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Now that Julian Assange has been arrested in London after seven years in exile at the Ecuadorian embassy, many are wondering if anything will happen with the “dead man’s switch” that Assange and WikiLeaks have talked about in the past.
The arrest happened shortly after Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno withdrew Assange’s asylum.
Assange is accused of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer, related to Chelsea Manning’s release of classified data in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Justice for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Assange now faces extradition to the United States, but his lawyer has vowed to fight extradition, AP reported.
When Assange appeared in Westminster Magistrate’s Court, District Judge Michael Snow found him guilty of breaking his bail conditions, saying that Assange was a “narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.”
Assange’s next court appearance will be May 2 via a prison video-link, where he will face an extradition hearing. Another extradition hearing is scheduled for June 12.
Julian Paul Assange, born in Queensland, Australia, in 1971, is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and images that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org.
Since it went online, the site has published an huge catalogue of secret material. The catalogue is especially remarkable because WikiLeaks is not quite an organization.
It has no paid staff, no copiers, no desks, no office. Assange is the operation’s prime organizer, and it is fair to say that WikiLeaks exists wherever he does.
At the same time, hundreds of volunteers from around the world help maintain the Web site’s complicated infrastructure and between three and five people dedicate themselves to it full time.
Key members are known only by initials even deep within WikiLeaks, where communications are conducted by encrypted online chat services.
The secretiveness stems from the belief that a intelligence operation run by ordinary people, with virtually no resources, designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public, will have serious enemies.
What’s still unclear at this time is, now that he has been arrested, what might happen with the dead man’s switch that Assange has talked about in the past?
Assange calls the site “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis,” and a government or company that wanted to remove content from WikiLeaks would have to practically dismantle the Internet itself.
So far, even though the site has received more than a hundred legal threats, almost no one has filed suit. Lawyers working for the British bank Northern Rock threatened court action after the site published an embarrassing memo, but they were practically reduced to begging.
A Kenyan politician also vowed to sue after Assange published a confidential report alleging that President Daniel Moi and his allies had siphoned billions of dollars out of the country. The site’s work in Kenya earned it an award from Amnesty International.
Assange typically tells would-be litigants to stick it.
In 2008, WikiLeaks posted secret Scientology manuals, and lawyers representing the church demanded that they be removed.

Assange’s response was to publish more of the Scientologists’ internal material, and to announce, “WikiLeaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than WikiLeaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats, or the Pentagon.”
Assange has a cyber-security analyst’s concern about computer vulnerability, and habitually takes precautions to frustrate eavesdroppers.
When Assange turned sixteen, he got a modem, and his computer was transformed into a portal. Web sites did not exist yet—this was 1987—but computer networks and telecom systems were sufficiently linked to form a hidden electronic landscape that teen-agers with the right technical savvy could explore.
Assange established a reputation as a sophisticated programmer who could break into the most secure networks. He joined with two hackers to form a group that became known as the International Subversives, and they broke into computer systems in Europe and North America, including networks belonging to the U.S. Department of Defense and to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
So we are not dealing with some amateur here.
By 2015 WikiLeaks had published more than 10 million documents. The published material between 2006 and 2009 attracted various degrees of publicity, but it was only after it began publishing the aforementioned documents supplied by Chelsea Manning that Wikileaks became a household name.
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is a transgender United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly three-quarters of a million classified military and diplomatic documents. Manning was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years imprisonment.
She was imprisoned from 2010 until 2017 when her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.
Manning has been jailed since March 8, 2019 for her continued refusal to testify before a grand jury against Julian Assange.
Coincidence? I think not.
Manning’s reasoning for not testifying was that she was morally against this tactic meant to force her to testify.
“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech,” Manning said to the grand jury as she was detained.
Manning’s lawyer stated that since Assange was arrested due to publishing the material Manning provided, the evidence provided would be a duplication of evidence she could provide and that the grand jury should no longer require a testimony from Manning. They argue that Manning’s continued detention is intended to coerce her testimony.
As I previously stated, Manning served seven years in jail from 2010 to 2017, and if Assange is convicted, she’ll face no new charges.
However, Manning can legally be detained for another 17 months until the federal grand jury investigating Assange is dismissed.
The Manning material included a video (April 2010) which showed US soldiers shooting dead 18 people from a helicopter in Iraq, the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).
Opinions of Assange at this time were divided. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard described his activities as “illegal,” but the police said that he had broken no Australian law.
US Vice President Joe Biden and others called him a “terrorist.” Some called for his assassination or execution.
However, worldwide, Assange has gained tremendous support.
In 2010 he received the Sam Adams Award, which Assange accepted in October.
The Sam Adams Award is given annually to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics. The Award is given by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a group of retired CIA officers.
He later won the Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal for Peace with Justice, previously awarded to only three people—Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Buddhist spiritual leader Daisaku Ikeda.
So now to the issue at hand.
Why, since the arrest of Assange, have we heard nothing further from the media?
Nothing on national evening news.
Nothing on the cable news networks.
Nothing from printed media.
Nothing from social media.
Why?
What are they afraid of? The guy is locked up.
Well, here is what I think. Julian Assange is a totally equal opportunity activist.
He could care less who he upsets with his operation.
Don’t believe me?
WikiLeaks has released numerous insurance files as a type of “deadman’s switch.”
Downloaders get an encryption key, but they need a second one before they can actually unlock the file. The insurance files operate as a type of backup. If anything happens to WikiLeaks, the second key is released, giving everyone access to the file, according to comments WikiLeaks and Assange have made in the past.
A file that is genuinely a dead man’s switch is typically labeled “insurance” in a WikiLeaks tweet. These need the second decryption key to open. That decryption key is the dead man’s switch that people are waiting on.
So what might they be afraid of? Here is a sample of what I found on a recent post claiming to list the categories and all the surrounding documents released in the dead man files.
This is just a sampling. There are literally thousands of documents.
Here we go:
US Military Equipment in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine.
Hillary Clinton E-mails (Collen Powell & Huma Abadene)
Budapest Gay Rights Riot
Aryan Nation Hotmail
Wikileaks Spy files (need second code)
Gitmo
Collateral Murder
Saudi Government Tech
US Catholic Hospitals
Google
US Minutemen Tech Manuals
US Laser Range Finder
Army Playbook, Rules of Engagement, Iraq
US Nuclear Sites
British Waterways Targets
Mass Murder in Mexico
American Casinos
Airline Pilot Scab list
Al Quaeda
Mormons
Scientology
Dow Chemical
Barnes and Noble
Homeland Security Threat Overview
Fat Cats of Africa
Sarah Palin
Angela Merkel
The Peru Oil Industry
..and then of course files on various locations around the world, including Egypt, Iran, Spain, Holland, China, Kenya, Israel, India, Korea, Iceland, Kosovo, Bolivia, and Peru.
So there you have it folks. What triggered my topic this week wasn’t all the noise, but rather, the silence.
Is the national, and for that matter, worldwide media, sitting on its hands for fear of triggering the dead man switch planted by Julian Assange?
In arresting him and extraditing him to the US, have we grabbed a tiger by the tail or should we have left him be?

So Elections were held yesterday in Israel.
Who won? Well as of this morning we still don’t know. It was a virtual tie and it may not be fully decided for weeks.
So do we here in the US really care?
The simple answer is yes, absolutely.
This is a very important election on the world stage and, as always, the national news instead decided to cover the college payment scandal as their lead story.
Benjamin Netanyahu the Prime Minister of Israel, has had an array of new enemies rising up around him. He faced an unexpectedly stiff challenge from Benny Gantz, a 6-foot-4 former army chief and career soldier who could credibly take over Mr. Netanyahu’s credentials as Israel’s “Mr. Security.”
The attorney general wanted to indict Netanyahu on corruption charges, accusing him of trading lucrative government favors for positive news coverage.
A new scandal bubbled up when he revealed that he had secretly approved the sale of advanced submarines to Egypt then lied about it. Even his right-wing base was growing weary of his self-obsession.
Yet, if the election on Tuesday was a referendum on Mr. Netanyahu’s record, he was happy to run on it.
He has been on a roll, opening ties with Muslim countries in Africa, thawing relations with Sunni Arab leaders, lining up allies in Eastern Europe and forging trade ties in Latin America and Asia.
He secured President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and, just two weeks ago, of its sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
Mr. Gantz has asked voters to focus instead on the corruption, self-dealing and arrogance that have tarnished Mr. Netanyahu’s achievements.
Sound familiar?
Against Mr. Netanyahu’s potent politics of division — pitting right against left, Jew against Arab, religious against secular, working-class against rich, peripheral towns against Tel Aviv, Mr. Gantz has offered a message of unity and healing, of putting “Israel before all.”
Neither man has said much about policy. The result is that one of Israel’s most consequential elections has been one of its ugliest and shallowest.
There were no debates and few serious interviews of the leading candidates. Get-out-the-vote rallies have been replaced by Facebook and Twitter videos and anonymous texts.
Israeli politics traditionally revolves around security, economics and the role of religion in government. But this campaign has hinged largely on Netanyahu himself.
There’s some Netanyahu fatigue after 10 years of his combative style and an accumulation of scandals around him.
In February, the country’s attorney general said he was preparing indictments against Netanyahu over cases concerning gifts he’s accepted and favors he’s allegedly done for media moguls to win positive coverage.
Netanyahu’s pitch in the campaign is that Israel has never been in better shape.
The economy has grown steeply over the last decade, with unemployment down and incomes way up.
The government has increased trade around the region and the world.
Again, any of this sound familiar folks?

And though there have been conflicts with neighbors — a 2014 war with Hamas in Gaza that the United Nations said left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead, rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon — the toll for Israelis has been relatively low and the impact on daily life has been minimal.
But Netanyahu’s critics worry about the health of the country’s democracy.
They note passage of a law declaring Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people,” which could undermine the standing of the country’s 1.6 million Palestinian Arab citizens.
Netanyahu says everyone has equal rights but recently also said, “Israel is the nation state not of all of its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.”
He has highlighted his close relationship with Trump, which has led to Washington backing Israeli claims to sovereignty in the Golan Heights and Jerusalem (where the U.S. opened its embassy last year).
Benny Gantz served as chief of staff of the Israeli military — the country’s highest-ranking officer — and retired in 2015.
He has little political record but has cast himself as the clean alternative to Netanyahu’s embattled administration. “There’s no more left and right. Israel before all,” says his campaign.
His campaign promises new laws barring people who have been convicted of crimes from holding office and he favors term limits for prime ministers.
Gantz’s critics have accused him of using his connections to get government contracts for a private company he headed after leaving the military. Netanyahu’s campaign questions his mental fitness.
Meanwhile, Gantz casts himself as someone ready to use overwhelming force against Israel’s enemies. An early campaign ad touted his leadership of Israel’s war against Hamas in 2014 and showed video of airstrikes.
Gantz has also promised to make peace but speaks without much specificity about a “separation” from the Palestinians. He says he’ll also reduce religious influence over Israeli law.
Netanyahu, has pledged to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if he wins his country’s election, a dramatic last-minute rallying call to his nationalist base.
Hundreds of thousands of settlers live in outposts in the West Bank, which Israel’s military captured in a war more than half a century ago and continues to rule, controlling the lives of more than 2.5 million Palestinians.
World powers consider the settlements illegal under international law, built on land confiscated from Palestinian families and squeezing them into ever-smaller enclaves.
Formally declaring the settlements part of Israel would also be seen as putting an end to fading hopes for a Palestinian state, as there would be little continuous land on which to create it.
A so-called two-state solution, which envisions an Israel and a Palestine side by side, has long been the preferred peace option of most of the international community. But growing settlement construction has dashed hopes.
Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital early in his term as US president further damaged the two-state ideal. The Palestinians see the occupied eastern section of Jerusalem as the capital of any future state, and cut contact with Washington after the declaration.
Last month, Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a plateau Israel captured from Syria in the same 1967 conflict and annexed in 1981.
The move broke from the post-second world war international consensus that forbids territorial conquest during war, and Palestinians warned that it set a dangerous precedent for land grabs in the West Bank.
In Israel, Trump’s announcement was viewed as an election gift to Netanyahu.
Trump said he had made the controversial decision after getting a “quick” history lesson from his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his pro-settlement ambassador to Israel and former bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman.
Saeb Erekat, a veteran former Palestinian negotiator, said he was not surprised by Netanyahu’s statement on settlements.
“Israel will continue to brazenly violate international law for as long as the international community will continue to reward Israel with impunity, particularly with the Trump administration’s support and endorsement of Israel’s violation of the national and human rights of the people of Palestine,” he said.
Break
Now here is another issue to consider.
Israel remains determined to continue pounding Iranian forces in Syria in a bid to keep Tehran’s forces away from Israel’s northern border.
At the same time, Russia has thousands of troops in Syria that could be caught in the crossfire—or even become belligerents if Moscow tires of its Syrian ally being pummeled.
And if Israel and Russia come to blows, would Israel’s big brother—the United States—feel compelled to intervene?
Not that Jerusalem or Moscow are eager for such a fight. “Neither of us desire a military confrontation,” a senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official stated during a recent interview in Jerusalem. “It would be detrimental to both sides.”

Yet Israel’s policy boils down to this: it will do whatever it sees as necessary to eject Iranian forces from Syria. And if Russia doesn’t like it, then that’s just the price of ensuring that Syria doesn’t become another Iranian rocket base on Israel’s border.
Relations between Jerusalem and Moscow are far warmer than during the Cold War. The result is similar to the U.S.-Soviet detente of the 1970s.
On the surface, a certain friendliness and desire for cooperation. Yet beneath the smiles is wariness, suspicion and a clash of fundamental interests.
“No one in Israel is confused about who the Russians are and who they are aligned with,” said an Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The Russians are not our allies, to put it mildly. We have one ally, and that is the United States. The Russians are here for totally different objectives. They are supporting a regime [Syria] that has an outspoken goal of annihilating Israel if it only could. They are also part of a coalition that supports Iran.”
Just how easily Israeli military operations can trigger an incident became evident during a September 2018 strike on ammunition depots in western Syria.
Anti-aircraft missiles launched by Syrian gunners accidentally shot down a Russian Il-20 surveillance aircraft, killing fifteen people.
Israel denies Russian accusations that it deliberately used the Russian plane as cover, or failed to give Moscow sufficient warning of the raid. Yet Russia still blamed Israel for the mishap and retaliated by supplying advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.
Nonetheless, Israel sees value in Russia as a potential restraint on Iran, and a possible lever to get Iranian forces out of Syria.
After a February meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin to mend fences after the surveillance aircraft incident, Israeli officials claimed Putin had agreed that foreign forces should withdraw from Syria.
For Moscow, friendly relations with Israel offer more influence in the Middle East even as America may be scaling down its presence in the region.
Still, the Kremlin has denounced Israeli strikes in Syria as “illegitimate.” Syria has been a Russian ally for more than fifty years, and it was Russian air strikes—along with Iranian and Hezbollah troops—that aided the Syrian government to retake most of the country. At least 63,000 Russian troops have served in Syria since 2015.
Though Putin has promised since 2016 that Russian forces would withdraw, Russia currently retains more than 5,000 troops and private military contractors in Syria, backed by several dozen aircraft and helicopters.
And Russia is in Syria to stay. The Syrian port of Tartus is Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean: in 2016, Moscow and Damascus signed a forty-nine-year agreement that allows nuclear-powered Russian warships to operate from there.
In addition, Russian aircraft and surface-to-air missiles, including the long-range S-400 air defense system, operate from at least two air bases in western Syria.
Israel can live with the Russians next door—but not the Iranians. Israeli officials warn of Tehran’s plan to station 100,000 Iranian and allied troops in Syria.
Hezbollah, with its estimated arsenal of 130,000-plus rockets, already menaces Israel’s Lebanon frontier. Syria joining Lebanon as a second Iranian rocket base is the stuff of Israeli nightmares.
“We continue to implement our plans,” the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) official replied when asked if Russia would deter Israeli raids into Syria. “Our activities suggest that, despite everything, we enjoy significant freedom of action.”
But more telling was his one-word response when asked how willing is Israel to fight for that freedom of action.
“Willing.”
Which leaves the question: Can Israel target Iran in Syria without triggering a clash with Russia?
There are deconfliction mechanisms in place, including a hotline between the Israeli and Russian militaries. “We are very strict about informing the Russians about our activities and that their operational picture is up to date,” said the IDF official. Yet those procedures were not sufficient to avoid a downing of a Russian plane.
Perhaps that ill-fated Il-20 was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, it is not hard to imagine a group of equally fatal scenarios. Russian advisers or technicians caught in an Israeli raid on an Iranian or Syrian installation.
An errant Israeli smart bomb that hits a Russian base, or a Russian pilot or anti-aircraft battery spooked by a nearby Israeli raid into opening fire. Or, perhaps Russia will just feel obligated to support the prestige of its Syrian ally and its shaky government.
Just how incendiary Syrian skies are for everyone became evident in December 2017, when U.S. F-22 fighters fired flares to warn off two Russian Su-25 attack jets that breached a no-go zone in eastern Syria.
To be clear, the IDF is neither boastful nor belligerent about its capabilities versus Russia, a former superpower with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. The IDF official likened Israel to “The Mouse that Roared,” the classic novel of a tiny nation that challenges the United States.
What makes a potential Israel-Russia battle so dangerous is that it is not hypothetical. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Soviet fighters were sent to Egypt.
This led to a notorious July 1970 incident when in a well-planned aerial ambush over the Suez Canal, Israeli fighters shot down five Soviet-piloted MiG-21 jets in three minutes.
On the other hand, Russia doesn’t need to fight Israel to hurt Israel. Indeed, the IDF official seemed less concerned about a physical clash between Israeli and Russian forces, and more concerned that Russia could choose to supply advanced weapons—such as anti-aircraft missiles—to Israeli enemies such as Syria and Iran.
In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union supplied numerous air defense missiles and guns to Egypt and Syria, which inflicted heavy losses on Israeli planes in the 1973 October War. If it wants to, Russia can make Israeli air operations very expensive.
As always with the Arab-Israeli (or Iranian-Israeli) conflict, the real danger isn’t the regional conflict, but how it might escalate. In the 1973 war, the Soviets threatened to send troops to Egypt unless Israel agreed to a cease-fire. The United States responded by going on nuclear alert.
Were the Israelis and Russians to come to blows, or if Moscow were to seriously threaten military force against Israel, could the United States risk a grave loss of prestige by not intervening to back its longtime ally?
Could Russia—whose Syrian intervention is a proud symbol of its reborn military muscle and great power status—not retaliate for another downed Russian plane or a dead Russian soldier?
Which leads to the ultimate question: could tensions between Israel and Russia lead to a clash between American and Russian troops?
In the end, somebody will have to back down. But Iran isn’t about to give up its outpost on Israel’s border, and Russia probably can’t force them to. Then there is Israel, which is grimly determined to stop Iran.
As the IDF official said, “We have proven over more than 70 years as a sovereign state that you don’t push us around.”
That, my friends, is why this recent election matters. Callers?

Gag Rule

A rule, regulation, or law that prohibits debate or discussion of a particular issue.

Between 1836 and 1844, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a series of resolutions and rules that banned petitions calling for the abolition of slavery.

Known as gag rules, these measures effectively tabled antislavery petitions without submitting them to usual House procedures. Public outcry over the gag rules ultimately aided the antislavery cause, and the fierce House debate concerning their future anticipated later conflicts over slavery.

The submission of petitions to Congress has been a feature of the U.S. political system ever since its inception. The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people … to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

First used in England, petitions have been considered an important means for the people to communicate grievances to their representatives or other public officials.

When the first gag rule was instituted in 1836, House protocol required that the first thirty days of each session of Congress be devoted to the reading of petitions from constituents.

After those thirty days, petitions were read in the House every other Monday. Each petition was read aloud, printed, and assigned to an appropriate committee, which could choose to address or ignore it.

This traditional procedure was halted in 1835, when the House began to receive a large number of petitions advocating the abolition of slavery. Many of the petitions were organized by the American Anti-Slavery Society, which had formed in 1833.

Southern representatives, many of whom were slave owners and entertained no thoughts of abolishing slavery, were outraged by the antislavery petitions.

In December 1835, southerners, uniting with northern Democrats, won a vote to table a petition that called for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

Breaking established precedent, the pro-slavery faction also won a vote to deny the petition its usual discussion, printing, and referral to committee.

This procedure for the “gagging” of abolition petitions was made into a formal resolution by the House on May 26, 1836: “All petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers, relating in any way, or to any extent whatsoever, to the subject of slavery or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being either printed or referred, be laid on the table and … no further action whatever shall be had thereon.”

The resolution incited strong opposition from many northerners, who perceived it as a violation of their time-honored civil rights. John Quincy Adams, a former president and now a representative from Massachusetts, emerged as the leader of an effort to revoke the new resolution. John C. Calhoun (D-S.C.), although a member of the Senate rather than the House, orchestrated the battle to preserve it.

The pro-slavery faction succeeded in renewing the gag resolution, which expired at the end of each session of Congress, in both sessions of the Twenty-fifth Congress (1837–39). On January 28, 1840, it succeeded again when it won a vote to turn the resolution into House Rule 21 (in later versions, Rules 23 and 25):

No petition, memorial, resolution, or other paper praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or any State or Territory, or the slave trade between the States or territories of the United States, in which it now exists, shall be received by this House, or entertained in any way whatever.

As a formal House rule rather than a resolution, the gag rule was now a permanent part of House procedure and did not have to be renewed by vote each session.

 

This new gag rule provoked even stronger opposition. Whereas the previous gag resolution tabled antislavery petitions after they were received, the new gag rule did not allow petitions to be received.

As a result of these changes, northerners who had previously supported the gag now joined Adams in opposing it. Several years later, on December 3, 1844, those opposed to the gag rule finally succeeded in rescinding it.

 

In view of recent activities within the US Congress, I have to ask the question, “Have we lost the ability to govern our country?”

We no longer have the gag rule formally in place, but I believe it is still alive and well at both the Federal and State level.

In this age of political correctness, our lawmakers are no longer willing to discuss controversial issues, for fear of reprisal by groups representing gun control, pro and anti abortion, religious freedom, LGBT, various ethnic groups, illegal immigrants, the list goes on and on.

Some may consider this a huge leap on my part, but I contend that we are right back where we were when the gag orders of the 1800’s were put in place to save our politicians from having to take a stand on the issue of slavery.

Don’t believe me?

Let’s look at several recent issues on both the federal and state levels.

First, the federal level.

House lawmakers on March 7 passed a watered-down resolution meant to condemn anti-Semitic remarks by Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar. The final resolution, approved by a vote of 407–23, was expanded to include other forms of bias and does not include Omar’s name.

Omar, a freshman Democrat representing Minnesota, doubted the allegiance of Jewish-Americans to the United States and refused to offer an apology. Efforts to control the damage from the backlash have split the Democratic Party, with the far-left Congressional Progressive Caucus defending Omar and centrist Democrats racing to allay concerns from Jewish colleagues.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on March 7 that a new version of the resolution was expanded to “speak out against anti-Semitism, anti-Islamophobia, anti-white supremacy and all the forms that it takes.” The speaker added that it is up to Omar to “explain” the remarks.

In other words, no one in Congress is willing to risk offending their Muslim constituents.

Illegal Immigration

In judging whether immigration reform will succeed, it’s helpful to know why so many past attempts by Congress and the White House to change the system have failed. Here’s a timeline of the major attempts to deal with illegal immigration and why they didn’t make the cut.

* The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986: The amnesty law of 1986 passed through Congress and was signed by President Ronald Reagan, but it is largely considered a failure. The legislation was meant to tighten border security and crack down on employers hiring undocumented immigrants, while offering amnesty to those already in the country illegally.

Three million immigrants were legalized, but the law did not slow illegal immigration or create a framework to deal with it going forward.

“For 20 years our country has done basically nothing to enforce the 1986 legislation against either the employers who hired illegal immigrants or those who crossed our borders illegally to work for them,” former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wrote in 2007.

* 1996: Under President Clinton, most reform was aimed at reducing immigration amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the country. But the backlash against strict reform led many of the harshest measures to be rolled back, meaning that ultimately little changed.

 

Attempts at harsher measures, such as barring undocumented immigrants from public schools and limiting legal immigrants’ access to health and welfare services, were watered down.

2000: President Clinton pushed for amnesty for hundreds of thousands of immigrants left in legal limbo by a technical screw-up involving the 1986 law and offered a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of Central Americans. Republicans blocked that effort, and mindful of electoral concerns, passed their own legislation addressing the 1986 issue and family members of legal residents.

2004-2007: President Bush hoped to appeal to both business owners and Hispanic voters with a comprehensive overhaul, but he was stymied by his own party.

Bush began pushing for a guest worker program in 2004. An early attempt by Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) died a quick death, in part because of election year politics.

2010: Like Bush, President Obama was caught between Hispanic voters and the GOP. In 2009 he called immigration reform a priority but acknowledged that there was too much on his plate to get it done soon.

Obama himself acknowledged that “there may not be an appetite” for immigration reform that year.

Immigration reform has suffered from the same few problems for years. Business interests and labor interests have to find a way to reconcile their disagreements. Conservatives who want enforcement first — or enforcement alone — have to be placated. Electoral concerns push lawmakers one way and then the other.

Optimistic advocates argue that the calculus has now changed. Protests in support of the DREAM Act (another immigration initiative prone to failure) has brought national attention to the plight of young undocumented students.

In other words, no one in Congress wants to alienate the Hispanic vote.

Abortion

A bill that would have required medical care to any infant born alive after an abortion has recently failed to pass the Senate.

The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, written by Senator Ben Sasse (R) of Nebraska, would have also made any health care practitioner present at the time of the failed abortion “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence [they] would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”

Under the act, a health care practitioner who failed to provide aid to the infant would be given a fine, imprisoned or both.

“Condemning infanticide should be a unanimous vote. It’s a basic human rights issue,” Sasse said in an interview on Fox News.

President Donald Trump responded to the failed bill, saying, “The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies after birth.”

He also called it, “one of the most shocking votes in the history of Congress,” and, “If there is one thing we should all agree on, it’s protecting the lives of innocent babies.”

The final vote on The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act was 53-44. It would have needed 60 to pass.

The bill was supported by all Senate Republicans, but was rejected by all but three Senate Democrats.

Those three Democratic “yes” votes came from Robert P. Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, and Doug Jones of Alabama.

Three Republicans did not vote, citing scheduling issues.

Many who opposed the bill said that it was unneeded and interfered with a woman’s medical rights.

Planned Parenthood President Dr. Leana Wen also responded to the bill, saying that it “was not based in science or reality, but instead is another attack by the Trump-Pence administration and the Republican leadership on healthcare.”

Wen also said that the Born-Alive Bill, “would have singled out physicians who perform abortions and potentially expose them to harsh criminal penalties based on lies and misinformation.”

In other words, no one in Congress wants to take a stand on the abortion issue for fear of alienating votes, just like Congress did on the issue of slavery.

 

Now to the state level.

Jussie Smollett

It all started after midnight on January 29, the night Empire star Jussie Smollett says he was attacked on a Chicago street. The 36-year-old told police that he was beaten outside of the Loews Hotel by two white men in ski masks who yelled racist and homophobic slurs, and championed “MAGA country,” as they tied a rope around his neck and poured bleach on him.

Due to the serious nature of the allegations, the Chicago police immediately began investigating the incident as a possible hate crime. They even discovered a threatening letter that was reportedly sent to the actor prior to the alleged attack. It contained anti-gay rhetoric and a mysterious white powder.

As news broke of the shocking incident, many celebrities and politicians rallied behind the openly gay actor, both in the press and on social media. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris even called the incident a “modern-day lynching,” while Smollett appeared on a television interview on ABC with Robin Roberts, where he reiterated that what he told police was unequivocally true.

It wasn’t until early February, when investigators uncovered a blurry video of two men walking near the supposed crime scene that the case took a very unexpected turn, one that would eventually cast suspicion on the actor himself. On February 20, a Cook County, Illinois, grand jury found probable cause that Smollett staged the attack. The young actor was arrested, charged with felony disorderly conduct, and released on bond shortly before being written off the hit show Empire. Smollett was also slapped with 16 more felony counts after allegedly lying to police about a hate crime.

As we now know, all charges against the actor were dropped as of March 26 by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. While the prosecutors have not revealed why they dropped the felony charges, they said the decision was made after reviewing all of the facts in light of Smollett’s forfeiture of his $10,000 bond. Usually when charges are dropped, the bond is returned to the defendant; in this case, Smollett agreed to give the bond he paid to the city, which is unprecedented.

“After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case,” the state’s attorney’s office said in a statement, “ including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community, and agreement to forfeit his bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case.”

As a result, Smollett will not face trial. He is a free man with an expunged record.

Again, the fact that Jussie Smallet is a gay black man and this case jumped immediately to a hate crime, it has tied the hands of all those involved.

Chick Filet ban in Texas

The Texas Attorney’s General’s office has launched an investigation to determine if the San Antonio City Council violated the First Amendment by barring Chick-fil-A, a franchise regarded by some as being opposed to same-sex marriage, from opening a restaurant in the city’s airport, the Texas Tribune reported.

The City Council voted 6-4 last week to prevent the nationwide chain of chicken restaurants from setting up shop at the San Antonio International Airport.

The action triggered a letter to city officials from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.

 

Chick-Fil-A, a national franchise with locations in the New Orleans area, is known for its leaders’ staunch Christian and conservative views and has been linked to groups that oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage. Its restaurants are closed on Sunday.

The company says its corporate purpose is to “to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come into contact with Chick-fil-A,”.

San Antonio City Councilman Roberto Treviño introduced a plan to approve the airport’s plan to permit eight new vendors to open in one of the terminals, but swap out Chick-fil-A for another vendor. Treviño told the council that he could not get behind a company with “a legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior,” according to the newspaper.

Here again, we see that local politicians are handcuffed by political correctness.

Gun control in Colorado

A Sheriff in Colorado told CNN he would rather go to jail than to enforce the state’s proposed Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), commonly referred to as “red flag laws.” If House Bill 19-1177 passes, the law would allow a family member, roommate or law enforcement officer to petition a judge so police can temporarily seize a person’s firearms if they’re deemed a threat to themselves or others.

“Are you willing to sit in your own jail to avoid enforcing this law?” a CNN reporter asked Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams, the Greeley Tribune reported.

His response was perfect.

“Well obviously no sheriff wants to be confined in their own jail, but if that’s what it takes to get this bill ironed out, then I guess that’s a sacrifice I’ll be forced to make,” Reams replied. “The worst way to bring attention to it is for me to be put in that position, but I’ll do that before I’ll violate somebody’s constitutional rights.”

The sheriff is challenging the law in court to keep the bill from becoming a reality.

“We’re working hard to try to figure out a mechanism to get this into the courts before anybody is harmed by it,” Reams said. “Unfortunately, someone has to be damaged by it first. It comes down to whether I want to take this to court for violating somebody’s rights or for me refusing to enforce a court order.”

But Reams isn’t the only sheriff who opposes the bill. More than half of Colorado’s 64 counties have declared themselves a “Second Amendment Sanctuary County,” meaning their sheriffs refuse to enforce these types of gun control laws.

If the bill passes and sheriffs, like Reams, fail to enforce a court order under the red flag law, they can be held in contempt. They could be fined indefinitely or arrest them.

Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in the Aurora shooting in 2012 is one of the bill’s co-sponsors, along with Democratic House Majority Leader Alec Garnett.

According to Garnett, he “won’t lose any sleep” if sheriffs have to sit in jail for failing to comply with the bill, should it become law.

“What I’m going to lose sleep over is, if that’s the choice that they make and someone loses their life, someone in crisis goes on a shooting spree, (or) someone commits suicide” because a gun wasn’t taken away, Garnett told CNN.

So, once again. Politicians at the state level risk losing voters based on their position when it comes to the 2nd amendment. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Just like Congress in the 1800’s dealing with the issue of slavery.

Folks, I really hope I am wrong here. I would hate to think we have lost our ability to govern ourselves. We all know what happened as a result of Congress failing to address the issue of slavery and state’s rights.

I pray we don’t see similar results in our future due to our lack of courage in tackling the tough issues we are faced with today.

 

 

The Socialist Party aimed to become a major party in the 20th century America.
In the years prior to World War I it elected two members of Congress, over 70 mayors, and huge numbers of state legislators and city councilors.
Despite the success of the American Federation of Labor national union, American radicalism was not dead.
The number of those who felt the American capitalist system was fundamentally flawed was in fact growing fast.
American socialists based their beliefs on the writings of Karl Marx, the German philosopher.
Many asked why so many working Americans should have so little while a few owners grew incredibly wealthy. No wealth could exist without the sweat and blood of its workforce.
They suggested that the government should own all industries and divide the profits among those who actually created the products.
While the current management class would stand to lose, many more people would gain. These radicals grew in number as industries spread. But their enemies were huge.
This was the time of the Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and Rockefellers.
Now along comes the founder of American Socialism.
Eugene V. Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1855 to a family of French immigrants.
Working his way up through the railroad industry, Debs formed the American Railway Union in 1892.

Two years later he found himself leading one of the largest strikes in American history — the great Pullman strike. When its workers refused to accept a pay cut, The Pullman Car Company fired 5000 employees.
To show support, Debs called for the members of the American Railway Union to refrain from operating any trains that used Pullman cars.
When the strike was declared illegal by a court injunction, chaos erupted.
President Grover Cleveland ordered federal troops to attack the strikers and Debs was arrested. Soon order was restored and the strike failed.
Debs was not originally a socialist, but his experience with the Pullman Strike and his subsequent six-month jail term led him to believe that drastic action was necessary.
He made the following statement to the Court, while being convicted of violating the Sedition Act (Sept. 18, 1918)
Your honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Debs chose to fight in the political arena. In 1900 he ran for President as a socialist and received 87,000 votes.
The following year, leading sympathizers joined with him to form the Socialist Party. At its height, the party numbered over 100,000 active members.
Debs ran for President four more times. In the election of 1912 he received over 900,000 votes.
After being arrested for antiwar activities during World War I, he ran for President from his jail cell and still received 919,000 votes.
Debs died in 1926 having never won an election, but over one thousand Socialist Party members had been elected to state and city governments.
So who was this guy? What did he say to gain so many followers?
Do he and the modern democratic socialists here in the US have anything in common?
Let’s take a look.

Eugene Victor Debs was born November 5, 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana.
He was a Socialist Party candidate for U.S. president five times between 1900 and 1920.
Debs left home at age 14 to work in the railroad shops and later became a locomotive fireman.
In 1875 he helped organize a local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, of which he was elected national secretary and treasurer in 1880.
He also served as city clerk of Terre Haute (1879–83) and as a member of the Indiana legislature (1885).
From his earliest days, Debs pushed for the organization of labor by industry rather than by craft. After trying unsuccessfully to unite the various railroad brotherhoods of his day, he became president (1893) of the newly established American Railway Union.
Debs’s union gained national recognition when it conducted a successful strike for higher wages against the Great Northern Railway in April 1894.
Debbs himself became famous when he was sentenced to six months in jail (May–November 1895) for his role in leading the Chicago Pullman Palace Car Company strike.
During his prison term at Woodstock, Illinois, Debs was deeply influenced by his broad reading—including the works of Karl Marx—and grew increasingly critical of traditional political and economic concepts, especially capitalism.
After announcing his conversion from populism to socialism in 1897, he led the establishment of the Socialist Party of America.
Debs was the party’s presidential candidate in 1900 but received only 96,000 votes, a total he raised to 400,000 in 1904.
In a 1905 speech, he argued:
“Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds that there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.
You do not need the capitalist. He could not exist an instant without you. You would just begin to live without him. You do everything and he has everything, and some of you imagine that if it were not for him you would have no work. As a matter of fact, he does not employ you at all; you employ him to take from you what you produce, and he faithfully sticks to this task.
If you can stand it, he can; and if you don’t change this relation, I am sure he won’t. You make the automobile, he rides in it. If it were not for you, he would walk; and if it were not for him, you would ride.”

Debs was again the Socialist Party candidate for president in 1908, 1912, and 1920 (he refused the nomination in 1916).
His highest popular vote total came in 1920, when he received about 915,000 votes.
Ironically, he was in prison at the time, serving a sentence for having criticized the U.S. government’s prosecution of persons charged with violation of the 1917 Espionage Act.
During World War I, Debs was a highly visible and vocal pacifist. On June 16 of 1918 he delivered a famous antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio.
He protested against World War I, which was raging in Europe. He was arrested because of the speech and convicted in a federal court in Cleveland, Ohio, under the wartime espionage law.
He was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison and disenfranchised for life — i.e. losing his citizenship.
While running his campaign from prison in 1920, Debs outlined his vision of a socialist future:
“Under Socialism no man will depend upon another for a job, or upon the self-interest or good will of another for a chance to earn bread for his wife and child. No man will work to make a profit for another, to enrich an idler, for the idler will no longer own the means of life. No man will be an economic dependent, and no man need feel the pinch of poverty that robs life of all joy and ends finally in the county house, the prison and potters’ field…
Industrial self-government, social democracy, will completely revolutionize the community life. For the first time in history the people will be truly free and rule themselves, and when this comes to pass poverty will vanish like mist before the sunrise.
When poverty goes out of the world the prison will remain only as a monument to the ages before light dawned upon darkness and civilization came to mankind.”
President Warren Harding pardoned Debs in 1921.
Debs supported himself during his campaign years with earnings from his writings and lectures.
From 1907 to 1912, Debs was the associate editor of Appeal to Reason, which was published in Girard, Kansas.
The magazine achieved a circulation of several hundred thousand, due to Debs` powerful writing. Debs also was regarded as one of the most gifted public speakers of his era, rivaling the great preachers and politicians of the time.
Having received his presidential pardon in December 1921, Debs arrived home in Terre Haute,where he received a tremendous welcome from thousands of Terre Haute citizens. Ill health prevented him from resuming active participation in politics.
Debs would spend the rest of his life trying to recover his health, which declined while in prison confinement.
He still wrote numerous articles and made several speeches, until 1926, when he was admitted to a hospital just outside of Chicago. He died there on October 20th, and his body was brought back to Terre Haute for burial.
A poster of Eugene V. Debs, hangs on the wall of Bernie Sanders office as a tribute to Sanders’ self-proclaimed hero.
Now Bernie, Congress’ only self-identified democratic socialist, campaigned with the movement’s newest star, New York City congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old former bartender who defeated one of the most powerful House Democrats in the primaries.
Her victory poured gasoline onto a fire that was already beginning to burn brighter. The Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) paid membership has hovered around 6,000 in recent years, said Allie Cohn, a member of the group’s national political team.
Last week, its paid membership hit 45,000 nationwide.
There is little distinction made between the terms “democratic socialism” and “socialism” in the group’s literature.
The DSA constitution describes their members as socialists who “reject an economic order based on private profit” and “share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships.”
The policies defining modern-day democratic socialism include: Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage, free college tuition and the abolition of the federal department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE.
Manhattan Institute fellow Brian Riedl went through the simple math of what free actually costs. It’s a lot.
It’s not just the free aspect, but the fact that the democratic socialists have made so many promises that must be paid for that will make it so tough to swallow for most voters.
Riedl looked at the 10-year costs of all the various promises made by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other self-described democratic socialists.
He was as generous as could be in his estimates, often accepting the democratic socialists’ cost estimate even when it was patently and absurdly too low.

It’s quite a laundry-list of promises with enormous costs: “Free college” ($807 billion); Social Security expansion ($188 billion); single-payer health care ($32 trillion); guaranteed jobs at $15 per hour plus benefits ($6.8 trillion); infrastructure ($1 trillion); student loan debt forgiveness ($1.4 trillion).
Net cost: about $42.5 trillion over 10 years, give or take a few hundred billion.
As it is, current federal estimates expect about $44 trillion in tax revenues over that same period, with a deficit of roughly $12.4 trillion. Remember: All this democratic socialist spending comes on top of what we’re already spending.
Even after massive cuts in other programs, such as slashing defense by half, or adding in phantom savings from supposed cuts in state health spending and anti-poverty programs, you still come up $34 trillion short over 10 years.
To raise $34 trillion, Riedl calculates, would require “seizing roughly 100% of all corporate profits as well as 100% of all family wage income and pass-though business income above the thresholds of $90,000 (single) or $150,000 (married), and absurdly assuming they all continue working.”
Or, he said, you could go to a VAT tax — a national sales tax on all goods and services. But it would have to be huge: a tax of 87% on everything you buy.
The bottom line is, these utopian ideas are not fiscally sane. And we mean that literally. They are a bizarre fantasy that should be discarded immediately by any reasonable person interested in an economically prosperous future.
That some believe that replacing capitalism with socialism makes you better off shows the profound failure of our nation’s education system.
Because it’s something that has never happened in the history of mankind. And young people, who are among socialism’s most ardent fans, don’t seem to even know this.
Eugene Debs, Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez?
Are these the people the next generation are looking to in order to solve all our problems?
I sure hope not.

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class.

One day while the class was in the lab, the professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting Communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist regime.

In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question.  He asked: “Do you know how to catch wild pigs?”

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.

The young man said that it was no joke. “You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free food.

When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence.

They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side.

The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America & Canada. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, welfare entitlements, free healthcare, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.
Here is thought to remember, Marx said, “Remove one freedom per generation and soon you will have no freedom and no one would have noticed.”

In 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt sought reelection to the presidency, some of his critics labeled him a “socialist.” The charge was so incendiary that the White House moved quickly to rebut it, labeling it an accusation “which no patriotic, honorable, decent citizen would purposefully inject into American affairs.”

Meanwhile, the overwhelming and seemingly improbable support among America’s youth for the 74-year-old Bernie Sanders—a self-described democratic socialist who once proudly defended communist dictatorships across the world—is the latest example of a historical illiteracy that treats socialism as a benign economic system that is more equitable and fair than capitalism.

A Pew poll from June 2015 shows a staggering 69 percent of voters under 30 expressing a willingness to vote for a socialist for president of the United States.

This was well before Sanders’ electoral successes in the early Democratic primaries.

A more recent YouGov survey found that voters under 30 actually have a higher opinion of socialism (43 percent in favor) than they do of capitalism (32 percent in favor).

“For older people, socialism is associated with communism and the Soviet Union and the Cold War,” says Michelle Diggles, a senior policy analyst at Third Way, a liberal D.C. think tank. “The oldest millennials were 8 years old when the Berlin Wall fell. They have never known a world where the Soviet Union exists. … The connotations associated with the word ‘socialism’ just don’t exist with millennials.”

Today, 20 percent of the world’s population continues to live under communist regimes, in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Laos and North Korea. These countries are some of the worst violators of human rights in history.

Maybe we should have seen this loss of historical memory coming.

Perhaps we should have heard the alarm bells of a 2011 Newsweek survey that reported 73 percent of Americans “couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War” in response to a question taken from the official test for U.S. citizenship.

Ignorance of socialism and America’s decades long struggle against it has become the norm, and the data suggest this norm will only get worse as a generation of Americans pass away and national memory fades.

For a generation with no memory of bomb shelter drills or sledgehammers smashing the Berlin Wall to pieces, the sad reality of life under socialist rule has been forgotten, and the lessons of the Cold War have been relegated to the “ash heap of history” alongside communism.

Instead, the concept of socialism has often been confused with liberalism. Socialism seems like a fine idea that means a more social equitable society for everyone—free health care and free education for starters.

 

Socialism is not roads, welfare, and free education. Socialism has always had a more ominous goal and shares close historical and ideological connections with more evil terms: Marxism and communism.

Karl Marx took socialism to what he viewed as its natural conclusion: The “abolition of private property.”

Class warfare is a long-running theme in socialism, even in this country. American socialist (and failed presidential candidate) Eugene Debs promised a world where “no man will work to make a profit for another.”

To break down the supremacy of one class,” the ultimate “aim of socialism, whether collectivist or communist, is to transform capitalist property into social property.”

The process of transforming “capitalist property”—that is, something legitimately purchased, inherited or otherwise earned—into “social property” for everyone is when socialism becomes sinister.

This promise of redistribution always involves winners and losers picked by the government. What if one has acquired capitalist property and does not wish it to become “social property?” Well, then the government might have to step in and take it.

The loss of private property—which ensures one’s independent livelihood— by force, erodes one’s ability to exercise free speech. What if the owner of some capitalist property taken by the government dares to protest its seizure?

That sort of dissent must be stifled to maintain order, so free speech is replaced by government-sanctioned propaganda. Unpopular opinions are shamed, and those expressing them are barred from forums like colleges and universities.

How do we know? Because we’ve seen it happen time and again. One Hundred years ago the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia showed the danger of combining socialist ideas with totalitarian violence, which created modern totalitarian communism.

It was Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin who expressed a sort of unifying theory, finally achieving Marx’s goals. “In striving for socialism,” Lenin said in 1917, “we are convinced it will develop into communism.” The result in more than 40 national experiments since then has been either totalitarian dictatorship or economic collapse, costing some 100 million lives before the communist experiment collapsed in Europe and the Soviet Union.

To be sure, not everyone in these societies was a loser, which gets at one of the great paradoxes of all socialist systems: the extreme inequality that allows a small group of party members to control the political and economic power in a country to the exclusion of an overwhelming majority of the citizens.

Only socialist countries have achieved the tragic distinction of launching rockets into outer space while millions of their citizens starve to death in famine.

Why are we seeing this rise in socialism?

There is a huge generation gap in today’s society when it comes to knowledge concerning socialism.

A survey and report by Emily Ekins a research fellow and director of polling at the Cato Institute recently published an article in The Federalist.

Her research points out that while a majority of voters under 30 support socialism, that figure drops to a mere 15 percent among those over 65. The reason for this is not difficult to see. It reflects a difference in personal experience.

Millennials either missed the Cold War entirely or were young children in its final years, with little or no conception of the triumph of liberty achieved with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

They do not understand the menace that socialism posed to the people it enslaved and to the free nations that it threatened.

The violence and brutality of the communist regimes of the past are irrelevant, just lines in the history book somewhere between the Spanish-American War and 9/11.

It’s more personal for older Americans. Perhaps some of their friends or neighbors—or they themselves—arrived in this country just ahead of Soviet tanks that were rolling into their homeland.

Perhaps they remember the stories of citizens of these supposed utopian socialist prison states arrested, “disappeared,” tortured, or shot simply for trying to cross a border.

Perhaps they remembered cowering under their school desks during drills in case of a nuclear attack (Duck and Cover), planned in communist Russia and launched from communist Cuba.

This is the context young American voters should know as they prepare to cast their votes in upcoming elections.

We cannot forget the lessons of history.

It seems like only a few years ago being called a socialist in American politics was an insult.

Millennials are simply not that alarmed by the idea of socialism.

In fact, millennials are the only age cohort in which more are favorable toward socialism than unfavorable. Young people are also more comfortable with a political candidate who describes him- or herself as a socialist.

So why are millennials so much more favorable toward socialism compared to older Americans?

Millennials Don’t Know What Socialism Is

First, millennials don’t seem to know what socialism is, and how it’s different from other styles of government. The definition of socialism is government ownership of the means of production—in other words, true socialism requires that government run the businesses.

 

However, a CBS/New York Times survey found that only 16 percent of millennials could accurately define socialism, while 30 percent of Americans over 30 could. (Incidentally, 56 percent of Tea Partiers accurately defined it. In fact, those most concerned about socialism are those best able to explain it.)

With so few able to define socialism, perhaps less surprisingly, Emily Ekins national survey found college-aged millennials were about as likely to have a favorable view of socialism (58 percent) as they were about capitalism (56 percent). Only about a quarter of Americans older than 55 have a favorable view of socialism.

Conservatives often use the word “socialist”, but they don’t realize that neither their audience nor even their political opponents really know what the word even means.

So what do millennials think socialism is? A Ekins survey asked respondents to use their own words to describe socialism and found millennials who viewed it favorably were more likely to think of it as just people being kind or “being together,” as one millennial put it.

Others thought of socialism as just a more generous social safety net where “the government pays for our own needs,” as another explained it.

If socialism is framed the way Bernie Sanders does, as just being a generous social safety net, it’s much harder to undermine among millennials.

This narrative says government is a benevolent caretaker and pays for everybody’s needs .

However, young people do not like the true definition of socialism—the idea of government running businesses. If socialism is framed as government running Uber, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, etc., it does not go over well.

 

But there must be more to the story, because most Americans have an unfavorable opinion of socialism despite not being able to define it outright.

So why do millennials have a less negative view of socialism?

Again, they don’t know their history.

Throughout the Cold War, socialism in the public mind became associated with clearly visualized economic, political, religious, and moral evils.

A major reason Americans realized the dangers of socialism in the past was that it was linked to the foreign threat of the Soviet Union and tyranny—and that is something regular people can understand.

Because Americans already associated socialism with their enemy, people were more willing to accept the reasons socialism was wrong.

Thus, throughout the Cold War, socialism in the public mind became associated with clearly visualized economic, political, religious, and moral evils.

First, it was clear that Soviet socialism was at odds with the American-style free enterprise system.

The USSR had a completely centrally planned economy with shortages, rationing, long lines, less innovation, less variety, lower-quality goods and services, and a lower standard of living as the consequence.

Thus, free-market economists had an easier time convincing Americans that American capitalism was far preferable to Soviet socialism.

Second, the Soviet socialist system was a system of political repression that disregarded human freedom.

Soviet socialism required total control not just over the economy but also over people’s lives—it demanded conformity, not autonomy, as a centralized bureaucratic force attempted to achieve equality of outcomes.

 

Thus Soviet officials sought to stamp out any source of possible opposition to state authority, including from artists, musicians, religious clergy, and even regular people making jokes or raising complaints about the government.

The Soviet socialist system was a system of political repression that disregarded human freedom, particularly evidenced by it sending tens of millions to forced labor camps.

Third, Americans also saw the moral dangers of socialism. For instance, in recent study involving interviews with older Tea Party members, many explained socialism in moral terms.

They would reference the USSR and explain how socialism hurts the human spirit because it takes the drive out of people and makes them dependent, thereby undermining their self-worth and self-motivation.

They saw socialism as inherently demoralizing for punishing producers and achievers and rewarding the lazy. Thus, socialism became a moral evil, as well as a political and economic one.

Fourth, many Americans came to view socialism as threat to religion.  The USSR’s state-sponsored anti-religious campaigns in efforts to promote atheism shut down most of the churches and decimated clergy.

Given how the USSR treated religious groups, Americans came to view socialism as a system that attempted to replace faith and community with government.

Millennials reached adulthood after the Cold War ended, however, and they don’t remember hearing much about Soviet socialism. Neither have they learned much about it in school.

To teach the truth about socialism in our schools today. is political suicide. I have been a victim of this practice as have many fellow teachers I know. If you want to keep your job, support common core, revisionist history, the removal of civics, American history, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence from the classrooms at all levels from grade school through college.

This lack of knowledge has allowed the progressive movement to promote the concept of socialism that everyone, regardless of his or her achievements and efforts, should be rewarded equally or at least rewarded according to his or her needs—“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” as Karl Marx stated in the Communist Manifesto..

At its most basic level, this is similar to the debate over kids’ participation trophies. Should all kids get a trophy regardless of what they do? Or should only kids who earn the trophies receive them?

In Emily Ekin’s research she found college-aged Americans were the only age group who thought all kids should get a trophy. After that, older cohorts split in favor of the winners getting trophies.

The fact that millennials disproportionately think that all kids deserve a trophy regardless of achievement probably at least partly explains their disproportionate support for Bernie Sanders & Alexandria Ocassio Cotez.

While millennials could forever be a “everybody gets a trophy” generation, as young people take on more responsibilities—buy a house, get married, have kids, get a promotion, start paying noticeable taxes, and work long hours—they may start to think their hard work and sacrifices should be rewarded more and socialism may not be the best answer.

We can only hope.

Alexander Hamilton had a love affair that almost cost him his political career.

Met a girl named Maria Reynolds in the summer of 1791.

At the time Hamilton was serving as the 1st Secretary of the Treasury in the Cabinet of George Washington.

Maria met Hamilton by simply knocking at his door.

She told him that she and her hubby had moved to Philadelphia from N.Y. and that once here her hubby left her for another woman.

Maria said she was broke and that she had heard he was a generous man who might be able to help her.

Hamilton said he didn’t have any cash on hand but if she left her address he would send some by messenger or bring it to her himself before the day was over.

That evening Hamilton took Maria $30.

Although she said she was broke she was living in a fine townhouse and when he arrived she led him to the bedroom. Hamilton claims nothing happened!

Hamilton was 36, Maria was 23.

Hamilton continued to see her throughout the summer of 1791.

He was able to do this because his wife and kids were spending the summer in N.Y.

After Hamilton’s family returned the affair continued.

During the winter Maria’s husband returned to her and they reconciled. However, Maria and Hamilton still carried on with the affair.

James Reynolds (Maria’s hubby) now call on Hamilton and asks for a job at the Treasury.

Hamilton told him he had no openings but he would be willing to help him find employment.

A short time later Reynolds called on Hamilton again and again he asked for a job. Hamilton said once again that he had no openings. Reynolds throws a fit and said that Hamilton had promised him a job.

Hamilton now began to suspect that he was going to be blackmailed by the Reynolds into giving Mr. Reynolds a position so Hamilton stops seeing Maria.

Things went fine for a while but in December, Hamilton came home and found a note from Maria stating that her Hubby knew about their affair and was now threatening to tell Hamilton’s wife.

In the note Maria asked Hamilton to come see her immediately.

The next day Hamilton got a letter from James Reynolds in which he claimed that Hamilton had ruined his marriage and therefore wanted “satisfaction”.

Reynolds now came to see Hamilton at the Treasury.

When Hamilton asked Renolds what it would take to make this go away, Reynolds evaded the issue.

After several more meetings, Reynolds finally told Hamilton that for $1000 he would leave town and leave his wife.

Although Hamilton was Sec of the Treasury he was not rich. However he agreed to pay and did so in two installments. (He kept all correspondence and receipts)

A month later Hamilton got another letter from Reynolds. He had not left Maria as he said he would and asked that Hamilton meet them both at their home.

What Reynolds proposed was that Hamilton could continue to see Maria but only as a friend. Right!

In no time Maria and Hamilton have resumed the love affair. Reynolds was aware of what was going on but would simply look the other way.

The catch was that Reynolds would now come on a regular basis to Hamilton for “loans”.

This arrangement continued on well into 1792.

Then problems arose. James Reynolds was arrested and imprisoned for his part in a scheme which swindled money from veterans of the American Revolution.

What Reynolds was doing was to obtain lists of Vets from the Treasury Dept. from corrupt workers in the Dept.

The Vets had been issued IOU’s for back pay. Reynolds would go to the Vets and buy the IOU’s which they thought were worthless for ten cents on the dollar.

Reynolds would then cash them in.

Reynolds got caught and now asked Hamilton to use his influence to get him out of jail. Hamilton said no way.

Reynolds now started to spread the rumor in the jail that he had evidence that could get Hamilton hanged.

Word got out to Hamilton’s political opponents and they now went to talk to Reynolds.

Reynolds showed them notes for the loans that Hamilton had given him and that was all it took to convince them that Hamilton was corrupt.

In Dec. 1792 3 members of Congress called on Hamilton and confronted him with the evidence.

Hamilton was mad at first but then realized he was in big trouble. He now gave a full confession of his love affair and how he was being blackmailed.

Midway through the confession the congressmen begged him to stop but he continued on producing the love notes and the receipts for the blackmail money. (The Congressmen didn’t want him to embarrass himself further.)

The Congressmen left convinced that Hamilton had committed no crimes and was himself a victim.

Before they left, Hamilton made them swear they would tell no one. Right!

Hamilton now broke off the relationship with Maria.

Needless to say the story did leak out and all the members of Congress soon knew about the affair. Although the public was still in the dark.

in 1795 Hamilton resigned as Sect of the Treasury and returned to his law practice in N.Y.

In 1800 the Federalist party wanted to run Hamilton for President. Somehow, however, the Democrats got their hands on the story of Hamilton’s affair and published it in a pamphlet.

The author, a man named James Cavendish stated in the pamphlet that Hamilton fabricated the affair story to cover up for his crooked dealings with Reynolds.

Hamilton now writes to the three Congressmen who had sworn not to tell and demanded to know who squealed.

the only one who didn’t write back was James Monroe. Hamilton confronted Monroe.

Monroe said he didn’t do it. Hamilton called him a liar and challenged him to a duel.

Had it not been for Monroe’s lawyer and Hamilton’s bro-in-law who were both at the meeting these to statesmen would have fought a duel.

Hamilton now decides the only thing to do is go public with the story of his affair.

Hamilton now wrote a pamphlet called “Observations”. which immediately became a best seller.

Hamilton’s wife and family remained loyal to him. The only one they hated was Monroe for squealing.

In publishing his pamphlet Hamilton sullied his name as a good husband, but saved his political career by being honest.

His picture on the ten dollar bill is a testament to that fact.

Now it is hard to believe, but the story does not end there.

Following the Louisiana purchase in 1803, New England and New York federalists conspired with Aaron Burr to secede New York and new England from the united states

 

Burr was to run for governor of New York then join New York with New England and form a new country.

 

Burr at the time was vice president of the U.S. under Thomas Jefferson.

 

When the secessionist plot went awry Aaron Burr blamed Alexander Hamilton, the leading federalist of the period and a long-time political enemy of Burr.

 

Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel.

 

In July 1804 at Weehawken New Jersey the vice pres of the U.S. Aaron Burr, shot and killed the leader of the opposing political party, Alexander Hamilton. Burr now fled to escape arrest. This would be like Vice President Pence shooting Chuck Shumer.

 

Burr now conspired with French and Spanish settlers to create a new country made up of Mexico, the western United States, and the Louisiana Purchase. He called on the commander of the western American army and governor of all of the Louisiana Purchase territory.

 

This man was James Wilkinson.

 

Wilkinson was himself a traitor to the U.S. In exchange for a pension, he provided military and political info to the Spanish.

 

When Jefferson sent Louis and Clark out west to see what they had bought, Wilkinson contacted the Spanish and suggested they hunt down and arrest the explorers.

 

Now Wilkinson joined up with Burr and betrayed not only the U.S. but also the Spanish in the plot to have Spanish settlers join up in Burr’s new country free from Spanish control.

 

When Wilkinson realized that burr ‘s plan was not going to work, he betrayed Burr and had him arrested in Mississippi in 1806 and sent him back to Washington to be tried for treason.

 

Unbelievably Burr was acquitted on the grounds that he had committed no overt act of treason. In other words, he was not successful in pulling off his plot.

 

This entire episode was known as The Burr Conspiracy.

Now folks, I’ll be the first to agree with you that our federal government is out of control. What I find fascinating is that we act totally surprised with each new wrongdoing reported every night on the evening news.

The difference between you and me, is that, knowing what I do about American history, nothing surprises me.

That is what scares me the most about our current situation.

I am amazed how “We the people” are convinced that our government can be fully trusted and when faced with unbelievable stories, we say. “It could never happen here.”

It has happened here, and could happen again. Study your history!

 

 

James Monroe (1758-1831), the fifth U.S. president, oversaw major westward expansion of the U.S. and strengthened American foreign policy in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine, a warning to European countries against further colonization and intervention in the Western Hemisphere.

Dropped out of college to fight in the American Revolution

He is the guy holding the American flag in the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware.

Negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with France for Jefferson

Presidency was known as the era of good feelings because America was feeling great.

Worked to pass the Mo. Compromise that admitted Missouri as a slave state in 1821 and extended Missouri’s southern border all the way to the pacific. Thereafter everything north of the line would be free, south of it slave.

Best known for the Monroe Doctrine which was actually written by Sect. of State, John Quincy Adams. It basically told Europe, you stay over there. we will stay over here, and we won’t have any problems.

He also signed the treaty buying Florida from Spain.

 

James K. Polk (1795-1849) served as the 11th U.S. president from 1845 to 1849.

During his tenure, America’s territory grew by more than one-third and extended across the continent for the first time. Before his presidency, Polk served in the Tennessee legislature and the U.S. Congress; in 1839 he became governor of Tennessee.

Ran on a platform to expand the US to the Pacific under what he called Manifest Destiny.

Manifest Destiny, was a phrase coined in 1845, that expressed the philosophy that drove westward expansion in the 1800’s. Manifest Destiny held that the United States was destined by God to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent.

In keeping with this concept, Polk negotiated with England to get exclusive rights to the Oregon Territory.

He then provoked a conflict with Mexico by sending US troops into disputed territory along the Rio Grande triggering the Mexican American war.

The small town of Brazito between Eldon and Jeff City, Missouri, was named by settlers there who had fought in the Battle of El Brazito, during the conflict.

Winning this conflict handily, we now acquired Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah.

This now triggered the issue of whether these new lands should be free or slave. Bringing the issue of slavery to a head once again.

 

Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) served in the army for some four decades, commanding troops in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War (1832) and the second of the Seminole Wars (1835-1842). He became a full-fledged war hero through his service in the Mexican War, which broke out in 1846 after the U.S. annexation of Texas. He was elected president in 1848.

Taylor, known as old rough and ready, comes in after Polk and has to deal with the issue of slavery in the new territories acquired from the Mexican American War.

Taylor was from a big slave owning family in Virginia and spent his life in the US Army.

Ran for president but people didn’t know his politics because he had never been elected to anything.

Won the election in 1848 and pushed for national unity. California had petitioned congress to be admitted as a free state. Southerners threw a fit since Mo. Compromise line split California in half. So they argued half of California should be slave.

The Whig party in Congress was pushing for admitting California as a free state and allowing the southwest territories to decide for themselves.

Taylor said no way and also threatened to send in troops anywhere southerners threatened secession.

We were on the brink of civil war, but it didn’t happen. Taylor suddenly died in office after eating a bowl of cherries and cream at a July 4th celebration at the as yet unfinished Washington Monument. Northerners were convinced that southerners in Texas poisoned him.

This rumor remained until 1991, when his body was exhumed and tests were performed indicating that he was allergic to cherries and that was what killed him.

A moderate, Vice President Millard Fillmore assumed the office of president upon the death of Taylor, thus averting war.

Ulysses Grant (1822-1885) commanded the victorious Union army during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and served as the 18th U.S. president from 1869 to 1877.

After spending a decade in the army and serving in the Mexican-American War, Grant resigned his post in 1854 when he was reportedly forced to resign from the army for being caught drunk on duty.

He spent the next seven years flopping as a farmer, real estate agent and rent collector. He was squeaking out a living by selling firewood on St. Louis street corners.

By this time he was married and had 4 kids. His father in law then gave him a job working in his general store in Galena, Illinois.

One morning he saw the local militia practicing in the street in front of the store. Grant started laughing at them. He told them they didn’t have a clue what they were doing. They said, “If you know so much, come down here and show us.

He did. After all, Grant had been in the military and had graduated West Point, although it was at the bottom of his class.

The boys in the militia were so impressed with Grant that they convinced him to join up with them in the Union Army.

Although known for his drinking, Abraham Lincoln apparently didn’t care. When a group of congressmen once alleged that Grant was a drunk, the President supposedly responded by asking what kind of whiskey the General drank. They asked why and Lincoln said, “If makes them all like Grant I want a barrel delivered to every one of my generals.”

Grant was elected as president in 1868 and served 2 terms. It was his first time in an elected position.

Grant was honest, but unfortunately surrounded himself with corrupt politicians who took advantage of him.

It was not all bad. He secured ratification of the 15th amendment that allowed black men to vote and he literally declared war on the KKK in the south following the Civil War.

 

Harry Truman (1884-1972), the 33rd U.S. president, assumed office following the death of President Franklin Roosevelt.

He was a small town boy from Missouri who worked his way up through local politics to become a US Senator.

He now came to head the budget oversight committee in Congress.

He noticed a tremendous amount of money couldn’t be accounted for and reported it to the press.

Truman kept talking to the press and eventually, FDR called him to his office. He said, listen here little man, I cannot tell you where the money is going, but you will immediately stop your investigation and make this go away. Do I make myself clear?

Truman said yes sir and proceeded to tell the press he found the money and it was going to dam projects for the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Turns out the money was going to a secret project to process uranium and build the atom bomb.

When FDR ran for his 3rd term in office, there was no doubt he would win, he just needed a running mate. So he asked his staff to find that little guy from Missouri that knows how to keep his mouth shut.

FDR died in 45 and his vice president, Harry Truman, the guy that kept his mouth shut, now became President of the US.

Famous for his quote, “The Buck Stops Here”.

Made the decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan and pushed for the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe following WWII.

Made the decision to fight the spread of communism worldwide which became known as the Truman Doctrine.

This position eventually led to the Korean Conflict and the Cold War.

The Cold Civil War

Trump and his critics despise each other. All that’s needed now is a spark.

Now folks, I meet with some great friends once a month at a local coffee shop. Some lean far left, some far right, some independent. We always have lively, and yet friendly political discussions.

The last time we met I triggered a vigorous debate.

I suggested that our current situation in this country was similar to what we went through leading up to the Civil War.

I stated that just like slavery, the new issue of late term abortions could be the spark to trigger a new civil war.

Now I can tell you, this raised a lot of eyebrows, especially with a good friend who happens to be African American and who leans to the left.

His first reaction was outrage that I would compare slavery to the current situation. However, like I said, we are friends, and value one another’s opinions. So He allowed me to continue. That’s why I love this guy. He said, “This should be interesting”.

I explained that we first needed to take the issue of morality out of the equation and look at this comparison strictly from a political standpoint. A very hard thing to do.

Don’t get me wrong. Slavery was an abominable practice and a stain on our country’s heritage and it did indeed trigger the Civil War. But let’s take a closer look.

Only one percent of southerners owned slaves at the time of the conflict. Yet when the war broke out, 100’s of thousands of Southerners volunteered to fight for the Confederacy.

Why? Surely they weren’t willing to risk their lives to fight for a bunch of rich plantation owners so they could keep their slaves. There had to be more to it, and there was.

Now follow along and see if you can see what I see in the way of similarities between 1861 and 2019.

Now in 1861, 80% of the South’s population worked on farms. Look at a map of election results. Where are the Trump supporters? That’s right, in the flyover country, the grain belt, rural America.

In 1861, the north had virtual control of all manufacturing in the US. As a result, people, including immigrants flocked to the big cities to find work. So, you had a choice, scratch out a living in the agrarian south, or head to the city to work in one of the thousands of available jobs in manufacturing.

Easy choice. So by 1861, the population of the north outnumbered the south by a 2 to 1 margin.

Have you seen a map of the results from the last Presidential election? Turns out that there are enough people living in NY, California, and Pennsylvania, that, if we simply went by popular vote, instead of the Electoral College, those three states could outvote all of the remaining states in every election and have complete control.

In 1861, half of all foreign born Americans lived in NY, Mass., and Pennsylvania. So the northern population continued to increase.

In 1861, northerners stated that southerners were poor dumb, dirt farmers.

In 2019 Conservatives are referred to as bitter deplorables who cling to guns and religion.

In 1861, the northern politicians were wealthy individuals supported by the railroads and the manufacturing industry. They were in it to make money and could care less about the terrible conditions of the common man working in the factories.

In the South, the only ones with the free time to run for office, were the rich plantation owners who could care less about the other 99% of white southerners who eeked out an existence on small family farms. The sole interest of the plantation owners was to protect the free labor force they found in slavery.

So in 1861, we had politicians who represented big business and southern cotton plantations. The rights of northern factory workers and southern farmers were not a consideration to the members of Congress be they northern or southern. Sound familiar?

Now one final comparison. All of this talk of the Governor of Virginia and the issue of appearing in black face in a college yearbook. Add to this the Kavanaugh debacle. For this I have one word. Hypocrisy.

Members of Congress are great at throwing stones at the other side until the same dirt falls upon them. And yes there is a comparison to 1861.

By 1861 most of the world saw slavery as an outmoded, inferior means of production. That’s right, they looked at it as a means of production. Not a moral issue. What ended slavery in nearly all of the industrialized countries, including England, was the fact that economists realized that in order to sustain an economy you need wage earners who can buy products.

Slaves did not earn a wage and were thus seen as a detriment to economic development. The solution was simple. Pay them and subject them to wage slavery just like the rest of us!

The North saw this happen in England and quickly followed suit. The problem was, Northerners owned a huge number of slaves who worked the docks and the factories.

Now in 1861 you could buy 160 acres of land for $40. A slave brought anywhere from $1500 to $3000.

Northern slave owners were not willing to take that kind of financial hit. So what did they do? That’s right, they sold their slaves to Southerners. A truly cruel practice where husbands and wives and mothers and children were separated, sold, and shipped south to new owners.

Now this took time. So when laws were passed emancipating the slaves of the north. Northern owners were given one year to be rid of their slaves.

In addition, in many states, northerners who owned slave children, born after a certain date, were allowed to keep them till they turned 25, then set them free.

Now those northern slaves who gained their freedom were subject to northern state laws that said they had no citizenship and could not vote.

They were forced to ride in separate RR cars and only on the top of stage coaches. They had to attend separate schools and could not occupy cabins on ships.

They could not dine in white restaurants or stay in white hotels.

The jobs they were able to get were those that no one else would do.

So, when we talk about our current Congress being a bunch of hypocrites, think back to what I just shared with you.

Folks, these are just a few of the comparisons I can make between our current situation and the situation in 1861. I could go on with things like tariffs and foreign relations, but I think you can see where I am coming from.

Bottom line, in 1861 and 2019 we have a have a polarized country led by a polarized Federal Government that is totally out of touch with “We the People.”

Did slavery trigger the Civil War? You bet it did. Was it the only issue. Absolutely not. 99 % of the southerners saw a federal government out of control, wielding tremendous power and now using that power to tell the richest and most powerful southerners, the rich plantation owning politicians, that they were going to take their property, the slaves.

Again, leave morality out of this. That 99% asked themselves, “If they can do that to those rich fat cats, what chance do I have against an all powerful federal government?”

So jumping back to the current situation. If the government can decide to allow late term abortions, Tax me at 70%, take away my guns, force me to drive an electric car, and eliminate the cattle and airline industries, where will it stop?

Shoot  folks, any one of those issues could be the spark that triggers the next conflict.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating a modern Civil War.

There is a new term for what is happening and I think it is perfect.

We are in a Cold Civil War.

A fellow by the name of William Smith recently used the term in an article in The Guardian on September 11, 2018.

Smith states that there is a sense that a terrible clash is about to occur.

There are many reasons for Trump supporters to despise the establishment: endless wars in which the brunt of casualties are borne by those from Trump country, grotesque public debt generated by vote buying, a two-tiered educational system that ensures income inequality, pervasive government surveillance, open and lawless borders, and on and on. Our elites bring to mind the French aristocracy under Louis XVI, feigning formality yet, behind the scenes at least, corrupt, incompetent, and ruthless.  

Ultimately what is most disconcerting is that the divisiveness is not just about Trump: it’s deeply rooted in two diametrically opposed views. America is no longer one country. These two groups view their national story from totally different stances.

Since the 1960s, America’s leaders have been educated through an immersion in the culturally radical teachings that dominate the curricula of our best universities.

It has become a primary goal of higher education to sensitize the future establishment to issues of race, gender, and class, and to raise awareness of global challenges such as climate change.

Elite education is no longer designed to hand down a common cultural tradition and to serve as a way to teach kids our American heritage.

In our schools today, it is taught instead that America is a great obstacle to the empowerment of oppressed minorities and the central driver of global crises.

A core teaching in the humanities and social sciences is that the Western heritage represents a monstrous oppression myth conjured up by dead European white men, which, has the full support of the Democratic Party.

Trump and his supporters hate that this is happening. They believe that the establishment has taken a knee against its own country.

Trump supporters, unabashedly embrace traditional American history and seek to elevate it by “making America great again.” Globalism, multiculturalism, and political correctness, are viewed quite simply as unpatriotic, an attempt to bleach away the collective memory of the American story.  

Trump understands the worldview of his base and capitalizes on it by attacking NFL “kneelers,” the liberal “fake news” media, and those who refuse to say “Merry Christmas.”

At the same time, he loudly rallies around traditional symbols of American authority such as the flag, the police, and the military.

The Liberals and Conservatives live in a different moral universes, and their unrelenting political warfare derives from both groups’ understanding that power flows to those whose narratives the people believe.

William Smith goes on to say “This will not end well, I fear. Goodwill and moderation exist on neither side. It may be that a civil war looms on the horizon. All that’s required now is a spark because every cultural accelerant is now in place.

Given Trump’s demeanor and the viciousness of his opponents, compromise seems unlikely. Most of the American media will blame any conflagration on Trump, and certainly he will deserve some of the fault.

But American elites are the revolutionary children of the ’60s and ’70s, proud despoilers of their country’s history and tradition.

I also, recently read an article by Charles R. Kessler in the October Issue of Imprimus (Hillsdale College)

He brings up another great point as to why we are in a cold civil war.

He states, “One vision is based on the original Constitution as amended. This is the Constitution grounded in the natural rights of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution written in 1787 and ratified in 1788. To simplify matters we may call this “the conservative Constitution”.

The other vision is based on what Progressives and liberals, for 100 years now, have called “the living Constitution.” This term implies that the original Constitution is dead—or at least on life support—and that in order to remain relevant to our national life, the original Constitution must be infused with new meaning and new ends and therefore with new duties, rights, and powers.

The idea of the living Constitution originated in America’s new departments of political and social science in the late nineteenth century—but it was soon at the very forefront of Progressive politics.

One of the doctrine’s prime formulators, Woodrow Wilson, had contemplated as a young scholar a series of constitutional amendments to reform America’s national government into a kind of parliamentary system—a system able to facilitate faster political change. But he quickly realized that his plan to amend the Constitution was going nowhere.

Plan B was the living Constitution. While keeping the outward forms of the old Constitution, the idea of a living Constitution would change utterly the spirit in which the Constitution was understood.

The resulting Constitution—let us call it “the liberal Constitution”—is not a constitution of natural rights or individual human rights, but of historical or evolutionary right. Wilson called the spirit of the old Constitution Newtonian, after Isaac Newton, and that of the new Constitution Darwinian, after Charles Darwin.

By Darwinian, Wilson meant that instead of being difficult to amend, the liberal Constitution would be easily amenable to experimentation and adjustment. The point of the old Constitution was to keep the times in tune with the Constitution; the purpose of the new is to keep the Constitution in tune with the times.

Until the 1960s, most liberals believed it was inevitable that their living Constitution would replace the conservative Constitution through a kind of slow-motion evolution.

But during the sixties, the so-called New Left abandoned evolution for revolution, and partly in reaction to that, defenders of the old Constitution began not merely to fight back, but to call for a return to America’s first principles.

When it became clear, by the late 1970s and 1980s, that the conservatives weren’t going away, the cold civil war was on.

In order to understand what our forefathers meant by freedom of religion, we have to go back to their history.

We all know that the Puritans, some call them Pilgrims, came here to flee religious persecution.

But what is the story behind that persecution?

It must have been pretty bad for these people to uproot their families, give up everything, and risk their very lives to make the hazardous voyage across the Atlantic to settle in a wilderness half a world away.

Let’s start with Henry VIII (yes of Herman’s Hermit’s fame)

England at the time was a Catholic nation.

Henry had no problems with Catholicism.

What he did have a problem with, was the pope.

Henry wanted to divorce his wife Catherine so he could marry his pregnant girlfriend Anne Boleyn.

Now Henry failed to tell the Pope about the girlfriend. He argued he should be granted the divorce because Catherine failed to provide him a male heir. Pope said that doesn’t cut it.

So Henry throws a fit. and throws all of the Catholic Clergy out of England, seizes all the church land, and forms his own church; The Anglican Church.

The Pope promptly excommunicated him.

Henry appoints himself head of the Anglican Church, makes it the state religion of England, requires it be supported with government taxation, and appoints his own Archbishop of Canterbury to run the day to day operations.

The first official act of the new Archbishop was to grant Henry his divorce and to send his wife Catherine off to the nunnery!

The structural changes Henry made to the English church (now called the Anglican church or the Church of England meant that the ruler of England was now also head of the Church of England, and so every time the ruler changed, there might be a major change in religion.

This is where the turmoil started.

Bear in mind, prior to Henry you were all Catholics living in England.

Henry just threw that out the window and you are now required to follow and support his new religion. People now literally feared for their salvation.

After Henry’s death, Edward (his son) was dominated by advisors who pushed England toward Calvinism (protestants who sprang forth from the teachings of Martin Luther)

When Edward died, Mary (Henry’s daughter by the divorced Catherine) shifted religious policy toward Catholicism.

So you were required by law to be Catholic, then Calvinist, then back to Catholic.

When Mary died, Elizabeth (another of Henry’s daughters) had no patience with any religion, Protestant or Catholic.  The result of Henry’s changes created an Anglican/Catholic/Protestant split that eventually led to religious civil war.

Now comes Elizabeth I (1558-1603).

Elizabeth managed to keep religious troubles to a minimum with a policy that included as many people as possible within the church of England, and persecuted any radical opposition on either the Catholic or the Protestant side.

One problem remained. Who would succeed Elizabeth?  Elizabeth never married and had no child.

 

Her advisors partly solved this problem by preparing for a transfer of the crown to a distant cousin of Elizabeth, the Scottish king James I (1603-1625) , who now becomes the first of the Stuart monarchs of England.

He continued exploration and colonization of the New World (our first colony, Jamestown, is named after him).

Now the colonies became a great place to get rid of paupers and religious dissenters.

These folks, who had no economic opportunity in England could have a chance at becoming wealthy in New World.  Likewise religious groups (Pilgrims, Puritans, Catholics) could go to new world instead of causing problems at home.

James also tried to continue Elizabeth’s policies in religion.  The King James version of the Bible contributed greatly to Christian unity, and, whatever differences English speaking Christians’ might have, for the next three centuries they at least shared a common Bible translation.

James had specifically asked his translators for a version of the Bible all could agree on, and the translators did this by relying on direct, literal translation from Greek and Hebrew rather than resorting to potentially controversial “interpretation” in place of translation.

Unfortunately for James, the religious situation began to get out of hand despite his best efforts.  Some Catholics had thought James would attempt to reunite with Roman Catholic church.

When he didn’t, some Catholic extremists were angry and wanted to kill James and the parliamentary leaders who might block a return to Catholicism.
Anti-Catholic sentiment led to the growth of Puritanism, a movement wanting to “purify” the church of England by removing all things associated with Catholic tradition (e.g., Christmas!).

The problems faced by James grew greater under his son and successor Charles I.

When Charles summoned parliament to ask for the authority to collect more tax revenue, parliament refused: they first wanted Charles agreement to what they called the Petition of Right, an agreement from the king that he would not resort to arbitrary arrests and imprisonments, arbitrary taxes, etc.).

Charles refused to grant the petition.

Eventually, Charles in frustration decided to do away with parliament, bringing about the period of his “personal rule,” 1629-1640.

Parliament didn’t meet for more than ten years, and Charles collected taxes without parliamentary authorization.  He could now levy a tax on those not going to church. 

But Charles made a bad mistake.  He now tried to unite the churches of England and Scotland by imposing the Anglican prayer book on the Scots.

The Scots threw a fit, and began a rebellion. Charles didn’t have the resources to deal with problem, so, at long last, he called parliament into session again.

Would parliament agree to increased tax revenue?  Not unless the king consented to the Petition of Right!

Members of parliament were now encouraging and supporting the Scottish rebellion.  Well, enough is enough.

Charles now sends his soldiers in the parliament building itself with orders to arrest treasonous members of parliament.  This was a mistake: Charles angered the London mob by his actions, and touched of riots which drove him out of London.

Once outside London, Charles made preparations for a come-back, gathering sufficient forces to reclaim London and re-establish his authority. Parliament  was in trouble, and needed an army of its own.

Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan and a member of Parliament, now gathers together his fellow Puritans and creates an army known as the Roundheads (because of short haircuts).

Cromwell and the roundheads now defeated Charles’ forces, Charles was captured and beheaded. and parliament was in control. (Forefather’s grandparents cut the King’s head off over taxes!)

They now turned to Cromwell, giving him the title Lord Protector.

So England has gone from Catholic, to Anglican, back to Catholic, and now Puritan!

Cromwell died 1658, and everyone wondered what would happen next. Both the army and parliament eventually agreed that the best thing to do was to go back to having a king, and Charles’ son, Charles II, was asked to take the throne.

Most English were glad to have a king again, and glad the Puritans were not in control anymore.

But the religious situation in England was a mess.

Charles II and Parliament now passed the Clarendon code.

It stated that those who would not support the Church of England and its teachings could not hold political office and would suffer other losses of privilege.

Charles’s successor was his brother James. James himself had converted to Catholicism, something parliament found hard to take.

Because his older daughters (Mary and Anne) were good protestants and because James was old, parliament tolerated having a Catholic king for the time being.

Mary was married to one of the leading protestant leaders on the continent (William of Orange), and most were convinced that there would be a protestant leader in short order.

But then James fathered a son who, by English law, took precedence over his sisters. The son was going to be raised Catholic, and this was too much for the anti-Catholics.  They had to get rid of James!

So Parliament asks Mary and her husband William to replace James.  This led to bloodless coup.

With no support, James fled England and William and Mary took the throne.

You guessed it. The king and Queen of England, who now head the Anglican Church, are Protestant!

It is this background of religious turmoil that drove the Puritans to America.

It is also, this history, which our forefathers carried that inspired them to forever remove a state run religion from our government.

“I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
― Winston S. Churchill

 

House Democrats are treading carefully when it comes to talk of a 70 percent marginal tax rate on income above $10 million, an idea floated by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Many Democrats are supportive of the freshman phenom’s call for higher taxes on the rich, but even some progressives are stopping short of endorsing that high a marginal rate.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she thinks “the fact that people are not paying their fair share is a problem and the millionaires and billionaires are the ones where that has to rest.”

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a leader of the progressive caucus in the last Congress, said that while it’s important to make sure that “everybody’s carrying their load,” he didn’t know if 70 percent “would be the right number or not.”

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said he wasn’t sure about a specific top rate but said that Ocasio-Cortez is “not off-base.”

Ocasio-Cortez floated the idea as a way to help pay for a “Green New Deal,” a proposal aimed at taking action on climate change.

More broadly, the new lawmaker has argued that a progressive tax system with higher taxes on the wealthy is well worth considering as the country looks for ways to pay for initiatives on health care and other safety-net issues.

She also made the argument that such high rates are hardly unprecedented.

“You look at our tax rates back in the ’60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system your tax rate, you know, let’s say, from zero to $75,000 maybe 10 percent or 15 percent, et cetera. But once you get to, like, the tippy-tops — on your 10 millionth dollar — sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

She noted that a high marginal rate wouldn’t hit most Americans, and that it would also only take a fair portion of a wealthy person’s income. A 70 percent marginal rate on income of $10 million would be effective only on a person’s income above $10 million.

“That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more,” she said in a recent “60 Minutes” interview.

Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent told The Hill that the congresswoman’s remarks on the show were “more conceptual” than a specific proposal for a 70 percent marginal rate.

The top marginal tax rate in the United States was above 90 percent in much of the 1950s and early 1960s, and the rate was 70 percent as recently as 1980.That year, the 70-percent rate applied to income over $215,400 for married couples.

During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the top rate was first cut to 50 percent and then lowered again to 28 percent.

In the last 25 years, the top rate has been in the mid-to-high 30s, with tax law lowering the top rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. In 2019, the 37-percent rate applies to income over $612,350 for a married couple filing jointly.

Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a 70 percent marginal tax rate does have the support of another freshman progressive lawmaker: Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who said she could potentially see herself introducing or sponsoring legislation down the line.

“I think we have a decisive mandate from this electorate, this 116th Congressional class to be bold. I think every creative solution needs to be on the table,” Pressley told The Hill. “And from a values based perspective to tax those, you know, who earn $10 million a year, I think it’s exactly what we should be doing.”

Pressley said while she and most members are currently focused on the partial government shutdown, she looks forward to continuing having a dialogue with like-minded members as they consider crafting policy.

Now folks, I am no expert on the economy. I am just an old history professor who has a talent for remembering events and significant people of the past.

Well when I heard about this 70% tax proposal I thought about an individual you may all find interesting.

His name is William John Henry Boetcker.

He was born in Hamburg, Germany on July 17, 1873. At the age of 8, his father, a foreman in a factory, was carried home on a stretcher, disabled for life when he was beaten by striking workers.

When he was about 14, Boetcker started a book. Despite his father’s assertion that he was crazy, he worked hard and finished it at age 16. It was called Neuester Rätzelschatz and was a collection of puzzles and mind problems.

A newspaper described him as Germany’s youngest author, and this drew the attention of the Countess Von Waldersee, an American born woman, who believed that Boetcker would have to go to America to make something of himself.

She thought he would never amount to anything in Germany. At age 18, after he finished high school, she gave Boetcker $65 to go to America.

Boetcker took the steam ship Augusta Victoria to America. It was a stormy crossing, and when it arrived in New York 30 days late, they learned that they had been presumed lost at sea.

Boetcker proceeded to Chicago, Illinois, where he attended the Chicago Theological Seminary. He spoke no English, and the professors spoke no German, so they conversed in Latin.

In 1893 the World’s Fair came to Chicago. The Pope had sent a Cardinal to represent the church, but a member of the Cardinal’s Special Bodyguard had taken ill.

An ad was placed seeking men six feet tall with military training who could play the cornet.

Boetcker had been a Reserve Lieutenant in the German Army, and he knew how to play cornet, so he answered the ad despite being less than the required height. Nobody else responded, and he got the job.

While at the Exposition, Boetcker rode the Ferris wheel, which was the first to have been built. He was fond of telling how he got stuck at the top of the wheel, and played “Nearer My God to Thee” on his cornet. So it can’t be said he had no sense of humor.

Boetcker disagreed with some of the Chicago Theleological Seminary’s principles, and moved to the Bloomfield Seminary in New Jersey to complete his studies for the ministry.

Upon graduation, the Reverend Boetcker was ordained in Brooklyn, New York.

He quickly gained attention as an outspoken opponent of organized labor (remember his dad?) and was instrumental in the founding of the Citizens Industrial Association, later making a professional career of public speaking.

He is sometimes considered the forerunner of current “success coaches” like Steven Covey, Joel Osteen, and Tony Robbins.

An outspoken political conservative, Rev. Boetcker is best remembered for writing a pamphlet called The Ten Cannots, published in 1916.

The pamphlet emphasizes freedom and responsibility of the individual on himself. It is often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln.

The error apparently stems from a leaflet printed in 1942 by a conservative political organization called the Committee for Constitutional Government.

The leaflet bore the title “Lincoln on Limitations” and contained some genuine Lincoln quotations on one side and the “Ten Cannots” on the other, with the attributions switched.

The mistake of crediting Lincoln for “The Ten Cannots” has been repeated, many times, but the words belong to Reverend Boetcker.

There are several variations of the pamphlet in circulation, but the most commonly accepted version is as follows:

• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
• You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
• You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
• You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
• You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
• You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
• You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
• And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Reverend Boetcker also spoke of the “Seven National Crimes”.

• I don’t think.
• I don’t know.
• I don’t care.
• I am too busy.
• I leave well enough alone.
• I have no time to read and find out.
• I am not interested.

Sound familiar folks?

It should. In the past we have talked extensively about socialism.

Now you can call it whatever you want. Socialism, Communism, Progressivism. Liberalism, it doesn’t matter.

What Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is trying to sell us is the same thing!

All of these programs are economic and political structures that promote equality and seek to eliminate social classes.

In theory they sound good, with everyone doing their share and working together to provide for the greater good.

Each uses a government mandated plan to ensure the needs of all community members are met.

Production from the community is distributed based upon need, not by effort or amount of work.

It is expected that basic needs for each person are met by the community, and there is no more to be obtained through working more than what is required.

For example, if a worker puts in more time at work, he sees no additional reward.

Therefore, this type of economy often results in poor production, mass poverty and little advancement. This occurred in the 1980s to the Soviet Union when poverty became so widespread, and rebellions and revolutions caused that nation to collapse.

Each worker is provided with necessities so he is able to produce without worry for his basic needs. Still, advancement and production are limited because there is no incentive to achieve more.

Without motivation to succeed, such as the ability to own an income-producing business, workers’ human instincts tell them to do the minimum. There are no rewards for working harder than your neighbor.

In capitalism, reward comes naturally without limitation to workers who work harder than their neighbor.

When there is profit, the owner can freely keep it, and he has no obligations to share his spoils with anyone else.

A capitalist environment facilitates competition, and the result is unlimited advancement opportunity.

In modern society, many countries have adopted pieces of socialism into their economic and political policies.

For example, in the United Kingdom, markets are allowed to fluctuate rather freely, and workers have unlimited earning potential based on their work. However, basic needs like healthcare are provided to everyone regardless of time or effort in their work.

The welfare programs like food stamps and federal housing in the United States are also forms of socialist policies that fit into an otherwise capitalist society.

The government then bureaucratically rations out—as they see fit—the means of human survival. In the end, you’ve basically got an elite corps of mobsters with the power to decide which folks are more equal than others.

That guy should pay 70% in taxes and these poor people should pay nothing and receive benefits paid for by that guy.

These programs also have a way of producing bloated bureaucracies that in turn produce ever greater poverty. Along the way, this produces even more corruption and cronyism.

Anyone out there think our current federal government is running efficiently?

As these initiatives progress, censorship becomes the norm because dissent cannot be tolerated or the system would collapse.

I think we all agree with Reverend Boetcker’s “Cannots”. (You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich)

However, my greatest fear today lies in his Seven National Crimes:

• I don’t think.
• I don’t know.
• I don’t care.
• I am too busy.
• I leave well enough alone.
• I have no time to read and find out.
• I am not interested.

Ask yourself. Are you guilty of any of these crimes? If so, what can we do to fix it?