Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend, and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln

Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

In the 22 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.

This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.

Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.

The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).

In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.

The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.

In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.

In this way, “we the people” continue to be terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.

The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.

Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, with the nation still suffering blowback from the permanent state of emergency brought about by 9/11 and COVID-19.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.

Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being persecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights and speaking out against government corruption. Activists are being arrested and charged for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a so-called government forum.

The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.

The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or encroaching on your private property unless they have evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise), and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.

The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.

The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.

The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.

As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.

Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution, which was adopted 236 years ago on Sept. 17, 1787, opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.

In other words, it’s our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.

We are supposed to be the masters and they—the government and its agents—are the servants.

We the American people—the citizenry—are supposed to be the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.

As the National Review rightly asks, “How can Americans possibly make intelligent and informed political choices if they don’t understand the fundamental structure of their government? American citizens have the right to self-government, but it seems that we increasingly lack the capacity for it.”

Americans are constitutionally illiterate.

Most citizens have little, if any, knowledge about their basic rights. And our educational system does a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Teachers and school administrators do not fare much better. A study conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis found that one educator in five was unable to name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment.

Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.

So what’s the solution?

Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties”  is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.

From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.

Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.

Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to do more than grouse and complain.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have the power to make and break the government.

The powers-that-be want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own. They also want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day.

Yet there are 330 million of us in this country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.

Tyranny wouldn’t stand a chance.

 

John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

The post Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Many Ways Our Rights Have Been Usurped Since 9/11 appeared first on Granite Grok.

New Hampshire Democrats had a decade to pretend to be diverse, but they kept electing pasty white members to Congress, and the so-called party of “diversity” (theirs) took away their plumb primary. The DC machine keeps giving them extensions to solve an unsolvable problem.

 

The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted unanimously at a meeting in Washington, DC, to give Granite State Democrats until2024 pres October 14 to submit a delegate selection plan that includes an approved primary date. Under DNC rules, states are not allowed to hold their nominating contests before March 5 unless they receive a waiver from the national party. The rules panel granted the extension after New Hampshire failed to submit a delegate selection plan by September 1 that included a primary date.

 

There’s not a lot they can do. State Law requires our Secretary of State to schedule the NH Primary 7 days before everyone else’s. Something he can’t do until other early states have etched theirs in stone. Not that it matters for Dems.

New Hampshire will be first, but the DNC calendar put South Carolina first (or so they say) because of the aforementioned diversity NH dems lack. The Palmetto state is more like the Democrat party, according to the DNC and Joe Biden, which is to say it is more electorally friendly in the primary to pasty white Joe despite voting Republican in every presidential election since 1964 except for a drunken one-night stand with a Peanut Farmer in 1976.

You can see why NH Dems might be bewildered. New Hampshire is purple, not red, but they keep choosing pasty-white candidates to Congress for whom they felt certain their constituents would pull a lever. Had they picked even one person of color in the 14 years since Obama beat that not-so-Maverick, John McCain, they probably could have kept their brass ring.

Republicans, in that same spread of time, nominated a string of blacks and Latinos, all of whom lost to pasty White Democrat Ann Kuster becasue, as every Democrat knows, when they talk about diversity, they don’t mean what they want you to think they mean. Kusters District is the bluer of our two, but the Congressional District, to Lefties obsessed with skin color, couldn’t find their way to vote for it while insisting on affirmative action everywhere else.

The result is a conundrum NH Dems can’t resolve. The DNC has told them they “have one more month to submit a 2024 primary plan that complies with the national party’s rules,” and they can’t. The DNC knows this, so it has effectively dispensed another yard of rope with which New Hampshire’s Democrats can rhetorically (or electorally) hang themselves on their race-pimping, diversity-peddling petard if you like.

They failed or refused to walk the talk, and their reward is a prolonging of the torture.

Kathy Sullivan, who has been around the Dem State Party Block a time or two, is riling up the locals for a write-in campaign. They think that no matter what, the Democrats who aren’t registering temporarily as independents to f**k with the Republican primary need to stand up for their president. Yes, he is yours, and you can have him. But they are kidding themselves. And I’m not saying don’t waste the time, effort, and money, but this is the DNC, and it is Joe Biden. Fixing the primary is baked in before the Klan bake even happens.

As Rob Roper observed weeks ago, this is all for show. No one wants Biden to win the nomination, especially Democrats, but to get the guy they want, Biden has to win so they can pretend he’s too ill, daft, or brain-dead to run and replace him with someone like that Communist Ken Doll Gavin Newsom. They’ll helicopter him in at the last minute, running to ensure Joe’s legacy. It’ll be a great story that will help cover whatever massive fraud is required to win, considering what Joe’s legacy has done to America. So you lose a few delegates to a convention from a primary that doesn’t matter.

So what? Just step up to the microphone, look the DNC square in its lazy eye, and f**k all. Admit that if you’d nominated brown people, your racist voters wouldn’t have elected them; let the DNC extinguish your torch and get off the damn island.

 

 

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It was bad enough that President Bidendisrespected the victims and First Responders of 9/11 by breaking the tradition of attending one of the memorial services at the attack sites. Beyond his scheduling misstep, he stood in Alaska in the shadow of Air Force One and lied to the military personnel gathered to hear from their commander-in-chief.

He started what should have been a very somber address with a joke with one of the assembled politicians. He then lied about his whereabouts on the day after 9/11. Documentation and video prove that Joe Biden spent the entire Wednesday, September 12, in the Senate Chambers. The whole country went into a travel lockdown, and he could not have traveled to Ground Zero had he wanted to.

Even his staff cannot walk back this lie that he spent much time expounding on. They contend that Joe got the timing wrong, but that does not work. Joe Biden is a pathological liar, but where is his team when his presentations are prepared? He was reading from a teleprompter, which means his team fed Joe his talking points. His staff is complicit in his continuous charade. Using lies for dramatic emphasis is a deplorable tactic for a speaker. It is inexcusable for the President of the United States, and Biden does it often. He has done it often with his relationship with AMTRAK staff whose families say were dead at the time Joe is referring to. The most disgusting lie is when Joe tells Gold Star families he understands their pain because he felt the same when his son Beau was killed in Iraq. He describes how he felt when Beau’s flag-draped coffin returned to America. It NEVER happened. I would scream that line if I could with the keyboard. Beau died of cancer in a hospital in America, surrounded by his family. It is unfortunate but far different than dying on a battlefield in a foreign land.

Telling this lie to 13 mothers watching their children’s bodies come home to them in wooden boxes is heartless, disrespectful, and insulting, for the truth is known by all. The history of Biden’s lies goes back decades. Joe Biden had to withdraw from two Presidential elections before 2020 when he was embarrassed after he got caught plagiarizing speeches. These humbling experiences were not enough to keep him from being Obama’s VP for eight years and President for four. He has been lying about his knowledge of his son, Hunter’s, business dealings that led to payments to the Bidens via 20 LLC shadow accounts. Now that Biden is the target of a fiscal deep-dive by Congress, he may have to admit the truth and apologize to America for lying about it for three years.

Maybe the press will have to finally acknowledge a story of corruption about the former Vice-President and now President is real. It is alarming that there is very little attention to a memo sent from the White House to media outlets demanding a moderation of reporting on the Impeachment Inquiry. This action further proves a Biden attack on the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press. Joe Biden is a corrupt President who has no regard for the Constitution or the Rule of Law.

Biden’s propensity to disregard the truth has permeated his entire staff, and Wednesday’s poor excuse for a Press Briefing is all the proof you need. KJP was joined by John Kirby and Jared Bernstein, the chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisers. The three of them distorted the truth on the Impeachment Inquiry, Iran prisoner purchase for $6 Billion, and the August inflation numbers respectively. Bernstein is one of the architects of Bidenomics yet, like KJP, read every answer to questions asked. This was a terrible display of Biden Administration incompetence, but at this point, should we expect anything more?

The post He Looked Into The Gates Of Hell, And Lied appeared first on Granite Grok.

As if the four previous prosecutorial cow pies that surround Donald J. Trump were not fetid enough, the U.S. Supreme Court soon will step into efforts to bar him from state ballots.

Assorted Trumpophobes are abusing the Constitution to deny Americans the right to vote for or against DJT for president. Specifically, Section Three of the 14th Amendment disqualifies from high office certain individuals who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [U.S. Constitution], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

This legal theory might make sense if Trump had been imprisoned for insurrection or rebellion. It might hold water, if he had been convicted of insurrection or rebellion.

This boomlet even might boast a thimble full of steam, if the Justice Department, a state attorney general, or some county prosecutor had indicted him for insurrection or rebellion. Unfortunately for Trump haters, this never happened. (RELATED: DEROY MURDOCK: Fulton County DA’s Anti-Trump ‘Smoking Gun’ Is A Toy Pistol)

In a bizarre and totally unprecedented action, Democrats waited until after Trump departed the White House to try him for “incitement of insurrection.” His second impeachment trial resembled an employer firing an employee after he left the company.

The House’s “incitement” accusation already was one step short of insurrection, akin to telling someone to torch a house rather than personally lobbing a Molotov cocktail onto its front porch.

Regardless, 43 U.S. senators found Trump not guilty, while 57 disagreed – 10 shy of conviction. So, the Senate acquitted Trump of insurrection.

Moreover, the 14th Amendment’s 1868 insurrection language is tied to the Civil War. It was designed to keep Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and other Confederates out of Congress and the White House. Trump’s detractors cannot escape these facts: He never served the Confederacy and was born 81 years after the North defeated the South in 1865.

Trump’s persecutors also refuse to acknowledge what he told supporters at a January 6, 2021 rally: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

 

 

This was no rebel yell.

Trump’s foes retort that he told protesters, “Fight like hell.” Alleged translation: “Smash into the U.S. Capitol, hijack the Electoral College, and make me President for Life.”

To call this argument flaccid overstates its potency.

Democrats regularly say “fight like hell.” Consider:

• On June 25, 2020, Joe Biden promised American families that he would “fight like hell to make sure they get the healthcare they need.”
• “We will file lawsuits, pass legislation in the House & fight like hell,” against alleged GOP voter suppression, impeachment manager Congressman Ted Lieu (D – California) declared via Twitter on June 9, 2020.
• Impeachment manager Congressman Eric Swalwell (D – California) told CNN’s then-anchor Don Lemon on March 18, 2019: “I’ll fight like hell to make sure we see this report” by Robert Mueller on Russiagate.

Trump’s lawyers turned the Democrats’ “fight like hell” argument into a pants-wetting laughing stock by showing at his Senate trial a nearly 10-minute long video of top Democrats using “fighting words.” President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and a parade of Democrat senators and House members say, “fight,” “fight back,” “fight on,” and — yes — “fight like hell” at least (by my count) 281 separate times.

“Fight like hell” is routine political rhetoric. This cliché is as innocent as “Remember to vote” and “God Bless America.”

If Trump really wanted an insurrection, he would not have authorized 10,000 National Guard troops to patrol Washington, D.C. on January 6. Trump’s enemies want Americans to believe that he ordered unarmed insurrectionists to storm the Capitol after he greenlighted 10,000 GIs with automatic rifles to crush their rebellion.

How idiotic do Democrats think Americans are?

Alas, the U.S. House’s then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D – California) and Mayor Muriel Bowser (D – Washington, D.C.) rebuffed the protection that Trump approved.

Trump offered to encircle the Capitol with troops. Pelosi and Bowser stopped him. And now Trump’s tormentors blame him for insurrection?

This claim is flimsier than a Kleenex in a cyclone.

Democrat liars relentlessly call themselves democracy’s stalwart defenders. If so, why not simply run against Donald J. Trump? Why bar him from ballots rather than let voters choose the Democrats’ vision or his?

Democrats, more evil than ever, understand that fascism is easier than democracy.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor

 

Deroy Murdock | Daily Caller News Service

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The Democrat Party in the USA is traditionally a party that intentionally sits in opposition to the Republican Party, which represents a continuation of the ideologies that established the country in 1776.

US Democrat politicians are essentially trained to understand that the things they say are intended to create the conditions for national dialogue. They know that they are taking stances on many issues that are wrongheaded or ultimately anti-constitutional.

In many ways, due to this intentional contradictary approach to politics, the Democrat Party requires the backing of the US intelligence community. The stance the Democrats take on issues is intended to produce a section of the national population that is incredibly misinformed on all manner of current affairs. The purpose of this initiative, historically, has been to ensure that a national debate and a constant discourse must take place in order to make decisions. It is a fake production of a theatrical and forced discourse.

The foundations of this approach to governance were drawn from the 1800s when the Democrat Party was founded and created. For all intents and purposes, this ideological approach to governance is somewhat of a relic today of a bygone age. The societies of the 19th century were drastically different than today— nuclear weapons were not present, people did not carry their own individual supercomputers around in their pockets, the internet did not exist, and international travel was much more limited. There were many other critical differences.

Today, the US Democrat Party, for whatever reason, has been empowered by foreign-born and foreign-based forces. The Party has deep connections to China, Iran, Ukraine, and several other foreign governments that do not necessarily or realistically have the USA’s well-being as a core interest. In fact, many countries want to use the USA for some purpose or another— to drain its wealth, to serve as a bad guy for fearmongering authoritarian leaders, to be a stand-in military police force. The US Democrat Party is happy to sell and forfeit US sovereignty and its citizens’ wealth for their own benefit. They are ultimately individualist and will do anything for their own personal power and profit, including stealing from or killing.

The modern US Democrat Party frequently uses the phrase “good faith” to criticize people who do not treat them with a certain amount of respect. Yet, the Democrats have twisted the meaning of the English language to serve their purposes. They are not democrats (lowercase “d”) and do not support true democracy. They do not practice civility and have undermined the civil society. They have stripped civic education from public schools in areas of the country where they hold power. In the past five years especially, the Democrat Party has metastacized, spurned to total tyranny by COVID and the threat posed to their ideology by figures on the political right.

This Democrat Party is not one that should be followed or supported. The people in power in that party require removal by scalpel. They have become a disease on the USA, and mostly, their policies and existence as politicians pose a dangerous threat to the safety and well-being of US citizens. Their leadership has intentionally drained and squandered the wealth of US citizens, transferring it overseas to non-US citizens and to themselves and their families.

The Democrat Party requires a hard reset. Everything that its leaders say and do should be seen as the tantrums of a spoiled child, who needs to be sent to the bedroom for a timeout to reset and rest. There is no need to comply with a spoiled child. Or they can be likened to the death throes of a dying animal— their ideology is out-dated and wrongheaded. It is not something that people need to accept or agree with. In many ways, it comes from an ideological foundation that is intended to provide disagreeable ideas simply to generate discourse.

For a democratic society to function, such deliberate state-supported misinformation does not need to be created or spread. There are plenty of issues that are present on the planet today to consider in order to plan the direction of the US society, our society. There does not need to be a forced wrongheaded agenda violently shoved on the people. It is dishonest, immature, and uncivil.

Force the Democrat Party to reset. If the current leaders can’t do it themselves, the US citizens must assist. It is not a partisan issue. It is a matter of cultivating a healthy national political culture.

The post The Democrat Party Requires a Hard Reset appeared first on Granite Grok.

By the middle of 2022, it was already become apparent that the US military was having problems meeting recruitment goals. In August last year, The AP reported that the Army would have to cut force size, and an army spokesman admitted the Army was facing “‘unprecedented challenges’ in bringing in recruits.” This came even with new larger enlistment bonuses. The problem, however, wasn’t as acute for the Air Force, Navy, or Marine Corps.

Since then, things haven’t gotten any better for recruiters. Now, recruitment shortfalls have spread well beyond the Army.  The New York Post reported last week:

Much of the military will fall short of recruitment goals by as much as 25% this year …

The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard are all expected to fall short of their recruitment goals this year, they told The Post. …

A spokesperson for the Air Force said they will likely miss their goal of 26,877 new recruits by 10%. The Coast Guard said they will likely only fill 75% of the number of full-time, non-commissioned recruits they need.

And as of April, the Navy, which has over 300,000 active duty personnel, was behind by 6,000 new recruits this year, and the Army by 10,000 out of their 65,000 goal.

2023 is the first time the Air Force has missed its recruiting goals since 1999.

Apparently, potential recruits aren’t buying whatever it is the military is selling these days as reasons for signing away one’s freedom to federal bureaucrats for a period of years. After all, the military is the only job that one can’t quit at any time, so any intelligent person will think long and hard before signing up.

There are many reasons for the recruitment problem. The decline in mental and physical fitness is real, and many young people are disqualified from a military job even before applying. Many others are put off by what appears to be an overtly politicized and partisan military. Pentagon leaders appear to be doubling down on ideological crusades more and more. Even while it faces a recruiting crisis, the military still refuses to provide back pay to service members who were forced out for declining the experimental covid vaccines. Unquestioning compliance with vaccine mandates, of course, is a cause near and dear to the current administration. Then there are the “woke” crusades in which military brass use drag queens as Navy recruiters and create recruitment ads tailor-made for LGBT personnel. The military wants to let you know they’ll affirm your gender transition—unless, of course, that gets in way of conscription. (The Pentagon claims the “woke” issue isn’t having much effect on recruitment.)

But there are other more deep-seated problems as well. There is growing evidence that the American public no longer reveres the military as it once did. Moreover, it is more abundantly clear than ever that military service has nothing to do with defending the United States or its people. And then there is the often-seen “problem” of low unemployment and the fact the private sector is drawing the best workers away from military careers.

The Public Is Losing Faith in the Military

Compared to institutions like public education, public health, and Congress, the military remains quite popular. However, the historical trend in public views of the military is clearly downward. In 2021, “About 56 percent of Americans surveyed said they have ‘a great deal of trust and confidence’ in the military, down from 70 percent in 2018.” The trend hasn’t changed since 2018. According to a Gallup poll, people who say they have a “great deal/quite a lot” of confidence in the military fell from 69 percent in 2021 to 60 percent in 2023. The all-time low, accoriding to Gallup was in 1981 in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate.

The dwindling regard for the military is certainly not alien to young potential recruits, and talk of the recruiting crisis regularly features concerns about current young men and women being insufficiently “patriotic” or willing to “serve their country.”

This presents a real economic problem for recruiters. A potential recruit who regards military service as ideologically distasteful cannot be easily enticed with a few offers of recruiting bonuses or a GI Bill. After all, the military has long relied on convincing recruits they will gain psychic profits on top of whatever monetary pay they receive. To capitalize on this, recruiters will say things like “you’re serving your country” or “you’re fighting the bad guys” or “you’ll make your father proud.” But what if people stop believing that stuff? It’s going to take a lot of money to sweeten the deal for potential recruits who are smart enough or well-educated enough to have other options.

Moreover, it’s easy to see why many young people don’t find military service especially enticing. The US military lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hasn’t won a major war since 1945. More clever potential recruits are likely to notice that the US invasion of Iraq was no more morally justified than the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Potential recruits with critical thinking skills might also notice the military is itching to turn American soldiers into fodder for Russian artillery. In previous ages, the usual regime propaganda might have worked to convince potential recruits that “we’re fighting the Russians in Ukraine so we don’t have to fight them in Kansas City.” It’s a variation on a common lie that warmongers tell Americans. But now, the military can’t even take for granted that conservatives—historically a key demographic for recruiters—will believe it anymore. Thanks to a shift in foreign policy views among conservative populists, many young men in middle America see a disconnect between the regime’s latest wars and actual defense of the “homeland.”

National Guard Troops Are Exploited by the Regime

This brings us to another problem recruiters face. Even those who doubt the regime’s latest imperial adventures oversea might nonetheless be convinced to join the National Guard. But even there, better-informed potential recruits are learning that the National Guard has degenerated into a reserve force for the regular military. The old “two weeks every summer” slogan about the National Guard has been exposed as a lie, and potential recruits seeking to “serve the community”  now know that they may end up fighting wars 10,000 miles from home. In 2021, National Public Radio reported on how the National guard exploits recruits. One Idaho National Guardsman described the new reality:

My entire life, the recruiting National Guard message has been one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer. And when we served, we used to say one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer, my ass. You know, when we went to Afghanistan, we were gone for 18 months…

NPR further noted:

There has been a lot going on that the National Guard has been brought in for—hurricanes, floods, protests, Iraq, Afghanistan. Last year, more than a third of the National Guard was on active duty. That’s the highest utilization we’ve seen since World War II, and some service members are getting fed up.

Once upon a time, National Guard forces could not legally serve overseas at all. This was why many young men in the 1960s managed to avoid a pointless death in Vietnam by signing up for the National Guard. Then, it was established they would not serve overseas without a declaration of war. Then the Pentagon and Congress decided it can do whatever it wants with National Guard members. A young many or women would have to be pretty desperate to sign up for that sort of treatment.

Unemployment Is Low

And that’s the thing. Workers right now aren’t desperate. The United States is currently in the middle of an employment bubble. Billions of dollars in new money created since 2020 has flooded the economy, driving up demand and producing countless malinvestments in the labor markets. Monetary inflation has driven increases in wages, and workers—for now—simply don’t need a military job. This relationship between low unemployment and low recruitment, of course, has been known for a long time. As a 2010 report from the Department of Defense noted:

Recruiting and retention are sensitive to the state of the economy. Studies indicate that a 10 percent decrease in the civilian unemployment rate will reduce high-quality enlisted recruiting by 2–4 percent. Retention also declines when unemployment decreases, but appears to be less sensitive to the state of the economy than recruiting. The recent economic downturn has improved recruiting and retention and has allowed the services to reduce use of enlistment and reenlistment bonuses. However, this improvement is expected to diminish as civilian economic conditions improve.

We’ll only know how truly severe the recruiting crisis is for the Pentagon once the unemployment rate starts to head up again. We likely won’t have to wait long. We can point to half a dozen economic indicators right now that point to a thoroughly slowing economy in the next year. As we see in the survey data, however, it is likely that views of military service have changed considerably in recent years. That means older relationships between joblessness and recruitment may no longer apply to the same extent. It may be that rising unemployment may not drive as many new recruits as may have been the case a decade ago. Recruiters may find that members of Gen Z are not enthusiastic about losing yet another war—regardless of the size of the enlistment bonus. We’ll find out soon enough.

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is executive editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Ryan McMaken | Mises Wire

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You’ll have noticed the absence of something almost daily. Content from Skip. He is up to his eyeballs in family matters that have consumed nearly every waking moment and many a sleepless night. It is not, we suspect, forever, but it has dragged on much longer than he expected.

Hurdles he’d jumped with an eye on getting back to writing have been cleared, only to find more. He’s working on it as you may have noticed today.

In his absence, I have had to lean more heavily on third-party content shared from places like Mises Wire, the Daily Caller, The Rutherford and Ron Paul Institutes, and even our own Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. We appreciate policies that allow us to share what is certainly top-shelf filler, but the Grok has long prided itself on original content—our take on the news and opinion of the day, not someone elses.

That continues to be the goal, and when possible, the daily menu will include op-eds and other local fare no one else has. But until Skip can get his feet under himself for more than five minutes, I’ll be adding the third-party stuff almost every day, along with a hat tip and thank you to our cast of volunteers: Groksters that provide regular news and opinions you can only get at GraniteGrok.com.

Looking forward

If you’ve not heard, my departure from my full-time job finally has a hard date. Sept. 29th is my last full day in the office. After that, I will begin relying on our donations and will be able to focus almost entirely on GraniteGrok and projects proposed or started but not finished.

On that point, we have someone looking into the best way to add the promised ad-free VIP version for subscribers and donors. The upgraded search feature is also actively under study. We already have the tools to add video content and podcasts, and I will be trying to get that back on track. In other words, there will be improving the experience and diversifying the content.

Vermont Grok has new content, if not every day, than several days a week, as we look for ways to grow the content and audience. We’ve also contemplated expanding into Maine – maybe next year.

We are also organizing a rather significant fundraising event at the Londonderry Fish and Game Club on October 28th (Save the Date!) to help keep it all moving in the right direction: live music, local and national speakers, a gun raffle (perhaps?), and more – details will follow as we finalize things.

So, we are not sitting on our hands or giving up publishing space. Any shift toward third-party content is temporary, and with any luck, Skip will be back on track in a week or two.

One more note. I’ve been summoned for jury duty at the beginning of October, so my full-time affections could be delayed depending on whether I actually get picked and when, for how long, and so on. Skip may have to heave-hoh in my partial absence, so I hope he’s ready for that.

Thanks so much for your patience, your financial support, and, as always, for reading GraniteGrok.

 

Reminder: If – at any time – you’d like to give or give more, start or increase a subscription, you can use the GiveSendGo campaign page (no fees) or donate through the website (PayPal). We also accept checks; you can email me for the address if this is your preferred method of support.

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The July military coup in the west African country of Niger has once again brought attention to the fact that the US government runs a global military empire that serves Washington’s special interests, and not the national interest.

Before the coup made news headlines, most Americans – including many serving in Congress – had no idea the US government maintains more than 1,000 troops stationed on several US bases in Niger. But it’s even worse than that. A recent report in The Intercept suggests the Pentagon repeatedly misled Congress about the extent and the cost of the US presence in Niger.

According to The Intercept, “in testimony before the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in March, the chief of US Africa Command described Air Base 201 (in Niger) as ‘minimal’ and ‘low cost.’” In fact the US government has spent a quarter of a billion dollars on the base since construction began in 2016.

So when did Congress declare war so as to legalize US military operations in Niger? They didn’t. But as Kelley Vlahos writes in Responsible Statecraft, US troops have been “training” the military in Niger since 2013 and the US government has constructed a number of military bases to “fight terrorism” in the country and region.

Does that mean that the Pentagon is operating in Niger under the 2001 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) meant to track down those who attacked the US on 9/11? It’s a good question and thankfully one being asked by Sen. Rand Paul in a recent letter sent to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Senator Paul first pointed out in the letter, “the Administration’s limitless interpretation of the 9/11 AUMF and frequent use of Title 10 authorities results in military operations abroad conducted with little Congressional oversight and even less public scrutiny.” Such actions “undermine our Constitution,” he writes as he asks, “in how many countries are US forces conducting operations authorized by the 2001 AUMF.”

Ironically – or maybe not – one of the coup leaders in NIger had been trained by the Pentagon at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. What is the US government training foreign military officers to do, exactly? Overthrow their own governments?

Whatever the case, it appears the coup government in Niger may be seeking a withdrawal of foreign military on its soil. Mass protests against French military presence has led the French government to begin talks with the coup government on withdrawal. There are rumors that the coup government may next request US troops to leave the country.

We should pre-empt their possible request by withdrawing all US troops immediately from Niger (and the rest of Africa) and closing all military bases. The claim that the US government is fighting terrorism in the area is doubtful. After all, in both Libya and in Syria the US government backed terrorist groups against governments it sought to overthrow. President Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan famously wrote to his then-boss Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012 that, “in Syria, al-Qaeda is on our side.”

Congress must step up and exercise its oversight authority to end the counter-productive US military presence in Africa. Our military empire is bankrupting us and turning the rest of the world against us.

 

Ron Paul | Ron Paul Institute

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

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If you ever wanted to witness the real-time evolution of a traditional faith system from one of meaning and purpose to a pointless Sunday Garden Party, the Church of England has your ticket.

 

The biggest news story to come out of the church’s gathering was that some within the Church of England are calling for 2000-year-old references to God as He, Him or Father to be banished, instead using gender-neutral or female alternatives.

Leaders at the synod took written questions from those attending. One question came from the Reverend Joanna Stobart, an Anglican minister, who wanted to know what steps were being taken to offer alternatives to God with male pronouns. Specifically, she hoped “to develop more inclusive language in our authorized liturgy.”

The Bishop of Lichfield, Michael Ipgrave, serving as Vice Chair of the church’s Liturgical Commission provided a reply that excited those seeking the change. “We have been exploring the use of gendered language in relation to God for several years in collaboration with the Faith and Order Commission. After some dialogue between the two commissions in this area, a new joint project on gendered language will begin this spring.”

 

In America, they call it the Episcopal church, with which I’m somewhat familiar. My uncle was an Episcopalian Bishop, and until his passing twenty-plus years ago, we’d get the odd bit of inside baseball. But most of the migration away from traditional church doctrine has occurred since then, so I’m more of an outside observer – which is not a bad thing. Much of what I write is from outside whatever institution is the object of my bleary eye. You come here to read my thoughts about this or that, and I have a few about the Synod, which has already been pointed out here.

 

The story of Jesus Christ may be the best known and certainly the most read of any man to have ever set foot on planet earth. Christians believe Jesus was born to the ever-virgin Mary, sometimes referred to as “the mother of God.” She conceived Jesus through a miracle, thanks to the Holy Spirit. While some doubters have questioned her virgin status, virtually nowhere in history has there been any credible debate that Mary was Jesus’ mother. At no point has there been a serious discussion that Mary herself was God.

With those two points undisputed, it seems illogical that Christians could take to referring to God as She or Her. If one believes Jesus was the son of God and that Mary was His mother, and that she wasn’t God, simple logic tells us God can’t be referred to as She.

Far more importantly, though, are the words of Jesus himself. He spoke frequently about his Father in Heaven. He gave us the Lord’s Prayer, which begins with the words “Our Father.” He was not ambiguous.

 

There is, of course, no limit to the ways in which they/them can massage anything to fit into whatever shaped hole needs filling, but doesn’t that defeat the purpose? Judeo-Christian doctrine is filled with stories about every sort of person/people wandering off the morality plantation only to have bad things happen to them. It’s almost as if someone accurately observed human behavior and came up with a way to explain how not to suffer quite so much as a result. With a slight bit of prompting, almost anyone can manage to live productive, meaningful lives during which we prepare the future generation for similar success, unburdened by the absolute inevitability of death.

The rest of it might be window dressing, and while the carpet doesn’t have to match the drapes, at some point, you’ll have wandered so far away from the foundation that there’s hardly any point to any of it. With nothing upon which to stand, what little there was that made sense ceases to function as anything other than an increasingly lousy reason to get up early on Sunday morning.

And I think that’s exactly what the Secular Humanists infiltrators have been after all these years. And maybe you’d rather side with them, but modern totalitarian societies make it a point to ensure that the only higher power you recognize is the state, and while some people and some faiths have had a spotty record when it comes to morality, rights, and humanity, the depots are still batting zero, and we’ve no reason to believe that will ever change.

The Church of England is headed in the wrong direction, and I think everyone knows it.

 

For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as “Christian”, a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, “Christian” remained the most common response to the religion question.

 

Membership in The Church of England is in a demographic spiral and being woke by pretending that more inclusive language will help is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

.

The post The Church of England Looks for Ways to Escape the Burdens of Christianity appeared first on Granite Grok.

Yeah, not a fan at all. If you are in or familiar with the Lakes Region, this car was parked in the Shaw’s parking lot across from Lowe’s in Gilford/Laconia. I had driven over from Lowe’s to pick up a couple of items and found this selfish Flatlander believing they could inconvenience people with their Bright, New, Shiny Subaru Forester with Massachusetts plate 187-D30.

 

(click to embiggen)

 

Parked right in the middle of two parking spots, as you see above. I’m not even sure I could have gotten it more dead-center if I was really trying hard:

 

 

(click to embiggen)

 

Entitlement, for sure. You backwoods, rednecked, toothless NH denizens, behold my magnificence….

I have to admit – if we hadn’t had to get home to take the Grandson off the bus, I would have parked right behind them. TMEW wasn’t amused at the idea, but I sure was.

After all, an opportunity to take a nap at Mr/Mrs/Miss Entitlement’s expense of time. And to let them know that’s why many of us “from around here” don’t like those that are “from away”.

 

The post Cloud and Sun – Great and Calming. On the Other Hand: Entitled Massachusetts Driver. MA Plate 187-D30 appeared first on Granite Grok.

Milk. You can get it from lactating mammals, but PETA would like you to believe that the cow-assaulting farmers aligned with the American Dairy-Industrial Complex are perpetuating a White supremacist milk culture. People who drink cows’ Milk are … systemic racists.

Are they, really? Or are the Almond ‘Milk’ people paying PETA to make up crap like this? I wouldn’t put it past them. The (cows’) Milk is racist narrative has been brewing for years, during which (coincidentally?) Almond Milk – which is actually creamy nut juice – has increased its market share among people who want Milk without the Milk (or the racism?) in the way Democrats want America without freedom.

They want it more than they can say.

I don’t drink much of either, and there is room for discussion about the Dairy Industrial Complex or the Almond Industrial Complex using this or that to secure its cartel, but we’re not here to discuss that, are we? The question is whether Milk is racist or, to be more specific – per the lactating mammals at PETA, cows’ Milk.

 

This can’t be real. Please tell me this isn’t real. pic.twitter.com/lm623VEgxB

— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) September 8, 2023

If it ever concerned you, it shouldn’t, the answer is no. It is not a symbol of anything white or supremacist, and a few seconds of research proves that point. Brown people milked first!

Domesticated “Cows” (Aurochs) and their Milk have been a part of human diets and cultures dating back to 8000 BC. That means, among people of all races, though not likely consumed as a liquid until about 6000 to 4000 BC when someone figured out how to process gut-wrenching dairy (raw Milk) into yogurt and cheese. That appears to have happened somewhere around 4000 BC.

 

According to scientists, the ability to digest milk was slowly gained some time between 5000-4000 B.C.E. by the spread of a genetic mutation called lactase persistance that allowed post-weaned humans to continue to digest milk. If that date is correct, it may pre-date the rise of other major dairying civilizations in the Near East, India, and North Africa.

 

Also,

 

People with the mutated gene would have had a better chance at survival and producing children with the same ability.  Soon, 80% of early dairying cultures in the Middle East and Europe carried this gene.  Dairying became a cultural and dietary mainstay.

 

In other words, Milk from the ancestors of our (for lack of a better term) European dairy cow was consumed in many forms by Sumerians (Archaeological evidence shows that the Ancient Sumerians drank cow’s Milk and also made cow’s Milk into cheeses and butters.), Egyptians (the cow was a goddess in her own right, named Hathor, who guarded the fertility of the land.“),  The Vedics (who ruled Northern India from about 1750 BCE to about 500 BCE, relied heavily upon the cow and the dairy products that it provided), and others, none of whom were “white” like Milk.

If people of color have been drinking and using cows’ Milk for longer than the “white man,” this, at best, suggests cultural appropriation, if anything. And if we’re talking about the Americas, you can start by blaming the Spanish.

 

“The first cattle to arrive in the New World landed in Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1525. Soon afterword, some made their way across the Rio Grande to proliferate in the wild. They became known as ‘Texas Cattle.’ Soon after, some of the [Spanish] settlers transported cattle to South America from the Canary Islands and Europe. More followed, and cattle multiplied rapidly throughout New Spain, numbering in the thousands within a few years.”

 

I’m still unclear why descendants of European Colonialists from Spain get an exception. The Spaniards erased the local Mesoamerican and South American culture, murdered the indigenous population, and replaced their language, and their descendants are victims of paler Europeans.

So, Cows’ Milk is racist and white supremacist even though brown people broke the seal on that whole business long before northern Europeans brought cows to North America, and the term white fragility was invented by people who probably drink nut juice.

Feel free to celebrate that reality by drinking… a beer that was thought to have been first crafted in Mesopotamia about 4 – 5,000 years ago.

 

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