Education, Governance, Politics 2018, Responsibility

Mid-Terms… and here we are.

September 29, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

The mid-term elections of 2018 provide a vibrant graphic – Kodachrome – Technicolor – Cinemascope (old terms you can Google) of both the failings and successes of the American experiment. Every stress and resolution since King Philip’s War has contributed to how the U. S. was formed and how we arrived… here. Which is where, exactly?

Hard to say. We have paddled, splashed, kicked and floated out past the string of floats, out past the raft and out to where a dense fog obscures the shoreline so well that we can’t be sure from where on the shore we departed, nor are we sure if that’s the shore we wish to return to. The fog is Socialism, the raft is principled education and the string of floats that marked the edge of safety, is the Constitution. The barque we are riding is Progressivism, and if we sink, at last, the people on shore who can barely see or care about us, will simply say good riddance; we were more trouble than we were worth, us and our God and our founding principles.

From where we Faithful constitutionalists are, we must devise a way back to shore – the ideas of America – while we convince the socialists that Constitutional republicanism based on democratically elected representatives, within which individuals are responsible for their choices and duties… and failures… is the only true direction to follow.

The mid-term elections in 2018 are an obsidian mirror reflecting every dark political urge, lie, distortion and fraud either party is inclined to use to further its ends. It all stinks, albeit obscurely. There is very little truth at work this year. It appears that if several media outlets were not repeating and amplifying increasingly strident and unsubstantiated statements, particularly in reference to Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats would have a very thin campaign “platform.”

Republicans stand for a closer approximation of Constitutional strictures and forms, but fail to stand firmly on much beyond Defense and tax cuts. Their own adjustment of principle for purposes of re-election is no less corrupt than that of their opponents. Connections to Chinese moneys, subtle, legal bribes, in both parties but sizable among Republicans, distorts decision-making on a hundred policies and problems. Somehow these two groups of self-serving oligarchs deserve our trust in the fulfillment of our Constitutional form of government. Now they are both demanding a hold on Constitutional power, vested in the Congress. Their tools are neither truth nor justice, but belief.

Republicans believe in the direction Trump wants to take us, for example, even if they dislike him personally. Democrats believe he is evil and their enemy, worthy of any form of resistance and defeat. Yet, he was elected by sufficient states to become president. Most of the nation preferred his promises to Mrs. Clinton’s. Effectively, Trump is on the ballot in every state again in the mid-terms. His opponents and all socialists are focusing on Brett Kavanaugh in order to coalesce their ostensible “base:” minorities, those dependent on government support, illegal entrants, abortion-lovers and the abortion industry, angry – likely single – women and the ‘deep state,’ itself. Their utter lack of ethics and decorum during the hearings, however, may not create the groundswell they hope for.

Democrats are also employing the final tactic in the 150-year war against Constitutional republicanism: pure socialism/communism. In the wake of socialist upset wins in a couple of primaries, numerous candidates for higher offices have come out directly in support of pure socialism. Socialism and Constitutional republicanism are antithetical and diametrically so. One wonders what country’s offices these former Democrats think they are seeking.

That obsidian mirror makes it hard, but not impossible, to see the shadowy actions of bad actors in the Department of Justice and elsewhere, as they strive to upset the result of a clearly-won presidential election. A perpetually compromised Congress, far more exposed in its work, attempts to expose illegal actions resisting the president, inside executive department agencies. It is not limited to Justice – far from it. Yet the demands of re-election distort the timing of their expository work.

Prudence would indicate that our biennial election “show” serves other-than-governance purposes, while it appeases, briefly, the unsettledness of the populace. People have followed, for decades… no, for centuries, political divisions. They followed them into civil war in 1861, and into other, bullet-less, civil “wars” since then, no less disruptive in a sense, including the current one. Now we must choose to continue towards restoration of Constitutionalism, or to hasten our descent into globalist socialism. For the aware, the mid-terms are how we’ll make that choice.

For everyone else, this is when we vote for more free stuff from Uncle Sucker.

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Governance, Politics 2018

As Ye Sow…

September 13, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

The alligators are circling and the Democrats are circling at the same time. The former are circling the Trump administration and the presidency, itself; the latter are circling the cesspool drain of socialism. Both the alligators of the “deep,” or now referenced, “steady” state, and the Democrats/neo-Socialists use the same set of tactics: Fascism.

“Oh, no,” you might say, “Fascism is a tool of the far-right and of White supremacists (whoever they are), and the left tries to fight them off!” Well.

You, the alligators and the Democrat left are confused. Fascism is a tool of the left. You have been taught the opposite, but a simple reading of history instructs us that we need to properly define Left and Right, perhaps starting with a change of terms. The left has changed the meaning of words repeatedly, but again, let’s use the right terms for Left and Right. “Liberal,” after all, described the colonists who fought against the British crown – which was “right” and which “left?”

Let’s consider that one trend in history, indeed the most common trend by far, is toward tyrannical control of people and economies. The alternative, individual liberty and actual democracy, is rarer, and, in combination with republicanism, more so. These two large trends can, roughly, describe almost every organized nation, today, and even the United Nations organization. Here’s where the permanence of word definitions becomes crucial. For our discussion Prudence suggests that “Liberty” be the direction of one trend, the rarer one, and “Tyranny… no, too pejorative a term… Control” be the direction of the more common trend throughout history. Societies and nations are on either a path toward greater individual liberty or toward greater centralized control.

On the liberty path we mark events like the invention of democracy, attributed to the Greeks; the Roman Senate, Christianity – which is not to say the Catholic or any other church unequivocally – the Renaissance, the Magna Carta, the English parliament, the Reformation of Martin Luther, the U. S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and other key amendments, the Civil War, World War II and the breakup of the Soviet Union. An incomplete list, certainly, but milestones nonetheless.

The story of control has always been marked by stronger over weaker people, conquest, kings, caesars and czars. As economic freedom and rights to private property took hold, the rise of socialism, always lurking but strengthened by unchecked economic inequality, became widespread enough in the 1800’s to create the dominant political forces of the 1900’s, including fascism and its ugly brother, communism. The new colossus, America, was not and is not immune from their blandishments.

We cannot examine our current status and our future, without recognizing the organizing morals of religion, and the educational value of churches. For “western” civilization the chief organizing moral structure has been, first, Judaism and the Old Testament, and then Christianity and the New Testament. The result of the long sweep of the Old Testament was to usher in the New and the examples and teachings of Jesus, the Christ. It is not one path, it is two, the second of which proclaims an individual relationship with God, and individual responsibility, as well. No longer was the story of God’s chosen people told about groups, but about individuals. No longer was the possibility of ascension into Heaven reserved for a handful of prophets, but it was made the business of every person. It was no longer an arcane secret, but instead the path was described and illustrated by Jesus, himself: “Greater things than I have done you shall do because I go unto the Father.”

Okay, enough of that. Let’s at least agree that Jesus’ teaching was that every individual was responsible for his or her own salvation or refusal of salvation. The doors of heaven were open to every person not committed to or consumed by evil… and each of us is responsible for the path he or she chooses – not so different from the Old Testament lessons, but personalized. It is the fundament of the Constitution and the concept of liberty, itself, and at no time divorced from responsibility: “As ye sow, so shall (must) ye reap.”

We can’t sow lies and expect honesty and truth to spring forth, for example.
Does this background inform the present? Prudence suggests that it does. Which actors are motivated by the desire to control individuals and their economic circumstances? Are they not “Democrat Socialists?” How do they propose to exert control?
The methods and tools are a very long list, but here are the most obvious ways:

Universal health care, or “single payer” or “Medicare for all.”

Comprehensive gun control.

Lower education standards for American history.

Nationalized Welfare.

Aggravated racial tensions.

Paid “antifa” thugs.

Those should be enough to show the direction that the left is taking, none of which is strengthening for the United States.

At first it is hard to understand why Democrats of today would be so fired up about the short list of 6 tactics, above. It is because they are socialists and socialism is about control and little else. You can see from the lowered education tactic that socialism’s resistance to the American experiment in individual sovereignty is not new, and if it must take 3 or 5 or a hundred generations, liberty’s ugly plans must be thwarted. The only defense against socialism is an alert, educated, self-disciplined citizenry… one that shares basic moral codes.

We can’t deny that Judeo-Christianity has informed our entire legal code and common-law bases for organizing this amazingly successful (western) civilization. We need not delve into matters of faith to recognize the practicality and reinforcing values of our legal traditions. It is informative that lately all things Christian are derogated and mocked, attacked, in fact. At the same time government and education institutions remove themselves from moral guidance or enforcement and even punish expressions of Christian values.

In the streets and in current politics, resistance to laws and their enforcement – and to their enforcers – is rampant, and deadly. These are socialists and fascists who are tearing down our legal and moral codes. Socialism lives on rules that society needs our wonderful governors to enforce (fulfilling the control instinct) since non-elite people cannot be expected to do almost anything correctly without them. This includes raising of children, imbuing them with morals, teaching them how to strive and excel, instructing them on proper relationships with and respect for the opposite sex, economic responsibility for oneself and one’s family, preparing them for independence and enlightening them with patriotism. These are all responsibilities of a benign, socialist government, after all.

When the Founders assembled the Constitution from the greatest civil organizing philosophies of freedom, they initiated a unique challenge to the prevailing organizing principles of tyranny, monarchy and theocracy. No other nation had attempted the creation of a government based on the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. In the process, and following a bitter fight against arguably the most powerful empire in the world at that time, the “American Dream” was born. It is little understood today, but is defined by “E pluribus unum.” America – the United States – would be a nation where all kinds and origins of people can form a nation, live and work together under a regime of personal responsibility and shared morality, self-discipline and individual civic sovereignty. Remarkable, and the diametric opposite of socialist diffusion of responsibility – and morality.

Socialism is by origin and intent a system without spirituality. Every one of its tenets presumes that human-devised, rules-based micro-management will yield a better society than religious or faith-based moral structures have or ever will. Socialism, by definition, is antithetical to Constitutional republicanism, and this fact illustrates why socialists have been pressing socialist “solutions” to civic and economic problems in the U. S. since the post-Civil War era, an effort that gained strength with each World War, the Depression and the “Civil Rights” movements. The skids were greased by Lyndon Johnson, Ted Kennedy and “Watergate.”

Now we are faced with one of our two major political parties celebrating resistance to laws and to law enforcement, even as it cries for more regulation from a massive, unmanageable government. What sort of political future… what sort of governing future do its members foresee? Are they anticipating a society with better cohesiveness, or lower crime rates, perhaps? By what mechanisms shall order be assured after dozens, if not hundreds of crimes are deemed un-prosecutable? Even now attorneys general are fighting federal authorities in many jurisdictions; many candidates for those offices are campaigning on their willingness to overlook criminal prosecutions they don’t like. How, indeed, will order be ensured?

Disorder is far from the socialist model… control is its bedrock. These same who agitate and cry for legal disorder, swoon for ultra-left socialist candidates and for ‘antifa,’ itself. It is the grand disorder of freedom that they hate… the majesty of it left in the hands of a moral, independent people. We are socialism’s enemy and socialism is ours, if we have the mind to understand and the heart to defend, our Constitution.

We cannot sow socialism and expect freedom and individual liberty to spring forth.

Culture, Education, Immigration, Race

What Direction is “Right”

September 3, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

The wasteland of American politics, amongst a hundred other logical and moral perturbations, is roughly divided into a party of life and a party of death, neither perfectly, of course. But… but roughly, yes. One party is aligned more with “pro-life” and one is aligned more with abortion, or “pro-choice.” Anyone can state which is which since it’s fairly well known where the two “parties” stand.

But it’s a circle and not neatly linear. The leftists, or progressives, infatuated with victim-identity-groups, exercise their dudgeon in support of “civil rights,” regardless of the effects on the group they describe as victimized by the denial of this or that civil “right.” In the case of abortion that group – and it’s a good, big one – is every woman. Rightists, or conservatives, are opposed to abortion because they think it’s evil and bad for individuals. They see the “right to life” as somehow the opposite of the freedom to choose abortion when pregnancy occurs, seeing the unborn child… and the mother… and the father, as affected individuals protected by the constitution. Leftists see the decisions about pregnancy, both the inception and the termination, as strictly the purview of the mother – so far always a woman. And so we divide.

It is impossible to avoid hypocrisy when it comes to other positions involving life and death. For example, progressives are both pro-choice and anti-death penalty, while conservatives are anti-abortion and pro-death penalty, very generally speaking. The latter would say that the unborn have a “right” to life but that murderers and other capital offenders have relinquished that right by their actions.

Progressive argue that pregnant women have the unique right to choose abortion, a right that must be protected, while those condemned to death at the hands of the “state” deserve a right to be rehabilitated from the conditions – many of those social – that caused them to kill or brutally rape and that the state should not become a murderer, itself. Both sides defend these “rights” and views with passion. Well, okay.

War – or defense – muddles the life or death arguments of both camps. Stalin, for example, caused the horribly painful deaths of millions of peasants (and intellectuals) in order to impose purer Communism, and he is regarded as a leftist exemplar and hero, today. After all, a thousand deaths are a tragedy; a million or more is a statistic. Hitler killed many fewer millions but the left declares him “right-wing,” although it is the right, today, that defends Israel. Hitler, a different-striped socialist than Stalin, the left has decided to hate; Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion mill in the world – and most profitable – they love. It can be confusing.

Progressives also fight for the “right” of illegal entrant women to have their babies (in the United States) so the confusion of leftists and of rightists trying to comprehend them, is understandable.

Giant business conglomerates that make armaments are identified with the right, although those companies, themselves, have literally no concern for parties or even nations. Their partnerships with governments removes them from the capitalist economy, in a sense, since they have saddled taxpayers with the burden of their success, not competitive customers. Both parties like these people because they are willing to support anyone financially, who will maintain them in power. It’s no longer recognized as corruption – just business, although it has little to do with the free-enterprise engine of capitalism that pays for everything.

To function over time armaments manufacturers need conflicts and threats of conflicts. Both parties come around the circle of life and death to where they bump into war and the manufacturers of the implements of war. The unpleasant side-effect of war, unfortunately, is death – death of soldiers, men and women, who despite volunteering for the military still didn’t want to die, and death of innocent civilians, no matter how careful politicians would direct the soldiers to be. Lots of death, injury and ruin, and both parties enable war in their own ways; both run in the opposite life or death direction from their opponents and inevitably bump in to the war business that puts the lie to most other philosophies each espouses.

Rightists tend to identify with “a strong military” and they use patriotism to the fullest for their advantage. Leftists, in very recent years, have come to despise patriotism, our anthem and the flag, itself, which rightists still can’t figure out. Conservatives see militarism as protection of the nation’s “life.” Progressives seem to have grown tired of the U. S. and patriotic references to it are of no value to them and may be readily opposed if only to aggravate the right. One might infer that the “death” of the nation wouldn’t upset the left nearly as much as it would the right.

Still, very generally speaking, the “right” tends to be pro-life while the “left” is pro-death. Like other destructive (of constitutional republicanism) movements based on “rights,” the right to destroy one’s fetus is defended as superior to the historic right to life. Indeed, the distinction between the two conflicting rights is a point of battle, not just opinion. As vital and fundamental as this conflict has been for 40 years (and for hundreds of years before Roe v. Wade) Society is now being sundered by the conflicts between “rights” unheard-of 40 years… or even 20 years ago.

Of ironic interest is the intensifying effort to grant Constitutional “rights” or “protections” to illegal entrants. While a pleasant-sounding attitude, there is no logical basis for giving such hard-earned rights to non-citizens. The Constitution was formed by American citizens in an era of freedom purchased by the blood of the first Americans. Citizens in the first thirteen states approved it. It is a benefit of citizenship whether by birth or by adoption, not of illegal residence or illegal presence. Yet there are large minorities in both parties – larger in the anti-Trump party – who are evidently quite happy to damage the nation, no matter how permanently, by breaking down immigration and border-defense laws. Many of these are equally enamored of Socialism… even of Stalin, himself, not because they understand what they are doing, but because they are willing to do anything to damage the United States. Make no mistake.

Many of the “no borders” zealots preach the “right of immigration” to improve one’s living conditions. It is a broad and ill-defined right that extends to everyone who is, first and foremost, not white. Like the right to abortion, when actually contemplated, the image of an immigrant or of an aborted immigrant to life, is covered in brown skin. Whites have been defined as oppressors in any and every instance, and are therefore entitled to almost no rights and chief among those so proscribed is ownership of private property. Thank you, education systems.

A more dangerous trend, Prudence teaches us, is “rights” codified based on personal, self-declared feelings. Our culture has been turned, if not twisted, by the 30-year fight for “gay” rights. Initially it was a logical, and reasonable push back against cruelty and discriminatory rejection of professed “gays” and “lesbians.”

Appropriating the word, “gay,” apparently applied primarily to male homosexuals but is sometimes used to describe lesbians as well.

But the “gay rights movement” quickly morphed from tolerance and non-discrimination towards unusual people, into demands for total acceptance and legalization of every permutation of sexual deviance – all of it self-declared. In other words, a person can declare him- or her-self to be “gay,” and come under constitutional protections now accepted as protecting every form of “expression.” That same person, however, can also choose to live as a heterosexual, self-declaring a non-gay status, and have, in effect, fewer rights or protections than previously.

This seems like a preposterous basis for application of the 14th Amendment. We have moved into a realm where people’s feelings are made the basis for anti-discrimination protections. More diaphanous is legislative logic for “trans-genderism.” With no physical evidence, men and women… and boys and girls… are permitted, if not encouraged, to live out their fantasies of being the opposite “gender.” The argument is based on “gender” being a linguistic designation of maleness and femaleness, and therefore nothing “permanent.” The lack of permanence is based on the fluidity of feelings and not of gender, itself, necessarily. Some exercise their convictions to the point of bodily mutilation and chemical distortion of their natural hormonal beings. The legitimization of these emotional incongruities has found its way into governmental responsibility for the emotional satisfaction and even physical or chemical balance of military personnel and even of prisoners who self-declare their identification with the opposite sex from that of their birth. Again, individuals are able to gain rights and protections based upon only their declarations and not on verifiable evidence. It is a dangerous path; parents keep your children safe – society no longer will.

Finally, and simply for the length of the essay, come the new “rights” to be offended. This amorphous body of social “rule-making,” stems from the concept of “hate crime” and its bastard child, “hate speech.” For a legal and judicial system that can’t define pornography, defining “hate” as an enforceable term seems a bit of a stretch. By some sort of arcane, subjective reckoning, a murder performed by a killer who keeps his feelings to himself is LESS of a crime than if he advertised his extreme dislike of the group he thinks the victim deserved to be part of. A dope who kills a fat person and who also hates fat people is in worse trouble than a murderer who loves them. You figure it out.

Academics and others who are ostensibly intelligent, actually nurture the concept of unbridled “offense” and attempt to set rules against “hate speech” (anything traditional, conservative or Constitutional… or critical of liberalism… or of Hillary Clinton), or insensitive pronouns like “his,” hers,” “he’ and “she.” By accepting the mythical “fluidity” of gender, colleges and other self-righteous arbiters of “education” buy in to the concepts of self-selected pronouns the meaning of which is decided by their inventors, with no connection to our common language(s). It’s another dangerous path, one that leads to hatred and confrontations initiated by the supposedly offended. Social and cultural adhesion are the victims… as is freedom, itself, in a country of rules rather than laws. Those are the tools of socialist fascism.

The loss of freedom our rabid quest for “rights” engenders (speaking of “gender”), is a form of death for every free person.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Immigration

America on the High Wire

August 25, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Constitutionalists and other conservatives, along with the rest of the world, are watching the American high-wire act being performed without practice and without nets. Having had top billing in the center ring since WW-II, The U. S. has also had unique control of the world’s money supply and, in the pleasant swaddling clothes of the so-called “Federal” Reserve Bank, has enjoyed unlimited debt creation for more than a century, financing sticky, anti-Constitutional socialism, sold so softly that once-conservatives defend its pillars, now.

Along the way the innate goodness of American ideals enabled the U. S. to also liberate and rejuvenate millions of people and dozens of countries, imperfectly, but with the best of efforts. On balance, the United States has done sufficient good in the century of its financial dominance that people living under much crappier politics still risk everything to get here. Unfortunately, unlike the struggle to get to “America” during the first 130 years of our existence, immigrants come less and less often for the opportunity to perfect themselves and their families, and more and more to grasp the socialist welfare for which we have indebted several generations to come, to provide for the “less fortunate,” who, in the minds of virulent anti-American socialists, comprise the rest of the world.

Therein is the outline of one of the strands of the high wire we, through our virtually inept governments, are attempting to navigate across a chasm so dark that most of the citizenry will not look into it… or acknowledge it, believing that nothing so threatening could possibly exist nor could our Senators and Representatives have allowed it to manifest. Yet here we are, gingerly sliding one fat foot before the other, hoping to cross to a better century to come.

In that better century we won’t be in debt up to our annual eyebrows, or obligated socialistically for many multiples of our entire annual economic output. We love our Social Security, our Medicare and a thousand other benefits. We love being able to shove the irresponsible in under the umbrella of Medicaid, lest we worry ourselves sick over them. But we aren’t loving the loss of independence that ungodly debt represents, nor the loss of freedom that taxes represent – at least we shouldn’t be. You do understand these concepts, don’t you?

Taxes are a loss of freedom? It should be obvious: freedom and economic freedom are symbionts. Debt, on the other hand, threatens freedom of the nation in terms of independence – economic independence. We owe a year’s economic output to someone, many some-ones, and a lot of that we owe to people who wish to destroy us.

Independence. It’s another strand in that taut, high wire on which America balances.
Most of those who would weaken, dominate or destroy the United States, removing us from our global economic chairmanship, and from our military empire, do not have the internal dissent that freedom allows. They do not have debilitating, enervating victim-based political mine-field governance. Nor are they constricted by waves of illegal and criminal aliens and hired armies of “antifa” street thugs who use violent force to make points that duplicitous media endorse. They aren’t required, politically, to attempt to coexist with a dozen opposing cultures within their borders, schools and core cities. They aren’t burdened by thousands of laws that are never enforced, or enforced differently for citizens and non-citizens.

And, like badgers, or jackals, they probe and push and nibble at our strength, waiting… waiting for the moment we are so distracted, or weary, or confused about our existence, that we can be toppled. Such an occurrence will mark a new dark age.

The high wire is not unable to hold our weight, or our debt or our dissension. Our confusion is more worrisome, but right now, it’s holding. There is no net. We have succumbed to debauchery, as it were, with governments decriminalizing activities and products they can tax… or gain votes from. It’s tawdry. What sort of government can profit from the temporary or permanent mental incoherence of its citizens? Our individuality no longer breeds responsibility or cohesiveness, rather division and wasted potential. As a people we are becoming more clever and less intelligent. Instead of rewarding success and improvement, we are rewarding failure, deviance… and incoherence.

Immigration, once a strength, we are now rushing – indeed fighting – to make a weakness and a threat. It’s not the stuff of socialism, but it is a weapon to prevent resistance to socialism. Socialism, a virtual denial of the spirit, is threatened by freedom – not by licentiousness, for that weakens freedom – because freedom, described by God in a million religious texts and well-distilled into our Declaration and Constitution, empowers individuals, not groups or classes. The majesty of individual sovereignty, barely recognized or remembered, today, is at the foundation of the American idea. For those blinded by the allure of socialism: the ability to get something for nothing – American independence of the individual is the enemy. The high wire is not yet severed, but the blowtorches of the original lie, now emboldened as “socialism,” are trying to soften its tensile strength.

Still we proceed, one foot before the other, carefully sliding and balancing, while the burdens of debt cower us and the rending of our muscles by a million jackals weakens us. The ideas of America – not her mistakes – are so strong that we are able to find new ways to rejuvenate her body, albeit more temporarily each cycle.

Belatedly, Trump is trying to “clean up” international problems that have encroached on our peace and prosperity for decades. Politically we have botched many circumstances, treaties, agreements and relationships around the world – too many to list. Currently we worry about North Korea, Iran, Russia and China, along with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Libya, Zimbabwe, Sudan and South Africa… oh, and Venzuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, Haiti, and even Canada. Ooops, forgot Philipines, Indonesia, Somalia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Other than that, things are pretty calm… unless we want to not overlook the entire EU and Britain in particular and the Balkans, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. And Georgia. Never mind the DNC.

The point is, it is a consummate balancing act the U. S. performs to keep its dominance through both economics and diplomacy, while shoveling huge volumes of “foreign aid” in the form of military aid, if not intervention, into over 150 countries. This doesn’t begin to quantify activities of the C. I. A. No wonder everybody loves us. All this while our enemies – every one socialist, communist or fascist (socialist) – watch for weakness, indecision, or introversion, or, for “leading from behind.”

If at some point the U. S. stumbles, fails to defend itself or, worse, fails to stand up for its majestic founding principles, the jackals will pounce to bring down – as in destroy the greatest affront to socialism and tyranny the world has ever seen: our great, lumbering hodge-podge of cultures and beliefs which had not the good sense to teach its own children the ideas of its founding and its exceptional place amongst humankind.

Our greatest balance pole has always been freedom, outlined in the Bill of Rights and elsewhere. We will do best to preserve ourselves and our countering role by cleaning our own house and by returning to our long climb toward honesty and perfection based on the sovereignty and individual responsibility of our people. We’ve drifted away from our ideals as we’ve carefully stepped far out above the abyss. Every reader knows the cleansing that must be done. There is no amount of political Febreeze that will correct for the rot it covers up.

We must regain our balance, and in fairly short order, Prudence indicates.

Education, Governance, Politics 2018, Representation, Trump

St. Mueller the Silent

August 17, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

The “Mueller Investigation” as the “Special Counsel” investigation is known, is a confusing, obfuscatory, scattershot, and stupefying, yet crystal clear example of the failure of American self-government. Mueller has played his role very well: careful, quiet, indictments of several people who a) will never be extradited for trial or, b) have nothing to do with what the public believes is the purpose of his investigation. A cool character, he.

Now the big press controversy is over a pre-election meeting attended by Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump. Jr. and some ostensible carriers of dirty dirt about Mrs. Clinton, Russian origin. The meeting wasn’t illegal and nothing illegal was done for all of its 20- or 30-minute duration. BUT! BUT! Did Trump, Sr. know about the meeting?

If he had known, it still wasn’t illegal. But, if he lied about knowing about it – which some claim, although there’s no evidence – and all one needs to do is accuse Donald Trump of something for certain people to “know” that he did not only that of which he is accused, but much worse, he’s such a terrible human being after all, then maybe Mueller can get him to testify that he didn’t know about the meeting under oath and then he may be accused of perjury because someone like James Comey, an established liar and hater of the aforementioned Mr. Trump Sr., and of Jr., too, most likely, has said he told him he did know of the meeting.

Mueller can choose whom to believe when testimony conflicts, and therein lies the flaw in the grand-jury / indictment system, proving the maxim that a good prosecutor with a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich. All he needs is for some homeless witness who claims to have seen the meat inside the sandwich in question, and to accuse the ham sandwich of being, in fact, a turkey sandwich. Soon the prosecutor’s suspicious attention is turned toward the sandwich so accused, with demands to hear what the purported ham sandwich has to say in its defense, only to find that the sandwich refuses to answer! Indictment follows.

Manafort is in big trouble. He apparently committed crimes by hiding income received from some sort of work for the then pro-Russian president of Ukraine. So his crimes were financial. His offense was working for the Trump campaign in 2016, during which time he committed no crimes. But, he breathed the air in Trump Tower and Mueller has treated him very differently from anyone else accused of similar crimes, including revoking his bail and holding him in solitary confinement. All this for a case that Mueller could have handed off to other federal prosecutors as he has other cases his broad investigation uncovered.

Manafort is obviously different because of his direct connection, briefly, with the eeeevil Mr. Trump: Mueller’s real target.

The official charge establishing this unique “Special Counsel” for the DOJ is short and incredibly broad:
ORDER NO. 3915-2017
APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL COUNSEL
TO INVESTIGATE RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE WITH THE
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND RELATED MATTERS

By virtue of the authority vested in me as Acting Attorney General, including 28 U.S.C. §§ 509, 510, and 515, in order to discharge my responsibility to provide supervision and management of the Department of Justice, and to ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, I hereby order as follows:
(a) Robert S. Mueller III is appointed to serve as Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice.
(b) The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the investigation confirmed by then-FBI Director James S. Comey in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 20, 2017, including:
(i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and
(ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and
(iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).
(c) If the Special Counsel believes it is necessary and appropriate, the Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters.
(d) Sections 600.4 through 600. l 0 of Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations are applicable to the Special Counsel.

Mueller was head of the FBI for years and worked closely, indeed friendly, with all the people who have lost their jobs there, over the past year: Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Yates, Paige, and others to come. Rod Rosenstein, not yet fired, who appointed Mueller, is also a close friend of his. The investigation team is comprised of anti-Republican and avowedly pro-Democrat, pro-Clinton personnel. It is reasonable to be suspicious of the even-handed application of the “law” likely to be arrayed against a Republican president who defeated “their” candidate. Mueller says nothing, but his treatment of Paul Manafort is louder than words.

Where the average sentence for Manafort’s alleged crimes is less than a year and a half – in a low-security “club fed,” Manfort is threatened with many decades of incarceration. A logical observer would recognize the prosecutorial tactic of squeezing a low-level criminal to get him or her to “rat” on his boss. There is plenty of doubt of that outcome.

But the Mueller probe is masterful in any case. While it makes clear the inability of our rotten, fatuous federal institutions to keep their own houses clean, it also has provided tidbits for rabid anti-Trump forces in media, the establishment parties, and in a thousand “non-profit” activist groups whose lifeblood comes from a thousand rotten grants of socialist funding whereby they separately and collectively weaken the body politic on a daily basis, and most foully from within the very government institutions created and sold to a heretofore “free” people as the fundaments of law and order.

And all of these seize on every tid and bit and crumb… and ham sandwich, with which to assail the President and all who granted him power to do what he is struggling to do. In truth he is neither Republican nor Democrat, yet the states are with him in the hope that our Constitutional republic might be saved.

On a sudden, the long knives of utter socialism are out. “Deminos” (Democrats in name only) are exposing their hatred for the ideas that formed The U. S. of A. Socialism, like the “serpent” that tempted Eve, is antithetical to Americanism. The American Constitution and Declaration of Independence cannot coexist with socialism. One need only to understand our founding and the majesty of liberty to recognize that truth. The heavy oil of socialism chokes out the life-giving waters of freedom and personal sovereignty. Need proof? There are twenty Trillions in proof hanging over our heads.

Mr. Mueller is faithfully serving the haters. Perhaps he knows this – his own past is far from pure.

Economics, Education, Politics 2018, Representation, Responsibility

Earning a Vote

August 8, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

People elected to office in the United States, from Senators and Representatives to state’s legislators, Governors and state-wide officers, Sheriffs, Judges, District Attorneys, Registers of Probate, Deeds and what-not, to cities’ councilors, Mayors, aldermen, local selectmen and various trustees of reservations, libraries, housing authorities and conservation commissions, all have an obligation, TO WHICH EACH SWORE ON HIS OR HER HONOR, BEFORE WITNESSES, to conduct him or herself and the business of the office at stake according to the law and in defense of various charters, bylaws, state and federal constitutions.

That is, each swore to be honest. Prudence recommends honesty as the best way to conduct the people’s business. Unfortunately, honesty, truthfulness are almost NEVER part of anyone’s campaign message, platform, literature or advertising, despite each knowing that he or she will happily SWEAR to be honest during the conduct of the office being striven for. Odd, that. In practice, all oaths to the opposite, many office-holders consider that honesty, in fact, extends only to the scrupulous fealty to the letter of the law: every jot and tittle and loophole thereof.

We do hear a lot about “working hard for you,” or “it’s time your group is treated more fairly,” or “my opponent, the incumbent (stated in a low voice) has not been honest with you,” or, if the case, “he doesn’t even pay his parking tickets!”

Because legislation – and regulation – is devised and designed by people who are hoping to find a way to gain personally from the “loopholes” they write into it… legally of course, voters rarely get much input to the process or the content of new laws. And, we are reassured from the rooftops as to the diligent efforts made on voters’ behalf, sometimes late into the night at great sacrifice, keeping their promises to “fight” for us and to “work hard for us” if entrusted with the office. After all, they swore an oath to uphold the law and the constitution, and there they are keeping every word of at least part of what was promised. And we re-elect them, sometimes for decades, as if we can’t imagine causing them to “lose” their jobs, for goodness sake!

Most gain considerable wealth while in office, and this is a very mysterious consequence of becoming a public servant. Some are paid from the public treasury quite handsomely, even exorbitantly, yet they continue to “sacrifice” in public service instead of accepting much more lucrative positions in the “private sector.” Just look at the millions paid to people like the presidents of nationwide banks, insurance companies, invest firms, Boeing, Amazon, Facebook and Exxon-Mobil. Yet still they toil on our behalf under terrible conditions and low pay, particularly in view of the tremendous responsibilities they carry for the rest of us. [See: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/03/31/massachusetts-vaults-into-first-place/]

Congress members and Senators seem to fare the best of all – at least the crafty ones. Politics, unfortunately, seems to attract those who are always looking for an edge of some kind… not a scam, necessarily, but some special advantage, like signaling what’s in your hand to your Bridge partner. One notices that there are many laws that specifically exempt the “Royals” (those currently in Congress) from their terms or penalties. For decades, for example, members of the House and Senate could take advantage of what in the private sector is known as “insider trading.”

That is, by virtue of knowing what laws and attendant regulations were about to be imposed, the Royals could buy stocks about to go up as a result, and short stocks that were about to go down as a result. It’s “edgy,” one could say, and we can be comforted in our beliefs that none of them would ever share that information with a mere civilian, since they all are sworn to uphold the law: every jot and tittle and loophole thereof. Moreover, they are forced to be away from their families and pay for extra housing in or near Washington, and it’s not fair to demand so much additional sacrifice on top of that already entailed in their “jobs” in Congress.

In response to negative press, Congress crafted the “STOCK” act, that essentially made insider trading by legislative employees (over 28,000 of them) and by executive department employees, illegal. President Obama signed it into law with cameras blazing. Not only was the trading illegal, finally, but everyone affected would have searchable financial disclosure statements available on some website, a requirement that was not very popular. A few months later, with most members absent, the House and Senate rushed a bill through and the President signed it with little notice or announcement. This bill kept the thousands of disclosures under lock and key in a basement room in the Capitol, where virtually anyone could review them… individually, by correct name, and even copy them for 10 cents a page. But they couldn’t be “searched,” per se, and you had to get to the Capitol and to that room during limited hours, and provide the correct name of the disclosure-owner. Nothing illegal, but just a little edge over the competition – us.

The search for truth is a competition, if you hadn’t realized that before now, and in this competition relative to our public servants, we have very wily opponents. Think of that: opponents.

How nice would it be to hear an office-seeker say in his “stump” speech: “I promise only a few things, ladies and gentlemen… just a few.” He or she holds up the fingers of one hand. “First, when you ask me a question about any part of my public job – the one you pay me to do – I will answer truthfully and fully, unless there is a specific statute that prohibits me from doing so. I will then explain that statute to the best of my ability, or get back to you promptly with the explanation. If there is a way for you to obtain the information from another person or office I will tell you and, if you need it, I will help you get the information… not just an ‘answer,’ but the information you are entitled to.

“Secondly,” holding up his pointer finger, “I will tell you the truth about the budget and about expenditures. The money we spend and allocate is all taken from your wallets and I will show you at least enough respect as American citizens, to tell you the truth about what’s being done with it.”

“And, finally, point number 3. I will not vote for any legislation that contains provisions that are ‘snuck’ into the wording because those provisions could not have passed on their own merits. In other words, some legislation is brought forth with titles that indicate it is about one issue, while hiding legislation about unrelated issues. Those bills are at least partial lies and I will not vote for them. On the other hand, I will fight to stop this practice. To do so I need your vote on Tuesday.”

Prudence declares her support for any such candidate. Sadly, none has presented him or her-self for consideration. On the other hand, if one were looking for someone who has crafted an articulate message of hate for certain groups, individuals or for the United States, there are several from which to choose.

The underlying problem with elected and appointed malfeasance is that it undermines the ideas of America. And there is no one to our West who will come to our rescue when our citizens lose all trust in our “self” governance. There is no one else with a more “free” system or where citizens have sufficient sovereignty to perfect themselves, who will ride to our salvation and help as throw off tyranny. We, the United States of America, still somewhat free, still somewhat honest, still somewhat Christian, are the last best hope on Earth. If, in our libertine libertarianism we allow Constitutionalism to perish, or if we fail to reverse our educationally slipshod descent into sexual confusion and feelings education, the whole experiment is at risk.

Indeed, for an American elected official to abuse his or her office, particularly for illicit, if not illegal personal gain, is among the worst offenses against our nation. It is virtual treason against the electorate, and utterly inexcusable. Compromised judges and law-enforcement officers naturally follow the path of rot blazed by dishonest elected officials. Tightening and increasing the penalties for official corruption should be the fourth part of our “honesty is the only policy” candidate wished-for above. Let’s hope.

Economics, Education, Politics 2018

Socialist is as Socialist Does

August 3, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

The “flash” of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’ success over Joe Crowley in the 14th District in Bronx and Queens, New York, seems to have ignited latent socialist dreams in dozens of Democrat Party “leaders.” All of a sudden there is a “new” idea on the political landscape: more than half the people are downtrodden victims of capitalism and the “lucky” ones who work are the oppressors and should be forced, by law, to support those less fortunate. Hallelujah! We are saved.

Aside from the fact that there is absolutely nothing new about these views, there is also nothing new about their perpetual, predictable failures. Their primary justification is envy and, more frequently today, hatred. Those are sad and fetid foundations for a plan intended to “lift” people out of poverty and hopelessness. Ocasio-Cortez has done a service to America, however, by revealing the vacuum of historical understanding of human nature and of the American people in particular. Perhaps it is a reasonable reaction to the mess we have made of enlightened economics in the United States; it is not a reasonable reaction to the lessons of history.

If only Republicans and other mildly conservative people were awake to the rot eating away at the true American promise and premise, instead of being so deeply beholden to the salamanders of money.

Loosely described, the American economy (and political dysfunction) is a result of creeping socialism that has been gnawing at our strengths since the Civil War – more noticeably since the 1900’s.

Socialism and other forms of mis-identified Social Justice, can win votes, sometimes for very ignorant or, dare we say, stupid candidates for office. They get elected by promising to A) Punish the oppressors, and, B) Hand out free stuff. Sometimes they are neither ignorant or stupid, but evil; sometimes they’re all three. Unenlightened conservatives, at the other end of the pendulum’s arc, promise to punish the freeloaders and to enrich the productive, hard-working class. Deportation and prevention of illegal entrants is a perverse gift to their politicking, just as outrageous concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of some of history’s most accomplished thieves is to Socialists.

Ocasio-Cortez is a graduate of Boston University where she learned something about economics. Her statements about economics and “public” financing, however, would lead one to recognize that what one believes is far more motivating in both words and deeds than any expensive education. Maybe she believes what she says about Socialist distribution of wealth… if only there were a Socialist distribution of productivity that partnered with it.

One can forgive her misunderstandings of the current federal budget, tax rates and overall distribution of taxation, [see “http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/11/04/a-few-words-on-capitalism-part-1/”] but it is a bit harder to overlook her total misrepresentation of her “Bronx” background and the supposed house-cleaning by her mother. She displays no better ethics than many disreputable politicians before, beside and in front of her. Conservatives, or Republicans, at least, seize on her ignorance and inconsistency, “progressive” socialists overlook it – belief trumps evidence.

It is harder to overlook the deliberate ignorance of both soft Republicans and hard Democrats who hold office, now. Well, perhaps ignorance is too generous; maybe most are stupid, or evil. Prudence indicates that holding office in the U.S., these days, is altogether too lucrative, too irresponsible and too secure against challengers. “Conservatism, Socialism… what’s the difference if I can snag the sweetest pension in the free world?”

It makes a lot of difference to the function and future of the United States. One needs, as does Ocasio-Cortez, to appreciate the origins and history of the U. S. The Europeans, Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Germans, Scandinavians and others, who came to the “New World” were very strong people. They were courageous enough to risk everything simply for opportunity. If they survived the first winter, there existed a chance they could make a successful life, one they’d have to carve out of wilderness. If they didn’t hunt game successfully or failed to prepare a field for planting, they could starve. Each had, or very quickly learned multiple skills since there were no hardware stores or clothing stores… or even cloth stores.

Virtually all were religious, Christian, mostly, or Jewish. Establishing churches was one of their first community projects; thanking God a daily ritual. Many died young from disease, injury, bad food, and from Indian defenses of their own lands and livelihoods. For women, childbirth was a major risk. Still, they came and slowly triumphed, knit by religion into common weal and defense, even when fighting other Europeans. The borders and nations we know in North and South America are the result, including hard-fought wars of independence from the European homelands. No matter how easy it is to smugly judge their actions it is admiration that we owe them, not condemnation.

They arrived with what they could carry. There was no welfare. Some were charitable, some more than others. There were no chits for free food and no subsidization for housing or health-care. Still, they came: strong, risk-taking, resolute, religious. Some of the strongest people in the world, and the government they formed, a constitutional republic, is based on the finest secular distillation of Biblical lessons ever devised: As ye sow, so shall (must) ye reap. It’s based on personal responsibility, if you don’t grasp the meaning in the King James version: personal responsibility for actions and inactions, successes and failures, honesty and dishonesty. Each is personally responsible for his or her actions throughout life. For many, there is a personal responsibility to God for everything good or bad. In lieu of that faith, personal responsibility is still the best approach to life, growth, personal improvement and the strength of society. Washing the concept out with the soft soap of Socialism is a choice made at great peril, threatening the strengths of society, families and individuals.

Today we are throwing out every vestige of the Bible we can identify. Ten thousand years of strengthening morals have been flushed away in a hundred years. America is losing its way at the very point that the original lie, Socialism, is rising up in the hearts and minds of poorly educated young people, led by the crassest of politicians.

One can recognize the original lie, easily. Under socialism individuals are absolved of individual responsibility, first by their identification with a group or class of people. Indeed, when it comes to politics, each identified group – and group member – is expected to vote the socialist ticket. If one can also be placed in a group that has been victimized by “the establishment,” which is defined variously as fits the socialist need, then that group is supposed to vote even more reliably socialist.
If a person runs afoul of the law, Socialism likes to diffuse the causes of that criminal activity, often by ascribing a history of victimhood and abuse, poverty, discrimination, lookism, sexism or, the trump card, homophobia. Therefore a long-term incarceration is unfair and we should extend the hand of additional welfare to help in the unjustly-charged individual’s rehabilitation. Just an example; no one can seriously imagine such an argument carrying any weight in a courtroom.

Socialism does not respect nationalism. For many of our young people, today, defining and defending of our borders is viewed as some sort of international crime, an affront to everyone who wants to live here instead of his or her own homeland. How twisted. How wasteful… that these people could have consumed $200,000 to $300,000 worth of public education and been granted DIPLOMAS ostensibly indicating successful completion of 12 or 13 years of learning. Yet they are so ignorant they don’t even know what they don’t know. They seem to “hang” with others who celebrate the same ignorance and who applaud statements and beliefs of abject stupidity… at least in terms of history and human experience.

It is incumbent upon Christians and Jews, and upon Constitutionalists, generally, to explain again and again why the morals and economics that help people perfect themselves, and that built the ideas and ideals of America, are better for this nation and the world, than ANY Socialist plan.

Culture, Education, Immigration, Representation, Responsibility, Trump

The Progress of Hate

July 22, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Since Mr. Trump’s campaign for the presidency commenced, the Left and those easily led by leftist propaganda have virtually exhausted the supply of calumnies that can be thrown against another person. For his part, Trump can take satisfaction at having advanced from “buffoon,” and, one of the worst, “businessman,” to “Nazi” and, topping every other, “Hitler.” And he seems to have advanced so far with no effort. Remarkable.

As interesting, and not just interesting: phenomenal, is the ability of the Left to accuse their most hated opponent of being history’s most reviled LEFTIST! Of course, as the left constantly proves, the meaning of words – and philosophies – is one of the left’s adopted tasks. The danger is that words intended to cut the deepest might become meaningless.

When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1942, Communist sympathizers infesting the West, including the U. S., immediately placed Hitler on the “far Right.” That lie was so successful it has become common “knowledge” and not just repeated casually, but taught as truth by people who ought to know better. Hitler was a socialist and a fascist. “Nazi” is an abbreviation of “National Socialist.” The enmity between Hitler and Stalin was between Cain and Abel. The Soviets suddenly became “allies” of the West by virtue of sharing an enemy – they never became a brother of American constitutional republicanism.

Ultra-leftists, George Soros and others, created the “spontaneous” agitators, “Antifa.” Antifa is an abbreviation of “Anti-Facist” which blithely mirrors the lie of Nazism being a right-wing philosophy. Fascism, as under Mussolini, Hitler’s happy Axis ally, is the primary tactic OF THE LEFT, not of the right. Antifa is a creature of the Left and it’s stated justification is to oppose fascism, a tactic of, well… the Left. Mainstream news outlets repeat their supposed purpose without analysis, in large part because most of today’s news companies are leftists, too, and the lie serves them.

No nation has ever “adopted” Fascism, although Italians were acquiescent following the corrupt failures of World War One and the economic fragmentation that followed. The soup of socialism in Italy was a widely varied mix from Catholic socialists to Communists. None could resolve the economic malaise and inflation. Fascism held out the promise of straightening everything out – putting people to work, making the trains run on time, enforcing dependable utilities of all kinds, where disparate unions had made key functions erratic and thrown people out of work. Mussolini, socialist to his core, perceived himself as the strong-man who could set things aright, and his rallying point was patriotism.

Patriotism for Italy and all things Italian, provided the unifying banner. For 30 years Italians could agree on very little but that they were Italians. The Fascists became “the Right” by virtue of usurping power that Communists and other ultra-socialists had jockeyed to obtain for themselves. Being to “the right” of international communists could hardly qualify Fascism as “Right wing” as the term is used today. Fascism was the penultimate collective, shy of Communism’s collective misery and politically elite control of production. Fascism organized business and industry to do its bidding, employing the profit motive for the State’s purposes. By putting people back to work Fascism appeared benign and was at first. Before long, however, Fascism could not help but take away freedoms as the trade-off for efficient government and, initially, efficient industry. The beliefs of fascist governors that they are in some way the best people to hold the positions they hold, is inevitable, and Fascism provides no mechanism for the governed to “clean house” of the corruption that power engenders.

Today’s “anti-fascists,” in their complete misappropriation of history, place American constitutionalists in the same camp as fascists and accuse them both of being on the “right wing” when, in fact, there is no connection. The exceptionalism of the United States is a form of “Rightness” that is at the opposite end of the political spectrum from the leftist, socialist soup of which Fascism was the outgrowth. Fascism and Constitutional Republicanism are so different as to be diametric. Yet we allow, and leftist media happily reinforce, the concept of “right-wing” and fascism/Nazism to be grouped as synonymous. Thank you, American public schools and most private schools, too. Even the Pope is now infected.

The founding Fathers, or, better, founding Philosophers, of the United States, determined to not simply create a kinder tyranny, but to create a new spectrum of Freedom. To become “an American” meant to agree with the ideas of America and, by adoption, accept the “American Dream,” defined only as the Constitutional Republic where people of all kinds can live together in Freedom and personal responsibility. We have drifted very far from the IDEAS, but not so far, quite, that we cannot row back to the safety of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, the exercise of citizenship in the United States is unlike that in every other nation: it depends upon shared morality and self-discipline. As those qualities erode and scatter in the winds of sexual abandon, the U. S. follows the same path toward leftwing fascism that far less promising nations have done before us. What might that look like?

It is, most sadly, conceivable in this summer’s reactions to normal legal functions at our southern border, that widespread rioting could erupt prior to the mid-term elections. People consumed by irrational hate for Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee and alleged “incarceration” of children in Texas have shown the ability to move thousands of ignorant people – young people – into civil disobedience. Is there a line they will not cross? Could a police incident where a young black man were killed, God forbid, in an urban setting, with cell-phone video spurring Ferguson-type rioting and destruction, spill over into multiple cities? As Federal troops arrive to support local police could shooting break out?

If erstwhile conservatives are in elective power when it becomes necessary to declare martial law, God forbid, again, they’d be accused of “police-state” tactics and “Hitlerism.” The police-state charge would have some merit. But it is a very risky step to take no matter how serious the civil unrest appears. So many legal conditions are suspended under martial law – even under a state of emergency – that “justice” is essentially discarded. Even if martial law ended in a month, say, the legal clean-up would take years.

Executive department bureaucracies would be locked out for at least some period. There is no way that “government” can appear to go on as before and, unfortunately, very little economic investment can proceed without satisfying a federal law or regulation or several of each. Large-scale trade activity would be severely disrupted for days or weeks, and with it, the World economy. No one outside of the U. S. knows how to deal with a non-functional U. S. government, any more than we in the 50 states do.

There are sizable numbers of people on the Left and the Right who would welcome a federal clamp-down in certain circumstances. On the Left one could imagine acceptance of a clamp-down to “stop fascism” and to free “political” prisoners, essentially rendering the U. S. a one-party state: socialist. On the Right, one can imagine acceptance of absolute federal stoppage of the drug trade, purging of bureaucracies of socialist-minded individuals, restrictions on abortion and absolutism on immigration. Neither adheres to the Constitution.

Martial law is too extreme to employ. We will need some rational way to walk our way back from the precipice of daily hatred of everything not “progressive” / socialist /Democrat. To Trump and those millions who wanted him in the Oval Office, the thought of relinquishing the limited exposure of foul and secretive government that Trump has begun, is anathema. Another way.

Unlike most pundits and proclaimed wise observers, Prudence dictates caution in offering solutions to our current divide between retaining the United States under the constitution, and letting it dissolve for the cause(s) of socialism. Do those fighting for dissolution even recognize which side they are on?

Have we allowed, through the actions of our “representatives,” the descent into a dilemma that democratic representation cannot solve? Aye, that’s the question.

Culture, Governance, Politics 2018

Leaders, Leaders Everywhere – Part two

July 7, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Modern leadership can be described in part by the lack of individual, internal and personal leadership. What does that mean? Essentially, there are millions of teens and 20-somethings who have finished their childhoods, schooling, even college for many, and arrived at a point in their lives: about 30 at the oldest – when they should be taking charge of personal events. They should be building careers but they are buried in little screens of non-reality, comparing relatively meaningless consequences. Who among them could “lead” in any direction? They are, in fact, easily LED. Like modern “LED’s” they have small impacts except to give off light when switched on by a “leader” who has reached them socially, with no prior personal connection, valuation or judgment.

Political leadership is the model of “leadership” for most people, today. Each must choose a course or direction and communicate it, and his or her reasons for choosing it. The success of that leadership is election and the gaining of some level of legal power, which the new office-holder claims is truly power belonging to all who worked so hard to get out the vote, etcetera, etcetera. In most cases, inexorably, only the elected person gains very much – he or she and those who garner favors from his or her new position. The Mission, then, turns out to be quite personal and bears no serious risk for failure. Was there leadership? Not in a classical sense, although in a modern one, perhaps.

One might suggest a postulate: The more personally enriching it becomes to win an election, the less likely widespread benefit or moral strengthening of the polity will result.

An unfortunate reverse postulate also writes itself: The more personally risky or costly a political campaign is to the candidate, the greater the likelihood of positive widespread benefit should he or she win, and the greater the forces that will array against that candidate’s success.
Is it as simple or as “clean” as that? Does the same dichotomy fit other forms of leadership?

Now that government leaves nothing and no one alone, leadership – in terms of effecting change – is grievously political, which is to say, tied to gaining and holding political power. If a politician becomes wealthy in the process, all the better, but gaining elected power isn’t everything… it’s the only thing. And in our soup of communication overload, the democracies of the world are at a distinct disadvantage in matters of social and national cohesiveness. In other words, short-term power is subject to instant and widespread pressures to make changes beneficial to ever-smaller “communities,” and no one, no one, is holding the line against social corruption.

Pandering has become retail… online retail. What has become of leadership? When leaders are discussed, now, they are either somewhat dictatorial, like Putin, Khamenei, Li Keqiang, even Kim Jong Un. What about Trump? Unlike true dictators, Trump is bound by cooperation with representatives who are intensely sensitive to retail forces of social change, including removal of borders and national identity. To the degree that he can exert some power vis a’ vis other, less malleable nations, he exhibits many hallmarks of leadership, something most American politicians creatively retreat from.

Given that most of the planet is explored and most markets interconnected, leadership is lately more “thought-leadership.” That is, influencers of what others believe. These are decreasingly Christian belief-leaders and much more often sexual-abandon leaders or, a small journey away, hate-leaders. While the sexual-abandon leaders break down old standards, beliefs and word meanings (public schools raise your hands), hate leaders can in minutes, not only destroy individuals and their livelihoods, but also families and friendships, the fabric of civility. A list of actively hated people and causes is disturbing:
• Donald Trump
• Family members of Donald Trump
• Every member of Trump administration
• Anyone who voted for Trump
• Anyone expressing support for Trump
• Republicans, unless very liberal
• Conservatives
• Opponents of abortion
• Limiters of abortion
• Those opposed to public funding of abortion
• Christians if they “act Christian”
• Politicians in favor of Christian prayer
• Meat eaters
• Farmers deemed unkind to chickens
• Companies owned by Christians
• Straights
• Straights uncomfortable with homosexuals
• People who disagree with homosexual marriage
• People who say they disagree with homosexual marriage
• People who disagree with “gay” rights
• People who disagree with teaching homosexuality in schools
• People who don’t believe in transgenderism
• People who believe in boys’ and girls’ bathrooms
• People opposed to homosexual adoption
• People opposed to self-declared gender identity
• People who disagree with unregulated welfare
• People who disagree with unregulated food-stamps
• People who want illegal entrants deported or kept out
• People who support the amended Constitution, every word
• People opposed to legalized drugs
• People who want lower taxes
• People who believe in American exceptionalism
• People opposed to Socialism
• People opposed to Communism
• People skeptical of Islam
• People opposed to Sharia law
• People opposed to black racism
• People opposed to Black Lives Matter organization
• People opposed to “Antifa”
• People in favor of Israel
• Jews
• People in favor of Jews
• People skeptical of Climate Change
• People “opposed” to science
• People opposed to unions
• People opposed to public-sector unions
• ICE
• Border Patrol
• American Flag
• Declaration of Independence
• U. S. Constitution
The reader may not have heard every one of the instances of hatred listed, but some of them, certainly. Each is disturbing when the fact of its ability to affect politics, civil discourse, even civility itself, is understood. The days of disagreement are over for many on the left, it seems; their aims now include destruction of both individuals and beliefs, causes and of the nation, itself.

One of our major parties has departed from its drift leftward and begun to rush somewhat blindly toward radical socialism. Republicans, feeling confident with Trumps popularity ratings, are failing to grasp the need to LEAD the nation away from the base hatreds of liberty that “leaders” on the left are using to gain power. The ridiculousness of statements by Rep. Maxine Waters and others seems obvious to the right.

The left evidently believes that now is the culmination of their 100-year plan to undermine the experiment known as the United States of America. Their dream is that “the American Dream” of all kinds of people living together under individual freedom and individual responsibility, morality and civility toward all, shall be snuffed out.

Where are the leaders?

Culture, Governance, Politics 2018, Responsibility

Leaders, Leaders Everywhere – Part One

July 7, 2018 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

America, or shall we say, the United States in particular, has severe leadership problems. We decry them in terms of politics as “partisanship,” but they are much broader than simply that. During our 100 years of industrialization we seemed to have a pretty good pool of leaders – business, industrial, scientific, mercantile, military, religious, philosophical and political. They weren’t deemed to be perfect by everyone, but they were relative giants in society and with their influences they appear to have set standards for others who would be leaders. A handful articulated this role, most simply lived it and comported themselves in what might be described as statesmanlike, in that they took larger views of life and growth, exploration and discovery, and responsibility, in their fields.

We have leaders among us now, of course, but… well, they’re different. And I mean no slighting of women in history, also of course, and the phenomenon of this devolution of leadership seems, unfortunately to have afflicted them, too. How to describe it? Or, how to describe a cause of it?

Let’s consider who a few of today’s “leaders” are. We know them: Trump and some in his administration; certain Democrat leaders including Mrs. Clinton; Congressional leaders, both majority and minority party; numerous “celebrities” from the entertainment industries – indeed, “celebrity” is a critical component of most “leadership,” today; ultra-wealthy business and financial leaders, like Federal Reserve governors and the Chair-man or –woman; the heads of corporations like Google, Facebook, Disney, Microsoft and a hundred more… maybe 500 more… maybe 5,000. But we hear of these business/industrial leaders usually with a descriptive term before their name: billionaire. Maybe, multi-billionaire. It’s a clue to what’s happened to leadership.

Money? Is that all that’s wrong with today’s leaders? They’re disoriented by wealth? Prudence would say, “no, not just money, but it’s a part.”

Leaders often have power. Charles Krauthammer had power as a “thought-leader” for example. Was he a celebrity? Somewhat, thanks to television, but he was a columnist and never described himself as a TV personality. No billionaire, certainly, but he had power for two reasons I can discern: 1) He was a well-read, well-educated observer of things powerful and political, who lucidly expressed his opinion with refreshing honesty, clarity and consistency, and 2) He was honest to himself and to his readers, a refreshing and rare quality from which his power derived. It has been a treat to be alive and literate during his lifetime. Most people under, say, 40, would not list him in their panoply of “leaders,” sadly.

Throughout history the most powerful, threatening, feared person has been in charge. He (occasionally she) could push people around, command their virtual, or real, slavery and surface fealty, and literally take the profits of their work. They could even “lead” them into battles but never were they “leaders” in the sense that they were going in directions that others wanted to go or felt “right” about going. That is to say, the mission driving the King – or kingpin – was not shared by those afraid to not follow him. Mission and Leadership appear to be of a set, virtually inseparable. Does this illuminate any of the apparent differences between leadership during “America’s” biggest century and now?

Intentionally or not, every leader, by default, has some kind of “mission,” possibly only because he or she has articulated what it is that has spurred his or her actions. Lo, and behold! That sudden mission is agreed-to, thanks to our being awash in communications, by a group of people who, in the majority of instances, know only a thin shell of what issues are at stake. But, they are behind “the leader” all the way. One might say that the “size” of the leadership is a function more of the extent of the communications about the issues than it is about the quality of the leader or of the importance of the issues… or of the “principles” that motivate the leader and the followers.

In earlier times, when it could take days for news to reach a significant number of readers – always readers – powerful, or strong-willed people, at least, would start their journey towards a big idea, big goal, big industry or discovery, more nearly alone. His (most often, his) “followers” numbered in the single digits or low tens. It required courage, then. There were no happenstance leaders during the big century. Right or wrong they were real, and honest to their missions. If they and the mission failed, they faced failure… sometimes failure that meant the loss of everything. Lincoln.

Morality has a way of guiding, cajoling, molding and even forcing bad actions to end and bad actors to leave the stage of public influence. In fact, morality is essential to the success of leadership. Even today, when institutions and agencies do their level best to remove themselves from moral judgment, every person who claims to lead this or that movement – even “flash” movement – first lays out some “moral” position around which the latest crowd of followers might rally. Something is wrong and thanks to this “leader’s” vision, that wrong has been exposed and with (your) help, and money, that wrong will be ended and “things” will be set right. Communications unlike anything humans have been exposed to throughout evolution, play a big role in two ways: 1) newsworthy crowds can be assembled in a moment and, 2) the “wrong” that unites them need not be agreed to by even a significant fraction of the nation’s population.
What is “right” and what is “wrong,” anyway? Leadership, historically, has generally been connected to “leaders” who exercise courage in defense of what is “right.” Clear examples were seen during the American Revolution. Not only were the patriots fighting the government they were born under, but fighting with guns and cannons and real bullets. Not all of their fellow colonists were with them, many helped to fight against them. But motivating Washington and every Continental soldier who endured with him and other officers, was the powerful belief that what they were trying to do would yield a greater “good.” They believed they were doing what was right – not just more comfortable or more profitable, but right in terms of freedom, independence and justice.

The “patriots” comprised not even half of the British colonists… not even a quarter. Their mission would have appeared futile in many instances yet they soldiered on. How? They were both blessed and cursed by the paucity of information available to them. Cursed because they did not know the nature or size or deployment of the forces arrayed against them; blessed because they, unlike their modern descendants, were not burdened by too much thinking about their circumstances or by too much planning of how to avoid failure.

That is to say, they didn’t “know enough” to stop believing in the rightness of their mission: bumblebees unaware that they could not fly. The combination allowed their belief and trust in Washington and others to not just maintain but strengthen, until they flew in the face of the greatest possible headwinds. Is that “faith?” Trust in something one cannot see? Leadership is connected to that ability of humans – to believe in something greater than one’s self.

Modern leaders are more likely to be constrained by a flood of information. Indeed, most of our current “leaders” are called so because of financial success. Nearly every move they make is “hedged” in half a dozen ways such that they, personally, cannot lose. Even if their leadership of great businesses “fails,” they have arranged for a “golden parachute” that lets them leave wealthy. Their “leader-ship” carries minimal risk… to themselves. Their “mission” is personal gain and not the gain of a people or of a nation. They may be giants, dollar-wise, but are mis-identified as leaders. More and more, “success” is a measure of mere wealth. Even top political leaders leave office with more money than they entered with, and many become multi-millionaires by selling their celebrity – or notoriety. Money.

The Civil Right