Vladimir Putin is a bad guy.Vladimir Putin is a megalomaniac.Vladimir Putin is a criminal.All
of those things are true.Similarly,
Adolph Hitler was a bad guy, a megalomaniac and a criminal. But Vladimir Putin
is not Adolph Hitler and Russia in 2022 is not Germany in 1938/39.But in both cases, the future of the world hung
on / hangs in the balance.But maybe not
in the way you think…
Much of the world was already engaged in war in 1941 when
the United States joined the fight.Most
of Europe and much of North Africa were under the boot of the Nazis while most
of the Far East was controlled by the Japanese.German U Boats were prowling the seas sinking ships around the world
from belligerents and non belligerents alike.There was a world war going on, we just weren’t active, frontline participants
prior to Pearl Harbor. However one looks at that period, the world as we know
it was under fierce attack and eventually would have enveloped the rest of the world,
including the United States.
In February 2022 none of that was true.Sure, Russia invaded Ukraine after invading Georgia
in 2008 (then leaving after six months) and annexing Crimea from Ukraine in
2014.And sure, Vladimir Putin has been saber
rattling about reconstituting the lost parts of the USSR.But the world in 2022 was not the world in
1938/39…
NATO didn’t exist then. The UN didn’t exist then.More importantly, the economic integration of
European nations to one another and the rest of the west didn’t exist to the
extent it does today.And finally, in
the late 1930s the Nazis had the most powerful military on the planet, while today
Russia’s troops are rightly seen as inferior to most they would face in the
West.
All of that to say when Russia invaded Ukraine in February
of this year, the world was not on the brink of anything resembling a world
war.
If you took a time machine and went back to February of 2022
and asked the American people would they be willing to spend in excess of $50
billion and send the world into an economic tailspin if Russia invaded Ukraine,
my guess is they would have said no.They might have talked about bulking up NATO forces, they might have
talked about sanctions, but I doubt they would have supported propping up a corrupt
regime in a notoriously corrupt nation with tens of billions of dollars that
would have to paid for by taxpayers already struggling under the weight of
inflation and economic malaise.Nor
would they have wanted to bring America and the world to the brink of a nuclear
cataclysm.
What is most sad about all of this is that none of it had to
happen. A new piece in Foreign
Affairs states “in April 2022,
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the
outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its
position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all
of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership
and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”So essentially, in April, less than two
months after the beginning of the war, the parties involved were close to
agreement with returning to the status quo of what existed the day before
Russia invaded.But the agreement
collapsed.Why? Joe Biden…
"Johnson brought two simple messages to Kyiv. The first is that Putin is a
war criminal; he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is
that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin,
they are not. We can sign [an agreement] with you [Ukraine], but not with him.
Anyway, he will screw everyone over” is how one of Zelenskyy's close associates
summed up the essence of Johnson's visit.”
Now that’s Pravda, a Russian mouthpiece, but its assertion
dovetails with statements
Johnson made publically two weeks later:“British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson said any peace talks over Ukraine are likely to fail, as he compared
holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiating with a
crocodile. Johnson said dealing with Putin was like "a crocodile when it's
got your leg in its jaws" and said it was vital that the West continues
arming Ukraine.” And “Johnson said
world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, agreed on a call this week
that they would continue to supply Ukraine with weapons, including artillery,
as Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine's East.”
So, essentially, the combatants had come to a resolution to
their conflict when the west shows up and decides they’d rather have more war. The
“they” in Johnson’s statement about not being on board with a peace settlement is
telling.Johnson was no doubt acting on
behalf of the man who “has
been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue
over the past four decades”, Joe Biden.There’s simply no way to believe that the UK was going to put the kibosh
on what could be a peaceful settlement to a potential powder keg without
Washington’s approval or encouragement.
At the very moment when a fragile peace could have been
worked out and negotiators begun to solve the differences between Russia and
the Ukraine, Joe Biden steps in and does what he does best, mess things
up.The timeline here is interesting… Despite
the fact that on March 10th the US promised Ukraine $13
billion and on March 26th Biden told the world that Putin "cannot
remain in power," the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were still able
to come to an agreement on a peace deal.And staggeringly, Joe Biden scuttled it.
Here we are, in September and the much of the world is in
recession, prices for everything are up dramatically, the US has provided
Ukraine with upwards of $60 billion in aid and Europe is facing energy
shortages and skyrocketing prices just as winter approaches.And now nuclear war is in the air.
All of this because Joe Biden wants revenge
on Russia for something they didn’t even do…
Most certainly Russia tried to influence the 2016 elections
in the US, but many countries do so.It’s
called statecraft and most certainly the United States does an enormous amount
of it.Nonetheless, even the Washington
Post, the Democrat mouthpiece, states that the Russian’s “efforts
were small in scope, relative to homegrown media efforts,” instead blaming “Fox News and the insular right-wing media
ecosystem it anchors.”
And
there we have it. The world of 2022 is looking a bit more like Europe of the
late 1930’s and on the brink of war because of Joe Biden’s Trump Derangement
Syndrome. But rather than being some troll on Twitter reposting Democrat memes
from his Mom’s basement, Joe Biden is the leader of the free world and is
expressing his TDS by sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine, sending
the world into a global recession and threatening Russia to the point where its
leader threatens to use nuclear weapons.
On literally
every single issue of consequence today Joe Biden is wrong.On the single biggest issue of today Joe
Biden has not only been wrong, but catastrophically so.At the moment the world should be finding
ways to pick itself up from the economic body blow of the Covid lunacy, the
world is watching Putin hover his shaky finger over the nuclear button and
wondering how many Europeans will freeze to death this winter because they don’t
have enough energy to heat their homes.
In
2022 if the world finds itself in a nuclear conflict, Vladimir Putin will bear
some of the blame, but he will share that with the feckless Joe Biden.Putin’s a thug and Biden’s a dunce and
everyone knows it. Most of the blame however will sit squarely on the shoulders
of the purported “81 million” Americans who were so angered by “mean tweets” that
they put into the most powerful office in the world someone demonstrably not
capable of running a lemonade stand.But
at least, like Neville Chamberlain they had good intentions.
Most people know about the Nazis and WWII and the Jews. A
century later however what many people don’t realize is that the Nazis didn’t
start out as the merchants of death they became. They started out as anti-big business,
anti-middle class, anti-capitalist and anti-Communist with only a relatively
tangential focus on anti-Semitism. For
all of their efforts in the first decade of their existence the Nazi party
attracted few adherents. It was only in
the early 30’s when they began to gain real traction, using the economic ruin
brought on by the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression to gain power.
While nationalism and anti-Semitism were always part of their agenda, it was the
post war economic disaster that was the golden ticket for a party who argued
the Germans were suffering under the boot of oppression. The Nazis promised to remove the shackles of
Versailles, reenergize the German economy and as a result in 1932 they won the
largest number of seats in the Parliament.
Leveraging this position Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933.
Once in power, the gloves came off.The Reichstag fire in February 1933 was used
as a premise to target political opponents and curtail civil liberties.A month later Parliament passed the Enabling
Act which allowed the cabinet to make laws with no parliamentary
oversight.In June of that year
opposition parties were outlawed and in December the lines between party and
government were erased.In January of
1934 the last vestiges of opposition was eliminated when states lost their
voice in government.So in a period of
less than two years the Nazi party went from a fringe party to having a
stranglehold on the government and the people of Germany.It was then that they unleashed their
heretofore relatively subdued anti-Semitism.From boycotts to book burnings to de facto discrimination to de jure separation
via the Nuremberg laws and finally, the Final Solution.
We can be almost sure that if we asked any German in 1932
would it be OK to gas and murder Jews, they would most certainly have said no. But
within two years Jews would officially be defined as a different, inferior race,
had their political and economic freedoms curtailed and within a decade
millions would be dead.
As Martin Niemöller suggests in his 1946 poem “First they came…” the Nazis were able to
accomplish their goals by taking baby steps of oppression with little
discernible pushback from a willfully gullible public.
And so it is that we find ourselves in America in 2022 with
fascism ascendant. And unlike what the media would like you to believe, it’s
not Donald Trump who’s leading the parade.For just over two years we’ve seen the evil of fascism take hold in the
United States like it’s never held sway before.
Consider the following:
In the summer of 2020 Democrats rained hell down on American
cities and citizens, by allowing and encouraging and funding urban terrorists
to destroy private and public property, attack citizens and the police and kill
dozens of innocent victims.
In 2020 and beyond, after years of watching Democrats assail
our election system, when anyone questioned the highly unlikely outcome of the
2020 election they were branded as anti democratic conspiracy nuts and accused
of supporting insurrection.
The relatively small riot that occurred on January 6th
2021– primarily involving those who questioned the 2020 election outcome – was labeled
an insurrection and hundreds of citizens who had been welcomed into the US
Capital or standing on its grounds were arrested, labeled as terrorists and
thrown in solitary confinement for months without charge or bail. At the same time there are a number of provocateurs who seem to have been involved about whom the FBI is stunningly disinterested.
Illegally politicizing the Department of Justice, for the
following 18 months the Biden administration and Democrats used the pretense of
the “insurrection” to harass, intimidate, arrest and jail members of the former
president’s administration, legal team and supporters.This harassment eventually led to the
unprecedented step of the Justice Department and the FBI raiding the home of
the former president and future presidential contender.
Beginning in 2020, in response to the Corona virus, states
and municipalities across the country (mostly run by Democrats) instituted draconian lockdown edicts that
eviscerated individual rights, destroyed small businesses and ostracized or
arrested individuals who resisted. Simultaneously teachers’ unions nationwide forced
the shutdown of schools, leading to extraordinary declines in student learning
and dramatic increases in youth depression. Those seen questioning the efficacy
of or the damage from such lockdowns and shutdowns were seen as enemies of the
regime and were subsequently silenced as the administration covertly worked
with social media companies to silence and deplatform them.
The Biden administration issued mandates for rapidly
developed vaccines of dubious efficacy and unknown danger and then proceeded to
coerce private enterprises to enforce said mandates.Questioning
that policy or non acquiesce with it was seen as a proxy for opposition to the
regime and livelihoods were threatened and destroyed.
Inserting themselves into the localist of government
activities, school boards, Americans who stood up and voiced their opposition
to their children being exposed to sexualization in schools or accused of being
racists because of the color of their skin have been branded as terrorists by
the Justice Department.
All of this threatening, intimidating and jailing of the
opposition set the backdrop for Joe Biden’s extraordinary
speech last week where he stated:Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans
represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.
This was not a campaign speech, this was the President of the United States
addressing American citizens… and he called 71 million of them terrorists.
Which brings us back to Germany in 1932.Just as the Nazis used their toehold on power
to take total control of the government and methodically use that government to
first slander then marginalize then cleave from society the hated Jews who were
said to be less than human, the Democrats have used their control over the
media, local governments and federal agencies to take over the federal
government and are now using that government to slander and marginalize and
cleave from society the millions of Americans who disagree with their leftist
agenda.
And these are not just idle words, Joe Biden is the head of
the United States government, with all of its resources at disposal, telling 71
million Americans they are a threat to the nation. And in case anyone missed
the point, after having just passed a law to hire 87,000 new armed IRS agents,
the administration hired Nikole Flax, who worked with Lois Lerner at the IRS when it was
targeting conservatives during the Obama administration, to run the new
division.So Joe Biden and the
Democrats have just created the largest armed police force in the nation and
set as its leader someone associated with the targeting of their political
opponents.Joe Biden’s words are not
just words… they are threats. He paints his political opponents as extremists
and then exhorts his supporters to “confront” them.“We’re all called by duty and conscience to
confront extremists who put their own pursuit of power above all else.”
None of this means that by 2025 we’ll have concentration
camps filled with emaciated conservatives, but it’s not like there’s no
precedent.But unlike the Germans after
1932, Americans still have the opportunity to do something about this, to make
their voices heard, to change the course of history.This November in all 50 states there will be
elections, and in most there will be a Democrat on one side and a Republican on
the other.In every single case, whether
for dog catcher, governor, senator or any office in between, they should pull the GOP lever.The GOP is far from perfect and their
candidates and representatives are at times questionable, but at the end of the
day, they are not Democrats.They are
not the party that is taking the country down the totalitarian path that
wrought so much damage and spilled so much blood in the last century.No, Republicans may be flawed, but voting for
them will likely not be fatal to the Republic.The same can’t be said about Democrats.
I was not, obviously, alive in 1776 when the United States
was born. I couldn’t be there when the 2nd
Continental Congress was writing the Constitution. I wasn’t part of the Union fighting to free
the slaves or the troops who landed on the beaches of Normandy. Nor was I a fireman running into the towers
on September 11 or a soldier in Afghanistan routing out the people responsible
for it. But I’m here now.
There’s no way I’ll be able to accomplish in my life
anything on the scale of greatness achieved by those men.But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.Just because one can’t aspire to be a saint doesn’t
mean that you shouldn’t seek to do good works.
We’re just a couple of weeks away from the 20th
anniversary of the September 11 attacks that changed the course of our
history.America in 2021 is seemingly a
universe away from America in 2001.In
almost every way, the country is far worse off.Americans are divided like never before.The basic notion of the United States as a positive force in the world,
a fundamentally good, if flawed, nation is under attack in our schools on our
airwaves and tellingly, in our military.Our borders are nonexistent – unless you’re Cuban – allowing literally
millions of people a year to simply walk into our country unfettered. Fundamental
tenants of American life, free speech, freedom of religion, private property,
and the notion of innocent until proven guilty are evaporating right in front
of us.
And then of course there’s Afghanistan.On the international stage we are watching the
real time collapse of American prestige, honor, influence and power.Joe Biden and his woke cabal have turned a
debatable policy of leaving Afghanistan into a military, humanitarian and
political disaster of epic proportions.Somehow, they have figured out how to not only abandon Afghanistan, but
do so while providing the Taliban with potentially thousands of American hostages,
betraying tens of thousands of Afghans who helped us over the last two decades
and provide the enemy with tens of billions of dollars of American military
equipment, ammunition and buildings.
In a word, America circa 2021 is in decline.And the pace of her collapse is
quickening.Things have been coming
apart for a while but started in earnest when the media turned on George Bush
after the war in Iraq, picked up steam with Barack Obama and the fiction that
opposition equaled racism, and came to a head with the hatred of Donald Trump and
reached its peak with the theft of the 2020 election.
As a result of all of this, the United States are not so
united.The country is coming apart at
the seams and the only way to keep it together is to once again give Americans
confidence that their legal votes count, that their voices count and that the man
or woman governing the country was legitimately elected.Citizens who feel like their government is
corrupt look for extra legal ways to solve problems, they evade taxes and
regulations and eventually establish their own shadow forms of government and
coercion. (See Mexico just across the nonexistent border) In the simplest form,
a nation where the citizens feel like the government is corrupt will find that
those citizens don’t obey laws unless there’s a gun pointed at their heads, and
in the case of the United States, with a citizenry built on two centuries of freedom
and liberty, that is going to take a lot of guns.
Tens of millions of Americans are asking themselves “What
can we do about this?” or “What the hell happened?” or “How the hell can we
save this country?”
According to the traditional way things have always been
done, nothing.We could wait for 2022
and 2024 to go back to the polls and think “Maybe we’ll win!”Don’t count on it.Should we start a revolution or try to
overthrow the government?Umm… no.Not only would such an effort be doomed to
fail, but that would open a Pandora’s box of chaos from which I doubt we’d emerge
as “One nation, under God” or as one nation at all.But by the same token, by doing nothing America
is rapidly becoming a fascist state run by tyrants of the far left.So can anything be done?I don’t know, but I’ve got a suggestion.
On the twentieth anniversary of September 11th Americans
should take back the date from the
terrorists who put it on our calendar.How? By making September 11 stand for something else.Make September 11 the day Americans stood up
and demanded their country back, stated that they would not accept their nation
being stolen under the cover of night, that they would not accept that America
has become a third world dictatorship where social media robber barons and corrupt
officials manipulate the voting machines and install their leader of
choice.Make September 11, 2021 the
modern equivalent of July 4, 1776 and declare that we will not be ruled by unjust
leaders with no legitimate right to govern.
How do patriots do that?By showing up at the doorsteps of their state capitals on September 11th
and demanding that their legislatures lend their voices to the fight.Those voices should demand that states with a
margin of victory in the 2020 election below 3% audit those elections and
decertify their electors in the event fraud is discovered.That voice is not a request.It’s a demand.
Now of course the legislatures could refuse.And even if they didn’t and made that demand,
Congress could – and probably would – simply ignore them. And lastly, even if
Congress were on board, the Supreme Court might insert itself into the mix and
claim it’s unconstitutional.We
understand all of that, but none of that obviates the necessity of making a
stand in the first place.Remember, the
Declaration of Independence was not the opening salvo of the conflict with
England.
In 1768 there was the Massachusetts Circular Letter which
declared The Townsend Act taxes were unconstitutional because Massachusetts was
not represented in Parliament. In
response the British sent troops to restore “order” and the result was the Boston
Massacre in 1770.From there more taxes
and more resistance, culminating in the Boston Tea Party in 1773.This defiance brought about the Coercive Acts
which sought to essentially turn Massachusetts into a police state governed by
the Crown.From there the table was set
for Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress and eventually the
Declaration of Independence.All along
the way the British had opportunities to avert losing what would turn out to be
the golden goose, but at each step they failed to do so. Will the states,
Congress and the Supreme Court make the same mistake?
The state legislatures, Congress and the Supreme Court may indeed
fail the American people once again, but it is up to us to make them understand
that we take our Constitution and our democratic Republic very seriously and
will no longer let them obscure what happened in 2020.September 11th 2021 will be the
first step in taking back the narrative, from the terrorists who struck at the
heart of our nation 20 years ago and the country from the conspirators who
struck at the heart of our Republic on the morning of November 4th.
None of this is intended to take away from the courage and valor of those who ran into buildings on that fateful day. Absolutely not. Their courage and bravery stand as beacons through the dark and will for ages...
In the end we may not be able to achieve the greatness of George
Washington or Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of D-Day or the men of NYFD, or
the men and women who fought so bravely in Afghanistan, but we can certainly
plant our flag and say “No more! We’re taking back September 11th
and taking back our Republic!”
They’re of course right.This may be the most incompetent diplomatic / military exercise in
American history… and it came straight from the Commander in Chief and his incompetent
cabal of woke advisors.
Given the tragedy unfolding today, one wonders if Americans
will learn the real lesson of Afghanistan.Sure, while one lesson would be to never put a senile incompetent leftist
in the position of Commander in Chief, that’s not the real lesson to be learned…
American direct involvement in Afghanistan started out
twenty years ago after the attacks of September 11th.It didn’t take long to discover that the
Taliban had been giving Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda training bases and a home from
which to attack the US.George W. Bush
sent troops in to rout them, which was largely accomplished within months.But of course the troops didn’t come home. They
stayed, with the ostensible mission of helping Afghanistan craft a nation that
would no longer be a haven for terrorists, and a government unwilling to
protect them.We – Americans, not me
personally as I did not serve during that time nor in that theater – built roads,
schools, bases, buildings, shepherded the writing of a constitution,
facilitated elections and helped form a government with all the trappings of legitimacy.One of the most laudable efforts was help to
give girls and women opportunities that they had essentially never seen in Afghanistan.
Of course, the Taliban, while defeated in terms of running
the country, never quite went away.They
hid in the hills. They hid in Pakistan and actually took parts of it over.They operated under the cover of night and gave
a constant reminder that they were never far away, having been funded and shielded by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service.
All of this “progress” cost a great deal, both in terms of
money and the lives of brave servicemen.When all is said and done, the United States will have spent somewhere
between $1 and $2 trillion seeking to build Afghanistan into a democracy with a
functioning military and government.At
the same time, 2,500 American servicemembers lost their lives executing that
mission.
All for what?Not
much, apparently.In just a number of
days the Taliban took over the entire country.The president fled. Americans were airlifted from the roof of the
embassy.Girls are now being stolen from
their families to be given as wives to Taliban fighters.Those who assisted the Americans and local
police are being rounded up and killed.The Afghan military has essentially evaporated, leaving the Taliban in
possession of tens of billions of dollars of American supplied weapons and
equipment.Soon the Taliban will bring
Afghanistan back to the 7th century, from whence they came.Sharia law.Women in bondage. No freedom.Economic backwater.
The lesson of Afghanistan is not that the United States
couldn’t turn The Graveyard of Empires into a thriving democracy, such as our
own. That was never in the cards. The
American colonies grew up as part of the British Empire and had been marching
slowly towards a representative government with individual freedoms for
centuries, culminating in the signing of the Declaration of Independence and
the ratification of the Constitution.Of
course neither of those was the final word and the United States has been
evolving towards a More Perfect Union ever since.
Afghanistan doesn’t have anything resembling the history we
have.Just the opposite.The nation, to the degree that is actually a
nation, exists largely on a map.The
people are far more tribal than they are Afghani, and most live lives like those
their ancestors lived 1,000 years ago.Nation
building in Afghanistan was always likely to be a failure, whether the United
States spent $2 trillion or $20.
And therein lays the lesson of Afghanistan, through the
words of Ronald Reagan.“Freedom is
never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our
children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on
for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our
children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States
where men were free.”
Americans live in the greatest nation in the history of man,
one that took literally centuries to get where it is today.It’s far from perfect of course, and it’s
always evolving, but the fundamental principles of limited government,
individual freedom and free markets have been guides the entire journey. But
because it’s not perfect, the left wants to destroy it.Tear down our Founding Fathers because they
didn’t think about 21st century mores when they were busy carving
out a new nation.Eliminate free speech
because mean words offend vulnerable sensibilities.Eliminate free markets because they do not
provide for a perfectly equal distribution of wealth.Divide the country by an endless array of
hyphens so that professional victims can identify their “oppressors”.
The freedom that Reagan spoke of, the prosperity the United
States has created and the opportunities Americans enjoy are not predestined.
They aren’t written into our DNA, not guaranteed by God and not irreversible.Just as a generation of Afghanis who grew up
in a relatively free nation are about to discover, what is here today is not guaranteed
to still be here tomorrow.History is
important. Culture is important. Shared values are important. Twenty years and $2 trillion dollars in Afghanistan prove that and demonstrate how quickly rights and freedoms can evaporate.
To the degree that pampered leftists who, in a global sense
were born on third and think they hit a triple, want to change the rules of the
game called America, change the dimensions of the playing field and change the players
in the lineup, they’re playing with fire. They think they know where those
changes will lead.They’re wrong.Free speech, and the respect for the free
exercise of such, once gone are almost impossible to regain.Private property, once taken, almost never
makes it back into the hands of the rightful owners and with it goes free
markets and prosperity.Government
programs, once launched almost never end, and edicts, once written are almost
never rescinded.A government unleashed
from the constraint of the Bill of Rights will never find its way back into the
cage.
Some people know that reality while others clearly don’t.Compare a 25 year old Afghani woman who is
now facing home detention, a burqa for life and a husband she didn’t choose to
a 25 year old American grad student standing in $300 sneakers holding a $1,000
phone and barking “F the police”.One clearly
understands what freedom is while the other wallows in his utopian fantasy
utterly clueless of how the world actually works.There’s a reason millions of people risk
their lives every year to come to America or literally cling to the wing of a
flying plane in order to escape Taliban Afghanistan.It’s called reality.
It would be nice if the left would learn the simple lesson
of Afghanistan, that freedom is fleeting and must be prized and protected, but sadly
they are unlikely to allow machinations in the real world intrude on their delusional
fantasies.
Earlier in the week I asked the question: What if Proof of 2020 Presidential Election
Fraud Develops? In it I mentioned a number of
remedies that have been widely talked about from impeachment to a Pentagon coup
to rioting in the streets.
None of those is an ideal solution. Indeed, the
first wouldn’t correct the problem, the second would turn the United States
into a third world banana republic and the last would bring about a modern
version of the bloody chaos that characterized post revolutionary France.
No, an ideal solution would reverse the
inauguration of Joe Biden and inaugurate Donald Trump as the rightful president
and do so while maintaining our Constitutional Republic.
As such, there is another option that could theoretically
do that, and thanks to TV shows from Perry
Mason to Law & Order it’s based on concepts most Americans are familiar
with: “fraud vitiates everything” and “fruit of the poison tree”.The former, based on the Supreme Court ruling
UNITED STATES v. THROCKMORTON (98 US 61 – Supreme Court 1878); states that “There is no question of the general doctrine that fraud vitiates the
most solemn contracts, documents, and even judgments.” That essentially means that in
contracts – and an election is nothing if not a contract – fraud makes them
invalid. Everyone knows if you sign a contract based on fraudulent information,
that contract is invalid.Further, from
that comes “void ab initio”
which means that fraud from the beginning taints everything resulting from it.No doubt most of us have heard a TV lawyer
seeking to throw out evidence against their client because the search itself or
the information upon which the warrant was based, was fraudulent.It’s called the doctrine of “Fruit of a
poison tree” from NARDONE V. UNITED STATES, (308 U.S. 338 – Supreme Court 1939)
which states that if a tree is poisonous, so too is its fruit. (H/T to Andrea Widburg, Donna Palen and Al Simon)
All of this means that once the fraud is demonstrated, the election is invalid;
Joe Biden is legally not president and every action of the Biden administration
has undertaken is void as if it never happened.That of course has never been done in a presidential election but it’s
occurred a handful
of times in lower elections.The fly
in the ointment of course is that all of this it requires a court, and
eventually the Supreme Court to rule that the election was indeed fraudulent.Given the Supreme Court’s general (but very
selective) reluctance to wade into political areas – particularly highly volatile
ones – and this particular Court’s demonstrated cowardice, it’s unlikely that
they would even consider the matter.
Which I think, leaves us with this:If the Constitution provides no specific remedy
to the bastardization of the Constitution itself, something new must be
done.As the Founding Fathers did in
1776, it may be necessary to rewrite the playbook. And that rewritten playbook,
while not a new Declaration of Independence, is a tentative Pact of Secession. This pact would be
among the states whose rightful votes should have gone to Donald Trump. These
states should make it clear that the rights of their citizens to a
Constitutional federal government have been infringed upon and if Congress does
not remedy the situation they will, in unison, secede.
This Pact would not literally be
secession… it would be the announcement of a proposed action that Congress
would have the opportunity to avoid by rectifying the demonstrated Constitutional
deficits of the 2020 election.The
reality is there is no blueprint for rectifying those deficits, but that is
because Congress, the states and the Supreme Court allowed an unconstitutional
inauguration to occur in the first place.Nonetheless, the theft of the highest office in the land simply cannot
stand.As New York, California and a
variety of blue states are seeing play out in their streets today, if you allow
thieves to steal with impunity, if you allow thugs to harass and assault with
impunity, you get more of each. The same holds true with the fraud of an
election and the usurping of the apparatus of government and the coercive
powers that come with it. If this theft is allowed to stand then no American
can go forward with confidence in the nation’s elections and the system based
on them.Once again, the Constitution is
nothing more than a piece of paper. It is the citizens’ loyalty to that
Constitution and the system built upon it that make it work. The proof
of that can be seen in the fact that the old Soviet
Union, Cuba,
China
and most other dictatorships regularly have constitutions that promise freedoms
and rights to their citizens that are rarely actually respected. Words on a
paper mean nothing if the government is not bound by them and the citizens have
no confidence in them.
This is, as the British might say, a bloody mess.
Indeed the last time secession played a pivotal role in American history that’s
exactly what we got.This however does
not have to be that. Spurred by a Pact of
Secession, Congress will have an opportunity, in concert with the states
themselves, to address the demonstrated fraud and rectify the deficit of the
election of 2020 in a cool, logical and peaceful manner.But they need to understand that once the
fire from the smoke of November 4th is demonstrated, the American people will
not sit idly by and watch their Constitution shredded.Too many have paid too high a price so that
Americans could live under the umbrella of liberty it provides to allow such a
transgression to prevail.
If the last month has taught us anything, today’s conspiracy theory could easily be tomorrow’s commonsense truth. The speed at which the Wuhan Lab theory as the source of the Covid virus went from “thoroughly debunked” to “Viable” and “Probable” in the media was extraordinary. Indeed, the media scorned the possible source of the most economically destructive virus in history – one that is credited with killing 3 million people – because they didn’t like the then-President of the United States!
Despite the fact that the lab in Wuhan was one of the only places on earth where scientists were studying such viruses, that 3 Wuhan employees went to the hospital in November 2019 with what turned out to be Covid symptoms, that the NIH had actually been funding “gain of function” research in Wuhan focusing specifically on the transmission of such viruses to humans… we were told the Wuhan “China virus” theory was a racist conspiracy theory!
As much damage as Covid did – and far worse, the “lockdowns” used to inflict COVID's damage – that’s nothing compared to the damage another “conspiracy” has done and will do. That, of course, is the “thoroughly debunked” notion that the election of 2020 was stolen, and that Joe Biden is in the Oval Office today because of election fraud. But of course that’s just some tin hat conspiracy theory. We’ve been told that “There’s no evidence of election fraud” and Trump “Lost Nearly 60 Election Fights In Court.” The latter of course is fiction.
Given that we heard similar things for the last year about the origins of Covid, the question is, what happens when proof unequivocally demonstrates that the election was indeed stolen?
All that has been missing has been the CSI level proof of the fire itself. Of course, given the depth and breadth of the Swamp, it may never come to light. But then it might. Currently in Arizona and Wisconsin audits are being done of the 2020 election.
So let’s imagine that somehow, integrity rules the day, and both states under audit produce rock-solid proof that the election in their states was stolen; what then? Technically, nothing. Arizona had 11 electoral votes and Wisconsin had 10. Together they represent 21 electoral votes and Joe Biden was declared the winner by 74 votes. In order for anything to change there must be a difference of at least 38 votes flipped from Biden to Trump.
But let’s say even one of those states produces demonstrable proof of election fraud. At that point the Republican legislatures of other battleground states that exhibited strange activity on election night… Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan would be under a great deal of pressure to look into the integrity of their own elections. Suddenly, with an additional 52 electoral votes in play, things look a bit different.
Let’s further assume that the legislatures of Georgia and Pennsylvania determine that there was sufficient fraud in their states to flip the state’s vote to Donald Trump. With Arizona and Wisconsin, those states would bring the total to 57 electoral votes flipped from Biden to Trump, changing the totals to 249 to 289 and leaving Trump with a majority.
What then? Can a state reverse its electoral vote after certification and counting? Can states recall their electors post-inauguration? Can Congress meet and redo the vote count six months after an inauguration? None has ever been done and there is nothing in the Constitution about doing so. Can the House impeach the President for the fraud? Even if the GOP controlled the Senate a conviction would be unlikely because there’s probably little to connect Joe Biden with the actual fraud done on his behalf.
Can the Supreme Court order a new election? While the Constitution gives the Court no such power, in the Bizarro world of modern America that certainly seems to be no barrier. It is unlikely, however, as the Justices had two clear opportunities to resolve this problem and did nothing. When Pennsylvania Republicans sued seeking to throw out the clearly unconstitutional changes to voting law, the Court demurred. Unconstitutional changes such as these are of course the very basis for the Texas lawsuit that the Supreme Court refused to hear after the election. One state allowing their election to be stolen does indeed negatively impact the rights of citizens of another state if that activity results in a fraudulent president who runs the government of the United States under which all American citizens are governed.
Once the fraud has been demonstrated, America is going to find itself in a situation where it doesn’t appear that there is any Constitutional remedy in place. Are Americans simply supposed to acquiesce to the theft and allow the fraudulent president to be the actual president for the next three years?
No. That would be like a thief stealing your identity and looting your bank account and then once discovered, being allowed to keep it because, as we all remember from elementary school, “possession is 9/10ths of the law.” That was wrong in elementary school and it’s wrong in the Oval Office.
What can be done when the Constitution doesn’t address a bastardization of the constitutional process? Does a military junta take control and put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office? Umm… No! Does the 25th Amendment somehow come into play? No, because that would not remedy the situation. Does Biden resign? Unlikely, and again, it wouldn’t remedy the situation.
A Convention of the States as outlined by Article V of the Constitution? Maybe, but that’s a long process and would likely not occur within the timeframe of the next election.
How about a shadow government? Does Donald Trump build a replica of the Oval Office at Mar-a-Lago and show the world what a real president would do in whatever circumstances the imposter president finds himself in?
Do true patriots take to the streets and use violence and intimidation to wreak havoc from sea to shining sea the way BLM and Antifa did last year, and maintain it until the Democrats capitulate?
None of those ideas is an ideal solution. An ideal solution would essentially reverse the inauguration of Joe Biden and inaugurate Donald Trump as the rightful president.
Many pundits are suggesting that Republicans should dig deep and focus on 2022, both at the local and the state level so that the GOP can take back the House and the Senate. While that’s true, it’s not sufficient because it doesn’t address the fraud in the first place.
If it’s possible to steal the presidency with impunity, what office in the nation is beyond reach? The simple answer is none, and that matters because the government has police power and once the Constitution becomes superfluous, the coercive powers of government suddenly have no limits. And for those who say that the Constitution still stands, the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper. It is the citizens’ loyalty to that Constitution and the system built upon it that make it work.
Government sometimes needs help. It can’t do everything… and it most certainly can’t do everything well. Some Americans have stepped up and use their resources and expertise to help government function more effectively.
An example of this is Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to fund “Special Assistant Attorneys Generals.” in the actual Attorneys Generals offices in half a dozen large cities across the country. Those SAAGs are tasked with a specific focus on climate change and act as liaisons between AG leadership and NGO’s and other interested parties. The goal was to step up and move the issue of climate change forward in the face of Congress refusing to move on the threat.
Another more recent effort to address government dysfunction had to do with voting. After the chaos of 2000, the Russian influence scandal of 2016 and complaints about lines and closed precincts after almost every election, it was clear that America’s voting system could use some assistance.
As might be appropriate for the high tech world we live in, it was a master of the Silicon Valley universe who stepped into the breach to provide assistance to the very low tech world of voting; Mark Zuckerberg. He and his wife contributed over $350 million to the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civil Life to pay election workers, drop boxes, foreign language information, train poll workers, rent polling locations and count votes during the 2020 elections.
The result was a far more robust election functionality in the locales where the money was focused. For CFCL it was what you would call a home run. Take Maricopa County Arizona for example. The county, with its approximately 2 million votes – including Phoenix – represents over 60% of Arizona’s electorate. CFCL spent approximately $3 million in the county. The result? Much higher turnout. Donald Trump received 995,665 votes, 250,000 more than he did in 2016 for a 33% increase. Joe Biden garnered 1,040,774 votes, a whopping 340,000 or 48% more than Hillary Clinton did four years before. Zuckerberg and CFCL certainly had an impact.
To see how much, look at the rest of Arizona where CFCL spent 30% less. Trump’s 2020 total grew by 32% (compared to 2016) while Biden improved on Clinton’s total by 38%. In Maricopa County where Zuckerberg spent $3 million the Democrat candidate increased his total by 48% while the GOP candidate grew his by 33%, a difference of 15%. In the rest of the state the difference between 2016 and 2020 was 6%. CFCL essentially boosted Maricopa County’s turnout by 9% compared to the rest of the state.
If a difference of 9% between Maricopa and the rest of the state doesn’t sound like much, remember that billion dollar casino empires have been built on games where the house has much less of an advantage and trillion dollar empires have been built with less than half that.
That CTCL model played itself out in a handful of states that gave the election to Biden. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia. In each state CTCL spent millions of dollars in heavily Democrat counties and drove almost unprecedented increases in voter turnout and troubling vote irregularities.
Today, in this particular case, half the country might suggest all of that is Constitutional. In fact, it’s not.
In the 1960’s the United States was in the midst of an upheaval of monumental proportions where racism and Jim Crow laws were being challenged virtually everywhere. People were being treated differently with the government’s imprimatur. The Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts were passed specifically to ensure the Constitutional requirement that people were treated equally. MLK’s I Have a Dream speech epitomized the goal of the journey that the United States embarked on over the next few decades.
Fundamentally Americans understood that people should be treated equally, particularly by government. Government has a power over you that no store or school or hotel does. Government can raise your taxes, impact your ability to open a business, dictate where your kids go to school, and most importantly, put you in prison.
As such, Americans expect government to treat everyone equally, and according to a report released by the Amistad Project, Zuckerberg’s CTCL not only didn’t do that, the expenditures were in direct violation to federal law:
This privatization of elections undermines the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires state election plans to be submitted to federal officials and approved and requires respect for equal protection by making all resources available equally to all voters.
The provision of Zuckerberg-CTCL funds allowed these Democrat strongholds to spend roughly $47 per voter, compared to $4 to $7 per voter in traditionally Republican areas of the state.
While there are most certainly areas of government where private / public partnerships can play a role – things like feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and substance abuse aid – none of those things involves the police power of government or determining the representation in the government itself. Bloomberg’s efforts involve the former and Zuckerberg’s impact the latter.
Government is supposed to be objective in the execution of the laws and by allowing private entities to illegally do the various functions of the state, the government is essentially putting its thumb on the scales that keep the Republic balanced. Just as it would be unconstitutional for Exxon to fund the enforcement actions of the EPA, the NRA to fund agents of the ATF or the Proud Boys to do enforcement work for the Border Patrol, it’s equally unconstitutional for billionaires or anyone else unaccountable to the people to be bankrolling election processes and activities.
No doubt had Donald Trump won with similar assistance by a nonprofit funded by Larry Ellison, John Schnatter or the late Sheldon Adelson, the nation would be subject to wall to wall cries that the election was fraudulent and that a Donald Trump was a fascist dictator. And indeed that would have been true. Had GOP aligned “nonprofits” provided training and helped counting votes in predominantly red counties and precincts, Antifa, BLM and Democrats would have “protested” and likely burned Washington to the ground. Instead, as it was, in the face of the clear theft of the most important election of our time a few hundred Trump supporters broke into the Capital and took selfies with the Capitol Police, put their feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and caused minor mayhem.
And so today as we “celebrate” the first 100 days of the fraudulent Biden administration, it might be useful to sit back and recognize exactly what Mark Zuckerberg's purchase of the 2020 election foretells. Unless this unconstitutional election is somehow set aside, or laws put in place to make sure the theft is never repeated, we will have crossed the Rubicon into a post Augustan Rome where the Imperial Throne is up for grabs to whoever comes up with the most gold for the vote takers and counters. Given that Kamala Harris is the next in line… it wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t have our own Year of the Four Emperors.
Adolf Hitler said: “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” That line may never have been as true as it is today.
What is that lie? It comes in many flavors: America is racist. Donald Trump is racist. Trump supporters are racists. Republicans are racists. You might notice a theme here. Now repeat the above and exchange the word racist for fascist...
None of those things are true. But truth doesn’t matter. Why? Because truth is not the objective, power is. In 2020 America, if you disagree with the left on anything from abortion to immigration to tax cuts to global warming you are an enemy who must be destroyed. And the primary weapons of choice are the slurs of racist and fascist.
And the beauty of it is that no proof beyond the assertion is necessary. Before he became president Donald Trump lived most of his life in front of cameras in the most media obsessed city on the planet. Morning shows, talk shows, radio shows, news shows, press conferences, grand openings, the Apprentice… you name it and Trump was there. As we all know, Donald Trump basically can’t keep his mouth shut, yet for the first 67 years of his life this man who never met a camera or microphone he could resist somehow kept the secret of his virulent racism a secret.
Then, once he became president he did such racist things as fund Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) at a level no president ever had, label the KKK as a terrorist organization, signed into law sentencing reform that had been called for by black leaders for decades, pardon the late boxer Jack Johnson and the very much alive Alice Johnson. He also supported “opportunity zones”, pushed for school choice, both of which disproportionately benefit minorities, and at the same time created an economy that brought about the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded. But he’s a racist.
The proof Donald Trump is a fascist is equally strong. He arrests and jails any reporter who dares to question him. He uses the CIA and FBI to spy on anyone who disagrees with him. He imprisons judges who rule against his policies. He trains the military on people who are peacefully protesting his policies. Clearly Donald Trump is a fascist.
To understand how accurate Hitler’s words are look no farther than a Newsweek piece from July: Half of Americans Think Trump Is Racist and an Additional 13 Percent Are Unsure. That is simply staggering, and the reason is simple: In excess of 90% of the media coverage of Donald Trump is negative. “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” Add to that the manipulation by Facebook, Google and Twitter and you get us to where we are today with an election that was not only stolen, but with 1/2 the population thinking that a flawed but good man is racist and a fascist...
The above is only a symptom of the real problem however. The real target is not Donald Trump per se, but rather the half the population who support him, and the truth is they hated us long before Donald Trump came onto the political stage, most clearly seen when we were called racists and Nazis for opposing Barack Obama in 2008.
Democrats and their comrades get away with it because they know we respect the rule of law. In 2008 when we lost to Barack Obama we didn’t riot. We peacefully protested and went to the voting booth. In 2010 we went to the polls and the Democrats lost 64 seats in the House and we finally turned the Senate red in 2014.
That is what conservatives and Republicans generally do. We don’t riot when we don’t get our way. Even when we’re cheated, as happened in 1960 with Nixon, 2004 with Dino Rossi and 2008 with Norm Coleman, we don’t try to burn the country down because we respect the rule of law.
What do 75 million Americans do if they discover that despite playing by the rules they’ve been duped again, this time on the single most important election of their lifetimes, with the future of the Republic literally hanging in the balance? They are told by the same media who spent four years pushing the fiction of Russian collusion that they should simply shut up and accept defeat, regardless of the myriad examples of voter fraud, both big and small.
Lincoln said “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” He was referring to the issue of slavery, but the line might also well apply here today. When fully half the American population loses confidence in the integrity of the election process upon which the nation is governed, loses confidence in the media - both traditional and social - who have been lying to them for years about fictional election tampering, and come to believe that their political opponents will use everything from rioting to mayhem to outright theft to gain control of the government, what should they do? What is their motivation to continue to participate in a process where the game is rigged? What is their motivation to continue to engage in a system where one side believes the Constitution is but a barrier to be subverted rather than the rulebook by which the nation is governed? What is their motivation to be constrained by a Constitution which their opponents disregard at every turn as they seek to undermine the very rights it was written to protect? What is their motivation to engage in a process legally when they know that their opponents seek to bastardize that very process to accumulate more power and eviscerate the very ideas upon which the nation was founded?
I don’t have the answer and I’ve no idea where we are on a spectrum of anarchy vs. tyranny, but I’m certain that the closer Democrats push the United States towards tyranny the closer we get to a point where liberty loving Americans look for other means to protect the God given rights the Constitution was written to guarantee. What that looks like, I’ve no idea, but Carl von Clausewitz once said “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” That’s something to keep in mind as the Democrats continue their march to eviscerate our Constitution and destroy the country that has given so much to so many for so long. I don't believe that freedom will go quietly into that good night...
This past summer there were a lot of American flags ripped,
walked on and set on fire around the country.Protesters pulled down statues, looted stores and set buildings on fire
across the country.They claim that
America is racist.They claim Donald
Trump is a fascist.They suggest
Capitalism is a cancer and must be replaced.And the Constitution, as it has been a tool of oppression since its
writing, must be eliminated.
To listen to protesters speak, the United States is a
cesspool of racism and oppression where only the rich thrive.
Maybe they’re right.Maybe America is nothing but one large work camp where citizens are
oppressed by their overlords where they have no freedoms and experience a
quality of life that is something out of Dickens. Maybe…
If that’s true, it should be easy to spot.Below are a variety of tables listing measures
of life ranked by country.The sources
for each set of data is different but most evaluate between 180 & 210
countries, depending on how that term is defined.
So what do the data say about this fascist, oppressive American
country? Well, as a journalist might say... lets's go to the data.
How about we start off with the basics… Life
Expectancy.Below is a table of selected
countries for life expectancy.The world
average is 72.6 and the United States comes in at 78.9, putting it solidly in
the top 25%.That’s not terrible.
Then of course there’s earning a living.Below is a table with the average incomes
around the world and the United States comes in at #5, with not a single
country above the United States having more people than the city of New York. That
matters of course because like herding cat, having a country where people are
spread out over vast areas, have extraordinarily different backgrounds and
heritages it’s far more difficult to get everyone on the same page in terms of
what works to achieve prosperity.America has done that.
And of course everyone talks about GDP, the sum of all of
the goods and services a nation produces. Below is a table of the 15 nations
with the largest GDPs in the world.The
United States, with 5% of the planet’s population produces 24% of the world’s
economic output:
Another way of looking at this is GDP on a per capita
basis.Here too none of the nations
above the United States has a population above that of New York.Again, none of the other countries on this
list comes close to being similar to the United States in terms of size and
diversity of our population, and with only Australia being similar when
compared to geographic footprint.
Of course it’s not all about income, it’s about what you can
do with that income.Below is a table showing
the top 20 countries (out of 101) based on the cost of living which measures
what one can actually purchase with the money they earn.And the United States comes in at 4.
Most of us work for a living and sometimes things work out
well and we accumulate significant assets, making us millionaires!Sadly, I’m not one of them, but there are a
LOT of millionaires in the United States.As a matter of fact, the United States, which again is 5% of the world’s
population, is the home of fully 40% of the world’s millionaires:
Millionaires: (in thousands)
1
United
States
18,614
2
China
4,447
3
Japan
3,025
4
United
Kingdom
2,460
5
Germany
2,187
6
France
2,071
7
Italy
1,496
8
Canada
1,322
9
Australia
1,180
10
Spain
979
11
Netherlands
832
12
Switzerland
810
13
India
759
14
South
Korea
741
15
Taiwan
528
And not only that, the number of millionaires as a
percentage of the population is higher in the United States than any nation on
the planet other than Switzerland… but in our defense, Switzerland has really
good chocolate.
Particularly important in this discussion is who those
millionaires are.The makeup of American
millionaires is below.Minorities,
making up 40% of the nation’s population, make up 24% of the millionaires.
And what’s equally important about achieving economic success is mobility into
America’s economic elite.Forbes, which
publishes its annual Forbes 400 chronicling the 400 richest Americans reports
that fully 70% of America’s richest individuals are self made while only 30%
inherited their fortunes.
American Millionaires By Race (and Population Race
Breakdown):
But of course not everyone will end up millionaires, but
opportunities exist nonetheless.Below
is a table that chronicles social mobility, which is roughly characterized as
the ability to move from one economic level to another.Of the approximately 180 countries in the
world this table looks at the 82 with the most measurable opportunities.The average of these 82 countries is 62.2,
and the United States comes in position of 27 with a mobility score of 70.4,
while Denmark is first with a score of 85.2 and Côte d’Ivoire is last with a
score of 34.5.A significant element of
this measure is education and healthcare, both of which drag down the United
States significantly thanks to excessive government intervention.
The reality of the fact that government intervention in
healthcare and education handicap the country is be demonstrated by the
following table that looks at the ease of doing business.This metric includes starting a business as
one of its measures, along with things like regulations, taxes, rule of law and
others.Starting a business is one of
the most effective ways in which one might improve their family’s economic
situation.To the degree that the United
States is ranked sixth out of 180 nations in terms of the ease of doing
business yet 27th in terms of social mobility suggests that that economic
opportunity is very real, while other measures hold the country back.
How about getting to work to run that business or make that
money – and hopefully have some fun too!Americans love to drive.As such,
the price of gas is a big deal.Below is
what people pay in different countries for gas.The world average is $3.80 and the US comes in at $2.15 per gallon while
in France they pay $5.94 and in Hong Kong they pay $8.49!
But it’s not just gas, but there’s buying a car and
maintaining it.Below is a table that
shows the percentage of annual salary it would take to buy a family car and
operate it for one year.These costs
include not only the car and its gas, but insurance and maintenance as well.
And where might an American drive?How about home!Below is a table showing the size of homes
for various countries around the world.The only nation where homes are bigger on average than in the United
States is Australia, but that should be expected as apparently all Australians
keep pet crocodiles!
It’s not just the freedom to drive around that American’s
like.For a nation that was founded on
the pursuit of freedom, freedom of all sorts is still important.Below are two tables, one measuring Economic
Freedom and the other Personal Freedom.
The freedoms in the following two tables in this analysis encompass
a variety of measures including these: Rule of Law / Security and Safety /
Movement / Religion / Association, Assembly, and Civil Society / Expression and
Information / Identity and Relationships / Size of Government / Legal System
and Property Rights.The numbers below
are the top nations of the total pool of 162 nations measured.
And of course the number one freedom someone can have is the
freedom of speech. Without the freedom to say what’s on your mind without fear
of retribution from the government is the strongest tool available for keeping
a government honest.Below is a table
demonstrating something that anyone paying attention this summer would
recognize, Americans have a level of free speech unfettered by government
authorities that is unprecedented in the world.
Another part of freedom is access to information, which is
increasingly delivered via the Internet.Below is a table that looks at the percent of the population with
Internet access for 214 countries.
While the United States may lag far behind on academic
success in primary education, our university system is the best in the world by
far.Below are the 15 best universities
in the world and the only two on the list that are not from the United States
are Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.
Then there is charity.The United States spends more money on charity than any other nation by
far.That is a function of both the
largest GDP as well as the percentage of giving.That is reflected in the table on the left
below.The table on the right measures a
more holistic giving approach that combines donations, volunteering and helping
strangers.Here the United States sits
at number two.
But it’s not just charity that demonstrates America’s
willingness to help, it’s the total social welfare spending.For whatever one’s views on such endeavors,
the United States is behind only France in social welfare spending.This measure includes things such as public
and private social expenditure, the effect of direct taxes (income tax and
social security contributions), indirect taxation of consumption on cash
benefits, as well as tax breaks for social purposes.
We are slight slackers however when it comes to spending on
video games.Americans come in number 3
behind Japan and South Korea on this important measure.
There is one last measure that must be looked at.That is Defense.The United States spends more on defense than
the next 10 countries combined.For some
that might sound problematic, but the reality is that American spending on
defense has allowed the world, particularly Europe to thrive.The second table below shows defense spending
as a percent of GDP.One of the reasons
that European nations are able to generate such extensive welfare spending programs
is that they have kept their defense spending low for decades while the United
States defense expenditures brought about the longest period of overall peace
in Europe in history.That spending may
not show up in happiness measures or salary measures, but it most certainly
shows up in the fact that both Europe and the United States remain bastions of
freedom, democracy and peace, and the carnage of a world war is a distant
memory we read about rather than something we all experienced firsthand. The
first table shows absolute defense spending and the second shows spending as a percentage
of GDP.
At the end of the day, this is piece is a chronicle of the
reality of America. America is indeed imperfect, no doubt for every table here
someone can find their own tables that paint a far darker picture using their
own sources.America does have
inequality, dysfunctional education and healthcare systems and too much
government regulation, but at the same time, Americans have done more with what
they have than any nation on earth.America offers economic opportunities on a wider scale (both geographic
and occupational) than any nation on earth. From Florida to New York to
California to Wyoming the opportunities are simply staggering from doctor to
scientist to graphic designer to business consultant to startup founder to
mechanic to plumber to Instagram model…
What many of the protesters don’t care about is the fact
that the United States Constitution guarantees Americans freedoms that people
in most of the world can only dream of and to the degree that others share some
of them, those freedoms are often at the mercy of political majorities.That includes minority opinions because
things that the majority agree with don’t generally need protection.
At the same time, the United States regularly receives more
immigrants from more places than any nation on earth and gives them opportunities
and freedoms most would or could not dream of at home.And it integrates immigrants at a pace that
no nation has in history.
While there are racial tensions in the United States as
there have been since its founding, in the last half century the country has
made extraordinary leaps which can be seen in both culture and economics, the
former can be seen on televisions, on sports shows and regularly on the radio
while the latter is demonstrated by the fact that 8% of American millionaires
are black, 8% are Asian and 7% are Hispanic.I’ve not found a source thus far, but one can imagine that those numbers
were far smaller during the 1950’s and 1960’s. But I can say that the story the Democrats and the media try and foist on us that America is indeed a bastion of racism is fiction. (https://imperfectamerica.blogspot.com/2020/06/data-shows-driving-while-black-meme-is.html)
For those who want to tear apart American culture because it’s
not what they like, denigrate American values because we’ve not achieved them
on their timetable, want to overthrow America’s capitalist system because they’d
prefer the “equality” promised by socialism or Communism, I’d ask, what place
in the world today, or in world history has a nation done a better job than
America of giving opportunity to its citizens, generating prosperity for its
citizens, protecting its citizens’ freedoms and at the same time helping drive
prosperity and peace around the world?If such a nation exists perhaps I’d certainly be interested in reading
about it.
Tomorrow there are two choices on the ballot.One candidate, a very flawed but passionate man,
understands that the United States is the greatest nation to ever grace the
face of this earth and sees his role as protecting that legacy and rolling back
government intervention to allow Americans of all stripes to address the
country’s shortcomings and achieve even greater success in the future.
The other also an imperfect man, but he sees the United
States as a highly flawed nation, he sees Americans of various identities as
victims and the Constitution as a roadblock to change rather than a guarantee of
freedom and a limit on government intervention on behalf of the majority.
If you like what you’ve seen in the streets of America over
the last six months and would like to see more of it, Joe Biden is your man and
the Democrats are your party.If however
you believe like Ronald Reagan that America’s best days are ahead of her and
that freedom and opportunity are the solutions to most of the problems we face,
Donald Trump is your man and the Republicans are your party.
