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

Dear Leader Thune,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The American people.

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What kinds of things can be done?

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

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

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

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

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

Follow me on X @ImperfectUSA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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