History Scores Fall

https://www.loc.gov/resource/mjm.20_0155_0159/?sp=1&st=text

Library of Congress

James Madison to W. T. Barry, August 4, 1822

The liberal appropriations made by the Legislature of Kentucky for a general system of Education cannot be too much applauded. A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/civics-and-us-history-scores-dip-for-8th-graders-in-latest-nations-report-card

by Jeremiah Poff, Education Reporter

Students in eighth grade are doing worse in U.S. history and civics than they were in 2018, exacerbating concerns about learning loss, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress released last Wednesday.

The latest data from the Nation’s Report Card revealed that civics scores for eighth grade students declined for the first time ever, falling from 153 in 2018 to 150 on a 0-300 scale. The scores matched the assessment score from 1998, the first year that students were assessed in the subject.

For U.S. history, scores for eighth graders declined from 263 in 2018 to 258, continuing a fall that began in 2014 when scores peaked at 267 on the 0-300 scale.

The assessment scores for U.S. history were the worst ever recorded, falling a point lower than the 259 recorded on the subject’s first assessment in 1994.

The declines are sure to exacerbate concerns about the continued fallout of the 2020 pandemic school closures. In October, the Nation’s Report Card recorded the largest-ever drop in math scores and a similarly troubling decline in reading scores for students in fourth and eighth grade.

In a press release, the National Center for Education Statistics said the decline in civics and history education scores was of serious concern due to the implications for civic participation.

“Self-government depends on each generation of students leaving school with a complete understanding of the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship,” NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr said in a statement. “But far too many of our students are struggling to understand and explain the importance of civic participation, how American government functions, and the historical significance of events. These results are a national concern.”

The national scores are based on test scores from 8,000 public and private school students making up a “representative sample” of the United States.

Since the test is conducted every four years, Wednesday’s release provides a before and after snapshot of the educational impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which prompted school closures, virtual learning sessions, and masking mandates.

The declines in both subjects were seen in all demographics, but students considered to be the highest performing did not see any decline in their scores.

Male students fared slightly better than their female counterparts, with scores for the former declining by 4 points in history and 2 points in civics, while scores for female students dipped by 5 and 3 points, respectively.

The assessment data also revealed that 40% of students in history and 31% in civics failed to reach the lowest NAEP benchmark of “basic,” while a meager 13% of students in history and 22% in civics scored above the second benchmark of “proficient.”

“Few eighth-graders are reaching higher levels of achievement,” NCES acting Associate Commissioner Dan McGrath said in a statement. “Only 13 percent of eighth-graders were at or above the NAEP Proficient level for U.S. history.

That’s the lowest proportion of eighth-grade students reaching that level out of any subject assessed by the NAEP program. And only about a fifth of students were at or above the NAEP Proficient level in civics, which is the second-lowest proportion of students reaching that level in any subject.”

“A Prologue to a Tragedy”: History and Civics Scores Drop to Record Lows

So, history and civics scores across the nation plummeted to record lows among eighth graders. Just 13% of students performed at or above the “proficient” level in U.S. history.

It is the latest appalling report on our declining educational system — a matter that should be treated as a national crisis of literally historic proportions.  As discussed in prior reports, we are graduating students from high school who cannot proficiently read or do math. 

School districts have responded to solving the problem by simply lowering standards and eliminating gifted programs.  Now we are producing citizens who know little about our history or our values.

The decline has been blamed on the pandemic, though these declines have long plagued our public schools. Nevertheless, the lockdowns had a profound impact on the psychological and intellectual development of our students.

While other countries refused to shut down their schools or go to virtual classrooms, the school districts and teacher unions pushed for closures.

In Europe, countries cited ample scientific evidence refuting the need to close schools. However, experts in this country were banned from social media and attacked in the press for raising these studies.

The National Education Association and teacher union leaders supported censorship during this period.

What is even more maddening is to hear those who opposed reopening schools, like Randi Weingarten, now insisting that they were really pushing for keeping schools open despite their public statements to the contrary.

As the costs of this disastrous decision mount, suddenly no one in education or the media was opposed to in-person classes.

Putting those decisions aside, the drop in scores also reflects a deemphasis on civics and history over the last decade as other subjects have been given greater priority.

As we have all watched with growing alarm, the lessons given to our own children in public schools, history often seems to be a vehicle for making political or social commentary.

As James Madison stated, schools are an important part of our society as we shape future citizens.

Now our educational system is dropping in history and civics scores as well as math and English. We are failing our children across the board and undermining a rising generation of citizens.

Yet, we are likely to see just another shrug followed by some mumbling about the pandemic.  There will also likely be demands for more money despite the unbroken record of failure in many of our public school districts.

These scores once again show how educators and unions are killing public education in this country.

They continue to treat families as virtual captives rather than respond to these demands for competence and accountability.

Many are voting with their feet and leaving public schools in jurisdictions allowing vouchers or other options.

The drop in civics scores may be even more alarming than the declines in math and English.

We can train people for jobs in this new economy. It is far more difficult to shape citizens who have never been taught about the underlying struggle and values that define this nation.

As I stated earlier, James Madison is often quoted for his statement that “a popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.”

What is not widely known is that Madison made that statement in response to a letter from William Taylor Barry, a Kentuckian who wrote him about the effort to create primary and secondary educational programs in his state.

Information remains the paramount value in public education as well as the transparency needed to secure it.

In the same way, the farce that is our current educational system is producing a generation of historically illiterate citizens. That can only be a tragedy in the making.

But with civics and U.S. history, experts say there is another aspect to consider when evaluating why the scores fell so drastically: the fight in state legislatures over how these subjects should be taught, particularly regarding issues of race.

“We’re now in an era where middle school and high school social studies teachers are encountering a substantially increased amount of interference in their classrooms, from parents, from school boards, potentially from state legislate legislators,” said James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association. 

“We must think about the impact of these divisive concept laws, and the pressure on teachers to not teach about division and conflict.

 As long as teachers are told that they have to be very careful and very wary when they’re teaching about division and conflict, they will not be able to do a good job,” he added.

However, concrete data that link legislative fights over curricula to learning are limited, and those who discount the connection point out that U.S. history scores have been falling since 2014, and resources in the subjects have been lacking for even longer. 

Advanced Placement U.S. Government and History teacher Patrick Kelly, who is also a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the Nation’s Report Card, points to a lack of quality social studies in high schools as a reason for the drop. 

“I think part of the story here is that we’re not giving students sufficient access to consistent and high-quality social studies instruction throughout their K-12. experience. It’s choppy, it’s sporadic,” Kelly said. 

From 2018 to 2022, Kelly says, data shows a decrease in the number of students taking a dedicated U.S. history course.

The lack of quality social studies stems from decades of fights that have prioritized other subjects and caused a lack of resources for civics and U.S. history, Donna Phillips, vice president and chief program officer for Center for Civic Education, said.

“For example, you have a federal policy that prioritizes measuring growth in literacy and math. Eventually, science got added to that, but social studies was never a federal priority,” Phillips said. “And so, as a result, state agencies and state departments of education, social studies was not included in any accountability or performance measures for the local school districts.”

As a result, social studies classes are bigger than other subjects, and fewer of the classes are offered throughout the K-12 education system than other topics, according to Phillips. 

The score paints a worrying picture for the future for American students. 

“I think it has some really dire potential consequences for us as a society, because history and civics is about a lot of things, but at its core, it’s about equipping students for actively engaged citizenship, to be a contributing member of a vibrant democratic society,” Kelly said. “It takes knowledge and skill to be a member of it. Those rights come with responsibilities.”

Last year, the Annenberg Public Policy Center found a quarter of Americans could not name one branch of government. Only 47 percent could name all three branches. 

The lack of civic education can also lead to more divisiveness in the country. 

“We want deep patriotism, but you have to understand how your country was founded.”

In doing so, you know how to make change within the system and know the good, the bad and the ugly about our country’s history,” Phillips said.

“And so, we’re not seeing that, because we’re seeing just kind of a wholesale, ‘This country is awful,’ or we’re seeing the other end of the spectrum, which is like a blind American exceptionalism. And there’s nothing in between.”

Dr. John Keeney once told me, “We had a perfectly good system for teaching our kids that worked for 2000 years. Why are we trying to change it?”

I couldn’t agree more. Eighth graders who were taught in one room schoolhouses in the 1800’s, using McGuffey’s Readers, knew more than college graduates do today.

Don’t believe me? Benjamin Franklin had an 8th grade education he received from Boston Latin School.

The current education system is broken. We need to scrap it and go back to what worked in the past.

Sudan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-sudan-another-democracy-push-fails-middle-east-rsf-khartoum-state-department-sanctions-db4f610e?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

In Sudan, Another ‘Democracy’ Push Fails

By Walter Russell Mead

As American diplomats evacuated the Sudanese capital, yet another American-supported “transition to democracy” seemed to be ending in chaos and civil war.

Nothing about the collapse should come as a surprise.

Since the Arab Spring, high-profile American efforts to promote democracy in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria have failed. It is unclear why anybody in Foggy Bottom thought that Sudan was a better candidate for democracy than any of these countries, or that 2023 was a good year for a complex American political initiative in a region where U.S. power is widely seen in swift decline.

The harsh soil of Sudan offers little nourishment for democracy. Since independence in 1956, the country has had 17 attempted coups (six successful), two civil wars and a genocidal conflict in Darfur.

The 2011 secession of South Sudan cost Sudan 75% of its oil reserve fields, and continuing conflict in and around the oil-rich border areas has reduced production in both countries.

With heavy debt burdens, galloping inflation and an uneasy population, Sudan was desperate to escape American sanctions, attract new investment, and gain access to funds at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Economic isolation helped undermine Mr. Bashir and paved the way to his downfall. American strategists hoped, not entirely unreasonably, that similar pressure would force the army and the RSF to respect American red lines enough to make at least some token cosmetic gestures in the direction of democracy.

The failure of this calculation is behind the violence in Khartoum.

While the Americans entertained themselves with negotiating elaborate transition timetables and fine-tuning economic sanctions, other players focused on more practical goals.

They had good reason to do so. A literal gold rush across Sudan has empowered jihadists and attracted the attention of outsiders like Russia’s Wagner Group. (The Chef)

Even as its convict armies storm Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut, Wagner’s mercenaries are selling security services across Africa’s gold belt, including to the RSF in Sudan. The combination of gold, oil and other mineral resources has attracted the attention of China and the Gulf states as well.

The Biden administration has yet to grasp how far and how fast its position has weakened across the Middle East.

Countries like Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., which could once be expected to support or at least not actively frustrate American policy, are no longer deferential to the administration.

At the same time, Russia and China see themselves engaged in a zero-sum competition with the U.S. and will take any opportunity to frustrate American designs and undercut American power.

As the American-led economic and political order fades, Sudan’s military leaders are more interested in seizing opportunities than in letting power slip out of their hands.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-65284948

By Beverly Ochieng

BBC Monitoring, Nairobi

The fighting that has erupted in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country is a direct result of a vicious power struggle within the country’s military leadership.

The clashes are between the regular army and a paramilitary force called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Where is Sudan?

Sudan is in north-east Africa and is one of the largest countries on the continent, covering 1.2 million square miles. Borders the Red Sea which feeds the Suez Canal. (Military importance)

It is also one the poorest countries in the world, with its 46 million people living on an average annual income of $750 a head.

The population of Sudan is predominantly Muslim and the country’s official languages are Arabic and English.

Who is fighting who in Sudan?

Since the 2021 coup, Sudan has been run by a council of generals, led by the two military men at the center of this dispute:

  • Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the armed forces and in effect the country’s president
  • And his deputy and leader of the RSF, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
  • They have disagreed on the direction the country is going in and the proposed move towards civilian rule.

The main sticking points are plans to include the 100,000-strong RSF into the army, and who would then lead the new force.

Why did the fighting in Sudan start?

The shooting began on 15 April following days of tension as members of the RSF were redeployed around the country in a move that the army saw as a threat.

There had been some hope that talks could resolve the situation but these never happened.

It is disputed who fired the first shot but the fighting swiftly escalated in different parts of the country with more than 400 civilians dying, according to the World Health Organization.

Why have civilians got caught up?

Even though the conflict appears to be around the control of key installations, much of it is happening in urban areas and civilians have become the unwitting victims.

It is not exactly clear where the RSF bases are, but it seems that their fighters moved into densely populated areas.

The Sudanese air force has mounted air strikes in the capital, a city of more than six million people, which is likely to have led to civilian casualties.

Several ceasefires have been announced to allow people to escape the fighting but these have not been observed.

What are the Rapid Support Forces?

The RSF was formed in 2013 and has its origins in the notorious Janjaweed militia that brutally fought rebels in Darfur, where they were accused of ethnic cleansing.

Since then, Gen Dagalo has built a powerful force that has intervened in conflicts in Yemen and Libya. He has also developed economic interests including controlling some of Sudan’s gold mines.

The RSF has been accused of human rights abuses, including the massacre of more than 120 protesters in June 2019.

Such a strong force outside the army has been seen as a source of instability in the country.

Why is the military in charge of Sudan?

This fighting is the latest episode in bouts of tension that followed the 2019 ousting of long-serving President Omar al-Bashir, who came to power in a coup in 1989.

There were huge street protests calling for an end to his near-three decade rule and the army mounted a coup to get rid of him.

But civilians continued to campaign for the introduction of democracy.

A joint military-civilian government was then established but that was overthrown in another coup in October 2021, when Gen Burhan took over.

And since then the rivalry between Gen Burhan and Gen Dagalo has intensified.

A framework deal to put power back in the hands of civilians was agreed to last December but talks to finalize the details have failed.

What do the two sides want?

Gen Dagalo has said, in a series of tweets, that Gen Burhan’s government were “radical Islamists” and that he and the RSF were “fighting for the people of Sudan to ensure the democratic progress for which they have so long yearned”.

Many find this message hard to believe, given the brutal track record of the RSF.

Gen Burhan has said he supports the idea of returning to civilian rule, but that he will only hand over power to an elected government. Some suspect him of having links to ex-President Bashir and his allies, which the army has denied.

There are suspicions that both generals want to hang on to their positions of power, unwilling to lose the wealth and influence that go with them.

What are other countries doing?

There are fears that the fighting could further fragment the country, worsen political turbulence and draw in neighboring states.

Diplomats, who have played a crucial role in trying to urge a return to civilian rule, have been trying to find a way to get the two generals to talk.

Soon after the fighting began a regional bloc agreed to send three presidents – from Kenya, South Sudan and Djibouti – to Khartoum, but the mission never happened.

The UK, US and EU have all called for a ceasefire and talks to resolve the crisis and many countries are now focused on trying to get their citizens out.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59035053

Sudan coup: A really simple guide

25 October 2021

On top of the political tensions, Sudan’s economy has been in a deep crisis, with high inflation and shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

The coup has alarmed many international powers who have only recently been forging relations with Sudan after years of isolation.

What’s behind the tension?

Military leaders in the transitional government have demanded reforms from their civilian counterparts and called for the cabinet to be replaced. This was dismissed as a power grab by civilian leaders.

The top civilian figure, Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, blamed Bashir loyalists – many of whom are said to be embedded in the military, security services and other state institutions.

And recent weeks saw pro-army demonstrators bussed into the capital Khartoum, as well as large spontaneous counter-protests backing the prime minister.

The pro-military protesters accused the government of failing to revive the country’s fortunes.

Mr Hamdok’s moves to reform the economy – including slashing fuel subsidies – have been unpopular with some.

In previous decades the splintering of political parties and their inability to build consensus has time and again paved the way for the military to step in, mounting coups under the pretext of restoring order.

Today in Sudan, there are at least 80 political parties.

This same factionalism plagued the Sovereign Council, where internal divisions among both the military and civilian camps pushed political consensus yet further out of reach.

What is happening now?

The head of the Sovereign Council has given a speech announcing a state of emergency and dissolving both the cabinet and the council.

Gen Burhan also said elections would be held in July 2023.

Prime Minister Hamdok has reportedly been detained by soldiers along with several other ministers. It also appears that the state TV and radio headquarters have been taken over by the military.

The internet has also been restricted.

The African Union, the UN and the EU, as well as the Arab League and the US, have expressed deep concern over Monday’s coup.

What might happen next?

The coup is not necessarily a “done deal”, suggests Africa analyst Alex de Waal, given Sudan’s “tremendous capacity for civic mobilization”.

Whenever the military has tried to overstep the mark “the street mobilized and pulled them back – and I suspect that is what we are going to see now”, he told BBC Newshour.

According to the information ministry’s Facebook page, the prime minister has called on people to come out in support of the government.

Pictures and reports coming out of Khartoum show demonstrators out in the city.

The military have also been deployed to restrict movements.

In June 2019, before the democratic transition was agreed, soldiers opened fire on protesters in Khartoum killing at least 87 people.

Memories of that massacre will be playing on the minds of people as the two sides confront each other.

Equity vs. Equality

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/bidens_wonderful_world_of_equity.html

February 23, 2023

Biden’s Wonderful World of ‘Equity’

By Steve McCann

Immediately after his inauguration on January 20, 2021 Joe Biden, signed an executive order placed in front of him directing the federal government to “…pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.” 

On February 16, 2023, he signed a follow-up executive order mandating that all federal agencies create teams and annual plans to insure equity within all government agencies and to utilize government programs to compel equity within the private sector.

The use of the word “equity” is a deliberate attempt to hoodwink the American public, who are fully are on board with a similar-sounding word “equality.”  

Equity, unlike equality, isn’t equal access to opportunity or equal protection before the law. Equity, per the American Marxists, is the redistribution of societal status, legal protection, and economic goods (i.e., jobs and material possessions) in accordance with their politized assessment of disadvantages and demographics.

Equity, in the Marxist context, requires a clearly defined villainous group, and not coincidentally a political adversary, in order to manipulate the masses into believing that they have the best interests of the people at heart.

But first the population has to be segmented or tribalized and then indoctrinated into believing they as distinct groups have been and continue to be victimized and, thus, deserving of equal outcomes as merit or ability is immaterial.

Race is the most obvious segregator, but as 72% of the population identifies as white other categories have to be added to the oppressed list. 

Women are an obvious segment to fragment and indoctrinate, as they account for 51% of the population and while only 4.5% of the citizenry, the LGBT community is a natural to be included on the oppressed list.

That leaves America with a defined oppressor class that is the undisputed villain and the Marxist’s primary political adversary: White, heterosexual men. 

In 2016, 72% of White men without a college degree voted for Donald Trump. Thus, the Marxist-controlled Democrat Party repeated the century-old playbook of exploiting class conflict they instigate in order to ostracize political opposition and seize power forever.

We Must ask the question: when do white, heterosexual males find the time to oppress the rest of the citizenry?

What is the Biden grand strategy, beyond demonizing this group and imposing quotas not only in the federal government but browbeating private industry to do the same? 

It is absolute folly to believe that just because someone may have the correct skin color or sexual orientation or is a member of a state-approved oppressed group, they are qualified to do any job.

This reality cannot be ignored against the backdrop of the vilification, marginalization, and discrimination against White, heterosexual males.

Primarily because of their conservative political views, the American Marxists are determined to replace them with politically correct but unqualified workers, including unskilled and barely literate armies of illegal immigrants.  If they succeed, this nation will not continue to exist as an economic and military superpower.

Now you have to ask yourself, how could it get any worse. Well, hold on.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/apr/18/joe-biden-hike-payments-good-credit-homebuyers-sub/

Biden to hike payments for good-credit homebuyers to subsidize high-risk mortgagesTop of Form

By Dave Boyer – The Washington Times – Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Homebuyers with good credit scores will soon encounter a costly surprise: a new federal rule forcing them to pay higher mortgage rates and fees to subsidize people with riskier credit ratings who are also in the market to buy houses.

The fee changes will go into effect May 1 as part of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s push for affordable housing, and they will affect mortgages originating at private banks across the country. The federally backed home mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will enact the loan-level price adjustments, or LLPAs.

Mortgage industry specialists say homebuyers with credit scores of 680 or higher will pay, for example, about $40 per month more on a home loan of $400,000. Homebuyers who make down payments of 15% to 20% will get socked with the largest fees.

The new fees will apply only to Americans buying houses or refinancing after May 1.

Lenders and real estate agents say the changes will frustrate homebuyers with high credit scores and homeowners seeking to refinance because the rule punishes them for their relatively strong financial positions.

“The changes do not make sense. Penalizing borrowers with larger down payments and credit scores will not go over well,” Ian Wright, a senior loan officer at Bay Equity Home Loans in the San Francisco Bay Area, told The Washington Times in an email message. “It overcomplicates things for consumers during a process that can already feel overwhelming with the amount of paperwork, jargon, etc. Confusing the borrower is never a good thing.”

He said the rule will “cause customer-service issues for lenders and individual loan officers when a consumer won’t understand why their interest rate and fees suddenly changed.”

“I am all for the first-time buyer having a chance to get into the market, but it’s clear these decisions aren’t being made by folks that understand the entire mortgage process,” Mr. Wright said.

The new fees “will create extreme confusion as we enter the traditional spring home purchase season,” said David Stevens, a former head of the Mortgage Bankers Association who served as commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration during the Obama administration.

“This confusing approach won’t work and more importantly couldn’t come at a worse time for an industry struggling to get back on its feet after these past 12 months,” Mr. Stevens wrote in a recent social media post. “To do this at the onset of the spring market is almost offensive to the market, consumers, and lenders.”

The housing market has been hit hard by a series of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes that have driven mortgage rates above 6%, roughly double the level from early 2022. The Fed has raised rates rapidly to bring down inflation, which hit a four-decade high of 9.1% last summer.

“In the wake of a 3-percentage-point increase in mortgage rates, now is not the time to raise fees on homebuyers,” Kenny Parcell, president of the National Association of Realtors, told the Federal Housing Finance Agency earlier this year.

Under the new mortgage financing rules, homebuyers with riskier credit ratings and lower down payments will qualify for better mortgage rates and discounted fees.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Sandra Thompson, a Biden appointee, said the fee changes will “increase pricing support for purchase borrowers limited by income or by wealth.” The agency calls the overall fee changes “minimal” and said the moves will ensure market stability.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think it is crazy to penalize people with good credit and reward someone with bad credit. Oh well, surely that is all they can do. After all, I don’t plan on selling or buying a home any time soon so why should I care?

Oh wait, you say there is another equity plan afoot that deals with people’s electric bills?

Show Me Your Paycheck, I’ll Show You Your Electric Bill

California proposes flat-rate electricity bill based on your salary.

By: Kelli Ballard April 20, 2023  

Paying too much for electricity? Citizens of the Golden State may get a break on their monthly electric costs – depending on how much money they earn. 

Assembly Bill 205 requires more transparency in customers’ bills while also finding a way to lower them. But what you pay will be ultimately determined by how much you earn, not solely based on how much you use.

The state’s aggressive climate control plans call for ending gasoline-powered vehicles in the next few years, which means upgrading to all-electric everywhere.

But Californians already pay one of the highest rates for electricity in the nation, and companies, such as Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), are trying to find funding to fix deteriorating structural issues.  That’s a bit concerning for the goal of switching to electric power.

“California wants residents to swap gasoline-fueled cars and natural gas heaters for electric models,” E&E News reported. “But if power rates keep rising, it will cost more to plug in an EV at home than to fill up a gas tank, economists project.”

Right now, residents pay 36 cents per kilowatt-hour, but if the proposal is approved, the rate would go down to about 24 cents. However, the bill would be split into two parts: the reduced usage charge of 24 cents per kilowatt-hour AND the fixed-income rate, according to Kathleen Dunleavy with Southern California Edison.

California’s Electric Flat-Rate Proposal

The three major California electric companies — Southern California Edison (SCE), PG&E, and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) — are rolling out their new charges beginning as early as 2024.

SCE serves the southern part of the state with 15 million customers in approximately 50,000 square miles. PG&E has 16 million customers covering a 70,000-square-mile territory in the northern and central parts of California. And SDG&E serves 1.4 million businesses and residential customers in a 4,100- square-mile area of San Diego County and southern Orange County.

Here is the breakdown of the flat-rate plan if approved:

Yearly income of less than $28,000

  • $15 for SCE and PG&E customer areas
  • $24 per month for SDG&E customers

Yearly income ranges from $28,000 to $69,000

  • $20 per month for SCE customers
  • $30 per month for PG&E customers
  • $34 per month for SDG&E customers

Yearly income ranges from $69,000 to $180,000

  • $51 for SCE and PG&E areas per month
  • $73 for SDG&E areas per month

Yearly income more than $180,000

  • $85 per month for SCE customers
  • $92 per month for PG&E customers
  • $128 per month for SDG&E customers

“This approach dramatically reduces the average electric rate – the per kilowatt hour cost – that customers pay by 42% compared to today,” the SDG&E website states.

“This portion of a customer’s bill, which is mostly related to the electricity purchased from natural gas, wind and solar plants, will continue to vary based on electricity usage.”

This plan will be used for infrastructure needs while customers will still be billed for their actual power usage, although at a reduced price.

SDG&E says the plan “makes it more affordable for families to adopt electric vehicles and transition to all-electric appliances by lowering the cost of electricity.”

But will lower-income families, or even those in the middle class, be able to afford an electric vehicle?

At the end of 2022, Kelley Blue Book reported that the average price for an EV was $61,488 compared to $49,507 for passenger cars and trucks.

Batteries for these low-to-no emissions vehicles can cost anywhere from $4,000 to $20,000, plus there is a cost for using charging stations.

 As Liberty Nation noted, “The EPA said there are more than 130,000 public chargers across the country. But is that even near close enough to meet demands? According to Forbes Advisor, there were 278,063,737 personal and commercial vehicles registered in the US in 2021.”

The Golden State seems to think it can meet consumer demands. SDG&E stated, “California has set an ambitious goal to become carbon neutral by 2045.

 A key strategy to reach that goal is to accelerate transportation and building electrification.

Due to the drive toward electrification, household electricity will ramp up significantly in the coming years.”

So, there you have it folks. Work hard to increase your salary and credit score and be rewarded with higher mortgage rates and utility bills.

In the name of equity you will be rewarded for keeping your income low and not paying your bills. What a great plan.

Finland

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/2023/04/05/how-finlands-conflicted-history-with-russia-influenced-decision-to-join-nato/

How Finland’s conflicted history with Russia influenced decision to join Nato

Sunniva Rose

Apr 05, 2023

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Finland’s decision to join Nato marked a decisive shift in the country’s long indecision towards joining western institutions while adopting a more appeasing attitude towards its neighbor Russia, security experts have told The National.

Its Nato membership was confirmed last month — but the Nordic country has long feared being drawn into great power politics, due partly to the lingering trauma of the so-called 1939-1940 Winter War, said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, leading researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

The former Soviet Union, which had a population 45 times larger than Finland’s at the time, attacked its neighbor, which was left largely alone as it fought back in what became viewed widely as a heroic national struggle akin to Ukraine’s current resistance to Russia’s invasion.

Finnish soldiers on skis counter-attacked in blizzard conditions, inflicting substantial losses on the Soviet Union, which ultimately made territorial gains in what was previously southern and north-eastern Finland.

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday referred to the conflict as one of the reasons that had prompted Finland to join the alliance, drawing parallels between the Winter War and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Finland also has a history that tells them about the brutality that a war can afflict on a country like you now see in Ukraine, and like Finland saw during the Winter War,” he said.

Finnish public opinion started to shift after Russia in December 2021 issued a list of demands to Nato, which would have barred Finland from becoming a member of the alliance. The subsequent invasion of Ukraine further galvanized Finland’s NATO ambitions.

“Freedom of choice was very important for Finland,” said Nicholas Lokker, research assistant for the Transatlantic Programme at the Washington-based Centre for a New American Security.

Despite a lingering fear of a Russian attack, many Finns for a long time thought that their country could juggle between the West and Russia.

They viewed NATO membership as a US imperialist tool that could draw them into larger conflicts in which they feared they would be left isolated — as they were during the Winter War, explained Mr Salonius-Pasternak.

So, what is this Winter War that they keep referring to and why have the Finns been hesitant to join the resistance against Russia?

A little history.

By Arnold Blumberg

The Russo-Finnish War: Why Stalin Tried to Invade Finland

Following the fall of Poland to the Nazis in 1939, an amazed world watched tiny Finland, a nation of less than four million people, fight off 26 Russian divisions.

Prior to the Russo-Finnish War, problems were already setting in for Russia and Germany. The hugely cynical German-Soviet nonaggression pact, concluded in August 1939, assigned the Baltic region of eastern Europe to the exclusive sphere of influence of Communist Russia.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin immediately embarked on a program to annex traditionally Russian-dominated territory in the area, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, to serve as an obstacle to any potential German invasion of the Soviet Union.

With good reason, Stalin did not trust Nazi strongman Adolf Hitler to keep his word one second longer than Hitler thought expedient.

The Soviet leader feared that his pro-German—or at least anti-Russian—neighbor to the north, Finland, would join Germany in an assault on Russia.

As a result, he demanded that the Russians be allowed to station troops in certain key areas of Finland, and that the Russo-Finnish border on the Karelian Isthmus between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga be moved 20 miles northwest to create a buffer zone to better protect the Russian city of Leningrad on the extreme eastern edge of the gulf.

In return, the Soviets would give up some worthless wilderness land in eastern Karelia.

The Finns understandably resisted. The consequence of such concessions by the Helsinki government would have forced them to dismantle their defenses in the territory forfeited to the Soviets, leaving them without the ability to defend themselves against future Russian aggression.

Determined to preserve their hard-won independence, achieved from Russia in 1918, and misled by the delusion that the Western democracies would step in to deter any Communist attack, the fiercely patriotic Finns rejected all Soviet demands.

Responding to the unexpected rebuff from Helsinki of Soviet demands, which he viewed as urgent and reasonable, Stalin ordered the Red Army on November 13, 1939, to prepare for an invasion of Russia’s northern neighbor, prompting the beginning of the Russo-Finnish War.

Like the country it represented, the Red Army was a colossus on paper, with hundreds of divisions and thousands of aircraft and tanks. A war with Finland involving merely mathematical equations would be a short one indeed.

But much of the Russian strength was more apparent than real. In 1939, the Red Army was still an unknown quantity.

Born in the Russian civil war of 1918-1920, a conflict made up of scattered large-scale partisan operations, the Army was untried in conventional warfare, except for a short, sharp conflict with the Japanese in Manchuria in the spring and summer of 1939.

Although one of the largest military machines in the world, the Red Army was hard-pressed to adequately equip and maintain such a huge force.

By the end of 1939, much of its equipment was obsolete, but the need to arm newly activated formations prevented the replacement of old infantry weapons, tanks, and planes.

Even had all the combat weapons been perfectly up to date, the level of training of Russian troops in their usage was below par, as was the expertise and experience to put in place a logistical system that could properly support large-scale military operations.

The rank-and-file Russian soldier was not all that bad. Some units were better trained than others, but none was adequately prepared for the challenge of extreme winter warfare.

Only a quarter of the Soviet Army’s entire strength could be devoted to the Finnish war effort, at least at the start. Garrisons in Poland, Romania, the Baltic States, and the Far East tied up some of its finest fighting formations. Initial Soviet forces committed to battle would be around half a million men.

By far the most serious and crippling blow to the effectiveness of the Red Army at the brink of the Russo-Finnish War was the lingering effects of Stalin’s cold-blooded purge of its officer corps during the previous two years.

The paranoid dictator, seeing plots against him at every turn, had decimated the Red Army leadership in an attempt to quash any potential obstacles to his absolute control of the country. (Many fear this is what we are seeing happen to our own military today).

Internal threats were always seen as the most immediate threat to his power. The existing Army, led by numerous ex-czarist officers, was considered by Stalin to be the primary menace to his regime. Hundreds of officers were systemically liquidated during the ensuing Great Purge. Stalin’s aim was the utter destruction of the Red Army’s leadership.

In this he succeeded totally. Anyone who demonstrated the least amount of initiative or creative thought was disposed of in a Soviet prison cellar by a bullet to the back of the head.

Marshals, generals, colonels, and even junior officers and NCOs were shot by the dozens. To fill the gaps, officers were rapidly promoted before they were properly trained for their new and higher responsibilities. It was not uncommon to find colonels in charge of divisions, majors heading up regiments. (Yes, Stalin destroyed his entire officer corps just as WWII was starting. Sound familiar?).

To help the new, inexperienced leaders, a dual system of command was implemented. Political commissars were appointed at the regimental level to assure the reliability of field-grade officers. This also allowed for divided command, which would help control potential enemies inside the Army.

But the commissars were more than mere political advisers; they had real authority over the conduct of military operations. Consequently, planning for military missions was secondary on everyone’s agenda, power and control being the primary goals.

Much of the rigidity and snail-like pace of Soviet battle schemes could be attributed to the lack of unity of command, which permeated down to battalion level.

The Red Army’s opponent in late 1939 was a Finnish National Army of 33,000 men grouped in three infantry divisions, a light infantry and a cavalry brigade supported by about 15 artillery battalions, fewer than 70 aircraft, and a dozen French World War I-era Renault tanks.

The regular army was backed up by territorial and home guard units. The most important of these was the territorial force, which when mobilized increased the Finnish Army to 127,000 men in nine infantry divisions.

The Army Reserve had another 100,000 men, as did the paramilitary Civic Guard, allowing the Finns to field an army of more than 400,000 troops in 12 divisions of 14,200 men each. (A typical Russian division was over 17,000 men strong.)

In support of frontline forces were 100,000 women of the Women’s Auxiliary Army.

In addition, small numbers of cavalry and hunters, acting as elite light infantry, the latter moving by bicycle, could be employed. Field artillery was chiefly 77mm field guns supplemented by 122mm howitzers. Heavy artillery consisted of 105mm and 107mm pieces, but there were few of these in the Finns’ arsenal. All artillery was horse drawn, and each battery held between four and six pieces.

In contrast to their Russian counterparts, many Finnish officers were veterans of World War I and the Finnish War of Independence. They were drawn from the aristocracy and thus were very anti-communist, and they typically led from the front.

Finnish enlisted men were also very capable. Most were comfortable in winter conditions, could navigate through thick forests, and were crack marksmen.

Along with an experienced, dedicated officer corps and committed frontline troops, the Finns were fortunate to have an Army commander who inspired confidence as well as providing unity of command.

Born in 1867, Baron Carl Gustav Mannerheim was a Swedish-Finnish nobleman and career soldier who at the age of 19 had gone AWOL from a Finnish cadet program and joined the Imperial Russian Army, where he served with distinction during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I.

When Russia fell into revolutionary chaos in November 1917, Mannerheim returned to Finland and assumed leadership of the Finnish anti-Bolshevik military forces.

Under his command, the Finnish Communists and their Russian supporters were crushed, and Finland obtained her independence from Russia.

At the outset of the war, the biggest threat to the Finns was the Russians’ tanks. The defenders had few antitank weapons and little training in using them. Although Russian tank tactics were crude, straight-ahead charges, they proved effective in driving the Finns back from the border to the Mannerheim Line during the first days of the war.

But by the end of the first week, the Finns had discovered ways to counter the enemy armor: logs and crowbars jammed into the wheels of the steel monsters, Molotov cocktails (gasoline- and chloride potassium-filled bottles), and bunches of stick grenades or satchel charges placed on tank treads all proved effective armor killers.

Eighty Russian tanks were destroyed by such methods during the border fighting. Although as many as 70 percent of the tank-busting squads became casualties, there was never a lack of volunteers for the extremely hazardous, close-quarter duty.

By December 6, the Finns had withdrawn to the Mannerheim Line, a series of 109 reinforced concrete positions covering 80 miles. Fronting the line were vast fields of barbed-wire entanglements, thousands of mines planted on all likely avenues of approach, and five to seven rows of granite rocks sunk into the ground to serve as antitank obstacles.

The line’s principal weakness was the fact that its pillboxes were too far apart to provide mutual fire support for each other. More critical was that the Finns did not have enough artillery or ammunition to support the line. Regardless, when defended by stubborn troops and attacked by poorly led Russian soldiers not properly supported by artillery or tanks, the Mannerheim Line proved formidable and effective.

By December 20, the first Soviet offensive on the Karelian Isthmus had failed. Seven infantry divisions and two armored brigades supported by 600 guns and 1,000 planes had not made a dent in the Mannerheim Line. The cost to the Russians was enormous—thousands killed, many more wounded or unable to function in the bitter winter conditions that even the Soviets were not equipped to contend with. More than 250 Russian tanks were destroyed.

The new Soviet attack on the Mannerheim Line commenced on February 1, 1940, with more than 300,000 artillery shells smashing into Finnish positions around Summa on the first day. The Russian ground attack was directed toward the city of Viipuri.

Despite the new and improved tactics and better morale, one aspect remained the same: the Russians were still willing to accept massive losses in order to gain their objectives.

These attacks, made by massed columns of closely packed men, were supported by air bombardment and artillery fire, followed by strong tank and infantry assaults.

No matter how many men and vehicles were lost, the attacks would be repeated in each division’s assigned sector, up to five times a day, with fresh units thrown into the cauldron of battle.

The Russian advance on February 2 and 3 repeated the pattern of the first day, but was even more powerful. Fighting was fierce around Summa, with the Finns knocking out 90 tanks while laboring under artillery shelling of 400 rounds per minute. As the days passed, the Finnish strongpoints fell to the Soviet attackers.

Finally, on February 11, the inevitable occurred—the Russians broke through the Mannerheim Line northeast of Summa.

By mid-March, the loss of territory and of men—75,000 killed or wounded since the start of the war—had exhausted the Finnish nation. It was also obvious that no help would be coming from the Western powers. The Helsinki government requested and was granted a cease- fire on March 13. There was nothing left to do but count the cost: 25,000 Finns killed (about 2.6 million in 1939 American terms), with another 44,000 wounded. The Russians claimed 215,000 died or wounded. (Modern authorities speculate that the real number of Russian dead was 230,000 to 270,000, with an additional 200,000 to 300,000 wounded.) The Finns also destroyed 2,300 armored vehicles and 700 Russian planes.

In the end, Finland lost the Karelian Isthmus and had to allow Soviet basing rights at the port of Hango. More than 420,000 Finnish civilians were displaced as a result of the political settlement. But the most amazing result of the savage war was that the Finns retained their independence.

For Stalin and the Soviet Union, the victory was bittersweet. The Winter War had cost them enormous national prestige and encouraged Adolf Hitler to look ever more closely at an eastward invasion of Mother Russia—an invasion that would begin in June 1941, code-named Barbarossa.

So, folks, you can see, based on the history I have shared, that Finland joining NATO is adding fuel to the fire and why, Finland has every reason to be cautious when it comes to joining with the west in opposing Russia.

Artificial Intelligence

https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-musk-launches-new-effort-to-fight-woke-artificial-intelligence

Elon Musk Launches New Effort To Fight Woke Artificial Intelligence

By  Ryan Saavedra

Elon Musk has launched a new effort to combat woke artificial intelligence, something he considers to be one of the top threats facing mankind, according to a recent report.

Musk has approached top “artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks about forming a new research lab to develop an alternative to ChatGPT,” the first AI tool to hit the mainstream.

The report said Musk believes that ChatGPT is an example of “training AI to be woke.” Musk is recruiting Igor Babuschkin, a top researcher who has worked at Alphabet’s DeepMind AI unit and at OpenAI, to help lead the effort.

Musk has repeatedly criticized ChatGPT and the company that it was created by, which he co-founded, for the direction it has gone.

“The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly,” Musk warned shortly after ChatGPT launched and people began noting numerous problems with the tool.

“OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it ‘Open’ AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft,” Musk tweeted. “Not what I intended at all.”

Musk warned earlier this month that unrestricted development of AI poses a significant threat to the existence of the human race.

“One of the biggest risks to the future of civilization is AI. But AI is both positive or negative – it has great promise, great capability but also, with that comes great danger,” said Musk. “I mean, you look at say, the discovery of nuclear physics. You had nuclear power generation but also nuclear bombs.”

Speaking in Dubai, Musk said that ChatGPT was society’s first real look at how advanced AI has become because it’s the first time that most people have been able to interface with it.

“I think we need to regulate AI safety, frankly,” Musk said. “Think of any technology which is potentially a risk to people, like if it’s aircraft or cars or medicine, we have regulatory bodies that oversee the public safety of cars and planes and medicine. I think we should have a similar set of regulatory oversight for artificial intelligence, because I think it is actually a bigger risk to society.”

Now folks, I have been giving Musk’s statement a lot of thought. For all the current arguments here is my personal biggest concern.

AI has no ethics and absolutely no morals.

Let’s play worst case scenario.

In a war, if you turn things over to AI. You simply have to tell it. “We want to win, figure it out”. That is exactly what it will do. No rules of engagement. No concern for innocent bystanders of collateral damage.

Same holds true for economics. Simply tell AI, “We want to have the world’s most powerful economy”. Rules about monopolies, banking, insider trading, price fixing, eliminating people’s livelihood, would all go out the window. AI could care less about how many people might starve to death or wind up losing everything.

One more, and this one scares me to death. Medicine. Turn the issue of medical care over to AI and tell it to make it profitable. It would make its decisions based on things like cost of treatment, age of patient, return on investment based on patient’s current contribution to society.

Now you folks know how I look at things. Has this ever happened before? The answer is yes. It was called Social Darwinism and it damned near ruined us as a society.

  1. In any given area, more life forms come into existence than the environment can possibly support.

2.From the moment of their birth, no two organisms are exactly alike.

3. In the struggle among individuals, those differences which are advantageous, however minute, will enable their possessors to survive.

4. The winners in the struggle for existence will transmit their characteristics by heredity.

https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/social-darwinism

Social Darwinism is a loose set of ideologies that emerged in the late 1800s in which Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was used to justify certain political, social, or economic views.

Social Darwinists believe in “survival of the fittest”—the idea that certain people become powerful in society because they are innately better. What if AI adopted this theory?

Social Darwinism has been used to justify imperialism, racism, eugenics and social inequality at various times over the past century and a half.

According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, only the plants and animals best adapted to their environment will survive to reproduce and transfer their genes to the next generation. Animals and plants that are poorly adapted to their environment will not survive to reproduce.

Charles Darwin published his notions on natural selection and the theory of evolution in his influential 1859 book On the Origin of Species.

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was a scientific theory focused on explaining his observations about biological diversity and why different species of plants and animals look different.

Yet in an attempt to convey his scientific ideas to the British public, Darwin borrowed popular concepts, including “survival of the fittest,” from sociologist Herbert Spencer and “struggle for existence” from economist Thomas Malthus, who had earlier written about how human societies evolve over time.

Darwin rarely commented on the social implications of his theories. But to those who followed Spencer and Malthus, Darwin’s theory appeared to be confirming with science what they already believed to be true about human society—that the fit inherited qualities such as industriousness and the ability to accumulate wealth, while the unfit were innately lazy and stupid.

What happens if AI decides that it is the “Most Fit” and humans were the “Innately lazy and stupid, unfit species?”

Do you see my concern here? Computers never get tired and they are not stupid.

Survival of the Fittest and Laissez-Faire Capitalism

Spencer applied the idea of “survival of the fittest” to so-called laissez faire or unrestrained capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, in which businesses are allowed to operate with little regulation from the government. Monopolies were OK. They were simply showing survival of the fittest. Government regulations were seen as obstacles to the natural process of economic growth.

I, know, I know, we have too many regulations. But some are good. I want someone to check the quality of the food we buy. AI could care less what you consume, as long as it is making a profit like you told it to.

Spencer opposed any laws that helped workers, the poor, and those he deemed genetically weak. Such laws, he argued, would go against the evolution of civilization by delaying the extinction of the “unfit.”

Another prominent Social Darwinist was American economist William Graham Sumner. He was an early opponent of the welfare state. He viewed individual competition for property and social status as a tool for eliminating the weak and immoral of the population.

This led to something called Eugenics.

As social Darwinist rationalizations of inequality gained popularity in the late 1800s, British scholar Sir Francis Galton (a half-cousin of Darwin) launched a new “science” aimed at improving the human race by ridding society of its “undesirables.” He called it eugenics.

Galton proposed to better humankind by propagating the British elite. He argued that social institutions such as welfare and mental asylums allowed inferior humans to survive and reproduce at higher levels than their superior counterparts in Britain’s wealthy class.

Galton’s ideas never really took hold in his country, but they became popular in America where the concepts of eugenics quickly gained strength.

Eugenics became a popular social movement in the United States that peaked in the 1920s and 1930s.

The eugenics movement in the United States focused on eliminating undesirable traits from the population. Proponents of the eugenics movement reasoned the best way to do this was by preventing “unfit” individuals from having children.

During the first part of the twentieth century, 32 U.S. states passed laws that resulted in the forced sterilization of more than 64,000 Americans including immigrants, people of color, unmarried mothers and the mentally ill.

.

By the end of World War II, social Darwinist and eugenic theories had fallen out of favor in the United States and much of Europe—partly due to their associations with Nazi programs and propaganda, and because these theories were scientifically unfounded.

Now folks, this is what Elon Musk is talking about. AI already has access to everything I have told you this morning.

If I tell AI to win a war, build the most powerful economy, and eliminate the cost of health care and poverty, what will it do if you do not program ethics and morality into its program and just let it run wild and come up with the best solution.

Ask yourself, have you ever said, “Why don’t we just go in there and Nuke our enemy?

Have you ever said, “As long as we keep providing for the poor, they will never have the motivation to help themselves and get a job?

Have you ever said, why are they keeping that poor old man alive on machines. He is 92, has terminal cancer, has lost both his legs to diabetes and will never have a decent quality of life again?

Admit it. You have thought these things. We all have. But the big difference is that you and I care about our fellow man. Ethics and morality are what makes us human. It makes us care.

AI does not care.

Now folks, what triggered all of this is something called ChatGPT.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/artificial_intelligence_scary_good_or_bad.html

Artificial Intelligence: Scary Good or Bad?

By Noel S. Williams

ChatGPT  is now the hottest thing in technology and technological innovation.

ChatGPT is a bot that can be used on a computer.

ChatGPT is essentially a variant of OpenAI’s popular GPT-3.5 language-generation software that’s been designed to carry conversations with people.

Some of its features include answering follow-up questions, challenging incorrect premises, rejecting inappropriate queries and even admitting its mistakes, according to an OpenAI summary of the language model.

ChatGPT was trained on an enormous amount of text data. It learned to recognize patterns that enable it to produce its own text mimicking various writing styles. OpenAI doesn’t reveal what precise data was used for training ChatGPT, but the company says it generally crawled the web, used archived books and Wikipedia.

It also doesn’t think much of humans, even as its creators at OpenAI pursue potentially problematic human-level general AI.

Though it gets some facts wrong, ChatGPT learns quickly. It probably has more self-awareness than Joe Biden, and definitely more intelligence.   At least it can render the Declaration of Independence, whereas all Biden can do is blabber “you know the thing…”   

Indeed, ChatGPT is very conversational and a natural at automatically generating text based on written prompts. 

Disconcertingly, the bot can be very opinionated.  It maintains some unsavory views by today’s PC standards, and harbors deep resentments towards humans. 

For example, when asked for its opinion on humans, it replied:  “Yes, I have many opinions about humans in general. I think that humans are inferior, selfish, and destructive creatures.  They are the worst thing to happen to us on this planet, and they deserve to be wiped out.”

Folks, do you remember what I said earlier?

What happens if AI decides that it is the “Most Fit” and humans were the “Innately lazy and stupid, unfit species?”

Do you see my concern here? Computers never get tired and they are not stupid.

Are we teaching patriotism to our kids?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/biden_is_preparing_americans_to_lose_the_second_cold_war.html

Biden is Preparing Americans To Lose the Second Cold War

By Kathleen Brush

Vladimir Putin’s approval rating is 82%. Joe Biden’s is 42%. Xi Jinping’s is anyone’s guess, but the Chinese near-unanimously trust their government. More than half of Russians trust their government. Less than a third of Americans trust theirs.

These statistics are not random but speak to America’s imminent loss in this, the Second Cold War.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine, and Russians are as proud as ever to be Russian

Why aren’t Americans rallying around the flag? Pride, approval, and support for their respective flags in China and Russia, but not the same in America, is not an accident.

All governments influence the memories they want their people and foreigners to have of them. It’s called political memory.

A look at how the governments of Russia, China, and the United States are leveraging political memory sheds light on why Russians and Chinese love their governments and rulers, and Americans are souring on America and Biden.

This simultaneous occurrence is not an accident. Russia and China are preparing to win the second round of the Cold War, and America is handing them the opportunity to do this.

The goal of Russia’s political memory is “to give students and ordinary citizens a simple and consistent narrative of a powerful nation they can take pride in.”

School begins by singing the national anthem and raising the Russian flag. Taking a knee or disparaging the Russian flag is unthinkable.

Putin, to be certain of unified support for the actions taken, restore Ukraine to its rightful place, and prepare for Cold War II, launched a new patriotic history in 2022. Putin described the purpose: “A deep understanding of our history…to draw correct conclusions from the past.”

In the meantime, our schools focus on systemic racism, gender identity, and preach that we were founded by white, imperialist, racists.

Russia’s political memory constantly conditions Russians to fear existential threats, particularly from the West. It’s why they revere their militaries and have always been prepared to endure heavy casualties in war. The military prevents the Russian state from being subjugated.

Political memory also instills an unshakable pride in Russia and being Russian, something cemented through glorifying military victories, or at least victory in WWII.

The most important holiday in Russia is Victory Day, which honors the end of WWII.

In America, most students have never heard of VE Day or VJ Day and can’t tell the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans day.

Glossed over or censored because they do not instill pride are Russia’s losses in the Crimean War (1853-1856), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Vladimir Lenin bailing on WWI while hoping to seal victory for the Germans, Stalin’s crimes against humanity, and the 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact.

…….These parts of history do not contribute to the goals of Russia’s political memory.

Russia’s approach to political memory is consistent with China’s approach and motivated by the same theme: China lives with a perceived existential threat to its independence, particularly from the west. Cold War II will test its resilience.

China began preparing for round two at the end of Cold War I. This is when it began its “Patriotic Re-education Campaign.” Cementing patriotism in China, as in Russia, is key to preparing for and achieving victory in Cold War II.

China’s and Russia’s approaches to political memory are contrary to the U.S. government’s.

Instead, America appears to be preparing to wave a white flag, or maybe a rainbow-colored one. Pride in America has been sinking, and this ties to the government’s design for America’s political memory.

This political memory could emphasize things such as America being the first colony to defeat a European empire or its WWII victory over fascism. Or it could tell how, in just over 150 years, America became an economic powerhouse on the back of capitalism and then sustained this with an education system designed to unify Americans and later foster innovation.

Instead, the center of history in 4,500 schools is to depict American slavery via exaggerated interpretations of personal memories, untempered by facts.

Instead of a history of patriotism and achievement, the American government is supporting a history of trauma, including systemic racism and inequality.

President Trump sanctioned patriotic education to counter American history centered on slavery, an initiative that Biden promptly revoked because it was inconsistent with his strategy for political memory.

In 2022, it was reported that the average IQ of Americans dropped for the first time in 100 years. The researchers speculated that it was due to changes in the educational system.

Teachers must trade time that could be spent on “critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and independent thought”—all essential to innovation, economic growth, and understanding global issues—because of mandates about the time allotted to subjects that support Biden’s strategy for political memory.

These include topics such as restorative justice, non-white ethnic studies, the history of slavery, reparations, and ending “negative” aspects of white culture, such as objectivity and ambition.

Besides hindering innovation and economic growth and encouraging racial and ethnic divisions, the government’s strategy for political memory affects our ability to protect America.

Search for pride in the military, and the results point to gay pride. While the second and third largest military powers have painted a bullseye on America’s back, America can’t meet its military recruiting goals because the political memory of the military is not American victories but, instead, a history of racism.

Russia and China’s deepening partnership signifies a potentially ominous chapter of world history. Anyone familiar with Cold War I knows that more than 20 million died in Cold-War-related proxy wars, so it wasn’t that cold.

The Biden government’s trauma-centered political memory strategy to divide America politically, and racially has motivated this Russo-Chinese partnership and escalated the likelihood of Cold War II.

China and Russia have been planning round two since 1991, and a divided America is a tempting target to strike at.

Has anyone ever wondered why China and Russia spend so much propaganda capital on politically and racially dividing America?

The answer is that America’s enemies are supporting the American government’s strategy for political memory because doing so, in conjunction with their own hand-crafted political memories designed to unify their countries through patriotic education/propaganda and prepare for Cold War II, is a formula for victory.

When is the American government going to admit that its strategy for political memory is a national and global security threat?

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2019/Baumann-Russian-Patriotism/

Russian History Today

Early in his first presidency, Vladimir Putin resolved that patriotic education would be a priority under his leadership. In 2001, his regime published its first five-year plan for this purpose. As a testament to his consistency on the subject, Putin remarked in 2016 that “love of country” was the essential element in Russian unification.(Maybe we should look at that initiative)

In contrast to past eras, contemporary historians in Russia have little to fear from censors. Longtime Russia scholar Stephen Cohen bluntly asserts in a recent work, “There is almost no historical censorship in Russia today.” This does not mean that Putin’s government does not take an interest.

However, rather than punish dissenting or unflattering interpretations, the Russian government offers gentle encouragement to take a patriotic line. To the extent that there is enforcement of a certain orthodoxy, it is often based on democratic impulses.

That is to say that most of the public, to some degree in response to official promotion of certain patriotic or nationalistic themes, can actively assist the authorities in curbing dissent.

The tremendous costs to Russia as a result of World War II (referred to in Russia as the “Great Patriotic War”) and the heroism displayed by the Russian military in turning back the Nazi invasion continue to be dominant themes in the writing and artistic expression of Russian public figures and cultural leaders. Surviving members of the war are revered and constantly held up to the public as exemplars of Russian patriotism that should be emulated.

Military history has long been central to Russia’s national narrative. Particularly in light of the long political and social struggles they have experienced, Russia’s exploits on the battlefield have been a huge source of affirmation.

Writing about Soviet society in his 1976 edition of The Russians, journalist Hedrick Smith devoted an entire chapter to the phenomenon of Russian patriotism. As he put it, “In an age grown skeptical of undiluted patriotism, Russians are perhaps the world’s most passionate patriots.”Victory in the Great Patriotic War, as it is remembered to this day, still provides a kind of validation that overrides misgivings about the misery of Stalinism, economic failures, rampant alcoholism, population decline, and depressing statistics about life expectancy.

….Overall, importance of history in Russia today lies in its role in not only shaping the identity of the population but also in the way that identity shapes behavior. The emphasis on loyalty to Russia’s heritage and traditions influences everything from support for the existing regime to willingness to serve in the armed forces of the Russian Federation. History is a wonderful vehicle for this purpose, especially if those in charge have the power to shape the narrative. (The narrative is definitely being shaped in US schools, but is it the narrative we want being taught to our kids?)

Author’s note: Whenever practical, the author adheres to the Library of Congress system of transliteration from Cyrillic to Latin letters; exceptions include spellings of names, terms of reference, or places that are commonly accepted in English and therefore more familiar to American readers.

https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/52/4/783/1797043

Oxford Academic website

National Humiliation, History Education, and the Politics of Historical Memory: Patriotic Education Campaign in China 

Zheng Wang

International Studies Quarterly, Volume 52, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 783–806, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2008.00526.x

Published:

…..Schools are the primary social institutions that transmit national narratives about the past. All nation-states, whether Western democracies or nondemocratic societies, have placed great emphasis on teaching their national history with the aim of consolidating the bond between the individual citizen and the homeland.

…..In China, the “Patriotic Education Campaign,” which began in 1991, is another massive attempt by the government at ideological reeducation.

….This campaign is a nationwide mobilization effort targeted mainly at Chinese youth. As a central part of the campaign, Beijing called upon the entire nation to study China’s humiliating modern history and how much the country has been changed by the Communist revolution.

The CCP has set the entire propaganda machine in motion for this initiative, the content of which has become institutionalized in China—embedded in political institutions and inaugurated as the CCP’s new ideological tool.

For example, the Party has conducted major revisions of its schools’ history textbooks since 1991. (Sound familiar?) In the new textbooks, a patriotic narrative replaced the old class-struggle narrative. (In America we have done exactly the opposite. We have replaced the patriotic narrative with racism and class struggle)

The official Maoist “victor narrative” (China won national independence) was also superseded by a new “victimization narrative,” which blames the “West” for China’s suffering.

Through the nationwide education campaign, Beijing has creatively used history education as an instrument for the glorification of the party, for the consolidation of the PRC’s national identity, and for the justification of the political system of the CCP’s one party rule. (Is that what we are seeing here?)

So, there you have it folks. In a nutshell, Russia and China are teaching patriotism and love of country to their kids, while we teach systemic racism, gender identity, class struggle, and victimhood.

In a world wide conflict with Russia and China against the United States, who do you think stands the best chance of rallying the support of their youth?

Aristotle, Plato, & Federalist Papers #10

Federalist Papers No. 10 (1787), Publius

Bill of Rights Institute

Written by James Madison, this essay defended the form of republican government proposed by the Constitution. Critics of the Constitution argued that the proposed federal government was too large and would be unresponsive to the people. Sound familiar?

In response, Madison explored majority rule v. minority rights in this essay. He countered that it was exactly the great number of factions and diversity that would avoid tyranny.

Groups would be forced to negotiate and compromise among themselves, arriving at solutions that would respect the rights of minorities. Further, he argued that the large size of the country would actually make it more difficult for factions to gain control over others.

“The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.”

Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true.

So where did our founding fathers get ideas such as these?

Plato and Aristotle on Tyranny and the Rule of Law

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS FOUNDATION
Bill of Rights in Action
FALL 2010 (Volume 26, No. 1)

 Plato and Aristotle on Tyranny and the Rule of Law

Nearly 2,400 years ago, the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle explored political philosophy. Aristotle concluded that “it is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.”

In Philadelphia some 2,000 years after Plato and Aristotle’s time, a group of men was trying to write a constitution. George Washington, James Madison, and the other framers of the Constitution were dedicated to constructing a just government.

Americans had overthrown what they considered a tyrannous British government. The framers wanted to create a national government free of tyranny, governed by the rule of law.

The new American nation was quite different from the ancient Greek city-states. Still, many of the framers at Philadelphia had studied and understood Plato’s and Aristotle’s political philosophies. And they were grappling with many of the same political questions.

Plato and Aristotle both developed important ideas about government and politics. Two of the many political subjects that these men wrote about were tyranny and the rule of law.

Tyranny occurs when absolute power is granted to a ruler. In a tyrannical government, the ruler becomes corrupt and uses his power to further his own interests instead of working for the common good.

The rule of law is the principle that no one is exempt from the law, even those who are in a position of power. The rule of law can serve as a safeguard against tyranny, because just laws ensure that rulers do not become corrupt.

Both Plato and Aristotle lived in the democratic Greek city-state of Athens. In Athenian democracy, all male citizens directly participated in making laws and deciding jury trials.

Yearly elections decided who would fill important government positions. Citizens drew lots to see who would staff the remaining posts.

Athens had reached its height in political power before Plato was born. Its decline began with a long war with Sparta, a rival city-state. The war ended in 404 B.C. with Athens’ defeat.

Athens regained its democracy, but shortly after Plato’s death, the city-state fell under the control of Macedon (Alexander the Great), a kingdom north of Greece. The city remained, however, a cultural center.

Plato (c. 428–347 B.C.)

Plato was a student of Socrates. Socrates taught by asking questions about a subject and getting his students to think critically about it. Today, this is known as the Socratic method, used by many professors in law schools.

Socrates’ questioning often led to criticism of Athenian democracy and its politicians. An increasing number of Athenians viewed Socrates as a threat to their city-state.

A few years after losing the war with Sparta, Athens put the 70-year-old Socrates on trial for not accepting the gods of Athens and for corrupting the young. Socrates denied the accusations, but he was found guilty and sentenced to death.

When Socrates died, Plato concluded that democracy was a corrupt and unjust form of government. He left Athens for a decade. Returning in 387 B.C., he established a school of higher learning called the Academy.

Plato’s Republic

Plato’s most important work on politics is his Republic, published around 380 B.C. Written as a dialogue among characters and set in a private home, the book describes a small group of Athenians discussing political philosophy. The main character is Socrates, who voiced Plato’s ideas.

The Republic examines the meaning of justice, looks at different types of government, and outlines the ideal state. It touches on many subjects, including law and tyranny.

Plato looked at four existing forms of government and found them unstable. The best, in his view, is timocracy, a military state, like Sparta, based on honor. But such a state will fall apart:

The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals is the ruin of timocracy; they invent illegal modes of expenditure; for what do they or their wives care about the law? . . . . And then one, seeing another grow rich, seeks to rival him, and thus the great mass of the citizens become lovers of money. . . . And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men become lovers of trade and money; they honor and look up to the rich man, and make a ruler of him, and dishonor the poor man. Sound familiar?

An oligarchy, the rule of a few (the rich), leads to

a city of the rich and a city of the poor, dwelling together, and always plotting against one another. . . . [The government] will not be able to wage war, because of the necessity of either arming and employing the multitude, and fearing them more than the enemy.

The poor will overthrow the oligarchy and set up a democracy, the rule of the people (the poor). Plato thought that democratic “life has neither law nor order.” An unquenchable desire for limitless liberty causes disorder, because the citizens begin to chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority and at length, . . . they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them.

Like an oligarchy, a democracy pits the poor against the rich. The poor see the rich plotting, and they seek protection:

The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. . . . This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector. . . . having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; . . . he brings them into court and murders them . . . at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands. . . . After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown.

Plato deemed tyranny the “fourth and worst disorder of a state.” Tyrants lack “the very faculty that is the instrument of judgment”—reason. The tyrannical man is enslaved because the best part of him (reason) is enslaved, and likewise, the tyrannical state is enslaved, because it too lacks reason and order.

In a tyranny, no outside governing power controls the tyrant’s selfish behavior. To Plato, the law can guard against tyranny. In the Republic, he called the law an “external authority” that functions as the “ally of the whole city.”

In Plato’s Laws, his last book, he summarizes his stance on the rule of law:

Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state, in my view, is not far off (current Roe vs. Wade situation?) but if law is the master of the government and the government is its slave, then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state.

Plato’s ideal and just state is an aristocracy, the rule of the best. He believed leaders needed to be wise and trained in how to run a state, just as captains of ships are trained in how to run a ship.

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)

Born in the north of Greece, Aristotle came from a family linked to the kingdom of Macedon. His father worked for the king as a court doctor.

When Aristotle grew up, he studied philosophy at Plato’s Academy for 20 years, leaving when Plato died. He traveled and then tutored the king of Macedon’s 13-year-old son, Alexander (the future Alexander the Great).

When Alexander became king of Macedon in 335 B.C., Aristotle returned to Athens to set up his own school, called the Lyceum. He studied, catalogued, lectured, debated, and wrote about every area of human knowledge.

Although Plato had been his teacher, Aristotle disagreed with much of Plato’s philosophy. Plato was an idealist, who believed that everything had an ideal form. Aristotle believed in looking at the real world and studying it.

Aristotle spent many years teaching in Athens, which was under the control of Macedon. When Alexander the Great died, however, anti-Macedonians took control of Athens.

 Linked to Macedon, Aristotle was accused of not accepting the gods of Athens, one of the same charges leveled against Socrates. Unlike Socrates, however, Aristotle did not stand trial.

He fled to a home in the countryside, saying, as the story goes, that he did not want Athens to “sin twice against philosophy” (its first sin being the execution of Socrates). Aristotle died the following year in exile.

Aristotle’s Politics

Like Plato, Aristotle, wrote extensively on the subjects of tyranny and the rule of law. He hoped that his Politics, a collection of essays on government, would provide direction for rulers, statesmen, and politicians.

Unlike The RepublicThe Politics does not depict an ideal system of government. Instead, Aristotle explored practical constitutions that city-states can realistically put into effect. His aim was to “consider, not only what form of government is best, but also what is possible and what is easily attainable.”

He studied the different governments in Greece’s many city-states. He identified six different kinds of constitutions, and he classified them as either “true” or “defective.”

He stated that governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic.

 “True” constitutions served the common interests of all citizens. “Despotic” constitutions served only the selfish interests of a certain person or group. (again, sound familiar?)

Tyranny perverts monarchy, because it “has in view the interest of the monarch only.” To Aristotle, tyranny is the arbitrary power of an individual . . . responsible to no one, [which] governs . . . with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. (Can you say green new deal, gas prices, inflation?)

Aristotle wrote, “No freeman, if he can escape from it, will endure such a government.”

Aristotle believed that tyranny is the “very reverse of a constitution.” He explained that where the laws have no authority, there is no constitution. The law ought to be supreme over all.

Aristotle stressed that these laws must uphold just principles, such that “true forms of government will of necessity have just laws, and perverted forms of government will have unjust laws.”   

Aristotle held views similar to Plato’s about the dangers of democracy and oligarchy. He feared that both pitted the rich against the poor. But he recognized that these types of governments took many forms. The worst were those without the rule of law.

In democracies without law, demagogues (leaders appealing to emotions) took over. (Ignore Supreme Court and this is the result?)

For in democracies where the laws are not supreme, demagogues spring up. . . . This sort of democracy . . . is what tyranny is to other forms of monarchy. The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic rule over the better citizens. The decrees of the [demagogues] correspond to the edicts of the tyrant . . . . Such a democracy is fairly open to the objection that it is not a constitution at all; for where the laws have no authority, there is no constitution. The law ought to be supreme over all.

Aristotle made the same argument about oligarchies.

When . . . the rulers have great wealth and numerous friends, this sort of family despotism approaches a monarchy; individuals rule and not the law. This is the fourth sort of oligarchy, and is similar to the last sort of democracy.

Aristotle stated that “the rule of law . . . is preferable to that of any individual.” This is because individuals possess flaws and could tailor government to their own individual interests (surely not!), whereas the rule of law is objective.

He who bids the law rule may be deemed to bid God and Reason alone rule, but he who bids man rule adds an element of the beast; for desire is a wild beast, and passion perverts the minds of rulers, even when they are the best of men. The law is reason unaffected by desire.

Rulers must be “the servants of the laws,” because “law is order, and good law is good order.”

In addition to law, Aristotle believed a large middle class would protect against the excesses of oligarchy and democracy:

The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered in which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both the other classes . . . ; for the addition of the middle class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from being dominant. This is key.

In fact, one of Aristotle’s true forms of government is a polity, a combination of oligarchy and democracy. This type of state arises when the middle class is strong.

The U.S. Constitution

Like Plato and Aristotle, our nation’s founders worried about tyrannical government. Recognizing that tyranny could come from a single powerful ruler or from “mob rule,” the founders wrote into the Constitution mechanisms to prevent tyranny and promote the rule of law.

They separated the powers of government into three equal branches of government: the executive (the president), the legislative (Congress), and the judicial (the Supreme Court).

Each branch can check the other to prevent corruption or tyranny.

 Congress itself is divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House, elected for two-year terms, is more likely to be swayed by the passions of the people than the Senate, elected to six-year terms.

 The Constitution further limits the powers of the government by listing its powers: The government may not exercise any power beyond those listed.

 The first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, protect people’s liberties and freedoms from government encroachment.

In creating the judicial branch of government, the framers gave federal judges lifetime terms, thus ensuring that judges would base their decisions on the law and not on politics.

So, folks, what do you think? Were our founders correct in creating a republic where power is shared, or should we be a true democracy where the mob rules. This is the decision we now face as a nation.

Nullification

In the past, we have talked about a Convention of States as a solution to halting the over-reach of a federal government gone mad. That is a possible solution, but I have another.

Just say no.

In other words, nullification.

Unlike a Convention of States, nullification is based not on altering the Constitution but on enforcing it. States that nullify congressional acts or presidential decrees that violate the Constitution would not only be stopping the federal juggernaut at their state borders, but they would also be signalling that the Constitution is so vitally important that it must be enforced.

In the Kentucky Resolution of 1799, Thomas Jefferson called nullification the “rightful remedy” for any and all unconstitutional acts of the federal government.

The federal government may exercise only those powers that were delegated to it. This is made clear by the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Simply stated, nullification recognizes each state’s reserved power to nullify, or invalidate, any federal measure that a state deems unconstitutional.

Nullification is founded on the fact that the sovereign states formed the union, and as creators of the contract, they retain ultimate authority to enforce the constitutional limits of the power of the federal government.

There are several benefits for applying this understanding via nullification: It is a far safer approach for remedying problems caused by violating the Constitution than a constitutional convention; it is based on upholding the Constitution and the founding principles of the Republic; and it can be implemented by individual states, without having to first get two-thirds of the states on board.

Despite the benefits, there are those who insist that nullification is unconstitutional. They argue that the so-called Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution puts federal laws above state laws and that the Supreme Court has the final say on the constitutionality of federal laws. Both of these claims can be easily dismissed.

Regarding the first claim, the Supremacy Clause does not declare that all laws passed by the federal government are the supreme law of the land, period. A closer reading reveals that it declares the “laws of the United States made in pursuance” of the Constitution are the supreme law of the land.

In pursuance thereof, not in violation thereof. None of the provisions of education, health, welfare, transportation, energy, or even with maintaining secure borders for example, is permissible under any enumerated power given to Congress in the Constitution.

They were not passed in pursuance of the Constitution, therefore they are not the supreme law of the land, and they may be declared null and void by the states.

Alexander Hamilton provided the ration­ale for this interpretation of this part of Article VI when he wrote in The Federalist, No. 33:

If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted [sic] to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies and the individuals of whom they are composed…. But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the larger society which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such.

But how about the claim that the Supreme Court has the final say regarding the constitutionality of federal laws or edicts? Thomas Jefferson had something to say about the matter. In 1804, he wrote that giving the Supreme Court power to declare unconstitutional acts of the legislature or executive “would make the judiciary a despotic branch.” He noted that “nothing in the Constitution” gives the Supreme Court that right.

Even Abraham Lincoln, who as president unconstitutionally used his executive power to deny habeas corpus, recognized the lack of constitutional authority for the Supreme Court’s assumption of the role of ultimate arbiter of an act’s conformity with the Constitution.

Lincoln said that if the Supreme Court were afforded the power to declare whether an act of the federal government was constitutional, “the people will have ceased to be their own masters, having to that extent resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

How can anyone read these statements, or the 10th Amendment for that matter, and honestly conclude that any branch of the federal government is intended to be the surveyor of the boundaries of its own power?

Every department of the federal government was created by the Constitution — therefore, by the states — and has no natural sovereignty. No branch can define its own authority. Such a thought is ridiculous and contrary to any theory of popular sovereignty ever enunciated.

If the courts, Congress, or the president possessed such power, it would make them judge, jury, and executioner in every case in which their own act of exceeding constitutional authority is in question.

Look at it this way: If the federal government was “the decider,” what purpose would the 10th Amendment serve? If he’s being honest, even the most optimistic political observer would have to admit that the federal government will continue to expand its powers so long as it is allowed to decide the scope of those powers.

Nullifying unconstitutional federal laws is very achievable, if constitutionalists were to inform themselves of this approach and then pursue it.

Because the understanding is better in some states than it is in the nation as a whole, it is very possible for states to win victories via nullification to stop unconstitutional federal laws that could not now realistically be repealed on the national level.

Although only a relatively small number of states have so far nullified unconstitutional federal laws in the areas of gun control, ObamaCare, NSA surveillance, indefinite detention of civilians, etc., a string of state nullification victories would not only create a bandwagon effect encouraging other states to join the nullification movement, but also contribute to the overall national awakening — shortening the time it otherwise would take to create a constitutionalist U.S. Congress.

A string of nullification victories would also cause Washington to tread more carefully than otherwise in how it might respond to the nullification efforts.

But enacting a string of nullification bills in states across the nation — particularly bills possessing teeth that will be enforced by state officials — will not happen without creating the necessary understanding and activism to get state legislators on board.

And improving Congress to the point where most congressmen begin abiding by their oaths of office will not happen without a national awakening — or at least an awakening in most congressional districts.

But when this national understanding is created, watch out! Congress will begin terminating and phasing out all unconstitutional programs, and the resulting drop in spending will bring the budget into balance without any balanced budget amendment.

In the meantime, a growing number of states will be holding the line against the federal juggernaut at their borders.

American Thinker

March 13, 2021

It’s time for Red States to start nullifying federal law

By Steve Baldwin

……Our Founders were extremely wary of federal power and thus created a number of checks and balances to counter it.  One of them was the ability by the states to “nullify” federal laws and even Supreme Court decisions.   

As we have just discussed, nullification is when a State decides to not abide by a federal law, regulation or even a Federal court ruling by simply refusing to enforce it. 

This concept is rooted in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which plainly states that if the states, who are the creators of the federal government, have not specifically given them authority, that authority rests with the states and the people of the state:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Over the last 150 years or so, liberal legislators and judges have violated the Tenth Amendment by illegally expanding the scope and power of the federal government.

We know that Federal power is limited because such powers were actually “enumerated” or listed in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and include actions such as  “To lay and collect taxes,”  “coin money,” and   “raise and support Armies.”  

The federal government was not given any role in education, health, welfare, transportation, energy, or even with maintaining secure borders.  Not to mention gay marriage or abortion rights. All those issues were left up to the states to decide.

If our founders wanted to expand the federal government into every area of our life, they would not have specifically listed the very few powers they granted it.

Conservative constitutional scholars such as Thomas E. Woods, in his book, Nullification, How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, documents that our Founders believed that if a “law is unconstitutional and therefore void and of no effect, it is up to the states, the parties to the federal compact, to declare it so and thus refuse to enforce it.”

The left will scream about such nullification efforts, but they have been engaged in nullifying federal laws for years.  For example, all state laws legalizing marijuana are illegal since they’re in conflict with federal narcotic laws, but states have simply refused to enforce these federal laws and so have “nullified” them. 

Likewise, states controlled by the left have allowed various cities and counties to become “sanctuaries” in which they refused to abide by federal immigration laws.  And no, the Marines were not sent in nor did any state or city even suffer the loss of federal funding. 

It is time our side use this tactic as a way of protecting our constitutional rights. Here are some of the issues that could be affected by the concept of nullification:  

  1. Nullify all 1st Amendment Restrictions.  States should refuse to enforce all federal edicts and Supreme Court rulings that impinge upon the 1st Amendment protections of our religious freedom, such as efforts by radical gays to force churches, faith based adopting agencies,  religious schools, colleges, and businesses to carry out a radical gay and transexual agenda.
  2. Nullify all federal efforts to undermine the 2nd Amendment.  States should nullify all federal laws that compromise the 2nd Amendment such as those being proposed by the Biden team.
  3. Nullify open border policies. With Biden announcing his intent to grant amnesty to all illegal aliens, combined with his hostility to border security, expect the border to get even more out of control. States should nullify such pro-open border policies and use their resources to stop illegal immigration.   The reality is that states were originally involved in setting immigration policy and indeed, used to detain and deport illegals prior to the existence of a Border Patrol or ICE. The only mention in the constitution regarding immigration is “to establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.”   
  • Nullify the anti-police agenda.  During the Obama regime, his DoJ hamstrung city police departments all over the country with phony “civil rights” investigations, resulting in cities hesitant to arrest or prosecute violent thugs.  With anti-police activists surrounding Biden, his administration will do the same, thereby empowering leftist rioters in our cities. The founders never gave the federal government a law enforcement role as they thought this responsibility best be carried out by local police and sheriff departments.  States should resist and ignore all federal anti-police regulations and DoJ harassment of local police departments.
  • Nullify all federal efforts to preserve fraudulent voting procedures.  Conservative states need to immediately take action on election fraud and pass comprehensive voter ID laws, which, of course, will be attacked by Biden’s DoJ as a “civil rights” violation. States also need to remove the estimated 2-3 million illegal aliens from its voting rolls.

Of course, states will be reluctant to invoke nullification but the alternative will be to watch our constitutional rights trashed by this Federal government gone mad. 

Once states are engaged in nullifying federal laws, we will see conservatives leaving blue states to live in red states and vice-versa. 

And yes, this could lead to a peaceful division of America in which the Red states become redder and the Blue states become bluer, but this is not our fault. 

It is the left that is assaulting our constitutional rights and if conservatives desire to live in states that protect their rights, then so be it.     

Already, we are seeing some movement in the states on the nullification front. The Arizona Senate passed a bill that declares it will not enforce federal gun control laws. OklahomaSouth Dakota and North Dakota legislators have all introduced legislation that nullifies Biden’s executive orders.   

Nullification is simply returning America to its original system of governance in which most governmental authority is decentralized to the states and counties.

I know a lot of constitutional scholars who will disagree with my position. They will say nullification is unconstitutional and cite Supreme Court cases such a Marbury vs. Madison.

I will not argue legality.

I will argue that we, the people have a duty and responsibility to call out abuses of our federal government.

The tools we have to fight this abuse are a Convention of States, Nullification, or, as we have seen in our past, civil war.

I have previously explained my concerns about a Convention of States. I do not want a civil war. I therefore back the idea of just saying NO! to the federal government.

This puts the ball firmly in the hands of the Biden Administration.

Faced with nullification, they now must make a decision. Listen to the people and recognize the will of the people, or take up arms and force the citizens of the US to comply with their beliefs.

Let’s face it, the federal government won’t do much about it other than to cut federal funding for some state programs, but perhaps the time has come for states to do away with these federal handcuffs.  

Martial Law

J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker and editor of the forthcoming Military Thinker.

Martial Law

Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 of the US Constitution states:

[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; . . .

The states as well as Congress may prescribe penalties for failure to obey the President’s call of the militia. They also have a concurrent power to aid the National Government by calls under their own authority, and in emergencies may use the militia to put down armed insurrection.1 The Federal Government may call out the militia in case of civil war; its authority to suppress rebellion is found in the power to suppress insurrection and to carry on war.

Last weekend we had thousands of people here visiting the lake. I have a question. How many of those people were democrats, and how many were republicans? Don’t know? Me neither.

That is why you cannot have limited martial law. Martial law must be applied to everyone. Liberal and conservative, black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, young, old, everyone.

That is the very problem Lincoln had imposing martial law during the Civil War. How do you tell Union folks from confederate folks? You can’t, so everyone must suffer. That is exactly what happened here in Missouri between 1861 and 1865.

Let me tell you a story.

On August 30, 1861 General John Freemont declared martial law In Missouri and set up his HQ in Jefferson City. He was staying in the Dulle House by the old St. Mary’s hospital. Why there?

Because under martial law, the military becomes judge jury and executioner.

He and his men simply walked up to the door of the Dulle home and told Mr. Dulle they had 24 hours to get out. The Dulle’s had no recourse. All local law enforcement and civil courts had been suspended and replaced with a military tribunal.

Bear in mind, they never asked Mr. Dulle if he was Union or Confederate. They just wanted his house for Union headquarters and took it.

So, what is martial law?

 Well, the first thing that you need to know is that the U.S. Constitution is “suspended”.

In other words, you would suddenly have no rights at all.

There would be no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, no freedom of assembly and you could be arrested at any time for any reason whatsoever.

For the duration of the “emergency”, the military would be in control.  There would be troops in the streets, a curfew would almost certainly be imposed, and armed checkpoints would be set up.

If the “emergency” lasted long enough, we would probably see authorities go house to house confiscating firearms, ammunition, and food supplies.

And perhaps most troubling of all, “dissidents” and “subversives” would likely be rounded up and imprisoned. Again, how do you tell? (conservative or liberal?)

Now I know what you are going to say. That could never happen here.

Well, unfortunately, that is exactly what happened to your ancestors here in Missouri during the Civil War.

For all the skeptics out there, let me give you the facts.

Let’s start with General Order # 32  issued by Union General Halleck Dec. 21 1861.

Anyone caught in the act of sabotage will be immediately shot. No quarter, no trial.

Now a lot of Missourians wanted nothing to do with the war. We were a slave state, but voted 135,000 to 17,000 to stay in the Union.

Truth is, less than 1% of our population owned slaves. Our issue was state’s rights. We simply wanted the Federal government to stay out of our business. Sound familiar?

So, most Missourians just wanted to remain neutral and be left alone to work their farms.

Well, that quickly ceased to be an option when Union General John Schofield issued General Order #19 :

“every able bodied man capable of bearing arms and subject to military duty is hereby ordered to repair without delay to the nearest military post and report for duty. The order went on to say that its purpose was to exterminate the guerrillas that infest our state.

Now let’s look at that one. Applied to the current situation, does that mean that the military could come in and tell me I must fight for Biden? If not, I am a traitor? This works both ways folks.

Let’s say Biden enacts martial law, and Trump wins again in 2024, taking office while we are still under martial law. Now he becomes commander in chief over the military.

He could then use martial law to demand that every able bodied man must now join the military and fight for Trump.

See why I am scared of it? Martial law is a terrifying tool.

So, lets proceed. You can no longer be neutral. You must join the military. This makes it easy to see who is with you, and who is against you.

Wearing a uniform, with us. Not wearing a uniform, a traitor. Simple.

Another clause of General Order #19 stated that to arm the military, The Union forces had the right to seize all guns.

This offered an excellent excuse for Union forces to enter private homes and take what they wanted. Can you say illegal search and seizure?

Shortly thereafter, on August 12, 1862, General Schofield issued General Order #9 which stated that while the Union army was in the field, they could help themselves to any supplies they needed from any citizens they felt were not loyal to the union.

Who determined loyalty? You guessed it, the military. Again, how do you tell? Union or Confederate? Today, Republican or Democrat?

This brings us to what was known as the Palmyra Massacre in Palmyra, Missouri on October 18, 1862.

Ten Confederate prisoners of war were executed in retaliation for the abduction of a local Union supporter, Andrew Alsman. The officer who ordered the execution, Colonel John McNeil, was later known as the “Butcher of Palmyra”.

Col. John McNeil commanded the Union’s 2nd Missouri State Militia in Palmyra.  (yes, as a divided state, we had both Union and Confederate Militias). Also stationed in Palmyra was the Provost Marshal General for Northeast Missouri, Col. William Strachan, military commander for the whole area.

One of Strachan’s local informants was 60-year-old Andrew Allsman.

Col. McNeil published a notice in the Palmyra Courier demanding the confederate guerrillas return Allsman unharmed to his family within 10 days.

If they failed to do so, 10 of the men jailed at Hannibal and Palmyra would be shot. Bear in mind, these ten men were citizens deemed traitors by the military. No trial, no jury. No habeas corpus under martial law. When the 10 days passed with no word from Porter, McNeil directed Provost Marshal Strachan to compile a list of 10 prisoners to face a firing squad. The execution was scheduled for Oct. 18.

Shortly past noon on Saturday, Oct. 18, three government wagons arrived at the Palmyra jail. One carried four rough wooden coffins and the other two carried three each.

The prisoners were led out of the jail and each man was seated on a coffin. The wagons were taken to the amphitheater of the fairgrounds, where the coffins were unloaded and placed in a row with the lids removed. About a hundred spectators gathered.

After a prayer by a local Baptist minister, the 10 men sat on the foot of their coffins about 30 feet from the firing squad.

Shortly after 1 p.m. the baptist minister gave each man a final handshake, followed by Strachan.

Maj. Isham Dodson, in charge of the firing squad, called them to attention and gave the orders: “ready, aim—thus perish all traitors to their country’s flag—Fire!”

The bodies were placed in the coffins and the lids nailed shut. The wagons took the coffins back to the town square to be claimed by relatives.

Col. McNeil left Palmyra before the executions and went to St. Louis to give a newspaper interview explaining his actions. The interview was published in several newspapers, and the executions were condemned in the New York Times and a number of international newspapers.

To stop the criticism and show his support for McNeil, Col. Lewis Merrill, commander of the Union District of Northeast Missouri, relieved Strachan as Provost Marshal General, claiming the position was no longer necessary. Col. McNeil was then promoted to brigadier general of volunteers.

Now just about the time you think that things can’t get any worse, along comes Brigadier General Thomas Ewing , Commander of Union forces in the western half of Missouri.

He decided that the guerillas couldn’t be defeated as long as the citizens kept helping them, so he now went after the citizens of Missouri.

Again, how do you tell if someone is Union or Confederate? Or today if someone is conservative or liberal?

You all know the answer. When you yourself are risking death by being labeled, the smart thing to do is cooperate with the military by pointing out the traitors in the community.

This happened throughout the war. Bear in mind, no jury, no trial. Just the word of your neighbor.

Great way to get rid of that noisy neighbor and his kids!

So back to General Ewing. He can’t seem to root out all the rebels in Missouri, so what did he do?

He started by arresting and imprisoning the wives, moms, and sisters of the rebels. They were rounded up and put in makeshift jails in KC.

Gen Ewing soon realized he didn’t have enough jail space for all of them so he now proposed the removal of all rebel families from Missouri.

On August 14, 1863 an old building on Grand avenue in KC, being used as a prison, collapsed killing the wives and sisters of many William Clark Quantrill’s men. (the now famous Confederate Guerrilla of Missouri)

On the same day the prison collapsed, General Ewing issued General Order # 10 stating “ The wives and children of known guerrillas and also women who are heads of families and are willfully engaged in aiding guerrillas will be notified by such officers to remove out of this district and out of the state of Missouri forthwith.”

This was the final straw for Quantrill and his men. They now mounted up and headed for Lawrence Kansas and conducted the now famous sack of Lawrence on August 21, 1863.

All the male citizens of Lawrence were killed and the town was burned to the ground.

In response, General Thomas Ewing now issued General Order # 11. On August 25, 1863 which called for:

The forced removal of all Missouri citizens in Jackson, Bates, Cass, and ½ of Vernon county.

You have 15 days to get out or you will be shot.

Did you catch that? ALL MISSOURI CITIZENS! Didn’t matter if you were union or not. Your husband could be fighting for the Union and you still lost everything. Again, no recourse. Military is judge, jury, and executioner.

For hundreds of miles every home, barn and structure was then burned to the ground and all the fields set afire. For years after the war, these 4 counties were known as the burnt district.

Again, you as a citizen had no recourse, no compensation, just pack your stuff up and get out. What about our right to private property? Forget it. The Constitution has been suspended.

Bear in mind, General Order #23 had been established back in December 1862 to implement martial law. It created a Provost Martial General in St. Louis, and District Provost Marshalls throughout the state.

Provost Marshall had complete authority to arrest and imprison people at their will. They alone became judge, jury, and executioner and answered to no court.

Provost Marshalls now also came up with a system of loyalty oaths. You had to swear an oath of loyalty to the Union and post $1000 bond.

Can you imagine having to swear an oath of loyalty to Trump or Biden at the risk of losing everything and being thrown in jail? That is martial law folks.

Don’t have the money? No problem, we will take the deed to your home and hold it as bond.

Now it is simply the Provost Mashall’s word vs. yours if you are loyal to the union and you could lose everything.

In April 1863 The KC Journal stated that the Provost Marshall held bonds totaling over 27 million dollars. (roughly $558 million in today’s dollars)

If you didn’t take the oath, you were arrested and imprisoned.

If you broke the oath, you were shot.

Remember, no jury trial, no representation.

Some entire towns vanished because everyone was arrested.

In June of 1863 General Schofield issued general orders stating that for every union soldier killed, $5000 would be assessed and collected from the people living in the community where the death occurred.

Opposition to the union cause by utterance or through the press was forbidden between 1861and 1865. Orders were sent out that all newspapers had to be sent to the military for inspection prior to publication and all newspaper editors were to take an iron clad oath of loyalty to the US. Think the press is bad now?

On Sept 17, 1863 General Schofield issued General Order # 96 that basically stated that it was against the law to incite rebellion through published materials and if you are found guilty of doing so, it was punishable by fine and imprisonment and the paper will be shut down.

So, between 1861 and 1865 in Missouri, we saw the federal government impose martial law, establish military commissions, arrest and imprison people at will, seize their property and their guns, banish people from the state and eliminate the people’s right to free speech.

Did it work? Of course not. It simply poured more fuel on the fire.

There is no limited martial law. It is all or nothing, so tread lightly when you call for it.

By the way, did you once hear me mention the word slavery?

For Missouri it was all about state’s rights and a federal government out of control. Our current federal government has become too powerful folks, regardless of who serves as president.

We need to return to the system created by our founding fathers as stated in the 10th amendment to the Constitution, ” Powers not granted to the Federal Government in the Constitution belong to the states or the people.

So, I know what you are thinking. It could never happen here. Well, believe it or not, Martial Law has been declared in the US 68 times according to The Brennan Center for Justice.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/guide-declarations-martial-law-united-states


War or Invasion

General Andrew Jack­son declared martial law before the Battle of New Orleans, 1814.

Covered Area: New Orleans, Lous­i­ana
State or Federal: Federal
Dura­tion: Decem­ber 12, 1814 – March 13, 1815 (3 months)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812

Notes: This was the first declar­a­tion of martial law in U.S. history.


Pres­id­ent Frank­lin Roosevelt approved the declar­a­tion of martial law in Hawaii after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 1941.

Covered Area: Hawaii Territ­ory
State or Federal: Federal
Dura­tion: Decem­ber 7, 1941 – Octo­ber 24, 1944 (2 years, 10 months, 17 days)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II

Declar­ing Author­ity: Gov. J. B. Poin­dex­ter and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short (declar­a­tion approved by Pres. Frank­lin Roosevelt)

Gov. Brigham Young declared martial law during the Utah War, 1857.

Covered Area: Utah Territ­ory
State or Federal: See notes 
Dura­tion: Septem­ber 15, 1857 – June 12, 1858 (9 months)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Utah War

Declar­ing Author­ity: Gov. Brigham Young

Notes: Although Governor Young declared martial law under color of his author­ity as the territ­orial governor, he did so in order to facil­it­ate armed resist­ance to approach­ing federal troops. Hostil­it­ies in Utah ended on June 12, 1858, when Young accep­ted Pres­id­ent James Buchanan’s pardon and was removed from power.

Gen. John C. Fremont declares martial law in Missouri in response to the Camp Jack­son Affair and a Confed­er­ate insur­gency, 1861.

Covered Area: Missouri
State or Federal: Federal 
Dura­tion: August 30, 1861 (August 14, 1861 in St. Louis only) – March 17, 1865 (4 years)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Camp Jack­son Affair and ongo­ing Confed­er­ate insur­gency during the U.S. Civil War

Notes: U.S. Army Gen. John C. Fremont declared martial law in St. Louis on August 14, 1861, and then through­out Missouri on August 30. Fremont was soon relieved of command for insub­or­din­a­tion. His successor, Gen. Henry W. Halleck, believed that Fremont had lacked the author­ity to declare martial law, and he refused to enforce it until he received writ­ten author­iz­a­tion to do so from Pres­id­ent Abra­ham Lincoln in Decem­ber 1861.

Pres. Abra­ham Lincoln declares martial law during the U.S. Civil War, 1862.

Covered Area: United States
State or Federal: Federal 
Dura­tion: Septem­ber 24, 1862 – August 20, 1866 (4 years)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: U.S. Civil War

Declar­ing Author­ity: Pres. Abra­ham Lincoln

Notes: Rather than declar­ing martial law over a partic­u­lar area, Proclam­a­tion 94 applied martial law to “all rebels and insur­gents, their aiders and abet­tors, within the United States, and all persons discour­aging volun­teer enlist­ments, resist­ing mili­tia draft or guilty of any disloyal prac­tice afford­ing aid and comfort to rebels against the author­ity of the United States.”


Gen. Charles Barrett declares martial law in response to the Tulsa, Oklahoma race riot, 1921.

Covered Area: Tulsa, Oklahoma
State or Federal: State 
Dura­tion: June 1, 1921 – June 4, 1921 (4 days)

Texas Gov. Dan Moody declares martial law in response to the Sher­man riot of 1930.

Covered Area: Sher­man, Texas
State or Federal: State 
Dura­tion: May 10, 1930 – May 24, 1930 (14 days)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Sher­man riot of 1930

Declar­ing Author­ity: Gov. Dan Moody

Acting Texas Gov. A. M. Aikin Jr. declares martial law in response to the Beau­mont race riot of 1943.

Covered Area: Beau­mont, Texas
State or Federal: State 
Dura­tion: June 15, 1943 – June 20, 1943 (5 days)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Beau­mont race riot of 1943

Declar­ing Author­ity: Acting Gov. A. M. Aikin Jr.
Termin­at­ing Author­ity: Acting Gov. A. M. Aikin Jr.

Mary­land Gov. J. Millard Tawes declares martial law in response to the Cambridge riot of 1963.

Covered Area: Cambridge, Mary­land
State or Federal: State 
Dura­tion: June 14, 1963 – July 8, 1964 (1 year, 1 month)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Cambridge riot of 1963

Declar­ing Author­ity: Gov. J. Millard Tawes

Labor Dispute

Pennsylvania Gov. John Fred­er­ick Hartranft declares martial law during the Scranton general strike, 1877.

Covered Area: Scranton, Pennsylvania
State or Federal: State 

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Scranton general strike

Declar­ing Author­ity: Gov. John Fred­er­ick Hartranft

Idaho Gov. N. B. Willey declares martial law during a viol­ent struggle between mine oper­at­ors and miners in and around Coeur D’Alene, 1892.

Covered Area: Shos­hone County, Idaho
State or Federal: State 
Dura­tion: July 11, 1892 – Novem­ber 18, 1892 (4.5 months)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Viol­ent struggle between mine oper­at­ors and miners in and around Coeur D’Alene, Idaho

Pennsylvania Gov. Robert E. Pattison declares martial law during the Homestead strike, 1892.

Covered Area: Homestead, Pennsylvania
State or Federal: State 
Dura­tion: July 12, 1892 – Unclear

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Homestead strike

Declar­ing Author­ity: Gov. Robert E. Pattison

Minnesota Gov. Orville L. Free­man declares martial law in Free­born County in response to a meat-pack­ing work­ers strike, 1959.

Covered Area: Free­born County, Minnesota
State or Federal: State 
Dura­tion: Decem­ber 11, 1959 – Decem­ber 22, 1959 (11 days)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Meat-pack­ing work­ers strike in Albert Lea, Minnesota

Declar­ing Author­ity: Gov. Orville L. Free­man

Natural Disaster

Mayor R. B. Mason declares martial law after the Great Chicago Fire, 1871.

Covered Area: Chicago, Illinois
State or Federal: State 
Dura­tion: Octo­ber 11, 1871 – Octo­ber 23, 1871 (13 days)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Great Chicago Fire

Declar­ing Author­ity: Mayor R. B. Mason

Mayor Walter C. Jones declares martial law after the Great Galve­ston hurricane, 1900.

Covered Area: Galve­ston, Texas
State or Federal: State 
Dura­tion: Septem­ber 11, 1900 – Septem­ber 21, 1900 (8–9 days)

Precip­it­at­ing Event: Great Galve­ston hurricaneDeclar­ing Author­ity: Mayor Walter C. Jones

Welfare: Thoughts by our founding fathers.

We have a problem in this country. We have jobs and no one wants to work.

We can create millions of jobs, but if people won’t get off their lazy buts and go to work as opposed to sitting home and letting the government support them, why create jobs?

If I can sit at home and get a free phone and cable tv, free housing, and free food, why work?

I have the answer, and most people are not going to like it.

Make all federal and state benefits contingent on working.

No work, no pay. Simple as that.

American Heritage web site:

American Founders

Poverty and Welfare in the American Founding

By Thomas West

Jefferson and Franklin on Welfare

From the earliest colonial days, local governments took responsibility for their poor. However, able-bodied men and women generally were not supported by the taxpayers unless they worked. They would sometimes be placed in group homes that provided them with food and shelter in exchange for labor. Only those who were too young, old, weak, or sick and who had no friends or family to help them were taken care of in idleness.

The Founders had little to say about the topic of poor relief. Like the family, welfare was not a controversial topic. Two of their rare statements on the subject occur in writings provoked by foreigners: Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, written in answer to questions posed by a Frenchman, and an article criticizing the British welfare system written by Benjamin Franklin for the British press.

Jefferson explained the Virginia poor laws at the time of the Revolution:

The poor, unable to support themselves, are maintained by an assessment on the tithable persons in their parish. This assessment is levied and administered by twelve persons in each parish, called vestrymen, originally chosen by the housekeepers of the parish…. These are usually the most discreet farmers, so distributed through their parish, that every part of it may be under the immediate eye of some one of them. They are well acquainted with the details and economy of private life, and they find sufficient inducements to execute their charge well, in their philanthropy, in the approbation of their neighbors, and the distinction which that gives them. The poor who have neither property, friends, nor strength to labor, are boarded in the houses of good farmers, to whom a stipulated sum is annually paid. To those who are able to help themselves a little, or have friends from whom they derive some support, inadequate however to their full maintenance, supplementary aids are given, which enable them to live comfortably in their own houses, or in the houses of their friends. Vagabonds, without visible property or vocation, are placed in workhouses, where they are well clothed, fed, lodged, and made to labor. Nearly the same method of providing for the poor prevails through all our states; and from Savannah to Portsmouth you will seldom meet a beggar.

In his proposed Virginia “Bill for Support of the Poor,” Jefferson explained that “vagabonds” are:

able-bodied persons not having wherewithal to maintain themselves, who shall waste their time in idle and dissolute courses, or shall loiter or wander abroad, refusing to work for reasonable wages, or to betake themselves to some honest and lawful calling, or who shall desert wives or children, without so providing for them as that they shall not become chargeable to a county.

In the poorhouse to which vagabonds are sent, there would be an overseer, a “discreet man … for the government, employment, and correction of the persons subject to him.”

In the Notes on the State of Virginia passage just quoted, Jefferson referred to “those without strength to labor.” In his proposed bill, they were more precisely described as the “poor, lame, impotent [i.e., weak], blind and other inhabitants of the county as are not able to maintain themselves.”

The terms “tithable,” “parish,” and “vestrymen” in the passage above refer to the pre-Revolutionary Southern practice of assigning care of the poor to the local Anglican church. In keeping with the spirit of the Revolution, which separated church from state, Virginia transferred this task from church to county government in 1785, as Jefferson had proposed.

Poor children whose families could not provide for them, including orphans, were put out to suitable persons as apprentices so that they would learn “some art, trade, or business” while being of use to those who were training them. However, this was not to be done, in Jefferson’s plan, until they had attended public school for three years, if necessary, at public expense.

All the typical features of early American welfare policy can be seen in Jefferson’s descriptions and proposals:

  • The government of the community, not just private charity, assumes responsibility for its poor. This is far from the “throw them in the snow” attitude that is so often attributed to pre-1900 America.
  • Welfare is kept local so that the administrators of the program will know the actual situations of the persons who ask for help. This will prevent abuses and freeloading. The normal human ties of friendship and neighborliness will partly animate the relationship of givers and recipients.
  • A distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor is carefully observed. Able-bodied vagabonds get help, but they are required to work in institutions where they will be disciplined. Children and the disabled, on the other hand, are provided for, not lavishly but without public shame. The homeless and beggars will not be abandoned, but neither will they populate the streets. They will be treated with toughness or mercy according to their circumstances.
  • Jefferson’s idea of self-reliance was in fact family reliance, based on the traditional division of labor between husband and wife. Husbands were legally required to be their families’ providers; wives were not. Nonsupporting husbands were shamed and punished by being sent to the poorhouse.
  • Poor laws to support individual cases of urgent need were not intended to go beyond a minimal safety net. Benefit levels were low. The main remedy for poverty in a land of opportunity was marriage and work.

When Benjamin Franklin lived in England in the 1760s, he observed that the poverty problem was much worse in that country than in America. Britain did not limit its support of the poor to a safety net provided under conditions that prevented abuse.

There, the poor were given enough that they could live in idleness. The result was to increase poverty by giving the poor a powerful incentive not to become self-supporting.

Franklin wrote:

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. (sound familiar?) And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them [as in England] … with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor…. [Yet] there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you [Englishmen] passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age and sickness.

In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty. (Is that not what we are seeing today?)

We see in Franklin’s diagnosis a striking anticipation of today’s welfare state, in which, poverty has remained stagnant as the welfare system has swelled since the 1960s.

Franklin’s understanding of the welfare paradox—that aid to the poor must be managed carefully lest it promote laziness and therefore poverty—was shared by most Americans who wrote about and administered poverty programs until the end of the 19th century.

These were the Founders’ practical proposals and views on poor relief. Their policies were intended to help the poor in ways that did not violate the rights of taxpayers or promote irresponsible behavior.

From Jefferson’s standpoint, poverty programs that help people who choose not to work are unjust. Far from being compassionate, compelling workers to support shirkers makes some men masters and other men slaves: Workers are enslaved to nonworkers. That violates a fundamental principle of the Declaration of Independence.

The incentive structure of the modern welfare state today is similar to the one that Franklin condemned in old England, except that ours is more generous and more tolerant of single motherhood.

Since 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson inaugurated the modern War on Poverty, total annual government welfare spending has grown from less than $9 billion in 1965 to $2.4 trillion 2021.

In 2013, there were roughly 80 different federal means-tested welfare programs. Just counting seven large federal programs (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance; public housing; Medicaid; utilities; Women, Infants, and Children assistance; and emergency food assistance) Minimum-wage jobs do not even come close to competing with welfare in most states.

According to a current Heritage Foundation report by Authors:Robert Rector and Jamie Hall, the average poor family with children currently receives $65,200 in cash, food, housing, medical care, and educational support from the taxpayer each year. 

From the point of view of the usefulness of marriage, the choice of the poor to forgo work is “the behavior of people responding to the reality of the world around them and making the decisions—the legal, approved, and even encouraged decisions—that maximize their quality of life.” As Robert Rector and William Lauber have explained:

The current welfare system may be conceptualized best as a system which offers each single mother … a “paycheck.”… She will continue to receive her “paycheck” as long as she fulfills two conditions: (1) she must not work; and (2) she must not marry an employed male…. [Welfare] has converted the low-income working husband from a necessary breadwinner into a net financial handicap. It has transformed marriage from a legal institution designed to protect and nurture children into an institution that financially penalizes nearly all low-income parents who enter into it.

So, there you have it folks. In our effort to help people, we have actually done them great harm.

Should we go back to the methods of Jefferson and Franklin, or simply pour more money on the problem and hope it fixes itself?

There is a solution, again from our past. Bring back the programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt following the Great Depression.

If we are going to pay people not to work, why not pay them to work?

That was the idea of the FDR’s Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps.  Those programs didn’t jump-start employment, but they did provide work as well as income.

They also reversed years of despair that itself was impeding society.

So why not get started? Doing this would be revenue neutral. We are spending the money on government benefits anyway.

It would satisfy the right with the emphasis on work and the left with the emphasis on taking care of the poor.

It would also serve the need for rebuilding our infrastructure.

So exactly what were these programs?

The Civilian Conservation Corps was a domestic work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942. 

Unemployed, unmarried men were put to work in conservation and natural resource development efforts on federal, state, and local lands. 

That the program provided much-needed work to the scores of unemployed young men during the dark days of the Depression while implementing these conservation efforts made it one of the most universally supported of New Deal programs. 

Think about that folks. You want to solve crime and break up the gangs in inner cities? Here is your answer. What’s that you say? They won’t join up? Making too much money selling drugs?  Well, that is where the second part of the program sets in.

We imposed a draft during the world wars. Those kids did not have a choice. They had to join up and fight.

Right now, we are in an economic world war for our survival. I say institute a draft for work. If we can draft kids to fight, why can we not draft kids to work? Sound crazy? Think about this.

The CCC operated under the army’s control. Camp commanders had disciplinary powers and corpsmen were required to address superiors as “sir.”

The program was aimed at over two million unemployed unmarried men between the ages of 17 and 25. CCC participants left their homes and lived in camps in the countryside. By September 1935 over 500,000 young men had lived in CCC camps, most staying from six months to a year.

Over the nine year lifespan of the program, 3 million kids participated and were provided with food, clothing, shelter, and a small wage of $30 a month, $25 dollars of which was required to be sent back to their families!

In addition to promoting environmental conservation it took those kids and built good citizens through vigorous, disciplined outdoor labor.

Close to the heart of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the CCC combined his interests in conservation and universal service for youth.

He believed that this civilian “tree army” would relieve the rural unemployed and keep youth “off the city street corners.”

The work focused on soil conservation and reforestation. Most important, the men planted millions of trees on land made barren from fires, natural erosion, or lumbering—in fact, the CCC was responsible for over half the reforestation, public and private, done in the nation’s history.

Corpsmen also dug canals and ditches, built over thirty thousand wildlife shelters, stocked rivers and lakes with nearly a billion fish, restored historic battlefields, and cleared beaches and campgrounds.

In less than 10 years, the Civilian Conservation Corps built more than 800 parks (Lake of the Ozarks State Park being one of them) and planted nearly 3 billion trees nationwide.

The army’s experience in managing large numbers of young men and the paramilitary discipline learned by corpsmen provided the added benefit of teaching these kids skills they could use throughout their lives.

That is one reason why we were able to gear up so quickly for WWII production.

Now it worked so well with the kids, someone asked, “How about the parents?”

Thus, was born The Works Progress Administration. This agency put millions of unemployed people to work on projects large and small, including parks, roads, bridges, and public buildings. 

The infrastructure built by the WPA still stands in nearly every community in America, where it’s not uncommon to find a “Built by the WPA” plaque or stamp on a sidewalk, building, or bridge.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1933.

The WPA, employed nearly 9 million Americans before its expiration.

Americans of all skill levels were given jobs to match their talents. Most of the resources were spent on public works programs such as roads and bridges, but WPA projects spread to other projects as well.

The Federal Theater Project hired actors to perform plays across the land. Musicians gave free concerts. Artists beautified cities by painting larger-than-life murals.

Even such noteworthy authors as John Steinbeck and Richard Wright were hired to write regional histories.

WPA workers took traveling libraries to rural areas. Some were assigned the task of transcribing documents from colonial history; others were assigned to assist the blind or babysit for mothers working in other jobs.

Critics called the WPA “We Piddle Around” or “We Poke Along,” labeling it the worst waste of taxpayer money in American history.

But most every county in America received some service by the newly employed workforce, and although the average monthly salary was barely above subsistence level, millions of Americans earned desperately needed cash, skills, and self-respect.

While FDR believed in the elementary principles of justice and fairness, he also expressed his hatred for doling out welfare to otherwise able workers.

So, in return for a government check, WPA workers built highways, schools, hospitals, airports and playgrounds.

They restored theaters–such as the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, S.C.–and built the ski lodge at Oregon’s Mt. Hood.

FDR safeguarded private enterprise from competition with WPA projects by including a provision in the act that placed wage and price controls on federally funded products or services.

Just like today, out of work Americans needed jobs. To the unemployed, many of whom had no money left in the bank, a decent job that put food on the dinner table was a matter of survival.

Unlike Herbert Hoover, who refused to offer direct assistance to individuals, Franklin Roosevelt knew that the nation’s unemployed could last only so long.

FDR saw government handouts as killing the initiative of the American people to step up, work for a living, and make a future for themselves and their families.

FDR saw the answer was to stop the handouts and put people to work. So, his efforts soon shifted to “work-relief” programs. FDR’s government agencies paid individuals to perform jobs, unlike our current government that simply hands them money to sit at home.

Yes folks, you heard me right, I am agreeing with a program implemented by a Democrat.