Donald Trump and Elon Musk: The New American Patriots

Donald Trump and Elon Musk, two men who have the world at their feet are risking everything for America.  They don't have to, but they do.  Not so different than some others about 250 years ago.

Rush Limbaugh used to talk about a story his father told about the signers of the Declaration of Independence:  “Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.”

The story had something of a resurrection in the early 2000s and was often shared in various iterations on social media. Not surprisingly, a minor industry emerged seeking to “fact check” them.  An example of such is this from Snopes, which first began fact checking them back in 2005: 

“Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died.

It is true that five signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured by the British during the course of the Revolutionary War. However, none of them died while a prisoner, and four of them were taken into custody not because they were considered "traitors" due to their status as signatories to that document, but because they were captured as prisoners of war while actively engaged in military operations against the British.”

Snopes concludes that the piece they reviewed (not the Limbaugh piece) was “Mixed” in its accuracy. They’re right. Accuracy matters. Particularly in matters of importance. They then add something that backhandedly drives home the basic premise: “So great is our need for simplified, dramatic events and heroes that even the real-life biographies of the fifty-six men who risked their lives to publicly declare American independence are no longer compelling enough.” This is the theme that most of the gotcha fact checkers miss and indeed, largely ignored by those who seek to debunk the audacity of what those 56 did… They were committing treason.  They knew they were committing treason.  They knew the penalty for committing treason was hanging.  And, yet, they did so, risking everything they had. 

What’s more, they weren’t committing treason against just some random monarch with a few colonies to protect.  No, they were committing treason against the most powerful nation on the planet whose navy dominated the seas and whose reach stretched across continents and oceans. 

Whether they ended up dying of old age as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams did – on the same day, exactly 50 years from the date of the Declaration of Independence, July 4^th, 1826 – or died during the war itself, as nine of the signatories did, all 56 of them knew they were risking their fortunes, families and their lives if they signed that document. And they did it nonetheless.

Today there are millions of Americans ready to sign a new Declaration of Independence from the tyranny America has become. Tyranny you say? 

The American government in 2024 is far more tyrannical than the British government under King George III ever was.  And it’s not even close. With over 88,000 laws and rules passed by the federal government just between 1995 & 2016, today it’s almost impossible for the average American to get through a single day, nevermind a single year or life without breaking a law.  In his book Three Felonies A Day civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate suggests that American commit three federal felonies every day without even knowing it.  And that doesn’t include the countless state and local laws or authoritarian fictions tyrants create. 

From a different perspective, consider this:  In 1880 there were 30,000 prisoners jailed in the United States, out of a population of 50 million, for an incarceration rate of .06%. Today there are 1.6 million prisoners of a population of 350 million, for an incarceration rate of .45%, and if one counts the additional 3.4 million others in the system – i.e. probation and parole, which were essentially nonexistent in 1880, you get a justice system control rate of 1.45%.  Are Americans somehow 25 times more criminalized today than they were 140 years ago or are there simply more crimes for which they can be convicted? 

As any conscious person knows, it’s the latter.

Which makes what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing, simply extraordinary.  While there are millions of Americans who would be willing to sign a new Declaration of Independence if it came to it, those two are trying to avoid having that be a necessity.  And they are risking everything in order to make it so.

Trump, unlike most politicians (presidents and members of congress alike) has actually lost money since becoming president, to the tune of $1.6 billion!  From the moment he announced he was running for president and continuing until this very day, the swamp has used propaganda, lies and lawfare to hamper him winning the White House, stonewall him while he was serving in it and today trying to keep him from winning again. Beyond that treachery, he was shot in a bungled assassination attempt and had at least one more thwarted. 

Musk, while still the world’s richest man, has seen governments around the world target his businesses and threaten to put him in jail for his purchase of Twitter and his defense of free speech. Indeed, just last week California blocked one of his companies, SpaceX, from more launches from the state specifically because of his tweets. 

And why is that happening?  Because like the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, Trump and Musk recognize that the American government has become a tyranny.  They recognize the government has become bloated, inefficient and stultifying to American freedom and prosperity while at the same time its fellow travelers in the media, finance, pharma, academia, etc. – have become wealthy and above the law.

The duo not only recognize that tyranny, they’re telling American citizens they’re going to destroy it. Trump promises to eliminate the Department of Education while Musk wants to help slash government by 80%!  For the cabal of government apparatchiks and the sundry hyenas who feed alongside them on the body politic of America, this is a declaration of war.  It threatens their very existence. And it must be stopped, whatever it takes.

Which is exactly what makes what Trump and Musk are doing so brave. Neither man needs to become embroiled in politics to live a life of luxury or provide one to their progeny. Indeed, both have knowingly and willingly put their fortunes and their lives in the crosshairs of the most powerful tyranny in all of human history.  That is the kind of courage that animated the creation of the greatest republic in human history.  That’s the kind of courage that inspired men from 13 separate colonies to put their differences aside and to fight for freedom. Ideally the courage of these two modern day patriots will inspire citizens across America’s 50 states to utilize the ballot box to save the nation those 56 founders bequeathed to us. One Declaration of Independence should be enough.  Hopefully we won’t need another. 

A Sixth Sense About Democrats

Memory is a strange thing. Arthur M. Schlesinger writes in A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House that JFK once said that his brain was filled with random bits of what he called useless information and he often had memory of how he’d come to know it in the first place.  The example he used is that he knew for some reason that the level of salt in our blood is the same as in ocean water. For myself, memory is like a roulette wheel where I’ll forget someone’s name two seconds after being introduced but somehow remember the color of the corduroy pants my mother made me wear 50 years ago… maroon and gold!

It's into this hodgepodge of my memory that something sticks out like a pulsar in the dark of space:  The moment the ring drops to the floor in the movie The Sixth Sense, when we suddenly realize Bruce Willis’s character is dead. I was simply dumbfounded. It immediately made sense, but I couldn’t believe that I’d not recognized it the whole time. The movie flashes back over the different scenes from Willis’s newly revealed perspective and it was suddenly as if I’d just watched a different movie than the one I’d actually seen.  From Willis’s eyes everything was clearly there, but I simply hadn’t seen it. The signs were there, but I just didn’t recognize them…

That movie came back to me this week when a piece of news came out that was every bit as crystalizing as that ring crashing to the floor and rolling. The Democrats hate Americans.  As millions of Americans picked themselves up and surveyed the extraordinary damage wrought by hurricane Helene, to their horror they discovered that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, an agency specifically set up to help American citizens and communities recover from natural disasters exactly like Helene, had run out of money.  And it wasn’t because the agency wasn’t given any money.  No, FEMA didn’t have any money to help Americans who had lost everything, were waiting to be rescued or who were hungry and thirsty because… the Biden / Harris administration spent $1 billion in the last two years providing housing and other services to illegal aliens.  Literally, a program specifically created to help Americans recover from disasters didn’t have any money left to help Americans recover from disasters because it had spent all it’s money on services for people who had come into the country illegally. 

Like that bouncing ring in the movie, that ill spent $1 billion released a cacophony of images of the disdain in which Democrats hold American citizens. The release of at least 425,000 convicted criminal illegal aliens into the heart of America, including 13,000 convicted murders and 15,000 who were convicted of sexual assault! California literally making it illegal require proof of citizenship when seeking to vote. Native born Americans losing 850,000 jobs over the last year while foreign born workers added a whopping 1.2 million!

And if there was any suggestion that the disastrous response to Helene was somehow a fluke by an otherwise effective administration, one merely needs to recognize that it comes on the heels of equally disastrous responses to calamities in Maui and East Palestine, OH.  The indifference to the plight of distressed Americans stands in stark contrast to the laser focus the Democrats have had for sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the extraordinarily corrupt government of Ukraine, flying illegals into the American heartland or using NGO’s to hide from the American people the billions spent on illegals.

This American horror story of despair should (but likely won’t) shock Democrat voters into recognizing that the party to whom they have given fealty hates America, disregards her Constitution and sees her citizens – including themselves – as nothing more than cows to milk then eventually butcher.    

How much love for their country can a party have that not only allows, but encourages and assists in the invasion of its own country by eight million people in four years, a population of larger than 37 out of 50 states?

How much value does a party put on the lives of citizens when it unleashes 13,000 known brutal killers into their midst?

How concerned for the safety and security of women and children can a party be that releases 15,000 rapists to prey upon them?

The answer is simple to all three questions is the same:  None.

Eight million illegals in four years.  A total of 640,000 criminals, 13,000 murderers and 15,000 rapists!   Of course the Democrat’s propaganda machine immediately jumped in and protect Biden /Harris by claiming that less than 5% of that number were released during their administration. So we’re supposed to believe that of the “11 million” illegal aliens released in America before Biden was installed, 420,000 of them, or 3.8% were convicted criminals, but of the 8 million released by Border czar Harris a mere 20,000 were convicted criminals, or a rate of .0025%.  So, somehow, of the illegals arriving before the Biden / Harris administration 1 in 25 was a criminal but magically of those arriving during it, only 1 in 4,000 were.  Umm... sure.

And none of this is incidental.  It’s deliberate. Democrat sanctuary cities and states have been obstructing ICE and federal immigration enforcement for decades and just days after his instillation Joe Biden eliminated some of the most powerful border protection programs Donald Trump had put into place…

Later, when Arizona built a wall of shipping containers to try and stem the flow of illegals across its border, Biden and Harris sued to force their removal.  Then, Texas installed floating barriers in a effort to interdict illegal crossings of – and reduce drownings in – the Rio Grande, again, Joe Biden and Border Czar Kamala Harris sued for their removal.

And for those states like California who leave their border as welcoming as an Amsterdam brothel, the Democrats reward them by flying hordes of illegals to other states like Texas who have been fighting the invasion largely on their own.

All of this should be a red flag to Americans. Democrats clearly value illegal immigrants over American citizens.  Even for those Americans animated by abortion rights or poverty programs or green energy, things that usually align directly with Democrats, the fact that Democrats prioritize illegals over citizens to the point of putting the lives of said citizens at risk should give them pause.  The truth is, it’s hard to fight poverty or save the planet if you’re broke, or worse, dead. 

Just as that bouncing ring woke Bruce Willis’s character up to the reality that was there in front of him the whole time, Helene's showcasing of the demonstrable truth that Democrats have for decades prioritized illegal aliens above American citizens should wake blue voters up to the notion that the party can and will sacrifice anything for power, including the safety, security and indeed, the lives of Americans… The Republicans may be a flawed party, but they at least have a clear plan:  Close the border and deport illegals.  Go to any Trump rally and if nothing else you walk away knowing one thing, his objective is to prioritize and protect the lives and prosperity of American citizens. After all, isn’t that basically why governments are constituted in the first place.

2024 Is 1800 All Over Again, Because Free Speech Is On The Ballot

Sex, sexual ambiguity, race, incompetence, war mongering and foreign interventions. While those are familiar issues in 2024, they’re merely echoes of earlier times… like the election of 1800!

The presidential campaign of 1800 was the sequel to the first truly contested American presidential election in 1796 and featured the same two primary players.  John Adams won and Thomas Jefferson lost and became vice president – the only time in history that’s happened.

Although friends, the men became viscous rivals – although never actually campaigning themselves – and the campaigns were as brutal as any seen in modern times. 

With the French Revolution still ravaging our first ally, their ambassador openly advocated for the Francophile Jefferson, seeking to defeat Adams who was thought to be considering war with France. At the same time the Federalists – Adams’ party – tried to paint Jefferson as potentially getting the US into a war with Britain. 

Four years later the campaigns became far more personal and far more viscous. “Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.”

Perhaps most consequentially as it relates to the election of 1800 vs. that of 1796 was the 1798 passage of the Sedition Act, part of what’s commonly referred to as the Alien and Sedition Acts.  The Sedition Act essentially targeted Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson’s party) editors and made it illegal to “write, print, utter or publish…any false, scandalous and malicious writing…with intent to defame the…government” To demonstrate how partisan this law was, the Federalists, who controlled Congress, wrote it to expire on March 3^rd 1801, so that it wouldn’t be available to the Democratic-Republicans if they prevailed in the election.

Ironically, the law, which was intended to help Adams and targeted Jefferson supporters didn’t have the desired effect at all, and Jefferson won.  It’s interesting, that John Adams, one of America’s primary Founding Fathers, sought to undermine the Constitution the first opportunity he got.  Indeed, he understood that the Constitution itself was little more than a piece of paper, telling the Massachusetts Milita:  “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” While the law was highly controversial and was enforced only sparingly, it stands as a monument to the reality that Americans must be vigilant in the protection of the right to free speech.

Which brings us to Democrats in the 21^st century.  Everywhere we go we see limitations on free speech from campus speech codes to hate speech legislation to schools coercing teachers to use “correct” pronouns.  And government interventions are almost never productive. Take “hate speech” where the feelings of victims are elevated above the rights of speakers. Does it change the opinion of the speaker? The person towards whom (if any) the speech is directed?  Not usually. If the premise is that government can protect “victims” from hearing speech that offends, where does it stop?  Must blacks be protected from discussions of IQ differences based on race?  Must whites be protected from being characterized as racist? Facebook recognizes 56 different genders.  Are Americans going to be forced to learn all 56 pronouns so as to not hurt anyone’s feelings? 

As if all of that was not bad enough, COVID and the 2020 election opened a Pandora’s Box of speech restrictions. The Democrats and their fellow travelers in the media, the intelligence community and the Healthcare Industrial Complex spent years seeking to ban speech with a different perspective of the official narrative. Doctors who wanted to talk about alternatives were suspended while videos opposing “lockdowns” were deleted and those mentioning “vaccine misinformation” were banned.

Then of course there was the election. This was easily the single most treacherous use of government to quash speech in American history.  Between the 51 liars from the Intelligence Industrial Complex claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation to the social media companies being coerced (it didn’t take much) into banning stories about it, no other effort at censorship ever turned an American election as this one did. 

This is where 1800 and 2024 may, and indeed should, converge.  In 1800, Americans were so disgusted with the Sedition Act that they handed the Federalists a defeat from which they would never recover. They lost the presidency. They lost 22 of their 60 seats in the House and as a result lost their majority. In the Senate they lost 4 of their 7 seats that were up and would lose their majority two years later when they lost 6 of their 9 contested seats. Other than a minor uptick when opposing the War of 1812, the party would remain on life support until finally being dissolved in 1828.

Essentially the Federalist Party’s attempt to eliminate the 1^st Amendment so galvanized the American people that it signed its own death warrant.  The Democrats’ attempts to obliterate the 1^st Amendment should generate the exact same result. And if anyone had even a remote notion that somehow that was not the Democrats’ plan, they need only look back two years when Biden created the Disinformation Governance Board.  That short lived board was, far more than the Federalists’ Sedition Act, a tool to regulate virtually every aspect of American life by a leviathan government that knows no bounds.

The bottom line is, free speech is at the core of American culture, indeed western civilization itself.  From Copernicus and Galileo questioning an earth centered universe to Matt Walsh asking What is a Woman, and virtually everything in between involves speech of one sort or another. Free speech, questioning one another and exchanging ideas are the bedrock of growth and liberty, both individually and as a society. 

Any party which, in contravention to our 1^st Amendment, seeks to crush free speech in order to accumulate or keep power should by default, be destroyed, and in 2024 that is the Democrat Party. Democrat constituencies, whether gays or blacks or Jews or Muslims or crazy cat ladies should be wary of feeling secure just because they are part of the “majority”.  As New York mayor Adams discovered this past Wednesday, it doesn’t matter how strong your Democrat bona fides are, if you cross the leadership you will be targeted. Now imagine what they can do to average Janes and Joes who stray from the plantation. 

America is at a critical point in her history.  The choice we make in November will send a message for centuries to come, just as did the election of 1800. Do we value free speech or not?  Soon we’ll know if Americans of 2024 understand the importance of our most important right to the degree they did 224 years ago…

Follow me on Twitter at ImperfectUSA

The New Gods Among Us...

In ancient Egypt pharaohs were considered gods.  They believed that when a pharaoh died, he would continue to lead them from the beyond, which partially explains why they had such ornate tombs.  At roughly the same time, Japanese emperors were similarly thought to be gods, a practice that continued until 1945, when, after the war the emperor was required to explain to his people that he, in fact, was not a god.

In the Roman Empire, while emperors were not considered gods while living, most were deified upon death.  While living however they were thought to have authority that had been divinely endowed.

Later, through much of European history, monarchs were often thought to be divinely inspired.  There existed a concept called the Divine Right of Kings which suggested that kings were anointed by God and ruled by his grace.  As such, they did not have to answer to anyone on this earthly plain, whether the Pope, parliament, nobles or anyone else. Of course ruling via God’s grace didn’t always protect kings from earthly dangers – in the form of assassinations or wars between two simultaneously divinely inspired enemies or your run of the mill usurper – but it was a great gig, if you could keep it.

As regal and majestic as all of this sounds, in reality, divine rule was nothing more than a tool to help establish legitimacy and maintain power for the ruling elites. Who could be a more powerful ally in demonstrating that an individual or a group should have power than God?  Using armies and weapons to keep subjects from questioning authority or revolting could be expensive. It was cheaper to do so through or with the assistance of religious beliefs.  If one could convince a man that his king was acting in the stead of God, the threshold of abuse he would accept before revolting would be much higher than if the king were just a man.

While the United States has never had a king – divine or otherwise as George Washington quashed that when offered the crown and turned it down – our Declaration of Independence, the document that established our nation, looks to God for inspiration. 

That doesn’t mean we aren’t ruled by gods, however.

I’ve always wondered why some of America’s richest people, particularly tech and finance types lean to the left. How could someone who has benefited so extraordinarily from the American system support ideas that are so anathema to its very existence? The things they support generally include bigger government, higher taxes, limitations on freedoms of speech and the right to bear arms among others.

The first is bigger government.  Many corporations see increasing regulations as a means to limit competition. By supporting minimum wage hikes or increased reporting regulations or mandates, large companies – many of whom are controlled or owned by billionaires – can and do use the government to impose costs that cripple small competitors while they themselves have the resources to easily comply.

Coincidentally, concurrently, the elites, particularly those in tech and on Wall Street, have little connection to the real world most Americans inhabit. From farms to restaurants to retail stores to truck drivers, the elites, in their remote offices and relatively low regulatory environments aren’t much impacted when OSHA or the DOT or EPA issue new regulations that handicap small business owners. While Wall Street may be heavily regulated as it relates to advertising and fiduciary responsibilities, the actual buying and selling is relatively unregulated when compared to the red tape blue collar industries face.

When it comes to higher taxes, this is usually a red herring for America’s barons. Many of America’s wealthiest leftists call for higher income taxes, one most of them don’t actually pay. Most billionaires don’t pay themselves much of a taxable salary and they earn most of their incomes from stock sales or dividends, which are typically taxed at a lower rate.  Regardless, even if capital gains taxes were increased, they find opaque tax avoidance schemes  that often reduce their taxes to zero or less, options that are rarely available to the average millionaire, nevermind the average Joe.

Free speech is another element of American culture that elites seem to have little appreciation for.  Leftists of all income ranges favor curtailing conservative speech, with violence a common tactic on college campuses.  The elites don’t dirty their hands with violence, of course, rather seeking to act through their control over social and traditional media, or via DEI coercion tactics of firms like BlackRock and Citadel.

And then of course there is the 2^nd Amendment’s right to bear arms. While many elites push gun control and the defunding of police, they rarely have to live with the consequences of such actions. With their armed bodyguards and their homes in safe communities, behind walls with security systems, their calls for gun restrictions never put them or their families in danger while doing exactly that to law abiding citizens. 

All of this taken together makes one think of the nobles of old Europe. They often thought of themselves as superior to the kings and only by accident of birth or treachery were not kings themselves. Frequently, financially strapped kings were often in their debt and as such allowed them great latitude in dealing with the world within their realms.

So too with America’s billionaire elites. From Gates to Hoffman, Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Jobs Powell, Soros, Buffett, Omidyar, Bloomberg and so many others, these leftists see themselves as kings or queens, unaccountable to anyone and anything. They use their tremendous wealth to push for policies that never actually impact them but harm common citizens. They assume that because they’re brilliant in one area of commerce they’re somehow qualified to coerce the rest of us to live our lives as directed. Invariably that “direction” involves governments creating more regulations which add additional burdens to the lives of everyday people for little or no benefit.  From “green energy” to DEI to the butchering of confused teenagers, these members of the WEF’s globalist cabal care far more about virtue signaling than about actually solving actual problems because, of course, average people’s problems never impact them.

The notion of “rules for thee but not for me” is nowhere plainer than the annual migration of private jets that descend on Davos as Klaus Schwab demands we eat bugs and embrace the “sharing economy.”  These paragons of green virtue expend more CO2 in one trip than a family of four does over the course of a year, but it’s OK because they’re saving the world. The fact that these ideas are all based on lies and result in the evisceration of individual freedom while accruing more control for the elites is of no consequence to our modern day nobility. 

The fact that they spit on the free exchange of ideas, limited government and free markets that are at the core of American prosperity, including theirs, is of no consequence. No, because they created a company that helps people search for friends or buy tchotchkes and as a result are richer than virtually everyone who’s ever lived should be enough proof that they must have been chosen by God to lead us. Understand?  Good.  Amen!

Ronald Reagan Showed What Honest Elections Bring - Democrats Knew They Were In Trouble

I would argue that aside from 1860, 1984 was the most important election in American history thus far. Ronald Reagan was running against Jimmy Carter’s vice president Walter Mondale.  America, at the end of the Carter administration was beleaguered, both emotionally and economically. The Iranian Hostage countdown had Americans glued to their television sets and the combination of double digit inflation and interest rates would knock them for a loop through the first couple of Reagan’s years.

But then Reagan’s policies began to kick in. Lower taxes, less regulation and increased energy output put the country on a path that would generate GDP growth of 7.2% in 1984, a number not seen since 1951 and one we’ve not seen since. At the same time, Reagan’s rebuilding of the American military and his unwavering support of freedom in the face of Communism made Americans feel confident on the world stage for the first time in two decades.

All of this translated into something unprecedented in American history.

In 1788 and 1792 George Washington won both elections by unanimous Electoral College votes.  Following that, in 1820 James Monroe won every state and every Elector except for one.

From that point forward no president ever won every state or the Electoral College by a unanimous vote.  A couple came close, including FDR winning all states but two in 1936 and Nixon winning 49 states in 1972, losing one state, Massachusetts, and DC. 

In 1984 Reagan equaled Nixon’s feat and won every single state other than one, Minnesota, Mondale’s home state, and DC. So, since 1968 the GOP had triumphed in 4 out of 5 elections and in only 12 years had twice won with 49 of 50 states. For Democrats, that could not stand…

They knew that if they didn’t do something, they’d find themselves in a wilderness like they’d never seen before.  And do something they did.  The first thing they did was to dupe Ronald Reagan into signing the 1986 Immigration and Border Control Act into law.  In “exchange” for making 2.7 million illegals citizens, the Democrats (assisted by worthless Republicans led by the feckless Alan Simpson) promised to build a wall on the southern border. 

The Democrats got their 3 million new voters, but Reagan and America didn’t get their wall.  As a result of that, today we have upwards of 30 million illegals in the country and Democrats who want to let them vote and or  make them citizens! And it worked. In 1992 California, Illinois, Massachusetts and other immigrant heavy states turned blue for the first time since 1964 and have never turned back.  

But lying to Reagan wasn’t the only thing Democrats did. Always keeping their eyes on the long game, they recognized that having millions of new illegals doesn’t help them a lot if they can’t vote. (Although they skew Congressional apportionment, typically towards Democrats.)  So they set in place a plan that would eventually allow them to register to vote.  That plan was the 1993 Motor Voter Act, signed by Bill Clinton and ostensibly sold as a law make it easier to register “underrepresented” voters. 

At the time illegals weren’t allowed to get licenses in the United States, but again, Democrats were playing the long game and today 19 states and the District of Columbia do provide them.  And to no one’s surprise, almost every one of those states is blue.  Together these states represent 230 of the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win the White House and eventually the law morphed into a vehicle facilitating immigrants and illegals registering to vote.   

But like any good insurgency, the Democrats had multiple areas of attack. Beyond flooding the country with new Democrats, they were doing other things as well.

One of those was extending the voting window. This one would seem like it’s bipartisan as it applies equally to everyone.  But not so much. There’s a reason most negotiators will tell you to let the other person make the first offer in a negotiation.  Aside from the power dynamic, it gives you insight into what cards your opponent is holding.  The same holds true here.  It’s much easier to understand how many votes you need to manufacture if you know in advance what the numbers against you are.  That’s exactly what we saw in 2020 when as the 3^rd of November closed out Donald Trump was ahead in a handful of states that flipped to Joe Biden by just enough votes to win. Georgia with 4.9 million votes was decided by 11,800 votes or less than .2% of the total votes.  Arizona, with 3.3 million votes was decided by 10,400, or .3% of the total.  Similarly Wisconsin, with 3.2 million votes cast was decided by 20,000 votes, or .6%.  Together those three states represent 37 Electoral College votes, which are exactly the number necessary to flip the election from Trump to Biden. (A 269 tie would have sent the election to the House, where states vote by delegation and where the GOP had a majority.) To understand how they pulled this off, read Mollie Hemingway’s Rigged.

Then of course there’s machine voting. Although the two parties have gone back and forth over this for years, the reality is, and always has been that they are simply computers which are easily hackable.  Despite years of Democrats claiming machine voting was unsafe, immediately after Trump “lost” we were told 2020 was the most secure election ever, this despite overwhelming proof that Dominion and other machines are not, in fact, even remotely secure.

The Holy Grail of Democrat cheating is mail in voting.  Like computer voting, mail in voting provides endless opportunities for cheating, such as retirement home and homeless vote harvesting, as well as eliminating signature verification. Indeed, in 2020 Democrats used the COVID hysteria to change voting laws and balloon mail in voting across the country so that by election day over 65 million people or 1/3 of the electorate had already voted via mail.

And even for those who actually turn up to vote in person, Democrats make it easy to cheat.  Democrats have fought voter ID laws for decades. If a picture is worth a thousand words a picture of a Voter ID map is worth countless elections. As one can see, almost every Democrat state has no Voter ID while almost every solidly GOP state requires photo ID. This, despite the fact that 80% of Americans support Voter ID laws. (In Europe, which Democrats aspire to emulate, 46 out of 47 countries require photo ID to vote.)

There’s more of course, from fighting efforts to clean up voter rolls to using lawfare to harm opponents, to using government agencies to quash free speech, but the bottom line is, Democrats cheat every opportunity they get, because they simply can’t win otherwise.

As America careens towards the most consequential election in our history, one that presents a stark choice between an imperfect but competent patriot and a Communist imbecile in Democrat clothing, Republicans need to understand what they are up against. A Democrat party that will sacrifice everything, from children to communities to the lives of citizens in their quest for power will eliminate the Constitution and the Republic without hesitation. They’ve told us as much.  We should believe them and act accordingly. Now is not the time for timidity.  As IKE said:  "History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."

Shining Cities On Hills Take Centuries to Build but Can be Destroyed Quickly

 America’s Founding Fathers were nothing short of extraordinary.  Never before had a group of men come together to do things that would so change the arc of human history.  To a man it’s likely that they agreed with Sir Isaac Newton’s adage from 1676:  "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." This particularly applies to the two men most responsible for the nation’s founding documents, Thomas Jefferson & James Madison.

Jefferson, whose extensive library was the basis upon which the Library of Congress is built, was extraordinarily well read.  From Plato and Plutarch to Chaucer and Shakespeare to Blackstone and Burke, he was a voracious reader. Perhaps none more so than the giant of the enlightenment’s, John Locke. In addition to the intellectual arsenal all of this gave him, there were specific documents he drew upon in writing the Declaration of Independence.  Among these were his own draft of the Constitution of Virginia, George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights as well as the English Bill of Rights and its antecedent, the Magna Carta. 

Madison shared Jefferson’s familiarity with Montesquieu, Locke, Blackstone and crafted the Constitution with many of the same sources in mind. Given the different functions of the documents, Madison focused the Constitution on the fundamental nature of man and the need to constrain men’s most based instincts while Jefferson’s Declaration was focused on the passions that impel men to act.

The nation they bequeathed to us is of course, imperfect, but it is extraordinary nonetheless.  Based on these documents and the 2000 years of western civilization that preceded them, it has evolved with principles that have been, in aggregate, the most providential in all in human history. Fundamental elements such as freedom of speech, press, religion, the rights to a fair trial and to be free from government molestation in your home created an almost crystal clear limitation on the powers of government and the tyrannical nature of men. At the same time, outside of the explicitly government sphere you have things like private property, Capitalism and the Judeo-Christian tradition that reinforced the framework of the nation.

As everyone knows, America had extraordinary challenges from the beginning, starting with her Original Sin. But throughout she has had at her disposal in the form of the Constitution the tools to evolve and overcome her imperfections and advance. 

The culture Americans have today, or at least did until recently, focused on things like community, church, freedom of speech, limited government, private property, merit & individual achievement.

All of that took generations to build.  It took patriots standing on the shoulders of giants to build… And the result has been nothing short of spectacular.  For most of the last century the United States has been the most powerful nation in the world from both a military and economic perspective, and perhaps most of all, from an opportunity perspective.  From universities to Silicon Valley to Wall Street to main street, America has led the world in scientific advances, economic advances and, again, opportunity.  This is nowhere more clear in the fact that of the 954 Nobel Prizes awarded since its inception in 1900, over 404 of them (42%) are Americans, and of those 404, approximately 35% are immigrants.  And it’s not just intellectuals. There’s athletics. Of the 21,000 Olympic medals awarded since the revival of the Games in 1896, Americans have won over 3,000 or 15%. In this year’s games, approximately 10% of the American team was made up of immigrants or children of immigrants. And money. Of the world’s 2,781 billionaires in 2024, 29% of them, or 813 are Americans. Of those 813, approximately 11% are immigrants. 

All of this suggests that immigrants are good for America.  That’s true.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a problem.  We do. Because culture matters…

Unfortunately what we have seen over the last 30 years has been a flood of illegal immigrants from nations with no concept of the basics of American culture. The breakdown of the countries of origin tells the tale. The top ten nations from which illegals hail are as follows:  Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Columbia, Ecuador & El Salvador. Together they make up 80% of the illegals crossing our border. Those nations have no sustained history of free speech, limited government, private property, free elections or Capitalism. Contrast that with the previous waves of migration (1840-1889 & 1890-1911) when 89% of immigrants came from fellow European nations with overlapping western values. 

It is simply not sustainable for a nation to import tens of millions of people from nations with cultures that are anathema to its own. Indeed of the top ten most dangerous cities in the world, eight are in the countries listed above. The basic elements of western culture, of American culture are not found in DNA, they are found in communities, in the shared history of the citizens and in the laws of the nation. Large numbers of immigrants from nations with different mores can be destabilizing. From crime to the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to support illegals to the strains on services such as education and healthcare to the dollars sent back home, illegals do harm to America.  Just this past week we’ve seen reports of Venezuelan gangs taking over  neighborhoods in Colorado and unleashing chaos in Dallas while 75% of arrests in midtown Manhattan are illegals. 

The only solution is deportation. By the millions. It will be ugly, it will be difficult, it will take courage in the face of withering media assaults and Democrat lamentations, but it is necessary.  If we do not build a wall and send the illegals home, it will be seen as an open invitation to the entire world to cross our border… and as Roy Beck explains with gumballs, that’s not sustainable.

Culture matters. The reality is, not all cultures are equal. If they were there wouldn’t be millions of people seeking to cross our borders. Western civilization in general and American culture in particular has taken centuries to develop, and a quick look around the world will demonstrate that cultures and civilizations that maintain themselves for centuries are few and far in between. 

If Americans don’t recognize that what we have is a gift and is something to be valued and protected, our shining city on a hill will soon devolve into the morass of chaos, violence, scarcity and tyranny where much of the rest of the world resides. If we really want to show compassion to those longing for what Americans have, the solution is not to open our borders and let them in, but rather seek to export the basic elements of freedom which are at the foundation of our success. There’s an adage of much disputed origin that perfectly articulates the idea:  Give a man a fish, feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Our goal should not be to suckle the millions of illegals who swarm our borders and overwhelm our cities, but rather we should be to export the fundamental tenants of freedom and prosperity to the billions around the world so they can build their own shining cities on their own hills…

From Constantinople to Washington - Sometimes One Man Matters

They say history repeats itself. Properly forewarned, it doesn’t have to.  As Americans prepare to write a pivotal history for the ages this November – one way or another – it might be helpful to take a quick look at an earlier moment in time when a much divided, fractured world faced a pivotal challenge, and how complacency sealed its fate.

Constantinople, the city founded by Constantine the Great in 330 AD and later protected by the Theodosian Walls, stood as the capital of the Roman Empire for 1,000 years. (What we refer to as the Byzantine Empire was at the time referred to as the Roman Empire.) The city, surrounded on three sides by water and walls on the other, was thought to be impregnable. 

It was attacked in 1204 by Crusaders (4^th Crusade) who were ostensibly on their way to retake Jerusalem from the Ottomans. As the result of dynastic and political battles between the east and the west, the crusaders diverted to Constantinople and sacked the city and carved up most of the Empire. (They never did breach the Theodosian walls.)

The Byzantine Empire had been shrinking for centuries and by 1400 consisted largely of Constantinople and a few Greek outposts. The city, however, sitting at a key point between Asia and Europe, still played a major role in the battle between the east and the west. 

The rising Ottoman Empire would end that century stretching from the modern states of Algeria to Yemen to Hungary.  But in 1453 Constantinople was still Christian, and a major thorn in the side of Muslim Sultan Mehmed II. He planned to fix that.

By late May, after a two-month siege of the city and making no headway, Mehmed was preparing to retreat.  A small number of his advisors suggested giving the siege one last day before they withdrew.  Mehmed agreed and on the 29^th of May the Ottomans threw everything they had at the city, and each of the first three assaults was turned back and the Ottoman generals despaired at the prospect of defeat. 

But then one of the great turning points in history happened.  Among the 40,000 defenders – vs an Ottoman force of approximately 80,000 – were 700 Genoise fighters defending the most vulnerable parts of the walls. The defenses stretched thin, these Genoise warriors had, led by their captain Giovanni Giustiniani, held the Turks at bay for two months.

Through the third assault of the day, the Genoise had performed impeccably, and the smell of victory was beginning to waft through the defenses.  At that very moment however, just as the fourth and final assault was commencing, Giustiniani was shot. Wounded, Giustiniani commanded his troops to evacuate him from the city.  Either because of a miscommunication of the evacuation order or because they were afraid they could not succeed without Giustiniani, the 700 Genoise abandoned the walls and left the most vulnerable defenses unprotected. Seeing their opportunity, the Ottomans made their move before reinforcements could be diverted and breached the walls and took the city. Mehmed would later make Constantinople the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Giustiniani would die from his wounds two days later as he was being transported home. Given the timing of his injury history posits that he may have been shot by a traitor within the walls timed to coordinate with the last assault.

Whatever the case, Constantinople fell and all of the west became fearful that the Ottomans were going to conquer the entirety of Europe. They wouldn’t, but they would haunt many a European’s nightmare for centuries.

The ironic thing is however, the city fell because it didn’t have the resources to effectively defend itself.  Despite pleas, most of those caterwauling kings and nobles of the west had been too busy with their domestic concerns, dynastic infighting and petty jealousies to bother sending support. As a result, a mere 700 men, or in reality, one man, stood in the way of the loss of what was seen as the Christian bulwark against the Muslim menace in the east, and when he left, the city fell. 

There are lessons to be had from the kings’ and nobles’ inaction. How many times have you heard a pro-lifer say they can’t vote for Trump because they feel he’s soft on abortion? Or a free-market advocate say they can’t vote for Trump because he supports tariffs? Or someone who says he won’t vote because everyone’s corrupt?

We all know Trump is flawed. But the reality is, we’re all flawed. We just know more about Trump’s flaws because he spends so much time talking.  I dare anyone to speak for a fraction of the time Trump does and not leave a trail of breadcrumbs that the propaganda ministry can’t use to paint you as Satan.

But here’s the truth, all of those people who say they won’t vote for Trump because of this or that are basically casting a vote for that very thing, only exponentially worse. And not only that, the election of Harris will come with a cart full of other things they likely don’t want.

If Harris is elected in November, the Republic as we know it will disappear.  Democrats will eviscerate the Supreme Court. They’ll add DC and Puerto Rico as states and the GOP will never again control the Senate. They’ll implement a 45% capital gains tax and a 25% tax on unrealized gains. DEI will become the law of the land with “equity” replacing merit as the fundamental measure upon which society is built. The scientific fact of men and women will be obliterated.  They’ll outsource American foreign policy to the WEF and the economy to the climate change cultists.  The open border will remain and millions of 3^rd world “refugees” with little appreciation for American mores or allegiance to the United States will pour over the border and then suddenly, not only be able to vote, but will get houses for no money down and benefits beyond what citizens receive. And freedom of speech and the 2^nd Amendment will be distant memories before the midterms.

Given this reality, those people who say they cannot in “good conscience” vote for someone they don’t like, are in reality not of good conscience at all.  They’re cowards. As any parent who has to discipline their kid knows, sometimes adults have to make the difficult decision to do things they don’t like.  As such, when the Republic is faced with an existential threat, when the choice is between a party that wants to save it and one that seeks Communism, to choose to do nothing is a choice, a choice to empower tyranny.    

Once the Republic is gone – in fact if not in name – all of those issues over which such men of “conscience” are wringing their hands will become moot. Not only will they lose out on those issues, but they will lose out on everything else. In a tyranny you control nothing, from your money to your family to your voice. 

This is the most popular quote of the 20^th century:  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” As pedestrian as it sounds, in 2024 it might be the most important quote of the day.  This November, anyone who decides to sit out the election because they’re offended by an imperfect man, or worse vote against him because of that imperfection, is literally voting to eviscerate the American Republic.  They deserve no respect, they deserve disdain, derision and contempt. 

Musk, MAGA & Me

Sometimes our memories play tricks on us. Mine, thinking it’s Houdini constantly makes things disappear and appear randomly.  Such was the case with an interview I did with Elon Musk back in 1998.  He was then at Zip2, his startup which helped put newspapers across the country – including the NY Times – on the Internet.  At the time the nascent Internet was a sliver of what it is today and not surprisingly, Musk was on the bleeding edge of it. 

After I did the interview I didn’t think about Musk again until sometime around 2004 when I read something about SpaceX. I emailed him but by that time the address I had was dormant and we never connected. 

Then I literally forgot that I’d interviewed him for years, to the point where in 2013 I was a student at Founder Institute’s inaugural Founder’s Lab startup bootcamp in Palo Alto.  The leader of the program was Adeo Ressi, Musk’s roommate at Wharton. Ressi showed us his new Tesla, that Musk had given him because he refused to buy one. Despite this my memory wasn’t jogged about having interviewed Musk. 

It wasn’t until years later that for some reason my mental Houdini reminded me that not only had I interviewed him, but that the guy whose program I attended and who showed us his Tesla was his roommate! In a very George Costanza moment I remember thinking “Gee, what could I have said that would have connected me with the juggernaut that Musk was?”

Whatever I might have come up with, like George, I had missed my opportunity.  But it did cause me to go back and see if I had a copy of the interview.  I eventually found one online.  I read it and two things stood out: Prescience and spirit. The first has to do with knowing that the Internet was going to change the world and knowing that most big companies were clueless about how to harness it. I remember being amazed that the NYT (back when it was a big, somewhat respected newspaper) was using the relatively unknown Zip2 to get online. They were, apparently, clueless about how to do it themselves and that’s the opportunity Musk was exploiting.

As someone who was hyper focused on that space at the time, I kick myself for not recognizing that Musk was at a whole different level in terms of understanding where things were going. In a word, prescient.

The second thing that stands out from that interview is his entrepreneurial spirit. “When it comes to a recommendation for would-be entrepreneurs, Elon suggests that when you get an idea for a business, take a page from Nike and "Just Do It"! "Learn as you go" because there is no better way to learn about business than to get out there get your hands dirty by doing. "Attack the creation of a business enterprise with creativity and intensity." Don’t be scared to take risks, because there is always a fall-back position, (such as getting a regular job or going back to school and getting another degree) especially when you are young.” 

That entrepreneurial spirit has driven the American enterprise for much of her history and been a core driver of a prosperity greater than any in history.   

Fast forward a quarter century and last Monday Musk had a “conversation” with entrepreneur, president and future president Donald Trump.  As I was listening to the conversation I couldn’t help but thinking about how older Musk echoes younger Musk. He told Trump “…there has to be an active process for reducing rules and regulations because otherwise they just keep building up every year, and you get hardening of the arteries and eventually everything’s illegal or takes forever, and then we just ossify as a society, we can’t make any progress, and it’s a really big deal.” Musk correctly articulated that regulations are strangling America’s productivity.  Indeed they are. 

This followed an exchange between the two moments earlier: Musk “Well, I think part of what people in America want to… People in America want to feel excited and inspired about the future. They want to feel like the future’s going to be better than the past, and that America’s going to do things that are greater than we’ve done in the past, reach new heights that make you proud to be an American and excited about the future.” To which Trump responded:  “They want the American Dream back. They want the American dream back, more important than anything else.”

That may not sound like anything extraordinary, but step back for a moment.  On one end of the conversation you have Musk, easily the greatest and most accomplished entrepreneur in a generation if not longer.  On the other you have a man who spent half a century in the trenches building a multibillion dollar empire around the world and the last decade enduring literally constant abuse from the media and political opponents and intellectual elites as he seeks to rescue the country from the Communist Democrat leviathan known as the Swamp.  They set fire to his last year in office, they leveraged Covid to steal the election, they bastardized the judiciary to jail him and they literally shot him… and the guy’s still standing!

So what we had was two extraordinarily accomplished men just talking about the future of the country, both the potential and the roadblocks. And unlike the Democrats who rule America, these two have actually accomplished things, built things, made things work and provided incomes for tens of thousands of Americans.  Virtually no Democrats in America from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris to the sainted Barack Obama to Bernie Sanders or Pocahontas have ever held a real job in the private sector, have no clue how to run anything, do anything other than incite mobs.  Yet they are in charge of our country.  In one sentence Trump hit the nail squarely on the head:  "These people are lunatics... In many cases the people from within are more dangerous for our country than the Russias and the Chinas..."  That sentence was by far the most powerful in the entire conversation because it demonstrates that unlike almost every other politician in America, Donald Trump understands where the enemy of the Republic is and who they are. 

The ideas covered in the conversation, government regulation, crime, the American dream, and the traitors within are rarely so well communicated directly to the American people.  Usually they’re processed like sausage by the Democrats and the mainstream media (apologies for the redundancy) so that they come out sounding like Nazi propaganda.  Which is exactly why the left is having convulsions over their inability to twist and manipulate and, frankly, lie about the message. 

And that my friends, may be the turning point in this election and in the direction of the country.  In buying Twitter and freeing it from government censors, Musk may finally create a connection between candidates and the American people that cannot be manipulated by the propaganda ministry.  In doing so he’s certainly taking the advice of his younger self: ”Don’t be scared to take risks.” He, like Trump, is risking much, and for both, perhaps more than just money.  But sometimes there’s a calling that goes beyond ourselves.  America is most certainly one such calling and I’m grateful these two men have decided it’s worth the risk.