Sure, that was 250 years ago, but the name Benedict Arnold is one of the very few that Americans still remember. And it’s not just because he was a traitor. We’ve had lots of traitors, from the Rosenbergs to Aldrich Ames to half the Obama and Biden administrations, but Arnold’s name endures because of when he played his role, at the moment the country was being born.

Which is where you come in.  The United States is at a precipice. If we learned anything from 2020 it’s that there is a massive cheating machine running through the heart of America.  Across the country Americans watched as that election was literally hijacked. For four years anyone who suggested the country had been the victim of a coup d'état were called conspiracy nuts and insurrectionists.

Today we know it’s true and a vast majority of Americans – tellingly, including Democrats, who will likely lose votes – support Voter ID and the SAVE Act. The reality is, if you do not pass the SAVE Act, America will go the way of Virginia and New York City, where a small concentrated elite will convince a majority of the population they are moderates and then govern like Communists once they get in office. A free United States will not survive another wave of elections where just enough fraudulent votes are manufactured that “moderate” Democrats are installed and who then rule as tyrants.

And once the American Republic has collapsed and the country is thrown into a hot civil war, history will wonder how the greatest nation in the world shattered into a million pieces without anyone stopping what was so obviously a fatal condition.   

History will then look back on 2026 and find its villain, in the person of John Thune, the man who stood in the way when 85% of the American people wanted to fix this fatal flaw.  Think about that. Benedict Arnold’s name lives on as a symbol of treachery when in fact at the time between 1/3 and ½ of the country wanted to remain loyal to Britain. And here you are defying the wishes of 85% of the American people for God knows what reason. You will be to the American Republic what Brutus was to the Roman Republic. For generations your progeny will be labeled as the spawn of a traitor. 

The incredible thing is, you have the opportunity to do something that most Senators, indeed, most men, never get a chance to do: Impact history writ large.  Few men in history have stood where you do, at a crossroads where the choices are so stark and monumental for the future. One road leads to a leftist dystopia in which freedom and prosperity are extinguished under a Democrat tyranny imposed under the guise of diversity, equity and inclusion.  The other leads to the messy chaos of freedom and Capitalism, an imperfect combination that nonetheless powers the long-term march of prosperity.

Most men don’t get the opportunity to write their story on the stage of history. You actually do, in real time. There have been a few dozen men who have occupied the position you hold, and probably less than 1% of Americans can name a single one of them.  You have the opportunity to embrace saving America, becoming the champion of freedom and literally saving the Republic. In a universe where very few legislators can be seen as champions for freedom, you have the opportunity to become one. Sure, getting the SAVE Act through the Senate is probably a lot like herding cats, but that’s the job you signed up for. 

Which legacy will you leave behind, freedom and prosperity or a dystopian tyranny? Because that’s the choice you’re faced with.  Choose carefully, because history’s being written, both yours and ours.

The American people.

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Constitution be Damned! Off With Their Heads! (Before they murder your daughter or your mother or you...)

The United States literally began with these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

What that actually means, particularly the pursuit of Happiness part, is different for different people. At a minimum however, we can all agree that Life means, well… life.

The above, of course, comes from the Declaration of Independence.  But that document doesn’t define the structure of our government, the Constitution does.  And from the Constitution we get our federal system, where (originally) the federal government had a number of well-defined and finite powers such as defense, foreign relations and adjudicating conflicts between the various states.  States on the other hand reserved all those powers not specifically prohibited to them or delegated to the federal government. 

And the truth is, that system worked very well for a long time.  About 150 years.  But, starting in the 1910s, with the passage of the 16^th and 17^th amendments, the line between the two started to blur, in the 1930s it began to be fray and by the 1990s it was basically gone, which is the situation we find ourselves with today. 

This evisceration of our federal system of checks and balances for all intents and purposes no longer exists.  From to welfare to education to employment to consumer products to media to farming to housing, the federal government is involved in virtually every other aspect of American lives. 

But you know one place where federal control largely doesn’t extend?  The criminal justice system.  That doesn’t mean there is there no federal involvement, because in reality, there is, but states exert more control over the criminal justice system than they do over other aspects of life like healthcare, automobiles, banking, etc. 

As it relates to America’s founding document, that’s a problem.  Not that I believe the federal government should take over everything.  Just the opposite, actually. Indeed, as I read the Constitution, 70% of what Washington does is blatantly unconstitutional.  I’m confident America would be a far more prosperous place if the federal government stopped doing most of what it does.

But, sadly, that’s not happening, and as the old adage goes: “When in Rome…” 

Chris Bray over at the Federalist had a piece the other day discussing federalism, and how because, blue states are so dysfunctional, the federal government is having to step in to protect dogs. Most certainly the Founding Fathers didn’t have protecting Fido in mind when they wrote the Constitution.  But you know what they did have in mind, and explicitly so?  The lives of Americans. 

Nonetheless, we are seeing across the country, from Virginia to Maine to California, state and or local governments failing to protect that most basic thing upon which America was founded: Life.  The reports and stories we seen regularly are heartbreaking.  We see a criminal with 40 arrests murder a young woman during a home invasion.  We see an illegal alien with 30 prior arrests fatally slash the neck of a random woman standing at a bus stop. We see a thug with 17 priors beat a 64 year old man to death in a subway because he didn’t like the way the victim looked at him.

For far too many criminals the justice system is nothing but empty threats, empowered by government employees more focused on leftist agendas than the safety of the citizens they serve.

Stephen Miller pointed out recently that western civilization only started flourishing after centuries of culling the most violent among them via capital punishment. I’ve often said that it’s impossible to go into a dark movie theater and fully enjoy the show if the entire time you’re worried that the guy behind you might shoot you in the back of the head.  Similarly, it’s difficult to build a functioning, flourishing society, one that advances science, technology and builds prosperity if the citizens of said society worry about being killed waiting for the subway or driving home from work or standing in line at some fast food restaurant. All of the creativity that a people might put into inventing new widgets or doing cancer research or teaching children how to read instead gets focused on how to avoid becoming a victim of crime.

These policies are the bleeding edge (literally) of George Soros’ and the swamp’s attempts to destroy the Republic and turn America into the leftist paradise they all dream of controlling.  And just as the as Communism in the 20^th century did nothing but deliver bloodshed, economic ruin and tyranny everywhere it showed its ugly head, we see the same thing in blue states and cities across America.

Given the failure of blue state / city judges, prosecutors and District Attorneys to protect the lives of their citizens, Washington should step in to do the job.  They won’t be able to protect everyone, but they will be able to tackle the problem in a way that the states and cities refuse to do. 

What kinds of things can be done?

First: Make murder a federal crime with capital punishment the sentence and a streamlined appeal process so that the process doesn’t drag on for years or decades.

Second: The federal government should begin to indict and imprison said judges, prosecutors and DAs every single time one of the career criminals they put back on the street kills someone. 

But, you might say, they have immunity. Maybe from state charges, but not from federal civil rights violations.  Think back to 1992 when the local jury acquitted the police officers of assault and use of excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. What happened then? The feds came in and charged them with violations of King's civil rights and won convictions. Frankly, that was a BS charge then, but the precedent was set. If using a baton on someone who put the lives of countless motorists at risk is a violation of civil rights then actually empowering the murder of someone is at least as much so. As such, given the role that the various government officials play in putting on the street career criminals who then go on to commit murder, the Justice Department should hold them accountable. 

What would the result of such a policy be? One would be that it would force government officials to weigh the potential consequences of releasing criminals into communities against the potential outcome to the community, and as a consequence, to themselves personally if that criminal murders someone.  Another would be that the amount of crime would drop precipitously as career criminals find themselves held behind bars far more often than they’ve become accustomed to.

None of this is ideal and this is not an ideal solution, but as Voltaire said: “Perfect is the enemy of the good”, and when government officials not only don’t protect citizens, but actively put them in harm’s way, they should pay for those decisions. Government without accountability is just another way of saying tyranny, something the Declaration of Independence was specifically written to oppose. 

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Weak Men and Hard Times: The SAVE Act as a Tipping Point

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times. G. Michael Hopf – Those Who Remain

Like most red blooded American men, I think about sex and the Roman Empire numerous times every day. In recent years I’ve added the above quote.

As I think back, the different elements of it were probably floating around in some amorphous uncoordinated morass in the back of my mind for years, never bothering to coalesce. No doubt the reason they didn’t is because for most of my life America was enjoying the “Good times”. 

Good doesn’t mean perfect.  For the first three quarters of my life, times were far from such for America. From Vietnam to issues of race to the rusting of the manufacturing belt to economic tumult and the crime wave of the 80s & 90s, much of that period felt like Americans were living on a roller coaster. But overall life was forward looking and optimistic. Slowly but surely, things seemed to be moving in the right direction in the long run. Japanese imports may have turned the Big Four into the Big Three, but they helped improve quality and innovation in the industry. Computers came along and started making everything from writing term papers to coordinating shipping logistics easier and more efficient. Among other things, transportation deregulation, the collapse of Ma Bell and the growth in franchising brought about a rise in economic standards and a spectrum of lifestyle offerings that no humans had ever imagined, never mind enjoyed.

But then we got Barack Obama. He had a goal of transforming America, and indeed he succeeded. His was the beginning of the time when Americans stopped being able to actually debate ideas openly.  Once Obama emerged on the stage, everything became about race and victimization.  On virtually every issue, if someone disagreed with the administration on anything, it was racist.  I’m not suggesting it was all Obama’s fault. While he is most certainly a race grifter, the reality is, the silencing of debate by calling someone a racist was enabled by Nancy Pelosi and every other Democrat in America. 

But sadly, it didn’t stop there. Beginning in 2008, the Democrats – always the party of victimization, including their offspring, the KKK – perfected a tool for suppressing debate: wall to wall victimization. 

From that point forward Republicans were either racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and probably all at once. And suddenly the spectrum of issues for which debate could now be cut off, because Republicans were characterized as the living, breathing incarnations of Nazis, covered pretty much everything. From education to social net programs to airline safety to community policing, to the butchering of children, literally every single issue on the table was infected with the victimization / DEI cancer where debating on the merits was no longer tolerated.

Which brings me back to the hard times. We are very much living in those hard times now.  Not in the sense that Americans are destitute and the economy is a broken husk as it was during the Depression.  No, the economy is doing fairly well, but make no mistake, we are careening into the abyss which will not be pretty.

What do I mean by that?  We have become a nation where logic and rationality no longer exist and where no one seems capable of or willing to do anything about it. Across the country we have states that not only pretend boys can be girls and vice versa but are enabling schools and hospitals to butcher children without their parents’ consent or against their wishes.  We have federal judges deciding they can exercise executive authority with impunity. We’ve seen the exposure of trillions of dollars of waste and fraud in federal programs and yet a GOP Congress keeps funding them. We have criminals with rap sheets a mile long and they’re released to continue to terrorize communities. We have an election that was stolen, a president who was targeted and thousands of citizens persecuted for J6. And not a single person has been held accountable. Over the quarter century after 9/11 we imported millions of Muslims who practice a religion at odds with our 1^st Amendment, yet we’re told we must be tolerant.

Perhaps nowhere is the dysfunction crystalized more than in the embarrassing spectacle of a Republican government unable (or unwilling) to pass the SAVE Act, something that 95% of their constituents support as do 70% of their opponents’.  Ensuring honest elections, something upon which 85% of the American population agrees on strongly, possibly the most unified issue in American history.  And yet the issue hits a brick wall because 4 GOP Senators don’t like President Trump’s bombastic style and Democrats don’t care about honesty. 

America seems to have become impotent when it comes to addressing real, concrete problems.  Which is what happens when weak men refuse to do what’s right for fear of being called names.  Donald Trump is brash and full of bravado, but he’s in charge of the Justice Department and this is happening on his watch. What’s more, just yesterday the “Deportation” president let a Communist come into his office and convince him to release an illegal alien who’d been arrested.  At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue John Thune talks a lot but lets himself be manhandled by an octogenarian in a wheelchair. 

A rational, normal person looking at this can’t help but wonder if there is any hope. Can the system be fixed under the current framework. If not, what then? 

I think we may just see this summer.  The issue around which all the above coalesces is election integrity. If the SAVE Act goes down and patriotic Americans realize that the GOP has basically sold the country out to grifters who manipulate elections from the school board to the White House, I wonder if we may not see large-scale protests and more by strong men across the country. 

Street demonstrations and shows of force are not a traditional tactic of conservatives, but when the legitimate levers with which a government is elected are undermined and controlled by a cabal of anti-American elites, what options are left? 

Popper's Paradox: Does America Have a Duty to Tolerate That Which Threatens It

As someone who looks at culture and politics regularly, I often write about problems and on occasion, proffer solutions. Sometimes the solutions are relatively straightforward and obvious, like suggesting to the GOP that if they don’t pass the SAVE Act and bring about something resembling honest elections they’re going to get their asses handed to them in November.   Others, I recognize, are far more complex than my 30,000 foot take on the issue. This is most certainly the case when I suggested the government should get out of the wealth redistribution business. Knowing that there are thousands of programs handing out trillions of dollars annually, just suggesting the government should get out of the business of taking money from Peter to give to Paul seems a bit trite.  And it might be, but trying to explain a problem and proffer a detailed solution in under 1200 words is a bit challenging, at least it is for me. 

But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop highlighting issues and making suggestions. 

One of the most important and challenging issues from both a cultural and political perspective is tolerance. What should we tolerate?  How much of it should we tolerate?  And, perhaps most importantly, what should be not tolerate… and why.

For years I’ve struggled with the idea of limits on tolerance, but didn’t really have a definition for it.  I do now. I recently saw a post that referred to Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance, something with which I was unfamiliar. I looked it up and immediately recognized it as the perfect distillation of exactly what had been running through my head, basically: Does society have a duty to be tolerant to that which seeks to destroy said society?

For a long time, America clearly understood the answer was no. The obvious example is Communism. America knew that Communism was a threat and Congress did what it could to thwart the party and extinguish the idea itself. Under the Smith Act (Alien Registration Act of 1940), it became illegal to act “with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence…”

The party was outlawed and leaders were thrown in jail, and while being a Communist wasn’t technically illegal, just being one could get you fired or blacklisted, both in Hollywood and beyond.  Eventually the Supreme Court, in Yates v. United States (1957), narrowed Smith, ruling that abstract advocacy of revolution or teaching doctrine was protected by the First Amendment. Only advocacy directed at inciting imminent illegal action could be punished. 

Today Communism is tolerated in America, and sadly, celebrated even. Indeed, it’s basically merged with the Democrat party and their love child has just been elected as mayor of New York. And the reality is, the Democrat party of 2026 is far more of a danger to the Republic than the Communists ever were.

The merger actually dovetails with the primary subject of this piece on tolerance:  Islam. 

Our 1^st Amendment guarantees Americans freedom of religion. Indeed, it’s literally the very first right protected in the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

There is no definition in the Constitution or anywhere else in government however that states exactly what a religion is.  In truth, religion in America encompasses everything from traditional Catholicism, reformed Judaism and thousands of Protestant sects to the late Heaven’s Gate cult and being a conscientious objector!

Perhaps nothing else demonstrates the reality that America is, in a word, tolerant. 

But are there limits to that tolerance? And should those limits apply to Islam?

I’d like to suggest that there should be, and yes they should apply to Islam.

The reality is, while Islam is most certainly a religion, it is also something else. It is a theology of conquest and subjugation. From its very beginning Islam was about conquering and conquest, through any means necessary, including deception. 

On a daily basis we hear Muslim “scholars” and others speak in the streets, on college campuses and online among other places, telling us that Islam will basically take over.  Even in high schools they are welcomed to proffer Sharia. 

And that gets to the crux of the problem.  At its very core, Islam is incompatible with western civilization.  It does not believe in freedom of speech. It does not believe in freedom of religion.  Women are 2^nd class citizens and non-Muslim women fare even worse. 

All of this might just be an exercise navel gazing, if it were not so deadly. Since 9/11 there have been more than 64,000 Islamic terrorist attacks around the world.  Most were actually in Muslim countries, particularly those with American troops on the ground. But not all.  Here in the United States, since 1994 there have been a total of 740 Islamic terrorist attacks or plots disrupted while in Europe between 1994 and 2021 that number was 367.   

But it’s not just naval gazing. Across Europe, they’re seeing what happens when Muslims reach just 5% of the population. In France over half of young Muslims want Sharia law, in Austria a court made Sharia legal, while in the UK Muslim rape rings were allowed to rape thousands of young white girls for more than a decade because the authorities were scared of being called racists. Indeed across Europe Muslims are rapidly increasing in numbers and not only are they not assimilating, they are bringing unprecedented rates of violent crime across the continent.  Here at home Muslims gather in large groups tell us they are taking over, something they have explicitly wanted to do for over 30 years! 

And so back to my original question: Does society have a duty to be tolerant to that which seeks to destroy said society?  Is Islam to be tolerated? If yes, ask yourself, is there a “religion” that might ever NOT be tolerated? What tenants might it have that are not present in Islam?  What kinds of activities would its adherents have to engage in that have not been so by Muslims?

Our Constitution was written as a vehicle for preserving the fundamental ideas of limited government, free speech, freedom of religion and individual liberty. A creed that explicitly targets those simply cannot be tolerated. 

This is one of those problems for which solutions would take far more 1200 words to cover.  Whatever solutions are to be had, they must start with recognizing that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.