On July 4th, 1776 we said, among other things, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. In fact, we asserts this as a self evident truth. You know: like the sun in the sky. I don’t have to prove this is correct, it is what it is. If you reject it, you are a liar or insane, just as you would be if you said at noon at the sun wasn’t up in the sky. To be sure, people can dispute this dogma and the United States is the only nation in the world – and likely will always be the only nation in the world – to assert such a thing in its founding document. But being an American requires subscription to certain dogmas, much as being a Catholic or Evangelical, Muslim or Jew requires subscription to certain assertions. The only way America works is if, by and large, everyone accepts certain things as a given – in America’s case, the Declaration of Independence is bare minimum…if you don’t believe what’s in it, why in heck are you here?
I believe that the problems of America today – as a society – stem from the atrophy of belief in American dogma. That is, we have increasingly ignored the Declaration and gone about doing things which directly contravene what the Founders fought for. This is not some novel idea: all nations and religions eventually have the same problem: a collapse of belief. Some nations and religions recover, others don’t – but they only recover by harking back to first principles and rigidly enforcing them. This is what we must do to save America: we must make belief in America near-universal among Americans. All things we decide to do must pass what I call the Declaration Test: is the proposal in conformity with the Declaration of Independence? If it is, then let us do it. If it is not, then it is abhorrent and must be rejected.
Think about this for a moment: right now, China runs various psy-ops on us while also bribing our institutions to work against American interests. This is part of China’s asymmetric warfare model against us. China reviewed her options in the mid 1990’s after the Gulf War showed American military superiority and decided that any sort of direct military confrontation with the USA would be a high risk operation. At least, that is, until America was massively weakened. Using the lever of “free trade”, China entered the USA and set about the program of undermining us from within while continuing to build up traditional military and industrial might for themselves…so that if a war came, it would be the USA in the morally and physically weak category. And even if war didn’t come, then the erosion of American confidence would leave China the dominant power in east Asia, Africa and South America. There were many arguments made in the 1990’s about why we needed to engage in the China trade – we’d make money! We’ get a strategic partner! Wealth would moderate China’s political system! This was all drivel, as we can see in the results but what was wrong from the beginning is that the USA, as an institution, could not legitimately engage with China. Why? Because China’s government does not have the consent of the governed. The PRC is a standing insult the the ideals of our Founders. It is a rejection of American dogma from start to finish.
It must be understood that under American beliefs, the government of China has not the just authority to do anything. Sure, they have the physical power to do things, but that isn’t the same as having the just power. Never in Chinese history has there been a Chinese government which had the consent of the governed (with a Taiwan exception, of course). If we as Americans enter into agreements with China, who are we agreeing with? A treaty binding on America is a treaty negotiated by the elected President and then ratified by the elected Senate – with any further legislation needed to enforce the treaty created by Congress and signed by the President. In other words, on our side, a binding treaty is something done with the consent of the American people via the mechanisms those people have devised to determine popular consent. China’s government is a corrupt oligarchy which shot its way into power in 1949 and never let go. If we make a deal with China then it means we’ve just made a deal with what amounts to a Mafia. Deals with the mafia are never a good thing – sure, mobsters are noted for keeping their word at times, but you’re still dealing with mobsters. You know: liars and thieves who will twist the deal to suit themselves.
Think about how it would be if we had never dealt with China – certainly never dealt with China since 1949. China, herself, would still be an economic backwater and a distinctly third rate military power. We wouldn’t have Chinese money corrupting our politics and society. Our position in the western Pacific wold remain supreme…we wouldn’t have Taiwan, South Korea and Japan furiously building up their military forces, almost certain to eventually encompass carrier battle groups and nuclear weapons. If we had merely obeyed the dogmas of the USA – if we had put China to the Declaration Test, the USA and the whole world would be better off.
So, too, with one thing after another, in both foreign and domestic affairs. All of our problems stem from a rejection of the wisdom of the Declaration and the embrace of ideas contrary to it. Deep State? Where and when did the American people in Congress assembled really consent to domestic spying? When was it announced before hand that the government would collect masses of data on us and then, after reviewing that data without a warrant, launch criminal investigations of us? The Russians are kicking us out of our base in Niger…when was consent obtained from the American people for us to have a base in Niger? I’m pretty up on things…I don’t recall that debate and decision. When did we consent to sending billions of dollars to NGO’s to transport millions of illegals to the US border? Oh, sure, it was in a law enacted somewhere…but I don’t remember us having a debate about it like, say, we had an open and lengthy public debate about building the Panama Canal. All the time now our government and institutions are trying to slip things in on us – the whole trans thing came out of nowhere with no popular demand and no public debate. It was just decided one day that people can change gender and everyone just had to conform to that. On and on and on like that. Keep in mind, I’ve made no judgement on the merits of the issues I’ve listed – my complaint isn’t that we have a base in Niger or that a guy in a dress wants to be called “ma’am”. My complaint is that we did not obtain the consent of the governed on either issue. Do whatever you want – as long as there’s a debate and decision. As long as consent is obtained.
The Declaration Test must become our go-to thing. Anything that anyone wants – or any thing we discover going on – must be referred to that document and a determination must be made as to whether or not it conforms to it. This is not a Right/Left debate – it is an American/Un-American debate. If we are to be Americans – if we want to be Americans – then we’d better start being Americans.
Blogs For Victory 
Trump Rally Draws Tens of Thousands in Blue State New Jersey
Despite being held in a state that has been reliably Democrat, a rally for the Republican former president set a record for New Jersey, a congressman said.
The program also featured remarks by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a potential vice president pick for President Trump.
I don’t know much about Burgum, but here are a few things that turned up in a search. On the surface he seems to hit many positives. Certainly appears better than some of the names that have been floated for potential VP pick and wouldn’t remove key people from congress, who are necessary to secure control.
He’s definitely got a lot of positives and I would never object to him as vice president. However, my personal wish list is for vice president with a strong legal background and a history of taking on big business and bureaucracy, who could be delegated by the president to deal with the Bureaucratic State. And because at this point I still think the best choice for our next president would be Ron DeSantis, I really don’t want another internal Republican battle for the White House 4 years from now.
Well, YEAH! That’s always been obvious. The entire lawfare strategy amounts to a conspiracy to influence elections.
Anyone who has paid attention to the Left and its tactics and strategies knows that one of those tactics is to accuse others of doing what it itself is doing. We’ve watched the left go from trying to influence election outcome (Russia Strategy, laptop denial strategy, sham impeachment hearings etc.) to actually interfering with election outcomes (2020 vote-rigging). This is what the Left does. There was a time in the United States when the left could legitimately win elections (although we do have the history of Joe Kennedy buying enough votes for Jack Kennedy to get him into the White House) But for the last several election cycles, it’s clear that the only way that the Democrat Party has been able to win the presidency is through the implementation of a variety of illegal and barely legal shenanigans.
Mark I think this is one of the best thread posts you’ve done. I think it summarizes the core problem that we have today. We’ve tap danced around it. We’ve called it the Deep State, we’ve called it the Bureaucratic State, we’ve made references to the existence of an extra-legal de facto fourth branch of government, but you summarized it very well when you said “My complaint is that we did not obtain the consent of the governed on either issue. Do whatever you want – as long as there’s a debate and decision. As long as consent is obtained.” (Note to “teacher” Casper: “extra-legal” does not mean super duper really legal. It means outside the framework of legality.)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reference to a comment by Trump that struck me as one of the most important things he ever said. That is, his repeated demand to Congress that it DO YOUR DAMNED JOB! While the left’s lap dogs and meat puppets like Casper have been whining and screeching and moaning that Trump is a dictator was a dictator wants to be a dictator whatever, the record is that throughout his entire term he steadfastly refused to expand the authority of the Executive Branch, tried to rein in the assumption of legislative powers by federal agencies and whittled away at the extralegal (go back to my explanation of that term) Executive Orders passed by his predecessor and focused very tightly on getting the government back to being a government by the people.
Yep.
And lets consider something else here – I mentioned that laws have been passed out of Congress which fund the NGOs which import the illegals. So, one might say since it was passed by Congress, the American people consented to it.
Wrong.
Nobody ever debated the proposal that billions of taxpayer dollars be appropriated for NGOs for the purpose of importing illegals. It was all inserted into bills nobody read. No possible consent. And this is before we get into the fact that it is also unconstitutional…there is no enumerated power to import illegal immigrants. I know we’re way past having laws matter…but that doesn’t mean they don’t actually matter.
We have to get back to basics here – to insist that things be done properly. The system we have works fine if used…we simply haven’t been using it. Mostly because if we used it, 90% of the problems we have – and the corruption it entails – wouldn’t be happening. In short, millions of people with trillions of dollars at stake would have to get a job.
1. Get rid of omnibus bills. Each bill can address one thing only
2. A bill must be written by its sponsor.
3. No bill can be more than 10 pages long.
4. No one can vote on a bill unless he or she has first signed a sworn affidavit that he or she has read the bill in its entirety.
Every now and then I hear something that I think “sounds just like Casper”. Today I was driving and listening to the radio and some poor Leftist was fretting —I thought he might break down and cry— because he just could not understand how in 2020, when the two presidential candidates were rated by the public for their perceived competency, Biden led Trump by 9 points, and today Trump leads Biden by 16 points. Oh my goodness. How could it BE?
That’s the thing about these people—- they simply lack the ability to connect the dots. In the 2020 campaign Biden had never been president. He’d actually never held an office that demanded much of him. And his incompetence in the few areas where he was ever asked to do anything was carefully hidden by the Complicit Agenda Media, much as they were hiding the information that was on the Hunter Biden laptop. So in 2020 too many people in the public only “knew” what they had been told about Trump’s competence and about Biden’s.
But three and a half years later they’ve been exposed to graphic illustrations of Biden’s incompetence and they’ve also been able to compare their situation now to what it was when Trump was president and realize that the reason it was so much better then is directly due to Trump’s competence as president and the reason it’s so bad now is because Joe Biden is a bumbling idiot who screws up everything he touches.
But these silly whiny lefties can’t do anything but whimper and wring their hands and be confused because they have locked themselves into their delusions and when faced with reality they just don’t know how to handle it.
Because when you tear down everything, he’s a man who’s been in Washington for more than four decades and has done nothing. Biden is the worst type of politician DC can produce: the man with decades of so-called experience who comes to the wrong decision on every issue.
Last poll I saw, had Trump at 51% in Nevada … that’s a done deal. And he was up by 8 or 9 in both AZ & GA, meaning he only needs to win just one rust belt State; WI, MI, PA. Outside of that, Trump has a shot at VA and NJ. MAGA is expanding. And you’re right, DeSantis needs to be set up for 2028.
I’m happy just giving up on Wisconsin. It’s such a loser state. And in the others you mentioned, there’s been a move toward Trump and I think the move is only going to get more pronounced as time goes on. It’s hard to believe that in Michigan 20 people could vote for Biden after what he’s done to the auto industry Here and Pennsylvania has been hit hard by the war on petroleum products.
I’m real sure this was not consented to …
Although the federally funded Unaccompanied Children Program is responsible for resettling unaccompanied migrant minors who enter the U.S., it delegates much of the task to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that run shelters in the border states of Texas, Arizona, and California.
And with the recent massive influx of unaccompanied children—a record 130,000 in 2022, the last year for which there are official stats—the coffers of these NGOs are swelling, along with the salaries of their CEOs.
“The amount of taxpayer money they are getting is obscene,” Charles Marino, former adviser to Janet Napolitano
I think we are seeing the separation of Americans and non Americans in this election. Trump is amassing a coalition of common sense Republicans and disaffected Democrats in Fly Over country, who know what it is to be an American … hard work, personal responsibility, family oriented, Faith based, etc. The Democrat coalition are the non Americans … global billionaires, uneducated socialist idiots, and establishment Republicans on the take. This election should be easy to win.
https://www.thefp.com/p/nonprofits-make-billions-off-migrant-children
OT, but Coffee & Covid is pretty good today. I laughed all the way through the part about Red Lobster’s impending bankruptcy, especially this part:
That’s one thing neo-Marxism has accomplished, making everything mind-numbingly verbose, bombastic, and pedantic — in other words, it’s just dumb fake intellectualism
That just perfectly sums up the entire Democrat Party. They are complete morons posing as intellectuals.
But they have allowed this delusional self-perception to define them as human beings, which is why now they can’t let go of it. The Left has somehow successfully bamboozled millions of people into thinking that aligning with the Left is proof of both moral and intellectual superiority. Given that the Left is directly responsible for not just the deaths but the murders of tens of millions of people in its pursuit of power and control, as well as for plunging nation after nation into economic misery and tyranny, it’s impossible for rational people to understand this, but it’s a powerful delusion.
With Friends Like Biden, WHO Needs Enemies?! THIS WaPo Biden/Israel BOMBSHELL Should End His Presidency
The left is quite adept at redefining language and shifting blame, but also constantly stepping in piles of dung of their own making leaving them scrambling to hang onto votes. One of the problems they’re facing is, constantly changing the direction of what votes they’re chasing, ultimately causing losses on multiple ends.
Oh my!
I wonder if Team Biden’s agreement to debate Trump in June (2 months before the Democrat Convention) is an effort to either get Biden to voluntarily step down or remove him via the 25th Amendment.
We’ll see how much they pump Bidum up with drugs to get him ready to debate if that’s in play. It was speculated some time ago during the earlier part of Bidum’s time in office that leftist powers were hoping the right would get him impeached, leaving their hands clean of the ordeal and able to shift in a different direction. However, I suspect the thought of Harris sitting in the big chair even scares many on the left as well. That, 1.) Bidum is still in office and 2.) He’s set to be the democrat’s nomination for the next election and 3.) The polls are showing significant losses for Bidum which historically carries weight in downline votes for congress, has to be scaring both leftist and swamp creatures. This seems to leave them with limited options, including intentionally leaving Bidum exposed to different forms of removal – especially if they can somehow place blame on the right. Short of that you can be sure they will continue to use whatever else they can dream up to scam the system, including another health catastrophe which always seems to be lurking around the corner.
The world is rife with rumors – and it could be that with reports today that major donors are flipping to Trump this might be the price for continued donor support: prove you can function.
But another word heard today is that Team Biden thought until a couple days ago that the election was in the bag…which means they either aren’t taking internal polls or were taking really bad ones. My view: they were taking really bad ones to serve up to Biden and senior staff but someone finally broke through to show that Biden is losing, and pretty badly. Now they have to do something to shake up the dynamic of the race. They can’t fix any problem…so, maybe if we get Joe out there?
It is a high risk proposition – even given that it is on ground entirely friendly to Biden. If he malfunctions even a little bit on camera, he’s cooked – that’s it; the election is over. Nobody will elect a clearly senile man to office. “Senior moments” are fricking kryptonite for politicians…it has happened over and over again even with popular incumbents who simply got old and nobody really noticed until they did.
Nobody will elect a clearly senile man to office.
I wish I thought this was true. But Casper is not the only willfully blind Democrat in the country. He’s not the only one who will excuse Biden’s rambling and mumbling and inability to speak coherently as merely a lifelong “stutter”. He’s not the only one who’s going to completely ignore Biden’s dependence on large format note cards and teleprompters and his bizarre meanderings off into the mental weeds as he comes up with various fantasies.
While falling apart during a debate is certainly likely to influence the outcome of the election let’s not pretend that there still aren’t millions of Caspers out there who would happily vote for a man who is blatantly senile.
This kind of discussion always brings me back to what I think is the single most important element in our entire political process. And that is that in my experience that most on the Left are not on the Left because they have an objective understanding of and allegiance to a specific political model. Rather, their allegiance seems to be to the people who represent the Left. And even more powerful Is their antipathy toward the people who represent the Right.
The problem with a phrase is that when it’s used a lot it tends to lose some of its impact, and I think that’s what’s happened with the phrase “Identity Politics”. That’s too bad because this is really a very important term, pointing out that there is an element of politics that depends more on personalities and identities than it does on actual political philosophy and structure.
I stumbled into this understanding purely by accident a couple of decades ago right here on this blog. I was engaged in an ongoing discussion with someone from the Left and I found it very frustrating because we never seem to actually talk about politics (as I understand the term) but seemed stuck in a circular argument about people. So I finally suggested that we first establish a simple objective base for our differing beliefs and start from there, and asked him to please explain his political philosophy.
Spook will undoubtedly remember the ongoing arguments that stemmed from this simple request. The response that I got from this person who had been so ardently and passionately arguing against whatever was going on on the Right at that time was a statement of what he obviously considered to be an objective rational coherent political philosophy but which had absolutely nothing to do with the structure of a political system. In general, it was that he thought people should be nicer to each other and that we should have a system that is “fair”.
Over the next couple of decades I repeatedly asked this question both on the blog and in personal one to one discussions and to this day I have received exactly one response that actually related to political structure. That was from someone who used to occasionally post on the blog back in the old days who stated that he was a Marxist, that he had studied the writings of Marx and that he accepted those writings as an outline of the best political model for governing the country. Every other response that I ever received to that simple question—-” what is your political philosophy?”—- has been in one way or another a refusal to answer the question, sometimes even attacking me or ridiculing me for thinking that there is such a thing as an objective political philosophy or finding it important.
Most people who vote on the right, can, off the top of their heads, explain a political philosophy that goes beyond a belief that we are better off with a smaller government. In conversations with these people when questions are asked they’re usually pretty good at explaining the problems of big government and how important it is to keep government closer to the people so that it remains government by the people and for the people. On the other end of the political spectrum I really don’t see this. I don’t see people who enable and support the Left, like people who post here, for example, and people who write in the comment sections of different articles and so on, indicating that they really have an understanding of the political structure of the Left and an objective belief that this is the best way to govern the nation.
I’ve even had some of these people become extremely indignant at my use of the terms Left or Leftist claiming that there is no such thing, that I have invented the term and even that it is a “pejorative”. A few years ago on my brother’s farm, I ran into a friend of theirs I hadn’t seen for years, And as we started catching up a little bit on what had happened over the years I learned that he had become a commercial airline pilot. Somehow the conversation shifted slightly to the fact that as a conservative he had learned that he had to be very careful about exposing his political position because the last thing in the world he needed was an argument in the cockpit of a plane crossing the Atlantic. I asked if he had ever had a rational discussion with a Leftist, and he said no. We ended up thoroughly entertaining ourselves, while seriously offending two of my three brothers, by illustrating a “political” discussion between someone on the Right and someone on the Left. ( The content tells you when this took place.)
R: Do you think we need tax reform?
L: GEORGE BUSH IS AN ASSHOLE!
R: How do you feel about the 10th Amendment?
L: GEORGE BUSH IS AN ASSHOLE!
And so on. When I have summarized the two opposing political models in this country—- that is, that one choice is of a federal government restricted in its size scope and power with most authority left to the states or the people and the other is a federal government which can expand to assume nearly unlimited power with very little authority left to the states or the people—-Leftist posters here have become unhinged in their outrage at my utter stupidity as I simply do not understand that what matters is ISSUES and ISSUES are far more complex than the simplistic outline I provided. They simply reject the concept that the real choice is in how we address those issues, not the issues themselves. People on both the Left and the Right often care about the same issues—- where we differ is how we think they need to be addressed. But people on the Left refuse to have that discussion.
As long as we have approximately half of the country making electoral decisions based on how they feel about people and issues and not on the best way to govern the nation we’re going to continue having these problems because we’re going to continue having only half of the country voting on what they think is the best blueprint for governing the nation, even when it is implemented by people we might not personally like, even though we may not achieve our ideal of purely Constitutional governance.
What I find interesting is the fact that when I have talked to people who espouse Leftist inclinations, instead of getting into an argument about the issues and the people I have just laid out my simple paradigm of alternative approaches to government— that same “federal government restricted in its size scope and power with most authority left to the states or the people vs a federal government which can expand to assume nearly unlimited power with very little authority left to the states or the people”—every one of them has agreed that we are a lot better off when the states have more power and the federal government is not a powerful Central Authority. They agree that one size does not fit all. It’s only when we introduce emotional elements such as specific issues or, more importantly to the Left, specific identities that these people veer back into their Leftist positions, which seem to exist solely in complaints about the Invented Right they have been told to despise.
Glenn Loury has an interesting take on racial disparities.
https://bagwithholes.com/america/two-conflicting-narratives-about-racial-disparities-glenn-loury/