"It is not the fault of the innocent that their parents choose either the shackles or the strong arm of tyranny."

Co-blogger krakatoa writes in the Ace of Spades blog,

Things are rapidly spinning into a dystopian police state in some areas.

I would say I pity those who meekly voted for enslavement, but I do not.

I would say I pity those that meekly follow their orders into the teeth of an armed populace, but I do not.

I would say I pity the children of both parties, and I mean that wholeheartedly.

It is not the fault of the innocent that their parents choose either the shackles or the strong arm of tyranny.

The over-reaction to this wu-flu is a genie that will be nigh impossible to put back into its bottle. We have set a new standard for dealing with large-scale crises, and that standard is unprecedented power to the state.

There are no saints who pursue, much less win, public office. There are only people with a will to power, certain of their own cause.

As much as I have grown to appreciate President Trump, I don't trust him nor any other elected official to give back any power they have attained, no matter how pure their intentions may be.

I pray all choose wisely from here on. The alternative could make us all wish instead for the casualties predicted in those ridiculous wu-flu computer models.

Do they really want to push impeachment even if it means they lose in 2020?

In his Morning Report today, JJ Sefton writes, Suffice it to say, that barring something completely out of the blue, after post-natal infanticide, disarming of the citizenry and open borders with welfare and healthcare for foreigners, impeachment will not only insure Trump is reelected a scant 13 months from now, but by a huge margin.

Do they really want to push impeachment even if it means they lose in 2020? Sefton links to an article in FrontPage Magazine by Daniel Greenfield that answers that question in the affirmative.

So why the unpopular impeachment push that can’t succeed because of the composition of the Senate?

The purpose of Random Treason Accusation #17 has always been justifying the use of surveillance, espionage and secret evidence ld against the political opposition. Or Watergate to the power of ten.

...Elections are a humiliating process that force lefties to lie to voters, hide their agendas, and appeal to the people they despise to be allowed to rule them. Even when they win, a sour taste lingers afterward.

The Left desperately wants impeachment proceedings because it wants to exercise direct power.

Impeachment is not just meant to be a trial of President Trump, but of the voters who chose him. Its outcome, whatever the composition of the Senate, is meant to be an argument for remaking the system of elections, whether by abolishing the Electoral College or tampering with the judiciary, that would take the power further out of the hands of the voters and concentrate them with the right sorts of people.

Outside the media and social media, where the purges of cancel culture are a daily event, the Left lacks the power to regularly drag its political enemies before its bar, to put them on trial and break them. And yet it craves that terrible power above all else. All its obsessions, political correctness, cancel culture, political protests, demonization and impeachment bend toward that consuming evil obsession.

The Mueller investigation enraptured lefties with its spectacle of police state tactics, night raids, prolonged interrogations, eavesdropping, and then finally trials that bankrupted their opponents.

Nothing else, not even winning in 2020, excites the Left as much as the prospect of more show trials.

That’s why it must have impeachment even if attaining it will destroy its chances of victory.

Read more here.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/disturbing-reason-why-dems-really-want-impeach-daniel-greenfield/

"If you don't care about truth,it is likely that all you care about is power."

Andrew commemorates Eric's Slalwell's decision to exit the Democratic race for 2020.

Andrew informs his audience about the Epstein case.

The ultimate target of the Left is freedom itself. Manipulating our actual history. If you don't care about truth, it is likely that all you care about is power. Andrew gives the example of Trump talking about the effort to rewrite history regarding Jefferson, Washington, and Charlottesville.

We are living on their plantation and we must all toe the line! But Trump has challenged their power!

Does it make you more tolerant when someone silences you? Definitely not! Kevin Hart is "standing his ground" against the cowards at the Motion Picture Academy.

Information is coming out that Rod Rosenstein had discussions with top FBI officials about what they could do to "reign Trump in. Andrew repeatedly describes it as a "power grab." We are living on their plantation and we must all toe the line! But Trump has challenged their power!

Trump and Klavan are just not quite like other people. They don't care what the swamp creatures say about them! If you are the kind of person who does not cower to those in power, you will be vulnerable as they come after you!

Michael Knowles is Andrew's guest to talk about the E.U. and Brexit. England's Prime Minister Theresa May is flying all over Europe trying to get them to agree to another Brexit vote which George Soros is sure to get those votes counted right this time! When you enter into these supernational organizations, you can't leave!

Andrew points out that the Brits are more connected to us than to the rest of Europe. The E.U. is being run by Germany! They won!

"it had become so drunk on its skeevy brew of secular cultism and unearned self-regard that it cannot conceive that it might be wrong."

Kurt Schlichter writes at Town Hall,

...A prosperous and free society where disputes are resolved peacefully requires open debate and the tolerance of differing opinions. If you don’t reason away your differences instead of silence opponents, persuade instead of intimidate, and operate under a rule of law that applies equally to everyone, then how do you address disputes? By the rule of power.

...The Tea Party was a rebellion. Electing Donald Trump was a rebellion. But our elite – our shabby, undistinguished elite that along the way traded actual accomplishments for mere snobbery – did not learn from them. It could not learn, as it had become so drunk on its skeevy brew of secular cultism and unearned self-regard that it cannot conceive that it might be wrong.

...but the left won’t win. It won’t destroy us. We have power too, starting with political power. It is time to wield it ferociously, but you knew that. You felt their hate for you, and you knew it was time to get in the ring.

Read more here.

"Having power is scary -- you are forced to make decisions that actually have consequences, and those consequences may involve the leftwing media saying mean things about you."

Ace of Spades writes,

I don't think Republicans want to hold either chamber of Congress; many Republicans prefer being like Ben Sasse, having no power whatsoever except to burble up baby-talk homilies that he can quote in fundraising letters.

Having power is scary -- you are forced to make decisions that actually have consequences, and those consequences may involve the leftwing media saying mean things about you.

So it's better to be a Controlled Opposition. They don't want actual power, which is a hard thing to have; they just want position, privilege, prestige and perks.

Since these dirtbags, sell-outs, and corporate shills prefer being in the minority, I say vote to keep them in power to spite them. Make them squirm.

Read more here.

"...throughout history urban populations have supported authoritarians, while rural populations have not.

The Zman writes,

...throughout history urban populations have supported authoritarians, while rural populations have not. In t"he ancient world, a savvy tyrant like Peisistratus could appeal to the masses of urban poor, to challenge the power of the aristocrats. On the other hand, authoritarian appeals work much better in high density environments. Still, daily familiarity with the power of the state makes people more trusting and comfortable with it. Socialism relies on that trust.

Read more here.

Dreamers trump citizens, sexual identity trumps religious faith, female empowerment trumps the manly virtues

Mark Steyn asks,

Why do Mitt's binders full of women outrage liberal sensibilities but not Harvey's pot plants full of semen?

Well, in the old days, the bourgeoisie expected bourgeois values throughout society. The wealthy and powerful disdained them, but discreetly. Now they disdain them openly. Indeed, they wage war on them, relentlessly. Instead, they enforce "progressive" values. Institutions fundamental to the nation-state, such as citizenship, have to be rendered meaningless - so that what matters in any immigration debate is not the citizens but the invaders, to the point where Nancy Pelosi thanks the parents of "Dreamers" for breaking American law and bringing them here, as a precious gift to a nation crying out for even more low-skilled immigrants. As for institutions that pre-date the nation-state - institutions almost as old as humanity - they're as easy to redefine, so that marriage can no longer be confined to those of opposite sexes. Speaking of the sexes, human biology can be vaporized, so that two sexes become 57 genders, and grade-school boys more interested in Barbie than GI Joe get to be pumped full of puberty blockers and directed to the girls' bathroom. And after all that, religion has to be put on the back foot, so that any recalcitrant mom'n'pop bakery for whom two men atop a wedding cake is an abomination, must be hunted down, dragged into court and financially ruined pour encourager les autres. And in a revolutionary present it is necessary ultimately to throttle the past - eliminating Robert E Lee, Christopher Columbus, Dr Seuss, Stephen Foster, the national anthem, to dam up the stream of history, the flow of past to present to future, and thus sever the citizenry from their entire inheritance, so that we are mere flotsam and jetsam on the frothing surface of the moment - a world where, in a certain sense, Harvey Weinstein is God.

...Once upon a time, the elites chafed under middle-class morality, and found sly workarounds for their darker appetites. Then came liberation. And in the ruins of bourgeois society a new moral hierarchy arose: Dreamers trump citizens, sexual identity trumps religious faith, female empowerment trumps the manly virtues...

And yet, as the case of Harvey Weinstein suggests, in the end nothing much has changed: As the old elite declined to be constrained by middle-class morality, the new elite decline to be constrained by their own purported morality. In the end, it's still about who has power, and who is disposable. As Lee Smith points out, the truth about Weinstein is only in the papers because Hillary lost. Were President Rodham in the Oval Office, this story could not run - because the First Gentleman has done everything and more that their longtime donor has done.

As a female-empowerment story, the Clinton candidacy was a joke. All Harvey Weinstein has done is provide an ugly but apt punchline. Rim shot - straight into the pot plant.

Read more here.

"No virtue greater than authenticity, and no vice worse than phoniness"

David Ernst, writing at The Federalist, reminds us of a speech Donald Trump gave at the Al Smith dinner just days before the election.

And a special hello to all of you in this room who have known and loved me for many, many years. It’s true. The politicians. They’ve had me to their homes. They’ve introduced me to their children. I’ve become their best friends in many instances. They’ve asked for my endorsement and they’ve always wanted my money. And even called me really a dear, dear friend. But then suddenly, decided when I ran for president as a Republican, that I’ve always been a no-good, rotten, disgusting scoundrel. And they totally forgot about me.

Ernst's analysis:

In other words: even if I have been a no-good, rotten, disgusting scoundrel, what does that make you? At least I don’t pretend to be decent; you people, on the other hand, have the gall to pretend that you’re any better than I am. Let’s dispense with the fiction that you would have treated me with any less contempt if I had bothered to live up to any of your standards of decency in the first place, and acknowledge that they have nothing to do with decency per se, and everything to do with power. Your presumption of any moral superiority is a willful, bald-faced lie, and I’m going to keep calling you on that crap until it puts me in the White House.

...In contrast to the many religions, systems of moral thought, and other ancient traditions that have distinguished every effort to better the human condition, postmodernism presumes that all of these endeavors are the cause of human failure. It therefore, operates according to just one moral imperative: discredit anything that other people presume to stand for goodness, because the belief that anything is superior to anything else inevitably results in prejudice, interpersonal strife, and inequality.

Thus, the Venus de Milo has no more aesthetic value than a crucifix in a jar full of urine; Beethoven’s symphonies are no more profound than the latest round of top 40 hits; all religions are fundamentally the same, and their “moderate” postmodern adherents are all comfortably represented on the “Coexist” bumper sticker. In a sense, it isn’t culture at all, but rather an anti-culture that measures success insofar as it deconstructs anything that other people value.

Provided that the postmodern man believes in nothing and values nothing, one wouldn’t be unreasonable in concluding that he cares about nothing. But anyone who knows postmodern man also knows that nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather, the “cult of non-discrimination” is filled with bright-eyed idealism about making the world a better place, and in the cases where it challenges baseless prejudice, it does make the world a better place. Like other utopian visions that seek to remake human beings into something alien to their nature, however, it is incapable of compromise, and thus lends itself to hypocrisy and fanaticism.

PC’s fakeness is only outdone by its fanaticism, which has grown with considerable intensity in recent years. Everything from Brendan Eich’s firing from Mozilla for donating to Proposition 8 in California, to the eruption of protests on college campuses over the offensiveness of Halloween costumes, to the controversy over state laws that restrict bathroom usage according to biology rather than gender identity, suggest that the postmodern “cult of nondiscrimination” only grows more desperate the more it succeeds. What gives?

The answer is that the postmodern man ultimately finds satisfaction in the only thing that is left for him: power. Moral superiority is an undeniable source of power over other people, and postmodernism’s moral imperative offers it cheaply to anyone who accepts its premises. The power to shut others up by merely insinuating that they are a bigot is subtle, but its potency is difficult to overstate.

...As they run out of traditions, institutions, and customs to deconstruct, however, the more diluted the power rooted in their outrage becomes. Hence the growth in moral hysteria over ever smaller and more trivial things.

...As soon as the PC outrage machine decides something is wrong with whatever you think, then it has no interest in your thoughts or reasoning: you must submit or remain silent.

All this raises an uncomfortable question for people who have no use for PC’s agenda, and who value the freedom to think for themselves. How do you respond to someone who is determined to smear you for your alleged bigotry regardless of what you think and why? How do you win an argument against someone who willfully changes the meaning of words, maintains that the truth is completely relative, and feels perfectly justified in accusing virtually anyone of the gravest moral failure?

...Trump grasps our postmodern culture intuitively, and put it to use with devastating effect.

If our opponents are going to accuse us of being evil-minded bigots, regardless of what we say or think, then what’s the point in bothering to convince them otherwise? Let’s play by their own rules of relativism and subjectivity, dismiss their baseless accusations, and hammer them mercilessly where it hurts them the most: their hypocrisy. After all, if there is no virtue greater than authenticity, and no vice worse than phoniness, then the purveyors of contrived PC outrage are distinctively vulnerable.

Democrats gleefully welcomed Trump’s victory in the Republican primaries with the expectation that they’d bury him in a pile of condescension for being a buffoon and scorn for being the next Hitler. Better yet, they figured that his astounding rise confirmed everything they had long assumed about half the country and were now free to say out loud: they are indeed a basket of irredeemable racist, sexist, homophobic deplorables. Mainstream Republicans would surely hop on board the progressive train rather than be associated with these creeps.

So I’m a scoundrel because I don’t pay income taxes? Maybe so, but it also makes me smart, just like all the other billionaires who are backing your campaign. So I’m a sexist because you found a video of me bragging about how my superstar status enables me to grab women by the p—y? Maybe it does, but allow me to publically introduce four of the women who have accused your husband of everything from indecent exposure to rape. So I’m a greedy businessman who stiffs my contractors? Fine. You’re a corrupt politician who sells out our national interest to line your own pockets.

Maybe everything they say about me is true, but at least I’m authentic, at least I’m real: you on the other hand, are a bloody, disgusting hypocrite.

So say goodnight to the bad guy! Because this bad guy is now our president.

Read more here.

Grifters

Victor Davis Hanson writes,

The Hillary/Bill fortune — generated by pay-for-play influence peddling on the proposition that Bill would return to the White House under Hillary’s aegis and reward friends while punishing enemies — hit a reported $150 million some time ago, a fortune built not on farming, mining, insurance, finance, high-tech, or manufacturing, but on skimming off money. The Clintons are simply grifters whose insider access to government gave them the power to make rich people richer.

Long gone was the Scrooge-like need to write off used underwear as charitable tax deductions or to play 4-trillion-to-one odds in rigging a $100,000 cattle-futures profit on a $1,000 “investment,” or Hillary’s decade-and-a-half as a corporate lawyer masquerading as a children’s advocate. How pathetic the minor league Whitewater cons must seem now to the multimillionaire Clintons — such a tawdry ancient example of amateurish shakedowns when compared with the sophistication of real profiteering through the humanitarian-sounding, high-brow, corrupt Clinton Foundation.

Why did multimillionaire Hillary charge UCLA, in the era of thousands of indebted students, $300,000 (rather than, say, $149,999.99) for a brief, platitudinous speech? Why did multimillionaire Bill need more than $17 million for being honorary “chancellor” of the financially for-profit but tottering Laureate University (whose spin-off associate organization was a recipient of State Department largesse)? Did he think the extra millions were worth the embarrassment of being the highest-paid and least-busy college executive in U.S. history?

Apparently, the good life did not drive the Clintons so much as the quest for the supposed best life. Even though they had finally “made it” among the multimillionaire set, the Clintons always saw others (no doubt, deemed by them less deserving) with far, far more — whether Jeffery Epstein, with his ability to jet wherever and with whomever he pleased, or green half-a-billionaire Al Gore, who ran even more successful cons, such as rapidly selling a worthless cable TV station to beat impending capital-gains taxes, and selling it to none other than the anti-Semitic Al Jazeera, whose carbon-generated profits come from autocratic Qatar. (The media never audited Gore’s attempt to become a cable mogul, unlike their current concerns about a potential Trump media outlet).

The Clintons suffer from greed, as defined by Aristotle: endless acquisition solely for the benefit of self. With their insatiable appetites, they resented the limits that multimillionaire status put on them, boundaries they could bypass only by accumulating ever greater riches. The billion-dollar foundation squared the circle of progressive politicians profiting from the public purse by offering a veneer of “doing good” while offering free luxury travel commensurate with the style of the global rich, by offering sinecures for their loyal but otherwise unemployable cronies, and by spinning off lobbying and speaking fees (the original font of their $100-million-plus personal fortune and the likely reason for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to put all her communications, mercantile included, on a private server safe from government scrutiny). Acquiring money to the extent that money would become superfluous was certainly a Clinton telos — and the subtext of the entire Podesta trove and the disclosures about the Clinton Foundation.

For the Clintons, power is the narcotic of being sought out, of being surrounded by retainers, of bringing enemies to heel and enticing sycophants with benefits. Liberalism and progressivism are mere social and cultural furniture, the “correct” politics of their background that one mouths and exploits to obtain and maintain political clout — and to get really, really rich without guilt or apology.

As in the quest for lucre, the Clintons’ appetite for high-profile authority is endless. Just as $150 million seemed as nothing compared with the billions and billions raked in by their friends and associates, so too eight years in the White House, tenure as governor, senator, or secretary of state were never enough. In between such tenures, the Clintons suffered droughts when they were not on center stage and in no position to wield absolute power, as they watched less deserving folk (the Obamas perhaps in particular) gain inordinate attention. A Hillary presidency would give the Clintons unprecedented Peronist-like power, in a manner unlike any couple in American history.

Of course, the Clintons are not only corrupt but cynical as well. They accept that the progressive media, the foundations, the universities, the bureaucracies, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley honor power more than trendy left-wing politics; they well understand that their fans will, for them, make the necessary adjustments to contextualize Clinton criminality or amorality. Sexual predations, the demonization of women, graft, and unequal protection under the law are also of no consequence to the inbred, conflicted, and morally challenged media – who will always check in with the Clinton team, like errant dogs who scratch the backdoor of their master after a periodic runaway.

The Clintons have contempt for the media precisely because the media are so obsequious. They smile, that, like themselves, the media are easily manipulated and compromised — to the extent of offering their articles, before publication, for Clinton approval (as the New York Times’ Mark Leibovich did; leaking debate questions to the Clinton campaign (as Donna Brazile did); or saying (as Politico’s chief political correspondent did), “I have become a hack. . . . Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this Tell me if I f**ked up anything.” The Clintons view such sycophants not with affection, but with disdain, given that they are moochers no better than the Clintons, with the same base desires, albeit better camouflaged by their pretense of objectivity.
Read more here.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441637/hillary-bill-clinton-greed-corruption-power-cynicism-endlesslyRead more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441637/hillary-bill-clinton-greed-corruption-power-cynicism-endlesslyRead more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441637/hillary-bill-clinton-greed-corruption-power-cynicism-endlessly

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441637/hillary-bill-clinton-greed-corruption-power-cynicism-endlesslyRead more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441637/hillary-bill-clinton-greed-corruption-power-cynicism-endlesslyRead more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441637/hillary-bill-clinton-greed-corruption-power-cynicism-endlessly

Hey, it was populist agitation that went into making this wreckage!

Mark A. Signorelli writes at The Federalist,

As the accumulating crises confronting the Western world stuff our newsfeeds more and more each day, a certain broad narrative about what is happening seems to have gained near-universal acceptance. It says the populations of Western nations are presently ruled by an incompetent and out-of-touch “elite,” who evince no regard for, or even knowledge of, the people’s will on a variety of issues, ranging from immigration to free trade to education.

In response, the citizens of these nations have demonstrated their contempt for these elites in fairly dramatic ways, from the Brexit to the rise of the Front National to the Donald Trump campaign. It is a contest between populism and elitism, we are told, that defines our political moment.

...Populism is a spirit, an attitude, informed by varying degrees of pride, self-sufficiency, frustration, resentment, and wrath.

...This attitude of permanent disaffection has been the primary psychological note of modern progressivism ever since the uprisings of the 1960s. Over the last half-century, even as the Left has conquered one institution after another—the university, the media, the federal bureaucracy—this disposition to revolt has remained the chief feature of the progressive mind.

It is why the people running our civilization have never developed the virtues necessary to carry out their duties adequately. Determined to always think of themselves as persons out of power, they never learned to regard themselves as persons with power, and all the responsibilities power entails. They never learned to imagine the kinds of moral formation that would fit a person for rule, rather than for protest.

This is why we can listen to a close advisor to the president—a woman with access to the most effective levers of power in the world—declare her intention to “speak truth to power.” But as for speaking truth as power, as for directing their policies with the wisdom and prudence requisite to their offices, the populist elite in control of the Western world have never learned how to do this, because their own modes of juvenile self-fashioning have precluded them from ever admitting that they do indeed occupy such offices.

This is the dimension missing from most analyses of our present political circumstances—the historical dimension. We find ourselves saddled with a teetering institutional structure without considering the decades of populist agitation that went into making this wreckage. Coates’ own biography is uncannily symbolic in this regard. The son of a Black Panther, he continues to spout his father’s revolutionary creed, even as his society grants him an unrivaled authority to speak and to write. It is why a man heaped with accolades and honors can still think himself the victim of a “cosmic injustice;” why a writer privileged with a platform in one of his country’s most prominent organs can think of no other use for this platform than to cultivate deeply uncharitable sentiments in his own child. He is incapable of recognizing himself as the establishment figure he has unquestionably become.

Read more here.

Power

Jonah Goldberg notices at National Review that on today's college campuses,

virtually every supposedly liberal principle -- diversity, free speech, “sound science,” empiricism, tolerance, democracy, the rule of law -- is being set ablaze in the quest of the one thing the radicals always want more than anything else: power. (See Jonathan Last’s outstanding Weekly Standard cover story for more on this).

The big criminals are still at large.

Here is the second segment of Bill Whittle's interview with Dinesh D'Souza, in which Dinesh talks about his life as a political prisoner in a "detention center" next to the Mexican border. After first avoiding contact with other prisoners, Dinesh decided to make it a learning opportunity. The strestreet criminals with whom Disnesh was confined, taught him that human nature is driven by avaravarice, lust, envy, revenge, the relentless pursuit of power.

Chivalry and modesty

The woman in the photo above is named Caprizchka. She has written a piece called Power vs. Love.

It would seem to me that ultimate power rests with he or she who dictates the course that “love” should take with others. Whether one is talking about men behaving chivalrously toward women as a demonstration of love for those women, or women behaving subserviently toward men as a demonstration of love, social norms might call one “good” and the other “bad”. Whoever defines those social norms has a lot of power.

Whereas I think that it is strange that there isn’t a linguistic equivalent of “chivalry” when the actor is a woman. Since men are generally physically stronger than women it would seem to me that the social equivalent of “chivalry” is “modesty”. Specifically, a woman who physically and materially subverts her outward appearance (the primary source of “power” in a woman particularly a young healthy one) such as to recede into the shadow of her beloved man is essentially behaving “chivalrously” by subverting her own power in his service, assuming that it is a service.

Read more here.

Lincoln was a dictator? The camera is the new gun. We the people have to be vigilant about our loss of freedom.

The Barrister at Maggie's Farm posts this interview of Judge Andrew Napolitano that was conducted in 2010. Here are some portions of it that interested me. (Actually, I found every word of it to be interesting.)

Daily Bell: What is justice in your opinion – having sat on the bench?

Judge Napolitano: I don’t think I can answer that in a simple paragraph. But justice is the enforcement of the fair response to human behavior consistent with natural law and consistent with the rule of law. So that means that you have to accept that the Declaration of Independence is not just a Jeffersonian musing, but is fundamental to American values. Our rights come from our humanity, which is a gift from God; they don’t come from the government, so they can’t be taken away by the government. You have to accept the role of government as an arbiter with respect to the infringement of those rights whether by an executive or legislative branch, or whether by a private person. Really there is no formula other than recognizing natural rights, accepting the fundamental law of the land, being fair and being brutally honest and having no interest in the outcome.

Daily Bell: Does President Barack Obama understand the Constitution in your opinion?

Judge Napolitano: I don’t think so, unless the Barack Obama that we witness in the White House is putting on an act. I mean to him the Constitution is no impediment to the exercise of judicial power. I have to modify this by saying rarely have we had a President who understood the Constitution. Grover Cleveland understood the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson for the most part of it understood the Constitution; Andrew Jackson partially understood the Constitution but very few others have.

Daily Bell: You served as an adjunct professor of Constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School, where you provided instruction and jurisprudence. Is the law constitutional these days? What does that mean?

Judge Napolitano: Yes, I did that for 11 years. You mean are laws written to the Constitution? The answer is no. Most members of Congress couldn’t care less what the Constitution says. Even though they have taken an oath to uphold it, preserve it, protect it and defend it, which was the same oath I took when I became a judge. I was interviewing a Congressman from South Carolina, Jim Clyburn, who’s the number three ranking Democrat in the house, and I asked him quite simply and plainly where in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to manage health care? He told me, “Judge, most of what we do down here, (referring to Washington) is not authorized by the Constitution.” The torturing and twisting of the plain language of the Constitution in order to permit the expansion of the federal powers has resulted in the loss of liberty and freedom of choice.

Daily Bell: Tell us about your book, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History.

Judge Napolitano: It is a rollicking tour from 1776 to 2008 about the classic lies the government has perpetrated on the people and the political, legal and moral effect of accepting those lies. I argue that the dirty, little secret of American history is that the Constitution is rarely enforced and the government gets away with its violation of the Constitution in the most explicit ways. It basically seeks to point out government’s myth-making when it comes to such constitutional points as, “all men are created equal,” or “Congress shall make no law abridging a freedom of speech,” or “all persons shall be secure in their property, houses, possessions.” I argue that FDR caused Pearl Harbor, that Lyndon Johnson created out of thin air the Gulf of Tonkin, that George Bush knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and was in fact authorizing his agents to torture people. I catalogue these and government lying about them in the book.

Daily Bell: What do you think of the Constitution and how it was written and the principles it espouses?

Judge Napolitano: When it was written it had some defects in it. It permitted slavery; it even permitted the slave trade. So one can love the restraint to impose on government, and one can love the bill of rights. One can appreciate the separation of powers within the federal government and the federal system as it relates to sovereign states that can act as a check to the federal government. But once we overcame things like discrimination based on race, and discrimination based on gender, it is a brilliant document that guarantees liberty and ensures the separation of power. Now unfortunately it has been harmed by at least two amendments that are unconstitutional. Now here is an interesting question: Can a part of the Constitution be unconstitutional? The answer is yes. The 16th amendment and the 17th amendment encapsulate the income tax and the changing of the manner in which the US Senate is elected. So the Constitution we have today is nowhere near the beautiful balanced instrument of limited government that the framers gave us. It’s barely a shadow of it’s original self.

Daily Bell: Some say the Constitution was a step backward from a less structured federation of states. Agree or disagree – and why?

Judge Napolitano: I agree. I do agree. I think that we would be far happier today under the Articles of Confederation than under the current Constitution, but we would also be happier today under the Constitution were it interpreted as it was intended to be. Unfortunately, almost from the beginning, and certainly with Chief Justice John Marshall, we bear witness to the march away from state sovereignty, the march away from individual liberty and the march toward federal dominance. This march has accelerated and decelerated at various times in our history. Usually at wartime it becomes more accelerated. But from the end of the Civil War and certainly from and after the FDR era, the march has consistently been away from state sovereignty away, from individual liberty and toward federal dominance.

Daily Bell: Did the Constitution lay the foundation for the War Between the States?

Judge Napolitano: I think War Between the States was fought over the issue of federal dominance. I think slavery was not the reason for the War Between the States. I think that Lincoln was a dictator who was terrified that by the loss of tariffs from southern ports – about 55 million dollars a year in 1860. it was a huge portion of the federal government’s income, which consisted at the time of tariffs, user fees and land sales. It was the loss of those ports that caused Lincoln to wage war against the states. I don’t think it was the Constitution that facilitated war. I think it was monster government that facilitated the War Between the States. I think slavery would have been eradicated on its own, much as it had been in Puerto Rico and Brazil and Portugal and Great Britain and even years earlier in western Europe.

Daily Bell: Would America have been better off without a Constitution?

Judge Napolitano: No, I don’t think so. America is better off with a Constitution if it meant what is said and interpreted as written. Because it does say, on its face, that there are certain guarantees. Regrettably, the government has rarely upheld those guarantees. The beauty of the Constitution was the idea of checks and balances. Men, as Madison said, “are not angels.” They will be drawn more toward power than toward liberty if there isn’t something to check the drive toward power.

Daily Bell: Why doesn’t current public law pay attention to economic laws – specifically the law of supply and demand and marginal utility?

Judge Napolitano: I wish I knew the answer to that. For some reasons, some of the fiercest defenders of civil liberties are also some of the fiercest adversaries to commercial liberties. I would argue that my fellow libertarians are the only people in the country who truly defend freedom because we defend civil liberties and commercial liberties. Even the flip side of this is deplorable. The Republicans, which from time to time have acted as if they defend commercial liberties, have assaulted civil liberties as well. We have migrated from a two-party system into a one-party system, the big-government party. There’s a democratic wing that likes taxes and wealth transfers and assaults on commercial liberties and there’s a republican wing that likes war and deficits and assaults uncivil liberties. Neither of them is interested in true freedom. The separation of civil liberties from commercial liberties is what has enabled this to happen.

Daily Bell: Do you have any final thoughts? Anything you want to say to readers that we didn’t ask about?

Judge Napolitano: I have enjoyed this interview. I hope the readers enjoy it as well. The people have to be vigilant about the loss of freedom. They have to press representatives in Congress to justify their behavior. And the camera is the new gun. Whenever you deal with the government, whether it’s a janitor or school teacher or a police office or a legislator, you want to film it because that will scare the daylights out of them. The government hates transparency and it hates fresh air and light and fresh air and light is a way to scare it back into its confines.

Read more here.

Who would pass up such a chance?

Jay Nordlinger also writes at National Review about our Supremes.

Judging is not for everybody. Judging requires a certain neutrality, which can be annoying. It requires fidelity to constitution and law. A judge has a constituency of one: the constitution and law.

P.S. Anyone who thinks that churches won’t be compelled to perform gay marriages is smoking the hash that we have long sought to legalize. There is no opting out of the new America. Get with the program, Gramps.

If you wear the black robe and wield the gavel, you have the powah, baby. And you use your power to do good, as you conceive good. Who would pass up such a chance?

Read more here.

The art of Constitutional torture

Kevin Williamson writes about Ayatollah Roberts and His Sharia Council at National Review.

In the matter of the so-called Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court ruled that the law must not say what it in fact does say because it would be better if it were not to say what it says and were to say something else instead. In the matter of same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court rules that the law must say what it does not say because it would be better if it were to say what it does not say instead of what it says. Which is to say, the Supreme Court has firmly established that it does not matter what the law says or does not say — what matters is what they want.

That texts may be imaginatively interpreted to any end is not news — “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” as William Shakespeare observed in The Merchant of Venice. The legendary constitutional scholar Barack Obama failed to notice, until the day before yesterday, that the Constitution mandates the legalization of homosexual marriage from sea to shining sea, but, to be fair, that is an easy provision to overlook, even for a mind as keen as Barack Obama’s, since the Constitution does not say one word about marriage, much less about the state-level codification of homosexual couplings being a fundamental federal right.

Constitutional torture is an art, and Chief Justice John Roberts has emerged as its Andy Warhol: an impresario who will put his name on anything.

It is uncomfortable to think about, but our Supreme Court functions in much the same way as Iran’s Guardian Council: It is a supralegislative body of purported scholars, distinguished by ceremonial black robes, that imaginatively applies ancient doctrines “conscious of the present needs and the issues of the day,” as the ayatollahs over there and over here both put it, deciding — discovering! — what is mandatory and what is forbidden as the shifting currents of politics dictate. The main difference is that the Iranians take their sharia rather more seriously than we take our constitutional law: John Roberts’s opinion in Burwell wasn’t just wrong — wrong can be forgiven — it was embarrassing, craven, and intellectually indefensible. Antonin Scalia was right to let him have it with both barrels, but he’d do better to resign from the Supreme Court — it is difficult to see how an honorable man could be associated with it.

...the idea that lurking in the penumbras of our 18th-century Constitution is a fundamental national right to gay marriage is simply preposterous. It is not there. It is a fiction, and, just like the Harry Potter novels, the fact that it is very, very popular does not mean that it is not fiction.

That the chief justice went one way on health care and another on marriage tells us nothing at all about the law or the Constitution: It tells us about John Roberts. And that is the problem. Asked what he thought about Western civilization, Mohandas K. Gandhi supposedly quipped that he thought it would be a good idea. Conservatives, if we’re being honest, might say the same about the rule of law. It would be a good idea, at least an interesting experiment. For the moment, though, there’s only power, the men who have it, and the things they do with it.

Read more here.

What comes first?

A commenter at Chateau Heartiste writes,

I saw a guy on the subway yesterday tenderly put his arm around his girlfriend while she was babbling cocksurely about something indubitably important. Today, saw a couple walking and the young man kissed the top of her head. In neither case did the girl’s body language show any reciprocation or gratitude.

What’s significant is that both men struck me as alpha at first glance.

The girl wants to feel your power and charm first, affection distant third.

Chateau Heartiste adds,

Power and charm first, affection third. That’s a pithy aphorism describing the contours of female attraction for the competing character traits of sexy men. Establish your dominance (which can be done by showing you won’t cave like a supplicating beta to her feminine wiles), engage her with your charm (an attitudinal cue that you live with an abundance of women mentality), bestow her with your affection (but only after she’s bestowed you with her sex and love).

The problem with the more romantically earnest sort of beta males is that they start with the affection, and then clumsily try to segue to the power and charm when they see that their affection is driving the girl away. It never ends well.

Read more here.

Do you agree?

Thanks to Christopher Buckley

How to engineer or assist evil

If you wanted to assist or evil, what would you do? Walter Williams writes about how it was done in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, and Mao Tse Tung's China.

The 20th century turned out to be mankind's most barbaric. Roughly 50 million to 60 million people died in international and civil wars. As tragic as that number is, it pales in comparison with the number of people who were killed at the hands of their own government. Recently deceased Rudolph J. Rummel, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii and author of "Death by Government," estimated that since the beginning of the 20th century, governments have killed 170 million of their own citizens. Top government killers were the Soviet Union, which, between 1917 and 1987, killed 62 million of its own citizens, and the People's Republic of China, which, between 1949 and 1987, was responsible for the deaths of 35 million to 40 million of its citizens. In a distant third place were the Nazis, who murdered about 16 million Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians and others deemed misfits, such as homosexuals and the mentally ill.

We might ask why the 20th century was so barbaric. Surely, there were barbarians during earlier ages. Part of the answer is that during earlier times, there wasn't the kind of concentration of power that emerged during the 20th century. Had Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Hitler been around in earlier times, they could not have engineered the slaughter of tens of millions of people. They wouldn't have had the authority. There was considerable dispersion of jealously guarded political power in the forms of heads of provincial governments and principalities and nobility and church leaders whose political power within their spheres was often just as strong as the monarch's.

Professor Rummel explained in the very first sentence of "Death by Government" that "Power kills; absolute Power kills absolutely. ... The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects." That's the long, tragic, ugly story of government: the elite's use of government to dupe and forcibly impose its will on the masses. The masses are always duped by well-intentioned phrases. After all, what German could have been against "A Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich"? It's not just Germans who have fallen prey to well-intentioned phrases. After all, who can be against the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act"?

We Americans ought to keep the fact in mind that Hitler, Stalin and Mao would have had more success in their reign of terror if they had the kind of control and information about their citizens that agencies such as the NSA, the IRS and the ATF have about us. You might ask, "What are you saying, Williams?" Just put it this way: No German who died before 1930 would have believed the Holocaust possible.

Read more here.