Irredeemable Greed, Sloth, and Wrath

            IM:  Gentlemen, Hillary Clinton labeled half of Trump supporters as an irredeemable basket of deplorables.  Does this sound like hate speech to you?

            AM:  Absolutely.  Given the nature of the audience to whom she was speaking, she was clearly dividing the American people into those groups that accept secular-humanistic progressive values and social justice against those who subscribe to Judeo-Christian values and the rule of law.  A virtuous diplomat would simply acknowledge contrary values.  But a progressive cannot do this as Schumpeter reminded us Gadfly’s letter to Hillary supporters.  Not only are nonprogressive values wrong, they are immoral.

            IM:  We hear a lot about corruption.  Trump opponents accuse the billionaire of only caring about himself:  not paying contractors, writing off nearly a billion in debt to avoid paying federal taxes for years, declaring bankruptcy multiple times, and demeaning women, and making racist comments.  Meanwhile, Clinton opponents complain that the government has failed to hold her accountable for violating numerous federal statutes as Secretary of State; that the “free press” gives her a pass on incriminating Wikileaks releases about the Clinton foundation; that her “experience” is associated with major failures, not successes; and, that she is committed to continuing the disastrous policies of the past eight years.

            Old Gadfly:  What cardinal sin is at the root of the corruption?

            IM:  There are seven cardinal sins:  lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.  Of these seven, it appears greed may be the primary sin.  Greed is “the intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.”  Food does not apply in this case, but certainly wealth and power apply for Clinton.  The Clinton Foundation has been a powerful conduit for wealth combined with an unbridled desire for political power.

            Old Gadfly:  Does greed apply to billionaire Trump?

            AM:  Possibly, but I think what motivated Trump more than greed was a desire to build, to create value appreciated by others.

IM:  To reinforce what AM is saying, Clinton’s manifestation of greed is more egregious than Trump’s because the emerging record reveals other behaviors stemming from greed.  Greed is even more egregious when it involves trickery and manipulation of authority.  Clinton’s private server and email scandal combined with the pay to play scheme of the Clinton Foundation are vivid examples.  Thomas Aquinas asserts that greed, like pride, can lead to not some, but all evil.

Old Gadfly: Please expand your argument.

IM:   Take sloth for instance.  According to the dictionary, sloth is, “the absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.”  Clinton, and other progressives, counts on a lack of interest in facts or the truth.  Once they have convinced their followers that their progressive agenda will make life better, they submit to this notion and refuse to exert themselves in seeking truth, especially in regard to their moral obligation to “plant good seeds.”  Planting good seeds means being responsible for oneself and a good neighbor and citizen.  Progressivism’s indentured classes, conditioned by the ruling class conditioners, prefer to take from a benevolent government.

AM:  In Jesus’ parable of the Tares (Matthew 13:  24-30), it seems that when a seed has been sown, we must be watchful of those who would threaten those good seeds with weeds.  I wonder if this is the essence of the abortion issue.  A child within a mother’s womb is such a seed.  Then, evil forces like Planned Parenthood choke out that seed, even up to the moment prior to delivery.  The Very Reverend John Lankeit recently provided a thoughtful homily on this subject.  Watch it here.

Old Gadfly:   Trump is pro-life.  Do you think he is interested in saving the lives of those who do not plant seeds?

IM:  Yes.  He’s inclusive.  This is his vision for making America great again.  That’s why he is reaching out to everyone, including victims of the Democrat-run inner-cities.  His vision is an America guided by the moral vision in our Declaration of Independence; an America governed by a limited government that acknowledges its limited power is delegated by the people; an America with revitalized institutions of a Constitutional Republic that empowers citizens (legal citizens) to achieve their American dream; an America where law-abiding citizens embrace their civil responsibilities in promoting peace and prosperity.

Old Gadfly:  So, now we see examples of greed and sloth.  Are there other sins?

IM:  Yes.  Wrath.  Trump opponents claim his speech is hateful by addressing illegal immigrants and Islamic refugees from the Middle East, by promoting a pro-live position viewed by progressives as contradictory to a woman’s reproductive rights, by pushing for tax reductions viewed as taking money away from those who need it, and so forth.  Trump supporters would argue that Trump’s anger in these cases is to protect justice by enforcing the rule of law and to protect the innocent from those who would impose their values contrary to Judeo-Christian values.  Clinton, on the other hand, has utter contempt for any who believe differently—her basket of irredeemable deplorables.  Clinton is the Pharisee while Trump is the tax collector in another parable (Luke:  18:  9-14).

 

AM:  As Clinton mentioned in one of her Wall Street speeches (discovered through the Wikileaks releases), she has a public position and a private position on matters (harkens back to the manipulative dimension of greed).  Today, at a campaign stop in Iowa, Clinton boasted about her composure during four and a half hours of debate with Trump.  This is her public demeanor.  A rare example of Clinton’s wrath out of public view was captured by an NBC crew that witnessed it after the Matt Lauer interview on national security.  Bill Still, a former newspaper editor and journalist presented evidence from an eyewitness source.  View the report here.

Old Gadfly:  Is Hillary redeemable?

IM:  I don’t know.

AM:  Probably not.

Old Gadfly:  I think we must believe all are redeemable.  But that requires a desire to seek the truth about ourselves and the world we live in.  Albert Camus’ novel, The Fall, was about a lawyer’s reflective attempt at seeking truth and coming to grips with cardinal sins.  I forget how it ended.     

Dear Hillary Supporter

If you can read this and have an open mind, then there is hope . . . please read the following.

Congratulations on your impending achievement.  If Hillary is elected, it will place America on the threshold of Orwell’s 1984.  How’s that for progress on behalf of the progressive movement?

Progressivism is socialism.  Throughout the recent past, socialism endeavored to defeat its opponent:  advocates of individual liberty, limited government, and a free market. Socialists believe in collective liberty, a strong central government in the form of statism, and a government-controlled economy.  As the evidence of history tells us, socialism is not sustainable.  It inevitably morphs into in the form of communism or fascism (yes, that’s right—fascism is a far left manifestation of left of center socialism).

Have you wondered why the left-of-center modern liberal now prefers to be called a progressive?  It’s a seductive term.  Many of my good friends who claim to be progressive think it means an advocate for progress, a better education, a better quality of life, and so forth.  Progress in this case is a noun.  American progressives believe in progress as a verb, to progress toward utopia this side of eternity, which is very consistent with Marxist socialism.  Nobel prize-winner Joseph Schumpeter shared this observation in his book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy: 

In one important sense, Marxism is a religion.  To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions [e.g., the anthropomorphic explanation for climate change]; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved.  We may specify still further:  Marxist socialism also belongs to that subgroup which promises paradise on this side of the grave (1950, p. 5).

To drive home the religious essence of Marxist socialism, Schumpeter went on to say:

The religious quality of Marxism also explains a characteristic attitude of the orthodox Marxist toward opponents.  To him, as to any believer in a Faith, the opponent is not merely in error but in sin.  Dissent is disapproved of not only intellectually but morally.  There cannot be any excuse for it once the Message has been revealed (1950, p. 5).

So, is there any evidence of this thinking in America?  Absolutely!  Let me offer some examples.

First, progressives, starting with Ted Kennedy, pushed for open borders with the assumption that the Democrat Party would win over more constituents thanks to generous government subsidies.  When the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona attempted to enforce federal laws dealing with illegal immigrants, he was sued for this by Obama’s Justice Department.  In this case, it is a sin to enforce federal law.  Many of these illegal immigrants ended up in inner cities run by Democrats-- modern slave plantations.

Second, Dinesh D’Souza, a legal immigrant from India and naturalized American citizen is now a felon without the right to vote.  D’Souza’s mistake?  He contributed more than the law allowed to a political campaign—in the range of $20,000 above the limit.  The candidate was a friend and there was no quid pro quo.  This contribution pales when looking at the millions of dollars given to campaigns of other candidates.  Check out the millions to Clinton’s campaign at OpenSecrets.org.    But, this was not D’Souza’s real crime.  His crime was exercising his First Amendment right to criticize Democrats and the Obama regime.  In his book, Hillary’s America:  The Secret History of the Democratic Party, D’Souza said:

   … I spent eight months in overnight captivity [federal prison in San Diego, CA] for my sins against the Obama administration.  My crime was exceeding the campaign finance laws by giving $20,000 over the campaign finance limit to a college pal of mine who was running for the U.S. Senate.  I didn’t do it to get anything in return; I did it simply to help an old friend.  For this, I found myself at the receiving end of the full force of the U.S. government.

But, since no one in American history has been prosecuted—let alone incarcerated—for doing what I did, I should be allowed to suspect that my real crime was in exposing President Obama in my film 2016:  Obama’s America and my books The Roots of Obama’s Rage and Obama’s America.  Obama hated my film, vituperatively attacking it on his website barackobama.com, and a few months later, the FBI was knocking on my door (2016, p. 23).

Third, when Catherine Engelbrecht applied to the IRS for 501c(3) status for her organization, True the Vote, she was harassed by not only the IRS, but four other federal agencies.  See her testimony here.  This case was related to a full throated effort by the IRS to suppress the conservative voice.  Lois Learner of the IRS pleaded the Fifth Amendment and destroyed evidence.  She has since retired with a full federal pension.

Fourth, the progressive’s new religion, climate change, is justification for a modern inquisition.  Democratic attorneys general now seek prosecution of those who are “nonbelievers” or deniers.  It is inconsequential that these deniers acknowledge climate change.  The sin is that they disagree with the science in terms of causes (i.e., anthropomorphic related to the use of fossil fuels).  For background on the case against Exxon Mobile see here.

Fifth, many Democrats have no problem lying, denying, or engaging in any other means of obfuscation.  Clinton was a staff member of the Democrat-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee that investigated Watergate and pushed for impeachment of Richard Nixon.  This was a great victory for the Democrat Party—the party of intellectual and moral superiority.  We have since learned that Clinton was fired for dishonest practices.  But, this is nothing compared to the broader collusion that took place among political partisans within the judiciary.  A recent book by Geoff Shepard, The Real Watergate Scandal:  Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot that Brought Nixon Down, builds a disturbing case based on newly released documents of illegal collusion.  Prosecutors colluded with judges (trial and appellate) to deny Nixon and his aides due process under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.  This was payback.  As Shepard argues, it was Nixon, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee that led the investigation and eventual prosecution of Alger Hiss for spying.  This action inflamed east coast Democrats because, not only was Hiss a member of the Harvard club, he was also a darling of the Democrat Party.  But, since the Watergate scandal took place over 40 years ago, Hillary supporters would be inclined to say, “What difference does it make?”

Sixth, dirty tricks that are either illegal or bordering on illegal are fully condoned by Democrats.  For a disturbing example, view a Project Veritas investigative piece here.  As expected here is the reaction from the White House.  This is consistent with the pattern to diminish the truth revealed in other investigations, such as selling baby body parts under the umbrella of Planned Parenthood.  Snopes, in an attempt to debunk the credibility of Project Veritas by citing liberal media sources, does not refute any of the evidence provided in their investigations.  Lie, deny, obfuscate.  Trump is demonized for locker room banter 11 years ago.  He did not deny it and apologized for it.

Seventh, while the mainstream media only acknowledges Wikileaks references about the Clinton Foundation, there is much more to be understood.  Peter Schweizer presents disturbing evidence of pay for play in his book Clinton Cash.  The book is summarized in a free, hour-long documentary here.
  
          Finally, the progressive media intentionally distorts reality—similar to scenes in Orwell’s 1984.  Perhaps one of the most egregious images was the one created to make it look like Trump was mocking a disabled reporter.  This is not what happened.  With a little research, the truth paints a completely different picture.  See the evidence here.  Or, the media downplays reality as a shield for their progressive champion.  Wikileaks reveals the real story in this case, where, on behalf of Clinton, Podesta explained how progressives infiltrated the Catholic Church with “supposed Catholic organizations.”  Read a disturbing summary of these efforts here.

I could go on and on.  But, hopefully this is enough to appeal to your capacity to reason.  Progressives claim to be open-minded.  Yet, when confronted with facts contrary to their preferred narrative, they typically will not take the time to examine them.  So, they tend to be mired in myth and folklore created by the progressive conditioners that have sufficiently conditioned them.  C. S. Lewis wrote about this dynamic in The Abolition of Man.

If you are one of the few with an open mind to have gotten this far and still support Hillary after reading these arguments, I can only conclude that you are so thoroughly duped that you are beyond recognizing the truth; or that you don’t care about the truth; or, that you are as corrupt as Hillary and beyond redemption.  If Hillary gets elected, may God have mercy on all of us for allowing a once Judeo-Christian grounded America to slouch into a secular-humanistic and tyrannical oligarchy.

Popular Despite Incompetence

Hillary Clinton is running for a third Obama term, banking on Obama's popularity.  

Can someone tell me why Obama is popular?  It is not due to policy success. Obamacare, his signature legislation, is a disaster—coverage is becoming narrower, premiums and deductibles are climbing, and the number of government-funded Medicaid recipients has skyrocketed.  Even democrats are distancing themselves from this Frankenstein’s monster.  The economy is limping along at about 1% GDP growth.  Labor participation rates are the lowest since 1977, compounding the significant increase in the number of Americans dependent upon government subsidies.  Our national debt is at $20 trillion while unfunded liabilities are in the hundreds of trillions.  Our military has been emasculated.

As the presidential election looms, Russia has become the preferred partner to Syria, Turkey, and Iran. Now, the Philippines have aligned with China. These developments stem from foreign policy incompetence.

          Mr. Trump made this observation in the third debate: "If she did nothing, we'd be in much better shape. And this is what's caused the great migration, where she's taking in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, who probably in many cases -- not probably, who are definitely...in many cases, ISIS-aligned, and we now have them in our country, and wait until you see -- this is going to be the great Trojan horse.  And wait until you see what happens in the coming years. Lots of luck, Hillary. Thanks a lot for doing a great job."

Thus, domestically and internationally America’s policies have failed to make things better, let  alone maintain some semblance of stability, prosperity, and peace; Obama policies have made domestic and foreign conditions worse.

Perhaps Obama's popularity is due to one major change:  as promised, Obama has in fact transformed America.  This transformation affects the economic, political, and social dimensions of our society.  He has convinced many socialists that capitalism is evil, and that the wealthy have not paid their fair share of taxes (despite generating the most tax revenue in our nation’s history).  He has convinced many progressives that their ideology is the only correct and moral view of the world.  And, he has convinced the secular humanists that Judeo-Christian principles and traditions are a threat to a woman’s reproductive rights, homosexual sodomy, and those who are confused about their gender.  Facts don’t matter, only a good story does (as he emphasized during a 60 Minutes interview in terms of his only regret during his first term).  This is why movements like Black Lives Matter (which emerged from the unsubstantiated belief that Michael Brown was unjustly killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri) are so important in his vision for transformation.  Actual facts are irrelevant as the following FBI data reveals blacks are killed by blacks 10 times more frequently than by whites:

          There are too many Americans who see the truth, but are afraid to share it with their friends because they do not want to be accused of being racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, misogynist, and so forth.  When Hillary trotted out the Gold Star Khan family at the Democratic National Convention, the purpose was not to honor sons and daughters lost in combat, but to demonize Trump.  The Khans became a human shield for Hillary’s (and her progressive mafia) orchestrated attacks on Trump.  This was designed as a trap—one that Trump could not avoid.  Trump’s first comments about this were in response to questions by George Stephanopoulos (a former Clinton policy adviser and Clinton Foundation donor).  This was a masterfully manufactured and orchestrated news cycle to demonstrate Trump's Islamophobia.     

So, why is Obama so popular?  The voice of the public narrative (mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, and the ruling class in general) wants him to be popular because he is the face of progressivism—the ideology that seeks utopia this side of eternity, which can only be made so through social justice administered by a ruling elite.  Yet, the mess that is everywhere reeks of incompetence in light of a once great America known for its vision, declared in the Declaration of Independence, and its system of limited and enumerated governance, described in the original Constitution.

Trump fights for a renewal of this vision, for everyone, especially our indentured classes within Democrat-run inner cities.  Clinton and her supporters represent the domestic enemies I swore to defeat in my commissioning oath:  “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”  Cicero observed similar dangers in his own day.  We would be wise to recognize the similarities captured in Cicero's statement:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

The significant divisiveness and lack of civility that permeates our nation reflects such a rotted soul.  Obama owns this transformation.  It is difficult for many to discern the reason's for America's rotted soul because Cicero’s “traitor” is popular.  Betting on this popularity by electing Hillary to a third Obama term would be foolish because it would reinforce the incompetency that has placed America and the entire international system on the threshold of utter catastrophe. 

          Rise up Americans.  This is our country.  Fight for it!  America must be great again.  Americans and the rest of the world depend upon it.

Character versus Corruption: Two Different Visions

Today’s article is a monologue, not a conversation.  I have been asked by a very good friend, someone I immensely respect for his intellect and sense of integrity and honor, to assess the two major candidates.  Here, I will do my best.  The assessment involves character versus corruption and two different visions for America.

Character versus Corruption

The presidential candidates represent a fundamental difference between character and corruption.  By character, I mean a sense of virtue and the role it plays in a just society.  A just society comprises citizens who possess a civic responsibility to the rule of law.  This is what provides stability and order within a society. 

Virtue does not include pandering, conspiring, colluding; nor, does it include mendacity, complicity, and duplicity.  These are traits that do not define the Trump campaign.  Several virtues define Trump:  honesty, courage, fortitude, and respect for the individual liberty that allows liberty-minded people to innovate and flourish.  Honesty is a virtue, even when it offends.  Trump has been honest and courageous in authentically and sincerely expressing his concerns about the lack of virtue within the ruling elite (some call it the establishment).  He believes in the U.S. Consitution and the rule of law as the framework for governance within America.  He criticizes those who believe otherwise, and as a consequence is attacked with labels—racist, Islamaphobe, misogynist, and so forth.  His greatest critics represent the truly corrupt worldview of the progressive left and even progressives within the Republican establishment (the Bushes, Romney, etc.).  The willingness to fund his own campaign demonstrates his fortitude in fighting for something far bigger than himself:  the American idea spawned by our Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.  His disappointment in how the recent ruling elite has squandered the political, social, and economic capital generated by those who understood the important relationship between a limited government within a system of federalism, inspires a sense of duty within Trump.

It was not virtuous when Senator Harry Reid claimed Romney had not paid taxes for ten years.  He knew at the time it was a lie, but it generated a news cycle very damaging to Romney.  When confronted about it later, he did not deny that the claim was false, but with a grin said, “we won didn’t we?”  So, now the news cycle is about a 1995 tax return, illegally attained and published by the New York Times.  Trump and his accountants completed the mandatory IRS filing based on public law.  In other words, it was an honest and legal filing.  Yet, that is not the issue.  Trump did not pay his “fair share” of taxes.  This immoral notion reflects a dangerous vision for America—more on that shortly.

Dwarfed by the manufactured tax travesty were the allegations, shared at the close of the last debate by Clinton, that Trump demonized a Venezuelan beauty queen.  Despite the fact that there were no witnesses to verify the queen’s allegations, the narrative was compelling enough to dominate all the mainstream news cycles.  The fact that business contracts were involved and the queen failed to live up to the arrangements had no relevance—truth, in this case, was less important than an opportunity to demonize a candidate that threatens the progressive worldview.  This is not virtue; it is corruption.

During the same debate segment, Clinton tattled to the listening public that Trump had not paid an architect (who she invited to attend in the audience) for his work on one of Trump’s properties.  Trump did not deny it.  He said the architect did not perform to expectations.  After doing my own research, I read complaints by the architect that because he did not get paid for this particular job, his company went under.  In other words, he only had one client—Trump.  If the architect had a reputation for meeting or exceeding expectations, he likely would have had more clients.  Nonetheless, there was no law suit, meaning there was no legal standing for one.  This is called accountability, something Clinton has no appreciation for.  She now claims the basement server was a mistake and accepts responsibility for it.  Responsibility and accountability are fundamentally different concepts.  Clinton is a member of the corrupted ruling class, so accountability does not apply to her (Comey got the memo).  Of course, there are plenty of precedents that have convinced her that she can avoid accountability.

Two weeks ago, Peggy Noonan penned an article for the Wall Street Journal:  “Travel Back to an Early Clinton Scandal.”  Calling someone overweight and cajoling them to lose weight to meet contractual terms is far less brutal than what Clinton did to the White House travel office.  Noonan claimed, “It was the first big case in which she showed poor judgment, a cool willingness to mislead, and a level of political aggression that gave even those around her pause.  It was after this mess that her critics said she’d revealed the soul of an East German border guard.”  On May 19, 1993, the entire travel office staff was fired.  Different stories were told over time.  “It emerged in contemporaneous notes of a White House staffer that the travel-office workers were removed because Mrs. Clinton wanted to give their jobs—their “slots,” as she put it, according to the notes of director of administration David Watkins—to political operatives who’d worked for Mr. Clinton’s campaign.”  To cover up the corrupt action, the FBI was asked to investigate; reluctantly, they did, and the head of the travel office was indicted on charges including embezzlement.  He was acquitted by a jury, and retired.  Mrs. Clinton said under oath that she had no role in the firings.  A General Accounting Office report later refuted this.  According to Noonan, “So—that was the Clinton’s first big Washington scandal.  It showed what has now become the Clinton Scandal Ritual:  lie, deny, revise, claim not to remember specifics, stall for time.  When it passes, call the story ‘old news’ full of questions that have already been answered. ‘As I have repeatedly said . . ..’”  Because they have the same worldview as Clinton, the mainstream media consider facts, such as the White House travel-office scandal, “old news.”

Clinton wants to increase taxes and government spending.  This would give the federal government more money to distribute to others (and probable voters) through various programs.  It doesn’t matter that this kind of thinking has accumulated nearly $20 trillion in public debt (not to mention the hundreds of trillion legal obligations for unfunded entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare—programs citizens paid into in good faith as a civil responsibility).  How would this benefit the economy?  Taxation takes resources from the private sector that can be used for investment and new jobs and shifts this wealth to the government to dole out in welfare subsidies—sapping the private sector of productivity and diminishing wealth creation.  The chart below shows the cost of the federal government is 65 times greater today in constant dollars (adjusting for inflation) per capita than when the Sixteenth Amendment was passed (authorizing individual income tax) was ratified in 1913.  American citizens are nowhere close to 65 times better off.  All this shows is that an expanding administrative state has become far more powerful and unaccountable than ever intended by the founding fathers.

The second chart shows the labor participation rate since the mid-1970s.  The significant decline in the labor participation rate coincided with the passing of Obamacare.  While the federal government gets better resourced over time through taxation and borrowed money, the economy has become far more fragile with investment resources either sucked away through taxation or suffocated by federal regulation.  And now American citizens are suffocating from crushing premiums and unaffordable deductibles.  Clinton wants to perpetuate this monster.

    

Facts may be inconvenient, but the data strongly support the adverse effects of a tax and spend orientation.  The progressive agenda is socialistic in its approach because it treats capitalism as an evil.  As scholars (e.g., Hayek) have revealed, socialism is not sustainable.  It morphs into fascism or communism, both far left manifestations.  Add to these dynamics crony capitalism (i.e., health insurance companies) and corporate welfare (e.g., companies like Boeing which gave a large contribution to the Clinton Foundation and receives billions from the Import Export Bank for lucrative contracts to sell fighters to the Middle East and airliners to Iran).  These practices perpetuate the establishment status quo (keeps elected officials in office focused on reelection instead of representing their constituents).  Recognizing these practices allows us to understand what Hannah Arendt explained as a step toward totalitarianism.  In her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt dedicated an early chapter to the political emancipation of the bourgeoisie—the centers of production within a society.  In the modern age of information technology, we can now include academia and mainstream media (centers for the dissemination of ideas) as part of that emancipation.

Different Visions for America

What we are asked to do in the upcoming election is to choose between two fundamentally different visions for America.  These visions are personified in the actual candidates:  one who still believes in virtue and the other who is terribly corrupted.  I know Hillary Clinton advances a progressive vison for America because President Obama has spent his entire tenure pursuing a progressive agenda. Hillary is committed to continuing this agenda.  This, by the way, is the only way to preserve an imagined legacy for Obama (at least for a few more years), not America.  What Donald Trump envisions is contrary to this vision because he seeks to restore individual liberty, limited government, the rule of law, and a free market; thus, it is soundly rejected by those who subscribe to the progressive agenda.

What is a progressive agenda?  It essentially subscribes to a powerful central government that solves most, if not all, of society’s problems guided by a fundamental principle of social justice.  This sounds noble; but, the means involve picking winners and losers in the name of “professed” equality of outcomes.  This is why, to a progressive, distributing wealth is morally justified.  As a consequence, this practice suffocates any incentive for innovation and entrepreneurial risk-taking.  Anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows that our economy is on thin ice.  Unlike a positive multiplier effect in the private sector, progressive policies impose a negative multiplier effect, sucking value out of the private sector to advance true “trickle-down economics.”  (For an excellent history on the trickle-down economics meme, see Thomas Sowell’s paper here.)  This scheme coercively takes wealth away from those who earned it to dole out to an increasing population of welfare recipients at the individual and corporate levels.  As a cultural consequence, this practice diminishes a moral obligation for an American citizen or legal resident to accept his or her moral responsibility to contribute to the greater good of society at large, to be productive, law-abiding, and self-reliant. 

Most Americans once understood the importance of natural rights and the difference between civil rights and civil responsibilities.  Progressives have long ago dismissed the inevitable truth of natural rights, that is, the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—rights granted by God, to be protected by a government that derives its powers from the consent of the governed.  Civil rights represent the obligation of government and civil responsibilities represent the obligation of the citizens to obey just laws and to contribute to society (from neighborhoods to the nation).  This is the noble and ideal social contract Rousseau advanced before it was perverted by Robespierre in his great reign of terror in the French Revolution.  Robespierre and progressives today believe that only the right political elite know how to determine what is good for the public at large.     

I contend that the progressive agenda is contrary to the founding principles of our Nation.  Trump believes in these principles.  So, this is our choice:  we either vote for the founding principles or for the progressive agenda that is contrary to these principles.  The progressives that include academia and mainstream media are betting that they can convince the American public that the progressive agenda is better than our founding principles.  This is why we see so much positive press for Clinton and negative press for Trump in the politically emancipated mainstream media (unless you watch Fox News).

Dr. Benjamin Franklin had an optimistic view of the potential greatness of a Constitutional Republic.  Yet, at the closing session of the Constitutional Convention, on September 17, 1787, Franklin cautioned us:

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

Trump asks voters to help him make America great again.  Clinton asks voters to be with her.   We have a choice: virtue or corruption; a renewed America or a despotic government.  Unlike Clinton who can smugly say “I made a mistake and took full responsibility,” we have a responsibility to make a good choice because we are the ones who will be accountable in terms of consequences.  

Putting Judicial Review into Perspective by Dennis Haugh

Understanding Constitutional checks and balances stands as perhaps the shiniest example of the failure of the educational system in the 20^th century. If one looks up “checks and balances” on the Internet, a triangle pops up showing each of the three branches of the national government checking and balancing each other as being the complete system of checks and balances. That is what is taught today throughout the educational system. As I explain in Political Vertigo, this is a misrepresentation of the Constitution. It ignores the vertical checks that were in the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights (Amendment 10). The contemporary view is more about balancing power within the national government. The vertical checks are the true checks on the power of the national government. They have been ignored both by the educational system and by our practice of governance.

This post discusses the role of judicial review within the system of checks and balances. To be clear, Edward Corwin was the first to use the term, judicial review, in 1910. The founders used no such term. Dr. Robert Lowry Clinton’s view is that it should really be called judicial supremacy. Nobel Prize winner Gordon S. Wood also uses this term. Although Dr. Wood considers Dr. Clinton to be a revisionist, it is a more accurate term.

Madison left us solid evidence that the framers in the Constitution Convention firmly held that the Supreme Court did NOT have the power to determine and impose what was constitutional and what was not. The Convention notes speak for themselves and affirm that the text in Article III section 2 confines the Supreme Court to rendering judicial opinions only. It does NOT give the Court the authority to dictate to either of the other two branches. This is where the precision of review versus supremacy is important. The accepted view today is really that the Court has an absolute check on the other two branches.  That is supremacy.

The contemporary view taught by the education system is that Marshall “assumed the right of judicial review” in Marbury v. Madison. There are a few ironic twists to this view.

1.    Marshall rightly argued that when a law and the Constitution conflicted, the Constitution is to prevail. This is the main intention of a written Constitution.

2.    He further argued that the legislature could not expand constitutional power of one of the national branches. Such an increase in power required the Article V amendment process.

3.    The Court actually ruled that it did not have the power to issue the writ of mandamus because it did not have original jurisdiction in the case.

Bullet one above is a given, and his application of it in the decision is proper and compatible with the framers’ “constructive limitation to a judiciary nature”. The distinction to be made is that nowhere in the ruling did the Court order either of the other branches to do anything, nor did it invalidate any law. Within the ruling, the determination was made that the Judiciary Act of 1789 could not legitimately augment the Court’s original jurisdiction over the limitation in the Constitution. It is ironic that this part of the argument is taken as the justification for judicial review – which is abstractly in violation of bullet two.

Bullet two argues that the legislature cannot expand constitutional power by a law. It is ironic that proponents of judicial review hold that the judicial branch CAN expand its own judicial power by judicial ruling. The inconsistency should be obvious. Such an increase in power should require an amendment to the Constitution – just as it should for the legislature.

Bullet three is interesting in that the Constitution actually does give the Supreme Court original jurisdiction for “other public officials”. As Secretary of State, Madison was a public official, so the Supreme Court did have original jurisdiction -- by the Constitution, so the Judiciary Act of 1789 was irrelevant. Marshall ignored this and inverted the ruling by making an unnecessary argument. The ruling is an example of how different conclusions can be reached by selecting different priorities as a basis – and ignoring evidence.

If the Constitution doesn’t give the Supreme Court the power to check the other two branches and Marbury v. Madison didn’t establish the power legitimately, how is it that the national government operates as it does? One of the modern tools that I introduce in Political Vertigo is the Strauss-Howe generations model. As generations have turned, there has been gradual acceptance by legal precedence. History has showed time and again that such power shifting happens. This is exactly why theoreticians as far back as Aristotle have proposed written constitutions to stop the phenomenon. As Hume stated, “It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once”.

What is the effect of institutionalized judicial supremacy? If we pause to think about it, our disappointments are really that the Court doesn’t strike down a law. The framers would say that we messed up by electing representatives who would pass such laws in the first place. Their expectation was that we, as the ultimate arbiter, would vote out such representatives and vote in ones that would repair the damage. Their take on our current circumstance would be that we are no longer capable of self-governance because we have become so corrupt as a society that we cannot effect the change via election – whether it is our voting or the result of the votes. Let us consider “Obamacare”.

Most of John Robert’s opinion on ACA was actual on target. The ruling of it as a tax is more than controversial, but there were some very sound points in it. Perhaps the most overlooked statement in the opinion was that he actually stated that we need to quit looking to the Supreme Court to strike down legislation. In fact, that was the founders’ expectation. On the other hand, the people did exactly what the framers expected. They voted in a Republican Congress with the expectation that they would repeal ACA. Congress did not do that. The reelection of Barack Obama signals a weakness in society’s public virtue. A Presidential veto was certain, and Congress failed to show the moral fiber to legislate a repeal.

What the Republican majority in Congress did was to let political faction override the will of the people. In chapter 8 of Political Vertigo, I analyze the modernizations required to restore Madison’s foundational analysis of factions. As things stand, the mechanism that the framers expected us to employ (voting) has been rendered ineffective by factions – and abandonment of republican principles.

The framers did give us another mechanism to exercise our role of ultimate arbiter. That mechanism is the second method of proposing amendments in Article V. Unfortunately, the framers were trailblazing a new concept to put an amendment process into the Constitution, so they didn’t get all the parameters right. In particular, they miscalculated just how difficult it would be to get an Article V Convention of States called. We have 225 years of data to do an analysis, and I do that in chapter 7 of Political Vertigo. At this point, we have gone so long without this course correction, it is not clear that we can ever agree to call such a convention. Many who would otherwise advocate such a convention are too scared of the results – because they know that society has become so corrupted. The results of not attempting this mechanism are obvious. Those who fear a convention should realize that the risk is not going diminish over time. It will only increase.

There is still more to mention about judicial supremacy itself. One of the modern tools introduced in Political Vertigo is Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which really applies to any organization. In a nutshell, there are two groups of people in an organization. The first group promotes the goals of the organization. The second group promotes the organization itself instead the goals. Finally, group two always gains control and makes the rules.

It is interesting to ponder how Pournelle’s Iron Law applies to the Supreme Court. It should be obvious by John Roberts continual saving of Obamacare that he is in group 2. In all probability, most Chief Justices have been in group 2. The result is that the Supreme Court has steadily increased its stature rather than focused on its true role in government. Dr. Gordon S. Wood published a paper in the Washington and Lee Law Review in June of 1999 called The Origins of Judicial Review Revisited, or How the Marshall Court Made More out of Less. The article covers the historic journey and attitudes surrounding judicial review and judges in general. It is one article of many that lionizes Marshall for promoting the stature of the court – which is exactly what group 2 attempts to do.

      Dr. Wood’s article reveals more than history. It reveals the author’s own perspective on the history. To the author, Jefferson was behind the times in his attitude of restricting judicial power. He also considers it enlightened to centralize power in the national government. As I write in Political Vertigo, academics almost universally rate Presidents highly who have actually exceeded their constitutional limitations rather than respected them. The same is true for academics and the legal profession with respect to justices. They also approve of the centralization of power (and money) into Washington DC. The power dynamic has been power being acquired by the national government to the detriment of the states. With the states being the “agents of the people”, this means that the people have progressively less real representation.

Mind Manipulation

IM:  I hear a lot of my fellow Republicans now saying Trump is a catastrophe and do not want to support him; some are even talking about voting for Hillary.

Old Gadfly:  Does that come as a surprise to you?

AM:  What I see playing out in the news is a very deliberate attempt to not only control what we see and understand, but to control our reactions as well.  Take the news today.  All the networks focused on how Trump claimed to have seen a video of an aircraft carrying $400 million in cash as ransom for four hostages released by Iran.  Trump later corrected this claim by saying it was actually another clip of an aircraft carrying the hostages.  The focus was Trump’s incorrect claim.  There was no interest in the $400 million in cash in exchange for the hostages.  In other words, Trump is dishonest or a loose cannon.  How about a glib president that chuckled away the $400 million in cash for four hostages, saying this was not ransom money?

IM:  Remind me what glib means.

AM:  Glib means “fluent and voluble but insincere and shallow.”  Voluble is “characterized by a ready and continuous flow of words” in order to dominate the narrative.  See how the press reacted?  They focused on Trump’s erroneous video clip—something considerably trivial compared with a ransom for hostages.

Old Gadfly:  Remember, F.A. Hayek made two important observations related to these dynamics.  The first was about how the political elite shape reactions to any opposition to their established values in the Chapter, “The End of Truth,” in his book, The Road to Serfdom.  Those sufficiently indoctrinated with these values are to spontaneously attack those who express any opposition to these values.  This explains the vitriolic reporting following George Stephanopoulos’s questions to Trump following the Kahn attacks at the Democrat National Convention.  The second observation in his book The Fatal Conceit:  The Errors of Socialism is that “the mind is the product of cultural evolution and reflects more imitation than reason.”

IM:  I hear a lot of people repeating what is in the news.  When I ask them to provide more detail or examples to support allegations, they go silent.  So, this must be a form of imitation.  Just this morning, I read Michael Morell’s op-ed, “I Ran the C.I.A.  Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton” in the New York Times.  This evening, quotes from his article were all over the news—a classic echo chamber.

AM:  I read the same article—pure propaganda.  He said, “Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. . . . I spent four years with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room.  In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.”  These are called platitudes.  If this is representative of the type of analysis he provided as the acting head of the CIA, no wonder we did so poorly on the international stage.  None of these qualifications relate to actual achievements.  But they do “glibly” disguise the tremendous foreign policy failures during her tenure—Benghazi, Libya, Egypt, Syria, ISIS, a resurgent Russia (who took Crimea and threatened Ukraine), North Korea, China, Cuba, and so forth.  None of these were successes—they were all setbacks.  Obama had no foreign policy expertise when he ran for president.  When McCain confronted him with this realization, Obama laughed at him and said, “but I have superior judgment.”  As if judgement is in one’s DNA and has nothing to do with experience and the wisdom that follows.

IM:  Morell, obviously pandering for a Clinton administration appointment, then went on to criticize Trump for his character traits:  “The traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement [nothing compared with the narcissist in chief, Obama], his overreaction to perceived slights [there have been no vicious attacks of Trump—they are all in his imagination], his tendency to make decisions based on intuition [he offers no examples, but don’t forget intuition is what Obama’s superior judgment depended upon], his refusal to change his views based on new information [even Hillary refuses to change her views about lying to the people even from old information on the record from Director Comey], his routine carelessness with the facts [nowhere near to Obama’s characterization of the ISIS threat, the economy, and so forth], his unwillingness to listen to others [Obamacare is the right thing to do even though the majority of Americans didn’t want it], and his lack of respect for the law [enforcing immigration laws do not count and Obama is exempted from similar criticism because it would be racist].

AM:  In my view, the most egregious part of his article is when he suggested Putin “recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”  Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation were involved in very serious “pay to play” actions with Russian actors.  Joy Overbeck provides a detailed expose in her article, “None Dare Call Her Treasonous.”  On the same page of The New York Times is another op-ed article by Arkody Ostrovsky, the Russian and Eastern European editor of the Economist.  The title of his article was “For Putin, Disinformation Is Power.”  The ideological zealots who make up the editorial staff at The New York Times completely missed the irony of these juxtaposed op-ed articles.  The Morell article is disinformation.

IM:  Mr. Ostrovsky said, “After Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the Soviet media, the contrast between socialist and capitalist economic systems had become too apparent.”  Yet, the progressive Democrats in America are pushing socialism while condemning capitalism.  Trump represents capitalism, which is why the progressive Democrats must diminish him as a candidate.  Ostrovsky continued, “Mr. Putin has reason to fear in one respect.  His system does face an existential threat from the Western model of governance.  Just as the economic inadequacies of Soviet Communism were exposed by comparison with the wealth produced by Western capitalism, Mr. Putin’s authoritarianism cannot match the appeal of an economy based on the rule of law, openness and competition.  The best way for the West to resist Russia, now and then, is to uphold its own values.”  Obama’s vision for fundamentally transforming America took us away from these values.  Hillary Clinton wants to accelerate this transformation.  Trump wants to reinstate them by “making America great again.”

Old Gadfly:  In the cold, gray month of January 1980, my wife and I traveled to Berlin, which included a visit to the Berlin Air Safety Center, a facility manned by officers from the four occupying nations—the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  As we met those on duty who were controlling flights into and out of Berlin corridors, two Soviet officers were in the room.  A younger one was sitting near the wall with his feet resting on the desk, reading the Pravda newspaper.  I shook hands with the senior Soviet officer on duty.  We were told by a younger Soviet officer, who spoke fluent English, the senior officer was a lieutenant colonel and a former MIG-25 pilot.  He was a first lieutenant, but the colonel reported to him—in other words, the lieutenant was the political officer for their unit.

AM:  The Russian word Pravda means “truth” in English.  We know Pravda was the government-sponsored and controlled paper.  It was the propaganda machine for the communist party—it reported on what the people were allowed to know or believe.

          Old Gadfly:  If the communist party controlled what was reported in the Soviet Union, then is it possible for an American ideology to have similar control over news reporting even in so called free societies?  Obviously it is.  American progressives—politicians, media, academia, and Hollywood—control the narrative.  The Trump and Clinton we see is the Trump and Clinton they want us to see.  Aggressive research is contrary to these images.  Hillary Clinton is unapologetically corrupt.  Peter Schweizer reveals some of this corruption in Clinton Cash (here is a free video that provides some of the evidence).  The last couple weeks I have asked friends, family, and complete strangers if they had seen Dinesh D’Souza’s movie or read his book:  Hillary’s America:  The Secret History of the Democratic Party.  Nine out of 10 have never heard of it.  The media is suppressing it.  This is called censorship because the facts and analysis are so contrary to the progressive idea of “truth.”  Americans—all Americans--need to realize this.