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. 

Watching History Unfold: The Berlin Wall, 9/11 and a Fraudulent Joe Biden Victory

History is usually written long after historical events played themselves out in real life. It’s rare, but not uncommon, to understand the gravity of historical events as they are actually happening.

For example, I was in the Army and stationed in West Germany when the Berlin Wall came down in November of 1989. It was of course news where we were, but I don’t think many of us in Rheinberg really understood that the epochal event of our generation was playing itself out only a few hundred miles away. We look back at it today as the touchstone that it is… the beginning of death knell and collapse of the Soviet Union. But at the time most of us didn’t recognize it as such.

That’s likely because for all of my life, and most of my parents’ lives the Soviet Union was the grand villain, the ubiquitous enemy, a fount of evil that simply was. It was the perpetual enemy to be feared above all else and it was the reason I and hundreds of thousands of others spent weeks, months or years training to counter attacks coming from Poland or East Germany or the Soviet Union itself.

In an environment where the Soviets being enemies was as natural as gravity, it was hard to see the fall of the Wall changing the world. But it did. September 11 was something different altogether. Most of the country was going about its normal business that morning, another mundane Tuesday that didn’t look to be particularly different from any other… Then the first plane hit. It was a stunning event, but for a moment we thought that it was a tragedy of an accident. The kind of bad thing that sometimes happens. The moment the second plane hit everyone in America knew something was going on, we were being attacked and that in one form or another, we were at war with someone.

In short order Americans found out that this was a new, non traditional enemy that would use brutal tactics to achieve its goal of our destruction. When those two buildings, those two signs of American strength and prosperity came down, we knew the world had changed.

And now we sit here two decades later and we are at a point in history no less important than the fall of the Berlin Wall or the attack on the Twin Towers. When the Soviets or the Islamic terrorists were the enemy we understood exactly what was at stake: our nation and our culture. Today, both of those things are in peril, but in a far more pernicious way.

The danger today strikes at the very foundation of our Republic, and indeed the Republic itself.

Most Americans don’t quite recognize that the exercise of the various God given rights we enjoy is not protected by the 231 year old document displayed in the National Archives, but rather by the fact that most Americans choose to respect the government and institutions that have been built on that document’s words. While the police and other government officials play a role in dealing with outliers, for the most part Americans pay their taxes, obey the law and avoid confrontations with their neighbors voluntarily. They understand they are part of neighborhoods, communities and a country based on laws that find their foundation (mostly) in the Constitution and values that find their inspiration in the Declaration of Independence.

Americans follow the rules not because of stormtroopers stationed on every corner enforcing diktats from above, but because the Constitution gives them a say in their government and their leaders. As such, even though Americans generally have a negative perception of Congress (18% approval rating) they remain engaged because every two years they have an opportunity to “throw the bums out!” And while they almost never actually do that, Americans feel like they have a say.

But what happens when citizens feel like their right to have a say is gone? What happens when citizens who already have a dim view of government in general have to sit by helplessly as they watch widespread fraud steal that right to say out from under them? What happens when citizens go to bed with one candidate comfortably ahead only to discover in the morning that in a nation with over 3,000 counties the mysterious midnight machinations of a dozen counties flip the election to the other guy? Particularly when data suggests that such an outcome is less likely than finding life on Mars.

When citizens no longer feel like they have a say in their government, when they feel like their government has been stolen right out from in front of them, they no longer feel an obligation to live their lives by the framework laid out in the Constitution. There have always been Americans who have felt wronged or disenfranchised or powerless and decide to act in ways that are… anti social, but they’ve largely been extreme outliers. What happens when fully half of the population feels like they have been disenfranchised and were forced to watch the theft play out right in front of them while politicians told them “Nothing to see here”?

The Revolutionary War occurred when the British sought to quash the economic and political freedoms the colonies had established over the previous century and a half. Despite attempts by the likes of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams to bridge the gap before it became a schism, the colonials had finally had enough and the Declaration of Independence became the foundation for a new nation. It was an uphill battle from the start with much of the population uncertain about which side to support. But eventually freedom won the day and eventually our Constitution birthed our Republic.

One wonders, after spending decades watching Democrats setting the table for this fraud (opposing voter ID laws, pushing for same day registration, expanding voting periods and encouraging mail in balloting) how Republicans and other freedom loving Americans will react to this theft? It’s one thing to lose an election that appears largely aboveboard, even when you vehemently dislike the other guy… but it’s another to have the election stolen from you when your eyes, common sense and reams of data suggest your guy won. If we were talking about dog catcher or a state senator this would probably not matter. But we’re talking about the head of the most powerful government in the world, whose reach extends from your kitchen table to the moon, literally. Make no mistake, beyond the typical election issues such as taxes and job creation and confrontation with or supplication to China, the real issue that is at stake is our Republic: Court packing, new states and the spectrum of federal power to coerce states and local governments. And of course vote fraud.

Americans have always taken comfort in the face of election losses because our Constitution gives them the opportunity to do a better job of making their argument, getting out the vote or selecting a better candidate next time. There was always hope. But not this time. If Democrats are allowed to steal this election in plain sight, then all is lost, including hope. No hope for honest elections. No hope for redemption. No hope for freedom. George Orwell said “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” If Democrats are allowed to steal this election then America’s past becomes a fiction of hate, America’s present becomes a reality of lies, deceit and coercion and America’s future becomes one of oppression and subjugation. That is exactly what our Constitution was written to be a bulwark against which is why Democrats have sought to undermine it for decades. Such are the things revolutions are made of, and this time we're watching history being made - and we all know it.

The NFL has become the No Freedom League - How Wokeness Helped Bring America to the Brink of Revolution

I grew up in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before they had satellite TV. As such, on the Monday after the Super Bowl everyone on the entire base would try and get through the day without knowing who won the game. That night, after a tape of the game had been flown down from the US, we'd watch the game and be riveted to our TVs. The military TV stations weren’t allowed to show private commercials so we would all greet a Pepsi or McDonalds commercial that might slip by the censors with wondrous applause. The NFL was my passion, along with my sainted Dolphins, with Gods Bob Griese and Dan Marino at the helm. Today however, I doubt I’ll watch another NFL game and most certainly won’t spend a penny on NFL merchandise.

Why? It’s simple. The NFL, helmed by men who are ostensibly some of the smartest businessmen in America, literally helped bring America to the brink of revolution, maybe even led the way. Of course we’re talking about Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter.

The NFL, and to a lesser degree, MLB and the NBA used to be oases from which all Americans could seek refuge from the slings and arrows of daily life. Monday at the office used to be “Did you see that catch?” or “The zebras blew another one!” Since Kaepernick started his grandstanding however the conversations became more about who was kneeling, what star was lecturing America about this grievance or that and ceased to be about the excitement or pain or joy of the actual games.

In a sad irony, Charlie Daniels once wrote an anthem called “In America” where he used an NFL team to demonstrate American's unity. 

And we may have done a little bit of fighting among ourselves, 

but you outside people best leave us alone...

Cause we'll all stick together, and you can take that to the bank,

that's the cowboys and the hippies and the rebels and the yanks...

You just go and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan and I think you're gonna finally understand”

It’s almost apropos that Daniels died in the very year when it’s not outsiders who have started a revolution, but other Americans, and they were set on that course by the NFL.

Had the “geniuses” who run the NFL understood anything about America and put a stop to Kaepernick’s on field preening four years ago, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Freedom of speech had nothing to do with anything. Kaepernick had and has every right to say what’s on his mind. The NFL however did not have to allow him to hijack their platform to trumpet it. Had they not helped him become a media darling, he probably wouldn’t have walked away from is multimillion dollar contract and become the least worthy “martyr” in the history of martyrs.

And just to be clear, it's not because they couldn't have done anything.  The NFL controls virtually every single thing about its games and programs. It choreographs everything!!! Uniform colors… check. Shirts tucked in… check. Fines for faux cellphone celebrations after a touchdown? Check. Yet somehow they weren’t able to tell players that they could not disrespect the American flag and National Anthem. They could have required standing, or required those not wanting to participate to stay in the locker room, or they could have kept all the players in the locker rooms and let the fans sing the song… But they didn’t. Instead, they allowed what would have been a flash in the pan to become a raging inferno that has the potential to turn the United States and its Constitution into ashes.  The fires and riots and attacks on police and federal buildings and America are simply the progeny of the boiling tempers fueled in part by the victim mentality emboldened by the NFL's wokeness.

Today in the United States the idea of free speech is vanishing and the NFL, by showcasing a struggling, marginal, spoiled quarterback with a chip on his shoulder helped make it so. Today in America, everything is political… science, education, healthcare and now, sadly, even sports. Sure politics in sports has been around for a while, go back to the 1968 Black Power Olympic protests or Muhammad Ali, but those were news, not everyday life.

Now politics has infested every corner of American life and you can’t help but see it everywhere from shopping to going to the movies to wedding cakes to science. Not to mention workplaces.  Up until about 2016 Americans had at least one refuge from the cancer of political rage… that was sports. Americans of different colors, of different religions of different national origins could get together and cheer for (or against) the Cowboys, the Raiders, the Patriots or the Steelers and feel like they were part of something bigger than themselves, members of the same team.  "How'd we do this weekend?" or "Where are we at this Sunday?" wasn't reserved for players or coaches... Fans were part of the team, the 12th man, they weren't just observers, they were family.  Sports made fans' differences inconsequential, even if only for as long as they were cheering together or drinking beer together or wearing the their matching Giants jerseys.

In putting politics front and center of their offerings, in letting their platforms become a cultural litmus test, in actively turning their sport into a vehicle for wokeness, the NFL has destroyed their brand as an American icon. Never again will many Americans look to it for a welcome respite from the chaos of everyday life. Never again will it have the capacity to change American life the way the Heidi Bowl did.

The NFL may continue to be a viable business for some time, but its place in history will be sealed by its engagement in wokeness. The thing about wokeness is that there are always new victims to be supported, new causes to be championed and new targets for expropriation and destruction. The geniuses who run the league shouldn’t be surprised that eventually they will be on the wrong side of some victims rights group and their businesses will be targeted, their directors will be hounded and eventually their assets will be taken, one way or another. When that happens they shouldn't be surprised that more than a few people might be whispering feelings of Schadenfreude.

America's Game of Russian Roulette: Clinton vs. Trump or Revolution vs. War

I remember in 2008 I told my wife that that presidential election was the most important in a generation. I told her in 2012 that that election was the most important in my lifetime. Both of those statements were completely true. In putting Barack Obama in the White House, for the first time Americans elected a race bating closet Muslim socialist / fascist as the leader of the free world. That is of course unfortunate in many ways for many people around the world. Not only has the American economy been stuck in the worst recession in 65 years, race relations are the worst they’ve been in 50 years, our borders are practically nonexistent, freedom and the Constitution are under constant attack and the image of the United States as a leader on the world stages is in tatters.

Now it’s possible that the election of 2016 is even more important, but sadly there is no relative superhero like John McCain or Mittens Romney on the ticket. I was against both of those squishy centrist candidates from the start and would have much preferred to have an actual conservative on the ticket… but alas it was not to happen.

It was with great expectations that I looked forward to the 2016 campaign as finally an opportunity for a true conservative to emerge from the mosh pit and lead the nation to a victory over the cancer of today’s Democrat party. Unfortunately however that did not happen. Between the GOP establishment’s incompetence and fear of a real conservative, as well as the media’s love of ratings – and that includes the so called “conservative” media – today we have Donald Trump as the standard bearer for the party of Ronald Reagan.

And so it is that Americans, with a population of over 320 million people have put themselves in a situation where the only two people with a realistic chance of becoming the leader of the free world are a lying big government socialist and an uninformed narcissistic thin skinned crony capitalist with no love for freedom. This is essentially the opposite of winning the lottery. Americans have somehow managed to put themselves in a game of Russian Roulette where all of the chambers have rounds in them!

While the elections of 2008 and 2012 set the nation on the road to ruin in terms of economic stagnation, stultifying regulation, the undermining of the Constitution and eviscerating America’s position as leader of the free world, the election of 2016 will have even more devastating effects.

The election of Hillary Clinton will result in the continuation of the policies of Barack Obama, only on steroids. We will get a Supreme Court that will look to the UN charter rather than the US Constitution. We will get continued and increasing regulation which suffocates prosperity and entrepreneurship but which helps big business. We will get increases in taxes, skyrocketing government spending and more race bating. And perhaps most of all, we will surrender our borders and will transform our nation into a refuge from which immigrants can escape the third world only to then work to turn our country into a mirror reflection of said third world.

The election of Donald Trump will give us a crapshoot of broken promises, protectionism, and isolation. At the same time the 1st Amendment may go by way of the dodo bird while regulation will likely grow for the benefit of big businesses and at the expense of entrepreneurs. More ominously, a Donald Trump presidency will create great divisions between the United States and our NATO allies and others who have helped maintain a relative peace for much of the last half century. As the increasingly bellicose Chinese and Russians seek to expand their spheres of influence, the world will watch a President Trump seek to pull back the American footprint. Osama Bin Laden once said “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse”. In this case the strong horses will be China and Russia, and that does not bode well for freedom or peace for anyone.

So at the end of the day, Americans have a choice to make, and neither is a good one.

The first option will put Hillary Clinton in the White House, and that will lead to a fracturing of the nation, along lines of race, along lines of income, along geographic lines and fundamentally about an understanding of the Constitution and freedom. And that fracturing could very well lead to revolution. And not a theoretical revolution played out in newsrooms and college campuses and on the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. No, this may indeed turn out to be a real revolution where people revolt against the tyranny of an economically and culturally oppressive government and a dearth of opportunity of any kind. It won’t show itself by a fife and drum corps marching down Main Street. No, it will be in the shadows as more police are targeted, more citizens take matters into their own hands and order starts to come apart while an increasingly militarized police force seeks to keep things in check. This revolution will look a lot more like the one that started in France in 1789 than the one that started in the colonies in 1776.

The second option will put Donald Trump in the White House and that will lead to a calcifying of the American economy, estrangement between the US and erstwhile allies, and at some point, war. And this war will not be a guerilla war fought against jihadis seeking to bring about the caliphate. No, this war will be against Russia or China. As Trump and his little hands pull back from the world stage, the Russians and Chinese will seek to expand their empires, taking Ukraine and Taiwan respectively. In both cases Trump will likely acquiesce, which will only lead to further expansion such as with the Baltics in the case of Russia and any one of half a dozen other countries or islands in the case of China. At some point the threat will become sufficiently ominous and American allies so vocal that the United States will have to engage. And unlike Korea or Vietnam or Afghanistan in the 1980s, this will not be a proxy war limited to some theater most Americans couldn’t find on a map if their lives depended on it. No, this will be a real, hot war with sophisticated enemies throwing billions of dollars of weapons at one another. One can only hope that such a conflict stays conventional…

So as we stumble towards the 2016 election Americans should be aware… they have left themselves with not only no good options, but only terrible options, both of which will likely lead to much bloodshed, chaos and possibly the end of the Republic. Good job Rush, Matt Drudge and the GOP establishment. When your country needed you, you decided to whore yourselves out to a populist megalomaniac. The citizens of dystopia in America’s future will no doubt be quite grateful to you.

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…

1776 & 2014 - Complacency and Revolution

How long has it been since you thought about the American Revolution? In 2014 not that many of us spend our time thinking about the catalysts that caused that revolution over 200 years ago. Who has the time? Between jobs, families, bills, a bit of TV and some recreation and socializing, there are only so many hours in the day. That’s the beauty of things being settled… you can get on with other things. If we had to spend our days thinking about what kind of government we wanted, how would we get anything else done? It would be impossible. Think about election season every 4 years. From July through November we can’t escape it: campaign advertisements on TV and radio, signs on the side of the street, wall to wall press coverage and endless water cooler chatter. All that and we have a government that’ been largely settled for 150 years.

Sometimes however it makes sense to go back and look at why things happen. In the case of American independence and the Revolutionary War, it was not any single event that caused the war to begin, rather it was a series of things that took place over years.

Among these things were well known events such as the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, the Intolerable Acts and the conflict at Lexington & Concord. Then there were other lesser know but equally important events such as The Quartering Acts of 1765 and The Declaratory Act. In all the Declaration of Independence lists 27 grievances against the King. Among them are:

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

Importantly, the most significant lines in the Declaration of Independence are not among those 27, but rather in the 2nd paragraph.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…
… all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Americans today are acting as Jefferson suggested most people do… they are suffering evils rather than throwing off the yoke of a despotic government. Jefferson suggests however that when the abuses become too much, the people will indeed revolt. So the questions in 2014 are two: Are close to that point of abuse that sparks a revolt, and is it too late to turn the tables on the usurpers?

On the first question, the answer is a resounding yes. While 2014 may not quite yet be George Orwell’s 1984 with an all knowing all seeing – and listening – all powerful government… We’re close. We have a government that uses the police power of the taxing authority to silence its critics. We have a government that has decided that children can be punished for their parent’s mistakes, even if it was the government who made it. We have a government that spies on its citizens with impunity. We have heavily militarized local police forces across the country and every federal agency seems to come with its own SWAT team, regardless of its mission. We have an executive branch that brazenly ignores the clear language of the Constitution. And then of course we have the shrinking pool of citizens who are forced to pay stifling taxes in order to support a growing horde of those suckling at the government teat.

On the second question, is it too late, the answer is less clear. Human nature suggests that at some point those who shoulder the burden of financing the government’s largesse will revolt. Today we don’t see taxpayers manning the barricades and storming America’s Bastilles so we clearly have some time to reverse course and strip the usurpers of their power.

Settled can be good, but as Jefferson notes, it can turn to complacency. And complacency can lead to rot. Whether it’s the five year reign of Usurper in Chief Barack Obama or the last 40 years of creeping comforts and expanding government, Americans have assumed that we’ll get through everything just because politicians tell us we will. That’s not how things work. Freedom and prosperity demand vigilance. Neither can survive where a government decides that they are its to withhold or grant. In 1776 fifty six men risked their lives and decided that they could no longer abide the complacency of accepting tyranny. And they started a revolution. How many Americans will come to the same conclusion in 2014 and risk far less when they turn off the television and enlist as foot soldiers in an electoral revolution in 2016? Only time will tell.