Harry Truman

Harry Truman is one of my favorite presidents. He never sought the office or expected it. He was on the ballot to replace Henry A. Wallace, who was too liberal for many of the party leaders. Roosevelt told him nothing, and FDR’s people treated him as a usurper. Yet he made decisions that shaped the next fifty or more years. Overall, he did an excellent job.

Of those decisions, I will cover his actions in Israel’s first days. I had a good sense of it, but an excellent YouTube video on the subject was very helpful in reminding me of the details.

In May 1948, Truman was running for a full term as President. Many people saw him as a small man who was not big enough to fill the shoes of the giant he replaced. All the polls indicated he would lose.

Israel looked to be another losing proposition. They planned to declare independence on May 14^th. Because it was surrounded by enemies who had oil and friends, nobody expected the fledgling state to survive for a month. Britain made its lack of support for Israel obvious.

The most respected man in America, George C Marshall, was Secretary of State. His department was completely opposed to recognizing Israel. They correctly foresaw problems that persist today. The Arab world hated the idea of a Jewish presence in the area, let alone a state. Israel could not match the oil reserves or the sheer numbers of the Arabs. The “logical” thing to do was to simply not recognize the declaration of the new state, not support it militarily, and let the Arab world destroy it and end the problem.

Marshall strongly presented his department’s position in a White House meeting on May 12^th, two days before Israel’s declaration. Although Marshall never voted, he told Truman that if he recognized Israel and Marshall were a voter, he would not vote for Truman.

I will refer you to the YouTube piece for more details. Truman not only recognized Israel within minutes of their declaration, but he also supported them unofficially, both diplomatically and by not enforcing policies that would have prevented them from receiving military equipment.

His actions made an essential difference. Without them, Israel would not have survived.

Ronald Reagan

When Ronald Reagan took office, the nation was suffering through what Keynesian economists had thought impossible. “Stagflation” was a combination of a stagnant economy and inflation. Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson wrote about Reagan’s role in this and listed some of the numbers. “Inflation was 13.3 percent in 1979.” “From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, there were four recessions.”

Samuelson’s column was a response to a column by Paul Krugman, which gave Reagan no credit for the actions in the early 1980’s that helped end the inflation cycle.

Samuelson’s column was titled “Volcker, Reagan and History.” The column explained that Reagan had the understanding and political courage his predecessors lacked. That changed everything and enabled Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to implement the policy tightening needed to end inflation.

Even now, President Trump is complaining that Jerome Powell is keeping interest rates too high. Most Presidents want rates lower because it is easier for people to borrow and spend. Throughout the chaos of the seventies, every attempt to raise rates to fight inflation caused pain; people complained, and presidents and other politicians yelled at the Fed to back off and lower rates. The standard political view was “fix the problem after the next election.”

Reagan majored in economics and sociology in college. He studied economics before Keynesian theory reigned. He believed in hard money. The pain of ending inflation was real. Samuelson wrote that Reagan had the courage to provide protection.

It’s doubtful that any other … candidate … would have been so forbearing …
What Volcker and Reagan accomplished was an economic and political triumph. Economically, ending double-digit inflation set the stage for a quarter-century of near-automatic expansion (indeed, so automatic that it bred the complacency that led to the 2008-2009 financial crisis — but that’s another story). Politically, Reagan and Volcker showed that leaders can take actions that, though initially painful and unpopular, served the country’s long-term interests
…
Volcker later said of Reagan: “Unlike some of his predecessors, he had a strong visceral aversion to inflation.”

But that move cost Reagan deeply in the 1982 midterm elections. The nature of the Congress changed, making his life more difficult.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump left the worlds of entertainment and business because he believed certain things needed to change. One of those was the threat to world safety caused by the existence of the regime in Iran. In 1980, he had an interview with Rona Barrett. He spoke about the hostages then being held in Iran and was obviously frustrated by the Carter administration’s timid response. He spoke about the way nations could and did disrespect the United States. He and Barrett also discussed why many capable people don’t enter politics.

Trump’s highest priority today is avoiding nuclear war and World War III. That may sound overly dramatic, but I am not kidding.

Trump takes the Iranian mullahs seriously. They have said they want to be able to destroy the “little Satan” – Israel, and the “Big Satan” – the United States. They have missiles with a 2,500-mile range and nuclear material.

The hostages were released the day Reagan was inaugurated. Reagan dealt with the economy and ended the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Since then, Presidents have wavered and waffled on the Iranian issue and, at most, dealt with terrorism and other problems the Mullahs created instead of dealing with the primary issue. Even though this is a midterm year, Trump decided he had to make sure Iran’s government had neither the capacity to make nuclear weapons nor the desire to do so.

On another front. Trump recognizes the risks in pushing Russia too far in Ukraine. This deserves more room than I have here. Put simply, Russia has not ruled out nuclear weapons, and European rulers seem trigger-happy. Even at the risk of being called “Putin’s Puppet,” he is determined to make sure Russia does not feel even close to being desperate enough to “go nuclear.”

There are risks to both issues regarding the 2026 midterms. European leaders are using Russia as an external “bad guy” to move the discussion away from their bad policies. Trump is taking a major risk to make the world safer, even at political risk.

The 2000 election was the Bush – Gore race with loads of controversy. The Florida Supreme Court hated Florida Governor Jeb Bush and kept prolonging the count. “Hanging chads” was the phrase of the day. The U.S. Supreme Court ended the whole exercise, and Bush became President. To this day, many Democrats refuse to acknowledge Bush’s win as honest.

After that election, a Commission on Election Reform was established. Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter and prominent Republican James Baker were co-chairs. In 2005, they issued a report entitled “Building Confidence in U.S. Elections.”

Ironically, the report works two ways. Those who want to build confidence in elections can follow its recommendations. Those who want to win at any cost have a guide to make elections easier to bend in their favor.

There are excellent discussions on many issues. Sometimes they leave a balanced partial answer when that is appropriate. One case is the restoration of voting rights for felons who have served all their time, including parole and any restitution. On page 49, the report favors this except in cases of capital crimes or sex offenses. They also suggest that the state tell a felon who is again eligible how to register.

On one side, they deal with administration and vote tabulation. They recommend:

Voting machines that tabulate voter preferences accurately and transparently, minimize under- and over-votes, and allow for verifiability and full recounts; and

Fair, impartial and effective election administration

Some states are banning paper trails of ballots. That will make it harder to verify counts.

The report spends a lot of time on voter registration and voter identification. They want a “complete, accurate, and valid list of citizens who are eligible to vote.” Note, they specify “citizens,” not “voters.” It is assumed that only citizens can vote.

A major issue is voter ID. There is a bill in the Senate, the SAVE Act, dealing with that. The Democrats oppose it. The Commission on Election Reform strongly supported Voter ID to help build public trust in elections. This is what they said:

[W]e propose that all states require a valid photo ID card, which would be a slightly modified REAL ID or a photo ID that is based on an EAC [Election Assistance Commission] template (which is equivalent to the REAL ID without the driver’s license). However, instead of allowing the ID to be a new barrier to voting, we propose using it to enfranchise new and more voters than ever before. The states would play a much more affirmative role of reaching out to the underserved communities by providing them more offices, including mobile ones, to register them and provide photo ID’s free of charge. In addition, we offer procedural and institutional safeguards to make sure that the card is not abused and that voters will not be disenfranchised because of the need for an ID.

[W]e propose measures that will increase voting participation by connecting registration and the ID process, making voting more convenient, diminishing irregularities, and offering more information on voting.

This is what the modern Voter ID bills aim for.

Democrats and their mouthpieces in the media claim that Voter ID is simply a new form of “Jim Crow” laws designed to limit minority voting. That is both absurd and insulting. The word we should never use about Blacks has the meaning of ignorance and incompetence. The argument that minorities can’t manage to get an ID is an argument that they are ignorant and incompetent. Polls show that minorities favor Voter ID.

I live in North Carolina, which, for now, has a Voter ID law. In early March, there was a primary election. I showed my driver’s license to vote. I will be eighty on my next birthday, have a large bald spot on the top of my head, and the remaining hair is white. Even so, some stores insist I show my driver’s license as an Alcohol ID when I buy wine or beer at a grocery store.

The list of places that require an ID is endless, and everyone, of every color, must comply. If voting is the exception, it might relate to a cynical story we often hear:

My uncle always voted Republican, but he’ll be voting for the Democrats from now on because he died last week.

The Carter-Baker Commission aimed to restore confidence in elections. They sought to set things up so that every citizen could vote and know their vote wouldn’t be cancelled by an improper ballot.

The Democrats and their allies, such as the ACLU, claim they are ensuring everyone can vote. They appear to want to be able to stuff any ballot box they need so they can win “by any means necessary.”

Appearance here is important. It is the issue of “Caesar’s wife.” If it looks like you are working to leave yourself a way to cheat, people naturally assume you intend to cheat. The Commission on Election Reform understood this. They were trying to set procedures in place to assure the public that cheating would be difficult.

There are many elections in history in which the losing side never accepted the results. Sometimes their claims were false, but in many cases, they were right. I am not going to get bogged down in various cases because the views on each case are held with a religious fervor. If we do all we can to lock down the process, we can increase trust in the system.

The writers studied public attitudes and monitored changes over time. Their statistical work seems fine, but their analysis of the cause is amazingly inadequate. By refusing to consider the possibility that the Gay community contributed in any way to the decline in support, they were left with a very hollow explanation.

They end up blaming the change on a public dealing with social instability and anti-establishment sentiment. I won’t completely rule these out as contributory, but they are not the main drivers.

There was always an understanding that a live-and-let-live attitude would work. Civil unions would provide the equivalent of the marital rights enjoyed by childless couples. But that was never going to be enough. Live-and-let-live wasn’t enough. Full approval was the goal, or even the idea that, in an overcrowded world, it might even be better.

Same-sex marriage was not accepted. It was imposed. When state referenda rejected it or specifically said no, courts decided the public wasn’t wise enough to know what was best. People who donated funds against it lost their jobs.

In the end, some berobed people on our Supreme Court decided that all the sages of the ages were simpletons and imposed their profound wisdom on our nation. In a colloquy, the possibility was raised that every religious institution teaching the wisdom of the ages might lose funding or accreditation if it failed to bow to the new wisdom. A group of voters who were aware of the court’s actions voted for an imperfect man as President in the next election.

Having won in the courts, the time had come for a choice. They could relax and enjoy their victory or keep pushing and rub it in. The former choice would have let the victory mellow in society. They chose the latter and, by being sore winners, set the course for the loss of support.

First, they muscled everybody everywhere. Churches, bakeries, wedding reception venues, photographers, and anyone else who might be uncomfortable dealing with same-sex events became targets. All ten bakeries in town would sell a cake off the shelf to same-sex couples. Nine would make a custom cake for their marriage. One wouldn’t. That was unacceptable. That was grounds for a federal case with the full involvement of the state politicians.

Major religious denominations, Christian and Jewish, split over LGBT issues. Fights over property, funds, and hierarchies continued for decades. In some cases, they involved international churches, and the divisions are still working themselves out.

Sore winners are self-centered. Everything is about them. They don’t understand that others are willing to let them do their thing, but it is not the only subject in the world. They are not the center of my universe. I am. I may focus on my faith, my family, my life’s work, or something else. But their lifestyle is not my primary concern.

Yet LGBT concerns constantly appeared everywhere I turned for recreation. Every excuse to talk about it was sought and used. Newspaper articles constantly covered it. TV shows of all types — news, talk, scripted, unscripted, and even sports — constantly brought up the topic. The public eventually had enough.

There’s an old saying about sex. Do what you want, but don’t startle the horses or the children. That was the red line the movement leaders should have known not to cross. But their arrogance was unlimited. When parents realized that their children were being taught that LGBT was normal or even preferred, a battle erupted.

Charlesworth and Finkel missed the point completely when they wrote:

… research shows no evidence of spikes in grooming discourse … that are meaningfully correlated with subsequent spikes in anti-gay bias.

I’m not sure how they’re defining “grooming.” It has various meanings. English girls in the UK are being raped and forced into prostitution. In the U.S., it refers to young children being given sexually explicit material and material that favors LGBT material. Parents are showing their anger at school board meetings and by pulling their students out of public schools.

The other issue driving down support is allowing males in women’s bathrooms and locker rooms and letting them compete in “women’s sports.” The “alpha males” of any primate group are expected to protect the females of the group. When society’s leaders don’t do that, something feels very wrong.

Support for “Gay Rights” is dropping for a simple reason. Americans who are more than willing to live-and-let-live expect others to do the same. When those who make a point about fair treatment become the biggest bullies on the block, sympathy is replaced by anger. We won’t let you bully us and ours. Decades of bullying have changed public attitudes. Bullying has produced antagonism.

Thomas Sowell explained it when he said:

One difference is that they want to live in a world with problems to be solved. That sounds crazy at first, but I mean it. Who needs political leaders to solve our problems if there are no problems? It also applies to journalists. No awards are given to people who write articles about births, weddings, and funerals. There is no excitement there.

The old saying about TV news is “If it bleeds, it leads!’ Excitement, conflict, turmoil, and uncertainty draw people’s attention. Heroes and villains get people to pay attention.

Politicians need a way to justify hiring people and spending money. That is done by identifying a problem that can only be solved through government action.

There are two ways of dealing with it. If they want to make it go away, they form a committee. Prominent people are named and show up at a press conference. They may or may not do any actual work on a report that may or may not be produced. If there is a report, the recommendations can be ignored, followed, or even used as a guide for what not to do.

After the chaos of the 2000 election between George Bush and Al Gore, a committee was established, headed by Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter and prominent Republican James Baker. In 2005, they released their “Report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform.”

Their very first recommendation, in the opening Letter from the Co-Chairs, is one that Democrats, journalists, and the ACLU constantly argue is simply a racist voter suppression maneuver by the Republicans.

The report also includes many other recommendations that those groups use as warnings about what to block if you want honest elections.

A bureaucracy is an even better tool for politicians. It is a way to endlessly pour money into solving a problem. You can prove you care about a problem by showing that you are willing to spend money to solve it. You also make your opponent seem heartless if they want to do anything sensible, like stop spending money we don’t have.

Jerry Pournelle had a background in operations research and space policy and became a very popular Science Fiction writer. He co-authored several outstanding books with Larry Niven. One was a modern take on Dante’s Inferno. Pournelle obviously disliked bureaucracies. One level of Hell in their novel was to spend eternity trying to get a form filled out correctly to satisfy a clerk.

He also had what he called his “Iron Law of Bureaucracy.”

Thomas Sowell did a summer internship at the Department of Labor in Washington near the end of his doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. His experience is a case study of whether politicians or agency leaders worry about whether their agencies help the people they were set up to help.

Sowell had gained employment as an unskilled young black man at a time when the minimum wage hadn’t caught up with inflation. He studied minimum wages in Puerto Rico and decided they didn’t help. It was something the people he worked with didn’t want to hear.

Which leads to another, even more poisonous, way to “help.” Over-regulation and price-setting smother an economy. I don’t have the space here to describe all the possibilities. Rent control prevents people from buying or building properties to rent.

There is currently a significant push to raise the minimum wage nationwide. Sowell has noted that the actual minimum wage is zero. Investors have no reason to open a business if they won’t make money. Labor costs are a factor in that analysis. Stores and restaurants may also be closed if labor costs exceed returns.

Just because money is being spent to “solve a problem” doesn’t mean that anyone wants the problem solved. In fact, by constantly redefining the problem, an agency can go on forever. Politicians have a cause. Agencies are filled with people who vote for them. Recipients and suppliers form a voting bloc committed to maintaining the flow of funds.

Harry Truman, the little shopkeeper from Missouri, was thrust into leadership at the end of World War II. He knew he had to let others take credit, but that was OK. He also knew the true nature of Joseph Stalin and what that meant. With measures such as the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift, he kept Europe democratic and out of Stalin’s control. He also recognized MacArthur’s talent in administering Japan and guiding it to democracy.

I yield to no one in my admiration for Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II for their role in the endgame of the Cold War. But I am sure they will agree that the handling of the early years was critical to the path and eventual outcome.

What happened after the end of the Cold War is a combination of arrogance, hubris, and absolute refusal to consider the concerns of the other side. The price is being paid now. Ironically, the unsophisticated Truman will go down in history as doing a far better job than the Ivy League-trained and well-connected Bushes and Bill Clinton.

By the middle of 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev was clear. He was the leader of Russia. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact were gone. NATO had been created to defend the West against two entities that no longer existed. On the other hand, Russia is a country with a history of being attacked and invaded from the West. It ain’t paranoia if you have a legitimate fear.

The United States has the Monroe Doctrine and acted when the Soviets put missiles in Cuba. Russia’s position was simple. NATO is a military alliance. It would not accept countries bordering it as members of an opposing military alliance.

I will now describe two cases in which there is ample evidence of deception by the United States. The links point to articles describing the deceit. Dozens of descriptions and links to additional supporting documents follow a substantial block of text.

James Baker and others in the Bush administration assured Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” beyond the newly combined German border. Sadly, this became the first of many “pinky swears” the Russians would be given.

In the first year of the Clinton Presidency, ambiguity was used again. Yeltsin led Russia. His drinking is helpful as an excuse, but the documents support the conclusion that the misleading was deliberate.

George Kennan was renowned as the leading expert on the Russians. His famous “X” paper in Foreign Affairs magazine in the late 1940s helped shape U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. In a New York Times Op-ed on February 5, 1997, he wrote, “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”

A quote from someone in the Biden administration, many years later, shows the degree of arrogance the Russians are dealing with:

Ukraine is another set of lies. Angela Merkel admitted that the two Minsk agreements were solely designed to give the West time to build up anti-Russian forces in Ukraine. The United States was openly involved in deposing a Ukrainian leader who was trying to be neutral. John McCain and other senators traveled to Kyiv during the crisis. USAID money was involved. The Russians had a deal for access to a warm-water port at Sevastopol in Crimea. That agreement died after all the shenanigans. To get access to the port, Putin took Crimea.

When NATO countries sanctioned Russia, they ruined their economies. They were competitive because Russian natural gas was inexpensive. Without it, Germany is deindustrializing. Automobile and chemical plants are closing and moving overseas. France and Britain face similar problems.

Europe froze Russian sovereign assets, and now they are setting things up to steal them. Nations are not going to put funds in European banks or Euros anymore. America has done the same thing, and nations are reducing their exposure to the dollar.

Russia is not trying to conquer all of Ukraine. It only wants to “rule” the parts of Ukraine populated by Russian speakers. That is the Eastern part, known as the Donbas, and the southern stretches extending to the port of Odesa. The remainder of the area is inhabited by people who speak Ukrainian. In that area, Russia’s interest is to make sure it is not part of NATO and no missiles can be placed there and aimed at Russia.

Russia is winning on the ground and winning allies. Europe is going broke and alienating former commercial partners.

Kennan warned against expanding NATO. We should have listened.

District Lines and Gerrymandering

I earned my undergraduate degree in Political Science in 1968. I’ve followed many controversies over district lines in the almost sixty years since then. I have learned one scientific fact. There is a marked difference between politically neutral redistricting and borderline criminal gerrymandering. When my party draws the lines, it is redistricting. When those evil guys do it, it is gerrymandering.

Before we moved to North Carolina, my wife and I lived in the third district of Maryland. Here is the map of that district.

Unless you’re a Democrat, it is a shining example of gerrymandering. You can rant, rave, and holler, or understand that it is a standard part of the political process.

Voter ID

I will be eighty on my next birthday. I bought wine in a grocery store the other day and had to show my driver’s license. There have been various lawsuits, but I was comfortable showing my license when I voted this month. It made more sense than having an old man show an ID to buy wine.

Polls of voters, including minorities, show heavy approval of voter ID. The arguments against it are both insulting and obviously mischievous. Many of my fellow shoppers were Black people who had no problem showing an ID when purchasing any of the items that required one. If a very senior white man must show an ID to buy wine, there is nothing racist about it. The claim that minorities are incapable of getting an ID is a grave insult to the intelligence and capacity of the people being “protected.”

Voter ID is a procedure designed to prevent fraud. Countries with a low literacy rate use an ink-stained thumb to show that someone has already voted. We use voter ID to verify the identity of individuals claiming to be voters in a specific location. To be blunt, the lack of voter ID makes it easier to have someone vote in someone else’s name.

“Count Every Vote”

There is a difference between counting “every vote” and determining the opinion of every legal voter. A completed piece of paper is not necessarily the honest expression of the opinion of an actual voter. There are many sarcastic ways people describe this.

“My uncle consistently voted Republican, but he started voting for Democrats after he died.” “It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts that votes!”

There have been cases where the assumed winner of a congressional seat found out weeks later that he lost because the “counting” continued, and “votes” were still being found. Sometimes they were “found in car trunks.

Fait Accompli

There is always disappointment after an election. Sometimes there is reason to doubt the results. I constantly hear that Al Gore was the true winner in 2000. I am also asked what I believe about 2020. There are two thoughts about every election. Do I like the result, and am I satisfied that it was conducted fairly? In a runaway election, both answers usually agree. In a close election, those on the losing side often hold contradictory opinions. They may believe their side lost an unfair election.

In a democracy, everyone is expected to accept the fait accompli and work to win the next time. When a “resistance” is the response, or multiple impeachments are attempted, the winners of that cycle start to wonder if they should accept the results when they lose.

Early Voting

Early voting is a reasonable idea if it starts a week or two before the election. Things happen every day during an election. A long early voting period means that momentous events might occur after voting starts. Debates can be postponed in hopes of reducing their impact. A brief period of early voting accommodates voter schedules. When voting is done in person using standard procedures and voting booths, it has all the security and solemnity of Election Day.

Voting By Mail or Computer

I understand that there are cases where voters can’t get to the polling place and must vote by mail. There are several reasons why this should be minimized. Those serving overseas, both military and civilian, obviously need to vote by mail. There are many other reasons. But it shouldn’t be just for convenience. Also, there is no reason to delay the count beyond election day to wait for mail-in ballots.

There are two reasons for keeping this to a minimum. The first is to reduce the chances of fraud. It is obviously challenging to guarantee the identity of someone who does not vote in person. There have also been cases of interference with mailed ballots to block votes from groups whose votes are likely to favor a candidate someone wants to see lose.

Secret Ballot

A more important reason for voting in person is that it is the only way to be sure everyone has a secret ballot. It is easy to overlook the importance of having the ability to vote without letting those who have power over your life know your choices.

Thomas Sowell discussed the impact of the secret vote in Wales. If you’ve ever been in an open group vote, you know what I mean. A union, HOA, or other vote done by a show of hands is not a free vote. There is a heavy pressure to “go along” with the group. Sowell noted that when votes in Wales were not secret, employees, fearing job loss, had to vote the way their employers wanted. Once they had the secret ballot, they could vote in their own interest.

Even if mail or electronic votes are honest, there is a temptation to accept subtle pressure and let someone look over your shoulder and know how you vote.

The secret ballot is too important to put at risk.

These are essential issues. Sadly, in a world of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), anything Donald Trump does has to be wrong and done for the wrong reason. If he were to comment that the Earth is round, the flat-Earth theory would immediately become fashionable.

The British hosted an impressive state dinner at Windsor Castle with more than 150 guests at a single long table. Trump had long been embarrassed by the lack of a place inside the White House for large dinners. Tents are sent up, lacking style and raising security concerns.

Years before Trump ran for President, he proposed a solution to President Obama’s staff. He would arrange funding and build a dining area. His idea was not taken seriously. But Trump was profoundly serious. The United States is an important country and should be able to do things with style and class.

He may have seen the White House television tour I saw many years ago. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy talked about the money donated to restock the supply of china and flatware. Those items need to be replaced over time. She saw a need and asked gracious friends to help provide the funds.

Trump is taking the same approach. He saw a need years ago. He is a builder. He knows everything there is to know, especially how to avoid all the delaying tactics that could stop it. For example, there is no government money, so there is no need for competitive bids. He doesn’t have to go through twenty years of committee approvals for the design. He will do it.

Trump and donors are spending $250 million to create a suitable, secure area for state dinners and other events. Then, TDS takes on a new flavor. It starts to become “truly dumb and stupid.” One of the Democrats’ congressional “shining lights” has a brilliant idea. Californian Eric Swalwell proposes that every Democratic presidential candidate must pledge that their first action as president will be to demolish the new room.

That only makes sense if there must be nothing to remind you of the fact that Donald Trump was ever President of the United States. He was!

Another item he started working on in his first term needs to be completed. That’s the Presidential airplane. For the experts, I know the difference. Air Force One is a call sign. Informally, the term is used to speak of a specific airplane, and I am going to use it that way for now.

The current 747, still used as Air Force One, entered service in 1990 and was 25 years old by 2016. It was time for an upgrade. Most passenger planes use only two engines even though they fly long over-the-water segments. For assorted reasons, four engines were still considered necessary for the replacement Presidential plane. This left only one possibility, the latest and last version of the Boeing 747. There was a lot of noise about costs, delays, and related issues.

One issue causing turmoil is President Trump’s proposed change to the plane’s color scheme, or livery. Change is always unsettling, and the present design was partly the work of Mrs. Kennedy. Also, the reports about Trump’s plans were absurd.

His proposed design is similar to the current one in the placement of words, flags, and presidential seals. It has more white space on the top half of the plane. The difference is the colors. The present design uses two shades of medium blue. They are pleasant but have no meaning. Trump’s proposal is simple. The plane for the chief executive of a nation should have the colors of the nation’s flag.

A bigger problem explains why he is building the White House extension with little or no involvement from government agencies. As noted above, the current Air Force One was twenty-five years old when Trump took office in 2017. It has been a decade since then.

Boeing has not performed very well in that time. There have been problems with the 737-Max. Doors have fallen off other Boeing models in mid-flight, and they’ve had other problems. Even so, ten years would seem to be enough time to complete an airplane with any color scheme. If they had delivered it in the Biden years, they could have used the current livery.

There are problems either with Boeing or with constant changes to the government’s specifications. Now, it has been thirty-five years, not twenty-five. Then the plane was old enough to run for Congress. Now it can run for President.

There has been a name change at the Pentagon. The Department of Defense (DOD) is now the Department of War (DOW). I don’t think this is what they had in mind. Changing the acronym from DOD won’t change things. It will still be the Department of Delay.

1 Corinthians 12:19-21 (NIV)
If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”

Many years ago, there was a TV program called What’s My Line? The panel had to guess the visitor’s job.

In any group, people have distinct roles. Sometimes we have tasks we would rather avoid. Parents would prefer to be “buddies” with their children when discipline is needed. There are many other cases where we would rather take the popular route rather than the firm route. But somebody must do the lifting, or the object isn’t moved.

Sadly, even though many people know that what was done was necessary, the person who did it is seen as mean. In politics, an opponent will use that against them. This is the case for government officials who enforce the law.

In a family, parents who never say “No” may be popular with young children, but the results are often disastrous. Parents set boundaries that grow wider as the child matures. Eventually, the child has internalized the discipline and habits of a mature adult who contributes to society.

Children are taught to be careful around strangers. Parents lock the doors to protect the child. For the family’s safety, a parent decides whether a given person may enter the house. They manage household income to ensure the family’s needs are met. They contribute money, time, and effort to help other people and train their children to do likewise.

In Matthew 22, Jesus was talking about taxes when he said, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” But the authorities have the power and the obligation to act in ways that citizens and church officials cannot.

In one sense, governments are like parents. But there is a significant difference. As described in the preamble to the U. S. Constitution, governments exist to” insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, and promote the general Welfare.” To do this, they can restrain, fine, imprison, or deport people who, through their actions, have shown they pose a threat to society.

Pope Leo XIV recently released an Apostolic Exhortation entitled Dilexi Te. He argues the church has always had a concern for the poor. That is appropriate. Its focus is “the things that are God’s.” Rulers have the duty to provide an environment where the public can safely work, raise a family, worship freely, and help the poor as their gifts allow.

This means the leaders also have the task of “locking the door” by controlling the borders. They must make rules about who can enter and stay. The government also sets limits and procedures. It has an obligation to ensure regulations are sufficiently stringent to prevent harm to its citizens.

Parents are not expected to randomly receive many children to raise and care for in addition to their own. A country has no moral obligation to do the same kind of thing. In both cases, the starting children or citizens feel cheated. It is even worse when the newcomers include violent criminals, and nobody stops them. The public is more outraged when they are expected to tolerate behavior from the newcomers that they would never accept from locals.

Even if every newcomer were a saint, the numbers would still be overwhelming. The initial infrastructure was not ready for the new population. Housing, schools, and hospitals were overloaded. Young people are frustrated when they see their prospects for buying a home disappear. Schools are overcrowded and filled with children who are just starting to learn English. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed. The main ER I would like to use is unavailable. I waited seven hours the last time I went there. Many of the immigrants had criminal records before they came here. Any attempt at screening would have blocked them.

Some people benefit from having these people here, regardless of the harm others suffer. Both political parties have members who want it to stay this way. The Democrats use the numbers to get seats in the Census and “voters.” These people can be used for cheaper labor.

The Catholic bishops are opposed to the effort to send back the people who shouldn’t be here. They have Leo’s DiLexi Te as support. But that is misleading. That writing is fine as a church document, but it doesn’t overrule appropriate government behavior. When a ruling official is deporting people who entered illegally and, in many cases, committed crimes here, there is no moral reason to oppose that action. There is, however, a financial reason. Catholic Charities receives substantial funding for services to immigrants. That would end if there were none.

Leaders in both North America and Western Europe have failed their citizens for too long. The “far right” parties in Europe are not nationalist in the sense of being genocidal. They expect, or instead demand, that their governments start providing police protection for their own citizens when the newcomers are the perpetrators. They can’t see why the government is putting immigrants in 4 and 5‑star hotels when their own citizens can’t afford housing, heat, or medicine.

In the United States, the issues are similar but even stranger. The public voted for change. They want criminal immigrants to be deported, but local mayors are telling their police departments to resist federal law enforcement. Are these people politically deaf? Don’t they understand their job?

It’s time to take these people back to basics so they can figure out what they’re supposed to be doing, or ”What’s My Line?”

Kirk was eighteen when he started Turning Point USA in 2012. One of its primary purposes was to let young people, especially college students, understand that the worldview they were immersed in at school was not the only viable way to see the world. Professor Johnathan Haidt had been studying that issue for years. He went to Duke in 2016 to give a talk about the frightening lack of diversity of opinion on college campuses. In response, Haidt created the Heterodox Academy to try to add some variety of opinion and ideas in college faculties.

To make things worse, most people see no variety of viewpoints in the information in the major media and daily entertainment. Most of the public considered The New York Times and National Public Radio to be moderate news sources. Bari Weis and Uri Berliner are both quite liberal and explained that they left those organizations because the groups had become lopsided and uncomfortably extreme.

You have a world where adults and students have lived with their views and opinions unchallenged. They are the proverbial “fish in water” who don’t understand the nature of water and can’t consider an alternative.

Especially with the internet, there are groups on the right that are isolated, but it is, or was, much harder for the right. I’m almost eighty. It may be different for young people, and I am not claiming virtue for one side over the other. The authors and material I read are not fashionable on the left or in the mainstream media. Heather MacDonald, Christopher F. Rufo, and Charles Murray are excellent and thoughtful. But they are either ignored or demonized in the major outlets.

Thomas Sowell described the insiders as viewing themselves as “the Anointed.” They were and are a group whose opinions are unquestionable. In polite company or on college campuses, the rule is simple. “To get along, go along!”

This explains why Charlie Kirk’s “Prove Me Wrong” was brilliant, provocative, and daring.

Jonathan Haidt had described the severe opinion monopoly on campus. Many conservative students were uncomfortable expressing different views. Kirk was their champion. The challenge to prove him wrong was brilliant. He dared students to understand the whole nature of what they thought they believed, and that there was an opposing view. In many cases, they had absorbed an idea without having to understand it completely.

Kirk was provocative because the students were in a bubble and had heard only one side. John Stuart Mill described their problem in a debate when he wrote in On Liberty:

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; If he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.

There is always a problem when a group’s views go unchallenged. They get more extreme. There is a need within the group to be better or purer than the next person. The ideas become increasingly radical and move further away from the middle. Those outside the group become less acceptable. They move from wrong to bad to evil.

Kirk was described as a “right-wing extremist’ with no recognition of the fact that universities and media have moved far to the left of anything Dr. Martin Luther King would have recognized as moral and sensible.

Kirk was a traditionalist in terms of marriage, locker rooms, and men in women’s sports. He was opposed to open borders and unlimited immigration. He also opposed restrictions on energy. These views are admittedly unfashionable in some areas, and those who want to “get along” are willing to “disagree,” at least publicly, with Charlie. But his views are polling on the “80” side of “80-20” poll results.

Kirk did for younger people what Trump had done for the general population. He made it OK for them to say what they believed. Schools, culture, and the internet had created a smothering environment where only one set of opinions was acceptable. Those opinions worked against the best interests of young people, and they knew it. Kirk came to the campuses and gave the students a chance to hear both sides and make up their minds.

That change had an impact on the 2024 elections. His death caused an instant jump in Republican voter registrations by first-time voters around the nation, including blue states. Young people joined his Turning Point organization, which his widow now heads.

Charlie Kirk’s ideas and legacy are now stronger than they were before he was martyred.

America’s leaders were warned about Russia’s position on Ukraine before Putin was born. Instead, they have allowed their arrogance to create this situation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian leaders, starting with Gorbachev, tried to link Russia economically with Europe and avoid military conflict. Their effort was rejected at every turn.

After World War II, George Kennan was the acknowledged expert on the Soviet Union and Russian leaders. The must-read paper on the Soviets was his famous “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in Foreign Affairs, July 1947. It is known as the “X” paper because it was published under that pseudonym.

In the January 27, 2023, issue of Foreign Affairs, Frank Costigliola wrote about Kennan’s remarkably accurate set of warnings about Russia’s attitudes and actions regarding Ukraine. He began by recounting Kennan’s most notable moments.

Kennan helped craft the Marshall Plan and other major midcentury initiatives.
Kennan’s star would dim after 1949 as he opposed the growing militarization of U.S. foreign policy, but he was still venerated as a Russian expert. His advice was sought by the Truman administration … by the Eisenhower administration after the death of Stalin … , and by the Kennedy administration during the Berlin crisis of 1961. …Kennan was consulted by officials in the State Department and in the CIA well into the 1990s.

Costigliola then describes an internal State Department Planning Paper published in 1948 with Kennan’s views. I note the year 1948 because Putin was born in 1952. Some people think this problem can be solved by replacing Putin. That is false. Kennan’s 1948 description of Russia’s attitudes shows that Putin is entirely in line with conventional Russian thought. Costigliola writes:

[T]wo problems identified by Kennan three-quarters of a century ago have persisted, particularly in the minds of Russian leaders… He wrote in a State Department memo that “there is no clear dividing line between Russia and Ukraine, and it would be impossible to establish one.” Second, the Russian and Ukrainian economies were intertwined. Setting up an independent Ukraine “would be as artificial and as destructive as an attempt to separate the Corn Belt, including the Great Lakes industrial area, from the economy of the United States.”
… For all these reasons, a hypothetical triumphant United States should not seek to impose Ukrainian independence on a prostrate Russia.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the surviving Russian leadership wanted to see Russia as part of a commercial partnership with Europe. Since the Soviet Warsaw Pact was gone, they saw no need for the continued existence of the West’s anti-Soviet military alliance known as NATO. As part of the discussions about the reunification of the two Germanies, the U.S. Secretary of State James Baker assured Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that “not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”

In 2000, Putin was about to become the Russian President, and he gave an interview to David Frost:

He clarified his intention: “Russia is a part of European culture, and I do not consider my own country in isolation from Europe. Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world. So it is hard for me to visualize NATO as an enemy.”

But even though the Cold War was over, a very belligerent anti-Russian strategy became policy in the 1990s. Sameed Basha described this change in a February 18, 2023, article in The National Interest.

The Wolfowitz Doctrine, named after then U.S. under-secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, was leaked to The New York Times in 1992. The crux of the policy underscored American supremacy at all costs in a post-Soviet world and “stamping out rivals wherever they may emerge.”

Basha then tracks Putin’s growing frustration as NATO continued to add nations on Russia’s borders to its ranks. Putin saw elections overturned by courts when the public tried to elect neutral governments. There were “Astroturf Color Revolutions” funded by money from USAID and the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, as well as money from George Soros.

In 2014, Ukraine had a moderate government working to maintain a balance. The votes of the Russophone Oblasts (provinces) in southeastern Ukraine had kept the elections balanced. Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych tried to be even-handed. He had offered Russia a 99-year lease for the naval port at Sevastopol and did not officially join NATO, but he was not limiting the freedoms of the western Ukrainians. A ”spontaneous” Maidan uprising occurred, leading to an “Orange Revolution” and new elections. In addition to visits by U.S. Senators, there is overwhelming evidence of American leadership and cash in the effort.

What followed was a campaign to stamp out the Russian culture in Ukraine. The four eastern provinces, which are heavily Russian, resisted. International accords were created in Minsk in 2014 and 2015 to stop the fighting. Sadly, Angela Merkel later admitted that the agreements were created only to give Kyiv time to get stronger.

Crimea had been part of Russia until 1954. With the 2014 Ukrainian chaos, Putin reclaimed it militarily, held a referendum, and declared it a Russian oblast.

Basha concludes:

From Putin’s perspective, invading Ukraine in 2022 was the only option to signal to the Transatlantic alliance that Russia is now in an economic and geostrategic position to counter any further expansion–that Moscow remembers how the broken promises Baker made to Gorbachev, that the line has been drawn in the sand, and the Wolfowitz Doctrine shall advance no further.

The city is not part of any state. It is a district managed by the federal government. In recent years, they have attempted to reduce penalties for car theft and shift toward fewer police. Congress can and has overridden the city council’s actions. The President is the equivalent of a state governor for the district.

Washington’s crime problem is not unique to that city. Sadly, many cities have ignored the issue of public safety. The excuses are many, but the costs are high.

Our problems began when public officials neglected their duties, claiming they cared more than others.

I can, as an individual, break a rule in a particular case for a deserving individual and do no harm. I am being charitable on my own, spending my own money, and I am not setting a precedent. Suppose I am a public official and fail to enforce rules. In that case, I force others to be “charitable” with their money and set a precedent where those on the receiving end of my generosity expect it in future rulings.

Let’s look at an example. If I, as a baker, know a family is diligent but has hit tough times, I may arrange for some bread to “disappear” in their direction without payment. It is my choice, my charity. On the other hand, if someone else steals bread from my store, I want to have them arrested. They may be as worthy, but I have not made that choice. If people can steal from me without my permission, I will go broke.

My hope is that the judge understands his role. When someone urged Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. to do justice, he replied, "This is a court of law, not a court of justice." The scriptures are also clear. Leviticus 19:15 (NIV) says: “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.”

There is a natural desire to help the poor. If a desperate family steals food, why can’t the system overlook it? But it can’t. The baker or grocer is also feeding a family or many families. When the court bends the law, it sets a precedent, and others start to feel they should be able to steal. It goes from bread to hamburger to steak to computers to cars to … As I mentioned, the D.C. Council just tried to lower the penalties for car theft.

The other problem with a judge who does “justice” is that no one knows what the law is. The law says, “If you steal, this is the penalty.” The productive person spent time, money, and other resources based on that assumption. If the judge changes the law, every producer in that area will reconsider their commitment to that region.

The problem is far worse when it comes to violent crime. The notion that we should be more understanding of those who commit violent crimes is so absurd that only overeducated people could believe it.

The D.C. Council was also absurdly in love with the idea that the world would be better with fewer police. Heather MacDonald’s excellent The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe deals with that idea.

The idea that social workers trained in de‑escalating situations could replace police became fashionable. Law changes made officers personally liable for split‑second life‑or‑death decisions. Recruitment became difficult. Many officers took their big-city training and went to smaller, safer areas to work.

MacDonald called it the “Ferguson Effect.” Seeing that they would have no backing and risked imprisonment and financial ruin if they tried to do their jobs, many officers developed “blind eyes” and refused to intervene. Crime rates, including violent crime, exploded.

In her book, she explains the frustration of the people who live in high-crime areas and want and need active police protection. These law-abiding people don’t want to put their children in bathtubs to sleep at night to protect them from bullets. They see the police as an aid, not an enemy.

For them, “Law and Order” and “Public Safety” are not political slogans or racist code words. They dream of a life without the fear of theft and violence.

In 1922, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was established under a royal charter. Initially, various funding mechanisms were attempted, but a general household fee was adopted. Other commonwealth nations have similar systems. Canada has a CBC. Australia has an ABC.

The United States government granted licenses to private companies to operate stations in a specific location at a particular power level. Since signals travel farther at night, some licenses included the requirement to reduce power at night. Some stations had no other stations in the country on their frequency at night and were referred to as “clear channel.”

In conjunction with international rules, we coordinated the allocation of call letters. At first, stations could start their “name” with “W” or “K” anywhere in the country. Eventually, that changed, and stations east of the Mississippi had to use W while those to the west had to use K. Pittsburgh’s KDKA was allowed to keep its “K” name.

Individual stations signed agreements with national networks for programming. In the early decades, there were four networks: Mutual, CBS, NBC Red, and NBC Blue. Mutual wouldn’t survive, and the government would eventually force NBC to sell its blue network, which became ABC.

All of this happened in the world of AM radio. In the early 1950s, an increasing number of consumers began to own televisions with VHF channels 2 through 13. The three radio networks entered television and were joined briefly by Dumont. With only 12 options, there were limited channels available. UHF technology opened, but until the sets could tune in channels 14 through 83, it made no sense to broadcast on those. In 1964, Congress mandated that all new sets be equipped with UHF-capable tuners.

Radio options also increased, and the quality improved. By the mid-1970s, car radios had both AM and FM channels, and mid- to upper-priced cars had multiple speakers for full stereo sound. These new stations had improved sound quality.

Until the new UHF and FM stations were widely used, they were available for tinkerers. Eventually, the major players moved in. Some regions lacked three VHF stations. One or more of the three major networks worked with an affiliate willing to use a UHF slot. AM music stations saw no reason to stick with poor-quality transmissions when FM was available. They either switched or added FM. Sometimes they kept the AM station as a talk or sports channel.

The United States had made various efforts to support the transmission of educational material in rural areas over the years. Foundations were also active. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting [CPB] was created on November 7, 1967, when U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. On February 26, 1970, the CPB formed National Public Radio (NPR), a network of public radio stations that began operating the following year.

CPB was established as technology opened opportunities for many new entrants in radio and television.

There is always a problem with government-funded broadcasters. They support the prevailing, or fashionable, view on issues. Media members are increasingly drawn from a narrow segment of society. They don’t feel the impact of specific policies. When national networks like the BBC and CBC endorse large-scale immigration, expensive energy, and net-zero policies, they appear to overlook or disregard the impact of these policies on a significant portion of the public.

The now former long-time NPR editor Uri Berliner made the case that NPR is biased. He starts by describing how far to the left he is and then explains that he has grown increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that he is not left enough to be comfortable with his coworkers. He notes that it wasn’t always that way.

It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.

He says the change happened after Trump’s 2016 victory. NPR bought the Russia collusion story completely and played it at full volume. “But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.”

In 2020, they ignored the possibility of a "lab-leak" cause for COVID-19 and the Hunter Biden laptop story. After the George Floyd incident, NPR went for the systemic racism approach full-bore. They even saw their institution as racist and part of the problem. He ends his article by citing the extremes of identity group participation in setting style guide rules at NPR.

[T]he NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage. … [W]hat’s notable is the extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”
And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity.

Members of Congress and the President who don’t share those views are not inclined to spend government money to spread opinions in opposition to their own. However, that raises a larger question. Why were we doing this in the first place? Free speech is that. Free. That means your speech is free to me. If you want to put your ideas on the radio or television, use your dime. There is no reason to fund these stations publicly.

People who refuse to hear the other side of the debate are always sure they are right. But there are severe problems with their certitude. Jonathan Haidt has been tracking the increasing narrow-mindedness of university faculties and has been involved in a group called the HeterodoxAcademy to try to counter it.

However, this attitude has moved from universities to the elites in general. Thomas Sowell has written extensively about these people. They know they are right. It can't be their fault if their ideas don't work and the public suffers. More time, money, or public education and effort will solve the problem.

When the elite have put themselves in such a one-sided environment, they never hear conflicting opinions. This is a serious problem. Haidt gave a warning lecture at Duke in 2016, where he said we need some universities focused on a search for truth rather than training social justice warriors. He described the weakness of people who only knew one side of an issue or argument. He quoted John Stuart Mill, who wrote in On Liberty:

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; If he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.

We see that in our leaders' reactions to disagreement with their policies. They haven't seriously studied or considered the slightest alternative to their views. It is their way or the highway. The conversations would have been civil if they had learned and considered both sides. They haven't. They've lived in a world where dissent is rude or inconceivable. For example, even a bird lover who expresses concerns about windmills is seen as a climate denier.

How do we avoid discussion and dissent? The methods are described in the great utopian novels of the 20th century: Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World. The Thought Police are here—I'm not exaggerating. If the people in control need to avoid hearing unpleasant thoughts, they simply prevent other people from having and spreading them.

In all three novels, steps are taken to ensure the public never hears ideas the leaders don't want to be heard. In Fahrenheit 451, all books are burned. In Brave New World, people are so distracted and drugged that they have no time or interest in ideas. In 1984, every action is watched, and the state destroys books, rewrites history, and redefines the language to make unacceptable thoughts impossible.

Christopher Caldwell recently wrote that Donald Trump sent J.D. Vance to the Munich Security Conference to express their concern for European freedom. Vance said:

The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is … the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” Europe, according to Vance, had become hostile to free speech. It was hostile to free speech because it was hostile to democracy.

Even worse is the impact of European policies and laws on American speech. In England, specific internet postings are illegal. Citizens are being arrested and jailed, and violent criminals are being released to make room for internet violators.

Why do we care? Because the Europeans have limited free speech on the internet everywhere. This is covered in an excellent article, unfortunately behind a pay wall. It is Make Speech Free Again by John Rosenthal in the Claremont Review of Books.

The problem results from the European Union Digital Services Act (DSA), which restricts speech among Europeans, Americans, and other English speakers. Under EU law, any carrier is in trouble if it allows the transmission of a message to a European device that violates any of its ”be nice” and “say only what we want you to say” rules. This means the carriers are censoring the speech of Americans even when we think we are speaking only to each other.

That means your ability to hear facts and ideas is limited, and you don’t realize it. That is why I moved my DalesIdeas.com website away from WordPress. SubStack is committed to providing a forum for all ideas. In the Soviet Union, ideas not allowed in the open press were photocopied in the samizdat press.

I hope to say what needs to be said and that you will receive the message. So, as my father said, “Let me know if you don't get this!"

CO² and hydrocarbons are today’s version of that threat. Energy produced by Coal, oil, and natural gas cannot be used or the glaciers will melt, oceans will rise, or some other catastrophe will occur. I am almost eighty. I was briefly involved in a kind of church enthralled by the idea that the end was coming. I am amused by matching the “end-of-the-world” dates that churches and climate models predicted. The church predictions cause less harm because we don’t use them to pass laws

.

In an earlier article, I mentioned a talk by Robert Bryce. He emphasizes how a small amount of electricity can be liberating for women in the world’s poorest societies. He notes that

Electricity Frees Women & Girls from the Pump, the Stove, And the Washtub

However, due to NetZero rigidity, first-world organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are more concerned with preventing any increase in CO² than any improvement in the lives of some of the poorest women in the world.

The problems in the first world are causing political turmoil and lowering living standards. The environmental mandates require NetZero and “30 by 30.” Neither of these has public support. Don’t tell me about the polling results. Here’s how that works. Do you support efforts to prevent global warming? “Sure.” How much will you pay for it? “I can’t afford anything on my budget!” They go along with the crowd if they don’t have to pay for it.

Rob Henderson coined the term “Luxury Belief” to describe an idea that only the wealthy could afford. Society is harmed when laws are used to impose these ideas on those who can’t afford them. NetZero and “30 by 30 are examples.

European leaders are heavily committed to this program. As a result, its political systems are in chaos. Bryce describes it clearly in his book.

the European energy crisis did not start with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, Europe’s energy suicide was well underway long before Russian troops headed toward Kyiv.

Before Russia and Ukraine, many Europeans were energy poor.

in September 2021, according to the European Trade Union Confederation, some “15% of the EU’s working poor—the equivalent of 2,713,578 people—lacks enough money to turn on the heating.” I also noted that fertilizer plants and steel mills were “closing their doors because of high energy prices.”

German energy policy is a farce. The Russia-Ukraine conflict started in early 2022 and Germany’s cheap energy supply of natural gas from Russia was cut off. Any sane government would delay energy policy changes until that issue was resolved. Especially if the policy is questionable.

Bryce notes “the only” alternative to hydrocarbon fuels:

If the countries of the world are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and providing more electricity to the billions of people now living in energy poverty, the only way to achieve these goals is with nuclear energy and lots of it.

But the Green party has always been part of the ruling coalition in Germany, and the nuclear plants were shut down in 2023!

In 2024 Germany had a limited natural gas supply and no nuclear power. So, what would rational leaders do? Since this is a country run by environmental fanatics, they shut down 15 coal-fired power plants. Then, in March 2025, they made a gloriously bad attempt to blow up another one.

A new political party has arisen in Germany. It is the AFD, “Alternative für Deutschland (Germany).” It wants to try a different energy policy. The insiders consider it a problem and have threatened to outlaw it.

German leaders keep talking about wind and solar. It doesn’t work. Germany built more wind and solar capacity in one year, and got less energy because it was a relatively dark, calm year.

Bryce discusses the problem.

Wind and solar energy cannot—will not—be able to meet our insatiable demand for energy and power at prices consumers can afford. The reasons for that are many, including their incurable intermittency and the staggering amount of metals and minerals needed to deploy them at scale. But the binding constraint is land use. There simply isn’t enough land to accommodate the massive amount of wind and solar infrastructure that would have to be built.

Fanaticism is frightening. It is on full display in Germany. Every move they made in terms of energy reduced their ability to meet the needs of their people in their homes and employment. The leaders didn’t care. We’re left with a frightening question. In his talk, Bryce had a chart showing $4.7 billion U.S. dollars going to groups supporting “Climatism.” I’m unsure which is worse because I don’t know if either is reversible. Greed and crusading both can provide reasons to be indifferent to harming others.

The time has come for those who suffer from this stuff to say, “Enough.” If you want less CO², go nuclear. If you won’t do that, shut up and go away. We won’t let you make us energy poor. We won’t let you feel holy by making our lives difficult.

A bit of history and geography is helpful here. The year was 1861, and the Civil War, or as many Marylanders wanted to call it, “The War between the States,” had begun. Geography was a significant problem for Lincoln. The national capital sits on land carved out of Maryland and bordering Virginia. They were both slave states. Virginia joined the Confederacy, and its capital, Richmond, was the capital of the Confederacy.

There had been riots in Baltimore, and the state wanted to leave the Union. Lincoln couldn’t allow that because it would surround the Union capital with Confederate states. Keeping Maryland in the Union was so unpopular that a state anthem was written as a protest. “Maryland, My Maryland” begins with the words, “The despot’s heel is on thy shores.” Lincoln is that despot.

Chief Justice Taney wrote the court’s opinion in the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln argued against that in the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

In Article I, section 9, the Constitution mentions habeas corpus and allows for its suspension.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended,
unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Scott Bomboy of the Constitution Center has an excellent discussion of the controversy and the arguments. He notes that Lincoln did not respond directly but waited until he addressed Congress on July 4^th, 1861. His remarks included the following:

Soon after the first call for militia it was considered a duty to authorize the Commanding General in proper cases, according to his discretion, to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or, in other words, to arrest and detain without resort to the ordinary processes and forms of law such individuals as he might deem dangerous to the public safety. This authority has purposely been exercised but very sparingly.

Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken if the government should be overthrown when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it?

Taney argued that since the exception was in Article I, Congress had to grant the President the authority to suspend the writ. Lincoln argued:

Now it is insisted that Congress, and not the Executive, is vested with this power; but the Constitution itself is silent as to which or who is to exercise the power; and as the provision was plainly made for a dangerous emergency, it can not be believed the framers of the instrument intended that in every case the danger should run its course until Congress could be called together, the very assembling of which might be prevented, as was intended in this case, by the rebellion.

Congress did not formally grant Lincoln that authority until March 1863.

Now, let us turn to 2025. Another Republican President has determined there is a need to suspend habeas corpus. The question is obvious. Is there a rebellion, invasion, or both?

Throughout Western civilization today, the definition of invasion seems to vary by class. Immigration is a “pick your facts” story. The worst case is England, where a disturbingly large number of English girls were “groomed” and raped, and the men were not prosecuted. In the U.S., reports of Tren de Aragua or MS-13 gangs controlling areas of a city are denied. The wealthy don’t care. Fancy lawyers and judges and their families aren’t impacted unless, or until, their kids die from fentanyl.

Vice President Vance recently spoke to European leaders in Munich about efforts to restrict the ability of the public to express concerns about immigration. In our last three presidential elections, many voters have tried to express their opposition to the volume and nature of immigration.

Multiple “angel parents” have lost children to violent actions committed by immigrants. Those who the immigrants have directly harmed are angry that the media lies by omission by refusing to cover these stories. Donald Trump was clear about his position during the election campaign. He saw the large number of illegal immigrants – specifically gang members – as an invasion and said he would do something about it.

On the other hand, both here and in Europe, some see many immigrants as beneficial. In this country, they have created “sanctuaries” of various types and passed laws ordering their local law enforcement to refuse to cooperate with the federal government. These actions fit the definition of rebellion.

To force every case to undergo extended court review would make the process futile. Those who refuse to protect our country by making the border porous want to keep it dangerous for the average citizen by using elaborate procedures to make it impossible to efficiently remove those who threaten our safety.

I’m an old man. Sixty years ago, I was an undergraduate majoring in political science. I saw signs calling for the Impeachment of Earl Warren and thought those people were foolish. Now I see courts used to block elections in Europe and convict Marine LePen, so she can’t run. In England, violent criminals are released to make room for people who post the wrong thing on the internet.

I am like a jilted lover when I think about the courts. Something I once respected has become soiled. Last year, the “lawfare” against a presidential candidate was absurd. I recently bought a used car and realized I trusted the used car dealer more than the courts. I can’t tell you how sad that makes me.

The question is simple. The U.S. Supreme Court will have its say. They’ll have to live with their decision at their country clubs in a world where Donald Trump isn’t an ordinary person but some demon. Yet, for those who voted for him and live near the chaos caused by the gangs invading their communities, what he is doing is clear and necessary.

The justices will decide whether they help the President counter the invasion or join the rebellion of the fashionable. If they insist on being a roadblock, the President must decide. The Preamble to the Constitution lists several purposes including:

insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence

Trump’s voters are surprisingly multi-racial and multi-ethnic. They voted for him because they were and are being harmed by the invasion. They know it is happening, and they want something done. Will our upper classes, represented by the courts, join Europe in refusing to protect the public? If they do, the President will have to decide whether he will work to meet the purposes of the Constitution or let those who want chaos have their way.

Respect and disrespect for various professions are both earned. It is one thing to talk about obeying the law and “Equal Justice Under Law.” That only works if the public believes the lawyers, especially the judges, are committed to fair play and society’s highest goals and purposes

Dictatorships in totalitarian states like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had completely biased judiciaries. Everyone lived in fear. They could not know what word or action might put them in trouble. Even a word in front of their children could be dangerous.

Judges did what they were told. If the ruling party said someone was guilty, they were. Favored individuals were untouchable. But everyone stayed on edge and spoke carefully. Favor could be granted and removed on a whim. Legal procedures were used, but nothing was done in a lawful manner.

Courts in France and Romania have convicted the most popular candidates in the country to keep them from running and winning elections. Donald Trump was the target of multiple versions of “lawfare” trying to block his effort to regain the Presidency. Alan Dershowitz explained how absurd the supposed felony convictions are. He explained that no one was defrauded in the fraud case, and no one could describe the charges in the other case. Yet Trump’s opponents keep telling you he’s a felon.

The election year “lawfare” convinced his followers that partisan judges can’t find “Neutral” on an automatic transmission. Any time there is a ruling against Trump, they are suspicious.

Since his term started, partisan Democratic judges have issued more than 100 nationwide injunctions to stop President Trump from doing the things he told voters he would do if they elected him. There is no basis for a judge to have jurisdiction over anyone other than the parties in the case in their court. However, those opposed to Trump don’t care.

Judges have issued “temporary restraining orders” (TROs) instead of “permanent injunctions” (PIs), hoping to delay the appeals process. Theoretically, a TRO is not a final ruling and can’t be appealed until the issuing judge makes a final decision. Trump’s DOJ isn’t buying it. They are asking for stays, and the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has agreed. The court has been clear in multiple opinions, “We construe these TROs as appealable injunctions.”

A significant issue must be resolved promptly and in a way that allows the President to protect the country. At this point, it is not clear whether the Court understands that.

The court just issued a stay in the case where a judge ordered a plane to turn around. It involves members of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua (TdA). That gang and MS-13 are serious threats and dangers to the people of the United States. Many of their members are here illegally; removing them with little legal hassle should be possible. Yet some people want to tie up the government to block that.

In the request to vacate the orders of the judge who wanted to turn the plane around, the government wrote:

Only this [Supreme] Court can stop [the courts] from further upending the separation of powers—the sooner, the better. Here, the district court’s orders have rebuffed the President’s judgments as to how to protect the Nation against foreign terrorist organizations and risk debilitating effects for delicate foreign negotiations.

Yet, in the Court’s opinion providing the stay, it is unclear whether SCOTUS understands the problem. Their decision limits venue shopping but still leaves the question of whether the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) applies. In an article about the ruling, Ilya Somin notes there is a question about

the applicability of the AEA, which only allows detention and deportation in the event of a declared war, or an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” perpetrated by a “foreign nation or government”

I am reminded of a high school test. The question was, “When did World War II start?” I was an avid reader. Simple question. It started when Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939. Wrong! The Brits were on their weekend. It began when the paperwork was formally completed on Monday, September 4th.

We need courts to take public safety as an urgent matter. TdA, MS-13, and other gangs are violent and cause massive deaths. They are part of the drug war, the crime war, and probably part of a good deal of the corruption at every level of government in all three North American countries. It is clearly constitutional for the President to work for the common defense and public safety. To do that, he can remove these people.

The courts must find a way to make that count as enough to trigger the AEA or find some other way for the President to remove dangerous people who are not here legally. If not, their procedural paperwork is no better than toilet paper. They need to expedite the procedures and let the Executive branch work to make the country safer. There can be no hint of any spite in their ruling, no hint that they are ruling personally to block Trump.

If the courts don’t let the President make the country safer, Trump’s base will gladly back him if he quotes Andrew Jackson and says, “They made their ruling; let them enforce it!”

Governments and societies in the Eurozone and Anglosphere are in a crisis because self-appointed or anointed “healers” have cures for society and the planet and are practicing a different type of malpractice.

They quote Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” This quote about facts is, in fact, not a fact. Moynihan was referring to falsehoods, which are not facts. But in another sense, he is wrong. We always choose.

Given the volume of facts in the universe, we are always aware of some more than others. That doesn’t mean we choose lies or false information. We select different sets of facts. Sometimes, our choices overlap. At other times, they differ entirely. We select information sources to help us choose our set of facts.

The famous “All the news that’s fit to print” must also mean “all the news that fits.” A publication, reading schedule, or even the human mind has limited space. We are always choosing between facts. Sometimes, the choice is relatively benign because we are doing our best to be informed. We can, of course, lie by omission and refuse to deal with facts we don’t want to hear.

Everyone has a narrative or worldview that guides or, in some cases, narrows their selection of allowable facts. In other cases, they may be in a social group with a clear understanding that only certain opinions and facts are acceptable. This framework is known as an “Overton Window,” which sets a border around what can be discussed in polite company.

Thomas Sowell describes a split in society in The Vision of The Anointed, where he explains that a group of self-declared saviors see the need to save the rest of the population, which they consider “Benighted.” In their view, they have the answers, and there can be no contraindications.

The Overton Window of the Anointed allows only affirming information. The reality of life for the rest of the population is called misinformation. A “complete information history” is not permitted.

The Anointed are determined to save the planet from global warming, climate change, or whatever it will be called next. They talk about plans like Net Zero and 30 by 30. The initial environmental goals of cleaner air and water made sense to the public and were not all that costly. But now things are different.

Cheap energy powers industry and a better lifestyle. It also powers what keeps us comfortable and preserves our food. Artificial intelligence, cell phone apps, and everything we do online are handled by vast “server farms” that use vast amounts of energy.

Any increase in the cost of energy ripples through the economy and shows up in everyone’s budget. I recall a survey asking how much people would pay monthly to “save the planet” from climate change. Support virtually disappeared by the one hundred dollar level.

Yet the Anointed seem utterly deaf on this point. They are determined to increase the price of energy to “teach those people a lesson” about the need to use less energy. Really? Our societies are facing a decrease in the standard of living as a result of this strategy. The public is angry, and any attempt to complain is “misinformation.”

Do the Anointed understand that “renewable energy” sounds like the fantasy of college sophomores in a 2 A.M. dorm room session? Any power source that doesn’t run 24/7 and depends on the sun or wind seems insane to the “unenlightened.” The lifetime costs of digging up the materials to produce and transport these devices and dealing with them when they expire are absurd. They also take vast land areas, threaten birds and sea life, and need backup sources when inactive. Other than that, they’re fantastic.

Many people can’t afford the increased cost of energy and energy-dependent products resulting from the net-zero movement. It is their ultimate contraindication, and their leaders need to change gears. Yet they see their pain barely reported, and their leaders don’t care. Even worse, the German Green Party forced the country to shut down nuclear power plants that produced relatively cheap electricity and had no CO² emissions.

Increased energy costs are lowering living standards and job opportunities, and the Anointed refuse to see it. Even worse. They refuse to hear anything that contradicts what they want to hear. That is why all their governments are in crisis. “Let them eat cake” is a dangerous phrase.

Voting is a civilized, non-violent way for the public to send a message. People are voting for “populist” or “right-wing” parties to do that. What is the message? They’re not voting for the parties on the right simply because they don’t want the parties on the left.

It is more than right and left. The public votes for the parties on the right to tell the Anointed they are wrong.

Jonah McKeown of the Catholic News Agency had an excellent article about the issue. Vance's arguments are summarized in the following:

"[A]s an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. It doesn't mean you hate people from outside of your own borders," Vance said Jan. 30.

"But there's this old-school [concept] — and I think a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world," he said.

McKeown's summary of Aquinas contains the following, which is, for me, the most divisive part of the immigration controversy:

Aquinas … concludes that God is to be loved first and foremost, followed by oneself, then neighbors, and among neighbors, he wrote that there are those who should be loved with a more intense affection, such as family.

The hierarchy laid out by Aquinas is not meant to diminish the importance of loving all people as Christ commanded but does acknowledge that certain relationships, practically speaking, carry more immediate obligations. For example, a married person has a higher obligation to care for his or her spouse than for others and an obligation to provide for his or her own children before providing for those in other places.

Think of this from the child's standpoint. Even within a family, there is contention for the attention of parents. But to have your parents absolutely fail to meet your needs – not your wants – your needs- to provide for the child of a stranger is morally unacceptable.

Parents have a moral duty to their children. There is no glory in fulfilling that duty. No plaques are handed out. No humanitarian awards are granted. But the parents aren't paying the price for the glory. The children are. These people are no better than those who waste the family's money at the bar or pub buying a round for everyone to be the life of the party. Or maybe they spend their time doing other than making sure there is someone to spend time with the children to hear them because there are more important things to do.

Politicians and others who think it is essential to care for various groups of dispirited people want to view them as forgotten and uncared for. Franklin Roosevelt used this term in a Fireside chat. Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man is a history of the Depression, offering a differing view of FDR's success in dealing with the economy. On the epigraph page, Shlaes contrasts FDR's definition of a "forgotten man" with the view of William Graham Sumner of Yale University in 1883.

As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X…. [W]hat I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. Perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. He is the man who never is thought of. … He works, he votes, generally he prays-- but he always pays--yes, above all, he pays.

In Sumner's view, C is the average citizen who has no say but bears the burden while X benefits and A and B get glory. In my "family" story, C is a child, and X is more favored. A and B are the adults in C's life. A

This concept of Sumner's Forgotten or Ignored Person describes the view of the average citizen of Europe or the Anglosphere about immigration. They are concerned primarily about the needs of their families and immediate neighbors. They are not xenophobic. But, unlike their leadership, they're also not oikophobic.

I'm reminded of the story of children's Sunday school, where little Johnny is told to love all the people in the world. He says he has no trouble with that if he doesn't need to love his little brother. Too many leaders currently "love" everyone in the world except their immediate neighbors, the deplorables.

It is easy to "love" someone far away or "love " when rewarded. Doing your day-to-day duty of caring for those who count on you is not about glory. It is needed. If you don't care for them, who will?

.

On the other hand, In the name of public safety and everyone's best interest, we always want the best possible person in any given position. Especially for quick-reaction life and death decision-making positions — Air traffic controllers, pilots, surgeons, firefighters, soldiers, police officers, and other similar specialists — we must select people on merit and ability.

In an ideal world, everyone would be "above average" and have a perfect score on every exam. We don't live in that kind of world. Thomas Sowell and J. D. Vance both grew up in challenging environments and, after time in the Marine Corps, went on to get degrees from Ivy League schools and become well-known.

Sowell is a black man born 94 years ago in poverty in Gastonia, North Carolina. His mother couldn't cope with raising a young child and sent him to live with a great aunt in Harlem, New York. A friend told him about the library. Sowell was smart enough to be admitted to Stuyvesant High School, but his family life was too disruptive. He was in the Marines during the Korean War, but fortunately, he was never in Korea.

After service, he completed high school, started college at Howard University in Washington, D.C. but completed his degree in Economics magna cum laude at Harvard. His Columbia University master's degree and University of Chicago Doctorate are also in Economics. He taught Economics at Rutgers, Howard, Cornell, Brandeis, U.C.L.A., and Amherst. Starting in 1980, he became a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. That position requires no teaching and lets him write, research, and speak on subjects that interest him.

His website provides an impressive list of his books. His writings, especially his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, recount his experiences.

Sowell has seen all levels of academic skill and effort given by and demanded of black students. He has spent much of his time trying to understand how the history of a group impacts their culture in terms of attitude toward various types of effort. Some of his writings on the subject include: Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study, Race and Culture: A World View, and The Quest for Cosmic Justice.

When you build a list of skills and sports, you will see that different regional, racial, or ethnic groups excel in various skills. Consider the following: farming, mechanical, working up high on buildings, jewelry, medicine, academics, politics, construction, haute cuisine, winemaking, and brewing beer. In sports, different groups and body types excel in basketball, football, baseball, gymnastics, etc.

Sowell was teaching at Cornell when Dr King was assassinated and black students took over buildings. He was not surprised by the trouble because he had seen the damage caused by "mismatching" students and schools. Years later, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used Sowell's "mismatch" terminology in a concurring opinion striking down affirmative action at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

What is a mismatch, and why is it bad for black students and society?

Affirmative action harms other students. But it causes mismatches, which harm black students. The question is simple. Do we want more good black doctors, engineers, etc., or more black students in the photograph of the entering class of the super fancy schools?

The highest academic awards are magna cum laude and summa cum laude, with the latter being the highest. Let's think of a school's teaching as like water coming out of a hose at high speed. Students at these schools can cope with high-speed learning. They are brighter than most people. Assume that at Magna U the speed is 95 MPH, at Summa U it's 100 MPH. There are, of course, black students who fit in at Summa U. They are perfect matches.

Affirmative action is harmful to BIPOC students who are very smart but not quite bright enough for Summa U. Summa wants them as part of the entering class picture. The school doesn't want to seem bigoted. The question is, "Is it good for the students, society, or even Summa to bring in students who won't keep up?" If they come in, they often fail in the professional classes and drift into what I call "anger studies." We then get more writings on the race war and explaining that the U.S. is the root of all evil.

These people are much brighter than the average student and would be able to keep up at Magna U. They would have become professionals and contributed to a society that needs every possible skilled person. Had Summa not misplaced them, they would have had excellent careers benefiting society.

Affirmative action for some cannot be done without establishing a quota for others. In any target group of fixed size, a minimum number of spaces for some people leaves fewer spaces (a lower maximum) for everyone else. I was a child actor many years ago and portrayed a Jewish boy studying hard to try to get into a Russian high school despite a severe anti-Jewish quota.

The spaces taken by mismatched students do not produce the qualified professionals society needs. Also, even though excluded people get training elsewhere, they are not pushed as hard as they might be, and society loses.

Sowell's writings describe many problems throughout history and worldwide where shortcuts have been used instead of increased effort to try to match results. It never works

Immigration issues are a primary focus of the new Trump administration because they were a central part of his campaign promises and essential to his voters. He did very well among Hispanics, especially in congressional districts along the border with Mexico. He also did well in areas with concentrations of crimes caused by less-savory newcomers.

Self-proclaimed "fact-checkers" constantly called Trump racist because he talked about those immigrants who made life unpleasant for our citizens when they came here. As was the case with European leaders, those in authority deemed it politically unacceptable to say anything unkind about the newcomers. The job of the government is to protect its citizens from dangers. When you let dangerous people in, you aren't doing your job.

Then there's the question of quantity. Globalists are often more excited by the class rings or ties than the American flag. Consider this. Every professional team or quality school has a limit and the ability to select and choose from a pool of candidates. I never had a chance to join a Major League Baseball team.

Those of you with a prestigious resume would resist a law saying that your school had to double its class sizes and move to first-come, first-serve open admission. What would that do to its reputation?

That's how many people feel about open borders. It is up to the government to be selective about who "joins Team USA." We want people who contribute. It is not a matter of race. When cheering in a game, any sports fan knows you "love' or "hate" a player for jersey color, not skin color. Anybody who comes here and contributes is welcome.

Another issue is Milton Friedman's famous quote, "You can have open borders or a welfare state – not both." Before social security, there were no benefits. My paternal grandfather died in 1925. My father was 11 and had to quit school and go to work. Immigrants at that time received no benefits. If the country needed workers, it could take in people at little or no cost to taxpayers. Today, immigrants are provided with housing, and children are schooled at the expense of local governments. Often, these per capita expenses are higher than social security checks.

Quantity is another issue for schools, sports teams, and countries. Housing costs and health systems are both impacted by sheer numbers. Waiting lines at hospital emergency rooms get longer.

Birthright Citizenship

An American citizen has a preference in terms of being able to get family members to the head of the line to enter the country as immigrants. A technique has been used, or overused, by women who are not citizens coming into the country legally or not, just before having a child on American soil. Hence, the child becomes an American by its birthplace.

Before the age of automobiles, let alone airplanes, this was inconceivable. Before the development of the welfare state, it was not financially disastrous. Such a child is called by those who oppose this method "an anchor baby" because a boatload of people can gain entry this way.

The History Channel offers shiplan excellent discussion of the history of birthright citizenship in the United States. I want to thank them. I had a general understanding of the subject, but their article provides excellent details.

They start with the two ways the child of an American citizen becomes a citizen:

children obtain their citizenship at birth through the legal principle of jus soli ("right of the soil")—that is, being born on U.S. soil—or jus sanguinis ("right of blood")—that is, being born to parents who are U.S. citizens.

In the 18^th century, the countries in the Americas wanted people to come, so they generally used a form of birthright (jus soli) citizenship. The World Population Review has a webpage covering the status of birthright citizenship legislation worldwide.

In 1790, the nation's first naturalization law came into effect. It stated that "free white persons" could gain citizenship if they had lived in the U.S. for two years and had a good character. The new citizens' children under the age of 21 were given citizenship, too.

Enslaved people and Native Americans were excluded. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision went further and said that even free blacks couldn't be citizens. After the Civil War, the 14^th Amendment was passed.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The History Channel article comments -

Notably, due to the "jurisdiction" requirement, most Native Americans were excluded from this Amendment.

One court case serves as precedent to interpret this part of the Constitution. The issue involved the reentry into the U.S. of Wong Kim Ark. He had been born in the U.S. to immigrant residents and was returning from a visit. The question was whether his place of birth was sufficient to establish citizenship. In 1898, the court ruled it was, and that case has served as precedent since then.

However, a Cornell Law School case summary notes the nature of a dissent applicable today.

the dissent viewed children born to U.S. citizens born overseas as more deserving of being natural-born citizens than those born in the United States to non-citizen parents, and yet they are not afforded the Constitution's protection. Further, the dissent argued that the "and not subject to any foreign power" provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 showed that Congress intended to exclude children of foreign citizens from the Fourteenth Amendment, as they would be subjects of the same foreign power as their parents.

Based on a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fact Sheet, legislation changed the process for documenting the birth of a child born overseas to a U. S. citizen as of November 14, 1986. The 14th Amendment has the standard terminating sectio

n:

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

In the Ark case, his parents were long-term residents of San Francisco's Chinatown. It was not a case of just visiting long enough to have the child here. In that sense, the value of this case as a precedent for those with little or no time as residents is questionable.

Trump's voters and Trump are clear. Uncontrolled immigration is costly, harmful, and dangerous. The government's is supposed to "provide for the common defense." It is unfair when the federal government lets in vast numbers of people and makes local governments pay for them.