Month: September 2016

Treachery and Deceit

In this time of infamy, when America needs men of good character and reputation to stand up and say “Not in our name!”, where are you?

There is an unsung hero of the American Revolutionary War, whose name is notably absent among the Founding Fathers. His military exploits were as great as those of George Washington, and, in many ways, this general had achieved much more in the early part of the Revolutionary War than Washington had. It was this general’s valor and strategic insight that not only won several crucial battles in 1775, 1776, and in 1777, the last of which resulted in the surrender of the northern British command under British General John Burgoyne. In 1778, wounded and under appreciated, this General Benedict Arnold was appointed the military governor of Pennsylvania.

As a man with quite a reputation as a skilled and resourceful general, Arnold was something of a war hero at the time, and this celebrity granted him access to the political Establishment elite, who surrounded Arnold with wealthy admirers of all political persuasions, including many influential American colonists who were not necessarily enthusiastic about the Revolutionary War. It was here, in a nest of politically influential Tories, that the bitterness that Arnold felt toward the Revolutionary government and military command gnawed at him. Scandalous accusations of bribery and corruption began to swirl around governor Arnold, and this proved to be the final stroke.

Using his Tory political connections within Pennsylvania, Benedict began to correspond with officers in the British military. The deal was simple. He would give the British the Fort at West Point and effective control of Pennsylvania, in exchange for a large sum of money and a general’s commission in the British Army. With so many rumors swirling around Arnold at the time, suspicious were high, and the messenger Arnold trusted to carry this treasonous offer was captured by American Patriots. The Revolutionary Government immediately sought to arrest Benedict, but he fled to the safety of the British.

After serving in the British Army against his own countrymen briefly, without any of the successes that marked his colonial career. After the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War decisively for the Americans, Arnold retired to England, where he died, reviled by Americans as a traitor. To this day, the name Benedict Arnold has become a slander of disloyalty, forever washing away all of the good he’d done for the American cause with one act of treason.

“Let me die in this old uniform in which I fought my battles.
May God forgive me for ever having put on another.”
-Benedict Arnold-

This has been a pretty rough week for ideological conservatives, and I know many are still wrestling with the philosophical fallout of Ted Cruz’s endorsement of Donald J. Trump. There’s no way to parse this as a win for Cruz or for ideological conservatism, so let’s deal with it head on. This was a collapse of our front line, not only did we lose the battlefield, we lost a lot of well meaning people, who are now so broken of will that they have turned themselves, frightened and cold, over to Trump.

For all of the immense good Ted Cruz has accomplished for the conservative movement in his tenure as a Senator and his dutiful service before that, all of it is threatened by his defection from the cause of Liberty. The very simple fact of the matter is that Donald Trump either is or is not disqualified to be president of the United States of America by merit or failure of his personal character. For months, we have fought against this blithering fascist, who’s uttered incomprehensibly reprehensible things in the last year, from congratulating dictators and tyrants, to defaming political rivals, and even dishonoring the American veterans.

He has been caught in lie upon lie upon lie, revealing not only a heart utterly overcome with deceit but utterly unrepentantly so. This man resorts to lies as a matter of habit. To him the very concept of personal honor is as alien as would be taking up residence at the bottom of a lake would be. For each good deed Trump has supposedly done, he has committed dozens of cruel and vile deeds, from trying to demolish an elderly American widow’s home to build a parking lot, to bullying rural families in Scotland, so he could and destroy their homes to build a golf course.

Donald Trump is a man of such vile dishonor and gross malevolence that if dueling ever became legal again, the line for a shot at Donald’s head would stretch from New York to Dallas and back again. It is, indeed, that very tradition of dueling that prevented men like Donald Trump from lasting long enough to poison the society with his vileness, and it is men like Donald Trump that make such a tradition seem not only sensible, but necessary. In no way is Donald worthy of the office of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, or Reagan.

“Heart? He doesn’t have no heart that man.
The only thing he has is what he – worry about himself.”
–Vera Coking–

“Just go back and ruin his own country rather than
come to Scotland and ruin our country.”
–Michael Forbes–

Ted Cruz says that he has prayed about this, and that he and his family have forgiven Trump for his vile statements and lies. It is this forgiveness that is the basis for Cruz’s endorsement for Trump. With all respect to Ted Cruz and his family, you may forgive a child molester for his vile deeds against your child, but that does not mean you ever let him near your children again! In just this way, we may forgive Donald Trump for being a rapacious, vile, repugnant human being, but that does not necessitate our political endorsement of him in our name!

To Andrew Klavan, Mark Levin, David Limbaugh, and many other trusted voices in the conservative movement who have taken a long hard look at Trump and a long hard look at Hillary and blinked, deciding that their fear of the danger Hillary Clinton poses eclipsed even the absolute black hearted, moral bankruptcy of Donald Trump, and thus justified their throwing in with Trump, I beseech you to reconsider. In this time of infamy, when America needs men of good character and reputation to stand up and say “Not in our name!“, where are you?

Are you so cowered by the potential evil of Hillary Clinton, despite her obvious ineptitude and the obvious fractures within the Democratic Party, to do what is right? Where is your moral relevancy to the American conservative movement? If we do not stand for what is right, what is just, and what is necessary, even in the face of bitterness, indignity, and under appreciation, then where is your honor, sirs? Like it or not, you are officers of the Reagan Regiments that form the ranks of  the conservative movement.

Is suffering under what would undoubtedly be an inept and foolish presidency of Hillary Clinton too much to ask in the name of doing what is right? Once again, in the battle of Liberty, the shadow of Benedict Arnold rises among the ranks. The cause of Liberty lives or dies not by the benevolence of tyrants but by the unswerving loyalty of Patriots who fight on no matter the suffering or cost. Liberty is what is right, not what is easy. In the face of the oncoming foes, who stands with me to man the cannons, and who turns coat and runs?

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

 

Natural Demand: The Keynesian Farce

These companies always fail, and the reason they fail always comes down to the same miscalculation: Artificial Demand is artificial, and everyone knows it.

In 2005, a group of engineers came up with an innovative alternative to the traditional silicon photo-voltaic solar panel and began aggressively marketing it. Through existing connections in the industry, they were able to acquire start up capital for Solyndra, named for their long cylindrical form solar “tube” panels. They applied for Department of Energy loan guarantees in 2006 but were not successful until 2009, when the Obama administration took over during a very uncertain economic period, fully embracing the socialist Keynesian economic theory.

The Obama campaign promised “government investments” in “shovel ready” projects to boost the economy, and billions of federal loans soon filled dozens of “green” companies’s coffers, including $535 million to Solyndra. They built a new manufacturing facility and hired two thousand employees to produce copper indium gallium selenide cylindrical solar panels. While Solyndra had increased their manufacturing capabilities (and cost overhead), sales of their panels remained more or less flat. Then silicon prices dropped dramatically, making traditional silicon solar panels vastly less expensive.

With their sales suddenly plummeting and desperately short of cash, Solyndra executives asked for further federal loans. The Obama administration, having hitched their political reputation to Solyndra as the poster child of their green energy job initiative, granted another $75 million of loan guarantees in February 2011, keeping the company afloat for another six months. By August 2011, the company closed its doors and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, laying off all of its 3,000 employees in short order. Over $600 million in federal loans simply vanished.

“Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”
-President Barack Obama-

We started discussing the principle of Natural Demand and how government taxation can negatively impact economic growth by reducing available discretionary capital in the economy. Now we’ll talk about how Keynesians continue to assert that government spending can supplement or replace Natural Demand, by allocating spending on goods and services elsewhere in the economy. Through this spending, Keynesian economists believe government can not only overcome the loss of growth caused by taxation but stimulate an economy, creating jobs in the micro economy, like priming a pump.

While there are several serious problems with this theory, not the least of which being the conspicuous failure to produce the desired “pump priming” effect when it has been implemented during recent recessions, the theory yet persists. To understand why Keynesian economic policies fail, we must first understand what Natural Demand really is. Put simply, when the market is left alone to its own devices, Natural Demand is the amount of a good or service that people will actually consume.

While it’s not possible to determine Natural Demand exactly at any given point in time, because people’s circumstances, needs, and wants can change hour to hour, the concept itself remains fairly intuitive. To illustrate it a bit more clearly, let’s look at an example of a family about to go out to eat. When they get into their car, they have a lot of options to choose from, but what they actually choose comes down to a few limiting factors:

  • First, what is it that they can afford? No matter how expensive their tastes may be, their pocketbook will restrain their choices for them. If the family has to choose between a steak dinner and utility bills, they are likely to settle for tacos, instead of steaks.
  • Second, what is it that all of them are willing to eat? It doesn’t do the parents any good to go out to eat at a fancy restaurant where an otherwise nice outing turns into an excruciating battle of wills. Pizzas, burgers, or tacos are an easier sell to kids than the seafood that the parents like so much.
  • Third, how much do they need? No matter how hungry they are, the 3 year old is never going to eat more than a 3 year old can eat. The family is unlikely to purchase an more than they can eat.

While there are other factors, these three elements suffice: what can they afford, what do they want, and how much do they need. Now considering every family within the same physical area, how much all of they can afford, what they want, and how much do they need, all together constitutes Natural Demand for the restaurant industry in that market. Simple enough?

“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”
-Lao Tzu-

Now, what people demand from day to day is fairly nebulous a concept, because what people want, need, and can afford can change from day to day, or even hour to hour. Suffice it to say, there are very real limits to how many couches a family will demand at any given time, even if those limits are difficult to nail down at any given time. A house, as well as a family budget, can only fit so many couches, after all, but it only takes one cat to bump that number to at least one.

It’s when people get it into their heads that they want to manipulate demand for their own purposes that things can get messy economically. History is filled with examples of failure after failure of companies that only existed so long as they were supported by their government, such as the East India Company or Solyndra. These policies always fail, and the reason they always fail comes down to the same miscalculation: bureaucrats believe that “Artificial Demand” modifies people’s economic behavior, yet somehow consumers never seem to act differently.

It’s ultimately why Solyndra failed. It’s not that the cylindrical form solar panels weren’t innovative or technologically sound. They seem to be, for all intents and purposes. The market simply didn’t want them. Was it because companies couldn’t afford hundreds of solar panels? Was it because companies were buying competitive goods? Was it because they didn’t see energy costs as a problem, especially when traditional energy prices were falling? Probably some of all of the above.

Regardless, Solyndra failed because they produced something for which Natural Demand simply did not exist for.

“Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer,
but must work, doing something useful with their own hands,
that they may have something to share with those in need.”
-Ephesians 4:28-

Consistent with the evidence of thousands of failures before and since, Solyndra’s failure demonstrated even half a billion in federal loans can’t make people buy something they don’t want. Had the company not received the more than half a billion dollars in federal loans, the company would have gone out of business anyway, but without wasting half a billion dollars of federal loan guarantees. The only difference between the two situations is the United States would have saved itself hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

This simple fact is what condemns Keynesian economic models. If the economy would have not only been no worse off but actually have been better off without additional federal debt, then their argument that government spending can not only stimulate the economy, but also do so while not damaging GDP growth is provably false. The problem with Keynesians is that they don’t even acknowledge these failures, somehow writing them off as necessarily stimulative. If only casinos were so forgiving.

Meanwhile, the entire point of a free and capitalist economy is people buy what they can afford, want, and can use. The reason capitalism works as well as it does is that it makes no attempt to alter what the market is going to do, because capitalists recognize the market is going to do what it’s going to do, almost not matter what we may want it to do. People don’t buy couches they don’t need, no matter how much we need them to buy couches. The same is the same for solar panels or automobiles.

Only Natural Demand drives the economy, in conjunction with the market’s ability to provide a supply. Leaving more capital in the hands of the people, and they will buy only the things that they want and need, no more and no less. If politicians or bureaucrats truly want to improve the economy for the sake of their constituents, they should focus on those things that maximize Natural Demand.

That means stop taxing personal incomes, so that income can be directed at the pursuit of happiness. That means reducing corporate taxation so that businesses are not punished simply for doing business within the United States. That means reducing the functions of government to fit within the constraints of this economy. Among many other reasons, this why the Founding Fathers wanted a limited government, so that capital could remain in the hands of those whom it most benefits.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

Natural Demand: The Frozen Cage

It is “Natural Demand” that ultimately fuels innovation and incentivizes exactly the type of risk taking that ignited the rapid growth from the late 1790’s through the 1890’s and early 1900’s.

The waning Norwegian winter air was crisp, and the afternoon was sunny and with a few distant clouds, altogether perfect weather for a ski excursion for three medical students. Following a familiar path down the ski slope near a waterfall, one of the doctors, a young woman named Anna Bågenholm, lost her balance and tumbled into the annals of medical history. She fell down the slope and landed on the icy river below. The ice beneath her was several inches thick but had been weakened by the warmer days, and it gave way, plunging Anna headfirst into the freezing waters beneath.

Average body temperature for a human being is 98.6° F. At just 95º F, a decrease of just 3.65%, the body is clinically suffering from hypothermia, causing shivering and shallow breathing. At 89º F, a mere 9.7% decrease of body temperature, the victim begins to suffer from moderate hypothermia, exhibiting increased slowness of breath, dizziness or confusion, loss of coordination or clumsiness, slurred speech, and rapidly onsetting fatigue. At 82º F, a 16.8% decrease of body temperature, the body begins to shut down as it enters severe hypothermia, and the patient may become delirious, suffer memory loss, and finally become comatose, as their heart and brain function slow and ultimately stop.

When Anna’s body hit the water the cold shocked the air out of her lungs, and the current wedged her body between the ice and rocky river bed below. Flailing desperately in the icy water, she found a pocket of air trapped beneath the ice and pushed herself against rocks and gasped in the freezing air. After forty minutes in the icy water, Anna lost consciousness. An hour and twenty minutes later, emergency responders finally managed to pull her limp and unresponsive body from the river.

Anna had no pulse and was not breathing, and rescuers began CPR immediately. By the time Anna arrived in the Tromso University Hospital operating room, she had been clinically dead for over an hour and a half. Nine hours and over 100 doctors and nurses later, Bågenholm was successfully resuscitated, though she remained in intensive care for two months until her organs regained function. She went on to complete medical school and practices medicine today.

“I don’t remember anything about the accident.
 I think that’s really good.”
-Anna Bågenholm-

The sluggishness of our economy is very much like a hypothermia victim, complete with the symptoms of confusion, lack of coordination, and rapidly onsetting fatigue, as the icy chill of government taxation leeches away precious heat. In the last two quarters, the United States economy has struggled at 0.8% and 1.1% in a precipitously declining growth rate since peaking in 2014 at 5.0%. The United States is not alone in this challenge. Just compare the US to the top ten European nations by tax revenue per GDP:

country-tax-revenue-per-gdp
Data from wikipedia andtradingeconomics

In 2015, the United States government seized $1.445 trillion from the pocketbooks of its citizens in 2015, even after refunds, or about 7.79% of the total GDP of around $18.558 trillion. Coupled with roughly $276.7 billion from excise taxes (1.49% of GDP), $338.2 billion from corporate taxes (1.82% of GDP), and $1.015 trillion from payroll taxes (5.47% of GDP), and a total of 16.57% of our economy has been leached out of the economy through federal taxation alone. If we think of GDP is our nation’s economic “body heat”, then at 16.57%, our economic patient would be at the very precipice of severe hypothermia.

The European economies, including the much vaunted socialist Scandinavian economies, are all clinging to the barest margins of growth while burdened by tax revenues per GDP far and above the United States. Could these governments sucking so much from their economies be causing their own chronic stagnant growth rates? The answer to this question is central to the conservative economic theory and remains a matter of debate, but looking at this admittedly limited data subset certainly suggests an answer.

“Those of the left often act as if human beings are just like inert
blocks of wood or like chess pieces that you can move around
on the chess board… but, of course, people react to [taxation].”
–Thomas Sowell–

Briefly, the theoretical argument can be summarized thus:

1) Taking capital out of the economy and using it for nonproductive government expenses reduces the amount of capital available in the economy.
2) With less capital available in the economy, there is less elasticity in demand driven markets and less tolerance for failure.
3) With less capital in the overall market and less elasticity in demand driven markets, inefficient markets are more likely to be generated than efficient markets, because there is less excess capital to cover risks.
Conclusion: This creates recessionary scarcity, worse risk to reward trade-offs in the economy, and ultimately drives down aggregate growth potential.

In the case of the United States, by laying a relatively heavy tax burden on the private citizen, the government crushes Consumer Demand. While Supply Side Economics has been shown to increase economic growth, the true power of the economy is Demand for products and services presently available and, more importantly, those not yet available. It is “Natural Demand” that ultimately fuels innovation and incentivizes exactly the type of risk taking that ignited the rapid growth from the late 1790’s through the 1890’s and early 1900’s.

It starts when families have excess discretionary income, because they have the ability to spend speculatively, combined with competitive wages and salaries, even lower middle class American families were able to afford luxury and convenience goods such as radios, televisions, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, dryers, cars, air conditioners, and even family vacations to Europe. They try a new restaurant, or a new expensive lotion, or perhaps a new type of home entertainment technology.

These purchases simply don’t happen, at least not with any consistency, unless families have excess discretionary income, and excess discretionary income only exists if it’s not artificially being “spent” in the form of usually wasteful taxation. It’s only when families are spending speculatively that the risk inherent in new and interesting products is marginal, because the chance to make at least some return on almost any investment is relatively high.

This is a subject that I’ve been wanting to right about for some time now, but the election and other economic and political issues have pushed it to the sidelines. I’ll continue this subject in the following article and demonstrate that there is no replacement for Natural Demand.

Be brave. Be free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

 

 

The Vilest Lie and Darkest Deceit

Only “country” is evoked almost as often as god among the smoldering rubble of mankind’s bloodshed and mayhem.

There is no greater threat to the conservative movement or the American Republic than this pernicious belief that Conservatism and Nationalism are at all similar or even necessarily compatible. After decades of socialist propaganda, the stupefication of the American populace has reached the point that otherwise well meaning people have been convinced intolerance of dissent is somehow an American virtue. It is not and must never be.

If America has become a nation where political dissent is intolerable, then we will have lost utterly what it means to be American. This, more so than any other reason, is why Nationalism is such a poisonous, self deluding ideology, luring those born by chance within the established boundaries of one nation or another into a illusion of unearned superiority. It is this ideology, a near cousin to Fascism, that is every bit as unAmerican as the vile ideologies of socialism, communism, feudalism, and even monarchism.

Unfortunately, Nationalism has become the political vogue of a vulgar, uneducated, self congratulating white male demographic who sees superiority as a birthright, rather than a quest. Their vision of American “exceptionalism” has become inexplicably tied to other largely uneducated, lightly pigmented human beings around the world, whose fading political influence and economic superiority has been and continues to be eclipsed by foreign competition. Until these entitled, regressive, socialist, ethnocentric elitists abandon these tribal impulses, the Republic is doomed to fall.

“But freedom is never more than one generation away from
extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.”
-Ronald Reagan-

The difference between Nationalism and Conservatism is easily demonstrated through a very simple analogy. If forced to choose either the flag of the Republic or the principles upon which the Republic was founded, the Nationalist will always choose the flag and ditch the principles, because the flag, in his mind, is synonymous with the nation. Faced with the very same dilemma, the Conservative will choose the principles and ditch the flag, because history has proven time and again that nations are replaceable.

What is good for the nation, believes the Nationalist, is what is good for all. If any conflict arises against interests of the nation, then the interests of the nation must always prevail. Superficially this seems like a fairly benign position, but what happens when the interests of the nation come into conflict with the interests of the individual? After all, wasn’t this the very conflict that sparked the American Revolution?

Only here, in the United States, did the Enlightenment ideas that spent over two centuries simmering in a cauldron of philosophical and political theory fully blossom into a nation. These precious Enlightenment ideas of Life, Liberty, and Property are the beating heart of Conservatism. The United States was born of the truly revolutionary idea that nations were not important, but the lives, hopes, and dreams of the People were. Without kings and titled elites, the People could at long last be free to pursue happiness.

“No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all,
continual fear, and danger of violent death: and
the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
-Thomas Hobbes-

Compared to this Enlightenment ideal, the Nationalist is a regressive, grunting, violent thug, forever trying to drag America back into the abyss of the Dark Ages, where a man’s place was in service to his nation, whether that nation served his interests rarely in the barest fashion or not at all. The Nationalist’s fascination with the past is fueled by a loathsome hunger for the blood of men and women that are not like him, because of ten thousand imagined slights for which almost no one living is even remotely complicit to, let alone guilty of.

These Nationalists mistake their obsession with the superficiality of national identity and willingness to fight for blood and soil as a proof of their “superior” cultivation and culture, but it is only proof of their diseased and deeply perturbed minds, because in no way are these urges innovative or unusual in the annals of history. Practically every dictator on earth, for thousands of years, has appealed to this base human impulse to barbarism. Only “country” is evoked almost as often as god among the smoldering rubble of mankind’s bloodshed and mayhem.

There is nothing new or noble about Nationalism. It’s just the same old justification of those that hunger for power over those that yearn to be free. Both the Tsars of Russia and the premiers of the Soviet Union used Nationalism to spur millions of Russians to their deaths in the conflagrations of First and Second World Wars, both started in large part by the Kaiser and then the Führer of Germany. There is nothing “conservative” about these vile ideals, and to find them suddenly in our midsts is a betrayal of everything that America has represented for centuries.

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
As nations become  more corrupt and vicious,
they have more need of masters.”
-Benjamin Franklin-

The Nationalist is a traitor and an enemy of Liberty, because he would put country before the Natural Rights of the People. He carries with him the chains of bondage to the state as he peddles promises of political, military, and economic security. They, just like their vile second cousins, the socialist revolutionaries, make their vicious appeal to the worker and the uneducated, while universally demonizing the “educated elite“.

Only in the American Revolution were intellectuals embraced, not murdered by the tens of thousands. In both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, the first to be culled were always the scholars and the educators, because they dared voice appeals to ethics and reason. Nationalist leaders always seek to destroy anyone smarter than they are, because only then can they foist their insane stupidity upon a gullible public, without anyone to remind the People that they are meant to be free.

By the way, you are meant to be free!

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

 

A Short Word: Bad Polls & Worse News

This is the chance of a lifetime for people looking to end the Establishment’s death grip on American politics once and for all.

Donald Trump’s supporters have a created an alternate reality bubble of their own cognitive biases. Nothing outside of their bubble can reach them, no matter how real or crushing it is. They want to believe that, despite all of the state polling, that Donald Trump has a chance to win, because he’s within a few points in national polling. Reality has a way of kicking down the door of these safe space reality bubbles, and that’s coming this November.

Lets start, with the aid of Real Clear Politics, and give Donald Trump all of the states that were won by either McCain or Romney in 2008 and 2012, regardless of how they are polling this year. Here are the results from 2008 and 2012.

McCain 2008, via RCP
Romney 2012, via RCP

If we give Donald Trump Iowa, Ohio, and even Florida, this is what the map looks like for the 2016 election.

giving-trump-every-thing

It looks like Donald Trump is in striking distance, only 11 electoral votes away from winning in November. This is what Trump’s supporters want to focus on, how close Donald Trump is to the weakest Democratic nominee for the office of presidency possibly ever. If Trump can pick up one or two more states, he’ll win. This is possible, but not likely, because of how those states have voted historically.

Now on the other side of the coin, as of September 15th, 2016, Hillary Clinton had a 4.4% point lead in Wisconsin, a 5.2% point lead in Virginia, a 5.8% point lead in Pennsylvania, and a 6.0% point lead in both Michigan and New Hampshire. Giving her just those five states where she’s polling outside of the margin of error creates an election night map that looks like this.

hillary-minimums

At 272 Electoral College votes, Hillary Clinton will be the next United States president, no matter how any of the other “swing state” votes go. She doesn’t even need Nevada, Arizona, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, or Florida. If Donald Trump loses Ohio or Florida, then it’s good night, loud mouthed prince. Both Ohio and Florida went into Obama’s column in 2008 and 2012 and, very likely, one of them will again this year.

If Donald Trump loses both Ohio and Florida, then the rout is on. Of serious note, Donald Trump has never sustained poll numbers above 40% in a 4-way race, peaking above 40% only 8 times since early May, and only 2 times in the last ten polls, one of which was the CNN poll where Republicans were oversampled by 25%. All of this is against the weakest and probably worst Democratic candidate ever seen.

If Hillary’s health conditions, whatever they may be, take her out of the equation, then we could see different results. Either way, it’s doubtful the Establishment controlling either party will want to change out these broken horses, no matter how bad this cycle gets. This is the chance of a lifetime for people looking to end the Establishment’s death grip on American politics once and for all.

Vote your conscience. It’s time to take American politics back from the politicians.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

Pomp, Adulation, and Avarice

The Republic has been through this fire before and need not go through it again.

Not every Founding Father was always a perfect role model for Conservatives, and this is truest in the case of John Adams who was elected to the office of president in 1797 for a single term. So contentious was John Adams’s single term as president, in fact, that Alexander Hamilton, a member of John Adams’s own political party, wrote in a letter to a colleague:

“For my individual part my mind is made up. I will never more be responsible for [John Adams] by my direct support—even though the consequence should be the election of Jefferson. If we must have an enemy at the head of the Government, let it be one whom we can oppose & for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures. Under Adams as under Jefferson the government will sink.“

Keep in mind that John Adams succeeded George Washington as president of the United States by virtue of election by the Electoral College. George Washington could have run for another term and achieved it, without question, but he chose to retire from public life. John Adams, at the time the Vice President and most popular candidate, won the presidency, which brings us unfortunately to the “disgrace of his foolish and bad measures“.

After the French Revolution, the radical French government had become openly hostile to the United States, and tensions between the two newly minted Republics rose rapidly. The Federalist faction sought to provide more executive discretion in order to deal with the possible threats of French nationals living in the United States. With the power of these acts collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts, John Adams almost single handedly destroyed the nascent American Republic.

John Adams shut down immigration, deported hundreds of legal immigrants, and effectively removed voting privileges for immigrants, which was, more or less, the intended purpose of the acts. He then turned the power of the Act upon to his Republican party rivals, who were critical of his administration, including members of Congress and the press. The most famous of which being Vermont Representative Matthew Lyon, a frequent and vocal critic of John Adams, who wrote that President John Adams had an “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and self avarice“.

Matthew Lyon and many others who had published similar opinions of the Adams administration were not only fined but actually imprisoned under the Sedition Act. Thomas Jefferson, then Vice President, and James Madison viewed Adams’s behavior to be utterly contrary to the character and principles of the First Amendment, and they began to quietly foment political resistance to John Adams’s administration among the states. And they were not alone, as members of John Adams’s own party turned against him, including, obviously, the very influential Alexander Hamilton.

Suffice to say, Matthew Lyon’s description of John Adams should sound more than a little familiar to anyone paying attention to the present political affairs, and much of the nature and purpose of the Alien and Sedition Acts should also sound dangerously familiar to the strident political language of one of the candidates this year. The Republic has been through this fire before and need not go through it again.

It should be obvious now why we must heed the words of Hamilton and have a president “whom we can oppose & for whom we are not responsible“, because should we survive this dark season at all, we must, at least, retain our political legitimacy. We cannot allow our political identity to be confused with this nightmarish Nationalist pseudo-ideology.

#NeverTrump

Liberty is For The Win!

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A Line in the Sand Marks the Man

Outnumbered ten to one, with the promise of death even if the defenders surrendered, Texas legend holds that Travis laid out the dire situation that faced them, and their options were few and grim.

On the afternoon of February 3rd, 1836, twenty-six year old Lieutenant Colonel William Barrett Travis rode into Bexar, Texas, leading 18 regular calvary in the Texas Army with orders to reinforce the regular and volunteer force defending the old mission and relieve Colonel James Clinton Neill. He found at the Alamo volunteers James Bowie, who had arrived a few weeks earlier, and Davy Crockett, who arrived earlier that same day. Both men were cultural icons, with reputations as big as the Alamo itself, and who had brought with them sizable groups of volunteers under their command.

James Bowie had granted himself an informal rank of Colonel and took an immediate dislike of Travis. Even after Colonel Neill had left Travis, the ranking officer of the regular Texan forces, in command of the fort, Bowie repeatedly undermined his command and even encouraged volunteers to disobey Travis’s orders. The infighting finally came to a head, and Travis put it to the men of the Alamo who they’d rather have in command. The undisciplined volunteers and enough of the regular Texan Army soldiers elected Bowie to be the commander.

With the Mexican Army bearing down on San Antonio, James Bowie and the volunteers spent a night drinking and celebrating raucously in town, and another day sobering up. Colonel Neill had to return to the Alamo to restore order, putting Lt. Colonel Travis back in command of the regular Texas Army forces, but allowing James Bowie to lead the volunteers. Unfortunately, precious days had already been lost, and when the Mexican Army arrived in San Antonio in late February 23rd, the Alamo’s defenders were simply not ready for the impending siege.

When Santa Anna arrived, he had his generals notify the Texan forces early in the battle that, true to his reputation, there would be no quarter offered. Travis defiantly ordered a cannon shot in response, and the week that followed was filled with skirmishes between the approximately 200 Texan defenders and nearly 2,000 strong Mexican Army. By March 4th, Santa Anna’s forces had the Alamo effectively surrounded, with the Texan defenders trapped inside.

On March 5th, Lt. Colonel Travis, now the sole commander of the fort after James Bowie was injured, mustered the men inside the fort. Outnumbered ten to one, with the promise of death even if the defenders surrendered, Texas legend holds that Travis laid out the dire situation that faced them, and their options were few and grim. He made clear his intent to stay and fight, then, with the tip of his saber, he drew a line in the sand in front of his men. He challenged those willing to give their last in battle to cross the line…

“We must die.
Our business is not to make a fruitless effort to save
our lives, but to choose the manner of our death.“
-Lt. Col. William B. Travis-

This moment remains the most enduring legend of the Battle of the Alamo and, in fact, the entire Texas Revolution. The battle itself has become part of the heritage and character of the Texan psyche, as well as an American touchstone of patriotism. Sadly, there are many lessons to be taken from this battle that apply to our present political situation, such as not allowing brash and egotistical leaders to break down the order of a group. This is not to dishonor James Bowie by comparing him with any modern political figure. Bowie died with honor, after a distinguished career in the service of Liberty far surpassing any loud mouth billionaire.

The core, and most important lesson remains: even in the face of an enemy that will offer no quarter, true men of honor and principle, when faced with these dire circumstances, choose to stand on their convictions no matter the cost, while lesser men waffle in their courage and slink out in the middle of the night with the women and children. When we are called to take a stand on any issue, even politically or ideologically, we must do so with all of our heart, courage, and dedication.

We must not shy away from our principles simply because we fear dire consequences. A man that lives like that is not a man at all, but a victim waiting for a tyrant’s leash. So when a true man commits to something, whether that be espousing a principle or crossing a line in the sand, he must do so no matter the cost. No time of the day nor change in the season makes an unworthy person less unworthy. What is right and true does not change from day to day. We must remember that true men of honor commit to “resist every assault, and to sell our lives as dearly as possible.“

rememberthealamo

Does anyone deny that we are in the fight of our political lives? That our country is now poised to fall into the hands of unworthy and dishonorable sorts the likes of which we have never, in our lifetimes, seen or even thought to see? If not, then the cost of surrender is too great to bear. Our option to fight on also bears no better prospects. We are faced with a terrible choice. Either we can down quietly, or we can go down in defiance, standing for what we believe in.

That is our line in the sand. Fight on no matter the consequences, or to flee in the night. For me, the choice is obvious and simple.

“Victory or death!”
-Lt. Col. William B. Travis-

Be brave. Be free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW