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.