Prosperity is the Best Revenge...

Now that that’s settled… From an historical perspective there’s some virtue in killing all of your enemies.  Julius Caesar didn’t and was killed almost immediately after having himself declared dictator for life. 

In 49 BC dictator meant something different than it does today.  Dictator was an honorable, temporary position that was only implemented when the Republic faced some dire or existential threat that required a firm hand to fix. Although vested with almost absolute power, a dictator would often be appointed for a finite period of time, perhaps 6 months, to deal with the problem and then would go back to being whatever he was before, a senator, a general, a citizen, whatever.  Caesar’s problem was he had kept extending his dictatorship until he had himself declared dictator for life. A month later he was killed by senators, some of whom were his friends, including, famously, Brutus.

His reign stands in stark contrast to that of his adopted son, Caesar Augustus. Augustus reigned for 41 years (the longest of any emperor), ruled over a relatively peaceful period of consolidation and prosperity and set the stage for the Romans to remake the western world, saying: “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” While speaking literally about the city, he was also metaphorically speaking about the Empire, having prepared the way for its long life.

The difference between Caesar and Augustus?  Augustus killed all of his enemies when consolidating power. By the time he took absolute control over the Republic and transformed it into the Empire, he had no enemies left, or at least none who were willing to stick their necks out to challenge him. Unlike most Emperors, Augustus died of old age…

As appealing as killing all of his enemies might sound in an historical perspective, I would advise Donald Trump to avoid doing so today. Some reasons are obvious, like the fact that Augustus didn’t have to deal with a hostile media and the army of lemmings who follow it. A more substantial reason is that again, unlike Rome, might does not make right, we have laws and traditions and morals that prohibit doing so.  But more persuasively is the simple fact that it’s unnecessary.

Augustus isn’t known as Rome’s greatest emperor because he killed all his enemies… no, he’s known as Rome’s greatest emperor because he laid the foundations for a relative peace and prosperity throughout the Roman world for two centuries.  Donald Trump can do the same in America without killing his enemies.

Last week I gave a list of 10 somewhat high level things Trump should do immediately upon taking office.  These included sealing the border, deporting illegal aliens and cleaning house in the justice / military departments.  Here I’ll suggest two specific things Trump can do that will set America up to prosper, and do so without rivers of blood.

First Trump must target those people in government who have weaponized the state in an effort to delegitimize him and keep him from office.  That doesn’t mean people who disagree with him, even if they do so vociferously.  No, the people he needs to investigate are those people who used the police power of the state to persecute him and illegally jail his advisors and J6 defendants.

Of all of the things that distinguish a tyranny from a free nation, freedom of speech is paramount.  A close second is a police power that is exercised based on actual laws, not on the whims and lies of politicians.  If citizens cannot feel confident that they will be unmolested if they do not break laws, what is their motivation to obey any laws? 

I’m not suggesting people like Clinton, Pelosi, Schiff, Chaney etc. be jailed unconstitutionally.  On the contrary, I’m suggesting they be investigated, legally and transparently, and, if appropriate, charged.  And it’s not only the household names that must be investigated, so too should the leadership of every agency that played a role in putting the country through the last 8 years of unconstitutional hell and bringing her to the brink of becoming 3rd world tyranny.

Second, Trump should immediately rescind JFK’s most infamous legacy, from 1962:  “That year, JFK signed executive order 10988 allowing the unionization of the federal work force. This changed everything in the American political system. Kennedy's order swung open the door for the inexorable rise of a unionized public work force in many states and cities.

This in turn led to the fantastic growth in membership of the public employee unions—The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the teachers' National Education Association.

They broke the public's bank. More than that, they entrenched a system of taking money from members' dues and spending it on political campaigns. Over time, this transformed the Democratic Party into a public-sector dependency.”

That Executive Order, more than perhaps any in the 20th century, changed American history for the worse. From that point forward, federal employees – and later state and local employees – could and did unionize against the American people.  Rather than carrying out the directives of the Executive Branch, their goal was to extract as much money and benefits as possible from the American people, and do so while accomplishing the least amount of actual work possible. 

Skeptical?  In 2021 the average American private sector employee earned a compensation (salary + benefits) of $88,152 while the average federal employee earned $143,643, fully 62% more. And federal employees quit at a rate that is 75% lower than private sector employees. Today there are 2.95 million federal employees, or one federal employee for every 118 Americans, whereas in 1962 it was one for every 226. This is the enforcement arm of the regulatory state that has a chokehold on America. 

And this is where Trump has the opportunity to change the trajectory of America’s future. The Heritage Foundation states that federal regulation costs America somewhere between $300 & $700 billion a year. If Trump can rein in the federal leviathan, that money would stay in American pockets, potentially adding 1% to our GDP annually. To put that in perspective, GDP has grown by 2.1% over the past 20 years.  A 1% addition result in a doubling GDP in 24 years vs. 36 years at that rate. (Rule of 72) If he were to cut the federal workforce back to 1962 levels, Trump would eliminate another $200 billion from federal spending which would add to productivity. 

There is no single bigger opportunity today than freeing up Americans and American industry to compete and create. Create better widgets, write smarter AI, make more efficient cars or develop the next Pet Rock or Christmas antlers. As Johan Norberg chronicles in The Capitalist Manifesto, it’s not capitalism per se. that creates prosperity, its free markets and choice.  History shows that there is no one better at finding and filling opportunities than American businesses, no one better at creating products and services consumers desire than American entrepreneurs.  If Donald Trump can unleash American creativity and productivity even back to the 1980s levels (3.1% GDP growth) nevermind 1950’s levels (4.2%) he will vanquish his enemies to the dustbin of history far more effectively than he would by turning them into martyrs…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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