What is a Good President?

What does it take to make a good president?

People, not knowing presidential history, tend to weigh their judgments towards the presidents of their own lifetime and measure them against what was going on at the time. If you lean towards the conservative side of the aisle during Biden's time he is the worst and Trump was the best. During Trump's time his acolytes claimed he was the best and Obama was the worst. During Bush's (43) time, especially post 9/11, he was the best and Clinton was the worst. I'm just going to skip Bush (41) other than to say that Carter was the worst while Reagan was the best. And so it goes clear back to the beginning of time. The funny thing is that if you support the other side the entire scale of judgment inverts. Everybody who was the best becomes the worst and all of the worst become the best. With time people tend to forget whatever was going on at the time and the presidents of those days and their accomplishments become totally forgotten.

The problem here is that there is no accepted standard of judgment for a president. If a businessman takes over the country, as if it was his own personal business and things are going well, his supporters forget the obvious violations of the Constitution and start calling him the greatest president of all time. Or if he gives you everything you want at public expense.

They tend to forget little things like the fact that if Washington didn't do what he did there would never have been a United States to begin with. He took a country that didn’t exist, from a country that was the most powerful and expansive empire in world history, fought a war for independence, was instrumental in writing the Constitution, giving that country its turn to become the most powerful and expansive empire in world history. Wouldn’t that qualify as an act deserving of being named the greatest president of all time? I think it would. In spite of his faults even the best of his successors could only claim to expertly or poorly maintain what he had put there, in spite of all of the odds against him, in the first place.

As far as the worst goes when is the last time you heard someone talk about John Adams and his Alien and Sedition Acts? You think Joe Biden is divisive? John Adam's stance on France as well as his general divisiveness created a climate where Representative Roger Griswold of Connecticut attacked Representative Matthew Lyon of Vermont on the House Floor beating him with a wooden cane.

Contemporary with that was the election where Jefferson challenged and won against Adams, the insults between the two were so legendary that historians comment on it to this day. Jefferson's campaign accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." So naturally Adam’s men called then Vice President Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." Depending on who you listened to Adams was a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant or Jefferson was a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.

The only thing that makes this different than today's often repeated (repeated and repeated again) mantra of "greatest president ever!" is that at the time there were only two to choose from.

Regarding divisiveness how about a guy who was so divisive that he actually split the country and killed an estimated two and a half percent of the American population? How about that trifling little business of killing more American soldiers than all other wars combined? Obama and Biden didn't kill two and a half percent of the American population in an unnecessary and unconstitutional war. And yet somehow that guy is considered to be an example of one of the best. Those who say “Lincoln was the greatest president ever!” don’t usually take into account the simple fact that Lincoln's war was more deadly than Idi Amin.

Yes. I said it. Lincoln was worse than Idi Amin. That’s by the standard of measuring the number of American deaths, something a good president always avoids, and how many times and how grossly he violated the Constitution, which following it, regardless of circumstances, is his duty by oath.

I’ve got a rather revolutionary idea. Let’s just say the presidents who kill the largest number of Americans are immediately candidates for being the worst presidents ever. That’s a good standard for a president. Don’t kill a lot of Americans and follow the Constitution.

Speaking of the presidents and the Constitution, did you ever wonder why James Madison’s face isn’t on Mount Rushmore in place of Lincoln’s? I mean the guy who wrote the Constitution versus the guy who made it possible for it to be destroyed? And we went with latter of the two rather than the former?

Bringing that effect, Lincoln’s war, up to present times, there is the simple fact that without Lincoln and his policies of expansionist government there'd have been no Obama or Biden. Had the federal government been held to the pre-Civil War constitutional standard by the American People neither of the two most current jokers would have been possible.

On the flip side we have a quiet guy like Ike, who is credited with winning WWII, getting America over the trauma of a post world war while his policies held off the Soviets and launching one of the more prosperous times in American history. And he had manners. But that’s a personal preference of mine. I tend to like the quiet ones.

Please, people, there were better presidents than Trump and worse ones than Biden or Obama. Study all of American history. Not just the presidents of your lifetime according to the Main Stream Media. As a constitutionalist I'd recommend you read the Constitution, learn it well and judge the presidents by their actions in support of it or against it and forget about all of the rest. Get away from the judgments of professional historians. Read the accounts of the losers of conflicts as well as the history written by the victors.

What do I think is a good example of a good president for modern times? As I said, I tend to like the quiet ones. None of them were quieter than Calvin Coolidge.

He had a wide spread reputation for not speaking unless he had to. His nickname was “Silent Cal.” He was commonly described as laconic. Not only did this apply to his presidency but his life in general. Once President Coolidge was seated next to a chatty woman at a dinner party who said to him “I bet I can get you to say more than two words.” His response; "You lose," is both classy and classic. I tend to like the simple, elegant, witty way of saying what needs to be said, without being a bloviating ass-hat, endlessly commenting on the subject of how great you are and how evil everybody who opposes you is. There is something to be said for being a consummate and professional statesman. They win people over.

Sometimes I find myself shouting at the video on my monitor, “Okay! I get it! Everybody is mean to you! You poor, poor baby! But what are you going to do about following your oath!?”

There is a big difference between saying what needs to be said and just plain being mean about it. That’s what Americans loved about Reagan. You remember him? The guy who took the country by landslide twice? The guy who in his second election took forty-nine states? Was he critical about the Demoncraps? Yep. However he defeated them by politely persuading the swing votes away from them while making the argument for his base. Interlaced with his criticism of his political opponents was a calm persuasive logic and an inimitable sense of humor.

Were I a betting man I’d guess that Reagan was a big Coolidge fan… (Note: As I typed this line the thought crossed my mind that I should look into this. So I just now looked this up, as a matter of fact, and it turns out that he was.

But as president you do have to say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done and have a spine about it. As governor of Massachusetts one of the things Coolidge had to deal with was a policeman’s strike in Boston. Riots and chaos ensued. Coolidge’s response? "There is no right to strike against the public safety, anywhere, anytime." Then he fired them all for abandoning their posts. On the flip side he did everything he could do to get the fired policemen jobs outside of the Police Department.

One of the things that Coolidge and Reagan had in common is that they were not sold on the line that the federal government is the best way to get to economic prosperity. They were more of the mind that that’s a job for the People rather than the government. For myself I can’t stand it when a federal official brags about how many jobs they created. It’s not their job to create jobs. It’s much better when they get the government out of the way and let the People create the jobs for themselves.

National debt post WWI was nine times higher than it had ever been before. Income tax was high. Jobs were scarce. Angry and unemployed veterans of WWI were roaming the streets in poverty. Prices for food and clothing were double what they were before the war.

This was the state of the country when Coolidge stepped onto the national scene. In spite of a large number of failures in his life he always pushed on. His perseverance in the face of political opposition was astounding and the key to his success. In the middle of his presidency his sixteen year old son died and one could even make the argument that after that his wife, for a time, left him because of his presidency. Did he complain about his detractors about how mean they were to him? Did he back down? Did he complain that he really didn’t want to sign the bills for all of the spending sent to him but he felt he had to?

No he didn’t. He instead hired a guy named Andrew Mellon to be his Secretary of the Treasury. Mellon is famous for creating the idea he called Scientific Taxation. This is basically the idea that the lower the taxes the greater the growth and consequently the higher the revenue. As a result there was enough wealth for everybody, so much so that the government could get by on taking only a tiny fraction of it. This policy has a history of working exceptionally well. Less government, more fun.

Coolidge vetoed a lot of bills for spending even during a time when military costs, veteran’s funding and the national debt made up more than half of the spending. He cut federal expenditures savagely. There was once even a parody of “A Christmas Carol” with President Coolidge in the part of Ebenezer Scrooge.

The top income tax rate came down by half while the federal debt was reduced by a third. In fact the budget was always in surplus. Unemployment was less than five percent, sometimes as low as three percent. Houses were converting to electricity, phones were being installed all over the country and people were buying cars. Why? Because the federal government wasn’t sucking the money out of the economy, of course. Yet the economy grew strongly and the federal government shrank. Wages rose and interest rates fell. Less money for the government equals more money for everybody else.

So, how about the actions of the president who launched the roaring twenties? A time in American history which was so prosperous that it is still talked about a hundred years later? Greatest president ever? Maybe not but he was certainly one of the better ones.

Like he said in this video, “I want the People of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the People can be kept by the People we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.”

He was not arrogant about how he was the right guy to save us. He said that he would get the government out of our way so we could save ourselves. He said he would let us live our own lives.

He said “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”

To end this post I would like to share the following words from Coolidge’s Inaugural Address:

“The wisest and soundest method of solving our tax problem is through economy…The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to public necessity. The property of the country belongs to the people of the country. Their title is absolute. They do not support any privileged class; they do not need to maintain great military forces; they ought not to be burdened with a great array of public employees.”—Calvin Coolidge

The House Votes to Ignore the Bill of Rights

As a constitutionalist I’m always looking for issues in the arena of public debate that adequately explain why we shouldn’t have the federal government involved in almost anything to do with our personal lives. As a person who leans libertarian, and as a person with common sense, I think it is a very bad idea to have every aspect of our lives ruled according to the dictates of some politically vested, unknowing, uncaring, disconnected tyrants in the federal government. The United States was created with the idea that people hundreds or thousands of miles away should never be able to step on our freedom.

When I was growing up in the seventies (yes, I’m that old) my father used to have a saying that he would use every time someone in the family was annoyed about something. Given that he was living with six children in a small house, fortunately with a big yard, normal sibling conflicts used to happen quite a bit. “Don’t make a federal case out of it!” he used to say to us. It wasn’t just my father’s saying but he was closest to me, so his is the first that came to mind. Whether it was a conflict between my parents, siblings or some students at school or some local political issue, that sentence, “Don’t make a federal case out of it,” would pop up on the lips of those involved on a fairly regular basis.

I think, aside from the fact that the sentence was used to show someone was making mountains out of mole hills, in general it was considered to be wise advice. Years ago I wrote an article for this blog explaining in a series of observable axioms the general behavior of government. In this article “The Axioms of Government” there are a number of these observations that come to mind. Most of them apply to the issue I wish to explore here however one of them, Number Eight specifically, rises to the top. “8. The more things are put under governmental control, the more potential control they exert against the freedom and rights of the People.”

What’s the event that triggered this line of thinking? One way to think of the issue is to say transgender women—biological males pretending to be women—shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports. The way a constitutional conservative thinks of the issue is to say that 219 Republicans in the House of Representatives vote to ignore the Bill of Rights.

“Don’t make a federal issue out of it!”

For some reason my experience in the Navy comes to mind with an amusing anecdote. It used to be popular for some reason for my shipmates to pick on the guy from Ohio. In the spirit of this, one of the guys once pointed out to me that “Ohio is the only state in the country that doesn’t have a law saying not to screw your sister. Why is that Ashton?” To which I replied, “You mean you need a law to tell you that it’s not okay for you to screw your sister? I would think that to only be common sense.”

The military has a rule that you should always handle whatever problems occur at the lowest possible place on the chain of command. Division officers and commanding officers get rather cranky when they become burdened with things that should have been able to be handled within your shop. The edicts they issue as a response to these kinds of situations usually are not what anybody involved with the situation really wanted and often seriously miss the point of the original problem which drew the undue attention in the first place. This situation is not unique to the military either. Business executives become just as cranky. My experience is that every single time an officer or business executive makes some very uncomfortable and ridiculous edict it is the result of them being cranky about something that should have been handled long before it got to them.

The same thing happens with government.

The question that should spring to mind to a constitutionalist, or any person valuing freedom, is “Should we handle this problem locally or should we rely on the more forceful and potentially irrational edicts of the federal government under the loving enforcement of nice men with guns?”

The idea of the lowest point on the chain of command is embodied within the Constitution itself as the Tenth Amendment. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This means that not only should the States and People handle these issues themselves but the federal government has absolutely no authority to handle them.

Does this mean that I think biological males pretending to be female should be allowed to compete against women in women’s sports.

To understand this I have to explain what I think insanity is. A lot of people say it is insane to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results. It is true that this could be described as insanity but it’s not entirely accurate. I think insanity would be better described as being unable to distinguish differences between things that are different.

If someone thinks a polar bear is a cute and fuzzy loveable creature that is endangered and needs protection and support, then jumps over the fence at the zoo to give said polar bear a hug, you would think this person crazy, right? This really happened a few years ago by the way. This person couldn’t distinguish the difference between a vicious carnivore and the cartoons of cute, fuzzy, endangered bears on the cartoons she’d been watching.

This could be something as obvious as a person who can’t tell the difference between a car and a tomato, thus tries to drive a tomato to work and slices up his car to serve on a BLT to his guests but it isn’t usually that obvious.

It’s a fun game to play. Look at all of the insane things people are doing and spot all of the things they think of as the same thing which are in fact different. The Demoncrap party practically runs on exploiting them. How about a person who can’t tell the difference between right now when they have freedom and a time in US history when people like them were slaves? How about people who can’t tell the difference between white people and people who are real racists? How about people who can’t tell the difference between fascism and people who simply disagree with them?

Well, what if you are confronted by a person who can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman? That’s insane. Right? For the vast and overwhelming majority of us, far into the 99th percentile range, you can pull out your pants and look down. Go ahead. Do it right now. I’ll wait….

You see a penis? You’re a man. You see a vagina? You’re a woman. That’s sanity. It’s a basic recognition between what is and what isn’t. The best part of it is that you didn’t have to petition Congress to be able to tell. You didn’t have to go to a biologist. You didn’t have to ask your friends, commanding officer, local government official or anybody else to make this determination.

It’s really not very confusing…unless…you’re bat-crap crazy.

Should men and women compete against each other in sports? That answer is best left to the men and women who choose to compete against each other. Do they want to? That’s up to them. Not me. Not you. Not Congress.

However, when a man chooses to compete against women, while pretending and claiming to be a woman, or unable to tell the difference between himself and a woman, in other words while he is insane, and the people putting on the event support this over the objections of the real women he’s competing against, that’s a problem. That’s an overt and obvious endorsement of insanity or cheating.

Were I one of the women I’d refuse to compete against him. Just let him swim or run down the field all by himself. The thing I wouldn’t do, as per my father’s advice, is to make a federal issue out of it. The federal government is going to respond in the same way that any authority taking on the burden of something that shouldn’t have anything to do with them would. They are going to make an edict, based on their own insanities, and use the force of government, backed by the power of nice men with guns, to decide for us all what we should or shouldn’t be compelled to do against our will.

This is not new. Any human society has people who think that they know what is best for all of us and they, by their nature, gravitate toward trying to be in control of us. The United States has been running this way since the Fourteenth Amendment because the “privileges or immunities” clause makes everything a potential federal issue. When something happens that a large number of people object to, there is a tendency to look toward someone who seems large enough to resolve the situation. This is not the way to freedom. It is the way to have a small group of people at the top who dictate to us what all of the rest of us can and cannot do, as well as what we have to do, even when we don't want to. And the chance that they will actually resolve the issue in a way that you want, or in a way that leads to more freedom, is a bad bet.

This is just a variant of making the biggest bully agree with you. Yes, he should in this case. However force is force and authority once granted is usually extremely difficult to get back, except through the progressive use of even more force, usually resulting in social upheaval, rebellion or war.

Yes, that the Democraps rise to this level of the endorsement of an obvious form of insanity is both reprehensible and astounding. That they do this in supposed support of their twisted ideas of women’s rights is an abomination to a civilized and sane society. However it is important to realize that every social issue the federal government gets involved in is a violation of the Tenth Amendment. When that social issue gets to a level that requires federal intervention on an issue that should be resolved by simply pulling out your pants and seeing what is there for what it is, is an example of something that has gone way past common sense or sanity.

I remember when being a constitutional conservative meant being both Republican and for keeping the government out of our lives. Apparently this is no longer true. If authority is granted to make a law like this, sooner or later it will be used to do the opposite. Maybe to resolve this issue they could even come up with a “Department of Gender Identification,” which would work directly under the authority of the President of the United States, to accurately decide what gender a person really is, with the end result of determining who they can compete against. Don’t laugh. They are already far more than half of the way there with Title 9, which in itself is a violation of the Tenth Amendment, for issues which should have been resolved at more local levels. Rule number two of my Axioms of Government article is that “The government will never limit its own power.”

In the mean time while the Republicans debate and try to make laws regulating who can compete in women's sports the Bill of Rights circles the drain. And it is their own involvement in issues the federal government has no business in that endangers it.

The American People are caught between the arguments that "the federal government should do this because it's our way" or "the federal government should do that because it's their way." What happened to the argument that the federal government shouldn't do anything about these kinds of issues at all? That these kinds of decisions are properly for the People, in freedom, to decide for themselves? Or at the most that the States should decide for themselves? Just don't make a federal case out of everything.

Should there be prohibitions against bat-crap crazy and sometimes surgically mutilated men pretending to be women, competing in women’s sports? Especially within our schools? Absofreakinglutely! Every State and locality within the States should do this for themselves. If they don’t do it the real women within these competitions should just refuse to participate. But this should never be an issue for the federal government.

Is this a lot to ask? For them to give up their shot at the glory of competitive sports? Sure it is. But what’s the alternative here? Be beaten on the field by a man? Or beat the man as a woman by standing on the sidelines and letting him, on the field alone, make a fool of himself?

As important as this is to you, and I don’t at all fail to sympathize with your position, there are larger ramifications. If you don’t take a stand as a real woman or for real women, at your own level and right now, then pretty soon you’ll have admirals in the United States Navy pretending to be women. You’ll have men winning awards for being the bravest and best of women everywhere. You’ll have men being given awards by officials in the federal government for being better women than people who are actually women. You’ll have a president of the United States dictating that you have to allow men pretending to be women in your public restrooms. You’ll have drag queens making a mockery of you and reading stories or twerking in front of your children.

So, boys and girls, it is time to ask yourselves, do you really need a federal law to tell if you are a boy or a girl? Or maybe we should all act like real men and women and simply not make a federal issue about it. If we rely on the federal government to “resolve” these kinds of issues the way we want, we are running the risk of them sooner or later “resolving” the issues in ways that we don’t want.

At the least we should all realize, regardless of what the issue is, every time Congress votes on a social issue, regardless of the party or politics of the situation, they are in fact voting to ignore the Bill of Rights.

The Attitude of a Constitutionalist: Part 2, Keep it Simple

Right after I posted last week’s article “The Attitude of a Constitutionalist” I realized that there was something I had planned on mentioning but didn’t. I had just simply forgotten it. I decided not to just tack it on at the end of the last article because as the week passed I thought of more things I wanted to say on the subject.

The rules of life are very simple.

That’s a basic philosophic truth. Even when someone seems to be living a very complicated life, if they understand it well enough to easily manage it then to them it seems simple. To a person who is less competent at handling life, looking at someone who is more capable of handling things looks somewhat complicated but the rule remains.

This comes into effect mostly when you are trying to solve a problem. Problems by their very nature seem very complicated. That’s how they remain as problems. Did you ever have a problem that seemed very complicated? Well that’s the problem that hangs around for a while. It’s the simple problems that don’t last very long. You just look at it and say, “Oh, well, all I have to do is this and it’s fixed.”

Problems by their nature are beginning to be resolved when they begin to simplify.

In the world of politics there are a lot of people making a lot of problems. These are called issues. You can dive in to the world of issues, issues, issues and how they interrelate to each other. You can look at all of the different people these issues would or would not affect and how it would or wouldn’t affect them. You can look at those people and try to predict how they would vote according to those issues. Then you can form a political party to try to handle those issues by the use of the government.

Liberals have their groups of issues. Conservatives have theirs as well.

Liberals say, “We need the government to make the people do this, and this, and this, and this.” Conservatives say, “We need the government to make the people do that, and that, and that, and that.”

Political Science is the study of how to win over the other guy using “this, and this, and this, and this” or “that, and that, and that, and that.” It does not try to solve problems. It does not try to evaluate whether this or that is right or wrong.

When you look at the issues and try to sort through them in order to figure out who and what you are going to vote for, as well as who and what you are going to vote against, you are engaging in the subject of Political Science. From there you become either a Republican or Demoncrap. Political Science is very complicated. Take the number of politicians, multiply them by the number of issues, multiply that by the number of positions any given politician could have on the issue, multiply that by the number of positions any other politician considered to be the opposition could have on the same issue, multiply that by the number of groups of people they could be speaking to in order to gain their support and how they spin the rhetoric (this is called “lying”) in order to make it the most palatable for the audience to accept, then multiply that by the chance of the political party winning or losing based on those issues, and finally multiply that by the different understandings of the people with regards to what the government is and is not supposed to do for them. That’s how many combinations of just the major possibilities you have to sort through in order to find out if any given candidate is worthy of your support.

It’s no surprise that politics seems insane.

I used to be into all of that. I was a Republican. If you are a Republican do you ever get the sense that there are a number of them in the party who are not really working for you? I’ve gotten so tired of pulling the knives of Republicans out of my back, as well as them being able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on so many critical issues, that I can no longer support them. My major leaning is still towards the Republicans because some of them do tend to support what I want but, well, let’s just say that trust has been very certainly lost. Bush signing McCain/Feingold’s “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act” saying that it had some constitutional issues but he thought it was a good bill was the straw that nearly broke the camel’s back. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ ruling on Obamacare was the thirty-two ton pile of bricks that turned the camel into a bloody smear on the pavement.

Such games can be fun for a while but at some point I got tired of trying to keep track of which lies from the lips of which politicians I was supposed to be supporting in order to maintain my lock step with the ever shifting sands of the Republican Party. One may ask why I don’t make the same criticism of the Demoncraps. The answer is that the Demoncrap Party has not risen to the level of criticism. They are too far beneath me to even comment on. One should try to place their efforts where there is some chance of success and ignore the rest.

So at the point in my life where my blood pressure started to become a concern, I decided that following the day to day political issues as they are in the United States was too much of a threat to my life. Too complicated. Complications are not the way to solve problems. Simplicity is.

These days I have only one issue. Is this given politician going to follow the Constitution? If so, I support him. If not, I don’t support him. It is their oath. It is the law. The government needs to follow the law.

I can tell in almost an instant what and who I’m going to support. Since I’ve made this change, when it comes to politics I’m an awful lot more relaxed about it. It’s just too easy. I never support someone because he is a Republican and Republicans are better than Demoncraps.

I don’t care if the party the politician is in is going to win or lose. Winning or losing is not the problem. Right or wrong is the problem.

That’s the difference between Political Science and Political Philosophy.

You might say to me that “If our side doesn’t win then the Constitution loses because the Demoncraps are so much worse! We have to win elections before we have any hope of restoring our country.”

This is a person who has lost his way.

If I have to compromise my principles; that the government should follow the law, that a person in political office has to be good for their oaths, that the Constitution has to be followed in order to restore our country to its rightful prosperity, in order to elect someone who is going to ignore the forgoing principles so that the other side doesn’t win, then I’ve already lost everything of value to me. Personal integrity means something.

Right and wrong come above win or lose. That’s the philosophic point that shreds politics. You cannot support “win” at the cost of “right” without losing. Or in other words, if you have to support “wrong” in order to “win” then sooner or later you will lose. This is what RINOs and other liberals are counting on.

They want you to compromise your values. They want you to compromise on the Constitution out of fear that supporting the constitutional candidate would cause you to lose.

If it is right to support the Constitution, if it is right for the government to follow the law, if it is right for politicians to follow their oaths to the Constitution with honor, then you will sooner or later lose by supporting anybody who isn’t fully behind the Constitution one hundred percent.

You cannot win in the long term by supporting “wrong” for any reason. Even the lesser of two wrongs.

Does it seem to you like the country keeps wandering further and further into the insanity that is liberalism? Here’s the difference. Liberals never, ever, for any reason, compromise their values. They make you compromise yours through the fear of losing. Or the fear of them being able to castigate you in the public arena of ideas as being too radical.

There is another aspect to this that is less obvious. If you vote for a candidate because he seems conservative, based on what he says about all of those other issues, and he’s certainly better than the other guy, but he isn’t a constitutionalist, how are you going to get him to do what you want him to do? In not following the Constitution he’s already violated his oath and the supreme law of the land. Why would he remain consistent with being conservative? His position is to say and do whatever he thinks he needs to do in order to get elected. He’s not going to be consistent except in compromising whatever he has to in order to stay in office. The simple fact is that most American People don’t know or understand the Constitution. They want what they want and they think their guy is the way to get the government to give it to them.

Political life is a lot easier to me. I want only one thing from the federal government. I only want any political candidate to say one thing while running for office. That one thing is for them to follow the Constitution. The guy who talks about following it often is the guy I think should win.

The guy who talks about every other thing under the sun but that, no matter how much he seems to love the country, is the guy who I think should lose. If he talks too much about how he’s the guy to handle all of the domestic issues he’s a flimflam artist and should be kept as far from public office as possible. He’s going to get in there and do whatever the hell he wants. From there it’s a crap shoot as to whether it will be conservative or not.

As issues I support the freedom of speech because it’s both right and part of the Constitution. I support firearms ownership because it’s both right and part of the Constitution. I support the People’s rights to protect and educate their children as they see fit because it is both right and part of the Constitution. I support the People’s rights to make their own health care decisions without government interference because it is both right and part of the Constitution. I support the People’s right to decide for themselves what to do with their own earnings because it is both right and part of the Constitution. I support the People’s rights to decide for themselves what they can do with their property because it is both right and part of the Constitution.

I support individual freedom because it is both right and part of the Constitution.

While the Constitution is not perfect—and we can talk about that some other time—the Constitution is almost entirely libertarian from the federal point of view. It’s a minimal impact on the freedom of the People while still having a country.

So why not just simplify it, sum it all up, and support the Constitution? All of the issues TRUE conservatives care about are included. Here’s a hint for you; when a politician tells you about how he’s going to fix everything and make things great but does not include the Constitution as part of it, he’s in it for the power.

It’s not up to the federal government to fix everything and make our lives great. It’s up to the federal government to only do what is necessary to handle international relations and national security, maintain a border and keep the government out of our way so that we can exercise the freedom to make our own lives great.

No single person can make America great or save the country from the insanity and evils of liberalism without the Constitution. This is not about leadership. It’s about getting the government out of the way so that no single person other than us as individuals can flourish and prosper. That’s how we restore our country. That’s how we make ourselves great.

And make no mistake about it, most of the problems this country is facing right now is because the  People don't know the Constitution well enough to force the politicians to follow it.

The Attitude of a Constitutionalist.

I pity the foo!

Wow. It’s been two weeks since I’ve written an article. I have to remedy that. The problem is that there’s really been nothing on my mind that’s been going on out in the world that I’ve had an urge to write about. It’s not that there isn’t anything going on, because there always is, it’s just nothing that I as a constitutionalist particularly care about. So rather than picking any particular issue I’m going to make it about attitude.

Let me give you an example.

Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels are in the news again along with some guy I’ve never heard of before named Alvin Bragg. Apparently this guy, Bragg, wants to arrest and indict the former president for something related to Stormy Daniels being paid hush money to keep quiet about some supposed affair The Donald had with her.

Did this really happen? Don’t know. Don’t care. Will The Donald be arrested? Don’t know. Possibly interesting but regarding the constitution, don’t care. Will it affect his run for the presidency? Okay, there I care about it a little bit because as my regular readers know, I am not particularly thrilled about former president Trump’s performance in office due to the very large numbers of unconstitutional things he supported as well as his profligate deficit spending. I only care about that to the degree that, while I would rather see him as president over any Demoncrap, I would prefer to have any truly constitutional and fiscally conservative Republican become president over him.

The only point where I would have any concern over this is if Trump should become president again it becomes an issue of the same sort as his former buddy, William Jefferson Clinton. Article Two, Section Four of our beloved Constitution says; “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” There’s bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors in the Stormy Danials case even if it happened many moons before. Even then I wouldn’t have a lot of concern because it is not a high crime or misdemeanor against the United States. It’s more about his reputation than it is about how it affects the country.

“Yes, but Brett, isn’t it important to have a person in office with honesty and integrity?” you might ask.

Of course I care about honesty and integrity. In personal relationships. I’m not looking to marry the guy. I’m looking for someone who can follow the Constitution. I’ve got the attitude of an employer. “Can this guy do the job?” is a legitimate question if I’m hiring him to work for my company. “Does he lie to and cheat on his wife?” is not. “Does he drink?” is not. “Does he believe what religion I am?” “Is his wife pretty?” “Does he have kids?” “Did he build a skating rink decades ago?” While it may be interesting and show his character it is not directly relevant to how well he gets his work done.

For a guy running as president there is only one thing I care about. Will he follow the Constitution?

If he talks about his plans for expanding universal health care I will not vote for him. If he talks about his plans for banning guns I will not support him. If he talks about regulating Big Tech with regards to free speech I will not support him. If he talks about Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security and how they should be expanded I will not support him. If he talks about controlling companies who create energy I will not support him. If he talks about expansion of the federal govern in any way I will not support him. If he talks about regulating healthcare I will not support him. If he talks about raising our taxes in any way or increasing spending I will not support him. If he talks about regulating the schools I will not support him. If he talks about how the government should be involved in abortion, either way, I will not support him. In short, if he talks about anything that is not directly mentioned in Article One, Section Eight or Article Two of the Constitution and “how the government should do something about it,” I will not support him.

Why? Because Article One Section Eight and Article Two are the sum total powers of the president with regards to domestic policy. Constitutionally he has a rather free hand on national and international relations. That’s what the federal government is supposed to do. They are not supposed to be involved in the daily lives of the People in any way. Just as I would do at work, if an employee starts talking about how he’s going to violate the company’s rules, it’s time to start looking for a different person to fill the slot.

That’s what I am. That’s what I mean about being a one hundred percent constitutionalist. I only care about issues that impact how the federal government follows the Constitution. If it has nothing to do with the Constitution, like for example the generally frumpy appearance of the current FLOTUS or stunningly beautiful appearance of the former FLOTUS, I really don’t care. I don’t care if the president is married or has kids. I don’t care if they are the most dorky or ugly creations of God or the most beautiful or the best or the worst. They don’t hold the nuclear codes.

If a candidate for any position in the federal government mentions how they should do something which isn’t directly and obviously backed by the actual text of the Constitution itself, they automatically go into my “NO!!!” list. This is especially true for anybody who is currently holding any position in the federal government or military.

I expect them to hold to the Constitution and nothing else. That is what their oath is. The oath is not to the country. It is to the Constitution.

There are issues like J6. There are peaceful protesters, guilty of nothing more than trespassing, who have been held without trial for several years now. Evidence has been withheld regarding the actions of Jacob Chansley and the Capitol Police Officers who escorted him around the building and let him into the Senate Chamber. Let’s not even talk about the murder of Ashli Battitt. This is a clear violation of the Fifth and Sixth Amendment.

Speaking of J6 and Trump’s second impeachment, he did nothing wrong regarding J6 and the impeachment was the most politically bogus abuse of the power of Congress in recent years. Anything the Demoncrap Party says about Trump is bogus and personal, and has nothing to do with his constitutional performance EXCEPT FOR THIS ONE THING!!!

Pay attention here folks. This is important.

I’ve never understood why the Demoncraps INSIST that J6 be called an insurrection. Unarmed mostly peaceful people invading one building and interrupting a government function is not anywhere close to the same magnitude as overthrowing a government, which by definition is what an insurrection really is.

So follow me here. President Trump is on record by the second impeachment for his role—as bogus as the charge is—in inciting a riot which is now publically accepted as the “Insurrection of January 6^th.” I refer you now to the United States Constitution, Amendment Fourteen, Section Three, which says; “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same….”

They, by naming the J6 protests an insurrection, plus naming President Trump as a participant in them in his second impeachment, are trying to disqualify him from running for office again. The other shoe hasn’t dropped on this and the most likely reason is in its timing. Mark my words, it will happen.

As I’ve said, I don’t care for President Trump because he’s not particularly strong on the Constitution but I do care about this because it is a prime example of the Demoncraps in Congress abusing their power in an unconstitutional way.

I can just scroll down my Twitter feed and comment whether I care about an issue or not. When I do care about it it’s certain it will have something to do with the Constitution. It is the only way that I view anything in politics. I don’t care about Demoncraps or Republicans or their parties. I don’t care about the political games they play with us and each other to win. After all, what this is about is the attitude of a constitutionalist. The government should follow the supreme law of the land regardless of party.

I care about climate change but not in the way that you might think. I think it is a hoax to bilk us out of money and power. Should we try to keep the Earth clean and functioning? Certainly! However, politically I only care to the degree that I can’t find anything in the Constitution that gives the federal government any authority to do anything whatsoever about it domestically. Carbon dioxide is plant food. That is a well known fact.

There is nothing in the Constitution for the federal government to do anything about Covid. Zero. Zip. Nada. All of the regulations, shutdowns, mandates, etc., which the American People have suffered at the hands of the federal government have been in direct violation of the Constitution. The only point they could possibly be involved is if it was of the order of magnitude to become a threat to national security. This also goes to every single one of the Covid relief payments, which were only necessary because of their unconstitutional interference in the first place. All bills and regulations spawned at the federal level have nothing to do with any valid power of the federal government, especially the ridiculous tens of millions of dollars of money sent to Pakistan for gender studies as part of a Covid relief bill. Which president signed that one by the way?

I care about things like the Ukraine but only because it is an unconstitutional issue. If we wanted to support an ally in a declared war in which we were a direct participant it would be a different issue. But to take money from our pockets to send to another country? Nope. There have been numerous calls to audit the money being sent there to help them. This would be a totally ridiculous waste of time when every single penny sent is a direct violation of the Constitution. This by analogy would be like auditing the expenditures of a bank robber to make sure such spending is completely ethical.

I don’t care how much a man loves his country. Really. I don’t care if he hugs the flag, kisses it, takes it to bed with him or has it branded into the flesh of his chest. It’s one thing to say he loves this country. It’s another thing if he is a government official and says he loves this country while not following his oath to the Constitution. If it were possible to hate this country and follow the Constitution I would prefer him over someone who claimed to love it while not following the Constitution.

Could there ever possibly be something more unconstitutional than reparations for slavery? To have money taken from people today who never owned slaves and pay it to people today who never were slaves, when the last time there was slavery in this country was 155 years ago is an outrage.

I don’t care if Oprah Winfrey thinks she’s been oppressed.

I don’t care if the nominated leader of the FAA is black, white, green, purple, male, female, trans, educated, uneducated, human or any other thing you can name in the universe. Why? Because the FAA is not supported anywhere by the Constitution. It is none of the federal government’s business under the Tenth Amendment.

I don’t care about the Pledge of Allegiance. It should not be mandated in schools. It is unconstitutional in that it claims the United States to be one nation when the US is really fifty sovereign nations. Additionally it was written by a socialist, likely with deliberate intent against the Constitution.

The notion that “reaching across the isle to get things done” really fills my mind with outright disgust. You cannot compromise with insanity. You cannot fulfill your oath to the Constitution by compromising it’s principles with people who are clearly against it. Compromise is only for the rational.

Any politician who calls the United States a democracy gets a lot of points against them. The United States is a republic per the Constitution, Article Four Section Four. Any politician calling this country a democracy is working directly against the Constitution.

Biden said once upon a time that he would cure cancer. You know what? That’s none of his business. I can’t find the “Cure Cancer” clause in the Constitution. Yet some criticize him for not keeping his promise to do so. Well, he’s not supposed to! Curing cancer is a great thing for doctors to do. It is not a great thing for governments to do.

There are a lot of calls for the federal government to ban the mutilation of children under the premise that they were somehow born the wrong sex. As much as I am against this kind of “surgery” I would also be against the federal government being involved in it. This is a thing for the governments of the States to do under the Tenth Amendment. Do I think the States should all ban this? Hell yes! The federal government has no authority either way with this, nor should they have. This is one of those things where if you give them the authority to do what you want, sooner or later someone will come along and use it in a way that you don’t want. Think ahead.

Recognizing things like this rapidly takes some practice but it is time well spent. First you have to know the Constitution to know what things the federal government is allowed to do as well as things they are not supposed to be involved with. The best practice you can do, and I very highly recommend that you do, is to first learn the Constitution, particularly Article One Section Eight, as well as the Tenth Amendment.

Then go to some speech a politician recently made and read it. Preferably you would do this in a word processor of some sort but you could also just print it out and do it with highlight markers. Highlight the things that the politician says he wants to do that are not specifically mentioned in Article One Section Eight. This is easier than you would think it is because there are only about twenty things that are mentioned there as federal powers. Then read the speech and highlight with a different color the things that are specifically named in Article One Section Eight. Count the words up that are highlighted with the different colors and divide one into the other. That would give you a percentage ratio of what the politician does to follow/violate the Constitution. Remember, everything not specifically mentioned by the Constitution is a State’s power per the Tenth Amendment.

When you do this enough times with enough speeches made by people whom you support, and find they are really not very fussed about actually following the Constitution, you too will develop the attitude of a constitutionalist.

The Donald, CPAC and that Pesky Constitution

Aaaah ssssooo! Here I am about ready to write another bad article about Donald Trump. I really don’t mean to but there’s just too much that he keeps saying and doing that is outside of the bounds of the Constitution and the Constitution is just my thing.

I don’t usually play political games and truthfully I hate politics. I rarely comment on Demoncraps because…you know…they’re an evil bunch of crap and are rarely worth my time other than to say that they couldn’t act in favor of the Constitution to save their very lives.

I only comment on people who may benefit from it or who I have some hope. Even then it is only with the possibility that they may fall down a flight of stairs through their mistakes and somehow land on their feet. I have some hope for the Republicans in this, that somehow the true conservatives within the party will somehow gain enough power to wrest control of Congress or the presidency and actually be worthy of their oaths which they have all taken toward the Constitution.

I used to do this thing where I would take someone’s speeches and sift through them and give a score as to how well what they were saying conformed to the Constitution. Just as a couple of examples for the sake of comparison you will find attached here President Reagan’s First Address to Congress which scored at 74.1%. President Trump’s First Address to Congress scored 52.6%. Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address was so horrendous I couldn’t even score it. President Trump’s First inaugural Address scored a dismal 36.2%.

I’m not saying that I dislike The Trumpster. I think he’s kind of funny and entertaining. If he were staring on a TV show about business I’d be a fan. He’s got some good ideas if he were to be running a big business. But it is not the business of a president to run the country as if it were his own personal business. That he is a successful business man means nothing to me as a president. The oath of office is not to the country. It is to the Constitution and it is how the Constitution says that the country is to be run that counts in this matter.

What the liberals say about him is just a big pack of lies. Most of which they themselves are guilty of. They think they have cause to be critical of him and I disagree with their reasoning on the subject. As you read my comments about him you will notice that none of what I say is personal. Almost all of my comments on him are with regards to the duties of the presidency and what the Constitution says about it.

I frequently find him saying things that are so grossly unconstitutional that I’d have thought they were quotes from Woodrow Wilson or FDR; someone of that ilk. His comments on what he wanted to do for universal healthcare in his run for the presidency in 2016 made me realize that I could never support him.

Sigh. Here’s the thing; THE MORE WE, AS CONSERVATIVES, TOLERATE AND EXCUSE A PRESIDENT WHO DOES NOT FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION, THE MORE THE LIBERALS ARE GOING TO BE ABLE TO GET AWAY WITH IN VIOLATING THE LIMITS THE GOVERNMENT IS SUPPOSED TO ADHERE TO. The successor inherits the power of the predecessor. Trump’s followers trust him with unconstitutional power, because, well, you know, he’s a good guy and they sound like good ideas on the surface. Biden then inherits that same power we trusted Trump with and uses it against us. Four years things go really well before it all turns to crap. What we are going through now is to that degree on Trump for passing all of the unconstitutional power he used on to Biden.

The purpose of the Constitution is to protect us from that. So while a large portion of the people who read this blog are dedicated Trump supporters, and I write this knowing full well that I’m going to offend some of them, I have to take the risk and say what is on my mind. It’s about the Constitution.

So here we are at CPAC, 2023. I could sum up eighty-five percent of his speech as a combination of three things. 1) See how great I am? 2) See how mean to me they’ve been? 3) See how stupid they are?

Don’t get me wrong. It was very entertaining. And mostly right. But in the entire thing, about two hours of talking, he only mentioned the Constitution once! And that once was how he wanted to change it!

This guy, by oath, is sworn to the Constitution’s defense. That’s what a president is really for.

The remaining fifteen percent of the speech was split between things he wants to do that are constitutional or unconstitutional. As is typical with him according to my observations they are about 50/50.

I’m only going to cover the unconstitutional things here.

So he commented about “No voter id.” That’s all fine but elections, per the Constitution, are held by the States and are really none of the federal government’s business. I’ve written about that here.

He made the statement that “We will route the fake news media.” Ummm…First Amendment? Anybody? As much as I disagree with the fake news media we can’t go down the road of regulating them. Honestly he didn’t suggest it and I have hope that he meant routing them by pointing out the truth to their discredit. That said his history for suggesting things that are grossly unconstitutional makes me wary, to say the least.

We are not going back to people that want to destroy our great Social Security system. Even some in our party, I wonder who that might be. Want to raise the minimum age of social security to 70, 75, even 80 in some cases. They are out to cut Medicare to a level that it will no longer be recognizable. Let’s be honest here. Social Security and Medicare are both Ponzi schemes created to rob money from the American People. If you were to set up a private system using the same rules you’d share a cell with the likes of Bernie Madoff. Setting that completely aside there is still the Constitutional issue. Both of these are grossly unconstitutional violations of the Tenth Amendment. I’ve written more on that here.

“A wonderful town in Ohio has difficulty, we are going to take care of that town. That city that village prior to worrying about the rest of the world.” I live in Ohio. A friend of mine from Navy boot camp is from East Palestine. I feel for those people. But this is not a federal issue. There is no authorization within the Constitution for disaster relief of any kind. It is a violation of the Tenth Amendment. There has been three times where entire cities have been wiped out in American History. The Great Chicago Fire. The Great Galveston Hurricane. The San Francisco Earth Quake. These three cities received no federal relief and somehow they still managed to exist quite well. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help. We should. But at the forceful influence of the federal government and the thugs from the IRS? Nope. Unconstitutional.

“I smashed the false idols of the free-trade fanatics. These are for they are getting pretty rich probably the second. I left the china lobby, bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our treasury from china. Thank you very much China. When no other president got anything from them. Our trade deficits were $700 billion per year. Think of it dollars per year.” Now here is something that I have to comment on that is just plain silly. The hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our treasury did not come from China. We the People paid those tariffs through elevated prices on imports from China. That money doesn’t come from them. It comes from us. There are a lot that great conservative economists like Milton Friedman and Walter E. Williams had to say about this. And with them I agree. If there is one thing that is distinctly conservative it is the right to free trade. This is not exactly a constitutional issue but I had to comment on it for my own sake because I believe in free trade without government interference. Trade deficits are not the evil they’re cracked up to be.

“I arrested the Marxists who toppled statues of our great heroes in Washington, D.C.. I arrested them. They were knocking down the most beautiful artwork, the most beautiful statues of great heroes. He didn't even know who they were, they just wanted anarchy and I passed and signed an executive order anyone who does that get 10 years in jail with no negotiation.” An executive order bypassing Due Process in the Fifth Amendment? Does this really seem like a good ideal for the president of the United States to do?

“And then Covid came in, and we did great job. We never got credit for that job we did a great job with Covid and gave back something very strong.” I remember a lot of press conferences with Doctor Fauci and Donald Trump. Every day press conferences for a while. All the while saying and doing all kinds of things unconstitutional for the federal government. There is nothing in the Constitution giving the federal government any emergency powers for diseases or pandemics. Nothing short of a threat to national security should involve the president on this subject.

“We have more oil in the United States than any country in the world, including Saudi Arabia. People don't realize it. In Alaska, I approved a site, we all know what the site is. Probably the biggest in the world. And the democrats said no, it's over. They turned it down. Ronald Reagan tried to do it. Every president, republican, and some democrats tried to do it. I got it done.” There is nothing in the Constitution that backs any of this up as a federal power. Granted, the federal government has its (very greedy) hands all involved with energy but it is all unconstitutional per the Tenth Amendment. The States can do this but the feds shouldn’t. And yes, we have more oil under our ground than any other place in the world. We can’t get to it because the federal government has no respect for the States, the People or the Tenth Amendment.

“I will end the scourge of homelessness taking of our cities and suburbs.” Good idea for the States and the People. But the Tenth Amendment makes it none of the federal government’s business.

“Frankly, the federal government should take over control and management of Washington D.C..” Ummm… dude! It already has that control. Article One, Section Eight, Clause Seventeen. How does he not know this? This is one of those things that just boggles my mind.

“Under our leadership we will take the homeless, drug addicted and severely deranged, get them off our streets and create tent cities where we will get them the help they so desperately need.” Tenth Amendment again. The States have this authority. Not the feds.

“I will fight for parent’s rights. Can you believe here we are? And I said I'm going to fight for parent’s right? Who would thought he would say, don't you think the parents have good rights? Who would've thought you have to say it, because they took the rights away. Including universal school choice and the direct election of school and supposed by the parents. We want the school principal to be elected by parents. We love the children more than the parents. If any principal is not getting this done, the parents should be able to fire the principal and select someone new.” Do you ever wonder why the federal government and Demoncraps have so much power in the school system? Do you ever wonder why parents are losing their rights to these dirt bags? There is no authorization for the federal government to do anything about education. Nothing. It’s all a violation of the Tenth Amendment.

“We will teach our values and promote our history and traditions to our children. We well, in other words, be proud of our country again.” Same as the previous comment. Tenth Amendment. It is not up to the federal government.

“I will revoke every Biden policy regarding the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all fifty states.” I’m going to say it. The transgender movement is insane. I mean total bat-crap-crazy-loony-tunes insane. But I can’t find any Article, Section or Clause in the Constitution for the federal government to do anything about it. The States should. The feds, per the Tenth Amendment, shouldn’t.

“And we will keep men out of women’s sports.” Again, the Tenth Amendment. My God! It’s as if he doesn’t even know it is there! I agree this should be done but everything under the sun is not a federal issue.

“By defeating Joe Biden I will save your economy I will save your retirement accounts and I will save your jobs. I have the greatest job's history of any president ever.” The reason the economy sucks under Biden is because the federal government is too involved with it. Part of this is President Trump’s cranking up the national debt by eight trillion dollars in half of the time that Obama did it. This is the quintessential idea of conservatism. The more the feds get involved with this the worse it gets. Our money and jobs are ours. It’s none of the president’s business, again per the Tenth Amendment. Granted, Trump did a good job at that part of it but his unconstitutional overreach here left us all open for Biden to come in and destroy it all.

“I will have a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods and gain total independence from China.” It’s none of the federal government’s business what I buy or where it comes from. Tenth Amendment again.

“We want everything including electric cars but we also want gasoline because the cars go longer and they are preferred by many people.” Nothing in the Constitution gives the feds any power over this. Tenth Amendment yet again.

“We want oil and gasoline and natural gas because it is cheaper, better and much more powerful. It is April Fools' Day. Under my leadership we will regain energy independence that we had three years ago. We were on our way to massive energy dominance. We would have been paying off our debt, because energy is big numbers it is not like you are selling a little product you're selling the biggest product of all it is energy. We would have been paying off our debt. We would have been the strongest. We were going to be, we were already bigger under my administration than Saudi Arabia or Russia. We were going to be bigger than both of them combined and within about a year we would have made the kind of money they are making times five.” The federal government has no authority over cars or energy and they are not supposed to be making money from it or them. Donald increased our national debt by a whopping eight trillion dollars. Why is he concerned about national debt now? But I digress… Tenth Amendment on all of this…again.

“I will fight for a constitutional amendment to [propose] term limits on members of congress.” Term limits are very, very, very bad. This is the one time he even mentioned the Constitution. This is his disagreement with it and how he wants it to be changed. If an old tiger is chewing on your throat it does no good to substitute a younger tiger for the older one. The problem isn’t the age of the tiger. It’s that the tiger is chewing on your throat. Term limits are like that. But more than that they don’t limit the powers of the federal government. They limit the choices of the American People on who they have to represent them. I’ve written more on term limits here and here.

“And I will move heaven and earth to fully and finally secure our elections. All republican governors should immediately go for paper ballots one day voting and voter id.” This one is one the line for me. The elections are run by the States. That’s the way it is supposed to be and for good reason. It keeps the president and Congress from running their own reelections. If you want to know what the Constitution says about elections you can find the article I wrote about it here and decide for yourself.

“Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living especially for young people.” Tenth Amendment again.

"As I announced yesterday we will hold a competition to build new freedom cities along the frontier and to be a populous America with a new shop at home ownership in the American dream.” Not only would this be grossly unconstitutional per the Tenth Amendment—again—but would be a profoundly stupid thing to do. Cities are built by people who want to live and do business in them. You don’t just pick a spot on a map and build a city there hoping that “if you build it they will come.” If there were someplace a city needed to be built there is a 100% chance it’s already there. And why should I, as a guy from Ohio, which is not a frontier State, be forced to pay my tax money to build a city on the boarder of Arizona and Mexico?

“We will rename our schools and boulevards not after communists but after great American patriots.” As much as I would be in favor of such a thing it is not any of the federal government’s business. Tenth Amendment.

“We will get rid of bad and ugly buildings and returned to the magnificent classical style of western civilization.” Unless it is a federally owned building he’s talking about the Tenth Amendment applies here too.

“We will support baby boomers and we will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom.” So he wants to make us pay for other people to have babies too? How does this guy even call himself a conservative? This is not only a flagrant violation of the Tenth Amendment but as grossly liberal an idea as I can imagine; universal healthcare notwithstanding. Imagine this. The federal government with the power to regulate how many babies you can or cannot have. What could possibly go wrong?

“All of this is within our reach but only if we have the courage to complete the job, got the deep state and reclaim our democracy and banish the tyrants and Marxists into political exile forever.” This one is a favorite pet peeve of mine. Article Four, Section Four of the United States Constitution says; “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The United States is a REPUBLIC! You would think a REPUBLICAN would be able to properly identify what kind of government the United States has. To his credit he later called it a republic. Look. This is really simple. If you live in a country where the People voted directly on national issues you live in a democracy. If you have representatives who vote on your behalf on national issues, no matter how they are chosen, you live in a republic. These are not the same thing. They are mutually exclusive.

These things as constitutional violations are pretty gross. Really. For the life of me I can’t understand why anybody who is for the constitutional rule of law in this country could support him. Granted, he loves the country. I genuinely admire him for that. He has done a fair number of things that have been good for it, inside and outside of the Constitution. However I would find it very difficult to believe he loves the Constitution which he is sworn to.

That said; I still have a half rotten potato in my cupboard that would be a better president than Biden.

National Divorce, Texit and Separatist Movements

Because I am a person of basic philosophic principles, rather than the finer details spawned from political partisan bickering, I’m going to start this article with a brief explanation of games theory. Ultimately that’s what politics is, on any level; the playing of, and effort to win, a game.

What I mean by games is that life works according to the same principles as a game. You have things you are able to or allowed to do. These are called freedoms. You have things that block you from doing things you want to. These are called barriers. You have goals that you would like to reach or be able to do. When the goals are achieved you win the game. If the goals are not achieved you lose the game.

Let’s use football, because of its popularity in the United States, as an example. In football you have a place to play, which is of course, the field. The players can move about the field, forward, backward and sideways, within the limits of the rules of the game. The movement is freedom. The rules and the opposing team are the barriers. The goal of the game is to move the ball down the field and get it into the end zone or through the goal posts more times than the other team. Part of the goal is to also prevent the other team from moving the ball down the field or through the goal posts.

If there is not a place to play, no rules at all, or people in the game who do not follow the rules, no way to move on the field, nobody to play on the other side, no goals or end zone to try to get into, then you don’t have a game at all. You also don’t have a game where the people playing the game disagree with or don’t understand the rules.

Now, suppose you were required to play a game of football where you had to follow the rules but the other side didn’t. No matter what you did the other side would always achieve their goals and win. You would never achieve your goals or win. Would you be willing to engage in such an activity? Of course you wouldn’t.

Reverse that. Suppose you were to be completely unrestrained by the petty concerns of following the rules, while your opponents were required to follow them. Every time you play, you win. Every. Single. Time. Over. And. Over. How long would you remain interested in that game? You’d get bored I’d bet. Then you wouldn’t play. Then other people also wouldn’t be willing to play against you. Then you wouldn’t have a game.

There is a lot more to the games theory of life than this but for the sake of this article the take away is that you wouldn’t normally play a game with people who won’t follow the established rules. It doesn’t matter if it’s football, baseball, race cars, poker, Scrabble, Dominoes, Risk, Monopoly, the United States of America, or any other game.

If you are in a game and your opponent won’t follow the rules the sensible thing to do, assuming you can’t get them to change their mind and become more ethical, is to leave the game. In fact, no matter what the game is, when it reaches the point where it is no longer playable, the right thing to do is to take your chips and leave. You have every right to do so.

The United States has this thing we like to toss about called “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Suppose that you are playing a game of poker and your goal is to live your life through the pursuit of happiness by the playing of this game. However your opponent decided he is not going to follow the rules and there is nothing you can do to convince him to follow them. You keep losing more and more of your chips and it is very obvious that it’s because of his refusal to follow the rules. So you announce that you have the right to leave and are going to do so because he’s not following the rules. As you slide your chair back from the table and move to stand up, your opponent pulls a big gun and points it in your face telling you to sit back down and keep playing. Certainly that would be a loss of the pursuit of happiness. Possibly it would be a loss of life. Wouldn’t that also be a loss of liberty?

If you are in any relationship with anybody doing anything how could it be said that you have freedom if you don’t have the right to leave? And isn’t the proper technical term for someone who refuses to let you leave the game on your own determinism, “asshole”?

There’s an interesting side note here which comes to mind. People who read my articles or talk to me about politics very much at all would sooner or later have to know that I very strongly disapprove of the actions of Abraham Lincoln. I think he’s the worst president in the entire history of the country. Certainly more Americans have died under his commands than almost all other presidents combined. I could and have written several articles about it but that is not the point of this one. The thing that comes to mind here that I wish to comment on is something I call “Lincoln’s Paradox.” If it is considered immoral for one person to hold another person, by use of force and against their will, how is it then moral for a group of States to hold entire other States of people by the use of force and against their will?

Either we are free or we are not. If we are free, we as States and People, have the right to unilaterally leave the game, especially when the other side refuses to follow the rules adopted within the Constitution. Otherwise we, as Americans, might as well have joined the Soviet Union.

Speaking of the Constitution, when people talk about it, sooner or later there will be in the conversation this principle called the “Separation of Powers.” There will also be in conjunction with that a thing called the “Balance of Power” or a system of “Checks and Balances.”

You will be, or have been, told that this means that we have the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch and the Judicial Branch of the federal government. That’s your separation of powers. Right there. That, or so you are told, is the system of checks and balances.

The president has his powers. The Congress has theirs. The Supreme Court has theirs. One of them gets out of control and the other two are supposed to bring them back in line. That’s the check and balance.

I have a head. I have a right hand. I have a left hand. I too, by the above standard, have separation of powers and checks and balances. If I’m confronted by some ethical dilemma, let’s say I’m on a low carb diet but I’m confronted by an apple pie, because, you know, apple pie is irresistible manna from Heaven. My left hand says “you want the pie.” Could my head and right hand be counted on to stop me from eating the pie?

The obvious problem in this scenario is that my head and my right and left hands are all part of the same thing. Me.

Let’s think about this. Slowly. The federal government (one thing) is composed of three branches. It (one thing) has a left hand, Congress. It (one thing) has a right hand, the Supreme Court. It (one thing) has a head, the president.

Ummm…the question in the mind of any reasonable human being right now would have to be, “What keeps them from taking all of the pie?”

Those who understand the Constitution know the answer to this question. And there is an answer. It’s called Article One, Section Eight, which I write about frequently, and the Tenth Amendment, which I also write about frequently. Neither of those are the point of this article though, so why don’t I just stick to the point?

The thing not mentioned (intentionally in my most humble opinion) by most Political Science professors, and their liberally written textbooks, is that the States have a whole crap load of their own powers as well. In fact per the Constitution, Article One, Section Eight and the Tenth Amendment, the States have by far more power over their own decisions than the federal government.

So per the Constitution, the Separation of Powers is, as mentioned, the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches, plus the States. Also the system of Checks and Balances includes the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches, plus the States. So if any one or two or three of these go out of control the remaining ones can attempt to bring them back in line.

Sort of.

Remember from above where I pointed out that the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches are all part of the federal government and thus are the same thing?

Okay. So now what we really have in our Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances system is (currently) fifty States on one side and the federal government on the other.

So if the federal government gets out of hand we have fifty States to bring them back in line. Now think about this less obvious fact of the matter; if the abused player leaves the table the cheater also loses the game because he can no longer take all of the pie!

Well, what happens if a lot of the States, and the federal government, decide they aren’t going to follow the rules? No matter what is said or done they just refuse to play the game called “The United States” by the Constitution? Wouldn’t and shouldn’t a truly free people be allowed to protect themselves and leave?

Thomas Jefferson apparently thought so. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” And I find myself rather inclined to agree with him.

The next words from Jefferson, which I also agree with, are; “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Recently there has been a lot of talk about it being time for a national divorce. This is a polite and politically correct term for secession. It’s not new. In fact it as a subject can be traced by a moderately capable researcher all of the way back to the Revolutionary War itself. More recently Texas was talking about leaving when Obama was president. California was talking about leaving when Trump was president. Texas is again talking about leaving with Biden as president. I’ve seen recent poll results from Texas where as many as sixty-six percent of the people polled there say they would support it.

It is a fitting and natural thing for any person or group of people to decide on a day to day basis if it is or is not proper to maintain our relationships to those with whom we are associated. Couples, companies and countries do this all of the time. Sometimes peaceably and sometimes not.

It is completely in keeping with the Declaration of Independence for them to do so. There is nothing in the Constitution that forbids a State from leaving. If there is something in other federal law that does so, and I highly doubt that there is, it would be unconstitutional under Article One, Sections Eight and Ten as well as the Tenth Amendment. There is the legal principle, for those who like Latin technical phrases, “nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege.” In English this simply means that if there is no law against it, it is legal to do.

While I would fight and die to defend this country, and all who wish to be a part of it while following its rules, I agree whole heartedly that it is time, because of the refusal of the federal government, and a significant number of the States, to follow the Constitutional rules, for some States to take their remaining chips, or pie, and leave the table to go and play a different game.

After all, according to the legal doctrine "protectus pieus maximus" isn’t protecting our pie also a very important part of life?