Merry Christmas: What Christmas Reindeer Antlers Say About America

I first wrote this in 2010 and I'm considering making it my annual Christmas post.

I republished it in 2017 as a response to a study I read:  Study: American Kids Lack Entrepreneurial Spirit.  That's like a dagger to the heart to someone who knows a bit of history and understands that the American free market has driven more prosperity and pulled more people out of poverty than any system ever in human history.  The loss of American entrepreneurial spirit for the world would be like the sun running out of hydrogen.  It won't implode immediately, but for freedom and prosperity, the end is nigh.  Well, here's my pinprick of an attempt to maybe ignite a bit of entrepreneurial spirit in someone, somewhere... and gratitude for the prosperity the American system has provided over this last 240 years... Some of the references may be dated (Like Groupon, which was a big deal back in 2010) but the point remains the valid.

One last note, for the budding entrepreneur out there or for the mature one, there may be no better present in the world than Harold Evan's "They Made America; From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine".  It's nothing short of brilliant.

What Christmas Reindeer Antlers Say About America

My wife is from France. In the four years we were on opposite sides of the ocean before we got married I had the good fortune to be able to visit the country a number of times. Much of that time I was working at Outback Steakhouse and always envisioned opening a unit in Paris. (I know, for most people that’s epicurean heresy, but consider the source… my favorite food is McDonalds and M&Ms…) Nonetheless, at Outback the fundamental idea was that we would prepare your food any way you wanted. You could have your salad dressing on the side, your Bloomin’ Onion cooked with flour, or you could have your steak extra well done. Whatever it was, we wanted you to be happy with your meal. When I mentioned the idea to my wife she said it would never fly because the idea of the customer being in charge of anything in France is largely unheard of, particularly as it relates to restaurants. Basically the rule is: Chef’s are trained to know what works with food so you basically get what they give you and you like it.

Not long after that I had another idea that equally befuddled her. Licensed apparel is a multi billion dollar business in the United States and around the world – think NY Yankee hats or Manchester United shirts. One of the biggest sectors of that industry here in the US is NCAA (college) licensed apparel. One day I suggested we think about going into the licensed apparel business and sell shirts, hats etc. for French colleges. She was puzzled. “Why would anyone want to buy a shirt with their college’s name on it?” I tried to explain the whole college rivalry, pride in your school deal to her and it just wasn’t clicking. She told me that such a business would likely not find a market in France because there is largely no such thing as school sports & spirit and French people would never understand the point. (The University of Paris tee shirts that are sold throughout the city are for tourists.) For the French, going to college is expected to be four years of focus and study with very little extracurricular activity of any sort, organized or otherwise. Simply put, it’s all work and very little fun and who wants to wear a shirt reminding them of that?

I thought about these two episodes recently when I saw a car with some reindeer antlers sticking up out of the door of a passing car. In a moment the subject of this column came to me: The beauty of America is the fact that anything and everything is possible here. When you peel back everything else, America is a place of possibilities. Americans by their very nature are a rebellious sort. From breaking with King George to Manifest Destiny to heading to the moon, America has always been a place where big things can and do happen. More importantly however, it’s also a place where everyday, seemingly inconsequential things can happen. What I mean by that is that it is not only the politician, the successful businessman or the wealthy heiress who can set out to pursue some grand design… it’s also the guy next door, the guy at the coffee shop or the guy you knew in 3rd grade who can do something that changes the world, or maybe just his little corner of it.

America is a place where people feel that if they can imagine it, they can make it come true. Although that doesn’t always lead to success, the aggregate impact of all that creativity on the country is tremendous. Think about how many things that you know of that are so fundamentally unimportant from the perspective of surviving in this world but impacted the lives of the people who invented them or used them. Silly Bandz. The Snuggie. College apparel. A dozen flavors of Coke. Personalized M&Ms. Car wrap advertising. Pet manicures. Cheesehead hats. QVC. Having it your way at Burger King. McMansions. The antlers are the perfect example. They’re utterly frivolous, but they let people express the fun side of Christmas and maybe make others smile as well. Not earth changing but certainly a net positive, particularly for whoever created and sells them.

The list goes on and on. And this is not an exercise in navel gazing. Just the opposite actually. It’s recognizing and appreciating the fact that America is a truly unique place and Americans are a unique people. Not because they any better or worse than anyone else, but because they have largely bought into the notion that in America anybody can have an idea and do something with it – although regrettably the system is increasingly suffocating the pervasiveness of that notion. Nonetheless, America has prospered – and much of the rest of the world has benefited – by Americans bounding forth from the darkness to invent things for which there was no demand, to do things that few might have thought possible or necessary and alas, to even stumble more often than not.

Many things that Americans come up with are indeed frivolous, but that’s really the beauty of the country. Just as failure is the foundation upon which success is built, a culture that tolerates and even extols the frivolous fertilizes the garden from which the consequential emerges. For example, while media giants have spent (and continue to spend) billions of dollars trying to figure out how to connect with Americans, something that started out as a way to meet and rate girls has actually accomplished it: Facebook. Yellow Page publishers have lost billions of dollars over the last five years because they can’t seem to figure out how to impact consumer behavior while a company built on the ashes of a website that helped people protest has managed to rapidly impact how and when millions of consumers spend their money: Groupon.

Whether it’s having your steak cooked exactly the way you want, sporting your schools’ mascot on the seat of your pants, or volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, America is more than anything a place where people feel like they are more than just cogs in a machine. They feel like they have the power to make their lives better and impact the world around them. Fundamentally, they are empowered to do things… frivolous or otherwise. That’s real freedom… the ability to decide what you want to make of your life and the opportunity to go out and do it, or even die trying. It’s not the destination that makes life worth living, it’s the journey. The journey in America may be cluttered with kitsch and failed ideas, but it is the dynamic energy fostered by freedom that has created so much of substance and so much abundance. As the year ends and politics takes a back seat to friends and family, we should remember and be thankful for that freedom which we so often take for granted.

Joe Biden Considers A Scorched Earth Policy On His Way Out The Door

Scorched earth is one of the most brutal strategies in war.  It can be an offensive or a defensive strategy and usually leaves a wasteland of destruction and starvation in its wake.  One of the most famous examples of an offensive use of scorched earth is Sherman’s “March to the Sea” from Atlanta to Savannah in November to December 1864.  He not only burned Atlanta to the ground, but for a wide swath all the way to the ocean he left a trail of destruction, from military targets, to infrastructure to crops.  The goal of course was to damage the military, but more than that to destroy everything and impede logistics and commerce.  The larger goal was to break the morale of the South and any hope that they could not only never win, but show them that their lives would be destroyed if they continued to fight.  He succeeded in spades and his campaign proved critical to the Confederacy’s surrender five months later.

The most famous defensive use of the policy was probably that of Emperor Alexander I when facing an advancing Napoleon during the French invasion of Russia in 1812.  As the French advanced further, the Russian troops embarked on a campaign of taking whatever supplies they could carry then setting fire to or destroying virtually anything that could be of use to the enemy. While in Moscow many buildings were spared, they were largely empty husks by the time Napoleon arrived. Having far outdistanced his supply trains and unable to live off the land, the Napoleon began his slow retreat from a campaign that would leave 350,000 dead French on the fields of Russia.

Another use of scorched earth is retribution.  This was possibly most famously utilized by the Romans in Carthage after the Third Punic War in 146 BC. Wanting to inflict revenge against the city that had loosed Hannibal on them half a century before and ensure their greatest rival never threatened them again, the legions leveled the city down to bricks, burned farms forced citizens to relocate 10 miles inland and barred them from rebuilding. Carthage would remain a desert for a century until Ceasar recognized its strategic value and begin rebuilding it. 

Joe Biden, who, unlike Sherman or Napoleon or Hannibal or Ceasar, will be forgotten the moment he exits the stage, is nonetheless looking at the scorched earth policy with a keen eye.

Biden, the politician who’s never had a job that didn’t come from the government, has contempt for the Republic.  For him, America, and in particular the government is just a vehicle for accumulating power and money.

The man is an inveterate liar. He lies about important things and trivial.  He lied about riding the train, the death of his grandfather and about being shot at in Iraq.   He lied about the truck driver who killed his wife and daughter in 1972, claiming that the man had been drunk despite police records of the time showing no such thing.  He cheated in college, lied about his standing at graduation in law school and, fatally for his 1988 presidential run, plagiarized Neil Kinnock, a British politician.   

If there is a legacy to Joe Biden pre Barack Obama, it is his destruction of the confirmation process for the Supreme Court. For most of our history up until that point in 1987 Supreme Court nominations were largely collegial processes that focused mainly on the candidate’s knowledge of the law and their qualifications for sitting on the bench.  Joe Biden and fellow liberal urchin Teddy Kenedy savaged Bork for his conservative views and, as the New York Times suggested, the Bork nomination “… in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics.” From that point forward, politics was no longer an arena where ideas were debated as a sidebar to American life.  From that point going forward, Democrats shifted hard left and in less than two decades the cancer of the left would infect virtually every element of American life. 

Joe Biden did that.

Not satisfied with ruining our economy, adding trillions to the national debt and allowing 10 million illegal aliens to invade the country, on his way out the door Joe Biden may be getting ready to eviscerate what’s left of our justice system and the rule of law.

Presidents have used their pardon power for years, with the most famous being that of Richard Nixon by Gerald Ford. Last week Joe Biden, despite saying he would not do so, pardoned his son for every federal crime he may have committed over the last 11 years, both those for which he had been convicted and those he had not.  That ensures that the Trump administration cannot charge the younger Biden once they take over the White House.

Biden’s pardon was unprecedented.  Most pardons are for specific crimes, and while Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a similar blanket immunity, it was specifically tied to the dates he was President. The younger Biden’s, however is far from specific and applies to no official duties.  It just happens to coincide with the moment Junior joined the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, despite having zero experience in or knowledge of the energy business.

Controversial pardons are nothing new.  Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 Puerto Rican terrorists in August, 1999 and later his brother, but Biden is said to be mulling doing something extraordinary, preemptively pardoning the people who used the justice system to persecute Donald Trump and his supporters, including the treacherous Liz Chaney and Adam Schiff.  Then there’s also Anthony Fauci, the COVID liar and General Milly, the traitor who thinks it’s his job to inform enemies of his Commander in Chief’s plans.  There are no doubt many others he’s considering, including Mayorkas & Garland.  And to top it all off, Biden is being encouraged to, and is no doubt considering, offer a blanket pardon to all illegal aliens who are here in the United States illegally.   

Combined with the $2 million the DOJ paid Page and Strzok for releasing their text messages about conspiring to keep Trump from winning in 2016, what we’re seeing Biden contemplate here is a scorched earth destruction of the rule of law.  Basically one party is telling its stormtroopers they can use the police power of government to persecute their opponents with no limitations because if they succeed, their opponents never make it into office to hold them accountable, and if they fail, their crimes can be pardoned before the enemy ever takes over. Heads we win, tails you lose…

If Biden burns down the Republic on his way out the door, Democrats has better take cover.  The Constitution is, as John Adams said, “made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Democrats have shown themselves to be anything but.  If they see fit to torch it, they should not be surprised if the GOP doesn’t decide to stop playing the patsy limiting themselves to the Constitution’s Marquess of Queensberry Rules. There’s a reason FAFO videos are so popular.  Americans covet justice; Democrats flout it at their peril.

 

The Roots Of American And British Decline Bear Bitter Fruit A Century Later

In the first quarter of the 21^st century the US and Britain find themselves collapsing from the apex position in western civilization which one then the other occupied for more than three centuries.  The interesting thing is that their collapse was precipitated almost simultaneously early in the 20^th century. 

In Britain, I’m sorry to say, my hero Winston Churchill was a primary driver of the legislation that would eventually put a stake through the heart of the nation he loved. The first act was the People’s Budget, which introduced unprecedented taxes on the lands and incomes of Britain's wealthy to fund new social welfare programs. Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George said the Budget would make poverty “as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests.”

The People’s Budget became law in 1910, after a year of delay by the House of Lords, the upper, dynastic house of Parliament. That delay was the final straw that led to the catastrophic Parliament Act of 1911.  Prior to the Parliament Act the House of Lords could veto budget bills indefinitely, meaning it had an actual veto.  Angry that the Lords had delayed the People’s Budget, the liberals decided to eviscerate their power altogether. The law eliminated the House of Lords’ ability to veto money bills at all and greatly limited their ability to stop other kinds.  As it was a law, the House of Lords would have to acquiesce to its own castration.  Not surprisingly most Lords opposed the measure, and it only passed upon a threat from King George V to pack the House with a sufficient number of new liberal Lords for it to do so. 

Across the pond in America the same leftist movement was preparing to send a similar pair of stakes through the heart of the Republic.  The first was the 16^th Amendment, ratified in February 1913, which changed the Constitution to allow for direct income taxation rather than apportioning it among the states based on population. The second, the 17^th Amendment, ratified two months later, changed the Constitution so that Senators, rather than being appointed by state legislatures, were selected by direct election of citizens. Suddenly, states, one of the three legs of the Republican table our Founding Fathers left us, had no voice in Washington.

The similarity of content and timing between the pair of acts in the two most powerful nations in the world was extraordinary.  In both cases the acts essentially gave the governments the almost limitless ability to redistribute wealth while at the same time eviscerating the power of their upper houses, which traditionally acted as yokes on the rapacious nature of government. 

Fast forward a century and both the US and Britain find themselves in the throes of economic and cultural suicide. In both countries debt and deficit spending are off the charts, free speech is being throttled, crime is out of control and leftist lies are being used to demonize half the population.

The most acute problem in both however is the fact that millions of people from third world countries with zero familiarity with, interest in or fealty to their laws and culture are being imported and settled among the citizens, whether their citizens want it or not.

The reality is that Britain is running headfirst into the dystopian abyss with the utterly incompetent new PM Keir Starmer at the helm with no rescue in sight as elections are not required for another five years and there’s little chance the feckless, globalist king will dissolve Parliament.  Here in America at least we’ve given ourselves a lifeline in the form of electing Donald Trump. But that lifeline is not going to be without its challenges.

The most consequential challenge is going to be in the neighborhoods and on the streets of sanctuary cities and states across the country who have spent decades ignoring the Constitution and thumbing their noses at the federal government, abetted the entire time by compromised politicians in Washington.  Not only have we had governors say they will not cooperate, but now in Denver we have a Democrat mayor saying he will battle the federal government trying to deport illegals, suggesting a “Tiananmen Square moment” is possible.

Although anyone paying attention recognizes that probably 90% of what the federal government does is basically unconstitutional, one thing that is very much within its purview is national defense. As such, when the nation is invaded by 30 million illegal aliens it’s a threat to national security.  And it’s no less a threat just because the invaders are coming across the border in fits and spurts and largely without a singular command. 

The fact that sanctuary cities and states have for decades openly flouted federal regulations as they relate to detainers and assistance to INS suggests that they have no respect for the Constitution.  Like Obama, for them the Constitution is merely an obstacle to be overcome when it constrains something they want to do and a shield to hide behind when trying to avoid what they are supposed to do.  The fact that much of Washington allowed them to do so for decades with impunity says essentially the same thing about America’s elected representatives.

Donald Trump, as Commander in Chief, is the man who is responsible for defending the country, and he can accomplish most of his deportation promise voluntarily.  If he takes these four steps he’ll likely accomplish 75% of his goal. 

1)      Stop all federal dollars going to programs that support illegal aliens.  That includes federal, state and local programs.  Do the same for NGOs and remove their tax exempt status. 

2)      Tax remittances at a rate of 50%.

3)      Stop all federal dollars going to any “sanctuary” city or state, for any purpose. 

4)      Arrest any state or local government official who refuses to cooperate with federal deportation efforts.

These steps will likely drive a majority of immigrants to self deport or volunteer to be repatriated.  For those whom these measures don’t inspire a trip home, hardened criminals or members of gangs like Tren de Aragua or MS 13, the president could and should harness the military to enforce federal law if states and cities don’t cooperate.  Ike, JFK and LBJ did so to enforce school desegregation, and ameliorating the danger of citizens being killed by criminal invaders is easily as worthy a cause of action as is ensuring children can attend school safely. 

Had the United States or Britain had an upper house that functioned as a break on government excess over the last century it’s unlikely we’d be here… but they didn’t and we are. Nonetheless, Winston Churchill, the half American sometime radical and reformer, who helped drive a stake into the nation he loved so much was to later make amends by leading her through her darkest hour. Today Donald Trump has the opportunity to echo Churchill’s finest hour by articulating exactly what makes America worth fighting for, why the invasion can’t be tolerated, and being willing to do what needs to be done to protect her and her citizens, regardless of the vitriol, contempt and obstruction he will no doubt have to endure along the way.

Trump Should Bring a Constitutional Gun to the Senate / Swamp Knife Fight

From the moment of Joe Biden’s coup d'état “victory,” in 2020, Democrats, who had spent years telling everyone our elections were vulnerable to manipulation, suddenly began telling us it was the most secure election in American history. 

Not long after the inauguration, adding insult to injury, Molly Ball wrote a long piece in TIME describing all of the maneuvers and manipulations Democrats had used to steal the election, and their preparations for “protests” – read violence – if their coup didn’t succeed.  But it did, and they were, gloating about it. 

Since that time, we’ve all come to see exactly what happened, much of it described in Mollie Hemingway’s bible on the coup:  Rigged.  We’ve read the Twitter files, we listened to Zuckerberg on Rogan, and watched Mike Benz on Tucker, not to mention the yeoman’s work done by Jeff Fulgman on investigating the blatant fraud in Georgia, one of the swing states that was awarded to Biden.

Mad doesn’t begin to express the rage inspired by watching them shred the Constitution and the Republic for four years, trying to kill the golden goose that has produced more prosperity and more freedom for more people around the world than any nation in human history.

But now, after Donald Trump won a second term, perhaps a different perspective is necessary. One of gratitude…

Why gratitude? Clarity. Because of the Democrat’s unprecedented malevolence Trump has an opportunity like no other president, ever.  He knows more than any politician in our history exactly what his enemies are willing to do to stop him. We’ve watched it play out over 8 years and now he’s in a position to do something about it. Almost…

Despite Democrat fraud that stole GOP Senate seats in AZ, MI, NV and WI, Trump still finds himself with a GOP Senate. That body, ostensibly controlled by Republicans, is as much of a swamp as anything you’ll find anywhere in the Democrat party. The majority recently elected RINO John Thune as their leader.  What’s more, the outgoing leader, the anti-Trump Mitch McConnell has just announced he’ll be chairing the powerful Rules Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.  At the same time, on the Senate Appropriations Committee, the single most powerful chairmanship in the Senate will be occupied by the virulently anti-Trump RINO Susan Collins of Maine. None of that bodes well for the MAGA agenda.

Trump, however, doesn’t have to acquiesce to RINOs derailing of his agenda. Why? Because he has a not-so-secret weapon: JD Vance. Trump should tell Vance that his sole job for the next four years is to exercise his constitutional role as President of the Senate and preside over the body, something vice presidents regularly did until the 1950’s.  Article I, Section 3, Clause 4 of the Constitution says:  The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

While casting the deciding vote when the Senate is tied is something he’s likely to be called upon for, there’s much more that he could do. The Constitution itself says practically nothing about how the Senate should be run.  It talks about voting and quorums, passing of laws and more, but virtually nothing about what goes on in the Senate procedurally.  As such, most of what they do is done because… that’s how they’ve always done it, or at least for a while. Some of the procedures were voted on by members while others were put in place by leaders. As an example, the leader of the majority is the most powerful person in the Senate because he has the first right of recognition by the chair: “This perception is based on his ability to make motions to proceed to legislation and nominations…” That “right” didn’t exist for the first 150 years of the Republic until it was created by Vice President Cactus Jack Garner while presiding over the Senate in 1937.

And this is where President Trump needs to utilize Vance. According to the Senate’s website:  “The Senate is governed by the Constitution, a set of standing rules, precedents established in the course of the legislative process, and special rules of procedure adopted by statute for particular types of legislation.” Rules are created and voted upon by the Senators themselves, and unlike in the House, the rules apply from one Congress to the next.  As such, those would be difficult to change without a rock solid majority, something the President sadly doesn’t have.

But precedents are something altogether different.  Here’s the thing, as we saw with Plessy and Roe being overturned at the Supreme Court, precedents are precedents… until they’re not. And there are a lot of them: 1,600 pages worth! 

At a minimum, Vance should eliminate Garner’s rule about the right of first recognition. From that point forward, he is free to guide the proceedings by calling upon whoever he chooses. Beyond that, Vance should scrutinize the Senate’s 1,600 pages of precedents and figure out which ones can be used to help support the president’s agenda, potentially as they may impact committee assignments, and adjust them accordingly. 

But “Wait!” you say, “That’s not the way that’s supposed to work!” Well, it is true that the Senate was specifically crafted to balance the passions of the masses as represented in the House and to a lesser degree the White House. That however was when States were considered equal partners in our federal system of government and appointed Senators.  But of course, the leftists eviscerated the original intent of that body with the 17^th Amendment and as a result the Senate has become simply a more entrenched version of the House.  If therefore, a cabal of geriatric swamp loving RINOs wants to try and shanghai the president’s mandate because the closeness of the balance in the chamber gives them the opportunity to do so, Trump should, paraphrasing Sean Connery in The Untouchables, bring a Constitutional gun to their knife fight and keep them from doing so.

To those who cry that if we do it, they’ll do it later, I say, so be it. The reality is, Democrats don’t need this in order to try and destroy the Republic.  They nuked the filibuster, which went back to our Founding Fathers, they were prepared to add Puerto Rico and DC as states to permanently alter the balance in the Senate, to pack the Supreme Court to turn it into a progressive rubber stamp and they imported 30 million illegals in order to control the House. The Democrats don’t need precedent to do anything. They do what they want, period. 

The fact is the swamp is an existential threat to freedom, prosperity and the Republic. Donald Trump must take advantage of this moment and the powers the Constitution provides to eviscerate it, now. If he doesn’t do it now, when the winds of change are so strong and America’s desires so clear, it will never happen.  He should not let a handful of geriatric RINOs stand in the way of exorcising the bureaucratic cancer of the swamp that menaces American citizens and ravages America’s prosperity. If he allows them to prevail it will be a betrayal of the nation and he will go down as the greatest disappointment in American history.