Category Archives: Politics 2023

Elections, Foreign Policy, Governance, Politics 2023, Politics 2024, Responsibility

AMERICA – Article II

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The second-most important “branch” of our Republic’s government is the Executive. To most people, this means the President, or “The White House.” It is much, much larger than that – grievously so. There is no accurate count of the number of Departments, Agencies, Offices and Titles that are funded, almost without question or oversight, in the sloppy budgeting process that Congress standardly fails to control. The total is well over a thousand; how close to two thousand, no one can tell. If Congress were forced to oversee every line-item in the budget, we’d probably see a quick reduction, consolidation or elimination of hundreds of these tax-consuming, practically parasitic entities. But Article II is about the powers of the Executive, how he (or she) is elected, and to what actions the President and his/her appointees are sworn.

Mostly, voters and other citizens (we hope, citizens) are concerned about and are told about how well the President is fulfilling his promises in office. The President is NOT the most powerful person in his “administration.” Who is, varies.

Among the “big” Departments – “Cabinet-level Departments” – are Defense, Treasury, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Commerce, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Labor, State, Transportation and Veterans Affairs. Originally, there were just 4 men who comprised Washington’s “cabinet,” a relatively informal group of advisors: Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War, Henry Knox and Attorney General, Edmund Randolph. Each was a “founder” of the new nation and involved in the creation of the Constitution. Each had his views of how the government should be administered and what the Federal Government’s interactions with “the people” and with the States, should be. We are still deciding.

Washington’s status was such that no one was prepared to attack him directly, but political parties soon developed as politically powerful leaders like Hamilton and Jefferson, Madison, Adams and Monroe, among others, and Jackson, later, sought followers to their views. These were the “factions” that were feared by Madison and others writing in the “Federalist Papers.” Washington sought statesmanship from his advisors… like his own. But it became rarer and rarer as party factionalism took hold. The framers of the Constitution expected loyalty to States to be the competing interests that would, in effect, strengthen the new Union of States. Party factionalism, as we can see today, has nearly obliterated those sovereign concerns, as Federal power has become the big prize… and source of wealth both licit and illicit.

The election of a President is done by the Electoral College, one of the earliest topics in Article II, to which 376 words are devoted. The framers, fairly fresh from the Revolutionary War, were very concerned about the creation of an executive officer, having lately fought against executive excess. They did not want the selection process to be “democracy” without severe restrictions that protected the rights of States. The model Republic they hoped to create would have “checks” and “balances” on executive power and even on legislative power. As much as was workable – if not practical – they wanted a chance for statesmanship and reflection to filter out “faction” and emotion in the selection of a President. Their wisdom resulted in the Electoral College. Today we can see the Constitutional mechanisms that are most worth defending by the nature of the heated emotions that wish to sidestep them, altogether. Every Presidential “election” is blanketed with statistics about the “popular vote,” especially when the Electoral winner received fewer votes in gross total than the person who did not win in the Electoral college. That he or she did or didn’t is immaterial; but the “popular vote” is announced by all media as if it mattered.

The Constitution does not provide for National elections; we have State elections, now 50 of them, by law on the same day. Every 4 years, citizens of the 50 states elect slates of Electors who will later vote in the “Electoral College” for the President / Vice-President “ticket” to which they are committed, having gained a majority or a plurality of the popular vote in their respective States. Every State’s election stands on its own, irrespective of the size of the majority or plurality of the popular vote in other states. We employ democratic process to elect people whose Constitutional function strengthens the REPUBLIC. The REPUBLIC is strengthened by the federation of its sovereign States; the rights and sovereignty of those States must be protected and defended by the powers ceded to the federal government. It was the citizens of States – States that pre-existed the federal government and the federation, itself – who ratified the Constitution and the Bill of Rights: the first ten amendments without which ratification would have been impossible.

The two keys to our Republic’s success and endurance include an EXECUTIVE who is checked by the power of the people – expressed in Congress – and, as John Adams incisively stated (one might say, predicted), “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” We have embarked on a course of denying government responsibility for promoting morality. Indeed, we are rushing to make legal immoral actions in order for governments at every level to share in their illicit proceeds. What a foul recalculation of the meaning of liberty.

Presidents after Washington have pressed for greater freedom of action without the slow action of Congress, almost continuously. Abraham Lincoln was the first to suspend basic rights due to the emergencies of the Civil War. The relationship of the federal government to individual citizens changed dramatically in the years following, and even before the end of Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation applied Executive power to the problems of black individuals in multiple states. Following the war a federal agency, the “Pension Office” under the authority of the “Commissioner of Pensions” organized to evaluate claims due to both physical and mental injuries incurred during the Civil War. Today there are, as noted above, well over 1,000 federal agencies and departments. Ostensibly, the President directs their work and function but, in fact, most of the Executive “branch” runs on its own, including lobbying Congress for never-ending funding and support.

The President is charged with being the “Commander in Chief” of the Army and Navy (and added military branches, now) AND OF THE “Militias” of the several states when called into service of the United States. Who those “Militias” are is not well-defined, although referenced in the Constitution and in the Second Amendment. Pre-existing the Army, the “National Guard” grew from colonial militias who defended against “Indian” attack, especially as the “frontier” encroached on Native lands, and later against the French and their native allies.

The “Army” was created from the Militias and State “Guards” during the Revolutionary War. Had it not been for General George Washington’s personal leadership, the Revolution would have failed as soldiers completed their periods of voluntary service, but who stayed to complete Washington’s mission of independence. It is difficult to grasp the privation and sacrifice required to pursue the war with Britain; few in today’s America are capable of what Revolutionary soldiers endured.

The Minutemen of Massachusetts grew, purposefully, out of the regiments of Militia. They were trained by veterans of the Indian and French-Indian wars and were the defenders against the British at Lexington and Concord, as the British sought to disarm the colonists. More regiments from Massachusetts served in the “Continental Army” than from any other colony/State, and formed the basis of the United States Army. The President is charged, ultimately, with command – and DEPLOYMENT – of all of the military forces, including calling up Reserve troops and the National Guard(s) of the several States, WITHOUT a declaration of a state of War, which only the Congress can effect. The “War Powers Act” in 1973, changed the basic relationship dictated by the Constitution.

In response to President Nixon’s secret bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, Congress attempted to reign in the creeping expansion of Presidential powers as Commander in Chief. Still, it recognized the perceived need for swift response to armed actions almost anywhere in the world where the PRESIDENT can articulate (within 48 hours of taking military action for up to 60 days without further Congressional approval) a “national interest” of the United States. This is a codification of the U. S.’s perceived role as “the world’s policeman,” and a dangerous relinquishing of Congressional, and, therefore, States’ authority over the commitment of their citizens to actions of deadly threat. All in all it is a stark example of how the Executive has become the super-representative of “the American people,” basically in opposition to Congress’ Constitutional power of representing the will of the citizens of the several States.

Since the end of World War II, and most particularly following the assassination of President Kennedy, the “federal” government has rushed to become a “National” government, directly undercutting the design of the Constitution for a Republic of united, somewhat sovereign States. Every heated declaration of “threat to our democracy” or “protecting our democracy” is premised on the desire for pure “majority rule” in the wielding of “national” power, no matter how temporarily a majority might be created for any cause or idea, rather than a republic-like careful deliberation and application of wisdom before action is taken or changes to governance made.

Constant reference to the Constitution and its amendments, is necessary to measure how far we have drifted from, and how much further some wish for us to drift from, the ideals and responsibilities of the American experiment and the “limited” Executive thereof.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Family, Politics 2023, Representation, Responsibility

ONCE UPON A TIME

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Americans are, to a greater extent than at any time since the “Great” Depression, unhappy and untrusting of others.  For all of our history as the United States of America, we have shared several senses of hope: economic, health, safety and cleanliness.  We might also add a sense of religious hope.  These hopes have slowly been… and are now quickly,  being erased from our shared beliefs.  It is unsettling.

Our origins as a people are exceptional as are our philosophies of governance and religious freedoms and numerous other rights protected by the Constitution.  The fundament of American exceptionalism is that the government(s) are formed and defined by the people.  Yet, since the beginning, those forces that believed the exact opposite: that governments are formed to control the people, their styles and means of living and their status in society, have been hard at work to undo the exceptionalism that once defined us.  Starting in 2020, the virtual Communist enemies of America have believed that success is within their grasp and, sadly, very many Americans, particularly young Americans, agree with the destruction of our culture and nation.

We are losing our hopes.

Every person has grown up with a pattern of habits and beliefs imprinted by or in reaction to our parents or guardians or lack thereof.  Other key people and childhood friends and classmates – and TEACHERS – all contributed to each of our belief structures and general outlooks and reactions to problems and opportunities.  Huge industries of psychologists, child-psychologists, counselors and psychiatrists have developed to channel our feelings, guilts or irrationalities relative to our upbringing.  In one way or another, at some level, we are, all, “screwed up” and seeking someone to blame for how we are.  How is it, then, that most of us have, throughout the history of the United States, turned out so well?

Indeed, through the times of greatest tests: The Civil War, various economic crises, World Wars One and Two and the Civil Rights movement, Americans have impressed the world with our drive to “do the right thing.”  Perfectly?  Naturally not; but, overall we used to tend toward the best response to challenges – personally and nationally.  Was it a miracle?  Was it a set of millions of coincidences?  Were children raised more perfectly then?

A qualified “yes” to the last question, but it was no accident that most of us grew up reasonably rational and morally straight despite our imperfect parents and circumstances, and the fundamental reason was culture.

We had a beautiful culture based in honesty and responsibility.  The rest of the world envied it and struggled to emigrate to our land of opportunity.  Our laws were equally applied, mostly, and our contracts were honestly enforced, mostly, and our private property – the fruit of our labor – was fairly protected by civil authorities, mostly.  We rewarded initiative and success and, mostly, forgave failure for those who strove to do better.  We honored churches and charity and respected marriage – even encouraged it in policy.  We respected learning and the learned, and the inventors who kept our economic future bright.  Parents could reasonably expect their children to have better lives than they had.  It almost sounds funny to recount these “American” qualities.

Our culture was the best there was, in our capitalist democratic republic, and we tried to share it with others.  Americans, individually, were enormously charitable toward one another and with the rest of the world, and we supported our nation being the same toward other peoples.  American citizenship was a golden possession, yet anyone who applied to be one had to meet only the simplest tests and commitment to be welcomed into our nation as an equal possessor of our “gold.”  Our basic Judeo-Christian ethics made us tolerant.  What have we done?

In spite of obstacles, our young people used to grow up in pretty good shape, and the reason was culture.  Schools, churches, libraries, police departments, pronouncements from the work of Congress, the military branches, radio programming, music and lyrics, television programming and news reporting, and even cinema… all reinforced our shared cultural beliefs.  Today?  Today, nearly all of these institutions challenge, if not tear down, our basic cultural norms.  Parents are nearly alone in their efforts to pass our culture along to and in their children.  What have we done?

As society becomes, almost daily, less and less honest, and our institutions less and less trustworthy, young people facing difficulties tend toward immediate suicide or the long-term suicide of drugs.  Adults seem to have no valid response to this.  Indeed, we allow for policies that make drug-addiction SAFER!  We don’t even want to enforce sanctions for criminal behaviors!  What are we doing?

None of what is going wrong is inevitable or guaranteed by the Constitution.  We human beings created the mess we’re in and we can “un-create” it the minute we decide to be adults, again.  What are we going to do?  God save us.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Governance, Immigration, Obama, Politics 2023, Representation, Terrorism

BIDEN, BIDEN, Who’s got the Biden?

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Information flows take the form of “news” stories – often opinions – social media scattershot (watch the spelling, there) some print media, and then there are “Special Reports.”  Among the “Special Reports” we can include White House press briefings.  In the “Biden” White House, though, press briefings provide almost no information: Mostly they provide obfuscation.  Still, many “news” sources can manage to create “news reports” that parrot the daily obfuscation – which is what “The White House” intends, while others make news of the gross failure of “the White House” to tell much, if any, truth.  Still, as Prudence has instructed us, there ARE truths about what is happening to our nation and the rest of the world, and careful sifting will reveal kernels of it… much like an archeological dig where arti-facts are revealed from under the crap and detritus of imperturbable soil.  Digging and sifting.

More than any other people, Americans deserve to hear the truth – all of it.  Unlike most other “Westerners,” however, Americans are about the least likely to hear it.

Competing countries – and forces – have their own “truths.”  We can see this most glaringly in the stories and hatreds and imaginings of Palestinians, although we should not discount the elements of truth amidst some of their “histories.”  That’s the trouble with hatreds and competing hatreds:  each employs truth to justify the hatred and to maintain the political power that comes with it.  Hating Jews, for the worst example, did not start with the Balfour declaration, and certainly not with the German Nazi Party.  Many Christians harbored hatred of Jews for centuries, ostensibly because they “killed Jesus.”  Plus, Jews banded together, kept their own customs, helped one another to succeed financially, and did not accept Christ as the Messiah.  Jews became bankers, often perceived and in fact, unsympathetic towards inabilities to repay debts.  And, they became jewelers, purveyors of expensive things for which prices had to be paid.  Plenty of reasons to dislike them in the eyes of many… or to hate them if cajoled relentlessly.  Rather than seek understanding, refined potential haters found it more comfortable to ignore or ostracize Jews even as they lived among the majority.

Almost every “Western” society has been unwelcoming to some degree toward Jews, despite the immense contributions to science and medicine and other highly educated pursuits in which Jews tend to excel, and prosper – even the great United States.  Yet, the treatment of Jews – “Hebrews” – by political leaders in the U. S. is far from exemplary, most particularly during World War II.  Despite American sacrifice to defeat Nazi Germany, Franklin Roosevelt was heartless toward Jews attempting to escape Nazi Genocide.  Based on spurious fears that even Jewish refugees might be Nazi spies, the Roosevelt administration refused entry to thousands of Jews seeking asylum.  Many of them were forced back to Germany where a large fraction of their numbers would die in the Holocaust.

Today, the U. S. holds itself out as a great defender of minorities, especially against “hate crimes.”  This extends even to cultural/religious groups that have been frequent, even documented, threats to Americans and to our nation.  Things are different.  No longer are we governed by parties that both want to protect and defend the United States, just with different methods.  One party appears to be in thrall of globalist forces that are essentially Communist, and that same actively appeases – or cooperates with – Communists and other totalitarians.  Indeed, one party seems determined to convert American politics to a totalitarian model… in the interest of “safety.”  At the same time – in the interest of idiocy – that party has dropped all defenses of its international border with Mexico, and facilitated the illegal entry of some eight Million aliens, a million of which have not even been interviewed: the “gotaways” who specifically avoid interview.

There may be a logical value to an open-border policy (that flies in the face of all existing immigration law), but no variation thereof seems Prudent.  The President of the United States, at the direction of – probably – former President Obama, has set policies by executive fiat, that must serve some interests, albeit not those of the citizens of the United States.  Dissolving a nation’s border is tantamount to dissolving that nation, and a citizen of that nation would be advised to ask his or her President why, and on what authority, he would allow such a crime?  For, a crime it is.  Indeed it has accumulated to several million crimes, and then it has become a federal imposition of unlegislated expenses – one might say, “illegal” expenses – upon the sovereign states that are protected(?) by the federal covenant we call the Constitution.

Those on the left defend the facilitated invasion of illegal entrants as some sort of “humanitarian” sacrifice the United States is obligated to make.  It is as though we are to blame for other countries’ crappy politics and socialist-totalitarian economics.  But it has become a grandiose lie being told hourly at our southern border – a lie told to the actual citizens of our country.  Illegal entrants from over 150 countries have crossed that ephemeral border, including thousands from “hostile” countries… those who are actively working to weaken, if not destroy, the United States.  The Biden administration is solely responsible for the breeching of our border(s) and the illegal release of illegal entrants into our nation.  One has to wonder.

Over the next decade we will have to capture and deport most of the Biden illegals.  Very, very few of them are legitimate asylum candidates.  According to international law, an asylee must accept asylum from the first country that allows him or her entry.  We’ve had illegal entrants from 150 or more countries.  Many had to pay for passage by air or by water to enter Mexico and then the United States.  Their presence at the Rio Grande is ridiculous and outrageous.  Why aren’t Americans outraged?

One of these days, it is sad to contemplate, there will be a significant terrorist event inside the United States.  We have, thanks to the President’s illegal policies toward an open border, INVITED terrorists into our nation and communities.  Nineteen radical Muslims executed the September 11th attacks; we know that some much-larger number of terrorist types have snuck into America in the past 3 years.  We know that both Muslim and Chinese espionage has undermined the federal government agencies and departments, even members of Congress and major cities’ governments.  Do we think that unfettered access to “The American Way” will magically convert these professional America-haters into Boy and Girl Scouts?  Not under the Biden administration… they seem to hate America, too.

Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Family, Governance, Politics 2023, Religion

Christianity Matters

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CHRISTIANITY MATTERS

For those who fail, intentionally or ignorantly, or intentionally ignorantly, to grasp that the peoples of Earth are engaged in a fundamental, spiritual war for which there is no mechanism of compromise, it’s time to wake up.  I am sorry for the shock to which you may shortly awaken, but it is real and unavoidable.  Hinduism and the “Law of Karma” teach that life – and Earth itself – is a test of our individual spirits.  It also teaches, like Christianity and Judaism and virtually every other religious belief system, that there is an “afterlife” where the soul, or spirit, survives in some sort of relationship with God, the Great Spirit, Brahman… even with Allah.  Religiously, this belief – or hope – is nearly universal. 

Writings about humanity’s creation, evolution and ultimate destination go back for thousands of years… like the Bible, the Vedas, and tens of thousands of prehistoric paintings, drawings, hieroglyphs, carvings and traditions.  Some are quite detailed about the technology required to get to “heaven,” others about the spiritual mechanisms for the trip.  There is a path for everyone.

Sadly, it seems Prudent to say, millions of people have convinced themselves that religion is a hoax and since they have figured that out, the conflicts within and between religions have no connection to them nor impact on their lives.  They seem to believe that the only purpose of life and lifetimes is to find as much human comfort and pleasure as possible, and that the measure of “success” is the level of toys and pleasures accumulated before death, and by how much may be “left” to their descendants.  Basically, if they cannot see, touch, taste or feel something, it must not exist.  While “pragmatic,” that belief is not Prudent.

Lately the news is consumed by kinetic actions initiated by the Hamas terror organization and the reactions, using superior force and methods, by Israel.  We should all step back and review the far larger efforts, worldwide, to unseat religion and God, Himself.  The goal of global Communism is no less than the elimination of freedom and its conjoined relationships of individuals with God.  The “World Economic Forum” is clever at reducing all of life’s concerns to financial relationships, and so is Communism and the various layers of socialism that claim to be only sympathetic to the underprivileged.  Even churches, including the Catholic Church and the current Pope, have forgotten the difference between charity, which is guided by a spiritual willingness to sacrifice for others, and socialism, that steals the resources of others by police power, in order to distribute it to certain groups whose political support may be “purchased” by “government” benefits.

Charity increases spiritual awareness and purity of thought.  It may also serve to “balance” bad karma created by negative actions for which an individual is forever responsible.  The Christian Bible teaches the same lesson as the Hindu law of Karma: “…whatsoever a man soweth, so shall he also reap.”  In simpler terms we might say that one cannot “sow” socialism and “reap” salvation.  That is, people who tell themselves that socialist dependency is some wonderfully charitable work, are lying to themselves as they lie to everyone else.  Nothing good can come from a foundation of lies.  Communists and others who promote the separation of everyone from religious faith, including liars like the World Economic Forum, are attempting to take the place of a spiritual creator-God.  At the same time they propose to replace the freedom and responsibility of truth with the imprisonment of rules, such that following the rules eliminates the sacrificial blessings of responsibility.

The battles against honesty and truth are taking place daily in our schools, our government(s) agencies, our colleges and universities and in the houses of representation in municipalities, in states and in the federal Congress… as well as in Gaza, Israel, Lebanon and Iran and Davos, Ukraine, Russia, China and North Korea.  Ultimately, the goals coalesce into one: the demise of America and the destruction of Judeo-Christianity, itself.

America, amidst great pressure to do so – including federal grants – is setting aside God, Christ and the fundamental honesty of Old and New Testament teachings… honesty that permeates our legal and commercial structures, at least in their founding and design.  The apparent trustworthy nature of America and Americans enabled the U. S. to become the heroic savior of Europe with our soldiers welcomed and trusted.  We were able to expunge Nazism and Japanese militarism at nearly the same time.  Little did we know that strategic and domestic lying had become federal policy.  Indeed, over the next 75 years the American people were among the least-informed while foreign governments and news organizations reported to their populations information about what the U. S. was actually doing internationally.  The federal Congress also transformed during this period, to one of the least trustworthy bodies in history.

Do we, Americans, comprehend what has been done to our heritage?  What is still being done at an accelerated rate during the Obama and Biden administrations?  Freedom, free speech, freedom of religion, equal application of the laws and, ostensibly, honest representation of our interests through democratic (honest) elections, comprise our culture.  So do free enterprise and ownership of private property and the ABSENCE OF LIMITS OTHER THAN WILL, INTITIATIVE, CAPABILITY AND HONESTY from attaining wealth and status.  The basis of all of it is Christianity in its purest intent.  We have turned away from our culture.  We deny our beliefs and our individual responsibility to them.  We refuse to pass our culture on to our children while we abort hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, and then wonder how it is that children grow up to kill one another. 

Sometimes fortunately, the world reacts to or reflects the attitudes and actions of the United States.  We have a dominant ability to communicate, and we are open enough to broadcast, literally, the evils we practice or allow, the foolishness we practice or allow, and the foul ideas we teach, encourage and vote into law.  The world can watch Americans and their government lie about everything from COVID infections, so-called vaccines, climate change, “fossil” fuels, genders, elections, history and economics, wars and foreign policies.  Then other nations are amazed as emissaries from the U. S. attempt to lie to them while encouraging others to govern themselves like Americans!  At the same time, Americans are rejecting their own form of government (two exclamation points!!)

Many U. S. citizens try to find comfort in the diaphanous idea that underneath it all there are people in the federal administrative structure that are managing things and keeping us safe.  Yet, little by little, we keep finding out that the bureaucracy has been lying to the citizenry, too… while scraping away our freedoms regulation by regulation, un-legislated rule by un-legislated rule.  Is this our “culture?”  Is this what brave and courageous Americans have fought and died for since Lexington Green?

We can track the socialist, even Communist assault on the principles of America’s founding, but we don’t spend much effort to expose the simultaneous assault on religion, especially Christianity.  The decline of “Americanism” has paralleled the decline of Christianity and Christian education.  The adoption of multiple evils as sources of revenue for governments out-pictures our cultural decline with sad clarity, as does the maintenance of addictions and homelessness.

Few recognize the threat to our independence and sovereignty that is resulting from these trends.  With politics and elections trusted less and less and less, and crime left unpunished by those elected, Americans are more and more accepting of the election – or presence by other means – of a strong leader who will “clean things up.”  The dangers of imposing the states of emergency or martial law are not always recognized as things start to get “cleaned up,” but sidestepping the Constitution for whatever supposed benefit is the ultimate danger.  Ours is a Constitutional Culture, as it were, and that is best described as a society where people make the rules limiting their government(s).  It is dependent upon a level of integrity and statesmanship in our elected representatives at every level.  That system has broken down.

We are challenged, now, to restore the principles upon which we were founded and, just as crucially, to restore our moral practices and beliefs.  What forces can be applied to shift so many directions?  Individually, we can improve ourselves and there are hundreds of self-help programs that might assist.  But, what about the “sins” we have codified as “rights?”  Is there a role for government in undoing the rush to replaces rights with licentiousness?  Or, can our “governors” be made to shift commercial activity away from our Communist enemies?  More simply, can tax laws be redirected to encourage marriage and families?

Somehow, probably including amendment to our Constitution, we have to establish a cleaner, less-drugged, less-addicted, less-debauched society that stands not for the victimization of every practitioner of destructive behaviors, but for the very best humans can be and for a future of greatness, growth, innovation… and hope.

We cannot make it if we continue to allow our people to weaken themselves and our purpose.

Biden, Crime, Culture, Economics, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2023, Representation

GULLIBLES TRAVELS

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You're ***tting me, right?
You’re ***tting me, right?

Amidst the anxiety, worry, fear and complete inversion of logic that comprises “Climate Change,” a sad failure of the heart is heard as gullible men and women who might create families, declare that they are afraid to bring children into this world which is doomed by the follies of pollution and fossil fuels.  It should be a mental thing, but it’s not: it’s a function of gullibility that is divorced from clear thinking.

America cannot survive gullibility.  Americans, more than citizens of any other nation, are OBLIGATED to study and understand the words, and the meaning of the words, and the philosophies supporting them… in our Constitution and other founding documents.  The United States of America – those are words, too, and we are obligated to understand them just as clearly.  Ours is a country with a role in history unlike every other.  “United” tells us that we are OBLIGATED to share common laws and moral guidance.  “States” tells us that our States are the structure of our nation, and our strength.  Ours is not a national government, it’s a federal one, yet every scrap of legislation that Congress passes EXPANDS national power over the states and the people, when it should be doing only what the states cannot do for themselves.  Words matter.  Whoever – or whatever – attempts to change the meaning of words is announcing its willingness to confuse the polity and steal our ability to discuss, reason and understand.

What American voters have allowed, so far, is an administrative bureaucracy that makes itself appear to be so important – so vital to our ability to remain fed and comfortable – that threats to its power or existence, even of tiny slivers of it, are tantamount to Hitler’s Nazism.  Minor interruptions, like temporary shutdowns until appropriations are approved by Congress, are described as imminent defaults on U. S. obligations and threats to every aspect of life from stocking grocery stores to providing health care and life-saving operations.  Worse, a government shutdown is racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist… and no one wants to be any of those things, let alone the whole country!

What illogical nonsense.  Yet, that is the definition of our “democracy,” today.  The “democracy” that we must impoverish ourselves to protect around the world, yet do our best to undermine, here, despite the fact that we are a Republic… that employs democracy.

Are your children gullible?  Possibly.  Once ideological teachers have taught our kids to believe untrue things, the pathways of gullibility are established.  If a first-grader believes the United States was founded upon racism in 1619, he or she can be led to believe that gender can be changed.  Pretty soon they’ll believe that their parents are a threat that cannot be told that their son or daughter is changing to daughter or son.  So, now it’s better to hide truths from parents.  We can’t survive gullibility.

Education, essentially dominated by government schools and unionized teachers and staff, is the fundament of culture and citizenship.  Along with language, math, geography, civics, science and a second language, the success of our nation requires that our children learn about our history, our founding, the ideas behind the Constitution and how it works, and basic economics.  Turning out students who cannot read – at huge expense – puts our nation at risk; filling their heads with untruths and radical theories of race and biology is the opposite of what parents – and our nation – need teachers to do.  Yet, as schools fail to educate, teachers’ unions dictate policies to management that increase costs, compensation and staffing while reducing accountability for teachers’ lack of results.  The incredible refusals to work and teach during “COVID” can never be forgiven.

Have we the intestinal fortitude to correct the direction and OWNERSHIP of our so-called “public” education system?  Can we place the management of public schools back into the hands of those we elect to manage them?  Or will we go to our graves with leftist, virtually communist teachers’ unions operating this huge fraction of our government for their own benefit… not for the advancement of our children?  Government employees should be severely restricted in their abilities to influence elections.  As it is, politicians charged with financial management of all departments rely on unions to get themselves elected.  They (the elected) then “negotiate” with unions for pay and benefits.  Those who are charged with representing citizens wind up basically representing only the unionized, public employees.  What a debilitating economic farce.  Will we continue this?  Or are there politicians with the courage to break it up and restore fairness, balance and honesty to our republican form of government?

We are $33 Trillion in debt.  Clearly the past 6 decades of “representative” government has failed to manage the people’s business.  We are on the path to insolvency and economic ruin when that day comes that other nations will refuse payment in dollars.  This is a system our “representatives” created in our name.  Now we have a poop-head as president who has invited SEVEN MILLION or more new welfare recipients, many of whom are actual criminals and terrorist threats to our nation, to our people.  Shame on him and shame on all of us who voted for him in 2020.  We knew he was a fool from his 40 years of history in the Senate and his 8 years as Obama’s V. P.  We knew he was a public policy and foreign policy idiot, yet we dutifully followed his party’s directions.  Now, we’re the fools.

Are we patriotic enough – still – to make wiser, more sensible, economically aware choices about who will represent us American citizens and who will be our President, representing all of us and our country?  Or, are we so gullible that we will again elect a caricature of a leader and toadies who claim to be our representatives?  How many of our Senators and “Representatives” are receiving money or gifts of some sort from China?  More than one, for sure.  Why do we re-elect them and then cede them power in their respective houses?

American citizens are the most powerful people on Earth.  We can affect both domestic and foreign policies of our powerful government.  Yet we continuously give up our unique rights in exchange for not being called names, and we continuously re-elect relatively ignorant and corrupt people to both state and federal offices – people who soon give up representing we, the People, and then learn to represent their personal interests by cooperating with other corrupt “representatives” who have learned how to steal, legally.  Whenever they actually face their voters, these worthies tend to represent the government to us rather than the other way around, explaining why this or that policy position that got them elected, cannot be accomplished.

Are we awake enough in 2023 to exercise our Constitutional rights and powers to put in place a legislature that will actually force the executive swamp to do the right things?  How is it that we couldn’t even get the border closed with a threat to shut down the government?  How is it that the Biden administration thinks it is “American” to force expenses upon the States in the breaking of federal immigration laws?  We ARE gullible, but, are we crazy?

Biden, Climate, Crime, Culture, Economics, Elections, Family, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Immigration, Obama, Politics 2023, Religion, Taxation

VOTE PRUDENTLY

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What on Earth

Prudence wonders about whether America will resolve to solve its problems – actually stop nonsensical policies – reduce federal spending – let men be men and honor the majesty of motherhood… stuff like that.  Questions abound.  Why don’t we have a secure, tightly regulated border, all around?  That’s one to which there doesn’t seem to be a good answer.

Why have we allowed about 7 MILLION illegal entrants over the past 3 years – unexamined adults and children, with unknown backgrounds and unknown useful skills – to pour into our country IN CONCERT with criminal drug and trafficking cartels?  How do we propose to house them in a nation where housing costs are the highest in the world?  How will we educate them in schools that are becoming a black mark on our society, in how many languages, at costs per student that are the highest in the world with the lowest quality of education results?  What sort of a plan is there?  Looks like there isn’t one.

How can a country that is 33 Trillion dollars in debt invite multiple millions of illegal migrants onto our welfare rolls?  No good answer – or reason – here, either.

Americans are wondering – or should be wondering – how it is that our military is being reduced precisely when China’s military, especially their navy, is being increased at its fastest rate ever?  Why are our soldiers, airmen and sailors being weakened by critical race and gender theories as Russia, China and Iran are growing as direct threats to the United States and our allies?  For that matter, why weren’t the military leaders who engineered the stupid and dangerous abandonment of Afghanistan, fired and forced to answer for their stupidity and the preventable deaths of service members at Courts Martial?

Here’s a crucial, life-or-death question for Americans: Why did President Obama and, now, Joe Biden, fight so hard to help Iran become a nuclear power?  Keep thinking…

How can the once-best medical system in the world allow itself to be compromised by a federal government agency that is financially beholden to pharmaceutical companies, to the point of dictating treatments and even outlawing viable treatment options(!)?  How can that medical system allow licensed doctors, many who are recognized researchers, lose their licenses and positions – including having their research suppressed?  How could it?

How could so many tens… no, hundreds of thousands of needless deaths of Americans be permitted, even forced, by the rotten collusions indicated above?  How can we ignore the thousands of “sudden adult deaths” occurring among young, healthy recipients of mRNA injections?  Why are those same being pushed down to 5-year-olds?  Have we lost our minds?

We seem to have lost “America.”  To some, the “some” that wish to eliminate America from the future, there is no good in any part of the United States because of slavery, a practice our nation sacrificed horrifically to end.  The promise of freedom and individual sovereignty for which we also fought and sacrificed – a promise made to all who descended from our founding and which is enjoyed by all who wish to destroy America, now, is a promise based upon Christian sacrifice and faith in God.   There is nothing coincidental that those same wish to destroy Christianity as they tear down America.  When did we lose our courage to defend both?

Rubbing raw the memories of slavery is a process very similar to climate fear-mongering.  The abiding purpose of both movements is never solution or even resolution of those supposedly existential threats to humanity: it is only to empower centralized, political control of humanity and its various nations and economies.  Where is the American Constitution in all of this?

Lately we have taken to defunding police departments where they are MOST needed, in cities where crime has been the worst, and where normal people and commerce are being threatened to the greatest degree.  There must be a good reason to do this in the minds and hearts of those who control those funds.  Prudence cannot discern what it might be… unless, and it’s becoming less and less of a long-shot, those who advocate and promulgate those anti-police policies, are actively trying to destroy America, too.  Evidently, they believe that the hollowing out of American cities – turning them into crime-ridden enclaves, will weaken America’s ability to defend itself when the final push to turn America communist, arrives.

The economic stress of “losing” the cities will also hasten the downfall of the nation.  Cities are the engine of growth and strength; they are always attacked in war.  George Soros and, now, his son, Alexander, have targeted American cities for collapse by financing District Attorneys who are radically opposed to bail, prosecution and incarceration of criminals.  Capitalizing on the unfortunate death (not a murder, more a suicide) of George Floyd, Soros and other anti-American types in the Democrat party, fed so-called protests that mingled with brutal, destructive riots and demanded the end of policing as we knew it in cities.  Some purpose is being served by what seems completely stupid.

The United States, Canada and Mexico sit atop the richest sources of carbon-based fuels on earth.  With the right economics and politics, North America (and South America for similar reasons) could be energy-independent and wealthy, industrialized and CLEAN.  Unfortunately, Mexico is nearly controlled by criminal cartels, Canada has slid into globalist socialism, and the U. S. has fallen sway to anti-scientific “climate-change” hogwash that leads us to sacrifice both freedom and wealth – and global influence – as well as our national sovereignty.  For unfounded reasons, we can’t use the energy we own; we must buy it from hostile countries that obtain it less cleanly than we do, and ship it by the millions of tons in dirty ships.  This dumb idea makes sense to a fringe element that benefits from battery-powered vehicles, solar panels and windmills.  As with other, numerous life-changing trends and forces at work within the federal administrative state, government falsehoods are actively diverting our nation from its history and heritage.  Why do we allow this?

Lithium-ion batteries, mostly controlled by China in terms of materials and manufacture, are being forced upon a public that doesn’t want them.  Why?  Because the government-types believe we need to want them.  They don’t work well and they are toxic and dangerously combustible.  This is all to reduce “carbon,” one of the key building-blocks of life on earth.  There is a belief – an ideology – that claims that carbon-dioxide, the major product of breathing, is capable of such a massive “greenhouse effect” that it will destroy life on this planet, including raising sea levels 20 feet or more.  People motivated by their faith in this concept are unable to consider that it is probably incorrect… and they are noisier than most of us, gaining political sway.  They are forcing the switch away from our extraordinarily efficient gasoline-fueled vehicles and from the freedoms they enable.  So, we are being forced – not encouraged, FORCED – to switch to less capable and less safe modes of transportation that cost more to operate… when they do operate.  They do have slick electronics, but they are relatively useless except in very limited applications.  Why do we, the People, permit our government to batter(y) us?

Our so-called Representatives have divested the Congress of most of its responsibilities.  Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, among other financial responsibilities of the Congress, states that “the Congress shall have the power… To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; …”  Yet the same band of worthies created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and, in stages, slipped the “Fed” into a position of financing unlimited debts on the credit of the United States.  Despite its supposed purpose of managing liquidity among banks and preventing financial crises, the Fed enables politicians to make economic promises that they generally do not understand the consequences of, knowing that there is unlimited funding available by “borrowing” from the Federal Reserve.  The Treasury issues U. S. “bonds” of various maturities and the Fed “buys” them with money it doesn’t actually have.  What could go wrong?  Socialism… socialism devolving into communism… that’s what could and is going wrong.  Why are the inheritors of the world’s greatest political and economic system allowing their nation to be stolen by socialist enemies… from inside?

The next set of presidential elections in 2024, may be our last opportunity to reverse at least SOME of the stupidity we have been borrowing for since 1963.  It will be Prudent for Americans to reaffirm their Americanism rather than their adherence to any party, and vote accordingly, and not by mail – DON’T VOTE BY MAIL!  It’s too easy to steal your vote or negate it.  Show up and vote… for America.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Elections, Politics 2023

UNCIVIL WAR

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The Democrats’ war on Donald Trump is revealing the nature of the Left.  It is not very different from how the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union treated wrong-thinkers as the “Revolution” devolved into brutality and murder.  So far, at least, the Biden administration has held off from extorting confessions from those who don’t agree with Administration thinking about virtually anything.  No one has mentioned bullets in the back of the head to solve wrong-thinking problems, but locking up political opponents is doing the job.

Sadly, a lot of stupid violence took place on January 6th, 2021.  Organized protesters went to Washington with shared, poorly conceived ideas about actually taking over the Capitol, a few of whom were armed and foolishly violent.  We still don’t know how involved federal agents were in those groups, but there were many, evidently. And the FBI and others have shown their willingness to embed themselves into conspiratorial groups in order to learn about planning for future crimes.  We’ve even seen how the FBI will practically create such a group in the case of the kidnapping of Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.  There are many questionable actors who were in the crowd on January 6th, but no one has identified or questioned them.

On the other hand, many of those currently incarcerated due to January 6th events, assaulted no one, smashed nothing and did no worse than enter the Capitol through open doors.  Their treatment in jail seems to be outside of legal norms; some have yet to be charged two and a half years after the fact.  Those are they who can be considered “political” prisoners.  Having watched FBI agents storm the private homes of pro-life activists while permitting illegal demonstrations at the homes of Supreme court Justices, shows that the motivations within the FBI are political in many instances and worth questioning.  Could there have been a cadre of FBI and other agents embedded in groups that went to the Capitol intending violence?  Apparently, yes.

There are other oddities about the so-called “insurrection.”  One is that President Trump wanted to reinforce the Capitol Police with thousands of National Guard troops.  Legally, only the mayor of Washington and / or the Speaker of the House could “ask” for federal troops to function in their jurisdictions.  Both refused to do so.

Information and “intelligence” existed that indicated subversive groups were planning to create troubles on January 6th.  Trump was holding a huge rally near the White House and thousands of people would be in the city and probably attempting to approach the Capitol to protest the certification of electoral votes.  If there were a way to turn such a protest to Democratic advantage, no pair of Democrat leaders would be better positioned – or likely – to take such advantage than Pelosi and Bowser.  Having the crowds storm the Capitol, particularly in conjunction with rabble-rousers whom both knew were intending to do so, could create the perfect storm of confusion and illegality with which to smear Donald Trump and conservatives in general.  It was all too well played out for the benefit of Democrats.

Within hours, Speaker Pelosi ordered fencing with razor wire and guarded gateways to surround the Capitol complex.  Added to that “security” were thousands of National Guard troops that she treated fairly poorly, causing them to sleep in parking garages among other things.  Soon the “January Sixth” committee was formed outside of Congressional traditions and yet another impeachment of Trump was attempted to no avail.  But, the January 6th Committee continued its tightly slanted “investigation” for a year and a half, yielding mostly political claims and talking points, while copious real evidence was hidden or kept secret.  Little of value derived from the committee’s “work” although lots of fearsome claims were made about conservatives and Trump supporters.  Now we’ve learned that the “Committee” destroyed much of its recorded work – a travesty, if not multiple crimes.  Another set of tactics were developed and implemented through the Department Of Justice.

Soon, three state and two separate federal charges were concocted and fed to grand juries in New York State and City, Georgia, Florida and Washington, DC. – fed by prosecutors, a District Attorney and Attorneys General who are known to hate Donald Trump or to have backed Democrat politicians financially.  Naturally, they would set aside all biases in the matters of accusations against former President, Donald Trump, who believes that the 2020 elections were rigged against him fraudulently and that his likely victory in 2020 was “stolen” from him and the 75 Million voters who voted for him. (Wink, now.)

Trump, however, is in legal jeopardy, starting with the New York City charges brought by District Attorney, Alvin Bragg.  In order that he could “gin up” charges against Trump, a “count” against him was created for every check paid to reimburse Trump’s then-attorney, Cohen, who had created a means of payment to adult dancer, Stormy Daniels, of some $150,000.  At one point she claimed the money was to keep her from talking about a sexual encounter with Trump while he was married.  In other statements, she denied such an encounter.  Trump’s counter-argument is that Ms. Daniels had tried to extort money from Trump and that he paid her “hush” money to prevent public embarrassment.  This would naturally and automatically help him as he began his campaign to become president in 2016.  So, depending on how you look at it, paying her to keep quiet made sense on several levels, not simply political.

But Bragg is certain that the misdemeanor “crimes” of incorrect bookkeeping entries by the Trump organization were done to cover up a larger, Federal crime, of illegal campaign contributions.  That case can be made, but has virtually never been made before.  “Getting” The Donald trumps every other consideration.

Letitia James, the New York State Attorney General, ran for her office on a promise to “get Trump.”  She’s doing everything she can.  She’s cobbled together a host of charges against Trump’s companies, going back several years, claiming that properties and assets were “overvalued” to obtain loan rates and amounts that were, therefore, obtained fraudulently.  That those institutions that loaned money to Trump entities all made money and profits from dealing with Trump, makes no difference if there’s a way to damage Trump, himself.  That poorer individuals wouldn’t have been able to obtain the same terms is simply stating the nature of finance.  If it involves Trump, however, there must be a racist, homophobic, insurrectionist crime that’s prosecutable.  “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”  Lavrenti Beria would be right at home in the Attorney General’s office.

Jack Smith, prosecutor of the “Documents Case,” is a different matter, and so is his case.  Trump had retained documents upon leaving the white House that were, evidently, still classified.  Some of his own statements seem to confirm that he knew some of them were problematic and still classified.  There are more than 32 felony counts filed against him and some may stick.  Trump has done his best to call Smith, himself, into question, but he is still the person who could get him convicted.  Many of the circumstances surrounding the case are unprecedented, and done for political reasons, but the facts on the ground are what they are.  The whole premise could have been – and heretofore, always have been – resolved through negotiation.  Virtually every President has retained records from office; Trump is the first to be charged criminally for doing so.  So, this case is eminently unfair, but it’s legal and the former President faces legal jeopardy as a result.

Georgia District Attorney for Fulton County, Fani Willis, in fairly obvious collusion with the federal DOJ, is attempting to strip away attorney-client privilege and executive privilege, while criminalizing opinions about a clearly questionable 2020 election process.  This is very bad legal country.  Will it lead to any state District Attorney now being able to hobble a President with conspiracy charges for speaking with advisors and attorneys?  What a mess Democrats are strewing across our judicial system.

What is it that makes Trump such an object of hatred and political fear?  Clearly, he threatens a lot of people in government and in the “industries” that survive on the largesse of government.  There are nearly 3 MILLION fairly permanent employees of the federal government.  Each has his or her own biases, beliefs and political leanings.  Most, unintentionally, some, intentionally, are part of the problem America faces: The rights and desires of the majority of Americans can barely be acknowledged, let alone become public policy, regardless of federal elections.  There exists a general resistance to significant change within the administrative morass called “the government.”  Trump intended and intends to restore power to the electorate; by default, this requires removing it from the bureaucracy.  The levers of power within the bureaucracy – what is called “The Deep State” – include numerous police and investigative agencies, most of which are populated by people who have their own, largely globalist, not nationalist, attitudes toward America.  If they deem it necessary, they will do what is being done to Donald Trump to protect their power, not ours.  Trump is the symbol, patriotic Americans are the target.

Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Family, Politics 2023, Religion

HATING THE HATE

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HATING THE HATE

Don’t you just hate it when people (it seems more often to be young women and gays) declare that they “hate” this or that movie, or a restaurant or some celebrity or… well, whatever?  “Hate” is tossed around like a beach ball at high-school graduation in that it has nothing whatsoever to do with what’s actually going on at the moment.  This is not to say that “hatred” isn’t a powerfully destructive and corrosive reality, it’s just that most people who hate things really don’t, in fact, which means that non-hating people have to be on the lookout for real hatred so that we don’t get caught down in it when it’s being tossed about like a beach ball: never staying in one spot long enough to start an infection.  On the other hand, playing with hate can leave reasonably intelligent people open to mob – or group – hatred campaigns while not actually recognizing when “party-hate” has become consuming “hatred,” so foul that it can change people’s personalities.

One person, reasonably intelligent and reasonable, might learn of something with which he or she strongly disagrees and privately bemoan the fact of a bad political or legal turn of events, but never descend into actual hatred of anyone as a result.  In a group of equally angered partisans, however, the formerly reasonable person might break laws and demonstrate, agitate, hold signs and shout hateful slogans while comforted by the like-mindedness of other proto-haters.  The real hatred spews out when counter-protesters show up, arguing directly against what the mob “hates.”  There is no worse hatred than pops out when opponents start to poke holes in the dislikes of the originating protesters.

The worst haters also seem to be the most likely and virulent accusers of hate in others.  Why this is so can be debated by psychologists, but it has something to do with the mental neighborhood in which they live.  In many cases it is a matter of hating themselves and finding it impossible to love others.  Hate is their currency.  It should be no surprise that “members” of the LGBTQ+ “community” are among the most active haters, especially transgenderists.  One could speculate that a person who “transitions,” even if only emotionally, bears the impossible burden of hating who he or she is… so much so that emotional and mental energies can be almost wholly committed to convincing oneself and others that he or she is, in fact, someone else, an enormous weight to carry.

Another activist group that accentuates its hate for opponents is that comprised of those who are pro-abortion.  As a qualified arm-chair analyst, Prudence can see clearly why this is so: people who are “pro-choice” or, in fact, pro-abortion, have first to believe a series of lies relative to the nature and effect of various abortion procedures, which means tricking themselves or lying to themselves, something that is psychologically unsettling in the first place, and then act with or support those who will act on an utter hatred for the proto-human trying to grow and live.  Only then could the death of that unborn child be rationalized.  Prudence believes that hatred begets hatred – jumping into the shallow end of a pool will ultimately wet the jumper just as thoroughly as would happen by first entering the deep end.

Pro-lifers, on the other hand, tend to be more religious and more Christian in beliefs and actions.  For them, life is sacred and fetuses are entrusted to mothers in God’s name; they can’t be killed for any reason.  Essentially, the two sides cannot compromise.  Having reveled in 50 years of nearly unrestricted abortion rights, pro-abortion forces now feel victimized by forces directly opposed to their beliefs in a right to abort the unborn for virtually any reason, including convenience of the mother and / or the father or of any other person with influence over the mother.  To those who have reversed the ostensible “right” to abort, pro-abortionists have only hate.  Those who can actively or acquiescently cause or accept the death of entirely innocent unborn babies are already steeped in untruth and hatred.  It is a small shift to hate those who have attacked their convoluted premises of justification.

Hate readily erupts from people on the Left, and the reasons seem complex, but they’re not.  Socialism is fundamentally premised on hatred.  Many who are attracted to this or that sympathetic-sounding promise of socialism, would vehemently deny Socialism’s connection to hatred of any color. Socialism is just “helping” the (choose all that apply:) downtrodden, oppressed, poor, disadvantaged, illegal, incarcerated, undocumented, impaired, incapable, marginalized, indigent, ill-informed, illiterate, iniquitous, intemperate, impregnated, introverted or invasive.  Such “help,” however, inevitably costs the recipients freedom and sovereignty.  By definition, each type of “help” places the recipient in a group henceforth identified by their weakness or dependence.  It all becomes political, as the government grows to encompass all the help it can imagine providing, and the recipients form advocacy groups for their type of neediness.

Nowhere in the socialist corrosion is there a solution to or cure of any need… just nuance and expansion of groups.  All the needy will likely vote to increase the levels of help and the numbers of helpless previously unrecognized.  Many will be hired to administer the distribution and identification of needed help.  It has been said that Socialism denies human nature and is therefore fatally flawed as a means of organizing governance to the benefit of the majority of citizens.  In fact, Socialism functions and gains power by promulgating the WORST tendencies of human nature and is therefore fatally flawed as a means of organizing governance.

It is clear that some people, due to momentums from earlier existences or due to unfortunate nurturing, even while in the womb, will be de-motivated to work and otherwise take care of themselves.  Such will comfortably accept support from others or, worse, have few compunctions about stealing what they need from others.  They are examples of basic beliefs being the foundation of morality.  Like most – not all, but most – humans, these individuals’ beliefs may be changed with appropriately provided education and rewarded actions.  It is a task that successful societies will undertake and accomplish… failed societies will excuse it and even encourage it as some aspect of “rights.”  It is, rather, an aspect of rewarded “wrongs.”  Continuous welfare creates resentment among recipients, not gratitude.  The relative status of dependents is low; those who have gained the skills to set their own economic path – path of personal “worth” – are obviously treated better, even revered.  Those who are economic “losers” are tolerated at best and scorned at worst.  There is no pleasure in dependency.  Dependents eventually hate the providers.  Any change in status for recipients, required by providers, will increase resentment.  A relatively minor trigger event could yield widespread hateful, destructive action.

Politically, disgruntled, economically dependent populations are fertile ground for opposition groups and philosophies.  A little guidance as to whom to hate, and how, can bring mobs to the streets and actions into riots, scaring the bejeebers out of decent citizens and civil authorities.  It can also guide volumes of votes at election time.  “Defund the Police” can actually gain political relevance.  There are politicians who are so craven as to capitalize on the political will and hatreds of the forces of social failure.  For shame.

One political party has shifted its basis to one of hatred, and it’s not the Conservatives, who tend toward belief in the potential and value of every person.  Rather than support and profit from their self-destruction, conservatives, more than likely Christian in outlook, believe in the possibility of rehabilitation and conversion of welfare recipients into productive, successful members of the greater society.  Welfare must be temporary, in our view; self-support is constructive and self-enhancing; work is its own reward as well as the means of self-support.  Everyone is valuable.  Unfortunately, for 60 years we have avoided fighting for our beliefs, attempting only to temper the failed and failing beliefs of leftists.  For another shame.  It is the politics of conservatism that has failed, not that of the left. 

There is a fundamental hatred expressed by leftists to keep people in the welfare morass.  The waste of their lives and their children’s lives, whether by imposed helplessness, victimhood or crappy education managed by other leftists, is an expression of hatred for those so trapped.  What a cruel outlook on politics and power.

Ultimately, as we are witnessing in 2023, there is a general hatred of American Constitutionalism and its “negative rights,” as Barack Obama calls them.  Theirs is a hatred of free speech, legal protections of religious expression, unreasonable search and seizure, Fifth Amendment protections and all the rest.  This readily becomes hatred of those Americans who believe in and defend the majesty of our Constitutional Republic.  As those same leftists cement into place the ability to control the outcomes of elections, their hatred for honesty, truth and fairness is clear.  Shame on them.  Conservatives are still whistling past the graveyard of failed civilizations, hoping against hope for fair treatment in elections.  I hate that.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Governance, Politics 2023, Representation, Responsibility

The Injustice of Rights

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Feed the Pig… and his employees.

We are obsessed with “RIGHTS” in the United States.  This isn’t to deny God-given, or “natural” rights, like Life, Liberty, self-defense, or Independence… or the right to one’s beliefs – about anything.  But it should raise questions in wise people’s minds about so-called “rights” that amount to immorality and other licenses to destroy.  It should make a person, especially a citizen of the United States, demand that TRUTH be part of every law and, therefore, every right that is protected by the Constitution of the United States of America.  This, of course, must mean TRUTH that is empirical and based on a structure of reality that is, itself, based on evidence.  Rights should never be based on popularity or “fad.”

To maintain a culture and a country based on empirical truths requires that the basis of truth, itself, must be controlled by the citizenry, not the government, and this requires several components and LIMITS, which we call, responsibility.  The system relies upon clear-thinking by each citizen and the ability to obtain knowledge, not just opinion, from available heritage-media, as Prudence defines it.  Heritage media is written history of both success and failure, and a wide gamut of opinion and philosophy about historic TRUTH or that serves to illuminate the shadows of historic truth.  Honesty, therefore, is essential in that culture’s economics, law and governance, and in ALL contracts, public and private.

In the imperfect processes of human civilization, society and family, mechanisms must be provided and defended that allow for correction of dishonest trends and tendencies.  The failure of course-correction in society, governance and education must, itself, be corrected as frequently as necessary in order to return to a path built on TRUTH and HONESTY.  The human tendency to take advantage of power, whether political or economic, must be correctable and, as automatically as possible, removable, so that the vast majority of citizens retain its opportunities for advancement, comfort and safety.

That is, any legitimate form of government, must deal with citizens as individuals, and, where possible, partner with each to assure individual “success” as a free and honest individual.  Both government and citizens must be acting honestly for this effect to be in balance and to manifest.  Language, therefore, must be rigidly defined as to meaning and understanding, a function of honesty that educational methods and content must be based upon.

The greatest opportunity for tyranny exists in government, no matter how benignly formed and constituted.  Police power resides in government and its only limits are a judicial system and politics.  We like to think that written law protects us as individuals, but the judicial system must agree with those writings, which requires purity of honesty.  Citizens attempt, through politics, to limit judicial power to honest jurists, but the system is imperfect.  The means to correct the course of judicial dishonesty are few and awkward to employ and, in fact, arcane on purpose.  Under the Constitution we hope that imperfect, if not dishonest, politicians will magically elevate the most honest individuals to our “Supreme” court.  It is a hope that, historically, has proven only partially fulfilled, but to a somewhat better degree than all judicial positions as a whole.  Still, the placing of power in the hands of a small number of jurists to decide Constitutional matters for thousands of others and for millions of individual citizens, is imperfect, at best, and mechanisms for correcting course even there, should be in place.

The natural limitations of foresight, to which all the crafters of the Constitution were subject, prevented planning for today’s advanced communications and democratized pollution of thought, and of honesty.  Those who took the risks of responsibility to found this nation against nearly all odds, could not conceive of an America where unskilled, unmotivated and unproductive individuals could claim the “right” to be supported by not just “the government,” but by the dishonest power of government to borrow from generations into the future for the comfort of the relatively useless today.

Nor could they have imagined a political engine that runs not on the honesty that the competition built into a democratic republic ought to ensure, but on the ability to manipulate truth and re-election bribery schemes to limit the number of citizens that might ever hold elected power.  There are serious weaknesses in our Constitutional system – not because it can’t work, but because it relies too heavily upon honesty and integrity of those to whom we relinquish power.  In other words, it fails to protect the citizens from the worst tendencies of human nature.  We can correct for these weaknesses of our Constitutional republic.

Clearly there is too great a concentration of power, political and financial, in the administrative state.  This is pleasing to leftists/Communists.  Their basic approach to life is that “experts” should be making decisions for, well, everyone who is not an oligarch.  For the wealthy, decisions are made that favor and protect them, much as we have observed during the COVID years.  Unfortunately, the political “class” is also happy with most responsibility being held by the deep state.  It removes that responsibility – and accountability – from the political personas they need to gain re-election.  Relying on elected “representatives” to reform the decades-long shift to un-representative administration of power, is a fool’s errand.  Things are too comfortable for too many of our “public servants.”

We need a Constitutional amendment that sets term limits for virtually all federal employees – elected and appointed/hired.  The “people’s business” has been subverted by an essentially communist administrative behemoth that no longer answers to the will of voters.  The American system was created to place and keep power in the hearts, heads and hands of American citizens.  To that purpose it is a failure.  Much heat is generated trying to find people to blame for this epic slippage of mission. 

Naturally, everyone is practiced at denying his or her role in the change.  It’s societal, starting with a lack of education of the average voter.  Coincidentally, the education establishment is firmly controlled by leftists.  States have played a role in the shift, as they sought out innovative ways to shift financial and other responsibilities to the federal government.  Leftists have led the efforts to shift welfare and other financial loads onto Washington, but, to their shame, conservatives have found it handy to duck those responsibilities, as well.  Nor will any state deny largesse that others are receiving… it would be unfair to their citizens, and so it has proceeded: shifting freedom, power and financial responsibility to the federal government.  Over 150 years increasingly socialist forces have transformed the basic relationships of the federal government to its citizens.  As often as it has been interpreted to protect citizens’ rights, the Constitution is as likely to defend socialist shifts of rights and responsibilities to government.  It’s obscene.

The money controlled by bureaucrats, more than three quarters of whom are leftists, easily sways corporate policies, creating a nearly irresistible force of control over 330 million citizens.  It doesn’t seem to matter who they are convinced to elect.  The direction of government tends to continue toward the left, which is globalist, now.  The independence of individuals and even of the entire nation, is no longer a national goal, nor is it likely, although possible, that citizens can reverse the course away from liberty and free enterprise, and even Constitutionalism.  The only option to reverse the course of global Communism is to amend the Constitution by adding tools and limits that the administrative (and elective) states would never permit, if that amending were in their hands.  Our Founders anticipated this.

Article Five of our Constitution provides for adding Amendments via two different processes.  The only one that has been employed to date is what may be called the Congressional process.  A two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate can propose an Amendment that may – or may not – be approved by the legislatures or popular votes of three-fourths of the States.  This has been done, starting with the Bill of Rights, 27 times.  It is not a perfect process, having included some glaring errors like the eighteenth and twenty-fifth amendments.  The process is totally political and responds to democratic whims. [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2021/06/27/boneheaded-25th/ ]

The alternate process is referred to as “Convention of the States” and requires that two-thirds of the States’ legislatures approve of an application to hold a convention for the purpose of proposing Amendments.  It states that “the Congress” … “shall call a Convention for proposing amendments…”  It is not clear that that “call” would require a two-thirds vote in both houses as the first process does.   But it definitely says, “…shall call…” and there is no stipulation that a “law” must be passed, so, it seems Prudent to say, a majority of the two houses should call the convention.  There are risks.

One is that the Left, Fascists and Communists, NEVER retreat from their mission: the destruction of individual sovereignty, liberty and responsibility.  We have seen that laws are meaningless in their view of history – RULES are the coin of their realm.  LAWS imply shared values of morality like, well, the Ten Commandments and their ilk.  Rules are made by rulers… and they will tell everyone what is right, wrong and moral when necessary.  Rules evolve, in their view, as do morals, including the number one, most-moral Rule of all: evolution must serve the State (which often means, One Party) and if it does then that is what is moral.

Great vitriol will spew forth if the magic number of 34 is reached.  Congress and the rest of the power establishment has no intention of relinquishing any of what they hold dear.  A Convention of the States could, if carefully managed, redress many imbalances in what should be a federal system of governance.  Most people don’t know what that term means.  The alternative is a “national” government – not what the Constitution created… and LIMITED.

One of the worst consequences of the national administrative, unelected “state,” is our astronomical debt.  Congresses since the Johnson Administration and the nationalization of welfare, have buried the American nation and people in, now, over 32 Trillions of dollars of debt.  Over this period of decline, every problem leftists could give a name to became a “crisis” or a “war” on this or that social ill.  Where is the honesty?  One wonders.

Arguments over “raising the debt ceiling” are annually fruitless.  Those who live their best lives amidst the swamp of Washington are always so deeply concerned about “defaulting on the debt,” something the United States of America, for Heaven’s sake, would never allow!  Oh, the horror!  Of course, there is interest to be paid for the privilege of never repaying the debt, itself, now in the range of $500 BILLION every year, which is a lot of Meals on Wheels.  It’s a lot of drug and other mental health treatment; it’s a lot of policing and incarceration of rabid criminals; it’s a lot of a lot of things.  Janet Yellen now wants to rate the INTEREST on the debt in terms of its fraction of Gross Domestic Product.  She had to go some to find a comparator that makes the interest bomb look small.  Where’s the honesty?

A Convention of the States could bring about amendments that would limit spending to actual revenues of the previous year.  What a concept.  Any revenue – and that means every penny – in excess of that figure would pay down the debt: another concept, hard for Washington to grasp.  How does YOUR Congressman or woman propose to pay down the debt?  Eliminate “wasteful” spending and “fraud?”  When the Defense Department fails to account for multiple billions of dollars, is that wasteful or fraudulent?  When Medicare is defrauded of billions every year, is that wasteful?  When States use Medicaid funds to pay other expenses, is that wasteful?  Or fraudulent?  If everyone from Congress on up is in on the game, it can’t be fraud, can it?

How about everything from health care to the National Institutes of Health, the CDC and Fauci’s NIAID be returned to the States, free from federal politics?  Do you think the pharmaceutical industry would have more or less influence over actual health… as opposed to lifetime drug consumption?  Maybe land-use policies could be returned to the States, as well.  Is federal binding-up of nearly 30% of the country, disallowing joint use for profit, national security and recreation… is that wasteful?  Maybe the “work” of the energy Department could return to the States.  Who would miss that agency except those who garner money in their pockets by dealing with a handful of bureaucrats instead of elected officials?

Maybe an amendment could remove politics from the FBI and restore it to investigating and fighting federal-law offenses while coordinating States’ cooperation for additional crime-fighting.  Policing should be a State matter, anyway.  It’s none of Congress’ business how States control crime and incarceration unless Constitutional rights are abused.

Fully HALF of Federal Agencies, Departments, offices could be eliminated, gone, kaput.  Few would miss them, again except for those who line their pockets by interacting with them.  If they are actually partnering in the success of American citizens, then keep them.  Otherwise, put every one on a separate line-item to be voted up or down every other year.  Perhaps the Congress could actually serve citizens instead of itself.  It might mean some hard work, though.

And let’s put limits on consecutive terms for every elected official who is paid more than an expense stipend, universally, but let States decide what they should be in their State.  These might include how many terms a previously elected office-holder must stay out of the process of running again.  But EVERY elected official should have to prosper in the private sector and live under the laws he or she helped pass.  Being in Congress or States’ legislatures or elected executive office is NOT a profession – it’s a sacrifice of service to neighbors, communities and country.  I guarantee we’d have different kinds of people in office – and different offices bound by different laws – which are the points.

Biden, Economics, Elections, Politics 2023, Responsibility

“Charlie” McCarthy

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Mr. Kevin McCarthy, ostensible Speaker of the House of Representatives of the People of the United States of America, in Congress, assembled, sans acclaim, is either confused or a compromised fool.  In his one opportunity to negotiate anything with the ostensible President of those same United States, sans acclaim, McCarthy managed to scrape the crumbs from the dinner trencher of the Big Guy, nearly dislocating his RIGHT shoulder from patting his own back in triumph.

Not a word was said about the defense of America and her people, or about the open border that threatens us, all.  Across the table from a documented criminal-President, McCarthy’s deep, deep concerns floated to the surface… of the Swamp – they were mostly air, after all… air-time, most accurately.  His leadership was on brilliant display, however, as he led his party to, ummnnh… well, nowhere.

Where does the Constitution permit the FEDERAL government to impose costs – illegal costs – upon the States of the Union?  Where does the Congress get the right to finance – BORROW to finance – the failure to follow U. S. law?  How can the Congress be a party to FAVORING illegal aliens over U. S. citizens?  Who, after all and in fact, does every sworn Member of the Congress of the United States of America work for and get paid by?  By LAW?

The weakest President in Prudence’ lifetime has bested one of the weakest Speakers – excepting Paul Ryan, perhaps.  Any Patriot must wonder why he or she still supports the Republican Party?  Here is a President of very questionable electoral authority and ethics, whose only means of communication other than scripts on teleprompters, is to spin fables: outright falsehoods that spill from his untethered brain and mouth like han ds-full of nuts, too bulky to allow for chewing… or mulling slightly.  Yet, not a word about the defense of our borders, our cities, our states, our citizens… or our very economy.  Most tragically, there was nothing about reducing our debt.

One must wonder why McCarthy agreed to this charade.  Is it simply, corruptly, to retain powerful “issues” with which to campaign?  To retain power for these lowly appendages of the deep-state Swamp?  Couldn’t get rid of Majorkas?  Or Wray?  Or, Milley or Austin?

When people from “both” sides are touting Victory, you know the “compromise” is a stinking pile of crap.