Watching The Founding Fathers' Fatal Oversight Playing Itself Out Right In Front of Us

Our Founding Fathers were geniuses.  They were far from perfect, but they were generally virtuous men, and they gifted us with a constitution far superior to anything that had ever been written.  The document they wrote was imperfect, as all things that men create are, but it was extraordinary nonetheless – even with the 3/5 Compromise. 

They gave us a system with a separation of powers, both within the federal government and between the federal and state governments. The Bill of Rights, which was basically the quid pro quo agreed to for ratification, extended that distribution of powers by recognizing that some rights belonged to the citizens and were largely beyond the power of government to impeach upon.

In hindsight however, the Founding Fathers made one fatal error, and we’re seeing it play out right in front of us today.  And it’s somewhat curious that they made it…

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, read widely in preparation for writing it.  He read the writings of Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Montesquieu.  He looked at the Constitutions of the various American states.  And he studied governments throughout history such as the Dutch Republic, the Achaean League and of course, as practically all of the Founders did, the Roman Republic. 

And this is what puzzles me.  A critical element of the success of the Roman Republic was term limits, which were adopted for the specific purpose of preventing an individual from accumulating too much power and leading to a new monarchy.  Magistrates, from Quaestors (the entry level bureaucrat workhorses) to Consuls (highest ordinary office; supreme executive/military authority) whose terms ran 1 year each, were generally forbidden from being reelected to the same office for a decade. This ensured that the power remained with the office itself rather than the individual.

With very few exceptions – largely dictatorships, an office rarely called upon and usually for military emergencies – this system of checks allowed the Roman Republic to survive for half a millennium (509 – 27 BC).  What’s more, it was when these limits started to be ignored, first with the Gracchi Brothers and then Marius & Sulla, that the precipitous collapse of the Republic began.  Of course the Gracchi Brothers in particular were responding to a Senate that was intransigent about sharing power – and wealth – with the rest of Italy. (The Senate was largely hereditary and made up of the oldest families and richest men in Rome.)

It’s curious, knowing that Madison and the Founding Fathers were well aware of this history, that they didn’t feel the need to include term limits in our Constitution, particularly as they had included them in the Articles of Confederation.

There are of course reasons for that. Our Founding Fathers never imagined Congress would be a full-time endeavor.  It was a part time job, usually meeting maybe 6 months a year as travel was slow and most congressmen had farms or law practices or businesses that needed to be attended to back home. What’s more, initially there was not a great deal for the federal government to do.  Indeed, state governments, particularly Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York were far more compelling destinations for powerful men than Washington. Demonstrating this, John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court stepped down to become Governor of New York, and when later President Adams reappointed him and the Senate confirmed him, he declined, citing the court’s lack of "the energy, weight and dignity which are essential to its affording due support to the national government."

At the end of the day, these combined to suggest to a majority of the delegates that term limits would be unnecessary and overly restrictive.

Sadly, that oversight is today starting to hemorrhage and the Republic’s future is at stake. 

From Georgia to Arizona to Minnesota, Americans are watching in real time as revelations about the coup d'état in 2020 finally see the light of day. Suddenly we’re seeing massive amounts of proof that that thing that Democrats warned about for years before the 2020 election, then swore was impossible after it, happened regularly.  Across the country and always in one direction.

Americans see this. And want to fix it, or at least 85% of the population does.  But they can’t. 

Why?  Because we have a handful of GOP senators who simply don’t care and there is little Americans can do about it.

But we have elections you might say. Sure, but they had elections in Soviet Russia too, and their incumbents won only slightly more often than ours. Soviets, with only one name on the ballot, invariably won reelection with averages of 99% of the vote.  “But this is America and we have real competition and freedom of choice” you say.  And what is the average reelection rate for members of Congress?  Well, in 2024 it was… 97% for the House, up slightly from the 94% over the previous 3 decades and 87% in the Senate, down from the 100% in 2022 but exactly what its average was over the previous 35 years.   

As it relates to the problem at hand, the House has recently passed a revised SAVE Act which mandates Voter ID for voting and citizenship proof to register. One would think with 53 seats in the Senate the GOP should be able to pass the act and get it to President Trump’s desk in a New York minute.  But no. Why, because at least 3 senators with a combined tenure of 94 years have decided that they don’t care about honest elections, regardless of what the American people want.  Indeed, 85% of Americans support Voter ID. That level of support is extraordinary. You couldn’t get 85% of Americans to agree on the color of the sun, but they agree on Voter ID. 

But somehow, Susan Collins – 29 years in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski – 24 years, and Mitch McConnel – 41 years (and a revolving cast of a few other vacillating GOP Senators have decided that they know better than the American people.  They don’t care.

These three GOP Senators and a few vacillating others, along with every treacherous Democrat senator – other than maybe John Fetterman, are giving the American people the middle finger.  And they all can do so because they have a close to zero chance of ever facing consequences over their decisions.

And that’s where the problem is. Our Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution to control the nature of man. But they miscalculated. They thought the federal government would remain relatively weak compared to the states and the people. Today it’s anything but. Indeed, Washington has become the most powerful city in the world, controlling most of our lives and literally spending more money than the GDP of every country on Earth besides the US and China.  And because of that, serving in Congress today is the opposite of the part time civic duty the Founders had envisioned. It’s a vehicle for unprecedented power and the riches that brings.

The reality is, Washington has become a cesspool of corruption and the fact that half of Congress feel comfortable stonewalling an issue more popular than baseball and apple pie demonstrates that reality.   

The old saying goes “Power corrupts & absolute power corrupts, absolutely.” 90-98% reelection rates are about as close to absolute power as you can get in a theoretically “democratic” form of government. 

If America has any hope of saving itself on the eve of its 250^th anniversary, this needs to be fixed, and there’s only one way to do it: Term limits.

From Patriot to Sucker: Is the American Dream Dying Under the Weight of Government Waste and Widespread Fraud?

I grew up in a military family and lived on military bases most of my early life, five years of which were spent on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.  Honestly, it was the most Americana place I’ve ever lived.  Think Mayberry surrounded by minefields.  Thankfully we didn’t often encounter the minefields, but we knew they were there. 

Fourth of July was always the biggest day of the year.  We had parades with tanks and marching bands and floats and classic convertibles with pretty girls waving from the back. The rest of the day would be filled with motocross races and boxing matches, track and field events and midway games and endless food. And everything was topped off with a concert and fireworks once the sun set. 

Never a great student, I went from one grade to the next holding on by my fingertips, except for history and social studies.  I was fascinated about history and loved reading about the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians, but mostly about America and WW II, which at that time had only been over for about 30 years. We of course studied the Constitution and what led to the Revolution, but we also read about slavery and the Trail of Tears and watched Roots. America was great, even if it was imperfect.

My joining the military after school was never a question. My parents never pushed me, but it was just what you did. And so after college I spent two years in the Army, stationed in what was then West Germany. One of the most interesting things I encountered while there was an old west town the local Germans had built. It looked like something straight out of Bonanza.  Inside each of the buildings was a wide collection of Americana, most of which was oddly anachronistic, like Mickey Mouse clocks and old pinball machines and lava lamps. The interesting thing was, these people loved everything American. Despite the war that was only a generation away, America was a place of dreams, a place of adventure, a place where anything was possible. 

That didn’t surprise me because my entire life I’d known that America was great.  It was imperfect, but I knew that it was fundamentally good, and that most Americans were fundamentally good.

After leaving the Army I went to grad school and earned my MBA and began my life as an entrepreneur, which I’ve done for the last 30 years.  In all honesty, I’m a terrible entrepreneur.  I’ve had some great ideas, but most came to naught. Aside from one minor success early on – a company teaching kids about investing and entrepreneurship, where I interviewed a young Elon Musk – every one of my entrepreneurial endeavors has been a bust.

But here’s the thing, I’ve always known that my life is better because of entrepreneurs and patriots who have come before me.  Our founding fathers gave us a constitution that created the foundation for the freest nation in human history, which in turn created unprecedented opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators to risk doing great things and then earn a reward for success.  For me, America was the land of opportunity, the place where anyone with a good idea and willing to put in the sweat and take some risks could find success. 

But sadly, I’ve started to question that… but not because of my own failings. Those I own. I was either in the wrong place at the wrong time or just didn’t do a good job selling my idea. No, it’s not my failures that have me questioning what America has become… It’s watching the millions and billions and trillions of dollars that get sent to grifters and thieves.    

I’m talking about the billions being funneled through fake or leftist NGOs that DOGE exposed.  I’m talking about the people who took PPP money during Covid and used it to live like rapper kings. I’m talking about the daycare fraud in Minnesota and the homeless grift in California and the home health fraud in Maine and elsewhere.  Not to mention the trillions wasted on countless green energy scams and the billions that go to support people who are here illegally. 

I’m talking about the people we see using EBT cards to buy lobster and steak while working people are living on Ramen noodles and hot dogs.  I’m talking about families who have been in Section 8 housing and on welfare for generations while working people are living like college students, sharing rooms and couch surfing among friends. I’m talking about colleges and companies dropping standards and accepting people not because of their hard work and merit, but because of a diversity thumb stuck on the scale.

The point of all of this is that over the last couple of years I’ve started to ask myself if I’m a sucker… and that maybe I have a lot of company.  I’ve worked hard my whole life and paid my taxes and aside from a college loan (non-forgiven) and a small PPP loan (forgiven) when Covid lockdowns hammered our business, I’ve never taken a penny from the government. Actually, my goal was always the opposite, to become sufficiently successful that I’d actually have to hire accountants to do my taxes.  And I wanted to do that by helping make other people’s lives easier or better.  That’s how fortunes have traditionally been made in America. Whether it was inventing the elevator or flash frozen food or selling Beanie Babies, you create a product or service that others are willing to voluntarily exchange their money for.  That’s America’s magic, a win-win exchange where everyone gets what they value most. 

But today I look around and I see companies laying off Americans while simultaneously bringing in millions of H1B visa workers.  I see grifting NGOs lining their pockets and using taxpayer dollars to keep Democrats in power – who then attack America at every turn.  I look at the fact that more than 50% of the money government spends is redistribution and half the country doesn’t pay income taxes.

And I wonder, why would anyone choose to follow the rules when it would be easier to simply run a scam or suckle at the government teat?  I understand that working hard and being honest is a part of one’s character, but at what point do conscientious people say “I’m done working my ass off just so everyone else can live like kings off my sweat”?

I love America and I always will, and I’m not giving up, but I have to wonder about the future. When someone like me who bleeds red, white & blue starts to question if it makes sense to do the right thing, I can’t imagine what the young people educated in the anti-American forges we call schools think.

From Athens and Rome to the Abbasid Caliphate and Song China, most of history’s greatest empires collapsed because they betrayed the very things that made them great in the first place.  For America that’s freedom and opportunity.  To the degree that grift, government corruption and “largesse” have replaced hard work, risk and merit as the primary avenues for “success” the Republic’s days are numbered. Sadly, I don’t see any signs in Washington that many of the people in charge of the system are much interested in fixing it.

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

The SAVE Act: Donald Trump's Place in History Will Be Defined by Whether He Saves the Republic, Period.

Recently I wrote a piece that received some pushback.  I wondered if Donald Trump was making the same mistake as George Bush Sr. did when he broke his “Read my lips:  No new taxes” pledge. 

If you read my work regularly, you’ll notice a decidedly clear bias towards warnings of doom.  It’s not my default position that life is nothing but doom and gloom. On the contrary. I actually have a website that explicitly talks about how good we have things and encourages gratitude for the American entrepreneurs and inventors who made our lives possible. In a universe where most of history was characterized by scarcity, war, slavery and early death, most Americans today have relatively extraordinary lives. 

Everything we have today came about as the result of the hard work of generations of people who left us this legacy.  From the Founding Fathers leaving us the Constitution to Grant defeating the South to Rockefeller rationalizing energy to Jobs putting the Internet in our hands, everything we have in the 21^st century came from the efforts of countless numbers of long dead people, as well as, often, our own efforts.

To the degree that one can identify the elements that made the last 250 years so different from any prior period, it was the combination of the individual freedom, free markets, private property and limited government.  Those elements laid the foundation for a nation to spread across a continent, become an industrial juggernaut and become an economic powerhouse able to promote freedom and prosperity to billions of people around the world.

That anger sometimes reflected in my writing is because the government, over the last 50 years, has done virtually everything it can to undermine that success. On almost every front, government has gotten itself involved in areas where it has no place, no constitutional authority, and regardless of how ineffective, pernicious or downright harmful its actions are, nobody ever does anything about it. The borg like government, with its tentacles attaching to ever more elements of American life, and tightening its grip, is killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  Look no farther than GDP growth. Below is a chart of average annual GDP growth by decade since 1950:

1950s: 4.2% 

1960s: 4.5% 

1970s: 3.2% 

1980s: 3.1% 

1990s: 3.2% 

2000s: 1.9% 

2010s: 2.4% 

2020s: 2.4% 

To understand how much of a problem that is, understand that in the 1950s computers were the size of a house and could do 5,000 calculations per second.  Today a computer fits in the palm of your hand and is literally billions of times faster.  Yet our GDP growth is almost half as much, but should be double.

If you want to know why, despite the fact that we are so much more efficient and have far better and more tools at our disposal, our GDP is half what it used to be, the answer is Government. Perhaps the only thing that has grown more than computer power over the last half century is government power. They have intruded on practically every single aspect of our lives, from mandating the ability to remotely turn off our cars to requiring those tags on your mattress to telling you the makeup of your neighborhood. And sadly, while they’re busy promoting the butchering of some children and the trafficking of others, they fail at the basic elements of government such as maintaining law and order, keeping our borders secure and not sending money to dead people. 

The tentacles of Government are everywhere, like a cancer that knows no bounds and for which there is no cure.  Of course, theoretically there is a cure for all of this: elections.  But the government has somehow managed to manipulate them so that regardless of who gets elected in either party, we basically get the same policies.  Sure, some things may change around the edges, but for the most part the Swamp reigns and nobody does anything about it. The budgets basically remain the same, the programs largely stay the same and the controlling elites basically rotate between government, NGOs and corporate boardrooms.    

And here’s where my piece talking about Trump betraying his voters comes into play.  I could spend my time showcasing the great things he has done, and he has done many, but I focus on the fact that if he doesn’t deal with the gun pointed at the head of the Republic, none of that matters. 

For Democrats cheating is simply their MO. Between importing new illegal voters, manipulating the voting apparatus, and fighting Voter ID, Democrats have basically wiped out GOP representation in New England despite the fact that 30-40% of the population in those areas are Republicans.  Democrats will destroy the Republic the next time they get power, and if Donald Trump doesn’t start acting like a leader with something to fight for, there won’t be anything left to fight for.

Once back in power, Democrats will kill that American goose.  They will manipulate voting rules to turn the country writ large into the dysfunctional cesspools they’ve created in Illinois, Maryland, California, etc.  They will expand the problems of San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, et. al. into the suburbs and eventually across the country. They will utilize every lever of government power to eviscerate the foundations of freedom that made the country great in the first place.

But it doesn’t have to be.  But unfortunately we’re watching Senate leader John Thune betray Americans on easily the lowest hanging fruit ever in American history, the SAVE act. You can say that Trump doesn’t run Congress or the Senate, which is true, but he is still the president with the largest soapbox on the planet, on an issue so powerful that even a majority of Democrats support it.  Trump should call on and or call out every GOP Senator who is standing in his way.  He should do rallies in their states and encourage citizens to reach out and sway them.  He should utilize every one of the substantial levers of power at his disposal to convince them to pass it. 

The reality is, the SAVE act (which isn’t perfect, as it currently doesn’t outlaw the insane policy of letting illegals have Social Security numbers) and its companion deportations, are where the tire hits the road relative to a free Republic. Literally, if we do not put in place guarantees for honest elections now, the country will be as blue as the California House delegation within a decade. 

The SAVE act is not sufficient to guarantee honest elections, but it’s a first step. As for my regular warnings of doom, I wish I could spend my time commenting on the new arch going up in Arlington or the new White House ballroom, but the reality is, those are of no real consequence.  If Donald Trump doesn’t focus on guaranteeing secure elections, neither will matter because both will end up as symbols not of a great hero who saved the Republic, but rather of the man who failed to save it when he had the chance. 

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Did We Just Witness Donald Trump’s ‘Read My Lips, No New Taxes!’ Moment?

In life, it’s hard to know whom to trust. When you’re betrayed, it often feels like a knife to the heart. The reality is, try as we might, and as much as we think we know someone, sometimes we just don’t, which is how we get divorces or broken friendships and estranged families.

As that’s the case with people we know, how much should we trust politicians?

Given that most of them are lawyers, we already know that many are good at twisting the truth, so we should probably be skeptical of anything they say. But the reality is, we don’t get the kinds of opportunities to get to know politicians the way we do spouses, friends, etc. We therefore largely must go by what we read about them and, of course, what they say.

For most of America’s history, trusting politicians was relatively unimportant. What I mean is that in the universe of things that affected our lives, other than on major things like war or taxes, government was, by design, pretty far down on the list of catalysts for most of our history. As such, people would pay attention to politics at election time, then not really worry about it much until the next cycle. Government was, after all, pretty small and, for most people, a distant concern.

Today, we’re at something of a polar opposite to that laissez-faire, small government America. As they control so much of our lives, it matters whether politicians are trustworthy and whether they betray their voters.

Probably the single biggest betrayal by an American politician—or at least president—was George Bush in 1990. During the campaign of 1988, he made a pledge at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans of “Read my lips: No new taxes.” That line resonated more than any single element of that campaign, and as a result, Bush won the popular vote by 8 points and took the electoral college 426 to Michael Dukakis’s 111, the last time any president received more than 380 votes.

Unfortunately for America, Bush broke that promise. After not being able to come to a budget agreement with the Democrat Congress, in 1990, Bush agreed to new taxes. The result was that, despite a 3% GDP growth and inflation sitting at 3%, Bush lost his 1992 bid for reelection. It’s true that H Ross Perot was on the ballot and threw a wrench in the works, but the reality is that the only reason Perot was even remotely viable was voter disgust with Bush’s broken promise.

Now, conservatives are rightfully worried that Donald Trump may be getting ready to have his “Read my lips: No new taxes!” moment, but it has nothing to do with taxes. I’m of course talking about statements such as this: “Immediately upon taking the oath of office, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history.” (He didn’t) And this: “I consider it an invasion of our country… We’ll get National Guard, and we’ll go as far as I’m allowed to go, according to the laws of our country.” (He hasn’t) And this: When Kristen Welker asked Trump in an NBC News interview whether his plan was to deport everyone without legal status, he responded. “I think you have to do it.” (Nope)

With the relatively tiny number of deportations thus far, pullback in Minnesota, and the administration’s softening its deportation stance on selected industries, supporters are starting to wonder if Trump is giving the insurrectionists on the left a “heckler’s veto” while capitulating to the Chamber of Commerce wing (AKA grifting RINOs) of the Republican party.

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While Trump may not be on the ballot in November and in 2028, the reality is, if he does not follow through on his promises, the GOP will likely lose Congress in November, and whoever the GOP nominee is, he will have a very steep climb in 2028.

In July 2025, support for deporting every illegal alien was at about 60% nationally. Today, according to the left-leaning Pew organization, the number is about half that. While the Pew numbers no doubt undercount the position’s support, the reality is, it’s likely significantly below what it was six months ago.

And it’s Trump’s fault. Here’s how:

1.    Democrats were always going to politicize deportations, and other than Stephen Miller, Trump has not fielded a strong team to communicate exactly why the deportations are necessary.

2.    The media was always going to give any conflict the Ken Burns / George Floyd treatment, and anything involving children was going to get the “Kids in Cages” framing. Again, Trump has done far too little to communicate the reality of what they are doing, and that includes highlighting the costs of “non-criminal” illegals to the nation.

3.    Finally, and most importantly, the left is well-trained, well-funded, disciplined, and motivated to basically begin a civil war over immigration because leftists understand that Democrat power is fundamentally tied to illegal immigration. They know that the violence they instigate will be portrayed as Trump’s.

And here is where Trump has dropped the ball most clearly. He promised to utilize the National Guard or even invoke the Insurrection Act to ensure that he can carry out his deportations in an orderly fashion. Not only has he not done so, but he has also allowed sanctuary cities and states to stand by while ICE agents are being assaulted trying to do their jobs. He’s let the leftists use violence and intimidation to derail the lawful policies most Americans voted for.

Americans have been shown over the last year that Democrat power is based almost exclusively on cheating in every way possible, from fraud in the election infrastructure to funneling billions of taxpayer dollars into their campaign coffers via NGOs to encouraging non-citizens to vote. Americans recognize that illegal immigration is the primary vehicle through which Democrats maintain their power, and they use that power to harm the interests of citizens at every opportunity.

Getting back to trust, Americans put theirs in Donald Trump to do the one thing that he talked about more than any other issue over the last four years: Deport illegal aliens, all of them.

No president in a generation has painted a more specific agenda than he has, and if he does not fulfill his promises, it will splinter the Republican party. There’s always been a fissure between the country club Republicans and the grass roots, and while the former would be fine if Trump goes back on his promise, the latter will not. They will either withhold their votes or go with third-party candidates whom they feel they can trust more than the treacherous Republicans.

Either way, such a betrayal would bring about the end of the GOP as a viable counterweight to the treacherous Democrats, to the degree that the GOP of the last 20 years had any counterweight value. With the Democrats in charge of America, Trump and his allies, both in the administration and out, would once again find targets on their backs a la the persecution of the J6ers, General Flynn, Peter Navarro, Rudy Giuliani, Tina Peters, et. al.

And it wouldn’t stop there. From individual ICE agents to local MAGA adherents to Trump’s donors, everyone associated with the movement would be crushed, using every element at their disposal from the IRS to the FBI to a sure to be resurrected Disinformation Governance Board.

As much as Trump probably dislikes the way the media portray him, he will like it a great deal less when they’ve imprisoned him and patriots blame him for the collapse of the Republic. Both are very real possibilities if he doesn’t keep his promises…

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