The Party is in charge, but it knows that we know they stole the election. So fearful were they of Trump supporters dominating the viewing stands to Obiden’s inauguration, they planted 25,000 soldiers in their stead. The Party understands optics and the unmistakable message for the deplorables was “We don’t have popular support, but we are in charge. Sit down and shut up . . . or else.”

We the People do not govern. America is occupied by hostile forces under the democrat party and its camp-followers. Just as the corrupted institutions of the Roman Republic remained in the Roman Empire, the American republic still exists on paper but in Potemkin institutions: a fake House of Representatives, a similar and undeliberative phony Senate, a social justice politicized Scotus and now a Pretender President.

We did what the John Birch Society, the leading opponent to an Article V Convention of States, advocated for decades. In overwhelming numbers we reelected the most capable, most pro-American and most anti-establishment President in our history. Let’s say this remarkable man has the energy to run again in 2024. Is there any reason to believe The Party will not further refine the art of the steal?¹ What say the JBS? Just keep voting in placebo elections in which the outcome is predetermined?

But, perhaps not all is lost. Perhaps amidst the storm of political persecution, We the People do an end-run around DC and reassert our sovereignty by replacing the democratic republic established in 1913 with the Framers’ original FEDERAL republic of member states. It is time for Constitutionalists, Birchers, Libertarians, the Eagle Forum and all liberty lovers to accept reality; get out of the Flatland mindset, recognize the futility of relying on elections and accept the third dimension our Framers left behind for our redemption in Article V.

A longshot? Sure. So what? Shall we do nothing and await Winston Smith deprogramming?² We must act quickly, because with every passing day more Americans swill the 1619 Project Kool-Aid. It is now or never to reinvigorate American first principles.

America and the world stand at the precipice. A new Dark Age is at hand in which tech giants, islamists, communists and globalists enrich appeasing democrats and never Trumpsters while they silence and impoverish Americans. Here is The Party’s lesson for us: don’t ever do that again. Don’t ever consider an outsider, a non-party man or woman like the Framers sought in Article II.³ Look at what The Party is doing to President Trump, his family and associates.

Whether or not President Trump stands convicted of a nonsensical charge designed to steal another election from him, he alone has the persona, experience and leadership to shepherd 75 million deplorables via their states toward the first Article V convention since our Framing.

Like George Washington, who twice saved America through his talent, experience, character, intelligence and grit, President Trump’s enormous prestige and respect are essential to our salvation.

Has the national government of 2021 not become a curse? Does it not subvert the Constitution and liberty? Our liberty and lives exist at the pleasure of The Party.

Donald Trump is the man to call on the sovereign American people to restore free government in a newly invigorated FEDERAL republic. President Trump has the nationwide standing to single out Congress to do its Article V duty and call a Convention of States. The states have submitted hundreds of applications and Congress is duty bound to call a convention. Now. Congress will of course refuse. Take the matter to the Scotus. Should Scotus decline, it is time for extra-constitutional measures. President Trump should then call the states to attend a COS.

Article V grants nothing. If Article V didn’t exist, We the People would still have a societal right independent of the government we created to meet in convention. Article V merely recognizes the inherent right of all societies to set the rules of their governing system. It sets out one orderly procedure to assemble delegates of the Sovereign People. It does not preclude a convention without the blessing of a corrupted congress. A state convention to propose amendments is not a gift from congress, but the expression of the Sovereign People to reestablish free government.

The Framers envisioned a free people would keep and improve their republic through Article V. They recognized that whereas power is aggressive, liberty is passive, and unless actively pursued, liberty will always fade in the face of encroaching power.

We are at the point where encroaching power is poised to snuff out liberty.

Forget the rigged elections. Article V.

1. Nancy’s first bill: HR1
2. Winston Smith was the protagonist in George Orwell’s 1984.
3. Check out Federalist 68, The Mode of Electing the President.

President Trump won. We the People happily carried our MAGA President to victory. In overwhelming numbers a grateful nation reelected one of the greatest Presidents ever. He and We won so bigly that democrats silenced him and us. Then they impeached him. Such is the threat posed by a living Donald Trump. The Left knows that we know they outright stole the electoral college for a bumbling pervert of a senile man who, although incapable of stringing together a couple coherent sentences, remains skilled at selling family influence to the Chicoms and skimming tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks from US foreign aid to second and third world countries.

Instead of cheering civilians, the Pretender assumes office today witnessed by thousands of soldiers in the previously federal capital of a free republic. In an America ruled without the pretense of self-government, the Left has big plans. Our natural rights from God and our civil rights in society to speech, press, assembly, equal justice and fair elections exist at the pleasure of Obiden’s ministers. To them, the Constitutional envelope of our Framers is an archaic and horrid racist memory. They are the ones they’ve been waiting for. They will not squander this opportunity to fundamentally transform the United States and grind their political enemies into atoms.

America is occupied. It is occupied by the brutal forces of the democrat party, media, Chicoms, the never Trump GOP and SA street thugs BLM and Antifa.

These people and groups compose The Party. Historically, authoritarian regimes use fictitious tales of treason as the pretext for crushing their political rivals and cowing their citizens into submission. Propaganda organs parrot the regime’s party line while less compliant media are censored.¹

Having pulled off the greatest electoral con and coup in our history, The Party will never relinquish power.

In Occupied America:

• Donald Trump is an unperson. Make an example of him. Humiliate him and his wonderful family. Ruin him. Imprison him. Set an example. No more Trumps.
• When the Pretender preaches unity, he means submission.
• We are global citizens. Since American culture is racist and inferior, the importation of superior cultures can only improve America.
• Continued Party dominance relies on hordes of illegal aliens. Native-born white people, especially Christian men, threaten Party dominance.
• Chicoms are not America’s natural enemies. They are The Party’s business partners.
• Chicoms own the Pretender.
• The United States abandons honor when it greenlights the Chicom invasion of Taiwan and other territorial conquests.
• Expect an Enabling Act, rationalized by the Capitol Hill riot, to make war on half of America.
• The Party will pack the Supreme Court and make Puerto Rico and Washington DC states.
• Count on nationwide Dominion Voting machines and mail-in ballots for The Party’s placebo elections. Count me out.
• The Party will either disappear the Electoral College or bribe enough states to implement the National Popular Vote.
• Government schools conduct daily Two Minutes Hate at images of Donald Trump and his Deplorables.
• Laws and regulations are for the Trumpsters. Party members are immune from prosecution.
• Your eyes lie. Truth is that which advances Party interests. Speaking or writing an untruth is a crime.
• BLM and Antifa punish the untruthful.
• Public denunciations of MAGA. Grovel to The Party or become, like Donald Trump, an unperson.
• The Party blacklists those in need of cleansing, reeducation and deprogramming.
• Free speech and press are conditional on the speech and press. All things MAGA are prohibited.
• Freedom of assembly is conditional on the participants.
• The first purpose of federal agencies is to destroy political opponents, the unrepentant Trumpsters.
• Weather is The Party’s god. The Christian God is reactionary and must go.
• As with God, wave goodbye to the foundation of our republic: the civil Judeo-Christian society.
• Children report their parents’ social justice crimes to The Party
• Thou shalt obey speech codes. Tech giant Thought Police.
• Thou shalt employ doublethink. Men can be women.
• Like Communist China, The Party keeps social scores which track everyone’s support of The Party. Privileges, such as travel, social media participation, and productive employment depend on one’s social score.
• High school boys shower with your teenage daughter.
• Party judges condone arbitrary house arrest and business closures.
• The Party rewrites history. We lose memory as well as voice. Welcome to the new Dark Age.
• The Party seeds Section 8 housing in your neighborhood.
• Equality in poverty is superior to unequal widespread prosperity.
• The FBI and DOJ, The Party’s sword and shield, imprison the unrepentant Trumpster.

“How few were left who had seen the republic!” Publius Cornelius Tacitus circa 90 AD.

1. Remember when dissent was patriotic? Great column from The American Spectator: The Left Redefines Resistance as Sedition.

The Thing about history is that it subtly questions what we do today. It educates Socratically; it doesn’t indoctrinate. The Classicist Victor Davis Hanson makes, I assume, a good living from a lifetime of reflection on what Greeks, Romans, Venetians, and various generals etc. did in times of crisis. Like Hanson, another great thinker, G.K. Chesterton, in 1929, dealt with history’s lessons in his engaging and conversational style.¹

Along with history, The Thing about laws and institutions is that most people aren’t especially interested in why they came about. Chesterton described the paradox of a fence or gate across a road. Someone built it, and for a reason. A Progressive would say, “I don’t see the purpose of this thing; let’s clear it away.” The more intelligent reformer or conservative stands athwart the fence and responds, “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” In Chesterton’s worldview, conservatives don’t reflexively roll with the radicals. They defend The Thing, the proven ways, until reformers convince them to join in changes.

This principle applies to a thousand things, to trifles as well as true institutions. Local, state, and national governments often amend laws. All is well and good when legislators consider why the law is what it is before they amend or repeal it. There are reasons for our societal and governing institutions. It is one thing for societal norms to naturally change incrementally through the passage of time and quite another for five lawyers on scotus to upend society, to clear the gate across the road, without so much as a fare-thee-well.

When modern Vandals tear through Washington DC in the fashion of the old Vandals ripping up Rome, we have a problem. The BLM and Antifa pukes aren’t reformers; they are barbarians deserving no quarter. They typically get away with their barbarism when big city mayors can’t see further than their next election. Something is very whacked and wicked when the people charged with defending lives and property figure it is in their electoral interest to stand down their police and watch their cities burn. Do they not realize the first reason, The Thing when societies form governments is to secure life and property? History and societal standards are so shallow in so many that they rationalize hundreds of deaths and widespread destruction.

So disconnected are those from The Thing of the statues they deface, that anti-history ignoramuses tear down the memory of famous abolitionists in the name of combatting so-called and non-existent systemic racism. While it is one Thing for spoiled local anarchist losers to get their kicks with cans of spray paint, it is another Thing entirely when political leaders see nothing more than the present and how they can turn and twist opportunities into political power. Nobody has any business destroying anything until he damn sure knows why it exists in the first place and the future effect of its demise should that institution be abolished or repealed.

Nancy’s House recently passed a bill to incorporate Washington DC as a state. Was there any debate as to why the seat of American government isn’t within a state? Of course not. Goodness, that would involve the study of our Revolutionary War era, the Constitution and state ratification conventions. Who has time for The Thing of history when doing what is best for the country isn’t the objective anyway?

Perhaps just as concerning are the relatively few defenders of the old and proven ways and institutions. Is it all that difficult to point out the danger of rashly undoing things before the un-doers have a clue as to what they are doing? In the years leading to the 17th Amendment, Senator Elihu Root of New York lamented the rush to democratize senatorial elections with little consideration as to why the Framers charged state legislatures with senatorial appointments. The Thing about democratizing the senate, and with it the entire congress, its instability leading to disorders and perhaps eventual dissolution of the Union, never quite made it to the editorial pages of leading newspapers.

America has used up, if not overdrawn, its liberty bank account. Where our early governments knew the difference between liberty and license and passed laws that left society unhindered in promoting unspoiled liberty rather than degrading and rotting license, government today does just the opposite. What it often defends as rights, which are in truth no such things, were unacceptable and spurned by society just a short time ago.

We are no longer self-governing and we did it to ourselves. We the People ratified the Seventeenth Amendment with little consideration of The Thing, the history of the Framers’ Senate. We’ve endured the effects of the 17th for over a hundred years. It past time to amend our Constitution and do it this time full in the knowledge of what we are doing.

Article V.

1. Chesterton, G. (1929). The Thing. Dodo Press.

On our nation’s 150th anniversary in 1926, Republican president Calvin Coolidge gave a speech in which he responded to the progressive wave that muddied the minds of the nation. Only thirteen years after the passage of the destructive 16th and 17th Amendments, Coolidge deftly reminded Americans not to discard principles that had served the nation and the world so well since 1776.

Highlights:

• The Declaration is the preeminent support for free government around the world.

• We celebrate the American Revolution because it represents the convictions of an independent, liberty loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights and had the courage to maintain them.

• Our institutions subsequent to the Declaration have stood the test of time. They have advanced civilization.

• Take time to turn off the noise of partisan politics and find solace and consolation in our two great charters of freedom, the Declaration and Constitution. Together, they will always provide adequate defense from all dangers.

• The Declaration is the outward manifestation of the desire of all men to be free.

• Like no other revolutionary movement in history before or since, not only did the Declaration liberate a people, it ennobled humanity.

• Great ideas are always reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

• About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter.

• If all men are created equal, that is final.

• If they are endowed with unalienable rights, that is final.

• If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.

• No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but retrograde.

• From the contemplation of these truths the Founders made their Declaration and adopted their Constitution. It was to establish a free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a mere influential few.

If the reader takes nothing else from this squib, I hope it is the bolded sentences above. Keep them in your hip pocket and ready to throw in the face of your hopeless Leftist friends and relatives this Independence Day. These are the truths that the Left denies. In the name of ill-defined and ever-changing social justice, perverted progressives strive to enslave the once freest nation on earth. We can stop these destroyers of all that is good and decent from progressing our Declaration and Constitution.

Article V.

We are the many; our oppressors are the few. Be proactive. Be a Re-Founder of the American Republic. Join Convention of States.

Since the Declaration is indeed hostile to their moral relativism, the Left has long attempted to minimize our founding to a fuzzy faith in the people. The “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and “all men are created equal,” translates in their Marxist minds as widespread democracy accompanied with equal stuff to all. It is in the democratic atmosphere alone in which their demagogues can incite the people into various factions constantly at each other’s throats.

Despite their efforts they can’t twist the Declaration into a statement of majoritarianism. A few minutes in actual reading and contemplation puts their slogans to rest. In the Preamble the Founders dissolved political bands, the statutory power of Great Britain. However, left untouched were the moral bands which connect all men, which are derived from the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.

Consent of the governed is not a rule for democracy. Consent is the means to an end, the security of our unalienable rights. Majoritarian consent alone is insufficient to make political power just. If numbers alone made right, the American Revolution would be deprived of its moral justification. The moral order comes first. Only after they had set forth that order did the Founders turn to government. And there too they were clear: government is instituted to secure our rights—that is its purpose. And it gets its just powers from the consent of the governed.

Government is thus twice limited: by its end, to secure our rights; and by its means, which require our consent if they are to be legitimate. Absent moral justification, our revolution could be regarded as littler better than a Black Lives Matter riot. Modern resort to dangerous majoritarianism is heard when the media often describe a congressionally passed bill as having “bipartisan support.” That is majoritarian Left-speak for just and moral law. It just isn’t so.

Our Founders recognized their duty, as equals among mankind, to explain why separation from Great Britain was necessary. Only a decent and civil people would even bother. The Declaration isn’t a crude manifesto of political separation and power to the people.

Before resorting to force for correcting abuses of government, civilized men will appeal to reason and even sentiment. So imbued were the Founders with introspective reason, they asked if they weren’t making too much of their complaints against George III. The same reason convinced them that America was headed for despotism, and it was necessary to “throw off such government.” Being rational yet knowing that one should not sit alone in judgment of one’s actions, they not only submitted facts to a candid world, but asked God Himself, “the Supreme Judge of the World,” if they were right.

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t signed by the chairman of a peoples’ committee. No demagogue-in-waiting stood ready to assume authoritarian power. Individual men, through reliance on the protection of divine Providence, mutually pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and sacred Honor. There is nothing more to pledge beyond one’s life, possessions, and especially honor. In an age when a man’s word carried more force than law, these men were so convinced in the righteousness and truth of their cause, they swore to never dishonor themselves and suffer the disdain of their peers.

This fourth of July, I suggest we all take some time beyond BBQ and fireworks. Engage your friends and in-laws in discussion of Our Noble Declaration of Independence.

Hat tip: Eidelberg, Paul. On the Silence of the Declaration of Independence. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976. Page 56.

Barbarians at the Gate

As opposed to political and illogical court decisions like that of the 6-3 majority in Bostock v. Clayton County, decisions that leave readers scratching their heads, the Kavanaugh dissent is a waft of easy-to-read constitutional clarity.

Right away Kavanaugh asks, “Who decides?” What institution makes the laws? What happened to separation of powers? What happened to the ordinary meaning of words? It’s unfortunately a multigeneration problem with the scotus. Absolute power has a way of getting away. As illustrated in the 2015 Obergefell decision, based on wholesale abuse of the 14th Amendment, I suppose we should have expected this outcome in Bostock. Nonetheless, it is still a horrid jolt.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, itself a product of the 14th Amendment, prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, or national origin. Congress could have provided protections for homos, drag-queens and freaks, but it didn’t. It could do so today. In fact, the House and Senate in different congresses have passed bills to protect these people from intolerance. But, they couldn’t pass the same bills in the same congress and send them to Presidents Bush or Obama for their signature.

Kavanaugh supports non-discrimination of these people; he just doesn’t view the scotus as the proper vehicle. He referenced Federalist 78 in which Alexander Hamilton noted that courts exercise “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.” In a quaint throwback to Hamilton, Kavanaugh humbly says his role isn’t to make or amend law.

As enacted, Title VII did not prohibit bias on the basis of age, disability, or sexual orientation. Through laws signed by presidents, Congress addressed age and disability discrimination in 1967 and 1990 respectively.

Kavanaugh so much as charges the majority with tyranny when judges update or rewrite laws because, in their view, congress is moving too slow or is too frightened to do what is right. James Madison warned of this: “Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control.” If judges could (do what they just did), the judiciary would become a democratically illegitimate super-legislature, unelected and usurping the important policy-making power reserved by the Constitution to the people. I have to wonder if Bostock finally shocked Article V opponents into realizing scotus is just another political institution that serves its own purposes and not those of the people.

Some thirty judges in ten courts of appeal ALL said “no” to Bostock. Thirty out of thirty. But, scotus disagreed. It found that Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination, meaning hiring preference of one sex over the other, also encompassed sexual orientation since 1964. Who knew?

Next, Kavanaugh admonished the court for substituting “literal” meaning for “ordinary” meaning. Ordinary meaning is the decades-old standard in which courts interpret words according to their everyday, commonsense use. The rule of law and democratic accountability suffer when a court adopts a hidden or obscure interpretation of the law. Taken literally, a statute that bans vehicles in a park also applies to baby strollers. A “cold war” could mean wintertime war. In the ordinary sense, a stroller is not a vehicle, and in common parlance a cold war is a conflict short of open warfare. These are the commonsense uses the scotus discarded in Bostock.

So, does the ordinary meaning of “discriminate because of sex” encompass “discrimination because of sexual orientation?” The answer is plainly no. Who in 1964 (or today) would describe firing from employment because of sexual orientation as a firing because of sex? To this day congress has never equated sex with sexual orientation. On the contrary, it drew distinctions between the two every single time. This longstanding congressional practice matters. When congress choses distinct phrases to accomplish distinct purposes, and does so over and over again, the scotus may not cast aside congressional handiwork.

Since the 1970s, congressmen proposed numerous bills to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. None of them included sexual orientation within the envelope of sex discrimination. In an Executive Order, President Clinton made the distinction in 1998 when he banned sexual orientation discrimination in federal employment. States have also distinguished sex from sexual orientation in various statutes.

The majority opinion prohibits employers from firing employees who self-identify as homosexual or as the sex they are not and never can be. A small business-person who owns, for instance, a toy store cannot fire some hairy guy in a dress and high heels who repels moms and kids from shopping. Oh. Thanks, Chief Justice Roberts.

Justice Alito warned, the decision, unless fixed by Congress, could destroy women’s sports, weaken religious freedom and free speech, weaken personal privacy, and cause chaos in schools. “But legislative history has no bearing here,” Associate Justice Gorsuch writes. Thanks, Associate Justice Gorsuch.

Will Christian schools dare fire teachers or employees who identify as the opposite sex, cross-dress, take cross-sex hormones, and surgically disguise his or her sex? Not likely. Thanks, Associate Justice Ginsburg.

You send your precious daughter to college. She finds her dorm roommate is a guy . . . oops . . . a trans-female. Thanks, Associate Justice Kagan.

Of course, if your daughter excels in high school sports today, forget about a college sports scholarship tomorrow. Thanks, Associate Justice Sotomayor.

The Thing (my apologies to G.K. Chesterton) about the Left is that it doesn’t know when to stop. Perhaps better phrased, the Left cannot stop until they consummate their progress in gulags, concentration camps, or killing fields. The French Revolution and the German guy with a funny mustache arrived there quickly. The Russians took a bit longer but got cracking after winning a civil war. In republics and constitutional monarchies it takes longer because they have that rule of law thing. But the end is the same: state-imposed anarchy in which a few lawyers impose their societal diktats. In America it means either open acceptance and support of perverted and sick individuals who practice incest, infantilism, pedophilia, bestiality . . . or else.

This scotus decision is not a victory for the country or for freedom. If the actual purpose and meaning of the law doesn’t matter, then what does? When words mean nothing, rights mean nothing. It’s another tragic defeat for the constitutional separation of powers, self-government, morality, truth, speech rights, and religious liberty. Conservative Christians, you’ve been warned—again.¹

1. See Laurie Higgins at the The Illinois Family Institute.

Donald Trump announced his candidacy on this day in 2015. I admit to not watching it live. As far as I knew he was a celebrity real estate mogul and that was that. I hadn’t watched any of his TV shows. While my family and I were initially Cruzers, we slowly warmed up to the incredibly successful Brooklyn guy who shared our common goals for America. After eight years of the muslim, Donald Trump was the right man at the right time in the nick of time.

In fact, we didn’t view the speech until sometime in 2017. No matter, it is classic Trump at his engaging best.

From watching the video or reading the transcript it’s clear why patriots love him and the Establishment had to destroy him. Our politicians don’t look out for American interests. They don’t know how to negotiate with other nations and don’t care. Before his campaign popularized “Make America Great Again,” and coined “We are going to drain the swamp,” the Establishment realized right away the danger posed by Donald Trump. He would assume office without owing political debts. Unlike Presidents since the early nineteenth century, he wouldn’t arrive in office with a legion of party camp-followers expecting patronage jobs. He didn’t need donors, so he was immune to lobbyists. He didn’t need the lobbyist grease that lubricates the payoffs, kickbacks and general criminality of Washington, DC.

To the quick, he promised to renegotiate trade deals, build a wall to stop the invasion across our southern border (and get Mexico to pay for it), repeal and replace Obamacare, destroy Isis, neutralize Iran and keep them from building nukes, rebuild our military, strengthen Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Cliff Notes to his speech:

Trade. America used to have victories, but not anymore. China beats us all the time. It’s not that the Chinese are so good at negotiating. I beat them all the time. It’s that the people we sent to negotiate were so awful. They didn’t know what they were doing and its killing America.

Tokyo did much the same. Try to find a Chevy in Tokyo. This is going to stop.

Invasion. The Mexicans laugh at us because they’re economically killing us. Not only Mexico, South America, but the rest of the world sends us their problems. They send us drugs, crime and rapists. They’re not good people. Probably middle-easterners come across too. This is going to stop.

Islamic Terror. Isis has the oil, and what they don’t have, Iran has. In Iraq, we’ve squandered $2 trillion, thousands and thousands of dead and wounded soldiers, whom I all love. And what do we have to show for it? Nothing. We leave our equipment behind for Iraqis to abandon after the first shot is fired.

Economy. Last quarter, our GDP was negative. Who ever heard of this? The horrible labor participation rate tied that of 1978 (Jimmy Carter). Real unemployment is about 20%. Don’t believe the 5.6%, don’t believe it. So many people can’t get jobs; there are no jobs because China and Mexico have our jobs.

Obamacare. It’s a big disaster, a big lie. Premiums and deductibles are going through the roof. It’s useless. Remember the $5 billion website? Five billion on a website and to this day, it doesn’t work.

The Establishment. Politicians are all talk and no action. Nothing’s gonna get done. I’ve been on the circuit listening to their speeches. They’re wonderful people and I like them. They ask for my support. I hear their speeches, and they don’t talk jobs or China. When was the last time you heard China is killing us? They devalue their currency to a level you wouldn’t believe. It makes it impossible for our companies to compete. But you don’t hear that from anyone else. I watch the speeches of these people; they say the sun will rise and the moon will set. And the people ask, what is going on? We don’t need rhetoric; we just want jobs.

Oh, and things are going to get worse because Obamacare really kicks in next year, 2016. While Obama’s playing golf, hey, maybe on one of my courses, Obamacare will kick in and be amazingly destructive. Doctors are leaving in droves. A doctor friend says he has more accountants than doctors working for him. We have to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something else, something much better and cheaper.

I’ve dealt with politicians all my life. If you can’t make a deal with a politician there’s something wrong with you. And that’s who we have representing us, politicians controlled by the lobbyists, the donors, the special interests. Hey, I have lobbyists that can produce anything for me. We have to stop doing things for some people; they’re destroying our country. We have to stop, and stop them now. We need the leader that wrote, “The Art of the Deal.”

We need a leader that can bring back our jobs, manufacturing, military, and take care of our vets.

Leadership. America needs a cheerleader. I thought Obama was that leader. Being young and vibrant, I thought he was a leader, but he wasn’t. He was a negative force, the opposite of a leader. We need someone who can take the brand of America and make it great again. We need somebody who can literally take this country and make it great again. We can do that.

All my life I’ve been told the truly successful person can’t run for office. Just can’t happen, but that’s the kind of mindset we need to make America great again.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for President of the United States, and we are going to Make America Great Again!

It can happen. Our country has tremendous potential. We have tremendous people. We have people who aren’t working, they have no incentive to work, but they’re going to have incentive to work because the best social program is a job. They’ll be proud, they’ll love it, and they’ll make much more, and they’ll do well . . . and we’re going to thrive, thrive as a country!

I will be the greatest jobs President that God ever created. I tell you that. I’ll bring back jobs from China, Japan, Mexico, so many places. We owe China $1.3 trillion and more to Japan. So they come in, take our money, take our jobs, and then they loan us back the money and we pay them interest, and then the dollar goes up, so their deal’s even better.

How stupid are our leaders? How stupid are our politicians to allow this to happen? How stupid are they?

I’m going to tell you about the trade bill. I’m against it for a number of reasons. First, the people negotiating don’t have a clue. Our President doesn’t have a clue. He’s the one that did Bergdahl. We get a no-good traitor and they get five people they’ve wanted for years and who are back on the battlefield killing Americans.

He’s making a deal with Iran. Maybe Israel won’t exist much longer. Disastrous.

So, I’m a free trader, but you need really talented people to negotiate. If you don’t have people that know business and instead use political hacks that got the job just because they made a campaign donation, you are going to get awful deals. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we don’t have smart people. We have people controlled by special interests.

China charges big tariffs, and more. They wanted Boeing’s secrets and patents before they’d buy any planes. China is smart, so don’t get me wrong, I love China. I sold them apartments. The biggest bank in the world is from China and their American headquarters is located right here in Trump Tower. But, we just can’t sustain with getting ripped off.

We have all the cards, but our leaders don’t know how to use them. Our leaders don’t understand the game. They built a military island in about a year. We could never do that. We have a big military problem with Isis and a bigger problem with China. In my opinion, the new China, believe it or not is Mexico.

So let’s say Ford decides to build a $2.5 billion plant in Mexico. Not good. With me as president, I’d call up the head of Ford. I know him. I’d explain he wouldn’t get the zero tax and just sell them across the border in the US. I’d explain how Ford would pay a 35% tax on the cars and trucks.

Here’s how the 400 or so other republicans running for president would handle it. They know a plant in Mexico isn’t good. They’d be upset . They’re not stupid. But they’ll get a call from a donor or a lobbyist from Ford, who says, “You can’t do that to Ford because Ford takes care of me and I take care of you.” Guess what? No problem. They’re going to build in Mexico. They’re going to take away thousands of jobs. Very bad for us.

So, under President Trump, here’s what would happen. The head of Ford calls me back, maybe a day later to be cool. He’ll beg, and I’ll tell him “no.” Then he’ll set all kinds of political people on me, and I’ll say, “Sorry fellas, no interest,” because I don’t need anyone’s money. It’s nice, I don’t need donors. I’m not using lobbyists. I don’t care. I’m really rich.

This is the kind of thinking we need for our country, because we’ve got to make the country rich. Social Security is going to get destroyed unless we start bringing money in. I’m going to bring the money in and we’re going to save it. So after pleading from Ford and their lobbyists, I’ll get a call from the head of Ford who tells me he’ll build the factory in the US. They don’t have a choice.

There are hundreds of things like that. Here’s another one. Saudi Arabia makes $1 billion per day. When they get in a jam, we send our ships. If the right person asked them, they’d pay a fortune. They wouldn’t be there except for us.

I was right on Iraq. Such a terrible waste. Rubio and Bush took two days to answer a question about Iraq. How are these people going to lead us? How are they going to make America great again? They can’t. They can’t answer simple questions. They don’t have a clue.

So Ford will come back. They’ll all come back.

This is going to be an election based on competence. They’re tired of getting ripped off by everybody in the world. They’re tired of spending more money on education per capita in the world while are kids rank 26th. We’re becoming a third world country because of our roads, airports, infrastructure.

When you run for office you have to declare your net worth. That’s okay, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I started off with my father in a small office in Brooklyn and Queens. He was a great negotiator. I learned so much listening to him negotiate with subcontractors, while I played with blocks on the floor. He was a great negotiator. He used to say, “Don’t go into Manhattan. That’s the big leagues.” I told him I had to go into Manhattan. I gotta build those big buildings. I gotta do it.

After a few years in Brooklyn, I ventured into Manhattan and did a lot great deals. Grand Hyatt Hotel. So the pundits say, “Donald will never run. He’s private and probably not as successful as everybody thinks.” I’m really proud of my success. I’ve employed tens of thousands of people. So, a large accounting firm and my accountants have been putting together a financial statement, just a summary. It was reported yesterday that I had assets of $9 billion. That’s wrong. It’s over $9 billion in net worth, not just assets. Banks want to loan me money. I say “no,” I don’t need it. I’m not doing this to brag. I don’t need to brag.

I’m saying this because it’s the kind of thinking our country needs. We need that thinking but have the opposite thinking. We have losers. We have losers. We have morally corrupt losers selling this country down the drain.

To sum up, I would do some things very quickly. I will repeal and replace the big lie, Obamacare.

I will build a great wall along the southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for the wall.

Nobody will be tougher on Isis than Donald Trump. Nobody.

I will find in the military the next General Patton or MacArthur, the right guy to take our military and make it work.

I’ll stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and will never use a man like John Kerry who doesn’t know how to negotiate.

I will terminate Obama’s executive order on immigration. Immediately.

I fully support the Second Amendment.

End Common Core. It’s a disaster.

Rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.

My company is building a hotel out of the old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC. Wonderful property, great location. We bought it through the General Services Administration under Obama. Probably the most sought-after property in American history.

We have to rebuild our infrastructure. Look at LaGuardia airport. It’s third world quality. I fly to China, Qatar, other places with top notch facilities and then land at another third world airport in Los Angeles. We must rebuild.

And I will save Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid without raising taxes.

You save them by making America rich, by taking back all the money that’s been lost.

Renegotiate foreign trade deals.

Strengthen our military and take care of our vets.

The American dream is dead, but if I get elected I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

In words that resonate today, he defined political liberty as the “tranquility of mind arising from the opinion each person has for his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another.” He wasn’t speaking so much of safe travel or safety in one’s home. The liberty he spoke of was safety against majoritarian tyranny, was one in which the citizen needn’t fear elections, elections that might put people in government armed with arbitrary power to do him harm.²

Not only were Englishmen free, they were rich and getting richer. Thanks to their balanced constitution, the middle-class was large and getting larger as the kingdom’s achievements in commerce and war dwarfed those of other European nations. There was no mystery to England’s constitution; its three components, the King, Lords, and Commons, combined the ancient forms of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, while avoiding the degenerate forms of totalitarianism, oligarchy and mob rule. Preserve the balance, and English liberty could extend indefinitely into the future.

This popular regard for the constitution extended from the late 17th century to the mid-1760s. So, what happened during this time, in particular between Montesquieu’s Spirit in 1748 and 1776? British-American colonials were even freer and more prosperous than their UK brethren. Why revolt?

Here is what Englishmen won in the Glorious Revolution. In their amended constitution, the king agreed:

To govern per the statutes of Parliament.
To not veto statutes.
To give up the right to create courts by fiat, or dismiss judges without formal impeachment.
To convene Parliament at least once every three years.
To call for elections at least once every seven years.
Not to levy taxes without Parliamentary grant.
Not to maintain a standing army in time of peace.
Not to wage foreign war without consent of Parliament.
To not require subjects to join the Church of England.

This Settlement of great questions was reinforced by the passage of time and subsequent stability of the kingdom in the 18th century. All well and good, and the Parliament/Monarchy Settlement worked as hoped in England, where the king didn’t dare upset or violate its strictures. But, that wasn’t the case in his thirteen colonies.

Recall the one indictment of George III among the twenty-seven in our Declaration of Independence that sums up most of the remaining twenty-six: “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their Acts of pretended legislation.” In other words, the Founders viewed their legislatures as equivalent to Parliament and charged the king with revoking the English constitution and its protections. Through his royal governors, he upset the balance of the English constitution in his colonies. He prorogued or dissolved colonial legislatures. He explored creating an artificial aristocratic estate designed to be isolated from the people. His Royal Navy set fire to Portland, Maine and Norfolk, Virginia. The cherished balance as practiced in England didn’t exist in America, where the king ruled through prerogatives as if the Glorious Revolution never happened. Acts that he wouldn’t dare in England earned him a revolution in America.

Such was our disgust, near the closing of the Declaration, we saw in George III a “Tyrant . . . unfit to be the Ruler of a free people.” Amidst his growing tyranny, we were prepared to fight to preserve the rights of Englishmen. At its core, the years leading to our revolution had less to do with non-representation in Parliament and far more to do with resistance, armed and otherwise, against the corruption of the English constitution. We revolted as much against what we envisioned in the future as we did for the there and then.

The British constitution, so abused by George III, ultimately failed in America. After just a few years under the Articles of Confederation, leading men convened in Philadelphia and crafted a new Constitution for what they hoped would once again be the freest people on earth. In Part II, we’ll look at the continuum and corruption of lofty ideals and first principles from the Glorious Revolution to the Constitution. We’ll find that unless constantly protected, constitutions invariably crumble, wither and die.

1. Montesquieu, C. d. (2010). The Spirit of the Laws Translated by Thomas Nugent. Digireads.com.
Book XI.
2. Thank the 17th Amendment, which a hundred years later gave us a government to fear.

The Framers based their solution to the danger of majoritarianism on their assessment of human nature. Early at the federal convention, James Madison asked:

Instead of reliance on religion, virtue, or conscience they would depend on the realistic, admittedly ignoble, but reliable inclination of men to follow their self-interest as the path to good government.

They would establish a republic in which the public good is advanced in the same way that commercial prosperity is achieved – individuals pursuing matters for their own benefit. It’s in the interest of every employee to satisfy their employer and popularly elected servants will follow the good as well as bad inclinations of their constituents. Identically, so did the Framers’ Senators protect the interests of their employers: the state legislatures.

Many modern constitutionalists, especially Article V opponents, base their solutions to bad government on pleas to elect better men and women. In turn, the nation could trust these altruistic angels to reliably execute the enumerated powers in Article I § 8 and prohibitions in sections 9 & 10. Unfortunately, this straightforward belief is not the first safeguard to liberty and justice baked into the Framers’ Constitution. Instead, their keystone to free government was a senate of the states, one that wasn’t isolated from the people, but one sufficiently small in number and far enough from the people’s immediate demands to take the long view and to deliberate for the better good.

Thus, the structure of their new government, not the morality of its participants or even the parchment barriers of Article I, was the Framers’ gift to good and enduring government. The only hope for republican government they believed was the establishment of a constitutional institution that, by accommodating “the ordinary depravity of mankind,” would make it in the interest, even of bad men, to act for the public good. Self-interest, the Framers earnestly believed, was the one check that nothing could overcome and the principal hope for security and stability in republican government. To avoid majoritarian tyranny, promote stability and preserve liberty, the structure of the Framers’ “more perfect union” retained the dominant feature of the Articles of Confederation: the states. It worked.

Are any other people as politically involved as Americans? We have caucuses, primaries, general elections, referenda to pass laws and state constitutional amendments from sea to sea, and yet our liberties are less safe with the passing of every election cycle. We often read, “people get the government they deserve,” but I’ll never accept that any American is born into, or deserves, life under corrupt democratic tyranny.

“If you ever want to sleep with a blonde again, you had better shoot down these bastards as soon as they come up” – a destroyer captain motivates his exhausted crew shortly before a kamikaze attack. The sea-battle toll for Okinawa that ended on June 21st 1945 was 36 U.S. warships sunk and 368 damaged. Almost 5,000 sailors were killed in action and another 5,000 wounded.

War naturally conjures images of courageous infantrymen. Gettysburg, Flanders Fields and not the Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf.

Too often forgotten are the heroic Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine sailors felled at sea. It’s understandable; there are no battlefield memorials, no marked graves, no poppies, no flags. Presidents and dignitaries visit Normandy and not Midway or Iron Bottom Sound. Few are the photo memoirs of engineering room slaughter-by-steam, of those who inhaled fire, of those blown overboard, of those who survived the battle only to die of burns, thirst, or sharks.

Hoses washed the remains of many off their ships. Some had proper burials. Did boot camp recruits know their Navy-issue hammocks did double duty as burial shrouds? I don’t know, but should your Memorial Day weekend find you on an Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf of Mexico beach, you are graveside.

Take time to say a few words of thanks.