An 18th Century Scottish Historian Foretells 21st Century America

Our Constitution, perhaps the greatest document in human history behind the Bible, is not quite perfect. In 2025 we can see things that might have been added. Number one is probably term limits.  Another would be a prohibition on deficit spending outside of war.  And maybe they could have added something about judges being responsible for the crimes the criminals they release into society commit…

No doubt there are countless things we could sit here 250 years later and think of that the Founding Fathers could have added but didn’t because they couldn’t see into the future. One thing they could see clearly was that the nature of man is to accumulate power, use that power to take from others and that the most effective way of doing both is by harnessing the power of government. 

Alas, it wasn’t possible to put frameworks in place to control all of the base instincts of men as they are simply unending and evolve constantly. The Founders could not envision our world.  They could write about freedom of speech and the press, but they couldn’t have known about radio or mobile phones or the dark web or Bitcoin or shadowbanning. 

Nonetheless one of the greatest attributes of their Constitution was its staggered terms. The House, the place from which spending originates, is the closest to the people and is elected every two years. The President, who executes the laws, has a term of four years.  Then the Senate, originally the representatives of the state legislatures, serve staggered six-year terms.

The goal of these staggered terms was to tamp the passions of men such that if a majority wanted something they couldn’t easily command it and it would take years for them to take control over the government. The Founders understood that tempers run hot but cooler heads often prevail with time and therefore they wrote a document with built in cooling off periods.

What the Founding Fathers never envisioned however was a permanent government, in either the elected officials or the bureaucracy.  Sadly, today we have both. That wouldn’t be a significant problem if government was as small as it was initially.  Indeed, for America’s first 50 years we had a Department of State, Treasury, War, Attorney General and Postmaster General.  That was it.  Interior and Agriculture came in the middle of the 19^th century when the country was adding states and territories rapidly and farming was becoming a major point of conflict between cattle herders, sheep herders, farmers and miners, not to mention Indians.  Nothing more until the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903 – the two split in 1913.

The point is, for most of the first half of America’s history the federal government was essentially an afterthought in the minds of most Americans.  For the Founding Fathers government was part time.  Today it’s anything but. To put this in perspective, there have been almost 2,000 people who have served as a US Senator, and of the 25 who served the longest, all but one started his career in the 20^th century – 15 of them after 1960 – and two are still there!  Similarly, over in the House, where 12,000 people have served as Representatives, of the 33 longest serving, all but one began their service in the 20^th century and four are current members.  The Founding Fathers didn’t see a need for term limits because for them Congress was a service to the country, not a job, and certainly not a permanent career.

Today the federal government is anything but an afterthought in the lives of Americans. Not only does it seek to control almost every aspect of our lives, but it spends like a drunken sailor on liberty weekend.  Not surprisingly, most of the regulations that stifle productivity and innovation and the departments from which most spending emerges are those created in the last century. Seventy five percent of the federal government spending is on things that simply exist at the federal level for our first 150 years.  From healthcare spending to food stamps to Social Security to education, the limited government our Founding Fathers left us with has metastasized into a borg that grows year after year, regardless of who’s in control. 

This does not end well, particularly as the United States is $37 trillion in debt, with twice that in unfunded obligations.  The words of Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler explains why:  “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

On our present course, that is America’s fate. Sadly we have few leaders willing to tell Americans the truth about that reality.  While we have men like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, Americans writ large don’t seem to be interested in following them. 

There are solutions however.  The FairTax would be a giant step in the right direction as it would remove from politician’s hands the ability to manipulate the tax code to give donors goodies. We could sunset regulations.  As an example, every law on the books would sunset after 10 years unless it was renewed by Congress, and would face sunset every 10 years unless it was passed by 60% of each house. Then there’s zero based budgeting, where every department must justify its entire budget from scratch every two years.  At the same time, welfare and other wealth redistribution programs that were never part of the Constitution in the first place must be eliminated, perhaps phased out over a four year period.  And of course, not to be forgotten… term limits.

Implementing these steps would rein in government spending and regulation, but more importantly they would simultaneously unleash an economic juggernaut unlike anything the world has ever seen. 

But as Tytler suggested, that’s not how things usually work. In 1776 a group of extraordinary men risked their lives and livelihoods to give free men an opportunity to build a new nation based on individual liberty and limited government. But before they could do that they needed to inspire the colonies’ citizens, two thirds of whom either wanted to remain British or were undecided.  Against all odds they not only inspired a nation but led it to victory against the world’s most powerful empire. 

But then they did something even more amazing.  Building on the Declaration of Independence’s recognition that rights come from God, they wrote the world’s first constitution based on those individual rights and framed a limited government to allow men to exercise them. 

Today America needs a new group of would-be heroes, men willing to target the entrenched barnacles that have grown up around our Constitution and the leeches that feed off both. It will take wordsmiths like Payne and Jefferson, coalition builders like Madison and Marshall and a leader like Washington to have any chance at success. Let’s hope they emerge before Tytler’s warning comes true. 

Donald Trump and Elon Musk: The New American Patriots

Donald Trump and Elon Musk, two men who have the world at their feet are risking everything for America.  They don't have to, but they do.  Not so different than some others about 250 years ago.

Rush Limbaugh used to talk about a story his father told about the signers of the Declaration of Independence:  “Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.”

The story had something of a resurrection in the early 2000s and was often shared in various iterations on social media. Not surprisingly, a minor industry emerged seeking to “fact check” them.  An example of such is this from Snopes, which first began fact checking them back in 2005: 

“Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died.

It is true that five signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured by the British during the course of the Revolutionary War. However, none of them died while a prisoner, and four of them were taken into custody not because they were considered "traitors" due to their status as signatories to that document, but because they were captured as prisoners of war while actively engaged in military operations against the British.”

Snopes concludes that the piece they reviewed (not the Limbaugh piece) was “Mixed” in its accuracy. They’re right. Accuracy matters. Particularly in matters of importance. They then add something that backhandedly drives home the basic premise: “So great is our need for simplified, dramatic events and heroes that even the real-life biographies of the fifty-six men who risked their lives to publicly declare American independence are no longer compelling enough.” This is the theme that most of the gotcha fact checkers miss and indeed, largely ignored by those who seek to debunk the audacity of what those 56 did… They were committing treason.  They knew they were committing treason.  They knew the penalty for committing treason was hanging.  And, yet, they did so, risking everything they had. 

What’s more, they weren’t committing treason against just some random monarch with a few colonies to protect.  No, they were committing treason against the most powerful nation on the planet whose navy dominated the seas and whose reach stretched across continents and oceans. 

Whether they ended up dying of old age as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams did – on the same day, exactly 50 years from the date of the Declaration of Independence, July 4^th, 1826 – or died during the war itself, as nine of the signatories did, all 56 of them knew they were risking their fortunes, families and their lives if they signed that document. And they did it nonetheless.

Today there are millions of Americans ready to sign a new Declaration of Independence from the tyranny America has become. Tyranny you say? 

The American government in 2024 is far more tyrannical than the British government under King George III ever was.  And it’s not even close. With over 88,000 laws and rules passed by the federal government just between 1995 & 2016, today it’s almost impossible for the average American to get through a single day, nevermind a single year or life without breaking a law.  In his book Three Felonies A Day civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate suggests that American commit three federal felonies every day without even knowing it.  And that doesn’t include the countless state and local laws or authoritarian fictions tyrants create. 

From a different perspective, consider this:  In 1880 there were 30,000 prisoners jailed in the United States, out of a population of 50 million, for an incarceration rate of .06%. Today there are 1.6 million prisoners of a population of 350 million, for an incarceration rate of .45%, and if one counts the additional 3.4 million others in the system – i.e. probation and parole, which were essentially nonexistent in 1880, you get a justice system control rate of 1.45%.  Are Americans somehow 25 times more criminalized today than they were 140 years ago or are there simply more crimes for which they can be convicted? 

As any conscious person knows, it’s the latter.

Which makes what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing, simply extraordinary.  While there are millions of Americans who would be willing to sign a new Declaration of Independence if it came to it, those two are trying to avoid having that be a necessity.  And they are risking everything in order to make it so.

Trump, unlike most politicians (presidents and members of congress alike) has actually lost money since becoming president, to the tune of $1.6 billion!  From the moment he announced he was running for president and continuing until this very day, the swamp has used propaganda, lies and lawfare to hamper him winning the White House, stonewall him while he was serving in it and today trying to keep him from winning again. Beyond that treachery, he was shot in a bungled assassination attempt and had at least one more thwarted. 

Musk, while still the world’s richest man, has seen governments around the world target his businesses and threaten to put him in jail for his purchase of Twitter and his defense of free speech. Indeed, just last week California blocked one of his companies, SpaceX, from more launches from the state specifically because of his tweets. 

And why is that happening?  Because like the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, Trump and Musk recognize that the American government has become a tyranny.  They recognize the government has become bloated, inefficient and stultifying to American freedom and prosperity while at the same time its fellow travelers in the media, finance, pharma, academia, etc. – have become wealthy and above the law.

The duo not only recognize that tyranny, they’re telling American citizens they’re going to destroy it. Trump promises to eliminate the Department of Education while Musk wants to help slash government by 80%!  For the cabal of government apparatchiks and the sundry hyenas who feed alongside them on the body politic of America, this is a declaration of war.  It threatens their very existence. And it must be stopped, whatever it takes.

Which is exactly what makes what Trump and Musk are doing so brave. Neither man needs to become embroiled in politics to live a life of luxury or provide one to their progeny. Indeed, both have knowingly and willingly put their fortunes and their lives in the crosshairs of the most powerful tyranny in all of human history.  That is the kind of courage that animated the creation of the greatest republic in human history.  That’s the kind of courage that inspired men from 13 separate colonies to put their differences aside and to fight for freedom. Ideally the courage of these two modern day patriots will inspire citizens across America’s 50 states to utilize the ballot box to save the nation those 56 founders bequeathed to us. One Declaration of Independence should be enough.  Hopefully we won’t need another. 

Shining Cities On Hills Take Centuries to Build but Can be Destroyed Quickly

 America’s Founding Fathers were nothing short of extraordinary.  Never before had a group of men come together to do things that would so change the arc of human history.  To a man it’s likely that they agreed with Sir Isaac Newton’s adage from 1676:  "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." This particularly applies to the two men most responsible for the nation’s founding documents, Thomas Jefferson & James Madison.

Jefferson, whose extensive library was the basis upon which the Library of Congress is built, was extraordinarily well read.  From Plato and Plutarch to Chaucer and Shakespeare to Blackstone and Burke, he was a voracious reader. Perhaps none more so than the giant of the enlightenment’s, John Locke. In addition to the intellectual arsenal all of this gave him, there were specific documents he drew upon in writing the Declaration of Independence.  Among these were his own draft of the Constitution of Virginia, George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights as well as the English Bill of Rights and its antecedent, the Magna Carta. 

Madison shared Jefferson’s familiarity with Montesquieu, Locke, Blackstone and crafted the Constitution with many of the same sources in mind. Given the different functions of the documents, Madison focused the Constitution on the fundamental nature of man and the need to constrain men’s most based instincts while Jefferson’s Declaration was focused on the passions that impel men to act.

The nation they bequeathed to us is of course, imperfect, but it is extraordinary nonetheless.  Based on these documents and the 2000 years of western civilization that preceded them, it has evolved with principles that have been, in aggregate, the most providential in all in human history. Fundamental elements such as freedom of speech, press, religion, the rights to a fair trial and to be free from government molestation in your home created an almost crystal clear limitation on the powers of government and the tyrannical nature of men. At the same time, outside of the explicitly government sphere you have things like private property, Capitalism and the Judeo-Christian tradition that reinforced the framework of the nation.

As everyone knows, America had extraordinary challenges from the beginning, starting with her Original Sin. But throughout she has had at her disposal in the form of the Constitution the tools to evolve and overcome her imperfections and advance. 

The culture Americans have today, or at least did until recently, focused on things like community, church, freedom of speech, limited government, private property, merit & individual achievement.

All of that took generations to build.  It took patriots standing on the shoulders of giants to build… And the result has been nothing short of spectacular.  For most of the last century the United States has been the most powerful nation in the world from both a military and economic perspective, and perhaps most of all, from an opportunity perspective.  From universities to Silicon Valley to Wall Street to main street, America has led the world in scientific advances, economic advances and, again, opportunity.  This is nowhere more clear in the fact that of the 954 Nobel Prizes awarded since its inception in 1900, over 404 of them (42%) are Americans, and of those 404, approximately 35% are immigrants.  And it’s not just intellectuals. There’s athletics. Of the 21,000 Olympic medals awarded since the revival of the Games in 1896, Americans have won over 3,000 or 15%. In this year’s games, approximately 10% of the American team was made up of immigrants or children of immigrants. And money. Of the world’s 2,781 billionaires in 2024, 29% of them, or 813 are Americans. Of those 813, approximately 11% are immigrants. 

All of this suggests that immigrants are good for America.  That’s true.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a problem.  We do. Because culture matters…

Unfortunately what we have seen over the last 30 years has been a flood of illegal immigrants from nations with no concept of the basics of American culture. The breakdown of the countries of origin tells the tale. The top ten nations from which illegals hail are as follows:  Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Columbia, Ecuador & El Salvador. Together they make up 80% of the illegals crossing our border. Those nations have no sustained history of free speech, limited government, private property, free elections or Capitalism. Contrast that with the previous waves of migration (1840-1889 & 1890-1911) when 89% of immigrants came from fellow European nations with overlapping western values. 

It is simply not sustainable for a nation to import tens of millions of people from nations with cultures that are anathema to its own. Indeed of the top ten most dangerous cities in the world, eight are in the countries listed above. The basic elements of western culture, of American culture are not found in DNA, they are found in communities, in the shared history of the citizens and in the laws of the nation. Large numbers of immigrants from nations with different mores can be destabilizing. From crime to the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to support illegals to the strains on services such as education and healthcare to the dollars sent back home, illegals do harm to America.  Just this past week we’ve seen reports of Venezuelan gangs taking over  neighborhoods in Colorado and unleashing chaos in Dallas while 75% of arrests in midtown Manhattan are illegals. 

The only solution is deportation. By the millions. It will be ugly, it will be difficult, it will take courage in the face of withering media assaults and Democrat lamentations, but it is necessary.  If we do not build a wall and send the illegals home, it will be seen as an open invitation to the entire world to cross our border… and as Roy Beck explains with gumballs, that’s not sustainable.

Culture matters. The reality is, not all cultures are equal. If they were there wouldn’t be millions of people seeking to cross our borders. Western civilization in general and American culture in particular has taken centuries to develop, and a quick look around the world will demonstrate that cultures and civilizations that maintain themselves for centuries are few and far in between. 

If Americans don’t recognize that what we have is a gift and is something to be valued and protected, our shining city on a hill will soon devolve into the morass of chaos, violence, scarcity and tyranny where much of the rest of the world resides. If we really want to show compassion to those longing for what Americans have, the solution is not to open our borders and let them in, but rather seek to export the basic elements of freedom which are at the foundation of our success. There’s an adage of much disputed origin that perfectly articulates the idea:  Give a man a fish, feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Our goal should not be to suckle the millions of illegals who swarm our borders and overwhelm our cities, but rather we should be to export the fundamental tenants of freedom and prosperity to the billions around the world so they can build their own shining cities on their own hills…

21st Century Cancel Culture: Robespierre Meets Mr. Potato Head

In high school I had a girlfriend whose parents were distributors for Amway, a multi level marketing company that sold lots of consumer products.  I don’t know if it was part of the company mission, but they wouldn’t sell Proctor & Gamble products.  Apparently her parents thought the company’s logo — a crescent man-in-moon and 13 stars — was a symbol of Satanism.  The “boycott” was toothless but the company eventually changed their logo to letters but later brought the moon back and won a lawsuit against some Amway distributors along the way.    

In college I met some demonstrators in the student union urging a boycott of Campbell’s Soup for the unfair treatment of farm workers in Central America.  After watching their movie I jumped onboard for a few weeks until I decided I probably wasn’t having much impact. 

Years later I remember reading about teachers down in Georgia wanting to ban Harry Potter from schools because of the witchcraft!

All of this came to mind recently after I read a few pieces suggesting that conservatives were hypocrites for decrying “cancel culture”.  They’re not entirely wrong.  Cancel culture is nothing new, and conservatives have engaged in it too…

But here’s the thing, it’s actually different now.  Much different.  For two reasons. 

The first reason today’s cancel culture is different is because with technology, nothing ever dies. When I was a young adult I did lots of things that were stupid, some of which I’m not proud of and others that simply demonstrated how it’s possible to have a brain without actually using it.  But none of those foibles or follies follows me around because there is no record of them other than in my head.  In earlier times people could learn from their own foolishness, learn from their mistakes and go on to be model citizens or at least strive to be, knowing that a broken promise here or an unkind word there wouldn’t haunt them forever.  Today that’s no longer true.  Today, because of the ubiquity of cell phones and the Internet, nothing stays hidden and nothing ever dies.

Today, there is no forgiveness nor forgetting.  From this day forward not only will every American have to live a pristine life, they will have to do so not only while navigating the rapidly changing currents of today’s mores, they will at the same time have to anticipate what will be acceptable in the future and live accordingly.  And it’s not just people.  It’s books, pancake syrup, children’s games, Halloween costumes and more.  Things that have been part of Americana for a century are now deemed racist, sexist or somehow otherwise unacceptable because they don’t comport with today’s values.  That’s simply an impossible standard for anyone to live up to whoever they are. 

The second reason cancel culture is different today is because of social media platforms. For good or (mostly) bad, social media is where a majority of Americans get their information.  Between YouTube, Facebook and Twitter Americans get far more of their information / news from social media sources than they do from traditional news sources.  The social media platforms have become America’s public square.  They grew and found extraordinary success and riches by pitching themselves as a place for Americans to express themselves, share ideas and communicated with one another. 

But once they vanquished all foes, once they became exactly what they purported to want to become, America’s public square, they started shutting down the speech of those with whom they disagreed.  So now that there are relatively few effective alternative communication vehicles available, Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon have decided that if you don’t agree with them, you’re off their platforms.  Sure, you still have free speech, but you have to wonder how many people you’ll be able to reach via skywriting, holding a cardboard on a streetcorner sign or shouting from your back porch.

Together, over the last decade and a half, these two developments have transformed the country, including the nature of the cancel culture.  They have turned what used to be largely ineffective fringe boycotts into extraordinarily effective main street shakedowns and takedowns… but with very selective enforcement. 

Dr. Seuss, whose books have brought joy to hundreds of millions of kids for decades are suddenly verboten but misogynistic and or vulgar rap videos are celebrated.  Gina Carano is fired for comparing the treatment of conservatives today to that of the Jews in 1930’s Germany while virulent anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan can be found in hundreds of videos on YouTube.  Donald Trump is kicked off Facebook and Twitter for the fiction of inciting a riot while Chuck Schumer, who threatened two Supreme Court justices, continues Tweeting unfettered. 

Comparing the boycotts of the past with the cancel culture of today is like equating your house cat with a lion in the Serengeti, both are cats, but the damage one does is largely limited to waking you up in the middle of the night by knocking makeup off your dresser while the other will stalk you night or day then rip you to shreds and eat you piece by piece once they catch you.

America’s founding fathers were indeed flawed men, but in the late 18^th century they were at the bleeding edge of society.  They were forward thinking men and revolutionary in their pursuit of freedom.  It’s one thing to be righteous standing in a 21st century America built on the ideas that brought us here, but think back to 250 years ago and what the world looked like. Imagine standing in Independence Hall or Parliament or in front of the Russian Czar and making the argument that there are more than two genders, that gay marriage is normal, or that African civilizations are equal to European civilizations. Try convincing King Louis or Pope Pius that women are equal to men and that they should get equal treatment in the army.

Now do all of that in the middle of near constant war, not only between the European powers, but between the native tribes across Africa, the Middle East and The Americas, and all of the above as they encountered one another at the intersections of civilizations. They were flawed men, but if they are personae non gratae in American schools then no one is safe. 

Applying today’s mores to the actions or words or thoughts of people who lived 2,000 or 200 or even 20 years ago is absurd, and made more so when it’s done selectively.  At the same time, if a handful of private companies are allowed to manipulate the public square for their own purposes then no ideas are safe. 

Cancel culture is real and it is largely an animal of the left.  It is tyranny for the sake of power.  But the not so funny thing about tyrants is that they always need a new set of enemies.  Once everything conservative has been canceled, who do they expect will be the next targets?  Once America is fully mulatto or Hispanic or no longer pigment challenged, who will be the next group targeted?  Once Christianity has become fully neutered in America as it has been in most of Europe, which deities will be targeted next? 

Cancel culture in 21^st century America very much resembles the late 18^th century… in France.  The revolution started out targeting the monarchy and ended up eating its own. By the time Robespierre and his fellow agitators realized what they had unleashed, the Reign of Terror was in full swing and it was their own heads that were in the basket.  At least Mr. Potato Head will have company…

HR 1 and Why Election Integrity Matters…

 If you’ve ever read Lord of the Flies, The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich or 1984, you understand the threat to life and limb that unrestrained power can be.  Lord Acton distilled the danger down to a simple phrase:  “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Our Founding Fathers knew that, which is why they crafted for us the greatest document ever written by men.  The Constitution they gave us had built into it a variety of checks and balances on government or any branch of government accumulating too much power.  They gave us the Connecticut Compromise, which balanced representation between large and small states, with two Senators elected from each state and Congressmen being elected based on population.  They gave us the Legislature which passes laws and the Executive which implements them.  And most of all, they gave us the Massachusetts Compromise, which created the ultimate check on government power, the Bill of Rights, an explicit articulation of individual rights that could not be infringed upon by government.  Finally, in what was likely the most groundbreaking element of any constitution ever written, the Founding Fathers explicitly limited the powers of the government with the 9^th and 10^th Amendments, the former stating that the enumeration of certain rights did not preclude the existence of others not addressed, while the latter stated that the federal government had only those powers given and any not given to it were reserved for states or the people.

Extraordinary students of history and men, Madison, Adams, Franklin, et. al. understood the nature of man and built a Constitution specifically crafted to counter that nature. It wasn’t a perfect document – and had a tool for addressing imperfections built into it – but it largely worked well for 233 years and allowed the United States to develop into the strongest and most powerful nation in the history of mankind.

Specifically their Constitution worked because it was – by design – insulated from the passions of men.  The staggered six year terms of the Senate was to balance out the biennial elections in the House – and Senators were appointed by states while Congressmen were elected by the people.  Presidents were elected every four years and Justices were appointed for life.  And the government was explicitly limited to what they could do.

Incredibly, while they knew nothing about cars or televisions or mobile phones or the Internet, the mechanisms they put in place largely survived as the march of time progressed. But for all of their familiarity with the dark sides of man’s nature, even the Founding Fathers, possibly the greatest assembly of men to ever come together in history, couldn’t foresee the darkness that lay ahead with the Democrat party of the 21^st century. 

Today America sits and watches as Democrats essentially send the Constitution through the shredder.  Emboldened by a pusillanimous Supreme Court, Democrats today – with HR 1 – seek to undermine the very foundation upon which that Constitution is based:  voting integrity by the governed.  They seek to codify arrangements that are by their very nature intended to eviscerate the notion of vote integrity.  Voter ID:  Eliminated.  Mail in voting:  Mandated.  Maintenance of accurate voter rolls:  Outlawed.  Same day registration:  Required.  Ballot harvesting:  Allowed.  These and much more are to be codified by HR 1, with the goal of giving Democrats end to end control over voting in the United States.  Once in control of voting they will control every branch and every element of the federal government in perpetuity.  And given that they back a regulatory state that never met a freedom it didn’t want to regulate, they will control every aspect of the lives of formerly free Americans. 

And that will be the end of America as we know it.  Entrepreneurial innovation?  Gone unless the mission furthers the green or “justice” themes of Democrats.  Educational freedom? Access to and success within will be predicated on a willingness to muzzle any thoughts or words that fall outside of whatever is currently deemed as acceptable.  Virtually everything, from sports to medicine to science to literature to media to the Internet to your very job, will become nothing more than vehicles for establishing one’s acquiescence to the left’s diktats, whether as regulated by Democrats or enforced by their fellow travelers seemingly everywhere from academia, the media and increasingly, big business.  

For more than two centuries Americans suffered through periods of government overreach, incompetence, malice and outright failure because they understood that they had the ultimate hand in dictating how government is run and that they would have the opportunity to make a change for the better via the voting booth.  Voting and elections were chaotic, exasperating and sometimes frustrating, but we largely accepted them because they were seen as a legitimate reflection of the public’s voice.

With HR 1 the Democrats are disemboweling election integrity, sullying the sanctity of the voting booth and most importantly, undermining Americans’ confidence that they control their own government and by extension, their own destinies.  The Constitution works only because people have confidence in its workings and their role in it.  Sadly, Democrats may find out too late that a citizenry who no longer have confidence that their government answers to them may decide to defy that government and seek to establish their own order.  It would be apropos – albeit sad for the world – if the very schemes Democrats put in place to try and guarantee their grip on power over a citizenry they disdain were the very schemes that caused that same citizenry to overthrow the system Democrats perverted to control them in the first place and replaced it with something one might see on an unnamed island in the South Pacific… My guess is the party worried about mean tweets, racist pancake syrup and offensive children’s books won’t thrive under the new system. 

Donald Trump: Not Exactly A Presidential President

American Presidents are supposed to be well spoken, articulate, magnanimous and carry themselves with a grace that makes them look natural on the cover of TIME magazine or standing next to the Queen of England.  They’re supposed to get along with the Washington press corps, titans of industry and play their role in the Kabuki theater of Washington DC power where Congress, the Executive Branch and the bureaucracy play their assigned roles and business continues largely unchanged from one administration to the next.

None of that applies to Donald Trump. He’s brash.  He’s arrogant.  He’s a narcissist.  He’s petty.  He’s vindictive.  He makes rash decisions and somehow is never responsible for stumbles that land at his doorstep, even when he’s the guy in charge… Donald Trump is practically no one’s idea of what Americans would traditionally call “Presidential”. 

Barack Obama on the other hand was the consummate “Presidential” president.  He was well spoken, genial, and got along well with the media, bureaucrats and foreign leaders.  Barack Obama, by all accounts carried the imprimatur “Presidential” quite well.  It was the actual presidenting that he was so bad at, which demonstrates with crystal clarity that the perception of one’s abilities and one’s actual abilities are not the same thing…

Donald Trump was a bull in a china shop of a President.  Or at least that’s the way the media, Democrats, academia, Hollywood and establishment Republicans painted him.  And that’s the key to understanding Donald Trump... knowing him through his enemies.  Voltaire said:  “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it." That prayer very much applies to Donald Trump.  His enemies are ridiculous.  They are failures at virtually everything they touch.  From destroying American schools and cities and the military, Democrats have made themselves beyond ridiculous in the eyes of anyone other than their fellow travelers.  Journalists have destroyed journalism as the majority of the media in the United States today is nothing more than a mouthpiece for Democrat talking points.  And higher education has become a cartoon into itself, with its focus on safe spaces for sparing the feelings of little snowflake rather than preparing young adults for the real world that exists beyond their ivory towers.  

And the mortar that keeps all of that ridiculousness and more together is the regulatory state.  The regulatory state is the font from which most power in the United States flows.  The power to regulate gives politicians the power to print money… both for themselves and their friends.  There’s a reason 7 of the 10 richest counties in America – out of over 3,100 counties – are located in the DC metro area.  From cushy government jobs to high paying lobbying gigs to flashy TV news hosting positions to bylines at self important newspapers, wielding power or influencing it or reporting on it is what makes Washington so desirable.  A perfect example of that was on display when hundreds of USDA employees decided to quit their jobs in DC rather than move out into the heartland when the Trump administration decided to place offices where regulators and researchers would be closer to the farms and farmers within their purview. They quit because they knew that Washington is where the power is, where the money is, where the influence is and where the prestige is. 

President Trump knew that that regulatory state was a rope around the neck of freedom, prosperity and America.  That’s why he needed to be vilified, attacked and eventually stopped.  Many people ask how some Republicans could stand by and watch as the president from their own party was attacked and disparaged as Donald Trump was. The answer is simple, establishment Republicans don’t really care about party, don’t care about effective government, and don’t care about their constituent's rights.  No, they care about only one thing:  Power.  If they could be out of office and watch government spending and influence slashed vs. be in office and watch government power grow, they would choose the latter every single time.  Go along with Democrats and they get to keep their invitations to Georgetown parties, their sponsored junkets to exotic and sophisticated locales, their regular Sunday morning talk show slots, cushy jobs for their families and of course the promise of a lucrative parachute if they ever find themselves defeated. Rein in government?  "No chance!"

It was into this well oiled machine of money, power and favors that Donald Trump sought to throw a wrench.  It was this “You scratch my back I scratch yours” Rube Goldberg government contraption that Donald Trump sought to overturn.  It was this "Go along to get along" understanding where Washington thrives by stealing citizen’s money and freedom that Donald Trump sought to expose.  And that is why he had to go.

Donald Trump opened up a schism in the United States unlike anything we’ve seen in 150 years.  He didn't do it by demonizing black people or brown people or Muslims or gays or soldiers or any of the other things the cabal of Democrats, media, and Never Trumper Republicans said.  In reality, Donald created a schism by reminding Americans that the nation is indeed blessed, that while flawed, America is the greatest nation in history and that fundamentally, Americans and America are good.  Donald Trump put the spotlight on working Americans… on factory workers and entrepreneurs and problem solvers rather than on the self important politicians and media personalities. This schism is based on power, not race.  

In four years Donald Trump did for America what he did forWollman Rink 30 years before.  After years of failure and millions of dollars wasted by the city government on the Central Park skating rink, Donald Trump renovated and opened the rink in a matter of months and under budget. In a similar way, after years of disparagement, Donald Trump made America great again. He showed that Americans that they could get back to work. That they could grow jobs and drive prosperity.  That they could lead on the world stage by embracing, not apologizing for, American values.  In other words, Donald Trump showed America that Americans can still accomplish great things, drove home the idea that it was the American people that made the country great, it was the ideas the Founding Fathers left us that made America great and it was our freedom and opportunity that made America great.  But most dangerously of all, Donald Trump reminded Americans that America’s greatness and prosperity do not come from government, they exist despite government.  And that could simply not be tolerated by the swamp, hence the four years of roadblocks, vilification and eventually a stolen election.  

Is Donald Trump a politically dead canary at the bottom of the American mineshaft of freedom or is he a phoenix ready to soar once again and lead the nation to even further greatness?  Who knows? Even today, after Trump emerged from his second impeachment victory his ridiculous enemies are seeking to bar him from Arlington, ban his name from schools and post offices and demonize, stigmatize and marginalize his supporters.  

Whatever Donald Trump’s future, one thing is for certain, his legacy is alive and well in the hearts of the 75 million American voters who remember a time when patriotism was a virtue, who understand that it’s possible for a nation to be flawed but fundamentally good, and perhaps most of all, recognize that America is the land of opportunity for every single person.  He may not be what the elite consider a very Presidential President, but he reminded us that it’s our people who make America great, our Constitution that makes her great and our freedoms that make her great despite the swamp's assertion to the contrary. He stood up and unabashedly proclaimed that America was and is a good nation, a great nation, and a force for good... and we believed him.  Whatever he chooses to do, we proudly carry the American flag and enthusiastically support his MAGA agenda... and we're not going anywhere.  

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?

First They Came...

With a respectful nod to Martin Niemöller, I present First They Came...

Gratitude at Christmastime... For our Freedom of Speech

Christmas is, among other things, a time for gratitude. Gratitude of course comes in many shapes and sizes. Some people feel gratitude for family, others for health, others for prosperity and some for all of those things and more and no doubt some for much less.

Whatever one’s situation here in the United States, we, as a people, have much to be thankful for. Perhaps there is nothing more deserving of our gratitude than the Constitution, that imperfect document upon which our nation was founded. It has much in it that has allowed our nation to not only survive, but thrive. Separation of powers. Limited government. The Amendment process. And of course the Bill of Rights.

Of all of the rights protected by the Constitution, arguably the most important is found in the 1st Amendment: Freedom of Speech. Why? Because human interaction of all kinds is based on communication. Whether it’s talking to a girl in a bar, arguing politics with someone at work, discussing the gospels after church or advocating for less regulation in front of the city council, speech is typically the mechanism through which we share ideas, have our theories challenged, test our persuasive skills.

Free speech is of course a messy proposition. If you allow free speech to flourish, eventually you’re going to come across some speech with which you disagree. Which is of course why the 1st Amendment exists in the first place. We don’t need a 1st Amendment to protect singing Jingle Bells or Sandra Bullock movies or Archie comic books. No, speech that everyone likes – or speech that people don’t care about one way or another – rarely needs to be protected. It’s all that other stuff that needs protection. It’s the Playboy magazine in the 1950’s, it’s the Seven Dirty Words, it’s the right to say your congressman, or president or local sheriff is a jerk. Basically the 1st Amendment protects one’s right to say things that other people disagree with.

And there’s the rub in our holiday ointment. Although the Freedom of Speech is possibly the most important freedom protected by the Constitution, it is coming under fire across the country. From university speech codes and “safe areas” to wishing someone “Merry Christmas”, it seems that the fictional “right” to not be offended is superseding the actual right of free speech. That is a serious problem, and it brings to mind the answer Ben Franklin gave after the close of the Constitutional Convention when a woman outside Independence Hall asked him what kind of government we had: “A Republic, if you can keep it”. When the Freedom of Speech begins to be undermined, the Republic itself won’t be far behind.

Earlier this year a US Senator from Rhode Island suggested using RICO laws to prosecute those skeptical of the “climate change” hoax. Not long after a group of prominent “climate change” professors seconded that suggestion. Although President Obama voiced his support of the notion of Free Speech in the face of recent crybaby university protests, two years ago his administration encouraged universities to ban “any expression related to sexual topics that offends any person”, which might at some point put someone whistling at a girl or commenting about her beauty at risk of official censure. Also on the university hit lists are the countless incidences of conservative speakers being shouted down and turned away from campuses. And then there are the terrorists who attacked the Texas Draw Mohamed contests and Muslims who advocate for Sharia law.

Whether from the government or from aggrieved minorities or even environmental activists, the movement towards silencing critics or opponents is a troubling one because it cuts at the foundation of our liberty and our Republic. The danger of creating an echo chamber is that eventually there are no dissenting voices to highlight possible errors in judgment, miscalculations, biases or simply reality conflicting with theory. And invariably those things end up in legislation, which further diminishes other freedoms as well.

As painful as conflicting ideas might be, as unsavory as offensive speech might be, having them on the periphery of good taste or “settled science” strengthens the core of our Republic. Rarely are ideas or values stronger than when they must be defended. It is in building that defense that we find our ideas or values to be worthy… or lacking, which, at the end of the day is how ideas advance, how values are forged and how our nation prospers. That is something we cannot forget and something we cannot allow governments or groups to undermine.

So this Christmas, with a toast of egg nog, perhaps a nod of gratitude to the Founding Fathers for giving Americans a gift that so few people on the planet enjoy… the right to open our mouths and be found a fool or a genius or a rabble rouser or just another voice in the cacophony that makes up the tapestry of our Republic.

Illegitimacy: America's racist past and present dooms its present and future...

I recently got into a lengthy discussion with some friends that makes me wonder how much longer the country can survive. Why? Because of such starkly different views on the nation, our history and the role of government. Frankly, I've never felt so bewildered in my life as to how people looking at the same information can come to such differing results… and I’ll point out, most of my interlocutors were white liberals.

The original catalyst for this discussion was Ferguson, MO. Almost immediately upon the killing of Michael Brown various friends posted comments on Facebook or linked to pieces discussing the disparity in the way blacks and whites are treated by cops. I was told by a black friend that a black man knows that every time he encounters a cop, regardless of the circumstances, his life is in danger. That cops can and do regularly stop, harass and abuse black men for no other reason than they are black. Ferguson and Brown were just the latest example of that racist reality.

I expressed some incredulity. While I suggested that it might be in fact true that police had a more heightened sense of awareness when dealing with blacks, I posited it might have more to do with the fact that black men, while they make up about 6% of the population, are responsible for approximately 40% of the violent crime in the country than racism. Somehow that didn't seem to fly. "No" that could not be the cause of the disparity. It had to be the racism on the part of some cops and the institutional racism on the part of the institutions that make up our justice system.

I further posited that even if it were the case that black men received a heightened level of attention from police, they could usually minimize the possibility of a negative outcome by being polite, respectful, and, even if they thought they were being unconstitutionally stopped, wait until afterward to file a grievance rather than get into a Constitutional argument and altercation with the officer who’s both worried about his own safety and that of the public. Indeed, I suggested that was likely good advice for anyone, black, white or otherwise, and it was the opposite of what Rodney King had done and increasingly what Michael Brown appears to have done. In hoping to lighten the tone somewhat I linked to Chris Rock’s great “How not to get your ass kicked by the police!” which is funny, but it makes some very good points as well. That didn’t seem to fly either.

The discussion devolved into suggestions that the United States always is and always has been a fundamentally racist country where whites have privilege (that they refuse recognize or acknowledge) and blacks are fundamentally unable to succeed. That was untrue on its face I suggested. To support the former they pointed to the Constitution. I explained that – while slavery is indeed a stain on the American history – the fact of the matter is that the 3/5 compromise was the only way that the Constitution could have been ratified, and that the Constitution put a stop (in 1808) to the importation of slaves, which had the impact of making slaves more valuable to their owners, and thus less likely to be literally worked to death as happened in far greater numbers in the Caribbean or South America where replacement slaves could be brought in without constraint. In addition, I pointed out, while some Founding Fathers such as Washington and Madison did own slaves, many others did not, including John and Sam Adams, and Ben Franklin freed his slaves and became the president of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society. In addition, a quarter of a million whites died during the Civil War to end slavery and save the Union.  I was told I was an apologist for slavery and the Founding Fathers...

I then pointed out that in this racist country where blacks can’t succeed, blacks not only dominate the ranks of sports and recording artists, but are CEO’s of such great American companies as McDonalds, American Express, Xerox, and Merck… and of course Barack Obama was elected to the most powerful position on the planet, twice!

But none of that mattered because America is racist and blacks are disempowered because of the color of their skin. It has nothing to do with unwed motherhood. It has nothing to do with government schools that don’t educate. It has nothing to do with government regulations that make it difficult for young black men to find a job. It has nothing to do with a culture that sometimes ostracizes learning as “acting white” and communities where the number one killer of young men between the ages of 15 & 34 is ... other young black men.  And of course it has nothing to do with government dependency.

There are certainly examples of cops misbehaving and sometimes abusing blacks – and others. We see those videos regularly. But those are the man bites dog stories because the majority of instances do not include abuse and we don’t hear about them. With over half a million cops on duty in the United States every day, even if it were 10 videos a day of such behavior, that would be a drop in the bucket of police interactions with citizens. (That doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be dealt with when it arises however.)

And here’s the problem that makes one think that the country just might be doomed. Despite the fact that slavery has been gone for 150 years and Jim Crow for 50, despite the fact that there are 35,000 black millionaires in the United States, America is apparently a place where blacks cannot succeed. Despite the fact that blacks have achieved some of the highest positions possible in Fortune 500 companies, been elected or appointed to the highest positions in the land, dominate a variety of entertainment arenas, America is a racist nation where blacks can’t succeed. Finally, because our Constitution was an imperfect document which made only baby steps towards ending slavery 226 years ago, America is forever doomed to be a racist nation.

It appears to be the case that there is nothing that whites or that the nation can do that will satisfy those who are focused on race.  From 50 years of government set asides and redistribution to a plethora of regulations mandating “diversity targets” in everything from home loans to staffing to college admissions, it never seems to be sufficient to atone for the country’s imperfect history. Increasingly it's becoming evident that there is a large and growing segment of the population that refuses to recognize that progress occurs, even while imperfection persists.

Unfortunately for the nation, as long as the Constitution is our foundation and an apparently racist white majority remains, blacks (and a growing list of other oppressed groups) have no chance of success and therefore everything in the country, from laws to property to achievement, are illegitimate. And of course, once something is deemed illegitimate it's open to being used or taken by the government to satisfy the demands of the dispossessed. Illegitimacy is rarely a good foundation for a well functioning representative government.  As the ranks of those focused on identity politics grow, calls for government action grow along with them... such things do not bode well for America’s future.

Secession, Revolution... are they the end game of a deck stacked against freedom?

I’ve argued for many years that the United States is the greatest nation in the history of the world. From driving prosperity to winning two world wars to putting a man on the moon to ensuring individual liberty the United States is unlike any other country in history. And it has nothing to do with DNA. Indeed, some of America’s greatest men came from elsewhere… Alexander Hamilton was born on St. Kitts. Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland. Albert Einstein was born in Germany. Leo Baekeland – the man who brought us plastic – was from Hungary. Nikola Tesla – the man responsible for the current running in your house – was born in Croatia.

It’s not the blood that makes the United States great, it is the Constitution. The US Constitution was the first document in history to form a government based on the principals of individual freedom, private property, limited / representative government and the rule of law. None of the things in the Constitution were completely unique. The Greeks had representative government and the Magna Carta put limitations on the Crown after all. What made the Constitution unique was the combination of those factors and the fact that the power resided in the hands of common citizens.

That could, frankly, have only occurred in the United States… because it was a new and free nation. Because of that youth, the colonies did not have vested interests sufficiently powerful to mold the formation of the government to benefit themselves. And as a result, the power resided in the hands of common men, the citizens. Not in the hands of an aristocracy. Not in the hands of the church. Not in the hands of some bourgeoisie merchants. No, in the United States the power to govern was put in the hands of regular citizens. There were power centers of course, but none – such as the northern states who still had debts to be paid from the Revolutionary War and the southern states who wanted low or no import tariffs – had the power to dictate the language of the Constitution. (To the degree that there was one vested interest powerful enough to make such a demand it was the slave states and the result was the most anti-freedom part of a document built on freedom.)

But why Philadelphia and not London or Paris? Both the British and the French had access to the same writings our Founding Fathers did – from Plato to the Old Testament to the Magna Carta to John Locke and Adam Smith and William Blackstone and Edmond Burke – but they did not create anything like US Constitution. Indeed, France, whose revolution followed the American revolution by a mere decade, spiraled into bloody chaos and brought about a dictatorship. The reason is because both France and England had strong vested interests loathe to give up their power and privileges, and as a result, neither laid the foundations for lasting prosperity that the US Constitution did.

And that prosperity was enormous and far reaching. By 1950 the United States economy was more dominant on the world stage than any economy in history. The US commanded fully 40% of the world’s GDP with less than 5% of its population. While both China and India had achieved that same 40% mark centuries before, they accomplished it with 35% & 30% of the world’s population respectively.

And that economic prosperity ushers in many benefits that are not measured in dollars like life expectancy increases, leisure time growth and dramatically safer employment conditions. Another measure of the impact of that prosperity is the Nobel Prize. Since the American economic heyday of the 1950’s, Americans have won over 50% of the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economics. Interestingly, 1/3 of those winners were immigrants who chose to come to the United States in pursuit of success, often because they didn’t feel they could do so at home. America is increasingly the epicenter of research of all sorts. Unfortunately however, it is not research that drives prosperity, it is economics and increasingly the United States is falling behind.

The freedom that drove the United States to become the most influential economic juggernaut in history no longer exists.  Today American GDP is 23% of the world's.  While we are still experiencing advances in technology and medicine, increasingly the United States is becoming an economic morass. Although we see companies like Apple, Facebook and Google creating millionaires and billionaires by giving citizens great products, the chasm between the ultra rich and the middle class and poor is growing. An example is that can be seen in the data since the recession of 2007 & 2008. According to the Wall Street Journal:

“All told, average inflation-adjusted income per family climbed 6% between 2009 and 2012, the first years of the economic recovery. During that period, the top 1% saw their incomes climb 31.4% — or, 95% of the total gain — while the bottom 99% saw growth of 0.4%.”

But it’s broader than that. American incomes have been declining for over a decade, from a high of $56,080 in 1999 (inflation adjusted) to $51,017 in 2012, a drop of almost 10%, a decline unprecedented since the Great Depression – another government induced disaster. But it didn’t need to be this way. Had our economy had been as productive over the last twenty years as it was in the 1950’s and 60’s the average American family would today have an income in excess of $120,000 per year. At the same time, and not coincidentally, the rate of employment in the United States has plummeted, with the labor force participation rate at its lowest level since 1978 and disability claims skyrocketing.

All of this, and much more, are the consequence of the United States abandoning the very things that caused it to be great in the first place: limited government and individual liberty. Just as the British and the French were straight jacketed by their vested interests the United States is straight jacketed today. And that vested interest is government.

Entrepreneurship has been the life’s blood of American prosperity and today it’s on the ropes. While Silicon Valley venture capitalists throw money at high tech startups the rest of the country has seen regulation strangle entrepreneurs in their cribs. Government regulations, particularly federal regulations, have strangled small businesses in America. For the last 40 years the gap between the rate of companies starting to rate of those failing has been getting smaller. The bigger the gap (Companies started – companies failed) the better for the economy because it means more companies are surviving and creating jobs and value. In 2009 the lines crossed and today there are more companies failing than are started annually. The result less prosperity as small businesses are the golden goose of the American economy, generating 65% of all new jobs.

What we have today as a result are fewer, bigger companies that are increasingly turning to the government to hinder competition. From Wal-Mart supporting Obamacare to steel companies seeking import tariffs to General Electric pursuing Export / Import Bank subsidies to Wall Street banks lobbying for low interest rates to the Chamber of Commerce advocating for open borders, big companies are increasingly looking for government to protect them from the vagaries and verities of the competitive markets that helped create American prosperity in the first place. They are willing to trade higher taxes and endure more regulation for a playing field that is tilted in their favor… that is of course until when the taxes become too high and the regulation becomes too onerous, then they simply relocate outside the country.

In America in 2014 we have the opposite of the recipe for prosperity. We have a ruling class that has no desire to give up its power and privileges and a business class willing bend to that power and fund those privileges in the name of fattening their bottom lines. In this case the ruling class is the federal government. The power is demonstrated by the fact that the federal government has its claws in virtually every aspect of American life… from what you can do with your land to what your kids can bake for a bake sale at school to the healthcare you have to the kinds of light bulbs you can buy. At the same time they are writing thousand page laws – which generate tens of thousands of pages of regulations – the government is taking ever greater amounts of money from taxpayers for its redistribution schemes. From a sixth of the population on food stamps to taxing the lunch your boss provides, the ruling class of government seeks to control virtually every aspect of American life.

And being in power has its privileges. Federal workers have achieved for themselves that $120,000 average income (including benefits) while the average private sector employee gets by with less than half that. Seven out of the country’s ten richest counties – out of over 3,000 – surround Washington, D.C. And of course government employees enjoy almost guaranteed lifetime employment. And those at the upper echelons enjoy even better privileges, taking advantage of the revolving door of power. When their party is out of power the revolving door turns and the regulators simply join the regulated class or their lobbyists, at even higher salaries, until their party returns to power and the cycle starts over again.

Perhaps the perfect example of how America used to be a place where things could get done, where private enterprise could achieve great things was the Empire State Building. Started in 1929, it took 14 months – four months ahead of schedule – to complete what would be the tallest building in the world for the next 40 years. Today, 13 years after the destruction of the towers that took that tallest designation from it, the World Trade Center complex is still not complete. Only within the last year did the first of the towers open that would replace the destroyed complex and pieces of it are not expected to be completed before 2020… 19 years after the complex was destroyed. And it may well be the most expensive building project in American history. Was it technical capabilities that kept the complex from being replaced? Had Americans suddenly become too stupid to understand how to build buildings? No. It was bureaucracy. It was regulations. It was lawsuits and political interference. In other words it was government and government empowered chaos.

Which brings us back to the beginning. The United States was at one time the single greatest economic power in human history. As a result of that prosperity it has had more of a positive impact on the condition of man than any force in history. But that was an America where citizens had big ideas and big dreams, and the freedom to build on the first to achieve the second. Today that America doesn’t exist and a tyranny of the vested interests has replaced it. From government bureaucracy to crony capitalists to politicians who use the government purse as a vote buying scheme, America is no longer the bastion of freedom and prosperity that it once was. It is no longer the shining city on a hill. It is no longer the place where anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps by sheer will and hard work. And as guilty as the Democrats are in this, there are many big government Republicans who are just as much to blame.

Is it any wonder that 25% of Americans would consider secession? No. I count myself among them.  What about a revolution? Yes, I’d consider that too, but not the violent kind in either case. When faced with the same kind of vested interests that kept the British or the French from doing what our Founding Fathers did, what can be done? The real question isn’t whether the gift that James Madison, George Mason, John Hancock and Sam Adams gave us can be saved? The answer to that is yes. The real question is, how…