10 Things Donald Trump Can Do To Make America Great Again

As I wrote last week, I think Donald Trump is going to win. I think he’ll take office in January, but the two months between will be chock full of Democrat tricks trying to delegitimize his victory, coordinated riots seeking to push America into chaos before he’s inaugurated, and the swamp seeking to do everything it can to insulate itself from the potential consequences of a Trump presidency. 

January 20, 2025 will not be a checkered flag moment. On the contrary, it will be the starting line for a four year race to save the nation.  As such, we need to look at what exactly needs to be done going forward and below is a list of 10 things President Trump needs to do. There’s much more, but I’d suggest this is a place to start.

#1 – Seal the border and deport all 30 million illegal immigrants. Just like last time, Democrats, RINOs and activist judges are going to try and stop him.  He cannot let them succeed.  Begin by declaring the nation is under assault and deploying the Army to the border until the wall is complete. The first step in deporting the millions of illegals is stopping all of their benefits. Next, given that they will need food and shelter when the benefits are curtailed, establish exit processing centers where they can come and find shelter and food and be processed out of the country.  Next, stop all federal funds from going to “sanctuary” states and cities who do not cooperate.  Finally, enforce federal legislation against hiring illegals, and send employers to jail.  Of course none of this will be enough, but it’s a beginning.

#2 – Resurrect the 10^th Amendment.  For those who don’t remember, the Amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Most of the things the federal government does are simply unconstitutional. Assign a crack team of constitutional scholars / lawyers to go over the federal government with a fine tooth comb. Starting with the federal government’s list of its own agencies, examine every single department and agency and highlight those for which there is clear Constitutional authority. For every other one, craft a plan for their dissolution. For easy things like NPR, PBS, NEA etc. which are inconsequential, make the dissolution immediate. For others, like HHR and other wealth redistribution programs, where sometimes generations of families have been raised to suckle at the government teat, create a three year plan that reduces their budget by 33% a year for three years, ending with the complete dissolution at the beginning of year four.  For those agencies / departments that remain, implement zero based budgeting so that they are forced every single year to make the case for the money they are seeking from the federal government. 

#3 – Restructure the Justice Department, the FBI the CIA and the Pentagon.  Fire the leadership of all four – up to and including the top 100 senior managers / officers of each with severance packages. Investigate every one of them and for those suspected of treason / incompetence over the last eight years and charge them. For the rest, give them the opportunity to demonstrate they deserve to be part of the organization if they’d like their jobs back. Their success on that score should be based on two things, competency and a demonstrated allegiance to the Constitution. 

#4 – Ban every DEI program and race or sex based program in the United States government.  Make it crystal clear to Americans that every single job, scholarship or contract associated with the federal government is based on one single thing, merit.  At the same time make it known that corporations making policy based on DEI and the climate change cult are violating their fiduciary responsibility and that officers and directors collectively and individually are liable for those violations. 

#5 – Abolish the IRS and the income tax and implement a flat tax or better yet, the FairTax.  This will, perhaps more than anything but the 10^th Amendment action above, drive a stake through the heart of the swamp beast.  There is a reason that the seven richest counties in America (out of a total of 3,143) are suburbs of Washington, DC: government and lobbying.  And few things drive more lobbying than tax breaks. 

#6 – Negotiate a peace between Russia and Ukraine.  Neither wanted this war and a month after Russia invaded there was a peace deal on the table both supported, until it was torpedoed by Joe Biden.  This useless and wasteful war is accomplishing nothing while costing hundreds of thousands of lives and causing trillions of dollars of damage to the participants and the rest of the world. 

#7 – Remove the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. This globalist, anti-capitalist fiction is nothing more than an attempt to give elites control over the lives of citizens around the world and drives the destruction of prosperity everywhere its tentacles reach.  At the same time, eliminate every “climate change” or “green energy” driven policy in the federal government and make a plan for unleashing America’s true energy potential from fracking and nuclear power.

#8 – Use Congressional power vested in it by Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution (the Elections Clause) to guarantee federal election integrity by requiring Voter ID and paper ballots in every state and outlaw mail in ballots for anyone other than the military. 

#9 – Craft a plan that sunsets every law and regulation in the federal register within a decade.  Put a framework in place for Congress to reevaluate every law on the books over the following ten years and each one should face a renewal vote. Those that pass with 60% of both houses can remain on the books indefinitely while all others sunset after a decade unless passed again. 

#10 – Pass a law that explicitly states that it is illegal for government agencies to coerce or motivate private enterprises to accomplish desired tasks that are illegal for the government to do on its own.  This applies to bank coercion of disapproved industries, data gathering on US citizens or censorship of free speech among others. 

Of course, as Trump learned in his first term, the swamp is a tenacious beast that will not go gently into that good night.  There will be gnashing of liberal teeth, there will be activist judges with God complexes trying to throw judicial roadblocks everywhere and there will be RINO calls to work across the isle.  He should ignore all of that and march swiftly towards returning the government to its originally intended, natural, limited state.  Doing so will unleash an economic and entrepreneurial juggernaut never before seen and will be sufficient to create a giant budget surplus.  That surplus will be sufficient to eliminate the national debt in less than a generation and with it will go most of the problems America faces today. 

There’s of course much more, but if he does half the things on this list Trump will easily have earned himself a place on Mt. Rushmore.

Trump’s Resilience And The Inevitable Endpoint of Democrat Politics

First published on July 19th...

Forty years ago, after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan I remember watching ABC anchor Frank Renyolds violently slam his fist on the desk when he was given some conflicting information about the president’s fate.  The ABC brass quickly marched Sam Donaldson out to co-host, hoping to keep Renyolds calm. The country was shocked and somber.  While the left disliked Reagan, there wasn’t a hint of joy (that I remember) expressed that he had been shot or that it was unfortunate that he survived.

Fast forward 43 years and we have another maverick Republican president (albeit not in office at the time) who’s wounded by a would be assassin’s bullet.  This time, while most of the country was shocked and appalled, there’s a significant element of the press and the left who argue that the president was responsible for the shooting, as others openly wish the shooter hadn’t missed. 

What’s interesting is that as every day goes by we find out more about the utter absurd, incompetence or worse that put Trump at risk.  We discover that the DEI clown running the Secret Service diverted Trump’s usual detail to protect her patron, Jill Biden and left Trump with the practice squad.  What’s worse, we discover that the building upon which the would be assassin set himself didn’t have a sniper on it because the roof was sloped – and a SS sniper might fall off – and that authorities knew the killer was there for more than 20 minutes before the first shot rang out. They were even in the building itself!  The most charitable assessment is that those in charge are utterly incompetent imbeciles.  A less charitable assessment would conclude that they were somehow complicit in the attack. 

But of course this is just the latest attempt to destroy Trump. The Democrats conspired to sabotage him from before he was president and never gave up.  There have been lies about Russia, kids in cages, “Good people on both sides,” suckers and losers, and of course Trump encouraging the drinking of bleach. He was impeached for talking with Ukraine, investigated for allegedly trying to coerce Georgia’s Secretary of State of Georgia to create votes after the 2020 election and impeached for incitement of the January 6^th “Insurrection” despite the fact that no such insurrection occurred.  And the countless manufactured court cases were just more of the same. 

All the while Democrats and their mouthpieces in the Propaganda Ministry have been telling Americans that Trump is a threat to the nation, calling him Hitler and suggesting that if he gets into office he’ll never leave. 

Donald Trump has been on the defensive for the last eight years.  What’s more, his supporters have been abused, harassed, thrown in jail and in the case of Ashli Babbitt on January 6^th and Corey Comperatore on Saturday, killed.

All of this presents a picture of America that is much different than the one that the Democrats and their fellow travelers in the swamp and the media want you to think exists, and last night Joe Biden inadvertently highlighted it.  He told the NAACP “And when you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder, Donald Trump called for the National Guard to go after you.” 

Democrats tell us it is the Republicans who are violent and dangerous.  That’s gaslighting.  Contra Biden’s assertion, I don’t remember the Floyd riots being particularly peaceful.  There were riots across the country, more than a dozen people died and that entire summer was full of violence.  Nor do I remember the protests after the death of Michael Brown or Freddie Gray being particularly peaceful. Thinking back even further, I don’t remember Seattle’s WTO protests in 1999 being peaceful nor the World Bank protests in Washington the next year. And the Democratic National Convention in 1968 wasn’t marked by peaceful protest either.  And more recently we’ve seen the Hamas supporting thug wing of the Democrat party unleash violence and chaos across the country. 

During that Floyd inspired “Summer of love” Democrats were calling for and supporting violence against the fiction of “systemic racism”. And now, while claiming they never encourage violence, they’ve been telling their sheeple for years that Trump is the new Hitler, a threat to freedom and a threat to “our democracy”.  They and their cronies have suggested that if he gets back into office he’ll likely never leave.

One wonders, given the left’s extraordinary propensity for violence, what might have happened if rather than Trump being shot, it was the sainted Barack Obama in the crosshairs when he was a candidate?  And what if the attempt had been successful?  I can only imagine that the resulting cataclysm would have made the “Summer of Love” look like a Boy Scout camp fire.

But it wasn’t Barack Obama and there weren’t any riots.  As a matter of fact, there weren’t any protest marches, there weren’t any threats of violence, there was… nothing.  And that’s the difference between Republicans and Democrats. One seeks to govern and advance its agenda through debate, legislation and the ballot box while the other seeks to use slander, intimidation and violence to achieve its means.

The last time Republicans were given a proverbial punch in the face – the stolen 2020 election – what did they do?  They protested in Washington, and almost all of the them doing so peacefully, as Trump had implored them to.  Unfortunately, Democrats conspired to leave the capital largely unguarded and decried the GOP when the predictable chaos ensued after police and agents incited a riot by firing stun grenades and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowd. This of course was labeled an “insurrection” but it was nothing of the sort. Whatever it was, it was not equivalent to the Democrat’s Summer of Love with burning cities, widespread violence and murders of innocent people.  That’s simply not the Republican way.

The bottom line is, Democrats think we live in a democracy while Republicans – for the most part – understand we live in a republic.  The former is the hallmark of tyranny of men while the latter defines a nation based on freedom and rights guaranteed by a constitution.   

So that is where we stand today.  We’re not at a hot war, but then we’re not far from it.  The Democrats and their comrades in the media along with their Antifa, BLM and pro Hamas stormtroopers have made it clear that a GOP victory in November will essentially put America where Germany was in the early 1930s.  That logic, taken to its logical conclusion, asks if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you?  Many of us might say yes. Well Democrats are telling us that we’re facing the same threat now in the form of Donald Trump. Given the level of gullibility and mental illness that characterizes the left, how many of them will not choose to become martyrs for the cause, or at a minimum, foot soldiers?  Let’s hope this attempted assassination has a silver lining, that the rhetoric on the left is dialed down a few notches and a few Democrats start listening to sources outside their silo.  If Amber Rose can do it, maybe a few million others could too and there just might be hope that Trump’s coming victory won’t trigger a leftist cataclysm.

Just Living Your Life... Under the Watchful Eyes of the Swamp

 “A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.”  Writing in 1928, John Shedd wasn’t really talking about ships. He was talking about life.

Years ago, my girlfriend and I went to see a movie.  What we saw, I’ve no idea, but I do know we had a terrible time, and it had nothing to do with what was on the screen and everything to do with what was going on in the theater. People were yelling at the screen, talking to each other, and smoking. My girlfriend mentioned the smoking, and I said that if that was the only problem we encountered, we’d be lucky, as I’d recently witnessed a bloody knife fight between two girls over a baby-daddy in a nearby theater.

I mention this because when you think your life may be in jeopardy, it’s hard to enjoy entertainment, and enjoyment is the whole point of movies. Movies require your buy-in for success, you must turn off reality and connect with the characters.

If you can’t do that, you can’t enjoy the movie. If you’re worried that someone’s going to pull a gun or set the place on fire, you’re going to be too busy scanning for danger to become engaged with what’s on the screen. You’d end up doing little more than wasting your time and money.

Just as movies require your buy-in and focus for success, so too does life. And that’s a problem with 21st-century America and the always-on-everywhere swamp. The danger is not so much that Big Brother is watching and trying to control our every move. He/it doesn’t have to. Our knowing that the state could be watching or listening is enough. It’s called the “Chilling Effect”, basically the government doing something that chills citizens’ willingness to exercise their constitutional rights for fear of reprisals.

Think about it this way: If you think it’s tough to enjoy a movie when you’re worried about what’s going on in the theater, imagine how difficult it would be to write a compelling, engaging movie with a critic holding a club looking over your shoulder the entire time. Well, that’s you trying to live your life.

How different would the script of your life be if you knew your every word might end up as part of some government dossier? How much could you embrace freedom and focus on having fun, sowing your wild oats, finding your passion, or risking failure to pursue some crazy dream if you were constantly wondering what some government bureaucrat with the power to throw you in prison or destroy your business or take away your kids might think? And that’s true even if you didn’t do anything illegal.

And that’s the problem. Since 2013’s Snowden revelations, we’ve known the government is actively collecting reams of data on virtually all of us. Back then, even the NY Times called it a “Threat to Democracy.” The government, against virtually the entire Bill of Rights, has and currently is looking at everything Americans do. (Want to see how much data they collect? Click here.)

Knowing our government is actively looking at emails, phone calls (or “just” our metadata, as we were assured), as well as our online surfing and purchasing habits, sends a chill down your spine. With 350 million people in the country, they’re probably not looking at you…but they might be.

And it’s not just the government. While, yes, it is the FBI, NSA, IRS, and other agencies in the alphabet soup of the state, it’s also Facebook, Google, Apple, and AT&T. It’s also the banks. Maybe the most relevant example of the banks is JP Morgan Chase—a company that recently paid $290 million to victims of Jeffry Epstein for empowering the pedophile—recently closing down the accounts of a prominent vaccine skeptic after closing the account of a religious freedom nonprofit last year. This follows a since derailed plan by MasterCard and Visa to track gun and ammunition purchases.

“But they’re private companies!” That’s technically true, but also false. They may be private but they’re often coerced by the government to do its bidding. What’s more, there’s often a revolving door with government officials that makes explicit coercion unnecessary and government service quite lucrative for potential regulators.

And so back to the life you’re living…

How comfortable are you going to be doing or saying anything that might cause the federal government (or state or local) to put you on some watchlist? You ask yourself “Should I wear this MAGA hat to that school board meeting, or should I wait until my building permit is approved?” “Should I write that blog critical of my senator, or should I wait until my nonprofit application is approved?” “Should I post pictures of my kids at the range, or should I wait until my bank approves my mortgage application?”

The reality is, citizens silencing themselves is a far bigger problem than the government censoring them. (Just think how unfunny “comedy” is today with the censorious woke scrutinizing every joke.) How many journalists or bloggers have avoided writing something or “toned it down” because they were worried they’d pay some price for offending the wrong bureaucrat?

It’s not just the words not spoken or the stands not taken that are the problem. It’s the fact that energy must be spent considering them in the first place. Living a successful life is challenging in the best of circumstances. Getting everything from an education to a job, starting a company or finding the perfect spouse and raising good kids. All take a lot of effort to do successfully, but the question is, how much harder would they be if you had to divert X% of your focus to constantly wondering what the consequences on them be if you exercised your First or Second Amendment rights?

Sure, you could simply keep your head down and not bother, but as we know from Fahrenheit 451, that actually harms society. And, even if you tried to keep your head down and go about your way, there’s no guarantee you aren’t going to end up on the wrong side of a government vaccine policy or tripped up by a school board’s constantly evolving “pronoun” policy.

At the end of the day, living a good life takes work and can be challenging, that’s particularly so in a free society. But it’s the freedom of ideas that the advancements of society, whether advocating for a legislative check on a monarch’s power, proffering a sun-centered system, or filibustering for a Bill of Rights. There’s a reason the US and the West have led the world in the growth of prosperity and advances in science and mathematics, and that reason is the freedom to exchange ideas, good and bad and otherwise.

Getting the most out of life, like enjoying a movie, depends on the ability to focus on the task at hand without fear for your safety as you do so. As the surveillance and control leviathan of the swamp grows, doing so becomes ever more difficult. Now might be a good time to start supporting candidates who vow to dismantle it before it dismantles what’s left of our freedoms.

Even if he's guilty, even if he's convicted, if Donald Trump is on the ballot, I'm voting for him

Donald Trump may indeed be guilty of the charges for which he was indicted a couple of weeks ago… or maybe not. He may even end up being convicted.  Regardless, assuming he’s on the ballot, I’ll be voting for him, even if he’s dressed in stripes sitting in a jail cell. 

Why? Not because I don’t take seriously the handling of classified records or trying to “obstruct” the Justice Department.  Indeed both are serious.  But even if Trump were guilty of both, even if he violated the letter and the spirit of the law, those violations are nothing when compared to the weaponization of the federal government we’ve observed over the last decade and a half.

The Democrat party has spent much of the last fifteen years turning the federal government into an American Stasi to be used against their political opponents in a manner unprecedented in American history. 

Barack Obama took aim at the Constitution early on when in 2010 his Justice Department targeted the press under the guise of “national security”.  They seized records from FOX News reporter James Rosen and accused him of “Espionage” for his reporting on American policy towards North Korea.  Three years later they used similar tactics against the Associated Press.   

Not content to eviscerate the freedom of the press, Obama next set his sights on freedom of speech, this time harnessing the IRS to undermine the Constitution. 

Other presidents have been accused of using the IRS against opponents, but they were pikers when compared to Obama’s war on speech in which the IRS sought to smother hundreds of grass roots Tea Party organizations in their bassinets, before they could even crawl.  The likely result of that “mistreatment” of grassroots opponents was that Barack Obama won reelection despite having 5 million fewer votes than he did in 2008. Contrast that with Donald Trump, who grew his vote total by 12 million in 2020 but somehow “lost” his reelection bid.

Then came the coronation of Hillary Clinton, which had to be guaranteed.  And the vehicle for that guarantee was the Russia collusion hoax which Hillary Clinton started and Obama knew about. The Durham Report lays out in black and white exactly how much the Department of Justice has been politicized.  The FBI not only should have never investigated Trump for Russia collusion in the first place, but over the course of years various FBI and other officials fabricated evidence, lied to judges, lied to Congress, ignored exculpatory evidence, and sought to entrap people in Trump’s coterie then coerce them into testifying against him. 

As a result of the Justice Department’s persecution of Donald Trump, not only was his term hobbled by investigations, but at the same time he had to survive attacks from virtually every corner, including legislators allegedly on his side.  Perhaps most perniciously, largely because of their weaponization of the Justice Department, more than half the country doesn’t trust the “premier” law enforcement agency in the nation.  In 2023 fully 70% of the American people feel like our elections may be compromised by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  To put that in perspective, after decades of the media propaganda machine lying about police hunting black men, black Americans still have a higher opinion of local police than Americans in general do of the FBI.

By 2020 the apparatchiks in the Justice Department had decided that they were America’s white knights and were going to save the country from having to endure another term of Donald Trump as president.  As the election was wrapping up the New York Post ran a story about a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter.  The laptop was full of information about drugs and prostitution and various other illegal activities that the younger Biden participated in.  More proe problematic however were the emails and other information that implicated Joe Biden in various schemes whereby his son and brother were handsomely paid by various foreign entities for his (Biden’s) influencing American policy while Vice President. The FBI worked back channels with America’s modern public squares, Twitter, Facebook and other media outlets to both censor the story and suggest that it was Russian disinformation at the same time. 

The FBI white nights succeeded in their quest to save the nation.  In an election that turned on less than 100,000 votes, fully 13 million Americans (16% of Biden’s “84 million” voters) said they would have changed their vote had they known about the laptop story.  That is what you call a coup d'état.  But as it was the Democrats and the Justice Department leadership running the coup, there was no problem.

Once in office Biden lost no time in seeking to weaponize the DOJ against Trump supporters, including hundreds of Jan 6 protesters, some of whom never even entered the Capitol.  On the 29^th of January, 2021, a mere 9 days after taking office, the administration set about plans to target conservatives by gaming out scenarios about vulnerable citizens facing “radicalization” by pro-life advocates and small government proponents. The following year the Justice Department would target as “domestic terrorists” parents concerned about what was being taught to their children in public schools.  Later FBI management would be accused of forcing agents to fabricate “extremist” and “white supremacist” cases because “The demand for white supremacy vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy”.  And just to put a fine point on it, in April Biden blasted “Those MAGA Republicans” as the real problem America faces. 

Which brings us back to Donald Trump and last week’s indictment.  The reality is, there’s likely not a single voter in America who is going to be swayed one way or another based on the outcome of that case. If elections were about the candidate, last year Pennsylvania Democrats wouldn’t have elected to represent them as Senator a guy who would have trouble completing a kindergarten art project over an erudite, if slightly odd, cardiothoracic surgeon.  Americans of every stripe understand what the choice is in 2024.  Most certainly there are voters who are turned off by some of Trump’s antics and statements, but the reality is anyone who says they would be willing to vote for Ron DeSantis but not Donald Trump is lying… either to themselves or to you. They’re simply looking for a fig leaf to cover their consciences so they can vote for a Democrat.

While at the end of the day the choice may ostensibly come down to a doddering Alzheimer’s patient vs. a convicted ex president, or even a “vapid pander bear” vs. the “Grand Wizard” of the KKK, the reality is the choice on the ballot next November is stark: The continued weaponization of government against the citizens or a resurgence of the freedom and limited government that are at the foundation of America’s greatness.  The Democrat Party and the rest of its swamp cabal have clearly demonstrated they are more than willing to ignore the Constitution and use the police power of government to coerce, control, and if necessary crucify anyone not willing to go along with their cancerous progressive agenda.  Donald Trump doesn’t want to let them do that.

Trump may be a highly flawed man, but as the nation watches its government being transformed into a repressive, progressive Borg, who better to lead the charge to destroy it than the man who has weathered its slings and arrows for the last 8 years?  More than perhaps anyone in America, Trump understands the threat because he’s experienced firsthand the danger it poses. And unlike most, he recognizes who the real target is, something he pointed out to supporters in 2019:  “In reality they’re not after me, they’re after you.  I’m just in the way.”

Sitting in a jail cell or out on the campaign trail, Donald Trump is the touchstone of the Republic.  We either go forward as a nation of laws limited by the Constitution or we transform into a nation of men governed only by coercion and brute force.  There is no middle ground. Given that I’ll take the guy in stripes every time. 

Don't Look Now But The Democrats of 2020 are Eerily Similar to the Nazis of 1933...

One of the brilliant things about the United States’ founding fathers was their understanding of human nature. They understood that it is the nature of man to seek to accumulate power. It’s been that way throughout human history. The seemingly unquenchable thirst for the accumulation of power has created empires across the globe. In Africa you had the Egyptians, the Songhai and the Carthaginians. Asia had the Ming, the Han, the Mongols, and of course the Ottomans. Europe had the Greeks, Romans, and the Spanish. The Americas had the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas. The British eventually assembled an empire that literally circled the world.

The parts of the world that were not subsumed into giant empires were part of smaller civilizations of varying sizes that operated, in most cases, through the accumulation of power via conquest and slavery. It was usually the conflict or potential conflict with competing powers that dictated how large a nation or an empire would grow. Because, after all, it is largely a trait of men to seek to accumulate more power until prudence dictates not doing so – and even then in some cases prudence is not much of a deterrent. And that applies even more to competing powers within a state than to those between states.

Our founding fathers knew this and decided to craft a Constitution to yoke the darker nature of men. Thus we have the federal system, where states have some powers and the federal government has others. The federal government would handle most large national issues while states would handle those closer to the people.  We have a separation of federal power between three theoretically equal branches of government. Within the legislative branch – which at the time of writing was expected to be the first among equals – there is a separation between the houses, and within the houses different powerbases. The states appointed Senators and the citizens elected the Representatives. Add to all of this the staggering of terms of office and you have a vehicle that was designed to limit the powers of mobs and keep any single group from being able to play on the emotions of men and take power.

And finally of course, for the single most powerful limit on the accumulation of government power, you had the Bill of Rights which clearly articulated the rights of the people, both individual and collective, that could not be tread on by the government. Free speech, a free press, free practice of religion, the freedom of assembly, a right to be secure in their persons and homes, and most important of all, because it protects all the others, the right to bear arms.

Our Constitution, like its authors, was and is not perfect, but over the years it’s evolved to ban slavery, grant equal application of laws and to expand suffrage. What is perhaps most interesting about the American Constitution is the fact that it’s guided the country for 233 years without a standing army of enforcers. Yes, there is an army of course, but it’s not used to keep citizens in line, because there is no line to be kept in. America was, for most of its history, a nation defined by freedom. Citizens could largely go about and do and say what they wanted. They could buy land where they wanted. They could start just about any kind of business they wanted. They could worship as they wanted. They could say anything that came to their minds… although whether or not that was prudent is another matter. Americans could move from place to place without permission of the government. They could, at the end of the day exercise their freedom, and that came from the Constitution. Barack Obama accurately stated “Generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you. But it doesn't say what the state or federal government must do on your behalf.” Obama meant that as a criticism of the document, but the fact is, that is exactly why our nation has endured and our freedom has endured so long and allowed us to change the face of the world along the way.

Which brings us to America circa 2020… Virtually all of those key elements that have kept our nation and her citizens free are today under direct assault… largely by the Democrat party and their partners in the media, academia, BLM and Antifa.

The left is today using the blueprint of the Nazi party to bring America as we know it to an end. Although the Nazi party came to power legally, constitutionally in Germany in 1933, prior to that the Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilung - SA) had spent a decade using violence and intimidation to cow some Germans into submission while simultaneously emboldening others to take up their cause. Once the Nazis were in power it was game over for a free Germany. The model of using the freedoms / rights afforded citizens of a nation to take control of that nation and then eviscerating those very laws and rights that allowed them to come to power in the first place can have staggering results. The Nazis took a dysfunctional post WWI Germany and turned it into an extraordinarily efficient killing machine, both of its own citizens and millions of others as it set the world on a course of war. That model of gaining power followed by death and destruction has proved highly effective in modern times from Robert Mugabe to Hugo Chavez to Vladimir Putin to Xi Jinping.

And today the left is seeking to use that very model to destroy America. Not sure? Just listen to them. They want to pack the Supreme Court. They want to eliminate the Electoral College. They want to eliminate free speech. They want to take away your guns. They have no compunction about using the IRS to stifle opposition. They have no problem using the FBI to overturn a fair election. They want to defund the police. They want to expropriate your property. They seek to rewrite American history. They want to implement laws based on race. They want to decide what communities look like. They want to keep schools and churches closed. They want to obliterate science. They want to decide what art you see. And of course they want to control the means of production to save the planet from the fiction of global warming.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Make no mistake, Democrats do not decry the violence in the streets, they seek to harness it. Make no mistake, Democrats hold no love for the Constitution other than how it can be used to bring them more power. Make no mistake, the Democrats don’t care one iota about your freedom or your liberty and they will take them in a heartbeat, if you let them. And this is not a bug in their system, it’s a feature. The Democrat party in 2020 no longer has a vested interest in freedom. Their only goal is power and subjugation. “Think what we believe or you’ll be cancelled.” “Say anything we don’t like and you’ll be cancelled.” “Support our opposition and you’ll be cancelled.” Today mostly what they do is get you fired, kicked out of school and shamed on social media, but with amorphous “hate crime” legislation advancing on every front, soon there will be literally no place to hide, because words no longer mean anything so the woke can literally characterize anything as “hate”. Taken individually some may argue these are nothing like Hitler’s fascist state. Perhaps, but collectively they are as clear a portent to the future as was Mein Kampf.

The most telling thing about this situation is that it’s not actually the Democrats per se leading it. It’s the Twitter and Facebook mobs. It’s the fascists at BLM and Antifa. It’s academia and the media. The Democrats (who nonetheless agree with all of it) are too spineless to actually believe in anything other than power. They are not leading, but rather playing catch-up, trying to run to get out in front of a parade that’s already in progress and pretend they're leading it to keep the money flowing in. Once in power – i.e. having the White House and both houses of congress – they will enact every over the top progressive policy BLM and George Soros can come up with because they understand that if they are not on the bleeding edge of wokeness, the mobs will simply replace them with people who are even more hardcore.

One wonders what the reaction to all of this will be from Americans who still value liberty and freedom… will they go quietly into that not so good night or will they “cling to guns or religion” and decide to push back against the new fascism?

Black Men and Cops: Why Race Matters...

Last week a Grand Jury in Cleveland declined to indict two white police officers in the killing of Tamir Rice, a 12 year old black boy who was shot while holding very real looking toy gun. This of course comes on the heels of a number of instances over the last few years of black men being killed by white cops.

I was listening to the radio with the host discussing the grand jury’s decision and talking about various elements of the relationship between blacks and whites and police. Many of the black callers felt they were treated in ways that whites weren’t. The host, who seemed to play devil’s advocate depending on the perspective of the caller, agreed that race certainly did impact interactions. Frankly, how could it not?

The reality is, race plays a big role in life. It is not a determinant of success or failure, but it plays a role, including interactions with police. This conversation made me think of a number of things I’d read recently. The Washington Post ran a piece that looked at the differences in gun deaths in the US based on race. Eighty percent of white gun deaths are due to suicide. Eighty percent of black gun deaths are due to homicide.

There were also a number of pieces about malls and theaters being shut down due to violence or mayhem caused by large groups of black teens. This on the heels of the “Knockout Game” we read much about and saw videos about in 2014 as well as the rioting in places like Ferguson and Baltimore. (In most, but not all, the perpetrators were black.)

There should be little question as to why cops, whether they are black or white, are more highly concerned when interacting with black men. The reality is, black men are staggeringly disproportionately represented among violent criminals in the US, according to the FBI, committing approximately 32% of all violent crime yet representing only about 6% of the population.  Compare that to non-Hispanic white males, who make up approximately 25% of the population and are responsible for approximately 45% of the crime.  White men commit violent crime at a rate of 1.8 times their size while black men do so 6.4 times... more than three times the rate.

The question should instead be, why is it that so many young black people across the country seem to engage in activity that is anti-social at best and brutally violent at worst? And this is not a white black issue. There are plenty of violent scumbags who are white, and it does happen that you sometimes see videos of groups of white “teens” behaving badly. The difference is however one of degree and the disparity of gun deaths is indicative of that problem. While white violence and anti-social behavior exists, it’s not overwhelming… In the black community it’s catastrophic. Murder is the number one cause of death for black men between the ages of 15-34. Indeed 44.7% of all deaths of black men 15-34 are murders. Compare that to white males of the same age cohort. Murder comes in at 4th place, accounting for 8% of all deaths. Even 8% is too high, but it’s tiny compared to 44%.

All of which brings us back to race and the feeling that many blacks have that they are looked at and sometimes treated differently than whites. That may indeed be true, but focusing on such an alleged disparity is focusing on the symptom rather than the disease. It is most certainly the case that most black Americans are law abiding citizens who are as troubled by black crime as whites. Indeed, given that the victims of black crime are overwhelmingly black, they are probably certainly more troubled.

Because police spend a disproportionate amount of their time interacting with black criminals and dealing with groups of black “teens”, it’s not surprising that officers are on higher alert when dealing with black citizens. That may not be fair, but it’s life in the real world with real people. If the goal is to have colorblind police officers who have no emotions, no experiences to draw on and no potential for discriminatory behavior, then we need Robocops rather than real police. There are bad police out there, and there is a need for training in some cases – as in the case Tamir Rice – but those are exceptions rather than the rule.

The solution to the problems between black Americans and the police is not turning the police into emotionless robots or meter maids, but rather creating an environment where police aren’t forced to exist on a heightened level of anxiety. If the black on black violence were to decline, if the major problems in black communities were truancy and vandalism rather than murder and assault, one would expect a less adversarial relationship to develop. The problem with trying to fix the relationship by heeling the police is that the real problems for black communities only get worse. Baltimore provides a perfect example of what happens when police are intimidated from doing their jobs… In 2014 there were 211 murders in Baltimore. In 2015 there were 344, an increase of 133, or 62%. That means that over the course of the year over 100 more black Baltimoreans were murdered than might have been had police not been intimidated into fearing to do their jobs. And that Ferguson effect is being felt around the country, with similarly tragic results for black communities. Unfortunately for the black men and women living in those communities, who are "championed" by movements like BLM and activists turned politicians like Barack Obama, actually solving community ills is much more difficult than protesting and race pandering…

Man Bites Dog, Ferguson Riots & Privileged White Kids Who Can't Get Jobs...

I’ve been told by a black friend that I, as a white person, can’t know the fear that permeates the mind of a black man when they are stopped by a cop, knowing that they can be harassed, arrested or killed simply for the crime of being black. That’s true. I can’t.

The truth is, it does happen that innocent black men are sometimes harassed, arrested and even killed by white cops. According to USA today, there were an average of 96 instances of white cops killing black men per year between 2005 & 2012. Author Jim Fisher states that 95% of all officer involved shootings are labeled “Justifiable Homicide” as when the victim had a gun, knife or some other weapon. Fisher believes that number is artificially high. Let’s assume that instead of 95% of those cases being justified, only 75% are and lets apply that to the USA Today stats. That would mean that there are 24 black men unjustly killed by police each year. That number is no doubt inflated, but let’s use it for discussion purposes.

Let’s put that number in perspective. In 2011, according to the FBI, approximately 2,200 black men were murdered in the United States by other black men. If you take that number and compare it to the inflated number from above, 24, the ratio of black men killed by other black men vs. black men killed by white cops would be approximately 95 to 1. That means for every black man murdered by the police, another 95 are murdered by other black men.

But we don’t see 95 Ferguson, Missouris burning around the country, do we? No. Indeed, the reason why Ferguson is so newsworthy is that it is an example of a Man bites Dog story rather than Dog bites Man.

Now, as another friend mentioned, getting shot by the police is not the same as getting shot by a guy in your neighborhood:

You can't compare the two! If you run into trouble with anyone else, you can fight, you can run, you can pull out a gun and defend yourself, your friends can help you.... when you are facing a cop, you can't do any of those things. Almost anything you do or say can be justification for them to use extreme force against you.

Most of that may indeed be true, but unlike the guy trying to take your lunch money or worse, cops are in the business of trying to protect people and the community. Every society needs a police force. In addition, there are community boards, inspectors general, internal affairs divisions – and sometimes even the US Justice Department – that look into every police shooting in this country. And beyond the institutional checks in place there are ubiquitous camera phone videos as well as plaintiff’s attorneys who represent the families of the dead.

As a result of all of this, cops often find themselves under a microscope like no other time in American history. But the truth is, none of what cops do is done in a vacuum, and what is seen on tape is often the final throes of a situation that has been playing out (and maybe escalating) over many seconds or minutes or even hours – The Rodney King video being a perfect example. Cops often are called upon to make life or death decisions in the blink of an eye. Every time they stop a car for a burnt tail light or are called to a domestic disturbance or see someone who seems to be acting strangely, they don’t know for sure what the outcome is going to be. But that’s their job.

Nonetheless, they do those jobs understanding the danger and the landscape they are working in. And that landscape sometimes breeds heightened caution. Black men make up 6% of the US population, but, according to the FBI are responsible for more than 50% of the murders. Black men make up 6% of the US population but according to the Census bureau are arrested for 38% of all violent crimes. Those facts exist, whether people want to acknowledge them or not. And that is the reality of the world police operate in, one that sees an average of 65 cops murdered each year and an additional 60 who die in the course of doing their jobs. Together those numbers can sometimes make for volatile, deadly circumstances, particularly in largely black communities like Ferguson, MO.

Years ago comedian Chris Rock did a great bit called “How not to get your ass kicked by the police!” It included such suggestions as “Obey the law”, “Be polite” and “Get a white friend”. As funny as the comedy piece was, there was a great truth about it. It reminded me of when I used to work as a manager at a restaurant and I would sometimes overhear young patrons complain that they didn’t get this job or that job because they were being discriminated against because of the way they looked. Occasionally I would need to interview high school or college students for a job as hostess or waiter. These applicants, largely privileged white kids, might come in with tattoos, wrinkled clothes, orange hair and with an overall unkempt look about them. And invariably they wouldn’t get the job. Usually it had much to do with how they looked. Here was the problem. I had one hour to interview X number of kids. Now, had I had the opportunity to spend an hour with each, getting to know their life story, by the time I got to know the real him or her I might have realized they were the greatest kid in the world and hired them. But that wasn’t reality. I had less than 10 minutes with each and I didn’t have the luxury of getting to know the “real them”. So I took in what I could, a big part of which was recognizing how they presented and comported themselves when they were applying for a job. I’m sure that I missed out on hiring some great kids, and that if I’d have only gotten to know their “real me” I would have recognized them for the superstar they were… but that wasn’t life in our restaurant and it’s not life on the street.

Cops have limited resources, information, time and sometimes have to make life and death decisions in split seconds, often amidst chaos. The reality is however that while being black is not a crime, crime statistics suggest that blacks will come into contact with law enforcement officers more often than others. And, again, while being black is not a crime, getting into a scuffle with police is not necessarily a good choice in most situations. Being belligerent to police is rarely a good choice in most situations, even if you’re in the right. Being uncooperative with police is rarely a good choice in most situations even if you suspect that you were stopped for DWB or Driving While Black. Cops often have limited time to figure out very complicated, chaotic and sometimes dangerous situations, both for themselves and others. They don’t always have the luxury of spending enough time with a young man to discover that “He was a good boy, he just fell in with the wrong crowd”. In dangerous situations, and those which can escalate to that point quickly, it’s probably always a good idea to do what one can to reduce the level of uncertainty and volatility and report any irregularities or abuse later. We don’t yet know the exact circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. But we’ve been told Brown and his friend were walking in the middle of the street amidst traffic. We’ve been told there was a scuffle and a gunshot may have been fired. And we can infer that Brown was likely concerned about getting arrested for a crime he had just committed. Finally we know that Michael Brown, a young black man is dead from the gun of Darren Wilson, a white police officer. That is all we know. None of those facts tell us what went on a week ago. After everything is known perhaps there will be grounds for taking action against Daren Wilson, and perhaps not. Today however, just as every day of the last week, the rioting that has occurred has done nothing to change any of the facts and has only succeeded in destroying the property of people who provide services in the community and in the long run making matters worse by for the people who live in Michael Brown’s neighborhood.

None of this suggests that rouge cops with chips on their shoulders and a bad attitude don’t exist. They do. Nor should any of it suggest that there are not truly innocent black victims of police brutality… There are, and more and more we’re seeing it on video. But like the Man bites Dog story, thankfully they are the exception rather than the rule. Most officers don’t sign up to be thugs. Most are trying to provide a service to a community, most do so heroically, often in extraordinarily chaotic and dangerous situations. Sometimes those situations turn deadly for either the cop or the perpetrator or, sometimes, an innocent person. But that is the nature of life, anywhere and everywhere. Police work is imperfect, being carried out by imperfect people in what are by definition trying circumstances. But if the concern is the save innocent black lives, to make the lives of black Americans better, the place to focus attention is not on the police with Michael Brown as the poster child, but rather on the communities and environments that have been the source of half of America’s murderers and murder victims every year for decades.

NSA, FBI, IRS and the 4th Amendment: Why freedom matters…

I remember once when I was in college I took a trip home to the DC metro area with my girlfriend. She and I went to the movies not far from where my mother lived in a rather rough part of town called Capitol Heights, MD. I have no idea what we saw. I do however remember that we had a terrible time, and it had nothing to do with what was on the screen and everything to do with what was going on in the theater.

Not long before this at a different theater a few miles away in Oxen Hills, MD. I was standing in line with a friend and I saw two teenage girls fighting not 10 feet away. I grabbed one of the girls and someone else grabbed the other. That’s when I noticed that the other girl was bleeding profusely and the girl I grabbed had a 12 inch steak knife in her hand. It was something about a baby’s daddy is all I knew. Needless to say we didn’t see a movie that night.

So at this different theater we were hoping for better results. As soon as we sat down I wasn't so sure. People were talking to the screen, smoking in the seats and being rather raucous. My girlfriend mentioned the smoking and I said that if that was the only problem we encountered that night we would count ourselves lucky.

I mention all of this because when you think your life may be in jeopardy, it’s hard to enjoy entertainment… and that’s the whole point of movies. Movies require your buy in for success. They require you to turn off reality. They require you to become connected with the characters. They require the suspension of disbelief and much more if you are to get everything out of the movie and enjoy two hours of entertainment.

If you can’t do any of those things you can’t become engaged in the movie. If you’re worried that someone’s going to pull a knife, a gun or set the place on fire, you’re going to be busy looking around to scan the theater, listening for commotion or trouble and generally paying attention to everything but what’s on the screen. As a result you'd probably miss much of the storyline and likely would end up doing little more than wasting your time and money.

Just as movies require your buy in for success, so too does life. And that’s the problem with all of this seemingly ubiquitous government surveillance. The danger is not so much that Big Brother is watching and trying to control our every move. They don’t have to. Our knowing they could be is enough. Somewhat like the Observer Effect in physics, the observing itself impacts the people being observed.

Think about it this way, if you think it’s tough to enjoy a movie when you’re worried about what’s going on in the theater… imagine how difficult it would be to write a compelling, engaging movie while the whole time a government agent is standing over your shoulder. Whether you realize it or not, you’re writing that movie... it’s your life story.

How much different would your story be if you knew your every word and action might end up as part of some government dossier on you? How much could you embrace freedom and focus on having fun, sowing your wild oats, finding your passion, or risking failure to pursue some crazy dream if you were constantly wondering what some government bureaucrat with the power to throw you in prison or take your kids away might think of it?

And that’s the problem. Knowing our government is actively looking at emails, phone calls (or "just" meta data in some cases) as well as our online surfing and purchasing habits sends a chill down your back. With 315 million people in the country they're probably not looking at you… but they might be. Imagine you’re a journalist pursuing a story on the undue influence a company or union is having on a piece of legislation. How hard are you going to dig knowing officials could be watching? Or maybe you’re staying in a loveless marriage for the sake of your children but you have a mistress who makes you happy. Maybe you’re visiting a website of a fringe candidate who has some ideas you agree with but others you don’t. Maybe you’re unhappy with your job and are spending a lot of time on Monster.com.  Maybe you're researching erectile dysfunction.  Or perhaps you’re inventing a technology that will put a big government contractor out of business. How many of these things or others would you think twice about doing because you’d be worried about government snoops twisting your motives into some sham case or sharing your info with your family or neighbors or employer or anyone else?

We already know that government regulations touch virtually every aspect of our lives, but most of us apparently believed the fiction that we had a 4th Amendment right against unlawful searches and could therefore mitigate our exposure to government control. As the IRS scandal showed, there are instances where we have no choice but to interact with government, and the more they know about you the more force they can bring to bear on that engagement. The combination of a heavily regulated society and an all knowing government make for an oppressive mix.

Living a successful life and finding happiness are difficult enough in the best of times, when we spend our days trying to focus on making the best decisions for ourselves and for our families. How much less successful will we be if we now have to worry about what some faceless government officials think about our activities and what the consequences of their opinions will be? Is that really a recipe for a successful and fulfilling life?

Maybe your name will never land on the desk of some partisan or self-serving rouge government official’s desk. But that’s not the point. When the fear that it might is enough to cause citizens to change their behavior, the damage is already done. It’s difficult to imagine a more effective way to throttle back the freedom and creativity that made the United States the most successful and prosperous nation in the history of the world. All of this is particularly troubling today as technology is changing the world at an unprecedented rate, and it’s only getting faster. If the United States seeks to maintain its primary position in the world, it will require its citizens to be as focused on creativity and success as they can. It’s hard for them to do that as they're nervously worrying about Big Brother lurking around every computer monitor, phone line and street corner…

The Police State of Obamaville...

When people think of a police state, they usually think of heavily armed, uniformed police kicking in doors and dragging out family members in the dark of the night. A police state doesn’t require police kicking down your door… at least not in the beginning, particularly when one is evolving from some other form of government, say for instance a constitutional republic. I’m not sure any police state ever came about as a result of some politician saying “When I get elected I’m going to use various elements of the government to take away your civil liberties, oppress my opponents and crush any opposition.” Typically dictators come to power promising to restore order amidst chaos or empowering the people against a tyrannical or corrupt regime. Putin was seen as bringing order to a crumbling Russia while Castro led a revolt against the corrupt Batista and Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew a hated monarch.

But this is the United States and by definition it could never become a police state.

But just for argument’s sake, let’s imagine someone had designs on becoming a dictator and wanted to turn the US into a police state, what kinds of things might be helpful? Obviously no dictator worth his salt wants to have opponents running around shining a light on his actions or stirring up the population against him or his policies. If only there was a way to keep opponents quiet. One way might be to choke off their funding by keeping them from raising much money and by intimidating their supporters. Check and check!

Of course, what good is being dictator if you can’t listen in to what subversive things people are saying about you… or anything else? Not much. As such it would be great to have a program where the government could listen in on every single phone conversation going on in the entire country… Not just when citizens are talking to known terrorists overseas, but simply when they are talking, period.. Check! But young people barely talk on the phone anymore… all they do is text, so you’d want to make sure you can see what’s going on there too. Check!

Unfortunately for you, every conversation in the country doesn’t occur on a phone as sometimes people still actually talk face to face. You might consider placing listening devices everywhere so you could listen in on those conversations too. Not likely however given the logistical nightmare it would be. If only there were a way to use their phones as listening devices, even when they’re turned off. Check! And maybe you could use the phone’s GPS data to track where everyone was at any point in time… and who they were with. Check!

As popular as talking on the phone is, people still spend a lot of time on computers at home. You’d probably want to have a program that allows you to monitor virtually everything anyone does online. Check!

Of course there is more to life than just what people say to one another.

It might also be helpful if you could make it so that a big portion of the population were dependent upon a check from the government (i.e. you), that way you could use that dependency as a tool with which to keep people in line and to whip up populist sentiment against anyone who was seeking to oppose your policies. Check!

As healthcare is pretty important to people, it might be very powerful tool to have if you could figure out a way to put the government in charge of everyone’s healthcare. Need that gall bladder operation or that cholesterol medicine? Let’s see what you’ve been up to first… Check.

Finally, as every good dictator knows, it’s important to disarm your enemies and potential enemies. Here you’d have to be very creative. A national background check before someone could buy a weapon would be a place to start. This would be particularly helpful if the agency operating such a system was allowed to define who it thought might be too dangerous to own a gun. A national registration where gun owner’s names and addresses were listed would be nice, and it would tell you exactly where to go to collect the guns whenever you’re ready. Not quite yet, but working on it.

But of course this is all hypothetical. As President Obama said: “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”

I think we have some problems here… Even if this unprecedented level of power were exercised by someone as honest and virtuous – not to be confused with perfect – as George Washington, a man who turned down absolute power twice in one lifetime, it would be a problem. Barack Obama is certainly no George Washington and in his hands all of this is a giant problem. This power in the hands as one as arrogant, perfidious and incompetent as Barack Obama is the equivalent of setting fire to the Constitution itself.

As a nation of laws and imperfect men operating in a world where millions of people seek new ways to harm us daily, there are certain things that government must do, many of which may seem unseemly in the light of day. Most Americans understand that. The America Barack Obama is creating is something all together different. If a government listens to conversations of its citizens in some limited, controlled circumstances, most Americans would accept that. If however that power is virtually unlimited, and more onerously, it is combined with a government that simultaneously seeks to control virtually every aspect of a citizen’s life, from what they can say and who they can support, to what healthcare they can get to their ability to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights to the economic opportunities available to them, then the Constitution becomes little more than a piece of framed artwork.

All that being said, we owe Barack Obama a great deal of gratitude for all of this. Before him Americans were seemingly happy to continue moving down the one way path of allowing government to take control of more and more of their lives as they deluded themselves into believing that only men of great character would control the levers of power. By demonstrating with crystal clarity exactly how fragile our liberty is in the wrong hands, perhaps Americans will come to, push back and begin reining government back into the box our Founding Fathers drew for it so that no one of any stripe can turn it into a police state. Barack Obama may well end up transforming America after all. Hopefully it won’t be in quite the way he intended.