From Resistance to Nullification to What Next?
January 10, 2018 8:22 am / Leave a Comment / Victor Davis Hanson
By Victor Davis Hanson — National Review
Trump’s critics ratchet up to insurrection, but Trump’s tax reforms and our growing economy could derail their dreams.
George H. W. Bush gave up power quietly and turned to charity work and occasional ceremonial speaking after his reelection defeat in 1992. George W. Bush — like Jerry Ford in 1977 and Ronald Reagan in 1989 — did the same when Barack Obama assumed power in 2009.
Unending Presidencies
Recent Democrats emeriti — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — apparently had a different vision of the post-presidency, unlike the quiet retirement of Lyndon Johnson back to his ranch in 1969. The three saw politics in more Manichean terms, as an existential struggle far too important to cease at the end of a presidential tenure.
Carter freelanced abroad for 30 years in successful quest for a Nobel Prize, but he often undercut presidential diplomacy. He regularly weighed in on the shortcomings of his successors — in a way he would have deeply resented had either Ford or Richard Nixon done the same.
No sooner had Bill Clinton left the presidency than he and Hillary Clinton began the grand plan for a return to the White House in 2009, and, after a setback, then again in 2017. Theirs was a two-decade long post-presidency of glad-handing, politicking, and, to use a euphemism, quid pro quo fund raising.
Barack Obama has already weighed in, including while overseas, on the shortcomings of his successor. His aides, led by Ben Rhodes, are at the forefront of the “Resistance” to thwart the Trump administration. Susan Rice and John Kerry comment regularly on supposed Trump foreign-policy blunders, as do James Clapper and John Brennan — usually in proactive fashion to deflect news accounts that may reflect poorly on their own past tenures.
Resistances
But all that said, we have never quite seen anything like the opposition of the so-called Resistance to the elected presidency that followed the Obama tenure.
There were the initial false charges that pro-Trump Russians had shut down power grids in Vermont. There were frivolous suits claiming that voting machines in three states were rigged. There was an organized, anti-constitutional effort to subvert the Electoral College so that it would not reflect the vote tallies of individual states. On Inauguration Day, there were congressional boycotts of the swearing-in ceremony. There were demonstrations at which, to take one example, Madonna envisioned blowing up the Trump White House.
An entire genre of assassination chic followed. Politicians, celebrities, actors, academics, and wannabees variously reenacted beheading Donald Trump, stabbing him to death, shooting him, torching him, hanging him, or, in the words of Robert DeNiro, dreaming of punching Trump in the face. Few in the media were bothered by the imagery or threats. Yet sometimes the hysteria became real violence — as when Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson’s shot prominent Republican politicians practicing for a charity baseball game, gravely wounding Republican House whip Steven Scalise, or when libertarian senator Rand Paul (present at the Scalise shooting) was attacked and injured by a disturbed neighbor and proponent of socialized medicine.
Formal efforts followed to impeach Trump in his first months of governance. Some evoked the emoluments clause of the Constitution, claiming that Trump had sought the presidency only to profit. Others sought recourse in the 25th Amendment, hoping that he could be removed because of senility, insanity, or debility. A Yale psychiatrist, who has never met Trump, was brought before Congress to confirm that the president was psychologically unfit to continue his office — and then wondered whether he might be physically restrained and forced to undergo examination (apparently unaware that she was getting quite close to advocating a coup d’état and also channeling the old Soviet remedy to political undesirables).
Deep-state bureaucrats and holdover Obama appointees refused to carry out presidential orders and became causes célèbres for violating their oaths of office. Justices were cherry-picked for stays of presidential directives on the basis on their liberal fides — until higher courts overturned their rulings. The Democratic congressional minority made wholescale effort to slow down confirmation of almost every presidential appointment.
Nonpartisan media research organizations found that 90 percent of all news stories concerning President Trump portrayed him negatively — an unprecedented negative rating. Late-night television morphed into 24/7 anti-Trump diatribes.
Journalists as diverse as the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg and Univision’s Jorge Ramos insisted that reporters could no longer be professionally disinterested in the age of Trump but must become activists to oppose the president and his agendas.
Indeed, the WikiLeaks trove revealed that marquee journalists such as the New York Times’ Glenn Thrush and the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank had actively colluded with the Clinton campaign to massage their news accounts and commentaries. The genre of “fake news” was born — ranging from the trivial of claiming in racist fashion that Trump had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the West Wing to the mythologies of a purported Trump plan to invade Mexico. CNN’s journalists and employees were sometimes fired for inventing anti-Trump narratives, or caught on a hot mic wishing for the president’s jet to crash, or reduced to using scatology to express their hatred. The network achieved a 93 percent negative treatment of all Trump news.
Obama political appointments had sought FISA court orders to surveille Trump associates, then unmasked the names and leaked them to friendly journalists, first, to hamper the Trump campaign, later to subvert the Trump transition. A Clinton opposition dossier, based on paid and unnamed Russian sources, peddled false stories to the FBI and Obama-administration Justice Department officials. It may well have been used to obtain the FISA orders.
Career FBI officers used government communications to express their hatred for the new president. Such bias may have fueled their efforts to warp their investigations. The director of the FBI knowingly leaked confidential notes of his meetings with the president. He probably passed on at least one classified document to a friend, with the instruction that it then be passed to a friendly journalist. James Comey’s hope was to ensure an investigation of the president by a special counsel — a position soon to be filled by his close associate and friend.
The deep-state resistance of bureaucrats ranged from the petty and trivial of refusing to hang the picture of the current president in their offices to the more substantial move of slowing down or refusing outright to carry out presidential directives. America had not seen such opposition to an incoming president since 1861.
If any such resistance had faced an incoming Barack Obama, the cries of outrage, media fury, and legal recourse would have proved overwhelming and been framed as a constitutional crisis. But no such pushback occurred. Instead, in 2009, power was transferred peacefully if not amicably.
Yet, so far, the Resistance, despite helping to drive down presidential approval ratings to the low 40 percent range, has not stopped the Trump agenda. The Mueller investigation will likely settle for face-saving charges against a few Trump officials for crimes not envisioned under its original directives. Its own biases and the FBI’s involvement with the discredited Steele dossier may result in a number of successful appeals of those who confessed or acquittals of those charged.
Nullification
The frustrated Resistance is starting to morph into a more serious crisis of nullification, if not insurrection.
California has just declared itself, in antebellum South Carolina fashion, a sanctuary state. State law supposedly now transcends both local California municipalities that had chosen not to become sanctuary cities and federal immigration law itself. The law is the logical result of the governor’s and the popular culture’s pushback against Trump. Jerry Brown in the past had evoked God to cast aspersion on Trump’s morality: “I don’t think — President Trump has a fear of the Lord, the fear of the wrath of God, which leads one to more humility.” And Brown toured abroad as state commander in chief, as he assured foreign leaders that California was to be dealt with as a near-autonomous country.
One-third of state residents, according to polls, favor Calexit, or withdrawal from the United States. Central to California’s insurrectionist chic is the idea that it is unique and no other state had the moral courage or right to follow its example. California would probably go ballistic, after all, if during the Obama administration, the governor of West Virginia or Kentucky had visited China to cement coal-export agreements that countered Obama policies, or if Utah had declared the Endangered Species Act null and void within its environs, or if Mississippi had decided that federal gun-registration laws would not fully apply within its Second Amendment–sanctuary state.
California apparently has sensed that its nullification efforts are provoking federal officials, and it now scurries to assure Washington that it does not mean to fully oppose all federal immigration efforts. In theory, state officials who bar federal officials from their mandated duties would be subject to federal criminal charges of obstruction. In a more concrete vein, the quarter-built overpasses of the state’s already ossified high-speed rail project — increasingly dependent on federal funds for reactivation — are beginning to resemble an eerie Stonehenge.
Perhaps not by coincidence, the Congress just passed tax-reform legislation that does not allow local and state taxes above $10,000 to be deducted from federal tax returns. For a state that has among the highest sales taxes, the highest property tax assessments in the nation, and highest state-income-tax brackets (rising above 13 percent on the top brackets), the new law doubles the effective state tax rate.
Given that there are a number of low- or no-tax states in California’s neighborhood, and given that the California Democratic party is incapable of reducing the state income rate, the new law may encourage some affluent retirees to flee the state. It would not take many to undermine a key source of state revenue. Note that of some 40 million residents, only about 150,000 individual or household tax returns account for about half of all California income-tax revenue — itself nearly 40 percent of all state income. Note also that progressive California is understandably worried that its affluent tax-paying golden geese may be sacrificed, even while the vast majority of its population will receive sizable tax cuts from the new federal law.
Damning Salvation
In tit-for-tat fashion, will the state seek more nullification measures to push back against the federal government? Legislators are now dreaming of redefining state income tax as deductible “charitable contributions” in order to reinstate federal tax deductions. That pathetic gambit would land an individual filer in the IRS pokey.
Again, California legislators apparently do not realize that any other state could do the same and thereby nullify the entire federal tax system. If they persist, no doubt the Trump Department of Justice would have good grounds to seek indictments against state officials for conspiracy to commit federal income-tax fraud.
So will large blue states continue their defiance of federal laws, whether they involve immigration nullification or their own legalization of marijuana growing and selling? It depends.
Black and Hispanic unemployment rates are now at record lows. Wealthy California high-tech firms like Apple are eager to take advantage of new tax laws and plan to bring back billions of offshored capital that will enrich state coffers.
Declines in illegal immigration, along with an economy running at 3 percent GDP growth, are pushing up the compensation of low-skilled workers in a way that clumsy state-mandated raises in the minimum wage could not.
Ironically, mega-states such as California, Illinois, and New York were close to the brink of insolvency under the calcified Obama economy. But they may enjoy record growth in 2018 that for now mitigates their own regrettable financial decisions. In other words, an expanding economy could turn resistance and nullification into a mostly boutique symbolic enterprise, as thousands of blue-state officials ceremonially damn the policies that may alone offer them salvation.
The End Of The Yankee Imperium
Posted on November 26, 2017
At the very beginning of the 19th century, the New England states were increasingly at odds with the the Southern states. One cause of the discontent was the sense that the slave states had too much power over the Federal government. Another was the decline in trade with Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The Embargo Act of 1807 and the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 sharply reduced trade with Britain and France. There was also the rivalry between the North and South, which dated to the founding the colonies.
Discontent with the War of 1812 brought things to a head. The Federalist Party in New England had been agitating for changes in the Constitution, like eliminating the three-fifths compromise. New England newspapers openly discussed secession. The Hartford Convention was a series of meetings among representatives from the New England states to discuss their grievances. The whole project collapsed with the wave of patriotism that resulted from Jackson’s victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans.
This episode in American history has largely been forgotten, mostly because the North won the Civil War fifty years later. The winners write the history books and this bit of history has never fit the narrative. It’s also why the The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina has been erased from the history books. Northern conservatives have made John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment their base. The fact that Locke and Shaftesbury hoped to impose feudalism on the American South is inconvenient.
The point here is that Americans have been raised up on a history of the nation written by Yankeedom. The North won the Civil War so they became the dominant region both legally and economically. Through the 20th century, the North also came to dominate the nation culturally, writing the history books and defining the national narrative. That’s how we get nonsense about the Puritans seeking religious freedom and carving a nation out of the wilderness. Jamestown has been all but erased from the nation’s memory.
The dominance of the North over the rest of the country probably would have petered out in the 20th century, but world events changed the direction of America. Teddy Roosevelt badgered Woodrow Wilson into breaking with American tradition, with regards to getting involved in European affairs. The Yankee desire to dominate North America became a quest to dominate the world. Once the US chose to get into the Great War, the old traditional American conservatism was killed off forever. The Yankee Empire was born.
The aftermath of the Great War, the Depression, World War II and then the Cold War prevented any change in America’s domestic arrangements. These were great unifying events, in that they justified the suppression of anything challenging the established cultural order. The upheavals of the 60’s and 70’s were based in New England, the Upper Midwest and Northern California for a reason. American Conservatism was born at Yale and run out of Connecticut for the same reason. That where the ruling class lived.
All empires end eventually. Often it is from exhaustion, the cost of maintaining the empire having long ago exceeded the benefits. Other times the culture that built the empire runs its course. The empire remains as a brittle outer husk that eventually shatters. Other times, it is a slow, ad hoc retreat back to something resembling normalcy. The Soviet Empire is a good example of this. It’s not been an organized retreat, but it has been a fairly bloodless one. Russia is now back to something close to its historic norm.
America was never built to a be great crusading empire. Even after generations of cultural cleansing, Alabama is still a vastly different place than Vermont. Regionalism is still the defining feature of America. Having one region dominate the others was the fear of the Founders, which is why they struggled to craft a government after independence from the British. The solution was a small federal government that handled a narrow set of things, like war and trade, that could only be done by a central government.
America’s ruling class, especially over the last few decades, have gone to great lengths to explain why providence has ordained America as the world’s peace keeper. The usual suspect have twisted this into a foreign policy of keeping the world safe for the Jewish diaspora. The truth is, the American Empire was always built on serendipity. The total destruction of Europe and the technological backwardness of East Asia left a huge vacuum. The atom bomb locked in the gains of the victors, by locking out all challengers.
The world that birthed the American Empire is long gone. China is now taking up her historic role as the hegemonic power of Asia. Europe is fully recovered, in the material sense, from the 20th century. It is time for Europe to recover culturally and that can only happen when the Yankee Empire recedes. Whether or not the European people have the will to defend themselves from the barbarian hordes to their south, that’s not something that can be decided for them. Europe must live or die on its own.
Domestically, it is long past time for a return to normalcy. The Cold War has been over for 25 years. The rest of the country is economically and demographically in better shape than Yankeedom. The oldest and most sclerotic states in the nation are located in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. The election of Trump and the resulting chaos in Washington strongly suggest the rest of the nation is ready to step outside the shadow of Yankeedom. CalExit and similar rumblings from Progressives are another sign of change.
The fact is, America was never a singular nation. It was a hodgepodge of nations, thrown together with degrees of overlap. The regions of the country share a language and share some history, but they are significant different too. America, maybe even all of North America, is better run as a federation, like a continent sized version of Switzerland. The areas where there can be no agreement are delegated to the regions. The areas where the interests are shared are delegated to a Federal state.
That can only come with the end of the Yankee Imperium.
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Song of the Open Road
By Walt Whitman
Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose,
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune – I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road . . .
. . . From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me . . .
. . . I inhale great draughts of space;
The East and the West and mine, and the North and the South are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me;
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me,
I would do the same to you.
I will recruit for myself and you as I go;
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go;
I will toss the new gladness and roughness among them;
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.
Each year I am hired to go to Washington, DC, with the eighth grade class from Clinton, WI where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation’s capital, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall’s trip was especially memorable.
On the last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history — that of the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima, Japan, during WW II.
Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, ‘Where are you guys from?’
I told him that we were from Wisconsin. ‘Hey, I’m a cheese head, too! Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story.’
(It was James Bradley) who just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good night to his dad, who had passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, DC, but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night.)
When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are his words that night.)
‘My name is James Bradley and I’m from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue, and I wrote a book called ‘Flags of Our Fathers’. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me.
‘Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game. A game called ‘War.’ But it didn’t turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don’t say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old – and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would talk to their families about it.
(He pointed to the statue) ‘You see this next guy? That’s Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene’s helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph…a photograph of his girlfriend Rene put that in there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.
‘The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank… (from Johnstown, PA). Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the ‘old man’ because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn’t say, ‘Let’s go kill some Japanese’ or ‘Let’s die for our country’ He knew he was talking to little boys. Instead he would say, ‘You do what I say, and I’ll get you home to your mothers.’
‘The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes was one of them who lived to walk off Iwo Jima. He went into the White House with my dad President Truman told him, ‘You’re a hero’ He told reporters, ‘How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?’
So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned in a very shallow puddle, at the age of 32 (ten years after this picture was taken).
‘The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky. A fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, ‘Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn’t get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.’ Yes, he was a fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother’s farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.
‘The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews.
When Walter Cronkite’s producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say ‘No, I’m sorry, sir, my dad’s not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don’t know when he is coming back.’ My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell’s soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn’t want to talk to the press.
‘You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn’t see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, ’cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a combat caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died on Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain.
‘When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, ‘I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back.’
‘So that’s the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.’
Suddenly, the monument wasn’t just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.
One thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC that is not mentioned here is, that if you look at the statue very closely and count the number of ‘hands’ raising the flag, there are 13.. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God.
Great story – worth your time – worth every American’s time. Please pass it on.
You can and should check these statements with the charities mentioned before you give or withdraw giving.
A timely reminder before the Holidays and our generous spirits open up our wallets…
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT BEFORE YOU MAKE CONTRIBUTIONS: As you open your pockets to do a good thing and make yourself feel good, please keep the following facts in mind:
The American Red Cross
President and CEO Marsha J. Evans’
salary for the year was $651,957 plus expenses
MARCH OF DIMES
It is called the March of Dimes because
Only a dime for every 1 dollar is given to the needy.
The United Way
President Brian Gallagher
receives a $375,000 base salary along with numerous expense benefits
UNICEF
CEO Caryl M. Stern receives
$1,200,000 per year (100k per month) plus all expenses including a ROLLS ROYCE.
Less than 5 cents of your donated dollar goes to the cause.
GOODWILL CEOand owner Mark Curran profits $2.3 million a year.
Goodwill is a very catchy name for his business.
You donate to his business and then he sells the items for PROFIT.
He pays nothing for his products and pays his workers minimum wage! Nice Guy.
$0.00 goes to help anyone!
Stop giving to this man.
Instead, give it to ANY OF THE FOLLOWING
GO “GREEN” AND PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE IT WILL DO SOME GOOD:
The Salvation Army
Commissioner, Todd Bassett receives a small salary of only
$13,000 per year (plus housing) for managing this $2 billion dollar organization.
96 percent of donated dollars go to the cause.
The American Legion
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary.
Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!
The Veterans of Foreign Wars
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary.
Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!
The Disabled American Veterans
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary.
Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!
The Military Order of PurpleHearts
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary.
Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!
The Vietnam Veterans Association
National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary.
Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!
Make a Wish: For children’s last wishes.
100% goes to funding trips or special wishes for a dying child.
St. Jude Research Hospital
100% goes towards funding and helping Children with Cancer who have no insurance and cannot afford to pay.
Ronald McDonald Houses
All monies go to running the houses for parents who have critically ill Children in the hospital.
100% goes to housing, and feeding the families.
Lions Club International
100% OF DONATIONS GO TO HELP THE BLIND, BUY HEARING AIDES, SUPPORT MEDICAL MISSIONS AROUND THE WORLD. THEIR LATEST UNDERTAKING
IS MEASLES VACCINATIONS (ONLY $1.00 PER SHOT).
Please share this with everyone you can.
[Re: The Red Cross
Most veterans do not give to The Red Cross because they charged us for coffee & donuts while in the field.
As far as Disaster relief is concerned, if you give to The Red Cross, money or blood, for a Declared National Emergency or Disaster, $0.00 goes to the disaster. Under The Stafford Act, that which authorizes FEMA, during a Declared National Emergency or Disaster, The Red Cross presents a bill to FEMA for ALL of its expenses and expenditures, and WE THE TAXPAYER pay The Red Cross 100% of the costs and expenditures!]
We originally stated: “Out of those 1696 players, 871 professional football players are convicted felons. “, we should have stated:
“Out of those 1696 professional football players in the NFL, 871 were arrested for felonies or misdemeanors (high priced attorneys may have pleaded some of those felonies down to misdemeanors). The arrest of those 871 professional football players did not engender respect toward Police Officers.”
By clicking on the below listed link, and reviewing the arrest record of the 871 professional football players, each recipient of this E-mail can make their own determination of whether the arrests were for felonies or misdemeanors:
To engender the respect of Americans, toward professional football players who take a knee during playing of the National Anthem and their NFL Players Association/Union, we encourage them to click on the two below listed links to read the two articles:
Breaking! The NFL Players Association Was Caught Funneling Money to Nazi Collaborator George Soros
Most Patriotic Americans do not respect professional football players, who take a knee during the National Anthem, by doing so disrespect the American Flag, and whose actions further disrespects the memory of military personnel, thru the ages, who were returned to the US in flag draped caskets, after losing their lives while supporting the Republic.
Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John. All Rights Reserved. The material can only posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author. It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.
[Should be read in conjunction with Thomas W. Chittum’s, Civil War 2 if you can get a copy. I looked on Amazon and CW 2 in readable form goes for ~$200.]
[The Heartland Plan and the same section in The Albany Plan Re-Visited offer solution to some of these problems. Ex. the article creating a federal university from which the federal government must get its statistics and facts solves some of the problems listed above as does the Article on federal citizenship. Another example is the section that requires the death penalty for official corruption.
Along with this essay, should be read Chittum’s Civil War Two and Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed.]
“They keynote speaker for the event was Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover Institute (sic) fellow and author of Mexifornia, a book that romanticizes the California of old, when whites were a large majority of the state’s population. Davis Hanson (sic) talked about how in parts of California, you can go 10 miles in another direction and it ‘looks like you’re in a different country.’ Hanson also attacked California’s Democrats, saying:
We don’t want assimilation so we’re going to give you as much amnesty, sanctuary states, sanctuary cities, we’ll do whatever we can so you can remain tribal in your outlook. Your tribal racial and ethnic identity is essential, not irrelevant to your character.
Hanson also expounded upon the reconquista conspiracy theory promoted by anti-immigrant activists. It stems from the ‘Plan Espiritual de Aztlan,’ a document produced by MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) in the 1960s calling for Chicanos to reclaim land. It is not endorsed by any mainstream groups, but for nativists it serves as the genesis of a conspiracy theory claiming that Latinos want to take back American land for themselves.
Davis Hanson ended by saying, “The state is regressing into a Third-World country.” He also attacked undocumented immigrants, essentially claiming they are incapable of being law-abiding residents, stating, ‘When I came to the States, the first thing I did was break the law, so why would I follow the rules out of necessity now?’”
________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Southern Poverty Law Center,
A few preliminaries: Mexifornia, written nearly 15 years ago, was not a romance about “white” California, but a warning that if assimilation, intermarriage, and melting-pot integration continued to be caricatured and eroded, and if massive immigration continued to be illegal, non-diverse, and not based on ethnically blind meritocratic criteria, then one day California would be faced with ethnic polarization, given its various ethnic groups, large numbers of struggling newcomers without legality, English, or high school diplomas, and a state unable to meet its commitments to ensure first-rate public education, infrastructure, transportation, and safety for all its residents. I feel the book was prescient; if you disagree, find an argument instead of using the buzz word “white.”
You state that MEChA advocated “reclaiming” land for “Chicanos,” but then incoherently state that such a supposition is a “conspiracy theory claiming that Latinos want to take back American land for themselves.” Is it a fact or a “claim,” both or neither? And what are “mainstream groups,” given that MEChA for decades has had a sizable presence on most California and southwestern campuses and claims a number of prominent alumni.
When you write “essentially claiming” rather than quoting what I actually wrote in full, we know that “essentially” is a catalyst for more fiction to follow.
In general, I rarely have seen a puerile attack like this in which everything you have alleged is demonstrably false. Since there was an apparent video of my 30-minute speech on “Two Californias” (presented at a Los Angeles symposia on the crisis of California) about the inordinate wealth of the Pacific Coastal strip from La Jolla to Berkeley and the poverty of the state’s interior, you obviously choose not to quote from it accurately if much at all.
And it is easy to see why, since my argument did not serve your circular purposes of fabricating “hate” in turn to whip up hysterias in turn to raise money in turn to justify your comfortable existence in turn to fabricate more “hate.” In contrast, you found that reporting the truth—the lecture offered statistics on education, energy, health care, infrastructure, and taxes in suggesting that Californians are not receiving value for the inordinate taxes and regulations they endure, largely because of incompetent, one-party governance—would have been of utterly no value to your careerist and financial aims.
The lecture was not even on illegal immigration per se, but on the tripartite role of (a) Silicon Valley’s and coastal California’s vast wealth and (in the case of multibillion-dollar tech companies) corporate exemptions from traditional antitrust scrutiny, (b) the aggregate flight of nearly 4 million middle class Californians to no-tax or low-tax states, and (c) the aggregate effects of massive illegal immigration in which the traditional allegiance to melting pot assimilation, integration, and intermarriage has waned due to politics, sheer numbers, and illegality.
Let me detail your fabrications in the order you made them:
1) One truly can go 10 miles in one direction in California and see the radical change from affluence to dire poverty. And that abyss is, as I noted, because that 1/3 of all welfare recipients in the nation live in California, where 1/5 of the population lives below the poverty line, and a fourth of the residents were not born in the United States and in many cases do not have English facility or high school diplomas, critical in a competitive market economy.
I suggest the SPLC staff drive just 3 miles from Woodside or Atherton to Redwood City or East Palo Alto and see whether my assertion is flawed. The proposition rests, as I noted and you omitted, on the fact that California is both the wealthiest of states by a variety of measurements and also by some data the poorest. Or as I colloquially put it, California is a sort of weld of Massachusetts and Mississippi under single state governance.
I am writing this reply on an avenue in which there are numerous houses with inoperative trailers, shacks, and near lean-tos arranged around a single-family dwelling, compounds in which the poor live without proper zoning, in structures that do not meet building codes, and under conditions that would be empirically described as Third World.
Less than 4 miles away there are also 10,000 square-foot gated mansions. That dichotomy illustrates California culture, demography, and governance, in the medieval sense of two classes rather than the past three.
The contrast certainly does look like two different countries: again, in the sense that in the gated mansions English is spoken, there are all the accouterments of upward mobility, and gates keep others out; in the multifamily/trailer residences, Spanish only is spoken, residents are often here illegally, and poverty is endemic. The contrast reflects a vanishing middle class and a state politics designed to reward the connected hyper-wealthy and subsidize the poor and to ignore those in-between—which is why the latter may have fled in droves.
Your next assertion is a flat-out untruth: “Hanson also attacked California’s Democrats, saying: We don’t want assimilation so we’re going to give you as much amnesty, sanctuary states, sanctuary cities, we’ll do whatever we can so you can remain tribal in your outlook. Your tribal racial and ethnic identity is essential, not irrelevant to your character.”
I did not say what you are alleging, but made it very clear that the quote was a reflection of the mentality of the Democratic elite and the La Raza activist leadership. A simpleton in journalism can fathom that the collective “we” is not the person “I, Victor Hanson” but refers to progressive groups, as I carefully noted, who are not eager to see assimilation, integration, and intermarriage proceed in rapid fashion. Such a development might result in a fully integrated immigrant society (in the fashion of the 19th-century and early 20th-century trajectory of Italian-Americans), one that would be less helpful to Democratic tribal politics. Even with the quote out of context anyone can see through your childish effort to suggest the quote reflects my own sentiments rather than my views of the operating principles of progressive identity politics activists.
You allege: “Hanson also expounded upon the reconquistaconspiracy theory promoted by anti-immigrant activists. It stems from the “Plan Espiritual de Aztlan,” a document produced by MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) in the 1960s calling for Chicanos to reclaim land. It is not endorsed by any mainstream groups, but for nativists it serves as the genesis of a conspiracy theory claiming that Latinos want to take back American land for themselves.”
In fact, I did not discuss in detail Mexican nationals or Mexican-Americans seeking to “take back” land, nor did I even go into detail about the racist heritage of MEChA, which is becoming an embarrassment only because its racist sloganeering (e.g., “a bronze state for a bronze people” “everything for the race, nothing for the others”) was so egregious that it has been airbrushed off MEChA sites. What I did say was that La Raza was and is a racialist term (“the Race” [sc. Latin radix] and deliberately employed to resonate racial chauvinism—illustrative of an unfortunate effort to divide and polarize groups.
I added and you omitted that the 1960s rebirth of the term in popular usage was similar to Franco’s and Mussolini’s political use of Raza/Razza (Franco wrote a novel Raza), as a way of copy-catting Hitler’s racist use of the German Volk to denote race as the key criterion of citizenship and definition of one’s “essence.” Apparently, the National Council of La Raza (a key element of the Democratic Party coalition) was recently embarrassed into agreement. After the election of Donald Trump, it suddenly has changed its name to UnidosUS from the former “the race”, and that is a laudable improvement. (Note what Cesar Chavez once said about the La Raza movement: “Today it’s anti-gringo, tomorrow it will be anti-Negro. We had a stupid guy who just wanted to play politics with the union, and he began to whip up La Raza against the white volunteers, and even had some of the farm workers and the pickets and the organizers hung up on la raza.”)
What do you mean when you write “nativist”? Someone who objects to racist terminology, and supports melting-pot integration and assimilation—in contrast to ethnic bigots like those in MEChA and La Raza groups who insist that their race defines their personas to the exclusion of others? What an Orwellian mindset, in which integration is defined as nativism.
You end your slander by more untruths: “Davis Hanson ended by saying, ‘The state is regressing into a Third-World country.’ He also attacked undocumented immigrants, essentially claiming they are incapable of being law-abiding residents, stating, ‘When I came to the States, the first thing I did was break the law, so why would I follow the rules out of necessity now?’”
Would you quote from the transcript of the speech? If you would, you will see that I ended with a call for unity, adding that there had to be more integration between poor and rich, and the restoration of a middle class, given that the state cannot do well when there is such an abyss between classes and a shortage of revenue to address long neglected infrastructure.
I did not attack undocumented immigrants, but said that the restoration of law (such as the end of illegal sanctuary cities and the enforcement of existing immigration statutes) is essential, yet would be difficult when millions of immigrants have not just entered the country illegally, but have done so as their first choice when arriving at a new homeland—a decision that the host de facto unfortunately overlooks or perhaps even rewards. When one breaks the laws without consequences, it insidiously erodes all laws and chaos is the inevitable result.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been in the news recently as a recipient of millions of dollars of grants from large corporations and movie stars, so I am not denying that fictions like the present one are effective in more or less leveraging money through hysteria. Yet your methods are not justified by your ends; the former are reprehensible and the latter self-centered. A growing number of Americans are learning about your group and discovering that when it cannot uncover hate, it invents it—and finds the ensuing smears and slanders quite profitable, resulting ironically in short-term lucre, but in the long-term continued diminution of your reputation. For a fair account of the meeting and speech, see http://citizensjournal.us/afa-focuses-decline-ca/
Davis Hanson
[In various venues, I have had people use the SPLC as a source. It is not. As Dr. Hanson refutes its nonsense, I must point out to all who use it, that, like the ACLU, it is a Leftist agenda agency and not a reliable, non-biased, source.
This is especially directed toward those who criticize without doing extensive research, or at the least going beyond wikipedia, a notoriously inaccurate source.]
My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.” Here’s my answer:
We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain? We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same.
This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.
I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”
The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today.
The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.
With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.
During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”
General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum, then Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.
Trump is fighting. And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent bastards, I read your book!” That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics.
That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.
Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do.
First, instead of going after “the fake media” – and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri – Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal. Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”
Everyone gets that it’s not just CNN – in fact, in a world where Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are people of influence and whose “reporting” is in no way significantly different than CNN’s – CNN is just a piker.
Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. With Trump’s ability to go around them, they cannot simply stand pat. They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices.
They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery.
The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.
Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s, church.
Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.
This makes “going high” a non-starter for CNN. This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next “nothing burger” and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how it’s “worse than Nixon.”
This, obviously, is what CNN has chosen to do. The problem is that, as they become more and more hysterical, they become more and more obvious. Each new effort at even faker news than before and faker “outrage” only makes that much more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media.
And, by causing their hysteria, Trump has forced them into numerous, highly embarrassing and discrediting mistakes. Thus, in their desperation, they have lowered their standards even further and run with articles so clearly fake that, even with the liberal (lower case “l”) libel laws protecting the media, they’ve had to wholly retract and erase their stories repeatedly.
Their flailing at Trump has even seen them cross the line into criminality, with CNN using their vast corporate fortune to hunt down a private citizen for having made fun of them in an Internet meme. This threat to “dox” – release of personal information to encourage co-ideologists to visit violence upon him and his family — a political satirist was chilling in that it clearly wasn’t meant just for him. If it were, there would have been no reason for CNN to have made their “deal” with him public.
Instead, CNN – playing by “Chicago Rules” – was sending a message to any and all: dissent will not be tolerated.
This heavy-handed and hysterical response to a joke on the Internet has backfired on CNN, giving rise to only more righteous ridicule.
So, to my friends on the Left – and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do. These aren’t those times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.
So, say anything you want about this president – I get it, he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this man. He fights.
[If you can find a copy, after reading this, read Thomas W. Chittum’s “Civil War II”.]
Freedom and Tyranny: The Meaning of Independence Day
July 5, 2017 11:46 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
A reflection amidst the barbecues and fireworks and the paeans to patriotism.
By Bruce Thornton // Front Page Mag
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
The Fourth of July is not just another day off from work. Nor is it just the celebration of our country’s birth, the bold act of the Colonists in challenging the world’s greatest power and creating a government based on freedom and self-rule. On this day 241 years ago the delegates to the Second Continental Congress adopted a document that laid the foundations of the American political order. Sadly, the meaning of the Declaration of Independence has been lost, and the order it created eroded by progressivism.
One of the greatest statements of political philosophy occurs in the preamble to the Declaration:
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 . . .
Government is a creation of the sovereign people who must consent to its forms and functions. It is thus accountable to the people, and exists primarily to protect their rights, especially freedom, that precede government. These rights are the “unalienable” foundations of our human nature, and come from a “Creator” and the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” They are not gifts of the powerful or any institutions that an elite of wealth or birth create to serve their interests. They cannot justly be taken away by any earthly power, but they can be limited and destroyed by tyranny.
Central to these rights is freedom, which implies self-rule as well as the scope to pursue “happiness,” the actions and behaviors, the way of living that achieves a good and virtuous life suitable for a human being possessing reason and free will. To secure the freedom of the individual requires political liberty expressed through a government of laws and institutions that reflect the collective consent of the people, and whose agents are chosen by the citizens or their representatives, and thus are accountable to the people.
A little more than a decade later the Constitution formalized the structures of governing that would protect this ideal. Recognizing that human nature is flawed and subject to “passions and interests,” and fearful of power’s “encroaching nature,” the framers separated, checked, and balanced power through federalism and mixed government. James Madison in Federalist 51 famously expressed the assumptions lying behind a form of government designed for the “preservation of liberty”:
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
Given a fallen human nature, power must never be allowed to be concentrated into an elite of any sort, for neither birth, wealth, nor wisdom can guard against the destructive excesses of power. Defend the people’s ordered liberty, equality of opportunity, and equality under the law, and the freedom of all will be protected.
This is the American creed, the set of ideas assent to which makes one an American––not blood, or soil, or any mystic “identity” exclusive of others and claiming a natural superiority over them.
The bulk of the Declaration, however, is a catalogue of the despotic acts of George III, whose “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” justified the rebellion against Britain. The word “tyranny” here is not used casually: it is a technical term from political philosophy going back to its beginnings in ancient Athens. Tyranny is the opposite of liberty and equality, for it makes power the instrument of the self-aggrandizement of the few at the expense of the many. As Aristotle wrote, tyranny is “arbitrary power . . . which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. No freeman willingly endures such a government.” A tyranny is diametrically opposed to the ideas set out in preamble to the Declaration.
At the end of the 19th century, progressivism began to undermine and dismantle the American creed, and to create a government in many ways similar to “absolute tyranny.” The advances of science and technology deluded many into believing that human nature and behavior could be understood and manipulated and improved with the same success natural science enjoyed. The old American creed based on a permanently flawed human nature and the need to disperse and balance power had to be discarded. As Woodrow Wilson said, the Constitution had to be interpreted “according to the Darwinian principle,” with a centralized government of technocrats who could shape or “nudge,” as our progressives today put it, human nature into greater “fitness” for happiness in a new world of science and technology. Now power is to be concentrated into an elite of superior knowledge charged with shaping people’s lives in order to “improve” them, and empowered to confiscate and redistribute wealth in order to finance this social engineering.
Also contrary to the Declaration is the progressive view of rights. Now rights come not from “Nature and Nature’s God,” their origins and nature transcendent. Now rights are derived from the will of flawed men, defined according to their limited and contingent vision of happiness and the good. Just as they disparage the Constitution, progressive thinkers sneer at the notion of natural rights “beyond the reach, not only of the majority but of the state itself,” as progressive historian Charles Beard wrote in 1912, who reduced natural rights to an “obsolete and indefensible” notion. Putting rights into the hands of powerful men meant that they could be multiplied and expanded by political power, as Franklin Roosevelt did in his 1944 inaugural address, in which he called for a Second Bill of Rights including everything from a “useful and remunerative job” to “adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.” But this turns rights into the gifts of power wielded by flawed and limited human beings, and as such the foundations of our rights are temporal and always up for debate and redefinition, as we have seen in communist countries or in Islamic sharia law.
Finally, the progressives rejected the idea of the transcendent, divine authority that defined humans by their innate freedom and equality. Hence the relentless efforts to drive religion from the public square and reduce it to a lifestyle choice and expression of private identity, no different from one’s taste in food, clothes, or entertainment. In this way the moral order sanctioned by “Nature’s God” and the “Supreme Judge of the world,” as the Declaration describes the divine order, which enforced limits on license and self-indulgence, can be marginalized and bereft of its power to sanction destructive behavior. This leaves the state––a collection of flawed, corruptible human beings limited by their own “passions and interests” –– as the only authority for regulating people’s lives.
The result is to set all rights adrift, vulnerable to chance and change. The author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson was a deist, but even he recognized the necessity of religious belief for the American order, and the dangers of ignoring its transcendent foundations: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
Today we live in a political order that the progressives have altered and distanced from its philosophical roots in the Declaration of Independence. Political power is now concentrated in the federal government and its 2.6 million mostly anonymous, unelected unaccountable workers who staff over 430 agencies and departments, which extend their coercive and regulatory power into every aspect of our lives. Every day we witness their tyrannical “repeated injuries and usurpations” at the expense of our freedom and autonomy, and the Constitutional balance of powers. The government confiscates wealth and redistributes it to political clients, just like the tyrants of old, in order to make people “accustomed to feed at the expense of others” and to make “their prospects of winning a livelihood depend upon the property of their neighbors,” as Polybius described the modus operandi of the ancient tyrant. Political freedom is degraded into license, the power to do what we want rather than to live as people deserving of freedom. Today we are subjects of Tocqueville’s “soft despotism,” which seeks “to keep [the people] in perpetual childhood,” and is “well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.”
Donald Trump has pruned back federal power to some degree, and praises patriotism and faith. But weaning the citizens from their dependence on entitlements––the engine of soft despotism–– is a monumental task that so far he has shown little interest in attempting. The difficulties the Republicans are currently facing just in reducing the growth in Medicaid spending that accelerated under Obamacare illustrate the scope of the problem. Given our $20 trillion in debt and trillions more in unfunded liabilities, our children and grandchildren are facing a fiscal Armageddon, and when it comes freedom and equality may be its first victims.
So today, amidst the barbecues and fireworks and the paeans to patriotism, we should take time to contemplate how far we have drifted from the ideals for which our ancestors fought and died.
The Swiss Report
Switzerland lies landlocked in Western Europe, a small densely populated nation
of nearly seven million people. To the west lies France, to the south Italy
and to the north and east, West Germany and Austria. By modern jet fighter, it
is ten minutes from the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe. Since 1815
Switzerland has remained an inviolate island of peace in the midst of war. Even
Adolph Hitler’s Wehrmacht, which conquered all of Europe in the early months
of World War II, chose not to attack Switzerland despite the fact that the small
country was in the crossroads of Western Europe.
Switzerland is, of course, neutral, but it was not mere respect for its neutrality
which kept the Nazi armies and others before it out of the tiny country. It was
the determination of the Swiss people to defend their neutrality and the credibility
of their means to do so. That determination remains alive today in the face
of weapons of mass destruction. So, too, does the credibility of the means.
Within 48 hours, the Swiss can field an army of more than 600,000 men,
100,000 more than the present army of West Germany. Today, it can provide
shelter space for 85 percent of its civilian population and by the 1990s intends
to have shelter space for the entire population. War supplies, medical supplies
and food supplies are meticulously stored in more than 100 kilometers of tunnels.
About 4,000 permanent obstacles and barriers and more than 2,000 demolition
devices are in place, ready to hamper and block an aggressor’s progress.
In short, Switzerland is an armed bunker.
Yet, there is no standing Army, no bunker mentality, no enormous drain on
the Swiss economy, no militaristic threat to Europe’s oldest and most fiercely independent
democracy.
How the Swiss have achieved this credible deterrent to invasion is the subject
of this report. The Swiss security system is unique as well as an example of what
a democratic nation can accomplish by applying reason and logic to problems
which have been realistically and carefully analyzed.
History
Niccolo Machiavelli, the 15th century Italian student of power, remarked of
the Swiss, “They are the most armed—and most free people in Europe.” Indeed,
Switzerland was born in the 13th century out of a desire to be free of domination
by the Habsburg family. In 1291 three Swiss cantons signed the Perpetual
Covenant which marked the beginning of the Swiss Confederation. In the
1300s, the Swiss fought several wars for independence with Austria and in 1499
Switzerland won its independence from the Holy Roman Empire.
The policy of neutrality originated in 1515 when the Swiss suffered a stunning
defeat by the French, but that early neutrality did not save it from an invasion
and occupation by the French under Napoleon in 1798. The Congress
of Vienna of 1815 restored Swiss independence and guaranteed its neutrality.
Switzerland adopted a new constitution in 1848, modeled somewhat after
the American constitution and this was amended in 1874 to increase the federal
government’s powers in military and court matters, although the cantons (equivalent
to American states) generally retain considerably more power than American
states.
The Swiss economy today is built around precision manufacturing, chemicals,
banking, and tourism. It has one of the highest standards of living in the world
and the land is criss-crossed by a 3,150-mile railroad network and 30,000
miles of hard-surfaced roads. Three major rivers have their origin in Switzerland—
the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po. Most of the population and most of
the agriculture are located in the plateau region between the Jura and the
Alps. Swiss agriculture can produce only three-fifths of the nation’s food supply,
a factor carefully weighed in the Swiss security system planning. The nation
is greatly dependent on imports for food and most raw materials for its industry,
including oil, natural gas, and coal.
Since 1815 the Swiss have not fought in a foreign war, yet they have maintained
the tradition of a citizen army and rifle and pistol shooting are among the
nation’s most popular sports with almost every village having a shooting range,
over 3,000 ranges in all.
Today Switzerland maintains its neutrality, but practices what it calls solidarity—
participating in international humanitarian projects, offering its good offices
for the resolution of disputes, and providing technical assistance to Third World
countries. The Swiss participate in those international activities and organizations
which do not require it to violate its policy of neutrality. Neutrality is central
to Swiss thinking and, in fact, is the determining factor in the Swiss security
system.
Swiss Strategic Thinking
Divisionnaire Major General Edmund Muller, deputy chief of staff, logistics,
summarized Swiss strategic thinking this way:
“Historical experience shows that if a nation is not able to defend itself
and to protect its spiritual and material values, it will become, sooner or
later, the target of power politics and force. Efforts to defend ourselves
against force are therefore still necessary. These efforts must be integrated
within a comprehensive security policy expressed in the form of clear guidelines.
Our government is convinced that we can successfully undertake
peace-keeping efforts in the future only if we can ensure at the same time
our own security in a credible way. The security policy of a country is only
credible if a realistic evaluation of the threats and a sober estimation of its
own possibilities lead to the implementation of a concept capable of inspiring
confidence at home and respect abroad.”
The words, “credible”, “respect”, “realistic”, and “planning” occur over and
over in Swiss defense documents and briefings. To a remarkable degree, the
Swiss government has approached its problems in a supremely logical manner,
setting out basic premises and drawing the correct inferences.
The objectives of the security policy are set forth as follows: (1) preservation
of peace in independence; (2) preservation of freedom of action; (3) protection
of the population; and (4) defense of the territory.
Each of these objectives has been carefully analyzed and the choice of words
is not careless. What the Swiss mean by “Peace in independence” is made clear
in the following excerpt from a report of the Federal Council to the Federal
Assembly:
“The preservation of peace—no matter how much we are interested in it—
is not an end in itself. It can neither be separated from the preservation of
self-determination nor can one be played off against the other. Our goal is peace
in independence; both aspects are therefore of equal importance.”
In defining preservation of freedom of action, the Swiss make clear they mean
freedom from foreign pressures, which can be achieved only by having available
a powerful means of resisting them and freedom from internal pressure
generated by illegal means or the use of force.
Having defined their security policy objectives, the Swiss then proceed to examine
the threat. In doing so, they include “the state of relative peace” along
with indirect war, conventional war, war with weapons of mass destruction,
and blackmail.
The following quotations from the same Federal Council report reveal not
only the Swiss view of the present threats but provide an insight in their thinking
processes:
“Today, peace does not correspond to the ideal and conditions usually associated
with it. The general situation is characterized by continuous confrontations,
also in those cases where there is no open employment of force.”
“The danger of a breach of international agreement is always present. The
collective security system envisioned by the Charter of the United Nations has
not been allowed to become effective, particularly because of the lack of unanimity
among the permanent members of the security council….today’s state
of relative peace is to a great extent due to the fact that the two superpowers
neutralize each other. The balance of fear, maintained only by the mutual threat
of annihilation, is not stable. It can be jeopardized by the excessive armaments
efforts of one side, by technological breakthroughs as well as by irrational actions….
under the protection of this relative balance of forces, powers and
groups of powers attempt to enlarge their spheres of influence through political,
economical, propagandistic and psychological pressures.”
“Conflicts are increasingly being waged by indirect means, with the goal of
influencing, weakening and finally overcoming the opponent through political,
psychological and terrorist means….this type of warfare takes advantage of the
increasing vulnerability of the modern state with its numerous vital facilities
(such as power utilities, communication, transportation and information facilities)
. Those who resort to this kind of warfare, whether they act in the interest of
a foreign power, a foreign ideology or out of anarchistic motives, take advantage
of the frictions existing within a society, as well as of all forms of political
and social malaise of certain population groups. By attempting to break up the
existing liberal order through the paralysis of the public institutions, facilities
and the democratic processes by way of defamation, intimidation and the employment
of force, they hope to be able to achieve their goals.”
“The possibility of blackmail exists at each level of conflict, taking advantage
of the opponent’s fear of the threatened actions. Blackmail acquires a particular
dimension if it is exercised by nuclear powers. The authorities of the state
against which the blackmail is directed could be put under intense public pressure
and be forced to make decisions of such a magnitude as to be without historical
parallel….the four levels of conflict are characterized by those methods
and means which would, at each level, be predominantly employed. During
large confrontations, the parties to the conflict will try to combine these methods
and means acting simultaneously in a direct and indirect manner.”
Thus, the Swiss take a hard look at the world and indulge in no escapist thinking.
They recognize that they could become the victim of blackmail, of subversion,
of a conventional or a nuclear attack. Yet they also realize that because
of their small size, they are not likely to be a primary target and therefore cannot
justify a continued state of mobilization.
The Swiss see the military as only one component of a spectrum of strategic
means to achieve their security objectives. Their foreign policy initiatives are a
strategic means to defend their policy of armed neutrality, to provide access to
raw materials and markets to exports. Social policy is a strategic means to provide
the stability necessary to withstand threats. Economic policy is a strategic
means of insuring that in times of crisis or war, the Swiss people can continue
to exist. The Swiss Government has actually formed what it calls a war economy
organization with the specific goals of planning for self-sufficiency in time of war.
In this regard, Swiss citizens are required to maintain in their homes a twomonths’
supply of food; industrialists and importers are required to maintain war
stocks of raw materials and food. Civil Defense is seen as the strategic means
of insuring survival of the population. In short, the Swiss approach the problem
of security with a totally integrated methodology that involves the entire nation.
The Militia System
The purpose of the military forces of Switzerland are two-fold: (1) to deter
war by the principle of dissuasion; and (2) if deterrence fails, to defend the
territory and the population.
“Dissuasion is a strategic posture which should persuade a potential aggressor
to avoid an armed conflict, by convincing him of the disproportion existing between
the advantages gained from an attack on the country and the risks entailed.
The risks which a potential aggressor must be made to perceive consists
in the loss of prestige, military forces, war-potential and time, as well as in running
counter to his ideological, political and economic interests.”
The Swiss have no illusions about their ability to defeat a major military
power. They could not have defeated the Nazi army which for a time considered
invading Switzerland. They mobilized, however, and made it clear beyond
a shadow of a doubt that if the Nazi army invaded, it would be fiercely resisted
and that the tunnels and passes into Italy would be destroyed. In a classic
example of dissuasion at work, Hitler’s general staff recommended against an
invasion on the grounds that the costs would be disproportionate to the gains.
The Swiss military forces are composed almost entirely of the militia. Only
800 out of 50,000 officers are professionals. They, and the recruits which happen
to be training at any given time, are the only people in Switzerland on
“active duty”
The Swiss militia system is unique and is not comparable to the present Reserve
and Guard forces in the United States. The basis for conscription is the
constitution, which mandates military service for every Swiss male from age 20
to 50 (55 in the case of officers). There are no exceptions. Conscientious objectors
are given a choice between Army non-combat units and jail. Those physically
unfit for military duty but employable are required to pay a tax. Women
are not included in the compulsory military service system, but small numbers
of them are accepted on a volunteer basis for non-combatant positions.
The universality of the Swiss system provides several advantages. It is fair and
therefore enjoys popular support. In the 1970s a national referendum was held
on the question of providing alternative service to conscientious objectors. The
Swiss people defeated it by an overwhelming majority.
A second advantage is that the Swiss Army does not have to operate a vocational
school system, training unqualified people in special skills which they take,
as soon as their enlistment is completed, into the civilian market. The Swiss system
operates in reverse. The Swiss Army, because everyone is obligated, can
choose those people trained in their civilian roles for the military jobs which
match their specialty. In the Swiss system, the burden of specialized training is
on the civilian sector.
A third advantage is that every male, age 20 to 50, who is an elected official
or civil servant in the government at all levels is also a member of the Swiss
Army. This helps prevent the jealousy and hostility that armies sometimes confront
in competing with other government services for their share of the public
resources. The lack of separation between the army, the people, and the government
is one of the unique and valuable characteristics of the Swiss system.
A fourth advantage is that Switzerland does not have a high proportion of its
defense dollars going to personnel costs. There are no military retirement systems
(the 800 full-time officers are included in the civil service pension system),
no veterans benefits, no massive payroll of a large standing army. There is
a medical insurance program to take care of injuries or death while serving on
active duty. Consequently, 50 percent of all Swiss defense appropriations can
be directed toward the acquisition of weapons and equipment. A comparable
figure is 30 percent in the Republic of West Germany.
At the age of 19, young men are given physical and mental tests in preparation
for military service. By this age, most young men in Switzerland have already
chosen their career paths and so permitting the Army to channel them into
the proper slots. Some consideration is given to the recruit’s preference and to
his locale, but the Army makes the final decision according to its own needs.
At age 20, recruits report for 17 weeks of training. The Swiss do not operate
separate training facilities for recruits and then others for military specialties.
Each training camp handles both the recruit’s basic training and his military
specialty. In other words, a young man destined for the medics reports directly
to a medical training company; an infantryman to an infantry training camp.
At the end of the training cycle, the recruit, now a member of a militia unit
with which he will stay in most cases for the duration of his obligation, returns
home. He carries with him his rifle, an allotment of ammunition, uniforms, military
pack, and CBR mask. He is responsible for the maintenance of this equipment
and is inspected annually. Once a year he is also required to qualify with
his personal weapon on a rifle range or face an additional three days of training.
Once a year, he will report for three weeks of military training in a rugged field
exercise set up as a problem the type of which his particular unit would face.
The Swiss Army is organized into four Army Corps. Each Army Corps controls
three Divisions. The Field Army Corps are composed of two Infantry Divisions
and one Mechanized Division. The Mountain Corps has three Mountain
Divisions. In addition, each Field Army Corps has some separate Border Defense
Brigades and the Mountain Corps, separate Fortress Brigades.
These 12 Divisions plus the Air Defense Command constitute the elite. Young
men aged 20 to 32 serve in these Divisions. Men of the “Landwehr”, 33 to 42
years old, are found in the separate Brigades. Those in the “Landsturm”, 43 to
50 years old, serve in the Territorial Forces. Thus, the duties of the militiamen
are adjusted as his physical capabilities change with age.
These elite field forces with the eight youngest classes of soldiers plus all Commissioned
Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers are mobilized for three
weeks of training each year. “Landwehr” forces train for two weeks every two
years, and “Landsturm” units for one week every four years.
All officers are chosen from the ranks. A young man chosen to become an officer
while he was a private must attend a one-month non-commissioned officers
school. If he is successful, the soldier is promoted to corporal and, to pay
off his new rank, he must serve as a group leader for a period of 17 weeks
immediately following recruit school.
The requisite number of corporals to meet requirements are sent to officer
training schools for four months. After successful completion of this school, he
is promoted to lieutenant. This is followed by service as a platoon leader with another
recruit training unit. After five years in grade, he will be promoted to first
lieutenant.
After two years as a first lieutenant, he is eligible for promotion to captain.
To be promoted to captain, a first lieutenant has to attend a three-week
weapons school, a four-week tactical school and serve as company commander
in a recruit training cycle. As a captain, he will command and administer a
company.
After eight years, a captain can get promoted to major, and then, if he completes
successfully special training, he may become a battalion commander.
Subsequent promotions to lieutenant colonel after seven years as major and to
colonel two years later depends upon individual ability and vacancies. The highest
rank a militia officer may attain is that of brigade commander. Divisions and
Army Corps are commanded by professional officers.
A first lieutenant or captain who desires to become a career officer has to attend
a series of branch schools and then attend a one-year course at the Military
Division of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. To be eligible for selection
as a member of the Corps of Instructors, an officer must have a civilian profession.
In peace time, the Swiss Army has no supreme commander. The Federal
Council leads the army. The general chief of staff is the “primus inter pares” of
the army staff. In case of war mobilization, the Parliament would select a fourstar
general as supreme commander.
Tours of Duty in Schools
1. RS
NCOS
2. RS
OS
3. RS
Tact
Shoot
4. RS
Tact
Shoot
5. RS
Tact
Shoot
Days
RS
NCOS =
OS
Tact
Shoot =
(Recruits and Superiors)
Private Corp Lt Cap
118 118 118 118
27 27 27
118 118 118
118 118
118 118
27
20
118
118 263 499 664
Recruit-School
Noncommissioned officer-School
Officer-School
Tactical School
Shooting-School/ -Course
Major
118
27
118
118
118
27
20
118
27
6
27
724
Colonel
118
27
118
118
118
27
20
118
27
6
27
27
14
765
The Swiss Air Force is composed of one Air Force, one Airbase and one Anti-
Aircraft Brigade. All combat aircraft are ready for use and are stored in rock-covered
underground bases containing fuel, ammunition, spare parts and repair
Equipment (value $2,000.00). Every Swiss militia soldier has the above equipment
ready at his home. (See opposite page for itemized list)
PERSONAL EQUIPMENT FOR MEN
(Standards)
No. Arming and Leathers
1 1 assault-gun with magazine and sling
2 1 cleaning-things for assault-gun
3 1 night-sight
4 1 bayonet with fitting
5 1 knife
6 1 belt
7 1 scabbard for bayonet
8 1 box with pocket-ammunition
Clothing
9 1 helmet 71
10 1 pass-cup, ord 72
11 1 working-cup, ord 49
12 1 pass-uniform, ord 72
13 1 pass-trousers, ord 72
14 1 working-trousers, ord 49
15 1 coat
16 3 shirts with breast pockets
17 2 jerseys
18 2 black ties
19 1 pass-raincoat
20 1 pass-leather belt
21 1 trousers-belt (elastic)
22 2 pairs of march shoes
Luggage
23 1 rucksack, mod 58/73
24 2 shoe-bags, grey
25 1 effects-bag, olive
26 1 supplies-bag, white
27 1 effects bag 58
28 1 haversack
29 1 canteen with cup
30 1 mess tin
31 1 spoon and 1 fork
32 1 cleaning things 67
Special Equipment
33 1 ABC (atomic/biological/chemical) protective mask with filter
34 1 bag for ABC-protective mask
35 2 pairs of plugs for hearing protection, in boxes
36 1 service book with identity card
37 1 identification tag
38 3 pairs of epaulettes
39 Miscellaneous
Cyclists — light infantry
Volunteer in Civil Defense telephone exchange
The infantry in action
Farmer on the way to his unit
Mechanized troops
Air-defense
Militia pilots for jet fighters
Telecommunications
Dogs for protection and rescue
Repair shop
Sheltered surgery
shops. There is an automatic surveillance and guidance system to help engage
the air defense and ground attack armaments.
The number of main weapons in the Swiss Army is as follows:
350 aircraft
800 tanks
1,200 armored personnel carriers
900 artillery guns (self-propelled or mobile)
300 artillery tubes in fortresses
2,000 mobile anti-tank guns
300 antitank guns in bunkers
2,000 anti-aircraft guns
3,000 anti-tank guided missile systems
20,000 bazookas
Thousands of grenade launchers and millions of mines are also on hand as
well as 30,000 army-owned special vehicles and 50,000 civilian-owned vehicles
tagged for mobilization. Each owner knows precisely where to bring his vehicle
in case of mobilization.
These and other war supplies are stored in arsenals and underground facilities
all over the country. They are stored by unit. A military unit, for example, will
draw the same equipment from the same arsenal each year for its annual training
exercise so that it becomes familiar with it, with its location, and can assist the
civilian maintenance personnel in spotting problems.
The Swiss logistics system is a work of genius and is tailored to the requirements
of a militia army in a neutral country which, if it fights, cannot count on
allies for re-supply or assistance.
Of 17,000 civil servants in the Ministry of Defense, 10,500 are in logistics. In
1981 the budget was 800 million Swiss francs and it maintains 5,500 buildings
and installations, 600 war bases, 170 maintenance facilities, and more than 100
kilometers of underground facilities.
These underground facilities not only contain stores of ammunition and other
war supplies but also underground repair facilities for tanks, artillery pieces, electronics
equipment and vehicles. The value of the Swiss Army inventory is 12.8
billion Swiss francs.
The Swiss Army maintains 40 military hospitals, ten of them underground—
completely equipped, spotless and ready. They are used only for training purposes.
When the Swiss purchase a weapons system from abroad, they purchase
enough spare parts for both the life of the system and for war reserves. This is
to insure continuity of use in a war even though Switzerland is cut off from the
original source of supply.
They also practice the principle of commonality so that military, civil defense,
and civil police equipment are the same. An example of Swiss ingenuity applied
to logistics is the storage of perishable medical supplies for war-time use.
These supplies are obtained from pharmaceutical companies, stored, and then
at the appropriate time, returned to the Pharmaceuticals for sale in exchange for
fresh supplies for storage. By arrangement, the Swiss government would actually
pay for the supplies only in the event of their consumption during a war.
Military Doctrine
Once mobilized, the Swiss Army would fight as a conventional force. Swiss
military doctrine calls for meeting the aggressor at the borders and waging total
war. This is a departure from earlier doctrine which in World War II called for
abandoning the plateau area for the mountain fortresses.
In the event of mobilization, the 4,000 permanent obstacles and barriers
would be activated and the more than 2,000 demolition devices already built
into key bridges and tunnels would be set off. Industrial machines would be disabled;
water levels in the more than 900 dams lowered; fuel tanks burned.
The Swiss terrain—a hilly plateau region between two mountain ranges—
would necessarily channelize the aggressor’s attacks. These obvious avenues
of approach are heavily fortified and would be defended from built-in positions
and by mobile forces of the three Army Corps backed up by the Air Force. The
Swiss plan is to make every inch gained by the enemy a bloody and costly gain.
In the event main units of the Army are destroyed, Swiss doctrine calls for continued
passive and active resistance by means of guerrilla warfare.
This combination of powerful resistance by conventional forces, continued resistance
by guerrillas, and the self-destruction of Switzerland’s industrial, communications,
and transportation networks constitutes the strategy of dissuasion.
The message to the potential aggressor is clear: after a bloody, expensive, timeconsuming
war, he will have gained nothing of value. He will be faced with
occupation of a hostile area, denuded of economic or transportation value, and
continued resistance by a determined and armed population.
The armed population is no bluff. Swiss militiamen are not required to turn
in their weapons upon completion of their obligation. It is said that every Swiss
home contains at least three weapons, for not only is there the militia system,
but there is a long tradition of civilian ownership of firearms and, as pointed out
before, rifle and pistol shooting are virtually the national sports of Switzerland.
There are few restrictions on the Swiss purchase, ownership or carrying, of firearms.
An armed occupation force would indeed be literally faced with the prospect
of a Swiss rifleman behind every tree.
The Territorial Service
A unique component of the Swiss Army is the Territorial Service. It has no
equivalent in the United States and so deserves special attention in this report.
Within the army itself, the Territorial Service operates as logistical units, but it
does much more and is the main link between the army and the civilian sector.
It is composed of those men in the “Landsturm” who are 43 to 50 years of age
as well as some younger men assigned to it for Air Raid Rescue Battalions.
The duties of the Territorial Service can be summarized as follows: (1) It has
the mission of providing warning services to both the Army and the civilian population
in case of danger from air, atomic, biological and chemical weapons as
well as dam bursts; (2) it is responsible for coordinating the lowering of the water
level of hydroelectric reservoirs and for other measures concerning the electrical
supply system; (3) it has the mission of caring for internees, prisoners of war and
refugees; (4) it provides military police to assist civil authorities when necessary;
(5) it is responsible for the military economy service—to supply all the
goods needed by the army from the civilian sector and to handle the dismantling
or destruction of civilian economic assets that could be used by the enemy; and
(6) to protect important and vital installations.
This Territorial Service is primarily designed for war, but portions of it can be
mobilized in peacetime to assist civilian authorities with non-military catastrophies.
Structurally, the Territorial Service is designed to parallel the Swiss civil government
structure. The basic civilian unit of the Swiss Confederation is the canton.
Some of the larger cantons are divided into districts. Cantons are grouped
together to form Territorial Zones.
At the level of a district (a portion of a canton) there is a District Civil Staff and
a Territorial Regional Staff; the Territorial Service equivalent of the canton is
called a Territorial Circle. Here again, the military staff works with the civil staff.
At the Territorial Zone level (groups of cantons), there are also parallel civilian
and military staffs.
To make this relationship clearer, we might imagine a United States military
service which had a command structure at the level of the Federal Government,
at the level of the Federal Regions, at the state levels, and at the district
levels within the states with the missions of providing domestic intelligence, security
for key installations, control of the economy in time of war, and assistance
to civilian authorities in handling disasters and civil disturbances. There is,
of course, no such organization in the United States.
The Swiss have not only clearly defined the missions of the Territorial Service
but also the rules under which it operates. For example, the needs of the army
take precedence over the needs of the civil sector. The Territorial Service can
assist the civil sector only on the request of civilian authorities and, even then,
authority and responsibility for civilians remain with the civil authorities. In other
words, in the event of a catastrophe, the Territorial Service is not authorized to
step in and take over operations, but only to provide assistance to civil authorities
under their direction.
On the other hand, in the event of war, the Territorial Service’s first obligation
is to the army and under those circumstances it would override, if necessary,
the civil authorities in the event of a conflict of interests. It is also the Territorial
Service which provides the manpower earmarked for use by civil defense.
Civil Defense
Some critics of the Swiss system have expressed the belief that the possession
of nuclear weapons has made the strategy of dissuasion obsolete. These are, to
be sure, those critics who view nuclear war as an offense for which there is no
defense.
The Swiss do not agree. Recalling one of their strategic objectives as protection
of the civilian population, the Swiss government has realistically assessed
that objective in light of nuclear, chemical and biological warfare. Their answer
was to embark on an extensive civil defense program with the idea of accomplishing
two of their strategic objectives—protection of the population and maintaining
freedom of action. They reason that an extensive and useable civil defense
program will give the Swiss government the means to withstand nuclear
blackmail, thus preserving freedom of action.
Hans Mumenthaler, director of the Federal Office of Civil Defense, put it this
way: “Lack of protection (for the civilian population) means an impairment of
our freedom of decision and lacking freedom of decision is rightly felt as an unfree
condition.”
The latest Swiss laws pertaining to civil defense were revised in 1978 and they
have made remarkable progress. To date, the Swiss have shelter space for 85
percent of the population and by 1990 plan to have 100 percent of the population
covered. In many cases, there will be two shelter spaces per person—one
at the place of work and one at home.
Swiss law requires compulsory participation in civil defense for all males aged
20 to 60 with exemption only for military service. Consequently, most of the
civil defense personnel are over 50. There is presently a mandatory five-day introductory
course and two days of annual training. Swiss officials believe this is
not sufficient and, even though supervisors train more extensively, they would
like to see the training schedule expanded for everyone.
The law requires that communities have full responsibility for enforcing federal
and cantonal civil defense regulations. Each family is required to provide a
shelter at home and all new construction, even of commercial buildings, must
provide shelters built to federal specifications. The confederation subsidizes the
construction of public shelters, but not private ones.
Private shelters are required to withstand one atmosphere of overpressure
while public shelters are built to withstand three atmospheres (one atmosphere
equals ten tons per square meter). In other words, the Swiss opted for blast
shelters that are rather simply shelters adequate for protection against fallout. A
shelter built to withstand three atmospheres of overpressure could theoretically
provide protection for people within nine-tenths of a mile from ground zero
with a one-megaton explosion.
Public shelters are equipped with independent water, air filtration, communications,
food and medical supplies and private citizens are required to stock
food for two week’s duration.
The Swiss have spent, since 1970, 5 billion Swiss francs on civil defense and
are currently spending at the rate of 210 million Swiss francs annually. Mumenthaler
says this is a ratio of about $1 for every $8 spent on defense. He estimates
that for the United States to have reached the same level of protection would
have required the expenditure of $85 billion.
Public support for civil defense is widespread. Mumenthaler explains, “We
are mountain people and we are used to living with danger—but we are also
used to preparing for it.”
Several key decisions were made in approaching the problem of civil defense.
One was to discard the idea of evacuation. Not only are warning times for Switzerland
practically nil, but Swiss authorities reasoned the country is too small for
evacuation to be feasible. Evacuees would hinder other military operations and
would likely be no safer. Therefore, the Swiss opted for “vertical as opposed to
horizontal protection.” This dictated the construction of blast-proof shelters.
Another was the adoption of the principle that every inhabitant must have an
equal chance of survival. The Swiss seem to be meticulous about the principle
of equal sharing of both responsibilities and privileges. The first obligation of
every Swiss citizen is to their country.
Because of the proximity to likely opponents, the Swiss have adopted the
strategy of ordering people into the shelters as soon as political or military tension
reaches a critical level. From that point on, only key workers would leave
the shelters until such time as there was an actual attack or the situation became
less tense.
Finally, the Swiss made a basic decision to separate civil defense from the military
operations. The office of civil defense operates under the Minister of Justice
and Federal police. While some 30,000 troops from the Territorial Service
would be made available to civil defense, primarily for fire-fighting and rescue
work, it is not a fighting organization nor does it replace normal civilian rescue
and emergency aid organizations during peacetime. It can be mobilized for
peacetime rescue work, but this is clearly a secondary mission.
Summary
Switzerland, a small country with limited res6urces, has conceptualized,
planned, and implemented a rational security policy which provides maximum
effect with minimum expenditures. The militia system, being both universal and
a part of the constitution, has wide public acceptance. It allows mobilization of
a large army without the draining costs of a large professional army. The personnel
savings have been invested in redoubts, barriers, equipment, storage facilities,
hospitals, and weapons.
To a remarkable degree, the Swiss require private sector participation in the
defense effort. These private contributions are estimated to equal the annual
government expenditures. By integrating their security policy to include foreign
policy, social policy, defense, civil defense and economic measures, the Swiss
have, in effect, oriented their entire public effort toward the end of security for
their nation and their people.
The Swiss General Defense system provides a high dissuasive value and credibility
to this small, neutral country in the heart of Europe. In case of war Switzerland
would not attract the more powerful nations who might consider Switzerland
to be a military vacuum. On the contrary, Switzerland can activate the
densest defense system—on the ground and in the air on short notice—in
Western Europe.
Thanks to Civil Defense as well as intricate economic preparedness, there is
a high degree of survivability even in a modern war of long duration. The most
important factor remains that the overwhelming majority of the Swiss has a
strong will to defend the country against any aggressor. They are prepared to
fight, and will fight whenever and whomever necessary.
On Peace…
“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective
means of preserving peace.”
— George Washington
in his first annual address to
Congress on January 8, 1790
On War…
“War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest thing. The
decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic
feeling which thinks nothing worth a war is worse. A man
who has nothing which he cares about more than his
personal safety is a miserable creature who has no
chance of being free unless made and kept so by the
exertions of better men than himself.”
— John Stuart Mill
(1806-1873)
Chairman’s letter, continued
contrary, the Swiss concept has promoted unity among the people of that small but
mature nation.
The people of Switzerland are to be envied for their many achievements, and the policy
achievement of a plan for armed neutrality could be a model either in whole or in part for
those seeking a rational approach to survival problems.
The concept of armed neutrality was a policy favored by our Founding Fathers but the
warnings and advice of Founding Father George Washington has been lost to Twentieth
Century Americans. Perhaps even at this late date, we could find many answers to our
current problems by observing the Swiss way of a total defense concept.
Sincerely,
“…to rebuild and strengthen the political, economic, and
social structure of the United States and Western Civilization so as
to make any merger with totalitarians impossible.”
WESTERN GOALS
Lawrence P. McDonald
Chairman and President
It’s the Hypocrisy, Stupid
June 6, 2017 11:52 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
Progressives go the full Jimmy Swaggart.
Some concerned Democrats are worried that their party may have lost the key blue-wall states because of its elitism, manifested as disdain for Americans between the coasts.
Perhaps emblematic of their worry is the strange metamorphosis of Hillary Clinton’s two presidential campaigns. In 2008, as Bill Clinton 2.0, she drank boilermakers, bragged about bowling and shooting, boasted about her resonance with the “white” working class, and clobbered Obama on his Pennsylvania clingers speech.
But after Obama’s win — and his assumed new formula of registering record numbers of minority voters and seeing them often vote in a bloc on the basis of racial solidarity — Clinton thought she too could follow this new pathway to Democratic victories. So she made the understandable political contortions
This time around, Clinton was bent on out-Obaming Obama’s “clingers” with her own “deplorables” and “irredeemables.” Her campaign was based on pandering to identity-politics groups — while she had cashed in on Wall Street in what can be fairly called a payola scheme with Bill to enrich the Clinton Foundation and thus indirectly themselves. The result was both a cultural and economic affront to what used to be the bedrock of the Democratic party.
Americans neither hate nor envy meritocratic elites. Here in one of the poorer areas of the nation in rural southwestern Fresno County, the poor admire the skilled surgeons who operate on their children. Most of the new agri-barons are up-by-their-bootstraps ethnics: Basques, Punjabis, and descendants of the Okie diaspora and the 1960s waves of immigrants from Mexico who may now farm more than 2,000 or 3,000 acres of orchards and vineyards and on paper be worth $10 or $15 million, though they dress in old clothes and drive run-down pickups. They are looked upon as success stories worthy of emulation because most talk and act like the people who work for and with them.
So perhaps what drives proverbially average Americans crazy is not the success and money of others, but the condescension and hypocrisy of what a particular elite says contrasted with how it lives: The disconnect recalls the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, the televangelist who on Sunday mornings three decades ago used to break into tears as he loudly condemned the sins of the flesh, while he privately indulged his worldly appetites.
Elites, whose lifestyles lead them to burn lots of carbon, rail about the Paris accords to those who get by burning lots less. What is galling is to see how little the elites’ green rhetoric is backed up by their green behavior. Could Hollywood celebrities at least for a year swear off the use of their private jets that emit more carbon emissions in a year than entire small towns in Ohio?
Why do not college professors who are strident activists for climate change agree to limit their intercontinental jet trips to one a year? Could our pundits and politicians who warn Middle America to brace for radical changes in their lifestyles at least agree to live in houses smaller than 2,500 square feet?
How do our elites square the circle of identity politics and big money? The notion that reparatory admissions and hiring are based on race and gender presupposes that past endemic bias has led to oppression that in turn had hit hard the livelihoods of the Other. But what happens when after a half-century of affirmative action, many who receive preferences are richer than those whom they accuse of white privilege?
Or is it more ironic than that? Wealthy white college kids chant about the demon white privilege, going so far as to help demand racially segregated safe spaces, dorms, and, in one case currently in the news, temporary expulsion of white people from campus. They rage against a privilege that they enjoy and that their perceived targets — the unenlightened middle of America — do not. Yet one easy way of ending white privilege, to the extent that it exists, among elite enclaves would be to send one’s children to public high schools rich in diversity.
One wonders how many hecklers and disrupters at Middlebury College, to take one example, chose prep school when there were better opportunities to mingle with minorities at inner-city schools? And if they really wished to address culpable whites, shouldn’t the college sponsor field trips to rural Pennsylvania or southern Ohio where such chanting demonstrators might more directly address the targets of their ire?
If one believes that charter schools and vouchers weaken the public-school system, then an effective way to counter such challenges would be to put one’s own children in public classrooms rather than to deny the poor the ability to disconnect from the public schools for the same reasons that so many elites have. One of the most surreal paradoxes of Washington, D.C., is the number of progressives (including the former president of the United States) who put their children in Sidwell-Friends while passionately opposing charter schools and vouchers.
The list of progressive paradoxes is limitless: handgun possession by the law-abiding is a supposed catalyst for violence, but not for security details who surround Hollywood and political celebrities. Elites lecture Americans on their supposed – isms and -ologies (sexism, racism, nativism), but when such sins are endemic to Middle Eastern societies abroad or indeed among immigrant communities inside the West, they are paternalistically excused or ignored.
Common themes in rap music are misogyny, racism and calls for violence against police — the sort of career-ending lyrics for most other entertainers.
The media are overwhelmingly progressive and critical of America for its supposed backward and unprogressive values. Yet reactionary ideas are most evident on the coastal corridors and on supposedly tolerant and liberal campuses. Who thought the liberal civil rights of the 1960s would end in the neo-segregationist movements of the 2010s, most recently at Evergreen College, where all whites were asked to leave the campus for a day while minority students shut down the campus?
Yet visit liberal Silicon Valley or Hollywood boardrooms, and a self-described and purported meritocracy rules, which so far has resulted in few minorities in those corridors of influence and power.
All these hypocrisies raise the question among fly-over Americans about the entire politically correct progressive agenda of elites: Has it become reduced to a cynical sort of indemnity insurance that elites take out to lubricate their own privilege? (Will Bill Maher survive his use of the N-word, given his loud liberalism?) Al Gore got rich by creating a veritable global-warming-alarmist industry, only to offload his largely failed cable channel (in a fire sale timed to help him beat anticipated higher capital-gains taxes) to the gas- and oil-exporting autocracy of Qatar. He got away without criticism because he was Al Gore, liberal environmental-justice warrior.
John Kerry has spent a political career prompting higher taxes — only in 2010 to attempt to berth his $7 million yacht in Rhode Island rather than his home Massachusetts to avoid high sales and excise taxes. He thought he could square that circle because he was John Kerry, fierce supporter of higher redistributive taxes to expand social services.
California is the locus classicus of sanctimonious elite hypocrisies: Interior farmers must give up their contracted irrigation water to save the Delta smelt, while San Francisco environmentalists insist that their own water supplies flow from the distant Sierra uninterrupted over the San Joaquin River into the reservoirs of the Bay Area.
Stanford students lecture about erasing things named after Junipero Serra, who purportedly exploited and maltreated native Californians while founding the mission system. But Leland Stanford, the founder of the university, as governor of the state, often lectured on the inferiority of nonwhite populations, while Stanford’s first president, David Starr Jordan (co-founder of the racist “Human Betterment Foundation”), was an unapologetic eugenicist who feared the effects of miscegenation. It is quite easy to airbrush Father Serra from a few streets, but campus social-justice warriors apparently value their Stanford brand name on their diplomas too much to Trotskyize away their own investment. Left unstated is that liberal students cannot be parties to racism so, presto, Stanford is exempt from rebranding.
Obama, who lectured the country that wealthy people did not build their own businesses, that everyone should realize when they had made enough money, and that it was not the time for profiting, now earns $400,000 from Wall Street interests for short speeches on his past successes — on the heels of raking in a reported $60 million for a his-and-hers book deal. How does the tire saleswoman in Grand Rapids or the welder in Tennessee square that? Americans have no problem with Obama’s post-presidential lucrative entrepreneurialism, but they do mind that he is never subject to the ramifications of his own loud redistributionist ideology.
In sum, the progressive Left’s problem is not elitism per se, at least in the sense that it’s now the party of wealthy people, investors, professionals, academics, the media, and celebrities. Rather the rub is the Left’s grating habit of lecturing America on its shortcomings while exempting themselves.
Finally, why do progressive elites act so patently hypocritical when they must sense it is destroying the Democratic party?
Other than the Dirty Harry answer “because they like it,” the answers are complex.
In part, they virtue-signal their own distance from the shunned middle classes, who are assumed to lack both the romance of the distant poor and the tastes and culture of the proximate rich.
Lectures without personal consequences allow the enjoyment of privilege without personal guilt. Without Barack Obama’s boilerplate on diversity and social justice, the public would see that he now lives a far more privileged life than does a Mitt Romney.
In career terms, the more memos you write deploring the lack of diversity, the less likely you or your old-boy white staff will be scrutinized by diversity czars. Hold up a simulacrum of Donald Trump’s severed head, dream to a crowd of blowing up the White House, flip the finger to Trump’s picture while flashing the V-sign to Snoop Dogg, the ex-felon and pimp, and there is little careerist downside. Mutatis mutandis, do that in the context of Obama, and your career would be over.
Big-city coastal culture is also closer to a postmodern hip Europe than to the premodern uncool interior a few miles away. There is a sense of globalized entitlement of a particular class that has prospered as a domestic market of 300 million turned into a world market of 6 billion. Our new plutocrats believes that because they became capitalist demi-gods, they also deserved commensurate cultural and spiritual exceptionalism.
An elite’s lectures on melting ice caps, transgendered restrooms, or Black Lives Matter are progressive versions of an unapologetic sinner’s singing hymns in church on Sunday; the harangues bring them closer to their social-justice deities and apparently give personal meaning to their otherwise quite non-transcendent lives.
In all their own manifest hypocrisies, Americans take for granted that elites of the Left have become the Jimmy Swaggarts of our age.
Butch got upset with a recent segment of Tucker Carlson that showed a blatantly legislating federal judge. My immediate response didn’t completely satisfy him. Below are Article III and part of Article II plus the reasoning behind them which are in
The Heartland Plan
, which may be found as a section in The Albany Plan Re-Visited available at http://www.bn.com/ebooks for $10.
Article III
The Judiciary
§3.01 The Judicial Power of these United States, shall be in a Federal System of trial and appellate courts with District Courts, Circuit Courts of Appeals, and one Supreme Court of Appeals, with jurisdictions as follows:
§3.01.01 District Courts shall be trial courts
§3.01.01a District Courts shall be apportioned among the states regardless of state boundaries
§3.01.01b Their jurisdictional borders shall be identical to the geographic borders of the contiguous congressional districts assigned to them by The Congress
§3.01.01b(i) No District Court may have fewer than one congressional district nor more than seven (7) congressional districts within its purview
§3.01.01c In criminal cases, the jury shall consist of no fewer than eleven (11) voting members and no more than twenty-one (21) voting members
§3.01.01c(i) a guilty verdict may be brought in by eighty percent (80%) of the voting members rounded down
§3.01.01c(ii) a death penalty verdict may be brought in by ninety percent (90%) of the voting members rounded down
§3.01.01d In civil cases, the jury shall consist of no fewer than seven (7) voting members and no more than fifteen (15) voting members
§3.01.01d(i) a liability verdict may be brought in by sixty-five percent (65%) of the voting members rounded down
§3.01.01d(ii) a punitive damages award may be brought in by eighty percent (80%) of the voting members rounded down
§3.01.01e There shall be no more than three times (3X) the number of voting members of alternates, and no less than two (2) alternates on every jury
§3.01.01f In the event of a deadlocked or tied jury, or the minimum number of jurors be passed, the judge shall seal the record and the Circuit Court of Appeals for his district shall immediately certify the record for appeal and decision
§3.01.01f(i) In addition to reviewing the record for legal errors, this Circuit Court of Appeal shall also render the verdict including all damages, real, compensatory, and punitive or in a criminal case, set the penalty including death
§3.01.02 There shall be several Circuit Courts of Appeals placed over the District Courts by The Congress
§3.01.02a Upon appropriate appeal made, the Circuit Court shall review the record for all errors of law and fact
§3.01.02b There shall be a separate Federal Court of Distinctive Appeal, which shall be responsible for all appeals from administrative and military courts
§3.01.02b(i) The Federal Court of Distinctive Appeal shall be located at the capitol but may create and order special magistrates to any locale for fact finding, but never decision making
§3.01.03 There shall be one Supreme Court of Appeal over all the Circuit Courts of Appeal
§3.01.03a Upon appropriate appeal made, the Supreme Court shall review the records and decisions of the lower courts for errors of law and fact
§3.01.03b The Supreme Court shall be responsible for resolving disputes between the circuits
§3.01.03b(i) It shall resolve disputes between the circuits as soon as they occur and certify the records no later than sixty (60) days from the rendering of the contrary decision
§3.01.03b(ii) All circuit disputes shall be resolved during the term in which they are certified, the court staying in session until its work is completed
§3.02 The Judicial Power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, consuls and civil servants when performing within the scope of their employment; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; and to appellate controversies between two or more states, and between a state, or citizens thereto, and foreign states, citizens or subjects
§3.02.01 All Supreme Court decisions interpreting statutes or this Constitution of these United States, shall be, on the day rendered, forwarded to the Congress for complete acceptance, partial acceptance and remand, rejection and remand, or rejection and direction pursuant to §1.08.01a
§3.03 Eligibility requirements for the Federal Bar
§3.03.01 All Judges, Justices and U.S. Attorneys must meet the same eligibility requirements as those for president
§3.03.02 All private counselors and advisors, appearing in that capacity in Federal Court, must meet the same eligibility requirements as those for members of congress
§3.04 Representation of parties
§3.04.01 Only U.S. Attorneys shall be members of the Federal Bar
§3.04.02 All causes, criminal, civil, administrative, or other, will be assigned to a U.S. Attorney for prosecution, and to a second U.S. Attorney for defense
§3.04.03 Any and all parties to a Federal Action may, at his own non-reimbursable expense, hire a licensed member of any bar as a counselor to assist the U.S. Attorney assigned to represent him
§3.04.03a The Court, at its discretion or upon motion of a party, may, but is not required to, and it shall be reviewable on appeal, order more than one U.S. Attorney to represent a party in a Federal Action
§3.05 Everyone protected by this constitution has access to this court provided this court has subject matter jurisdiction
§3.05.01 Every petitioner shall submit his claim to the district court in which he lives
§3.05.01a the petition shall be reviewed by two U.S. Attorneys and one judge for appropriateness
§3.05.01a(i) Appropriateness shall include a decision on jurisdiction, both subject matter and personal
§3.05.01a(ii) Appropriateness shall include a decision on frivolity
§3.05.01a(iii) If the suit be found inappropriate, it will be returned with instructions on where and how to properly file it
§3.05.01a(iv) If the suit be found inappropriate for frivolity, the petitioner shall be charged the full expense of filing and assessment
§3.05.02 If the claim be appropriate, the court will prepare the petition for filing in accordance with the Rules of Procedure and assign it to the appropriate District Court wherever that shall be
§3.05.02a The appropriate District Court shall take charge of the suit, file it, assign a court, a plaintiff’s attorney and a defense attorney from its available pool of U.S. Attorneys, and perform all other necessary functions for the just and expeditious resolution of the claim
§3.06 Juries
§3.06.01 Every Bona Fide Corporeal Federal Citizen is subject to jury duty without recourse, except:
§3.06.01a Those actually in hospital
§3.06.01b Those adjudged mentally or physically incompetent by both a doctor of competent jurisdiction and a sitting Federal Court or under the age of eighteen (18) years
§3.06.01c Military or Civil Servants serving overseas or whose duties are of such paramount necessity to the public defense or health that to require their attendance endangers the public welfare
§3.06.01c(i) In such cases jury duty is postponed, not exempted
§3.06.01d Those scheduled to have life saving surgery during the time estimated for trial
§3.06.01d(i) In such cases jury duty is postponed, not exempted
§3.06.01e The President of the United States; The Speaker of The House; and, The Counter-Speaker of The House
§3.06.02 Jurors shall be compensated for their service by bringing the prior year’s 1040-IRA form and an hourly compensation will then be ascertained; compensation will then be at the hourly rate for the first forty (40) hours per week with the next twenty (20) hours at one hundred and fifty percent (150%) for the next twenty hours in that week and at two hundred and twenty five percent (225%) for each weekly hour past sixty (60)
§3.06.02a The court shall provide the second meal for any day where the juror’s time exceeds eight (8) hours
§3.06.02b Jurors shall supply the court with a statement of benefits from their employer or other provider of same and the court shall directly reimburse the provider the cost of such benefits for the duration of jury duty
§3.06.03 There shall be no peremptory challenges
§3.06.04 No potential juror shall be dismissed for any reason other than cause shown and cause shown is reviewable by the appellate court
§3.06.05 Avoidance of jury duty, or the filing of false information to avoid jury duty, is a felony
§3.07 Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, or giving them aid and comfort, or in supporting them financially or materially
§3.07.01 No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court
§3.07.02 The penalty for treason is death without stay or pardon
§3.07.03 No attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted
§3.08 No Federal Court at any time nor in any manner may grant a criminal greater rights or privileges than has a bona fide corporeal citizen of these United States of America
§3.09 Federal Judges and Attorneys shall have, once appointed, tenure for life or voluntary retirement, excepting that:
§3.09.01 §1.03.05 applies
§3.09.02 The President or the House may remove any judge or attorney for medical or psychological reasons, proven in a court of competent jurisdiction, including but not limited to, a finding of drug or alcohol dependence or abuse
§3.09.03 A judge or attorney once dismissed, may never be reinstated
§3.01 & §3.02
What appear to be overwhelming changes from the 1787 Constitution are actually what was originally intended in the 1787 Constitution, by both the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians, were reiterated in the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, and from time to time by various presidents and governmental watchdog groups, each having recommended one or all of these things. Each time that one or more of these have been suggested, the United States Supreme Court has made its next decision on whatever subject raised everyone’s ire, a slightly retrograde decision which never recovers a tenth of the ground lost but which placates all of the court watchers but has continually moved us into the realm of socialism and of judicial legislation. The quick proof is to look at almost any controversial opinion made by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and where the U.S. Supreme Court has ultimately ended up. Another quick proof is to look at how easily the avowed socialist Ruth Bader-Ginsberg and Sotomayer were confirmed and to how impossible it has been to get Moderate Republicans confirmed, never mind actually getting a Republican or a Conservative confirmed. The best quick proof has been the death penalty.
When the founders put in the clause regarding cruel and unusual punishment, they were specifically talking about stocks, branding, maiming, dunking, drawing & quartering, castration, forced bankruptcy then moving the debtor and his whole family into debtors prison where he and they became day-laborers-slaves and died still in debt, as it was structured to be impossible to work the debt off, the debt being then inherited by his heirs.
Jefferson knew about this personally as he was debt free until he married. When his father-in-law died and they inherited her proportional share of his estate, Jefferson found himself so in debt that he never recovered. He himself died selling family/slave members west and a bankrupt. The state of Virginia allowed a lottery for the purpose of relieving his debt around 1823 but still couldn’t raise enough money to satisfy his creditors. (Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, died on July 4th, 1826 coincidentally within hours of John Adams, 2nd President of the United States, who died debt free.)
So, here we have a structure that places justice back into the hands of the citizenry. Currently, you do not have the absolute right to a jury trial in a civil case. You now have to ask and the court may deny your request. Also, the structure of the courts is codified. The Federal Circuit Court is now the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It just so happened to evolve this way because when you sue the federal government, you must file in D.C., hence, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals just so happened to get the bulk of the administrative cases. This hasn’t affected how the individual circuits have interpreted the Code of Federal Regulations, the C.F.R.’s which are the regulations formulated by the various government agencies for the implementation of their powers. One need only check on what the 9th Circuit has allowed or what the EPA and NLRB have gotten away with.
A quick proof is the judicial extension of the Social Security Act by the 9th Circuit back in the 1970’s.
The SSA was for people who put into the funds. If you didn’t contribute to the funds or be the widow or minor child of someone who had contributed into the SSA trust funds, you weren’t eligible to receive any Social Security checks of any kind. With the influx of Vietnamese refugees, some claiming post-traumatic stress from watching their villages, farms, relatives or jungles being bombed into the stone age by the United States Air Force, all on their own testimony without corroboration, and Administrative Law Judges (ALJ’s) denying these claims, when appealed through the District Courts to the Circuit Court, the 9th Circuit decided to extend to these poor people one hundred percent (100%) vesting in the Social Security Plan. You should research this yourself to make certain that this is the correct order of things. It just may be that Congress violated the constitution and the original SSA and the 9th Circuit was merely following the will of the people as placed into law by the elected representatives of the people. Regardless … .
Another quick proof is the death penalty issue. In every poll and at every election, the citizenry are in favor of the death penalty with an affirmative vote of at least 70%. Yet the courts, both state and federal, keep saying that killing a murderer is cruel because it inflicts a certain amount of pain on him. Let us consider the absurdity of this position.
First, it’s not up to the courts to decide this issue, it’s strictly legislative. Second, even if you’re an atheist, what’s the real difference between death by lethal injection and death from old age? Personally, death by lethal injection is much more humane than requiring someone live in Leavenworth Prison for thirty, forty, fifty or more years.
Technically, the bulk of this section shouldn’t even be in a constitution. Most of this is statutory in nature. Because the courts have become havens for the personal agendas of the judges, it’s necessary to spell it out for them and remove so much of their discretionary powers.
§3.03 through §3.05
Juries. Part of the problem with the lack of justice is the ability of the court to disallow citizens to participate on a jury on a whim, and that potential jurors can escape jury duty for any reason or no reason and without good cause shown. Actually, this, as certain other sections, shouldn’t be in a constitution. This should be a statute. However, the phrase, “why would you want a jury of people too stupid to get out of jury duty,” is all too true.
Judges and attorneys do not want anyone educated to sit on a jury, nor do they want anyone who may view the facts dispassionately. They all want an easy resolution by either overwhelming the jury with so much crap that they take the easy way out or they appeal to their emotions to get huge jury awards. Quick proof: there is no substantial evidence as to what causes cerebral palsy. The Plaintiff’s bar has made themselves billions of dollars by appealing to the emotions of jurors. The widow of a man who used Vioxx for less than nine months and then died of heart failure, is certainly not entitled to $50,000,000 for the loss of his life’s earnings and consortium, much less a punitive award of $250,000,000 when the evidence so clearly shows that the patient must take Vioxx for over 24 months to have any serious side effects. A jury made up of people from the community, college graduates as well as high school drop-outs, men and women, probably would not have come to that decision.
When one looks to Europe, we see that in these kinds of cases, an economic assessment is made for the bereaved family and that’s what they receive, and, if the manufacturer is found to have been negligent, the corporate leaders are charged with manslaughter and do time if convicted. Here, we try to keep things on the economic plane, keeping in mind fair play, equity and justice, which the courts disallow.
By having juries defined and the community protected by these rules, and the pecuniary interests of the judges and attorneys completely removed from the litigation process, justice will become the norm and injustice an aberration.
§3.07 through 3.09
These are self explanatory. The section on not allowing criminals more rights that citizens is fairly well covered above. The penalties’ section simply removes the undesirables from staying on the bench.
More Reasoning
Another quick proof of the malignant intentional negligence of the court system, and one which is about to cost the taxpayer trillions of dollars, is the allowance into the court system of a suit for reparations by people alleging to be descended from slaves, here in the United States. This gross injustice is so rife with illegal and non-judicial forms that it must be commented on.
A quick historical background on slavery in the western hemisphere has been pointed out above. In addition, it’s necessary to point out that the people who profited from slavery include all those northern states who provided the ships and ports, and agents in Africa who bought the slaves originally and those that took Federal Dollars to improve roads and canals, those Federal Dollars being tax revenue from primarily southern states. However, just to point out the legalistic nonsense involved and allowed in this suit, read on:
First, in order to file the suit, you must be the one injured. No one in this country can claim to have had his labor stolen by the government. The United States Government has never owned slaves and, in fact, when Lincoln tried to avert the War of 1861 by asking congress to buy the slaves, he was told that the federal government wasn’t allowed to own slaves, even for the limited purpose of manumission. When Lincoln proposed to buy the slaves from the slave states that had stayed loyal, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, & Delaware, his purpose to prove that the war was being fought to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves, which was an unconstitutional purpose, he was told that the necessary and proper clause wasn’t broad enough to allow congress to spend the money that way and that the spending clause also prohibited this purchase. His decision to free the slaves through The Emancipation Proclamation was allowed only because it didn’t apply to the United States but to a foreign nation with which the United States was at war and because it was not a government action, but an action by the military applying only to an enemy state! So, nowhere in the 220 year history of the United States has the United States owned slaves. Plaintiff’s lack standing for this reason alone.
Second, you must be the damaged one. Reparations suits have been allowed by the courts where the plaintiffs have been Japanese-Americans wrongfully incarcerated during WW II and for Jews and others against Germany and Swiss Banks for the theft of goods and labor. There is also a suit being considered against Japan by WW II veterans who were used as forced labor to build roads, bridges and work in factories, where, again, only those living have been allowed in as parties, none of their descendants. In this suit, no one originally a slave is a plaintiff.
Third is the all-necessary parties rule. In order to provide justice, you must make all those liable parties to the suit. Generally, this is considered a class action suit. Now, let’s look at those actually liable in the reparations issue: First, those who took the original peoples into slavery, according to the actual facts and records, were 80% African Tribesmen who took other tribesmen into slavery, a practice that still goes on today. Not one African tribe or country is included as a defendant. Secondly, there were those who transported the slaves, primarily Boston and Providence shippers, none who’ve been made defendants.
In such a suit, all the plaintiffs must be included or given the chance to be included. Everyone has seen the ads in Reader’s Digest and TV Guide, where you need to file as a plaintiff in one of the asbestos suits, or breast implants, or Vioxx. The same joining of parties is necessary in this suit. Since this is a suit for reparations for some ancestor having been a slave, then just about everyone should be a plaintiff because somewhere in your history, and mine someone was a slave to somebody. Being Polish, several generations of my ancestors were enslaved as serfs by the Russians; a serf being worse off than a slave because a slave has value and a serf is only part of the land, like a tree or a rock. If this reparations suit were reasonable, then we’d all be plaintiffs and every institution, business and government would be a defendant. Simply as a matter of law, it’s a necessity to include all necessary parties. Not done here.
Further, in order to be just, only those who originally owned slaves can be assessed damages. My grandparents came to this country to get away from the war. I’m second generation. To the best of my knowledge, no one in my family has ever owned slaves, but in fact, have been Russian Serfs. I should be a plaintiff. On the side of defendants, in order to be just, a study would have to be made as to who was here before 1866 when slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, as well as who is actually descended from an actual American slave owner. And, someone had better include those blacks descended from that 32% of slave owners who were black.
Next is the issue of Statute of Limitations. If these people who were not damaged by slavery are entitled to bring suit over one hundred and fifty years after the last occurrence, then everyone can bring suit against anyone and everyone for any reason at any time regardless of law or reason. The Statute of Limitation for a suit of stolen labor is less than ten years in Missouri. This means that any suit filed after 1876 should be dismissed for un-timeliness.
Next is the issue of Cause of Action. Is this really a suit for damages for discrimination or for forced labor? Forced labor is really a States’ issue and should not be in Federal Court for that reason alone. If this is a discrimination issue, then where are the Amer-Indians, Chinese and Caucasian descendants necessary for adjudication?
Damages must be for a sum certain or there must be some method of determining damages. In this suit there is no reasonable formula for computation of damages. In fact, there is no formulation for who should receive those damages if it becomes possible to ascertain them. Less than 60% of the blacks living in the United States today are descended from American slaves. How is the court supposed to determine who collects what.
Along with the issue of damages is mitigation of damages. How is the court going to count the monies spent by congress on welfare, affirmative action, EEO &c., or the monies given to charities or The National Negro College Fund, &c, by whites and others, against any spurious damages? Impossible.
Best yet, whom can they collect against? All the slave owners and their property are long gone. Under the 1787 Constitution, the court does not have the authority to order the Government to pay damages caused by private individuals, only congress can do that and only for a legitimate reason. Any order by the court to pay from tax revenue is unconstitutional on its face. The suit should have been dismissed as not in the jurisdiction of the court, but in fact a legislative issue. And Congress is forbidden to pass Bills of Attainder and Ex Post Facto laws. Meaning, you can’t post date a law back one minute, much less 160 years or more, just because you want to. And, the court has no jurisdiction in this matter.
Instead the people of the United States, over 95% who have no involvement in the issue, are staring at a lawsuit, or not because the mainstream media hasn’t reported this suit, are going to be out trillions of dollars.
One thing not mentioned above, is that the lawyers involved will make a fortune on this bogus suit. The court will award attorney’s fees to the lawyers. Article II removes the litigating federal attorneys from all temptation of financial gain through misapplication of law or procedure. Even in a case where the court feels that the suit needs more lawyers, in Kansas City alone, there are over 200 lawyers available for temporary work at $23.00 per hour, no benefits other than overtime, so additional lawyers, not U.S. Attorneys, are readily available at reasonable rates, as temps.
These changes are necessary for justice and to stop the millionaire jury lottery that our courts have become. Make a group of people not smart enough to get out of jury duty sympathetic, and regardless of law and fact, become an instant multi-millionaire with the lawyers getting up to 60% as their fee. (State of Missouri allows 60% to attorneys in contingent fee cases.)
Nope, these changes are not only necessary, they are righteous.
[From Article II, The Legislature:]
§1.08.01 The House shall have the following Standing Committees with the responsibilities as delineated therein, plus those others to be delegated and revocable to them by The People, and in The Senate revocable by The States:
§1.08.01a Judiciary
§1.08.01a(i) Within thirty (30) days of a decision by The Supreme Court on any Constitutional Issue, or Interpretation of a law passed by congress, this committee will recommend either the acceptance of the court’s interpretation in its entirety, acceptance of a part of the interpretation remanding the remainder for the court to reconsider, for which it will have no more than ten (10) days to submit a re-interpretation for this committee to reconsider, or reject the court’s interpretation in its entirety in which case the court will have ten (10) days to resubmit its decision; this committee shall have the privilege, not right, of suggesting to The Court a more appropriate decision
§1.08.01a(ii) When the committee has decided to accept the court’s interpretation in its entirety, it will then submit to The Congress the Court’s decision for its approval
§1.08.01a(iii) The Congress will then, as a committee of the whole, decide to accept or reject the Judiciary Committee’s Report. In the event of a rejection, The Congress shall have thirty (30) days to write and pass by a 60% majority of the Quorum of the entire Congress, a decision that will then be the final decision as to the interpretation of this Constitution or of the Federal law in question
§1.08.01a(iv) The Judiciary Committees shall recommend the appointment of all Federal Judges and Attorneys from the appropriate lists provided to them by The President to The Congress
§1.08.01a(iv)A Appointments must be made within thirty (30) days of a position becoming vacant
§1.08.01a(iv)B Appointments must be made from and only from the pre-existing list of candidates provided by The President, said lists further defined in Article II, The Executive
§1.08.01a(v) The Judiciary Committees will be responsible for recommending to The Congress for its approval all Rules of Civil Procedure, Rules of Criminal Procedure, and Rules of Evidence, keeping in mind the recommendations of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and also that of The Executive as submitted by The Attorney General of the United States, but neither shall they be bound by such recommendations
§1.08.01a(vi) The Judiciary Committees shall be responsible for the recommendation of Impeachment of Federal Judges and U.S. Attorneys, when called for by a Writ of Impeachment from either the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or by The Executive or by themselves, or by the Legislature of the State in which the Judge or Attorney is assigned
§1.08.01a(vi)A Said Writ shall clearly state the breach of this Constitution alleged, the evidence supporting the Writ, or, present the Conviction of Felony requiring said judge’s or attorney’s dismissal as required in Article III of this Constitution
§1.08.01a(vi)B If said Writ is presented by a state’s legislature, the Writ must have been voted approved by 75% of both houses of that legislature, 75% of the full legislature, not 75% of the quorum
§1.08.01a(vii) At the direction of The Congress shall provide all other oversight necessary to prevent the court from legislating
1.08 Required Committees and their responsibilities
Specific Committees designed to do certain things. The Founding Fathers, as noted in the preceding comment, had limitations on the franchise. They believed that certain issues, even those that were unpopular or messy, would be properly handled because congress would be made up of responsible people. Two Hundred and Twenty years have shown us otherwise. Just look at the number who routinely bounce checks. Look at the pork. Look at the current spitefulness & partisanship wrangling, over 9/11 and the Iraq Vote. Look to Obamacare and all of the waivers; and, if that’s not enough, go read Throw Them All Out, for the insider trading, legal for congress, illegal for you and me.
Look at the National Debt, or don’t. Whether you do or don’t, YOU owe over $100,000, as does each man, woman, and child who’s a citizen in this country. We’ve got this debt because members of the congress created by the 1787 constitution, are irresponsible and represent only special interest groups and most particularly not the middle-class taxpayer. (The current National Debt is over 16.75 Trillion Dollars – $16,750,000,000,000.00 now divide by 300,000,000 and that’s how much each individual owes, and really, who’s going to pay that money off? )
In recent history various congressional responsibilities have been ignored and the executive and judicial branches have stepped into the vacuum. Roe v Wade is only one public example of such. The Dred Scott Decision, for those who are actually familiar with it, is another. Almost every decision of John Marshall’s, starting with Marbury v Madison, has been a lurid and successful attempt at taking power away from the people. Reading from The Federalist it seems that the Founding Fathers would have approved. Reading from the works represented in The Anti-Federalist, The Massachusetts Plan, and those speeches in Congress from about 1820 through 1860, as well as the constitutional debates themselves (1787), it’s shown that the 1787 constitution became terminally ill with Marbury.
In both sets of essays and such works as Calhoun’s A Disquisition on Government and Geo Washington Letters to Bushrod Washington and the various letters of such note-worthies as Senator/President Jefferson Davis, Senator Stephen Douglas, President Abraham Lincoln, President John Adams, President Thomas Jefferson, et al, congress is MEANT to supersede the Supreme Court and the Executive. Instead, for fear of offending some special interest group back home, much power has left the people by the ineptitude and cowardice of the national legislators.
By having specific duties and responsibilities spelt out, The Congress cannot but do its duty and fulfill its obligations to the nation. The questions of constitutionality of abortion would’ve been answered within six months; Spiro Agnew would’ve gone to jail a lot sooner; the National Debt would be a lot less; a $500,000,000 bridge to nowhere in Alaska wouldn’t exist; Cindy Sheehan and now Sandra Fluke, wouldn’t be in the news ad nauseum.
An historical aside is that before the Marshalistas got control of the Supreme Court, constitutional issues were put to the jury, not to a judge or appellate court with its own agenda.
The Fusion Party
May 30, 2017 10:35 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review
The Democrats are following the lead of the progressive media — together, they now form the anti-Trump brigade.
Is there a Democratic-party alternative to President Trump’s tax plan?
Is there a Democratic congressional proposal to stop the hemorrhaging and impending implosion of Obamacare?
Do Democrats have some sort of comprehensive package to help the economy grow or to deal with the recent doubling of the national debt?
What is the Democratic alternative to Trump’s apparent foreign policy of pragmatic realism or his neglect of entitlement reform?
The answers are all no, because for all practical purposes there is no Democratic party as we have traditionally known it.
It is no longer a liberal (a word now replaced by progressive) political alternative to conservatism as much as a cultural movement fueled by coastal elites, academics, celebrities — and the media. Its interests are not so much political as cultural. True to its new media identity, the Democratic party is against anything Trump rather than being for something. It seeks to shock and entertain in the fashion of a red-carpet celebrity or MSNBC talking head rather than to legislate or formulate policy as a political party.
The result is that in traditional governing terms, the Democratic party has recalibrated itself into near political impotency. Barack Obama ended the centrism of Bill Clinton and with it the prior Democratic comeback (thanks to the third-party candidacies of Ross Perot) from the disastrous McGovern, Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis years.
Indeed, Obama’s celebrity-media/identity-politics/community-organizing model brought him more new voters than the old voters he lost — but so far, his new political paradigm has not proven transferable to any other national candidates. No wonder that over the eight years of the Obama administration, Democrats lost the majority of the state legislatures, the governorships, local offices, the Senate, the House, the presidency, and, probably, the Supreme Court.
Most Democratic leaders are dynastic and geriatric: Bernie Sanders (75), Hillary Clinton (69), Elizabeth Warren (67), Diane Feinstein (83), Nancy Pelosi (77), Steny Hoyer (77), or Jerry Brown (79). They are hardly spry enough to dance to the party’s new “Pajama Boy” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” music.
Yet those not past their mid-sixties appear unstable, such as the potty-mouth DNC head Tom Perez and his assistant, the volatile congressman Keith Ellison. Or they still believe it is 2008 and they can rally yet again around “hope and change” and Vero possumus. That politicos are talking about an amateurish Chelsea Clinton as a serious future candidate reflects the impoverishment of Democratic political talent.
In such a void, a traditionally progressive media, including the entertainment industry, stepped in and fused with what is left of the Democratic party to form the new opposition to the Republican party and in particular to Donald Trump. The aim now is to alter culture through the courts and pressure groups rather than to make laws.
A disinterested observer would have seen that the Democratic antidote to Trumpism was a return to Bill Clinton’s focus on working-class, pocketbook issues — the issues that might win back swing voters in the proverbially blue-wall states. But that won’t happen. The Democratic party is now in the hands of Obama progressives, who in turn follow the lead of the hip, cool, and outraged media that have no responsibility other than to appear hip and cool and outraged. Trump apparently understands that and so focuses most of his invective not against a tired Nancy Pelosi or the shrill Chuck Schumer but at the major networks, mainstream newspapers, and Hollywood celebrities — the heart now of the progressive fusion party.
Trump’s strategy is understandable. A recent study released by the Harvard Kennedy School and Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy reported that in Trump’s first 100 days, 80 percent of major-media news coverage was negative (double the figure during President Obama’s first three months). More important, anti-Trump news constituted 41 percent of all media news coverage, a percentage three times greater than coverage accorded prior presidents. In clinical terms, we might call that an obsession.
If it were not for Fox News’s much caricatured “fair and balanced” coverage (52 percent of its Trump coverage was negative, Harvard reported) to average in with other major print and television media, the anti-Trump bias would have been far greater — given that CNN and NBC ran almost no media coverage that portrayed Trump in a positive light (their coverage was 93 percent negative).
The symptoms of the Media-Democratic party fusion range from the trivial to the profound. The merger is emblematized by the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, which has now fully morphed from a self-congratulatory night for Washington media insiders to a star-studded Petronian banquet of progressive celebrities.
Operationally, the celebrity world and the media have institutionalized political obscenity and street theater. On Inauguration Day, Madonna dreamed out loud of blowing up the White House; Ashley Judd went on a crude, incoherent rant about Trump. Since then, media fixtures such as Steven Colbert and Bill Maher have melted down, the one suggesting on the air that Trump had committed a sex act on Vladimir Putin, the other that he commits incest with his daughter. Yet both were simply amplifying the prior gross slur from Politico reporter Julia Joffe: “Either Trump is f***ing his daughter, or he’s shirking nepotism laws. Which is worse?”
Democrats in Congress and party functionaries have parroted the media’s obscenity and its pettiness. Sixty-seven representatives boycotted the inauguration. A new Democratic-party T-shirt reads “Democrats Give a S*** About People.” The head of the DNC, Tom Perez, routinely uses “s***” as if he were a stand-up on late-night TV. John Burton finished chairing the California Democratic convention with group chants of “f*** Trump,” with collective outstretched middle fingers.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) cried out that if the Democrats could not offer an antidote to Trump, then “we should go the f*** home.” California senator Kamala Harris, supposed icon of the future of the party, rushed in with her own four-letter obscenities.
Celebrity ex-felon Martha Stewart thinks it’s hip to flip the bird to a photo of Donald Trump while simultaneously flipping the V-sign to an image of rapper Snoop Dogg, the violent ex-felon and former pimp who was most recently in the news for shooting an effigy of Donald Trump. Obscenity has become the media tail wagging the Democratic-party dog, even though such vulgarity might shock television audiences rather than win voters.
Note also the media’s idea of the “Resistance” to Trump, as if multimillionaire celebrities attacking Trump while camped out in the scrub of the Hollywood hills were our version of the World War II maquisards who ambushed Waffen SS patrols in rural France. After the media hyped the “Resistance,” even sore-loser Hillary Clinton piled on that she too had enlisted. Role playing, rumor peddling, and virtue signaling, in lieu of winning elections and offices, are for now the new Democratic agendas.
Instead of formulating policy, the fusion party targets its opponents in Whac-A-Mole fashion. After moving on from the smear of First Lady Melania Trump as an illegal alien and call girl, we went to Steve Bannon, the Charles Lindbergh–style fascist; then Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the duplicitous Russian patsy; on to daughter Ivanka Trump, the incestuous peddler of trinkets; then to National Security Council member Sebastian Gorka, the Hungarian Nazi sympathizer; and now presidential adviser Jared Kushner, the Russian collaborator. Each “scandal” got its 15 minutes of cable-news outrage and unhinged tweets from celebrities, before the wolf cries howled on to the next target.
The media brag that they now more or less run the Democratic agenda. Univision’s Jorge Ramos (whose daughter worked for the Hillary Clinton campaign) recently thundered:
Our position, I think, has to be much more aggressive. And we should not expect the Democrats to do that job. It is our job. If we don’t question the president, if we don’t question his lies, if we don’t do it, who is going to do it? It’s an uncomfortable position.
In other words, Ramos confessed that the Democratic party apparently has neither new ideas nor a political agenda that would win over the public, and thus self-appointed journalistic grandees like him would have to step forward and lead the anti-Trump opposition as they shape the news.
Fellow panelist and CNN’s media correspondent Brian Stelter answered Ramos, “You’re almost saying we’re a stand-in for the Democrats.” Thereby, Stelter inadvertently confirmed Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon’s widely criticized but prescient assertion that the media are in fact “the opposition party” — and should be treated as such.
During the 2016 campaign, James Rutenberg of the New York Times reminded journalists that they should feel no need to treat the exceptional Trump candidacy by “normal standards,” a de facto admission that journalistic crusaders would take the political lead in opposing Trump. Christiane Amanpour said nearly the same thing in reference to Trump’s stance on global warming: Journalists are now to be advocates, not disinterested reporters of the news.
In the matter of the Podesta WikiLeaks trove, it was often difficult to determine whether reporters such as Glenn Thrush and Dana Milbank were colluding with the reelection efforts of Hillary Clinton, or whether an inept campaign without ideas had turned to such reporters and columnists to develop its campaign talking points and strategies.
When Thrush was caught massaging his stories with the Clinton campaign and confessed himself to be a hack, he received a career boost: The New York Times hired him. The message seemed to be that more reporters should do what the Democrats could not. The common theme of the Obama-era Journolist, Ben Rhodes’s “echo chamber,” the Washington Beltway power media/politics marriages and sibling connections, and the WikiLeaks revelations was that the media and the Democratic party were more or less indistinguishable.
Most of Hillary Clinton’s agendas and campaign themes were not policy-oriented; nor did they grow from a coherent and detailed political ideology shared by Democratic officials. Instead, Hillary Clinton modeled her talking points on media-driven agitprop such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and global-warming activism.
Yet outside Hollywood, New York, and Washington, the issues facing voters are not income redistribution, transgendered bathrooms, the division of Americans by race, or the radical alteration of the economy to supposedly address recent climate change induced by carbon emissions. In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in late 2016, the media earned only a 19 percent favorable rating, which raises the question of whether the fusion between Democrats and the media is the old party’s salvation or suicide.
Donald Trump has been given a great gift in that his gaffes are seen by most Americans in the context of an obsessed and unhinged Democratic-media nexus. He is pitted against a new fusion party of media elites and aging political functionaries, who all believe that America should operate on their norms, the norms of Washington, New York, Hollywood, and Malibu — all places that symbolize, to most Americans, exactly how the country has gone wrong.
[What is as important and should be mentioned, is that the Left no longer believes in democracy. We voted, they voted, we got GOP/ Conservative officials, stop crying and respect the vote.
Further, reported today, is that thousands have voted in VA who are not U.S. citizens. A new commission is looking into voter fraud. Remember, after Hillary lost, there was an outcry to check the vote and in Detroit they found hundreds of illegals had voted.]
The Obamas and the Clinton Road to Perdition
May 30, 2017 9:16 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
By Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
Hillary and Bill Clinton were a proud, progressive power couple who came into big-time state politics on promises of promoting “fairness” and “equality.” It did not matter much that very little in their previous personal lives had matched such elevated rhetoric with concrete action. And so the ironies and tragedies that followed were not altogether unexpected.
The theme that united the subsequent tawdry reports about the Clinton cattle futures scam and Whitewater was an overweening lust for money. The Clintons seemed to feel entitled, in the sense that their education, sophistication, and taste deserved the sort of peace of mind, enjoyment, and security that only comfortable circumstances could provide, and which was taken for granted among the rich progressive environments in which the Clintons increasingly navigated. They had arrived and they “deserved” it.
In 2001, we are supposed to believe, the Clintons left office “dead broke” as the result of their sacrifices as first family. In Hillary’s words, they were scarcely able to afford the various mortgages on their homes with which they had been encumbered (“we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses”).
Given an ever greater need for cash beyond a mere government pension, given that from 2001 onward they had something to sell beyond Bill as a “wise-man” president emeritus (i.e., Hillary’s New York Senate career as a springboard to a second Clinton presidency), and given their innate characters (or perhaps their hamartiai), the next years were predictable. After 2001, the long arc of their moral universe bent toward personal aggrandizement through the Clinton Foundation, pay-for-play State Department favors, and $10,000-20,000-a minute rah-rah speeches to rich people eager to leverage the next episode of Clinton influence peddling.
Such smart, capable, self-assured, and haughty people are the stuff of Greek tragedy, and its warnings about the descent from hubris (overweening arrogance) to atê (unhinged madness) to nemesis (divine retribution and downfall).
At the denouement of most tragedies. the figures who survive the wrath of the gods—and who are not themselves beheaded or slain by their own hands—are sometimes enlightened by their destruction, rediscover some purpose, acquire an appreciation of pathei mathos (wisdom through pain) and find peaceful redemption.
People like the Clintons—or for that matter Euripides’s characters such as Jason (Medea) or King Pentheus (Bacchae)—are oblivious to the ultimate and preordained trajectories of their fates. Hillary Clinton has ended up a two-time failed presidential candidate, stained with money grubbing scandals and chronic deceit, who blew huge leads in 2008 and 2016, despite being the beneficiary of unprecedented cash, campaign consultants, and party endorsements. She has sacrificed her health, her reputation, and her very life to do everything politically right, which was not only ethically wrong but also proved, in good Athenian tragic fashion, politically disastrous. (Tragic figures, remember, do anything and everything they can to pursue an ambitious sense of self—and thereby only ensure that they can never obtain it.)
A gaunt Dorian Gray-like Bill Clinton in his twilight is indeed tragic. He may have the sins of the flesh written all over his face, but he had also convinced himself at one point in his life that his undeniable political cunning, education, and folksy charm could be put to use for noble purposes beyond the tawdry sex, chronic lying, and narcissism that were his brands. But after the scandals, the impeachment, the pardons, the Foundation miasma, the quid pro quo speaking fees, the Lolita Express, the disastrous campaign interventions for Hillary from 2008 to the tarmac scene with Loretta Lynch, the petty rivalries and double-dealing, optics reflect that there is nothing much left of a once dynamic president but an empty shell.
At the denouement of most tragedies. the figures who survive the wrath of the gods—and who are not themselves beheaded or slain by their own hands—are sometimes enlightened by their destruction, rediscover some purpose, acquire an appreciation of pathei mathos (wisdom through pain) and find peaceful redemption. And perhaps Bill and Hillary, after the wreckage of 2016, might still earn pity and end up like an elderly but sympathetic Oedipus at Colonus.
The departing Obamas should study and learn from the Clinton dual tragedies.
Jason and Medea charming the sleepless dragon of the golden fleece. Giovanni Battista Crosato. (1697-1756)
So far they have already shared uncanny affinities to the early- and mid-careers of Bill and Hillary. Like the Clintons, the Obamas were of the middle-class, Ivy-League trained lawyers, and committed progressives. Similarly, they returned to their Midwest homes to establish local political identities, in order eventually to springboard back to the always favored eastern coastal corridor of culture and power.
Like the Clintons, the Obamas had a unique message that reverberated well beyond progressives: the first African-American president trumped perhaps even the selling-point of the first woman president. Both couples were hip, and helped to redefine the new Democratic Party as the natural home of Wall Street billionaires, Silicon Valley masters of the universe, and celebrity activists. Goldman Sachs and rap music are now complementary, in the manner ostentatious golf gear is now iconic of youthful vigor and not of suburban apartheid.
Like the Clintons, the Obamas felt that their education and progressive caring had unfairly denied them just compensation (cf. Michelle’s chronic “raise the bar” lamentations, and her “downright mean” country, “never been proud” unhappiness). And like the Clintons, their marriage seemed at times as much the fruit of professional legal training, shared ambitions and liberal politics as it is of a bond forged in love and devotion.
Bill always enjoyed good times and was a gifted crammer, in the way that Barack once confessed that he was prone to laziness (“I think there is a laziness in me”). His body man Reggie Love claimed that Obama had a propensity for killing time, such as playing cards on the day of the bin Laden raid.
In contrast, Hillary and Michelle supposedly goaded their husbands onward. Both were sometimes hammered in the press for their dourness, temper tantrums, tough talk, and even more left-wing agendas, and who were protective of their daughters in the sense that they might someday rightfully follow the political pathways of their fathers.
Such angst (as in the case of the Clintons) occasionally led the pre-presidential Obamas to get mixed up with their own petite versions of impropriety (the opportunistic nexus between Michelle’s high-salaried raises and Barack’s steady political advancement) or disreputable Jim McDougal-like hangers-on, such as the felonious low-income housing lord and Obama campaign fundraiser Tony Rezko and his unreported discounted sale to the Obamas of an expanded backyard.
Like the Clintons, the Obamas survived scandals in office that might have imploded doctrinaire conservatives (Fast and Furious, the surveillance of the Associated Press journalists and Fox News’s James Rosen, Benghazi, the NSA taps, the Clinton email fiasco, the politicization of the IRS, the likely unmasking of surveilled political opponents, and assorted tawdry incidents at the General Services Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Secret Service.)
The Obamas—unlike the Carters, the Reagans, and the Bushes—have decided to stay in the Washington-New York corridor. They have bought a Clinton-like mansion and plan to remain directly engaged in domestic politics, by focusing opposition against their successors. The Clintons might remind them that being a hooked political junkie is not as easy or as post-presidential as easing into the role of a senior statesman.
Now, like the Clintons, the Obamas are leaving the presidency at a similarly young age (Bill was not yet 55 when he left office, Barack is 55) and eager to monetize years of public service and apparent progressive selflessness. The Obamas certainly enjoy the same press adulation and popularity that met the Clintons in 2001.
They should now pause and read Euripides.
One of the first things Barack Obama did after leaving office was to jet off to Tahiti to enjoy a month of downtime (for the majority of the sojourn reportedly alone) with sybarite California multimillionaires and celebrities on yachts while staying in multi-thousand-dollar-a-night paradisiac digs. Bill Clinton long ago wrote the primer on all that.
The Obamas—unlike the Carters, the Reagans, and the Bushes—have decided to stay in the Washington-New York corridor. They have bought a Clinton-like mansion and plan to remain directly engaged in domestic politics, by focusing opposition against their successors. The Clintons might remind them that being a hooked political junkie is not as easy or as post-presidential as easing into the role of a senior statesman.
Like the Clintons, the Obamas have signed his-and-hers book deals, reportedly for somewhere between $60 and $65 million, topping the Bill and Hillary volumes that in aggregate won advances of little more than half that sum.
We should assume that, like the Clinton tomes, the Obamas will rely heavily on ghostwriters—and aside from some score-settling and self-congratulation, will publish mostly uncontroversial, “inspirational” Clinton-like accounts of their White House tribulations and their speaking truth to the power of the Neanderthal right.
Like the Clintons, the Obamas have discovered that a presidential couple must have a foundation. And so “The Obama Foundation” now follows in the footsteps of the Clinton Foundation, boasting of its noble ambitions (“we will have projects all over the city, the country, and the world”) in the universal fashion of the once heralded Clinton Global Initiative.
Unlike presidential foundations other than the Clintons’, its potential earnings will be enhanced by the fact that both Obamas are going to stay active in national politics, and that Michelle has been mentioned as both a possible senate candidate (think Hillary in New York) and a national officer seeker (think Hillary in 2008 and 2016). Again, the paradigm may be Clintonian—leveraging big money to the foundation that in the Clinton calculus could serve as a convenient prop to keep otherwise unemployable surrogates paid until the next campaign, and to provide the sort of free private jet travel to which the Obamas now feel entitled.
Of course, central to the Clinton blueprint was big-money from Wall Street speaking gigs. Obama just earned $400,000 for a speech, and, reportedly, has signed on for more. Like the Clintons, he will square the circle that once upon a time, as a progressive in good standing, he fired lots of anti-Wall-Street/free market bullets (“now is not the time for profits”, “at some point you’ve made enough money” [$60 million?], or “you didn’t build that”).
Thus Obama can facilitate that paradox with the proven Clinton wink-and-nod formula (a cynical Wall Street knows that it has prospered as never before under progressives like Obama, that liberal anti-wealthy invective is as scripted as it is irrelevant, and that in the future an Obama may well have political clout worth investing in).
The Obamas, as progressives, are exempt from the hypocrisies of both decrying and leveraging wealth. And they know that the Democratic Party has used hip and cool as cover for rich and privileged. Indeed, they are already half-way along the Clinton post-presidential arc.
Still, they should pause, reflect, and remember where that bend of the Clinton moral universe ultimately ends up.
What We Remember on Memorial Day
May 25, 2017 12:59 pm / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
The obligation to honor the war dead has often conflicted with the need to make distinctions among them and their causes
By Victor Davis Hanson// Wall Street Journal
A few years ago I was honored to serve briefly on the American Battle Monuments Commission, whose chief duty is the custodianship of American military cemeteries abroad. Over 125,000 American dead now rest in these serene parks, some 26 in 16 countries. Another 94,000 of the missing are commemorated by name only. The graves (mostly fatalities of World Wars I and II) are as perfectly maintained all over the world, from Tunisia to the Philippines, as those of the war dead who rest in the well-manicured acres of the U.S. military cemetery in Arlington, Va.
A world away from the white marble statuary, crosses, Stars of David, noble inscriptions and manicured greenery of these cemeteries is the stark 246-foot wall of polished igneous rock of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the mall in Washington. On its black surfaces are etched 58,307 names of American dead in Vietnam. They are listed in the chronological order of their deaths. The melancholy wall, birthed in bitter controversy at its inception in 1982, emphasizes tragedy more than American confidence in its transcendent values—as if to warn the nation that the agenda of Vietnam was not quite that of 1917 and 1941.
The Vietnam War may have reopened with special starkness the question of how to honor our fallen dead, but it is hardly a new problem in our history. As today’s disputes over the legacy of the Civil War and the Confederacy suggest, it has never been enough just to lament the sacrifice and carnage of our wars, whether successful or failed. We feel the need to honor the war dead but also to make distinctions among them, elevating those who served noble causes while passing judgment on their foes. This is not an exclusively American impulse. It has deep roots in the larger Western tradition of commemoration, and no era—certainly not our own—has managed to escape its complexities and paradoxes.
Our own idea of Memorial Day originated as “Decoration Day,” the post-Civil War tradition, in both the North and the South, of decorating the graves of the war dead. That rite grew out of the shock and trauma of the Civil War. In the conflict’s first major battle at Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) there were likely more American casualties (about 24,000 dead, wounded and missing on both sides) than in all the nation’s prior wars combined since its founding.
The shared ordeal of the Civil War, with some 650,000 fatalities, would eventually demand a unified national day of remembrance. Memorial Day began as an effort to square the circle in honoring America’s dead—without privileging the victors or their cause. The approach of the summer holidays seemed the most appropriate moment to heal our civic wounds. The timing suggested renewal and continuity, whereas an autumn or winter date might add unduly to the grim lamentation of the day.
But could the distinctions so crucial to war itself really be suppressed? Consider the themes of the two greatest speeches in the history of Western oratory: Pericles’ long Funeral Oration for the Athenian dead of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, delivered in 431 B.C. and amounting to some 3,000 words in most translations; and nearly 2,300 years later, President Abraham Lincoln’s 272-word Gettysburg Address of 1863.
An illustration of Pericles’ Funeral Oration.
An illustration of Pericles’ Funeral Oration. Photo: Alamy
Both statesmen agree that the mere words of the present generation cannot do justice to the sacrifice of the fallen young. Lincoln sees the talking and the living as less authentic commemorators than the mute dead: “We can not consecrate—we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”
Pericles argues that even a notable such as himself has almost no right to assess the sacrifices of the dead: “I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperiled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill.”
By their ultimate sacrifice—what Lincoln calls “the last full measure of devotion”—the mute war dead argue that even heroic men are less important than the eternal values of freedom and democracy that “shall not perish from the earth.” Such chauvinism assumes that democracies are by nature superior to the alternatives. Thus to Pericles, Athens was the “school of Hellas” and for Lincoln America was “a new nation, conceived in Liberty.”
For both orators, the dead are the natural link between self-sacrificing forefathers and the present generation’s own progeny, who at some future date may be called upon to emulate those who have died to perpetuate the nation. In this view, we are not quite unique individuals but part of a larger generation whose values and accomplishments are to be judged collectively and in comparison to what came before and will follow.
‘Both Pericles and Lincoln see war and its evils as tragically innate to the human experience.’
Finally, both Pericles and Lincoln see war and its evils as tragically innate to the human experience. Conflict will demand sacrifices, in varying degrees, from each successive generation of free peoples. As the philosopher George Santayana more pessimistically put it, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Both orators suggest that democracies and republics will always be the natural targets of aggressors who see their freedom as weakness to be exploited rather than as magnanimity to be appreciated.
The Western tradition of commemoration also includes a unique idea of individual moral exemption. As first articulated by Pericles, we overlook any defects of character of the war dead, attributing to one brief moment of ultimate sacrifice the power to wash away all prior moral faults.
A noble death serves, in the words of Pericles, as “a cloak to cover a man’s other imperfections; since the good action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual.” The great playwright Aeschylus wanted his epitaph to read only that he was a veteran of the Athenian victory at Marathon—a battle where his brother fell.
These themes still resonate in our own habits and rites. This Memorial Day the flags on graves in American cemeteries set the dead apart, in a special moral category that discourages any discussion of the bothersome details of their short lives.
‘We now tend to see the Confederate dead as faceless emblems of larger causes.’
Pericles and Lincoln assume that the sacrifice of the war dead is enhanced by the nobility of their cause and the victories they have won. In the age of the Parthenon and Sophocles, democratic Athenians considered themselves superior to oligarchic Spartans, seeing vindication in their early successes (Athens would go on to lose the war 26 years after the great speech of Pericles). Similarly, the Union believed itself the moral better of the slaveholding South and would march to triumph under that banner two years after Gettysburg.
For democratic peoples, it is difficult to separate victory and nobility from commemorations of the fallen. This is especially true when it comes to events that directly engage our own moral imperatives. In the case of the Civil War, we now tend to see the Confederate dead as faceless emblems of larger causes, not as unique individuals who wrestled with their own moral paradoxes. Yet we seem to think that future generations will not do the same to us, applying their own—possibly quite different—standards to the collective sacrifices of our generation.
Herodotus, the Greek historian of the Persian Wars, saw armed conflict as a tragedy for all warring parties precisely because it was central to the human experience and thus endless. In obscene fashion, war inverted the natural order of peacetime by compelling fathers to bury sons. Pericles bluntly reminded us that the tragedy is not when we the middle-aged and old die but when the youth do, “to whom a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its consequences.”
A portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
A portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Photo: Getty Images
Railing at the loss of the nation’s youth has thus long accompanied the tradition of praising noble sacrifice for a just cause. The historian Thucydides nearly wept over the young Athenians senselessly killed—in the wrong place, at the wrong time, on the wrong mission—by the tribes of wild Aetolia: “These were by far the best men in the city of Athens that fell during this war.” When Lincoln said of the dead that they “shall not have died in vain,” he implied that the sacrifices of the aggregate Union war dead by November 1863 would be for naught if the North lost the war.
The Roman lyric poet Horace in his Odes famously praised the ultimate contributions of Roman legionaries, declaring, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”: “It is a sweet and fitting thing to die on behalf of the fatherland.” Wilfred Owen, the English poet and veteran of the trenches of World War I (killed one week before the armistice), would have none of it. In the conclusion of his nightmarish signature poem, he bitterly channeled Horace:
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
After the Somme and Verdun, Owen no longer saw clear moral winners and losers, only endless carnage without hope of resolution: hence the “old Lie.” Similarly scornful was the poet and critic Randall Jarrell’s response to the contribution of Allied bombing to winning World War II. His poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” ends with the verse, “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”
‘We don’t mourn all war dead equally or find tragedy in every loss.’
Still, for all the carnage and senselessness in just and unjust wars alike, we don’t mourn all war dead equally or find tragedy in every loss. Certainly the SS officers who were buried at Bitburg, Germany—where President Ronald Reagan in 1985 caused a storm by visiting on the 40th anniversary of V-E Day—were connected to the horrors of Auschwitz. And while there is something understandable in solemn visits of Japanese officials to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo to honor the 2,466,532 names of the dead found in the Shinto shrine’s “Book of Souls,” many of those men left a trail of 20 million dead throughout Asia and the Pacific from 1931 to 1945.
I grew up in a Swedish-American family in which the name “Okinawa” went unmentioned, a campaign that was tactically unimaginative and strategically incoherent—and yet aimed at finally stopping a murderous imperial regime. My uncle and namesake, Victor Hanson, a corporal in the 6th Marine Division, was killed in the last hours of the last day of battle for Sugar Loaf Hill.
I inherited both Vic’s college athletic equipment and a Periclean admonition from my father (who himself flew on 39 missions over Japan in a B-29) to “live up to Vic”—without much elaboration other than the implicit advice that the only thing worse than fighting a dirty war on Okinawa would have been to lose it.
I visit Victor Hanson’s grave each Memorial Day in the nearby small California Central Valley farming town of Kingsburg, still in astonishment that such a mythical person, whom I never met, gave up his youth (and a long life ahead) for what we have now collectively become. Pericles hoped that such sacrifices would move the living of subsequent generations to a deeper appreciation of the greatness of Athens: “feed your eyes upon her from day to day, until love of her fills your hearts.”
On Memorial Day we should remember that all commemoration is underpinned by ambiguities about the causes, conduct and aims of particular wars. No one has captured the heartbreak of the war dead more effectively than the Marine memorialist E.B. Sledge, who wrote “With the Old Breed,” a horrific account of his nightmare on Peleliu and Okinawa.
Sledge is sometimes simplistically described as an antiwar voice (“So many dead. So many maimed. So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.”), but he did not end his gruesome story of combat with a universal denunciation of war. He finished instead with a solemn reminder—somewhere between Horace and Wilfred Owen—that circumstances count.
His words are worth recalling as we cast our eyes over the endless fields of tiny flags we will again see this Memorial Day on the graves of Americans who gave their all for us:
Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one’s responsibilities and be willing to make sacrifices for one’s country—as my comrades did. As the troops used to say, “If the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for.” With privilege goes responsibility.
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress (no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One Thousan Eight Hundred and Eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article) (no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate).
Texas has become the 11th State requesting a Constitutional Convention.
Those who have followed my posts, know that the 1787 Constitution has been nullified for over 100 years. The nullification took place through improper Supreme Court rulings, the failure of both the Executive Branch and the Legislature to fulfil their Constitutional obligations and responsibilities. The use of the regulatory process to pass to the Civil Service the duties of both branches in order to avoid the politically inconvenient has led to our current set of crises. The open borders, illegal legalization of drugs, murdering of police, abuse of taxes, theft from taxpayers for unconstitutional purposes, and on and on, are as do to taxpayer ignorance as politicians’ apostacy.
In 1787, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, took numerous templates for consideration. At the convention, Alexander Hamilton, to his enemies’ delight, even proposed a Monarchy so that the convention could cover all workable government forms in their debates.
There are numerous books available to us, which cover this period extensively. I recommend Edwin Meese, III’s “The Heritage Guide to the Constitution”, and that you visit Brion McClanahan’s website, http://www.brionmcclanahan.com and pick from his numerous works, I suggest starting with his “The Founding Fathers’ Guide to the Constitution”.
As much as I dislike Mark Levin, his American Trilogy in which he explains, quite accurately and comprehensively, the origins of the 1787 constitution, where it was felled, and what can be done about it, including his 27 recommended amendments, is another work I recommend.
Judge Andrew Napolitano has several works I recommend and for the same reasons.
“The Albany Plan Re-Visited”, has a template that includes variations and reasons for them including an Article on aggregation, and how weighted voting may be a much better form of direct representation than any proffered so far. ( http://www.bn.com/ebooks ).
Why?
With Texas now on board for an Article V Constitutional Convention, we are now 1/3 of the way there. YOU may soon be asked to vote for delegates from your state to attend and decide on what our next Federal government will have power to do and not do.
In the XVIIIth Century, politics was a major form of entertainment for the populace. Currently, VR, XBOX, & Playstation are the major forms of entertainment. In order for us to pick the correct delegates to such a convention, we must know of the various forms of governments and the templates for constitutions. Waiting until the last minute to educate ourselves on the possibilities, is a losing strategy.
Learn the templates, learn the variations, learn the possibilities available to us that will free all of us, and allow all of us to keep our wealth, and not have it taken at gun point and sent to foreign and domestic tyrants.
How to Blow an Election — in Five Easy Steps
May 9, 2017 12:27 pm / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
Counting the ways, and Comey is not among them.
Hillary Clinton recently took “full responsibility” for her 2016 loss. Only she didn’t. Instead of explaining what the historian Thucydides once called the “truest causes” (aitiai), she went on to list at least three pretexts (prophases) for her defeat: sexism, FBI director James Comey, and the purported Russian hacking of her unsecured e-mail server and the John Podesta e-mail trove.
Clinton’s accusations also raise the larger question of why a presidential candidate wins or loses an election.
In general, there seem to be five hinges of fate: personality, positions on the issues, the general political atmosphere of the era, the quality of the campaign, and sudden and unforeseen outside events such as depression, scandal, or war. Even a biased media or lots of money pales in comparison.
The Pretexts
We can fairly dismiss Clinton’s pretexts.
Take sexism. Hillary Clinton found her sex an advantage in being elected to the U.S. Senate from New York. For a generation, among the most powerful and successful figures in U.S. politics were three progressive, multimillionaire, Bay Area women who, in a most non-diverse fashion, lived within 50 miles of one another: Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi.
From 1997 to 2013 women of both parties were in charge of U.S. foreign policy as secretary of state, for twelve out of 16 years. One could make the argument that “the first female president” was an advantageous campaigning point, not a drawback; it was certainly designed to bookend Barack Obama’s successful trumpeting of being the first African-American president.
Blaming a deer-in-the-headlights FBI director James Comey is equally problematic. His passive-aggressive pronouncements irrationally first exonerated her, then did not, then did again. Faulting the FBI for her own likely felonious behavior of sending and receiving classified communications on an unsecured server (or of Bill Clinton’s trying to leverage Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac) is sort of like blaming the defeat at Pearl Harbor on the Japanese — true, but hardly the whole story given America’s responsibility for its own unpreparedness.
In similar fashion, had Donald Trump lost, he might have faulted the Washington Post for airing the decade-old Access Hollywood tape that nearly destroyed his campaign, as if the clear ill will and partisanship of Jeff Bezos’s Post were not empowered by Trump’s own private, hot-mic — but nonetheless crude — statements. The Germans claimed that harsh snows and the last-minute campaign in the Balkans had delayed and thus doomed their 1941 Russian offensive, as if the Red Army did not have a say or as if Germans were a tropical people.
As far as the Russians, they are Russians — always seeking to throw wrenches into the gears of U.S. elections. The Republicans claimed that their firewalls kept the Russians out of RNC e-mail; John Podesta using “password” for his password invited them in. And, of course, no one forced Washington journalists to collude through e-mail with the Clinton campaign, and no one ordered Hillary to jerry-rig a home-brewed server. The Russian-collusion bogeyman was probably as effective a campaign prop for Clinton as the supposed Russian-inspired e-mail revelations were for Trump.
1. McMurphy Trumps Nurse Ratched
More likely, Clinton lost the key, Rust Belt states that swung the electoral vote to Trump for our five classic reasons.
Her personality, in far different ways, was as polarizing as Trump’s. But Trump was far better as a TV showman, given his long stint on reality TV. Hillary’s voice, facial expressions, and comportment were not winning. Even on the rare occasions that she told the truth, she seemed more insincere than Trump, even when he was spinning a yarn.
Trump’s image as a bad boy was less damaging than Hillary’s as a scold. Both are roughly the same age and, to the eye, not in the best of shape, but Trump displayed an almost animal energy while Clinton often appeared frail, worn, and on occasion ill on the stump. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader sympathizes with the pseudo-patient and con Randle McMurphy, who does everything haywire, rather than “Big Nurse” Mildred Ratched, who does everything by the book; the former was at least undeniably alive, the latter only ostensibly so.
2. Against Something Is Not For Something
Second, Hillary Clinton had no real sincere position on any issue other than a desire to stay in public office for nearly a quarter-century, and her willingness to extend the eight years of the Obama agenda — an agenda that had never achieved 2 percent economic growth and that saw record labor non-participation, a doubling of the national debt to $20 trillion, and a world in chaos abroad.
Once Obama got wise in January 2016 that he was the most popular when he was not seen or heard, he dropped out of sight and kept silent. Meanwhile, 17 Republicans along with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton hogged the national spotlight and tore one another apart. Through it all, Obama’s eight-year-long stream of dismal popularity ratings gradually improved. But his newfound transient popularity did not mean that most Americans liked Obama’s policies or judged them as successful.
The result was that Hillary played a losing 1968 Hubert Humphrey to Obama’s lame-duck Lyndon Johnson — she risked an occasionally meek nip on the administration’s ankles but was otherwise silent about her own positions to the extent they even existed. In a year when people wanted a change from the prior eight years, Clinton offered none. “I am a woman” and “Trump is a monster” were not serious campaign issues, but they sum up the totality of why Clinton wished Americans to vote for her. Most still did, but not in the key states where Obamism had wrought disaster.
3. Populists Bite Back
Third, voters had, once again, tired of Washington politics. The aura of 2016 was “drain the swamp” change. A septuagenarian socialist, who was not a Democrat, nonetheless almost won the Democratic primary on the theme that a Washington insider Bernie Sanders was at least not a Clintonian apparatchik mired in quid-pro quo beltway payola.
In a normal year, a sober and judicious Jeb Bush, or a proven competent governor such as Scott Walker, or a charismatic ascendant such as Marco Rubio would have won the Republican nomination.
But not in 2016, when voters wearied of sermons about their ethical shortcomings delivered by liberal and conservative grandees who were not subject to the consequences of their own ideologies — whether on trade, globalization, illegal immigration, health care, the budget, or foreign policy. Many voters saw Hillary, accurately, as the epitome of self-interested professional politics, leading always to personal enrichment. Trump’s supposed vulgarity and crudity only enhanced his image as a reckless (but nonetheless defiant) Samson determined to pull down the supporting pillars of the rotten Washington temple — even if the wreckage fell on himself, he’d ensure rubble on everyone else as well. Hillary was the EU; Trump was Brexit.
4. Super Bowl III: The Colts Upset the Jets
Fourth, arrogance, ignorance, and sloth are a fatal trifecta—sort of like the conditions that led the Baltimore Colts to be disastrously upset by the New York Jets in Super Bowl III. The Colts’ tried and true and careful Johnny Unitas proved no match for erratic and flamboyant Joe Namath.
Haughtiness, insularity, and laziness characterized the conduct of the Clinton campaign. Even a novice outsider could see that Obama’s successful electoral matrix — record minority turnout and bloc voting, coupled with the drop-off in turnout by a disengaged white working middle class (tired both of left-wing identity politics and Republican bluestocking elitism) — was not going to be transferrable to an off-putting 69-year-old, white multimillionaire.
Not only did Hillary Clinton lack Obama’s youthful vigor and mellifluousness; she also seemed at times geriatric, snarky, and screechy. The result was that she did not win the minority vote at the levels she needed. Further, she galvanized the supposedly ossified and irrelevant white working classes to finally come out and vote, in their own bloc fashion, against her. Obama had guaranteed her his downside but never delivered his upside.
Clinton’s only chance to make up for missing identity-politics voters by appealing to the working classes of the Midwest was to replay her 2008 Annie Oakley Democratic-primary role — by drinking boilermakers in Milwaukee, or bowling in Scranton, or reminiscing about shooting guns as young gal. But eight years ago, the Democratic party was still aw-shucks Bill Clinton’s. In 2016, it was captive to the identity-politics polarization so effectively deployed, in community-organizer style, by Barack Obama.
So instead Clinton doubled down on the tired theme that Rust Belt losers needed to shape up and get with the globalized progressive project and a demography-is-destiny new America. Obama had deprecated Pennsylvanians as has-beens clinging to their Bibles and guns; Hillary updated them, adding “half of Trump’s supporters” as irredeemables and deplorables. Miners were toxic losers who needed to learn how to build solar panels rather than mine coal. In contrast, Trump called them “our miners.”
She made her disdain concrete by never campaigning in Wisconsin and only sporadically visiting the Blue Wall states eastward to the Carolinas. And she was convinced that demography had doomed the white working classes and empowered Latinos and blacks in red states such as Arizona and Georgia. Clinton’s inept campaign aimed, then, not just at a win (which was attainable by nonstop populist barnstorming and message massaging in the Rust Belt) but, greedily, at a “mandate” that was impossible, given minority-vote falloff and Democratic estrangement from the working classes. Apparently, no one told the campaign that open borders were not a popular national issue, and that Democrats could not win Texas even with Latino bloc voting, and that they could do so in deep-blue California but without any electoral significance.
Clinton surrounded herself with Pajama Boy whizz kids who looked and sounded as if they were on vacation from DuPont Circle in D.C., or Manhattan’s Upper West Side (and who appeared as Stanley and Livingston explorers to the natives of southern Michigan or eastern Pennsylvania). Meanwhile, Trump advisers, such as Kelly Ann Conway and Steven Bannon, acted and talked like they had been around the proverbial American block.
Hillary had the money edge, all the establishment endorsements, a united Democratic party, and a captive toadyish media. Yet she still lost to an outspent Trump, who had never run for a single public office and whose own party and media elite damned him as much as they did his enemies. His victory will remain one of the most amazing campaign outcome in U.S. election history — especially in a postmodern electronic age in which “analytics” and “data” are supposed to make human capriciousness a relic of the past.
5. From Clinton Cash to Non-secure E-mail
In 2016, there was nothing comparable to the unpopular Iraq War or the frightening 2008 financial meltdown that had propelled Obama to the White House. But there was a succession of scandals — almost all Clinton’s — that confirmed the image that she was not just unethical, but predictably so.
Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash is underappreciated for its effect on the campaign. Through painstaking research, it tied together all the strands of Clinton nefariousness: the Clinton Foundation as an excuse to hire political flunkies and provide free jet travel; the quid pro quo State Department nods to those who hired Bill Clinton to speak; and corruption under Hillary Clinton, from cellphone concessions in Haiti to North American uranium sales to Russian interests.
Add to the Clinton sleaze Hillary’s unsecured server and communications of classified material, the creepy New York and Washington careerists who turned up in the Podesta archives, and the political rigging that warped the conduct of the Democratic National Committee.
The result was that Hillary could no longer play the role of the “good” Clinton who “put up” with her husband’s “good ole boy” sleaze. Her new image was that of an equal partner in crime — or perhaps even a godmother who used the capo Bill as muscle. In comparison, Trump steaks, Trump University, Trump taxes, and Trump ties were old-fashioned American hucksterism, but with one important difference: Trump’s excesses were a private person’s; Clinton’s were those of a public servant.
The correct exegesis for losing in 2016 should explain the Democratic strategy for winning in 2020: Run a vigorous, mellifluent, and sympathetic candidate; put forth new solutions to old problems; empathize with noncoastal America and camp out there, too; run a campaign as if it were in danger of losing rather than already past the finish line; and prune away Washington, D.C., hangers-on, with their acceptance of corruption as the new normal.
Or instead maybe Democrats can nominate another 69-year-old, multimillionaire female political insider who will run an identity-politics campaign on her gender, on the fact that she is not the monstrous Donald Trump — and on the premise that all the world, from the FBI to the Russians, are out to get her.
[One of many reasons that I like Dr. Hanson’s posts, is his adherence to practical history. One may take out all personal content, and then be able to use this, as so many of his columns, as a guide to “how to” do something. If we take his posts analyzing the 2016 election, remove the personality components, we have a book that explains both how to win an election and how to lose an election.
The same may be said of his columns on social issues. His analytical approach allows us to see how to run a government properly, or not, through is writings on the conditions in California.]
To jrj@combatveteransforcongress.org
CC ‘Charles S. LiMandri, Esq.’
May 8 at 9:06 AM
CAIR, A Fifth Column In The US, Targeting American Children In Public Schools
By Capt Joseph R. John, May 8, 2017: Op Ed # 347
Former Special Agent John Guandolo, FBI, US Naval Academy Class of 1989, (USMC) in the below listed recording, discusses how dangerous to the Republic, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is. CAIR was founded in 1994 by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) its subversive activities, guided by the MB, are dangerous to the survival of the Republican form of government, as outlined in the US Constitution. The below listed recording is an extremely important recording and we are encouraging recipients to distribute to those in their address book who oppose replacing the US Constitution with Islamic Sharia Law. The MB created Al Q’ieda, ISIS, Hamas, CAIR, and spawned many other terrorist groups. They are all Radical Islamic Terrorist groups who have the same objectives—to destroy Western Civilization from within.
During the last 8 years, Obama appointed members of CAIR, the MB, and members of the MB Front Groups to thousands of very sensitive and highly classified positions in DHS, NSC, NSA, CIA, DOD, STATE, the White House, the FBI, Congressional Staffs, as well as to other US Government Agencies. The MB, CAIR, and the MB Front Groups have established a dangerous Fifth Column in the US Government, much more dangerous than the Fifth Column the Communist Party was able to establish in the US Government in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
CAIR and the MB have been trying to eliminate Anti-Terror Training Programs from all service branches of the US Armed Forces. CAIR leaders managed to get Muslim Clerics appointed, as supposedly “unbiased” investigators to review the current DOD Anti-Terror Training Programs. CAIR’s goal is to get the appointed Muslim Clerics to make so many major recommendation for change, that they will effectively eliminate the Anti-Terror Training Program—it’s like putting the fox in the chicken coop to guard the chickens.
Air Force Special Agent David Gaubatz, who worked a CAIR headquarters as an undercover agent, convinced CAIR that he was a converted Muslim. He uncovered 12,000 incriminating pages of CAIR internal documents outlining their subversive activities, and acquired incriminating audio and video recordings of their subversive activities. Those CAIR internal documents prove that Radical Islamic Terrorist Agents in the nation’s capital, working closely with CAIR, have developed plans to undermine the authority of the US Constitution, and replace it with the governing authority of the Quran and Sharia Law. The incriminating documents, the audio recordings, and video recordings were turned over to the FBI.
”The documents show that CAIR, despite claiming to cooperate with Law Enforcement Agencies, is actively working behind the scenes to mislead and deceive the FBI and other Law Enforcement Agencies in support of terrorist suspects – and have even cultivated Muslim moles inside of Federal Law Enforcement Agencies who have tipped off FBI terror targets” (those Muslim moles were placed there by the Obama administration). (WND Exclusive by Art Moore May 3, 2016).
The MB and its Front Groups have been outlawed and designated dangerous International Terrorist Organizations by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Bahrein, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia. Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom announced they are close to designating the MB as an International Terrorist Organization. In 2014, CAIR was designated as an International Terrorist Organization and outlawed by the UAE.
The State Department should designated the CAIR, the MB, and the MB Front groups as International Terrorist organizations. Once they are designated as International Terrorist Organizations, the FBI and the Justice Department will be able to remove their members, from highly sensitive and classified positions in the US Federal Government.
Exposing the MB & CAIR as a Fifth Column in the US Government, and revealing the MB & CAIR’s plans to replace the US Constitution with Sharia Law will permit the FBI and Justice Department to remove them from their government jobs. That can be accomplished by administering lie detector tests to members of the MB &CAIR in government; they can be simply asked if they want Sharia Law to replace the US Constitution. A security screening program could be initiated that is similar to the one that the FBI and the Justice Department employed to eliminate a Communist Fifth Column from the US Government from 1940 to 1960, when members of the Communists Party were located in US government positions, by administering lie detector tests that ferreted out hundreds of Communists who were trying to subvert the US Federal Government.
In 2008, in the Holy Land Foundation Trial (HLF) in Dallas, which was the culmination of 15 years of investigation by the FBI, CAIR was found to be guilty in US Federal Court of a terror-funding plot. It was revealed that CAIR was involved in fraud, sedition, and terrorism, yet Obama appointed them to very sensitive and high security positions in the Federal Government The US Justice Department identified CAIR, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-financing conviction in the nation’s 240 year history. Prior to HLF, and since, CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce terrorist groups like the MB, ICE, Al Q’ieda, Hamas, and Hizballah.
While CAIR Senior Management repeatedly denied receiving unlimited amounts of foreign funding from off shore sources, the authors of the book “Muslim Mafia” obtained a video of CAIR spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, boasting of his ability to bring in half a million dollars of “overseas money” from Saudi Arabia. (WND Exclusive by Art Moore May 3, 2016).
The FBI specifically identified CAIR as “a Hamas front group in the US, and as an entity of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a secret body set up to advance the Hamas terrorist agenda.”
“FBI wiretap evidence from the Holy Land Foundation case showed that CAIR’s Executive Director, Nihad Awad, attended an October 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders, and participated in their activists in Philadelphia, PA. CAIR, according to the evidence, was created by the MB, out of a need to give a “media twinkle” in order to the MB leaders’ agenda, of supporting violent jihad abroad, while slowly institutionalizing Islamic Sharia Law in the US. A federal judge later determined that the Justice Department provided “ample evidence” to designate CAIR as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator, affirming the Islamic group had been involved in “a conspiracy to support Hamas. In addition, CAIR leaders have made statements affirming that their aim is to establish Islamic rule in the United States.” (WND Exclusive by Art Moore May 3, 2016)
The FBI is involved in prosecuting over 1000 Radical Islamic Terrorist cases in all 50 states, and the subjects under investigation include members of the MB, CAIR, ISIS, Al Q’ieda, MB Front Groups, self-Radicalized Islamic Terrorists, and 1/3rd of the cases concern Muslim Refugees who entered the US from 7 of the 43 Muslim majority countries, that the Trump administration has been trying to put a temporary travel ban. Some of the members of CAIR, who have been appointed to thousands of government positions by Obama, are suspected of engaging in subversive activities, in furtherance of MB goals, that are detrimental to the security of the United States.
Former FBI Agent Mike Rolf stated that the CAIR leaders, listed below, have been charged with or convicted of terrorism-related crimes, documented in “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America” authored by David Gaubatz and investigative journalist Paul Sperry. In addition to the CAIR leaders, listed below, other CAIR members have been involved in the 194 Radical Islamic Terrorist attacks in the US listed in the attachment, that have been perpetrated in 63 cities in the US since 9/11, that the left of center liberal media establishment continue to try to cover up.
1)Ghassan Elashi one of CAIR’s Founding Directors was convicted of terrorism and is in federal prison,
2)Rabith Hadid, a CAIR fundraiser, was blacklisted by the Treasury Department for financing Al Q’ieda and other terror groups, was arrested on terror-related charges and deported to Lebanon,
3)Abdurahman Alamoudi, a CAIR Director is serving 23 years in federal prison for plotting terrorism.
4)Randall “Ismail” Royer, a former CAIR Communications Specialist, is serving 20 years in federal prison in connection with the Virginia Jihad Network which he led,
5)Bassam Khafagi, a CAIR Director of Community Affairs, was arrested and pleaded guilty to bank & visa fraud in supporting Al Q’ieda and advocating suicide attacks on Americans,
6)Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of CAIR, was wiretapped by the FBI and evidence of his plot to disguise payments to terrorists as charitable giving, caused the FBI to sever ties with CAIR in the US.
7)Laura Jaghlit, a CAIR Civil-rights Coordinator, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation as part of the FBI investigation into terrorist financing, money laundering, and tax fraud.
8)Omar Ahmad, Founder & Chairman Emeritus of CAIR, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
9)Nabil Sadoun, a CAIR Board Member, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation and was in a Hamas Front organization; he was deported to Jordan by the Justice Department.
10)Muthanna al-Hanooti, a CAIR Director, whose home was raided by the FBI is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy land Foundation case
San Diego is the second largest city in deep blue California, with a history of being pro-American and pro-military, and it is the initial targeted battleground city in Southern California that George Soros and CAIR are focused on changing San Diego’s pro-American agenda in the future. Soros and CAIR supported the election of the type of San Diego Unified School Board (SDUSB) that would install a progressive, anti-American, and Islam-centric curriculum to indoctrinate students. San Diego is CAIR’s initial city in the US, ground zero, where the MB Islam-centric indoctrination program would be implemented, by “Targeting American Children In Public Schools”, while at the same time, Soros would also be implementing his own progressive anti-American and Marxist indoctrination program described below.
Members of the SDUSB has been endorsed and supported in their elections by CAIR, and by Soros’ funded Progressive, Marxists, Anti-American, and pro-Illegal Aliens & pro-Muslim Refugees organizations (i.e. Free Press, La Raza, America Federation of Teachers, Planned Parenthood, SEIU, NOW, the AFL-CIO Labor Council, the CA Democratic Party, Muslim Advocates, Catholic Alliance For Common Good, the Rotary Peace Committee, the Peace & Freedom Party, and the Communist Party USA).
Members of the SDUSB have formed a close working partnership with CAIR, a dangerous Islamic Terrorist Organization. In 2015, Kevin Beiser and Michael McQuary, two members of the SDUSB, issued a formal proclamation in support of, and in recognition of CAIR San Diego, citing ten years of “constructive civic engagement” in San Diego and Imperial Counties. They praised CAIR’s work to “promote not only religious and cultural tolerance and understanding, but also justice and equality for all who live in the United States.” While CAIR, as you read above, is an international terrorist organization whose leaders have been convicted of terrorism, listed above.
Under the guise of establishing an anti-bullying program, the SDUSB became the first School Board in America to approve the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic indoctrination plan that is discriminatory towards Christians and Jews. The policy violates American parents’ opposition to the indoctrination of their children in the Islamic religion, and violates their opposition to having their children taught to accept Anti-Constitutional Sharia Law.
An anti-bullying policy already exists in the San Diego City Schools, there was no need for the SDUSB to vote for a new discriminatory anti-bullying policy, which is an excuse to issue text books to teach Islam in San Diego City Schools.
A parent’s permission is required, prior to subjecting their child to being indoctrinated in the Islamic Religion, Sharia Law, or any religion in the classroom. By their actions, members of the SDUSB, as individuals, have subjected themselves to a Class Action Law Suit for violating US Federal Law (parents of students or any interested party, can contact Attorney Charles LiMandri, Esq. listed on the copy line of the address bar, to represent them in a class action law suit).
Even though Muslims are allowed to forego religious obligations in a non-Muslim countries like the US. The new MB Islam indoctrinating program voted for by the SDUSB will include adding lessons on Islam in the Social Studies curriculum that emphasize prominent Muslims in history, that creates Muslim-only “safe spaces,” adding Muslim holidays to the school calendar, and providing support and resources for Muslim students during Ramadan. Instead of prescribing detention for those who bully students which is the current bullying policy in San Diego Schools, the SDUSB plans a “restorative justice” program in which students are required to dialogue with each other about perceived bullying words or actions. Special disciplinary measures will also be created for the so-called bullying of Muslims.
At the same time Christmas vacation has been replaced with Winter holiday, Easter break has been replace with Spring break, Christian holidays are not listed to the school calendar, yet Ramadan is called Ramadan on the School Calendar. The SDUSB has not created Christian-only or Jewish –only “safe spaces.” In an intentional discriminatory act, lesson plans in Judaism &Christianity will not be taught to Muslim students in the Social Studies curriculum with emphasis on prominent Christians and Jews in history. A previous request by a student for Christian Bible Study at lunchtime was rejected by the SDUSB. CAIR complained and alleged favoritism when Christian students in Roseville, a Detroit suburb, were given permission slips to attend off-site Bible study classes—CAIR has a double standard and aggressively discriminates against Christians.
The SDUSB plans to use “restorative justice” in their Islamophilic anti-bullying program. “Restorative Justice” is inspired by Marxist “group criticism.” It is not just a punishment for bad behavior, but a Communist technique to reprogram the young impressionable student’s mind in the way they think. Group criticism is a technique, which has long been used by Communist brain-washers and re-education specialists to make independent thinkers conform to group dogma. It is the SDUSB that is actually bullying very young school children, in order to control their thoughts and speech, by indoctrinating them in Islamic Religion, Marxism philosophy, and an Anti-American curriculum where patriotism has been minimized.
The SDUSB is employing Common Core, instituted by Obama. Over the last 8 years Common Core has eliminated most historic Patriotic references in their history books, eliminated references & stories about the Founding Fathers in the curriculum, and failed to teach the analysis of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. US History as it was once taught, for the most part has been removed from grammar and Junior High School curriculum, resulting in millions of graduates with very little knowledge of US History.
The SDUSB is controlled by 5 radical Marxist ideologues. They would not call themselves that, of course, but voters should watch what they have been doing to the school children’s classroom curriculum. Last year they approved a program for all schools in (cultural Marxist) ethnic studies. The votes of the SDUSB demonstrates that they are sympathetic with radical Marxist ideologues.
The President of the SDUSB, Marne Foster, was removed from the Board for criminal corruption, yet all 5 members voted to honor her with a proclamation—that fact should be reason enough to remove all 5 members of the SDUSB from office. Despite the fact that the budget is $134 million in the red, the 5 inept SDUSB members voted to give across the board pay raises to every teacher and all employees. The 5 members of the SDUSB have repeatedly demonstrated their inept financial management and their inability to manage billions of taxpayer dollars; they have effectively bankrupted the city schools.
The 5 member SDUSB have been promoting anti-Christian religious, and anti-Jewish religious policies, and have violated a Supreme Court ruling that prevents teaching religion in Public Schools. The Board’s vote to partner with the CAIR Terrorist Organization, in order to force feed, and indoctrinate millions of very young students with the teachings of Islam, and brow beat them into being compliant with Sharia Law, is in a violation of “Establishment Clause” the US Constitution. The First Amendment prohibits a government agency from attempting to effect a secular goal by the propagation of religious concepts.
It also appears that there are allegation against the School Board for “covering up” the sexual assault on students in city schools, some of the students are as young as 5 years of age. American parents who want to protect their children in the San Diego Schools from bullying by the SDUSB members should attend the May 16th School Board meeting, as their first step in initiating a recall election for every Board member.
The SDUSB should consist of American Patriots who understand generally accepted financial practices, who will no longer partner with a Radical Islamic Terrorist organization to force feed the indoctrination of Islam into the minds of millions of very young Christian and Jewish children, and who will protect and defend the US Constitution, not try to install Sharia Law in the United States to replace the US Constitution.
There are thousands of US Marine Corps, US Navy, and US Army Veterans residing in San Diego who repeatedly put their lives on the line in combat against Radical Islamic Terrorists, who swore to protect and defend the US Constitution, understand generally accepted good financial practices, have been extremely successful managers of large budgets, and have supervised thousands of Military & civilian personnel—-one or more of those veterans should be elected to the SDUSB in a recall election.
Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John. All Rights Reserved. The material can only posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author. It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8
Itemized below are 83 of the 194 Radical Islamic Terrorists attacks on US soil perpetrated since 9/11, by Jihadist, by Muslim refugees, by descendants of Muslim refugees, by Islamists who were radicalized thru the Internet, or Radical Islamic Terrorists who traveled to Syria and Africa to train with ISIS, Al Q’ieda, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The countries of origins from which many of the Radical Islamic Terrorists have been entering the US thru the UN Refugee Resettlement Program, and have been killing and raping Americans for 8 years, are Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Iran, and Libya. Except for Iran, those countries had effectively no control over the identity of terrorists operating and training within their country’s borders.
The Radical Islamic Terrorist perpetrated attacks on US soil in Sacramento (CA), Houston (TX), Morganton (NC), Philadelphia (PA), San Bernardino (CA), Times Square (NYC), Chelsea Area of Manhattan, Moore (OK), Detroit (MI), Boise (ID), Orlando (FL), West Orange (NJ), Fort Hood (TX), Portland (ME), Chattanooga (TN), Garland (TX), Boston (MA), Portland (OR), Minneapolis (MN), St Cloud (MN), Buffalo (NY), Jonesboro (GA), Ashtabula (OH), Bingham (NY), Glendale (AZ), Phoenix (AZ), Little Rock (AR), Merced (CA), Marquette Park (IL), Fresno (CA), Seattle (WA), Skyway (WA), Denver (CO), Aspen Hill (MD), Baltimore (MD), Oakland (CA), Fresno (Arlington (VA), Fredricksburg (VA), Montgomery County (MO), St Louis (MO), Bowling Green (KY), Scottsville,(NY), Richmond (CA), Washington (DC), Irving (TX), Port Bolivar (TX), Warren (MI), Waltham (MA), Manassas (VA), Buena Vista (NJ), Baton Rouge (LA), Montgomery (AL), Aberdeen, (SD), Chicago (IL), Los Angeles (CA), Hamden, (CT), Colorado Springs (CO), Denver (CO), Niskayuna (NY), Twin Falls (ID). and many other US cities too numerous to be listed here.
After each Radical Islamic Terrorist instigated attack, the identity of the attackers were covered up by the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood for 8 years, working in concert with the left of center liberal media establishment to mislead Americans about who perpetrated the 194 terrorist attacks or threats to injure Americans in the US. They used politically correct language to cover up the identity of the Radical Islamic Terrorists who repeatedly murdered Americans for the last 8 years. It was a continuing conspiracy that resulted in the injury and murder of hundreds of American citizens, the cover up undermined the National Security of the United States! The FBI is evaluating 1000 open cases on potential plots to kill Americans in all 50 states, and uncovered 83 Radical Islamic Terrorist plots, 37 of them were ISIS plots to kill or injure Americans in the United States. A percentage of the 83 uncovered plots to kill or injure America by potential terrorists can be attributed to some of the 900,000+ Middle East and African Muslim Refugees Obama resettlement in 187 cities throughout the US over an 8 year period.
The foreign nationals listed below executed 83 Radical Islamic Terrorists attacks and attempted support for ISIS designed to injure or kill American citizens in the above listed US cities during the last 8 years, and is a partial list of the 194 Radical Islamic Terrorist incidents perpetrated in US cities by Radical Islamic Terrorists since 9/11:
Bilal Abood was a translator who came here on an Special Immigration Visa for Iraqi nationals who provided services for American Forces. He even briefly joined the US Army. On the surface he was exactly the sort of Iraqi Refugee that the media likes to depict as the ideal immigrant, but Abood was also a member of ISIS. When he was arrested, he insisted “America was the enemy of Allah”.
Jasim Mohammed Hasin Ramadon and Ali Mohammed Hasan Al Juboori came to this country with Special Immigration Visas. Then Ramadon, Juboori and three other Iraqi refugees brutally assaulted a 53-year-old Colorado Springs woman. When the police arrived at the scene of the Iraqi Refugee sexual assault, they found blood splattered on the walls. The Iraqi Refugee rapists lured in their victim by complaining about how hard it was living in America and being called terrorists. The victim, a night nurse, took pity on them because they reminded her of her son. By the time the Iraqi Refugees were done, she had been violated and left near death.
Abdullatif Ali Aldosary an Iraqi Refugee who entered the US thru the UN Refugee Program set off a bomb outside a Social Security office in Phoenix, Arizona. The authorities found plenty of bomb making materials in his home. He was also accused of a murder that had taken place a few days before the bombing and had previously been sent to jail for harassment. His case had been put on hold for “terrorism-related grounds of inadmissibility”, but he still couldn’t be deported.
On April 18, 2017 Kori Ali Mohammad, age 39, a black suspect was taken into custody on Fulton Street in downtown Fresno, CA by police after firing 16 shots from a large caliber handgun, killing 3 white males; he shouted “Allah Akbar”, and declared a hatred for white people when taken into custody. On April 13th he shot and killed a white security guard at a Motel 6 in Fresno.
On April 12, 2017 the Chicago FBI Field Office and Joint Terrorist Task Force arrested and charged Chicago based Edward Schimenti and Joseph Jones for attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist Organization (FTO).
On March 3, 2017 Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan came here from Iraq as a refugee thru the UN Refugee Program. When the FBI searched his Houston apartment, agents found an ISIS flag. Hardan had been planning to leave bombs in the trash cans of two Houston malls. He had contemplated an attack on the Grand Prairie military base in Texas.
On February 14, 2017, 35 year old Adam Nauveed Hyat of Pakistani descent and a former Marine wrote “Explosives” on a closet door mirror in a Denver, CO Sheraton Downtown Hotel, leading police to find pipe bombs after running up a bill of $10,000 at the hotel; guests were removed from the hotel while the pipe bombs were defused. After flying to Los Angeles on February 17th, Hyat was tracked down and arrested, armed with knives, near the Los Angeles Airport. Adam’s father, Sultan Hyat, said his son has mental problems.
On January 31, 2017, 29 year old Ahmad Bahjat of New Haven, an Iraqi Refugee who entered the US thru the UN Refugee Program, posing as Uber Driver, was arrested for raping a woman. The woman had left a New Haven bar and walked to a parking area designated for Uber and taxi drivers, according to Hamden Police who arrested him. Bahjat pretended to be an Uber driver and the woman got into his car, believing he was the Uber driver.
On November 28, 2016, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a 18 year old Somali refugee who entered the US thru the UN Refugee Program drove his car into a crowd students on the campus of Ohio State University, then got out of his car and attacked students with a butcher knife injuring 11.
On September 19, 2016 Ahmed Khan Rahimi, a 28 year old Afghani refugee, who entered the US thru the UN Refugee Program. He traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to train as a Radical Islamic Terrorist and set off a bomb in the Chelsea District of Manhattan, NY. The explosion injured 29 people; he was arrested after a shootout with Police Officers in Linden, New Jersey, where he wounded two police officers. Ahmed was charged with 5 counts of murder. Earlier in the day, he set off a pipe bomb in Seaside Park, New Jersey; five other bombs were found at his residence.
On September 17, 2016 Dar Ahmed Adnan, a Somali refugee who entered the US thru the UN Refugee Program perpetrated a knife attack on 9 shoppers at the St Cloud Crossroads Mall in Minnesota, and was shot to death by an off duty St Cloud police Officer.
In July 8, 2016, Abdirhman Ahmed Noor, a 24 year4 old refugee from Somalia, who entered the US thru the UN Refugee Program, jumped bail and remains at large after being charged with 2 counts of attempted murder in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Noor chased two men down, firing at them. One man, Dar’na Tansmore, was hit and laid wounded on the ground when Noor allegedly walked up, stood over his victim and shot him again. Lutheran Social Services South Dakota has been paid by the federal government to resettle 947 Somali refugees in South Dakota since 2002.
On June 12, 2016, Omar Saddiqul Mateen, the son of Afghan refugees, massacred 49 gentle & innocent Americans, and wounded 53 others, in the Orlando night club, Pulse, in the deadliest mass shooting in US history.
On June 2, 2016, one Sudanese refugee boy 14, and two Iraqi refugee boys, aged 7 and 10, lured a special needs 5 year old girl, Jayla Peterson, stripped her naked. then savagely raped her under knife point, in the Fawnbrook Apartments in Twin Falls, Idaho; they then urinated in her mouth. An alert 89 year old retired nurse, Jaylene Payne, interrupted the attack when she saw all three of the refugees boys with their clothes off. The three refuges boys pleaded guilty to committing, aiding in committing, and acting as an accessory in committing a felony.
On March 24, 2016 seven Iranians working on behalf of the Iranian Government were indicted for a series of cyber-crimes that cost US financial institutions tens of millions of dollars and compromised critical controls of a New York Dam.
On February 16, 2016, a court magistrate ruled, after hearing the FBI testimony, that Khalil Abu-Rayyan, a 21 year old Iraqi man from Dearborn, MI, who is a son of an Iraqi Refugee. He was considered too much of a threat to public safety and was ordered held without bail. He got excited by thoughts of beheading Americans, burning people alive, and throwing homosexuals off of tall buildings. In conversations with an undercover FBI agent, he actually made plans to shoot 6,000 member of a Christian Church in Detroit. (If I) can’t go do Jihad at the Middle East, I would do my Jihad over here.” He also told the agent that “shooting and death make me excited. I love to hear people begging and screaming. … I wish I had my gun.” The FBI claims that since 2014, Abu-Rayyan used Twitter for “retweeting, liking and commenting” on Islamic State propaganda.
On February 12, 2016 a machete wielding assailant known to the FBI, identified as Mohammad Barry, a Somali refugee who entered the US on the UN Refugee Program, living in Ohio attacked Jewish and Christian patrons at a restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, wounding four people. Witnesses said it was carnage. Some of the patrons fought back by throwing chairs. Police later shot and killed Barry after a short chase. Investigators are trying to determine if Barry attacked the Nazareth Mediterranean Restaurant because he thought the owner was Jewish. In actuality, the restaurant is owned by an Israeli Christian.
In Philadelphia, PA, Edward Archer, a 30 year old Jihadi, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, opened fire in the name of Islam, on Philadelphia Police Officer Jessie Hartnett, who was ambushed sitting in his car on January 8, 2016. Archer fired 11 shots and hit the Officer Hartnett three times, grievously wounding the officer; the officer returned fire and hit Archer three times.
In an unrelated case, also on January 7, 2016, Omar Faraj Saeed al Hardan, an Iraqi Refugee, was arrested in Houston, TX on charges of providing material support to ISIS and going thru terrorist training.
On January 7, 2016, Aws Mohammad Younis Al-Jayab, a Palestine born Iraqi, was arrested in Sacramento, CA on charges of assisting Jihadi organizations.
In December 2015, a Somali-American was arrested after encouraging several friends to leave the United States and join ISIS, and giving one individual over $200 for their passport application.
The son of an Pakistani immigrant Syed Rizwan Farouk, and Tashfeen Malik, who entered the United States on a fiancé visa thru Canada as Syed’s bride, and subsequently became a Lawful Permanent Resident, along with her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, who pledged allegiance to ISIS, killed 14 people at a Christmas Party in San Bernardino, CA on December 2, 2015 , and wounded 22 others, in the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since September 11, 2001. They were recruited to their jihad by a Muslim Somali refugee who has now moved to Syria, but continues to recruit Jihadist in America using social media.
Five Bosnian Muslim refugees (in the same family) were arrested on November 18, 2015, two in Missouri, two in Illinois and one New York for sending arms and cash to ISIS.
In November 17, 2015 A Uzbek Muslim refugee in Boise, ID was convicted of plotting to bomb US military bases.
On November 4, 2015. 18 year old Faisal Mohammad who had a black ISIS flag in his possessions and a terrorist manifesto, stabbed 4 of his fellow student at U C Merced; police had to shoot him to stop his stabbing spree. He had pro-ISIS propaganda on his computer. The FBI said he was a self-radicalized Islamic Jihadist.
A second Immigrant from India, who is married to a US citizen, who was indicted on charges of conspiring to provide thousands of dollars to Al Q’ieda in the Arabian Peninsula, in order to assist them in their global Jihad, and on one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud (November 2015)
On October 1, 2015, Chris Harper Mercer, a black Islamist terrorist who traveled to Syria in September 2015, to train with ISIS, and was identified as a Radical Islamic Terrorist by the Russian Security Service, executed a mass shooting on the campus of Umpqua Community College in Rosebud, Oregon killed 9 people and wounded 7 others. He was associated with Mahmoud Ali Ehsani, but the Obama administration refused to accept the referral from the Russian Security Service, and when he returned from Syria in September, he wasn’t arrested, so he perpetrated his mass shooting. He was shot to death by Police Officers
An immigrant from Egypt, who subsequently was granted U.S. citizenship, was charged with providing, and conspiring to provide, material support to ISIS, for aiding and abetting a New York college student in receiving terrorist training from ISIS, and conspiring to receive such training. (August 2015)
An immigrant from Albania, who applied for and received Lawful Permanent Resident status, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for giving over $1,000 to terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, and for attempting to join a radical jihadist insurgent group in Pakistan. (August 2015)
A refugee from Uzbekistan was convicted of providing material support and money to a designated foreign terrorist organization. According to the Department of Justice, he also procured bomb-making materials in the interest of perpetrating a terrorist attack on American soil. (August 2015)
On August 14, 2015 three Somali Muslims, Mohamud Mohamed, 36, and Osman Sheikh, 31, Abil Teshome, 23, brutally beat and murdered Freddy Akoa, 49 a Christian in Portland, ME. The attack allegedly took place over the span of several hours, in which Akoa suffered cuts and bruises all over his body, a lacerated liver and 22 rib fractures. However, according to the autopsy, Akoa died as a result of blows to his head.
On August 12, 2015, a 39 year old Muslim Somali refugee, Libyan Mohamed, was sentence to three years in prison for attempted sexual assault on a 31 year old severely mentally handicapped woman sitting outside at a group home for the disabled in Aberdeen, South Dakota
Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez murdered five US Armed Forces (1 Navy and 4 Marines) in Chattanooga, TN in July 2015. Mohammad was an immigrant brought here by his family from Kuwait at a young age, and who was later approved for U.S. citizenship, who carried out the Islamist attack that killed the 5 military personnel in Chattanooga.
An Uzbek refugee living in Idaho was arrested and charged with providing support to a terrorist organization, in the form of teaching terror recruits how to build bombs. (July 2015)
An immigrant from Sudan, who applied and received US citizenship, tried to join ISIS and wage Jihad on its behalf after having been recruited on line(June 2015).
An immigrant from Ghana, who applied for and received US citizenship, pledged allegiance to ISIS and plotted a terrorist attack on the US soil (June 2015).
On May 3, 2015 an attack with gunfire was carried by two Radical Islamic Terrorists followers of ISIS at the entrance to the Curtis Culwell Center, in Garland, TX featuring cartoon images of Mohammad—both were shot and killed by a police officer. Just prior to the attack one of the gunmen posted “May Allah accept us as Mujahedeen”—he wrote both pledged allegiance to “Amirul Mu’mineen”, a likely reference to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
An Iraqi immigrant, who later applied for and received US citizenship, was arrested for lying to federal agents about pledging allegiance to ISIS and his travel to Syria (May 2015)
The Somali refugee who recruited the San Bernardino killers also recruited the jihadist who attacked the Garland, TX “Draw Mohammad” contest in May 2015, fled the United States.
On April 20, 2015, Six Somalian Muslim refugees were arrested in Minneapolis, Minnesota for attempting to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State and fight for ISIS.
An immigrant from Saudi Arabia, who applied for and received U.S. citizenship, swore allegiance to ISIS and pledged to explode a propane tank bomb on U.S. soil. (April 2015).
An immigrant from Yemen, who applied for and received U.S. citizenship, along with six other men, was charged with conspiracy to travel to Syria and to provide material support to ISIS. (April 2015).
A Uzbek man in Brooklyn encouraged other Uzbeki nationals to wage Jihad on behalf of ISIS, and raised $1,600 for the terror organization. (April 2015)
An immigrant from Syria, who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship, was accused by federal prosecutors of planning to rob a gun store to “go to a military base in Texas and kill three or four American soldiers execution style.” (April 2015)
A Kazakhstani immigrant with lawful permanent resident status conspired to purchase a machine gun to shoot FBI and other law enforcement agents if they prevented him from traveling to Syria to join ISIS. (February 2015)
A Bosnian refugee, along with his wife and five others, donated money and supplies, and smuggled arms, to terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq. (February 2015)
On December 18, 2014 an radicalized ISIS supporter in Morganton, NC shot a 74 year old man in the head multiple times.
On December 14, 2014, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, born to a Muslim African American family, executed two NYC police officers as they sat in their patrol car. Brinsley is reported to have approached the two officers as they were sitting in their patrol car in the notorious crime ridden Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, New York and began firing rounds into the vehicle before fleeing on foot to the closest subway station where he later committed suicide.
Two Bosnian Muslim refugee in Portland, Oregon was arrested in November 21, 2014 for trying to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
In September 30, 2014, ex-con Alton Nolan, a Muslim convert, a proponent of Sharia Law, who was radicalized to Islam behind bars, wielding a knife, beheaded a female employee, Colleen Hufford, at the Vaughn Foods processing plant in Moor, OK, and was prevented from beheading a second female employee by the company COO, who shot Nolan to stop his rampage.
An immigrant from Afghanistan, who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship, and a legal permanent resident from the Philippines, were convicted for “join Al Q’ieda and the Taliban in order to kill Americans.” (September 2014)
Five Somali Muslim refugees were charged in July 2014 with fundraising for jihadi groups in Africa.
A Somali immigrant with lawful permanent resident status, along with four other Somali nationals, is charged with leading an al-Shabaab fundraising conspiracy in the United States, with monthly payments directed to the Somali terrorist organization. (July 2014)
An immigrant from Bangladesh, who applied for and received U.S. citizenship, tried to incite people to travel to Somalia and conduct violent jihad against the United States. (June 2014)
On June 25, 2014 Ali Muhammad Brown, age 29, a devout Muslim, gunned down Brendan Brown, age 19, in Livingston, NJ. Ali said it was an act of retribution for US Military actions against Muslims in Iraq, Syria, and Iran.
On June,1, 2014, Ali Muhammed Brown confessed to the murder of a 30 year old man on April 27th. in Skyway, WA.
A Moroccan national who came to the U.S. on a student visa was arrested for plotting to blow up a university and a federal court house. (April 2014).
On April 3, 2014, Salam Al Haideri a 24 year old Iraqi Refugee from Niskayuna, NY who entered the US thru the UN Refugee program. He raped a 19 year old 4’11 teenager behind a “I Love NY” pizza place dumpster while slamming her head into the ground. The Iraqi Refugee’s 96-pound teenage victim was left with broken ribs and a fractured nose. Al Haideri was the third refugee to be convicted of a sex crime in the area. He was found guilty of aggravated assault and rape and was sentenced to 22 years to life.
On March 6, 2014 a Muslim man shoots his lesbian daughter and her lover to death a leave a copy of the Quran open to a page condemning homosexuality.
A college student who immigrated from Somalia, who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship, attempted to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Oregon. (Dec 2013)
On August 4, 2013 in Richmond, CA a radicalized Islamist convert “on a mission from Allah” stabbed a store clerk to death.
On April 19, 2013 in Boston, MA a Radical Islamic Terrorist, the Tsarnaev brothers (the Boston Marathon Bombers) gunned down a University police officer sitting in his car
The April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing by Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev; those brothers and their family were Muslim refugees. -The Boston Bombers were granted political asylum and were thus deemed legitimate refugees. The younger brother applied for citizenship and was naturalized on September 11th, 2012. The older brother had a pending application for citizenship.
On March 24, 2013 in Ashtabula, OH a Muslim convert walks into a church service Quran, and guns down his Christian father while praising Allah
On February 7, 2013 in Buena Vista, NJ a Muslim man beheaded two Coptic Christians Immigrants.
On November 11, 2012 in Houston, TX a 28 year old American man is shot to death by a radical Muslim over an alleged role of converting a woman to Christianity.
In September 15, 2012, Amine El Khalifi, and al Q’ieda Radical Islamic Terrorist plotted to do a suicide bombing of the US Capital.
On February 18, 2012, two Radical Islamic Terrorists from Pakistan, who later applied for and received US Citizenship, were apprehended trying to detonate a bomb in New York City
On January 1, 2012 in Houston TX a 30 year old Muslim convert to Christianity is shot to death by a devout Muslim for converting his daughter to Christianity
On September 11, 2011 in Waltham, MA three Jewish men have their throats cut by Radical Islamic Terrorists.
Two Al Qaeda members from Iraq who had spent years in Iraq using IEDs and participated in attacks that killed American soldiers (their fingerprints were recovered from IEDs). Mohamed Hammadi age 25 and Walid Alwan age 31, were arrested in Bowling Green, KY on May 25, 2011 while living in public housing and were receiving public assistance; both entered the US thru the UN Refugee Program as Iraqi refugees! Hammadi was recorded in a telephone conversation plotting a terrorist attack in the US. They were both convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
On April 30, 2011 Mohammad Alfatlawi a proponent of Sharia Law was charged with the “Honor Killing” of his wife and daughter in Detroit, Michigan.
In May 4, 2010 Faisal Shahzad conducted a terrorist car bombing plot in Times Square that failed.
In December 25, 2009, the bombing terror plot to kill 290 innocent passengers on a flight from the Netherland to Detroit the Nigerian Radical Islamic Terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutlallab (aka the Underwear Bomber) failed to detonate on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 because the explosives in his underwear malfunctioned, and passengers were able to subdue him until he was arrested.
On December 4, 2009 in Bingham, NY a non-Muslim Islamic Studies professor is stabbed to death by a Muslim graduate student in revenge for Muslims who have been persecuted.
On November 5, 2009, Maj Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 US Army soldiers and wounded 32 others in Fort Hood while yelling “Allah Akbar” at the top of his lungs—Obama insisted it was simply “Work Place Violence” and not a Radical Islamic terrorist attack by a disciple of Anwar Al-Awlaki. Prior to the shooting, in his previous assignment as an intern and resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center his colleagues and superiors were deeply concerned about his behavior and anti-American comments—but because they were cowered by the Obama’s administration’s warnings and perceived threats to their military standing, that they better be “politically correct’ and not disparage such anti-American comments—nothing was done to drum that Radical Islamic Terrorist out of the US Armed Forces.
On November 2, 2009 in Glendale, AZ a Muslim daughter dies from injuries suffered when her Muslim father runs her over with his car for being too “Westernized.”
On June 1, 2009, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a convert to Islam, who had gone to Yemen in 2007 and stayed for about 16 months, open fire on a Little Rock, Arkansas US Armed Forces Recruiting Office in a drive by shooting with a rifle, against a group of US Army Soldiers standing in front of the Recruiting Office. He killed Private William Long and wounded Private Quinton Ezeagwula; he was given 11 consecutive life sentences.
On April 12, 2009 in Phoenix, AZ a Muslim man shoots his Muslim brother-in-law and another man to death, after he finds out that they visited a strip club in contradiction to Islamic values.
On February12, 2009 in Buffalo, NY a Muslim founder of a Muslim TV Station beheads his wife in the hallway of the TV Station for seeking a divorce.
On July 6, 2008 in Jonesboro, GA a devout Muslim man strangles his 25 year old daughter in an honor killing.
[In recent Senate Hearings, Susan Yates, Esq., former acting AG, supported her position of not representing Pres. Trump’s travel ban by citing to her concern over constitutional issues re discrimination by religion. She, as most politicians and media empty heads, have not read the Qu’Ran. Posted elsewhere on this blog are over one hundred direct citations from the Qu’Ran. According to the definition of a Hate Group, as established by the federal Hate Crimes Act, Islam is the Satanic Cult of the pedophile Mohammed to worship the Arab Moon god, god of Darkness, Allah.
Beware! Recently reported, then shushed, a Detroit doctor was discovered performing female genital mutilation surgery on young Muslim girls. Where is NOW? Where is Elizabeth Warren? Where is Hillary? Where is Pelosi? Where is Feinstien? Where are the university academics?
Y’all are, hopefully, forwarding these to your elected officials, municipal, county, state, and federal. Overwhelm their inboxes. Get active in Tea Party and Freedom Caucus politicians.
Justplainbill's Weblog 
From Resistance to Nullification to What Next? Victor D Hanson [nc]
From Resistance to Nullification to What Next?
January 10, 2018 8:22 am / Leave a Comment / Victor Davis Hanson
By Victor Davis Hanson — National Review
Trump’s critics ratchet up to insurrection, but Trump’s tax reforms and our growing economy could derail their dreams.
George H. W. Bush gave up power quietly and turned to charity work and occasional ceremonial speaking after his reelection defeat in 1992. George W. Bush — like Jerry Ford in 1977 and Ronald Reagan in 1989 — did the same when Barack Obama assumed power in 2009.
Unending Presidencies
Recent Democrats emeriti — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — apparently had a different vision of the post-presidency, unlike the quiet retirement of Lyndon Johnson back to his ranch in 1969. The three saw politics in more Manichean terms, as an existential struggle far too important to cease at the end of a presidential tenure.
Carter freelanced abroad for 30 years in successful quest for a Nobel Prize, but he often undercut presidential diplomacy. He regularly weighed in on the shortcomings of his successors — in a way he would have deeply resented had either Ford or Richard Nixon done the same.
No sooner had Bill Clinton left the presidency than he and Hillary Clinton began the grand plan for a return to the White House in 2009, and, after a setback, then again in 2017. Theirs was a two-decade long post-presidency of glad-handing, politicking, and, to use a euphemism, quid pro quo fund raising.
Barack Obama has already weighed in, including while overseas, on the shortcomings of his successor. His aides, led by Ben Rhodes, are at the forefront of the “Resistance” to thwart the Trump administration. Susan Rice and John Kerry comment regularly on supposed Trump foreign-policy blunders, as do James Clapper and John Brennan — usually in proactive fashion to deflect news accounts that may reflect poorly on their own past tenures.
Resistances
But all that said, we have never quite seen anything like the opposition of the so-called Resistance to the elected presidency that followed the Obama tenure.
There were the initial false charges that pro-Trump Russians had shut down power grids in Vermont. There were frivolous suits claiming that voting machines in three states were rigged. There was an organized, anti-constitutional effort to subvert the Electoral College so that it would not reflect the vote tallies of individual states. On Inauguration Day, there were congressional boycotts of the swearing-in ceremony. There were demonstrations at which, to take one example, Madonna envisioned blowing up the Trump White House.
An entire genre of assassination chic followed. Politicians, celebrities, actors, academics, and wannabees variously reenacted beheading Donald Trump, stabbing him to death, shooting him, torching him, hanging him, or, in the words of Robert DeNiro, dreaming of punching Trump in the face. Few in the media were bothered by the imagery or threats. Yet sometimes the hysteria became real violence — as when Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson’s shot prominent Republican politicians practicing for a charity baseball game, gravely wounding Republican House whip Steven Scalise, or when libertarian senator Rand Paul (present at the Scalise shooting) was attacked and injured by a disturbed neighbor and proponent of socialized medicine.
Formal efforts followed to impeach Trump in his first months of governance. Some evoked the emoluments clause of the Constitution, claiming that Trump had sought the presidency only to profit. Others sought recourse in the 25th Amendment, hoping that he could be removed because of senility, insanity, or debility. A Yale psychiatrist, who has never met Trump, was brought before Congress to confirm that the president was psychologically unfit to continue his office — and then wondered whether he might be physically restrained and forced to undergo examination (apparently unaware that she was getting quite close to advocating a coup d’état and also channeling the old Soviet remedy to political undesirables).
Deep-state bureaucrats and holdover Obama appointees refused to carry out presidential orders and became causes célèbres for violating their oaths of office. Justices were cherry-picked for stays of presidential directives on the basis on their liberal fides — until higher courts overturned their rulings. The Democratic congressional minority made wholescale effort to slow down confirmation of almost every presidential appointment.
Nonpartisan media research organizations found that 90 percent of all news stories concerning President Trump portrayed him negatively — an unprecedented negative rating. Late-night television morphed into 24/7 anti-Trump diatribes.
Journalists as diverse as the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg and Univision’s Jorge Ramos insisted that reporters could no longer be professionally disinterested in the age of Trump but must become activists to oppose the president and his agendas.
Indeed, the WikiLeaks trove revealed that marquee journalists such as the New York Times’ Glenn Thrush and the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank had actively colluded with the Clinton campaign to massage their news accounts and commentaries. The genre of “fake news” was born — ranging from the trivial of claiming in racist fashion that Trump had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the West Wing to the mythologies of a purported Trump plan to invade Mexico. CNN’s journalists and employees were sometimes fired for inventing anti-Trump narratives, or caught on a hot mic wishing for the president’s jet to crash, or reduced to using scatology to express their hatred. The network achieved a 93 percent negative treatment of all Trump news.
Obama political appointments had sought FISA court orders to surveille Trump associates, then unmasked the names and leaked them to friendly journalists, first, to hamper the Trump campaign, later to subvert the Trump transition. A Clinton opposition dossier, based on paid and unnamed Russian sources, peddled false stories to the FBI and Obama-administration Justice Department officials. It may well have been used to obtain the FISA orders.
Career FBI officers used government communications to express their hatred for the new president. Such bias may have fueled their efforts to warp their investigations. The director of the FBI knowingly leaked confidential notes of his meetings with the president. He probably passed on at least one classified document to a friend, with the instruction that it then be passed to a friendly journalist. James Comey’s hope was to ensure an investigation of the president by a special counsel — a position soon to be filled by his close associate and friend.
The deep-state resistance of bureaucrats ranged from the petty and trivial of refusing to hang the picture of the current president in their offices to the more substantial move of slowing down or refusing outright to carry out presidential directives. America had not seen such opposition to an incoming president since 1861.
If any such resistance had faced an incoming Barack Obama, the cries of outrage, media fury, and legal recourse would have proved overwhelming and been framed as a constitutional crisis. But no such pushback occurred. Instead, in 2009, power was transferred peacefully if not amicably.
Yet, so far, the Resistance, despite helping to drive down presidential approval ratings to the low 40 percent range, has not stopped the Trump agenda. The Mueller investigation will likely settle for face-saving charges against a few Trump officials for crimes not envisioned under its original directives. Its own biases and the FBI’s involvement with the discredited Steele dossier may result in a number of successful appeals of those who confessed or acquittals of those charged.
Nullification
The frustrated Resistance is starting to morph into a more serious crisis of nullification, if not insurrection.
California has just declared itself, in antebellum South Carolina fashion, a sanctuary state. State law supposedly now transcends both local California municipalities that had chosen not to become sanctuary cities and federal immigration law itself. The law is the logical result of the governor’s and the popular culture’s pushback against Trump. Jerry Brown in the past had evoked God to cast aspersion on Trump’s morality: “I don’t think — President Trump has a fear of the Lord, the fear of the wrath of God, which leads one to more humility.” And Brown toured abroad as state commander in chief, as he assured foreign leaders that California was to be dealt with as a near-autonomous country.
One-third of state residents, according to polls, favor Calexit, or withdrawal from the United States. Central to California’s insurrectionist chic is the idea that it is unique and no other state had the moral courage or right to follow its example. California would probably go ballistic, after all, if during the Obama administration, the governor of West Virginia or Kentucky had visited China to cement coal-export agreements that countered Obama policies, or if Utah had declared the Endangered Species Act null and void within its environs, or if Mississippi had decided that federal gun-registration laws would not fully apply within its Second Amendment–sanctuary state.
California apparently has sensed that its nullification efforts are provoking federal officials, and it now scurries to assure Washington that it does not mean to fully oppose all federal immigration efforts. In theory, state officials who bar federal officials from their mandated duties would be subject to federal criminal charges of obstruction. In a more concrete vein, the quarter-built overpasses of the state’s already ossified high-speed rail project — increasingly dependent on federal funds for reactivation — are beginning to resemble an eerie Stonehenge.
Perhaps not by coincidence, the Congress just passed tax-reform legislation that does not allow local and state taxes above $10,000 to be deducted from federal tax returns. For a state that has among the highest sales taxes, the highest property tax assessments in the nation, and highest state-income-tax brackets (rising above 13 percent on the top brackets), the new law doubles the effective state tax rate.
Given that there are a number of low- or no-tax states in California’s neighborhood, and given that the California Democratic party is incapable of reducing the state income rate, the new law may encourage some affluent retirees to flee the state. It would not take many to undermine a key source of state revenue. Note that of some 40 million residents, only about 150,000 individual or household tax returns account for about half of all California income-tax revenue — itself nearly 40 percent of all state income. Note also that progressive California is understandably worried that its affluent tax-paying golden geese may be sacrificed, even while the vast majority of its population will receive sizable tax cuts from the new federal law.
Damning Salvation
In tit-for-tat fashion, will the state seek more nullification measures to push back against the federal government? Legislators are now dreaming of redefining state income tax as deductible “charitable contributions” in order to reinstate federal tax deductions. That pathetic gambit would land an individual filer in the IRS pokey.
Again, California legislators apparently do not realize that any other state could do the same and thereby nullify the entire federal tax system. If they persist, no doubt the Trump Department of Justice would have good grounds to seek indictments against state officials for conspiracy to commit federal income-tax fraud.
So will large blue states continue their defiance of federal laws, whether they involve immigration nullification or their own legalization of marijuana growing and selling? It depends.
Black and Hispanic unemployment rates are now at record lows. Wealthy California high-tech firms like Apple are eager to take advantage of new tax laws and plan to bring back billions of offshored capital that will enrich state coffers.
Declines in illegal immigration, along with an economy running at 3 percent GDP growth, are pushing up the compensation of low-skilled workers in a way that clumsy state-mandated raises in the minimum wage could not.
Ironically, mega-states such as California, Illinois, and New York were close to the brink of insolvency under the calcified Obama economy. But they may enjoy record growth in 2018 that for now mitigates their own regrettable financial decisions. In other words, an expanding economy could turn resistance and nullification into a mostly boutique symbolic enterprise, as thousands of blue-state officials ceremonially damn the policies that may alone offer them salvation.