Were the Nazis Right Wing?

There’s a multiplayer game out there called “Secret Hitler,” where players try to guess who the fascist in the group is. From the game description: “Secret Hitler is a social deduction game for 5-10 people about finding and stopping the Secret Hitler. Players are secretly divided into two teams: the liberals, who have a majority, and the fascists, who are hidden to everyone but each other.”

See what they did there? Liberals and Fascists. It’s an either/or choice. And this sort of subtle phraseology feeds into a narrative promoted by world communists that has been around since 1936. It’s the basis of the ideology behind groups like Antifa and it colors the rhetoric on the left. By sneaking this sort of dichotomy into a seemingly innocent game, it subtly colors the worldview of those who accept it unquestioningly. As a result, it becomes a matter of course to many young people that the Right/Conservative/Republicans (henceforth referred to as the Right) are Nazis/Fascists, and the Left/Liberal/Democrats (henceforth referred to as the Left) are the last bastions against the barbarism of the Nazi movement.

This is dead wrong.

This dichotomy originated with the Anti-Comintern act of 1936, which was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Japan to resist International Communism. Nazism and Fascism justifiably developed a bad rap after the horrors of WWII, and the international communist party used that for their own propaganda purposes by establishing a false dichotomy: Nazis/Fascists were against the International Communist Movement. Therefore, if you do not support International Communism, you are a Nazi/Fascist. Capitalists and conservatives are against International Communism, ergo they are Nazis/Fascists. We all know that Nazis and Fascists are evil, therefore Capitalists and conservatives are evil. This either/or narrative is promoted by predominantly leftist university professors across the country.

This bit of simplistic thinking seems to have caught fire in the minds of today’s youth, who are politically naïve and historically ignorant. The lack of an informed counterargument on today’s campuses validates the idea in the minds of the youth, who usually haven’t been exposed to a contrary opinion.

To understand this, you have to first look at the roots of Fascism. The word “Fascist” comes from the word “fascia” which is a bundle of sticks. The analogy is that a stick by itself is easily broken, but when collected and tied in a bundle with other sticks, it’s nearly unbreakable. In the Early 20^th century, the world was still coming to terms with the industrial revolution, and how it would manifest itself in terms of economics and politics. Benito Mussolini differentiated Fascism from Communism and Capitalism as a “third way” that was neither Communist nor Capitalist, but drew from what he felt were the best features of both. Adolph Hitler, who was at heart a socialist, was intrigued by Mussolini’s ideas, and adopted many of them as his own.

Since Fascism borrows from both the Capitalist and Communist ideologies, proponents of the Liberal/Fascist dichotomy are quick to point out the similarities between Fascism and modern Conservative thought, and in a fit of confirmation bias seem to be blissfully unaware that the argument can easily cut the other way. To properly address this, we need to look at the foundational principles of Fascism and the Nazis and compare them to our modern political spectrum.

We start out with a name. What is a Nazi? What does it stand for? Nazi is short for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or in English, the National Socialist German Workers' Party. As if the word “Socialist” in the name wasn’t enough, one needs to look at the party intent. It self-bills as the “worker’s party.” Which ideology today bills itself as a champion of the workers, and upholds things like union laws? Liberal or Conservatives?

World Communism in the 1930’s was a relatively unknown quantity, and an attractive idea. The details of Stalin’s Great Terror hadn’t found their way out of the Soviet Union, and the mass murders of millions in China, Cambodia and elsewhere were still in the future. Around the world, the goals of the industrialist capitalist seemed to be at odds with the labor that was necessary to drive the engines of industrialization. The Great Depression coupled with the punitive war reparations from WWI had caused the German economy to collapse, discrediting the idea of conservatism and capitalism in the eyes of the rank and file German citizen. In 1930’s Germany, Hitler’s Nazi Party’s primary competition was with the Communist party, funded by the International Communist movement. Hitler believed that some sort of socialism with a strong central authority was the answer, but he was an ardent nationalist, and couldn’t abide being answerable to an international political movement. In his xenophobic racism, he proclaimed that Germans should rightfully only answer to German authority, and thus painted the International Communist Movement as his arch-rival.

This is a critical thing to understand. Hitler was not an ideological enemy of International Communism, he was a political opponent, vying with the Communist movement for the same demographic as a means to gain power: the disaffected worker.

So let’s take a look and compare the Nazi/Fascist ideology to today’s political climate and see how it lines up, both in its stated objectives, ideas and actions. We’ll start with the 25 points of the Nazi party, outlined by Hitler in the first mass meeting of the German Worker’s Party on February 24, 1920 in Munich.

1. We demand the union of all Germans in a Great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples.

2. We demand that the German people have rights equal to those of other nations; and that the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain shall be abrogated.

3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the maintenance of our people and the settlement of our surplus population.

These are an echo of the mantra professed by the victorious powers in WWI, where they paid lip service to self-determination as they redrew national boundaries after the war. It was a publicity sentiment on the part of the victorious Allies, ignored for all intents and purposes when it came to Basques, Irish, Kurdish, Ruthenian Poles and others. Hitler was playing off that to demand that Germans, too, had the right to self-determination, and as such was pandering to the German identity. As an ideology, neither today’s Right or Left has an authoritative claim or rejection of the concept. These three points are irrelevant to today’s tension between Right and Left.

4. Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of creed, can be our countrymen. Hence no Jew can be a countryman.

This incoherent and xenophobic rant strikes a chord with the immigration debates today and is a trigger in the minds of the Left. The Left believes in open borders, and that there is no downside to unrestricted immigration. Since the dangers of unrestricted immigration without assimilation are easily observable in those communities which have been most impacted by these policies to date, one can only see this as an irresponsible policy to consolidate political power, since it’s generally believed that immigrants from underdeveloped nations will predominantly vote for the Left.

Unlike the narrative the Left would like to paint about the Right, there is no xenophobic sentiment to halt all immigration, and keep America only for Americans. The Right, however, insists that immigration be controlled, that immigrants be screened for contagious diseases and criminal backgrounds, and that immigrants can be self-sufficient after entering America and will not become wards of the State. These reasons are encoded in American immigration law. The Right further believes that the strength of America lies in the love of American values, American culture, and the adherence to American law. Immigrants must assimilate into American society, not form foreign enclaves separate from American society. In this regard they differ greatly from the Left, who believe in Cultural Relativism and Diversity, and do not see America as culturally superior or exceptional, in spite of historical and economic evidence to the contrary.

Although the Left would try to make the case that the Right equates to Hitler’s fourth point, neither side has any real resemblance to Hitler on this point.

5. Those who are not citizens must live in Germany as foreigners and must be subject to the law of aliens.

Neither the Left or the Right overtly proposes that non-citizens abide by a different legal framework than that enjoyed by citizens. In a strange twist, though, the Left seems to be a champion of exempting aliens from certain laws. The Left has obstructed the deportation of known felons who are in the country illegally. Certain felony activities, including rape, polygamy and female genital mutilation are tolerated by Leftist judges on the insane legal theory that their culture is superior to US law. In a roundabout way, the left has in fact allowed non-citizens a more relaxed legal framework than the average citizen enjoys. The Right insists that all laws apply to all persons equally, and that you don’t get a pass or leniency for being an immigrant, legal or illegal.

In this way the Left is actually more like Hitler’s point than the Right.

6. The right to choose the government and determine the laws of the State shall belong only to citizens. We therefore demand that no public office, of whatever nature, whether in the central government, the province, or the municipality, shall be held by anyone who is not a citizen.

The US Constitution makes citizenship a requirement for the Office of the President. This requirement was established long before the ideas of Communism/Fascism/Capitalism were vying for power. While only the office of President has a citizenship requirement, the basic sentiment is echoed throughout our governmental structure: to represent a body politic, one nearly always has to actually reside in the region to be represented.

Recently, Leftist governments seem to feel that the non-citizen should enjoy the right to vote, ostensibly in the interest of Democracy. Of course, if the non-citizens were known to vote predominantly conservative, the Left would be burning the country down at the very suggestion, so this is little more than pandering for political gain, and not an ideological stance that the Left is inextricably wedded to.

While one could make the case that the Right and Left differ on this and that the Right is aligned with Hitler’s point, it’s pretty clear that the Left’s position on this is opportunistic, malleable and not based on an inviolate ideology. If the majority of immigrants were ideologically conservative, the Left would be screaming to close the borders, deport the aliens and that strict citizenship laws be enacted.

7. We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.

Remember that this was just after WWI, and food shortages were a reality. Neither the Left or the Right is proposing deportations to increase the survivability of the citizenry. However, the first part of this, “ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood,” is decidedly a policy of the Left. The Left routinely panders to the low-wage earner by promising a higher wage, regardless of whether it’s earned or not, with seeming complete disregard for the economic consequences of this policy and the subsequent devaluation of all types of skilled labor. In this point, the Left is decidedly in step with Hitler.

8. Any further immigration of non-Germans must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately.

Neither today’s Left nor Right proposes to stop immigration. The Left would like you to think this with their shrill rhetoric, but there a wide difference between stopping immigration and controlling it to vet who we let in. The Left would also like to you to think that the Right wants to remove all immigrants, which is also a lie. Illegal immigrants are a special class of immigrant who have broken 8 US Code 1182 (a).(9).(B).(ii). No one is seriously pursuing legislation to hunt down and deport the millions of illegal aliens to which this applies, although the Right would like to see laws enforced that would remove the attraction of these people to stay here and encourage them to self-deport.

The difference is that Hitler’s policy was based on a racist idea of German superiority, and a desire to avoid diluting the German culture and blood with foreign peoples. The policy on the Right is to simply exert the sovereign right to control our borders and immigration in exactly the same way that every other country in the world does. As I have stated before, this would also be the policy of the Left, except for political opportunism that unrestricted immigration offers the Left.

9. All citizens must possess equal rights and duties.

This seems like a “well, duh” point. Who honestly doesn’t think that this isn’t a reasonable political position? Well, believe it or not, the Left doesn’t. The left believes that we should observe a number of inequities in our legal system. According to the Left, certain citizens should have the right to exclusive colleges, government aid programs and social clubs based solely on the color of their skin. If this litmus test was applied to whites where minorities were excluded based on race, there would be literal hell to pay, and there was. But the Left is fine when it’s the other way around and whites are excluded. They make up all sorts of nonsense to justify this, but the bottom line is that it’s not equal. Hate crimes are established to increase the punishment for a crime if it’s determined to be driven by racial bigotry. Except that it never seems to apply when the victim is white. So, in the eyes of the law, is a white victim worth less than a minority victim of the same crime? The Left champions affirmative action laws that give an unearned advantage to minorities that they deem to be disadvantaged. This is insulting because it suggests that these minorities are incapable of achieving success on their own without a legal thumb on the scale. Once upon a time this may have been appropriate, but in today’s economy a minority doesn’t have to rely on the white man to give him a job or an education, and probably wouldn’t want to work or go to school there anyway if racial discrimination really was a factor.

The left is also inconstant about duties. In their Marxist world of, “to each according to his needs and from each according to his abilities,” the Left is the champion of a progressive tax rate, and a soak the rich mentality to punish economic success. The duties of the rich are far more financially onerous than those of the poor, according to the Left, no matter what the economic consequences of this sort of silly thinking are.

So we’re going to have to say that the Right is in step with Hitler on this one, and not apologetic about it in the least. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

10. The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.

This sounds pretty totalitarian, doesn’t it? I can’t imagine anyone from today’s Left or Right owning this one. But let’s cast our nets a bit wider, shall we? In human history, this has happened before. Under a communist dictatorship, people are compelled to perform the labor required of the State. The State dictates what you will study, what you will work at, what you will produce, and in what quantities. There is, and never has been, any such compulsion in a capitalist, free market society. So in this regard, is Hitler more like the Communists that despise him, or the Capitalists that the communists want to equate him with?

The Left makes a lot of noise about people's "right" to health care, and "right" to a certain standard of housing.  Health care and construction are the product of people's labor.  When you make that product a "right" and regulate what those who produce these can ask for their services, you are making that person a slave of the state, unable to derive the true worth from their labor, and unable to derate their labor to equal the value they're actually receiving.

Sorry, but the Left has to own this one.

11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.

I double-dare anyone to say that this is a policy or position of the Right/Conservative/Republicans. This one belongs to the Left, lock stock and barrel.

12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

Profiteering is outlawed. This is definitely the policy of the Left. What Hitler – and the Left -- doesn’t say here is what happens to the confiscated proceeds.

13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.

14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.

15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.

Left, Left and Left again. No one stops to think how these demands are going to be paid for, or why companies will continue to conduct business with the profit incentive removed.

16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.

Government interference and control in the marketplace is a position dominated by the Left.

17. We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.

Government confiscation of property without compensation, rent controls, and real estate price controls. All of these seem perfectly reasonable to the Left and are anathema to the Right. A fundamental tenet of the Right is that private property is sacrosanct.

18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.

Punish the profit makers. Punish the bankers. This is the clarion call of the modern communist/socialist movement.

19. We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law.

The Roman law that Hitler is referring to here is the code of statutes that was observed in Germany at the time. To understand this, you have to understand the difference between statutory law and common law. Statutory law is legislated prohibitions and requirements, with performance and punishments defined in the statute. Common law is normally civil law and is based entirely on precedent. How judges ruled in previous similar cases informs how they should rule in any given case. Hitler sought to abolish statutory law and replace it all with common law, removing any shred of objectivity to enforcing the law, and allowing it to be molded as the powers that be saw fit. 

This is very similar to the Left’s insistence that the US constitution is a living, breathing document, subject to the whim of the moment in interpretation, as opposed to the Right’s understanding that it’s an immutable standard that should only be interpreted in the frame of reference of the intention of those who drafted it. This point of Hitler’s leans to the Left, I’m afraid.

20. In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.

It was this platform that established compulsory public schools for all German children until the age of 18. Hitler was unapologetic that these schools would be used for cultural indoctrination. In today’s society, the Right insists that public education be restricted to the objective teaching of mathematics, history, reading, writing, science and languages. The Left, however, sees nothing wrong with adding political indoctrination, social re-engineering, and teaching value systems that may be at odds with those practiced at home. Since parents are required to send their children to these schools, they’re for the most part helpless to stop the schools from usurping their role as teachers of values and morals. Therefore, the Right prefers that the schools be privatized, with some sort of voucher system that would allow the parents the ability to choose from the available accredited schools, to be able to avoid the Leftist indoctrination and social engineering that’s happening at the schools at all levels. The Left resists the privatization movement with every fiber of its being, not because of any concern for the children, but because it will remove their ability to indoctrinate the population at an impressionable age.

In this way, Hitler’s education policy is in step with that of the Left.

21. The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young.

Universal health care. Is that a policy of the Left, or the Right? As someone on the right who believes the Constitution is the ultimate law of the land, can someone show me this bit in the Constitution?

22. We demand the abolition of the regular army and the creation of a national (folk) army.

The Left always seeks cuts to the military. Then I’m reminded that Obama wanted to form a people’s army to promote his vision. The parallel is chilling. The Left owns this one.

23. We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press. In order to make possible the creation of a German press, we demand: 

(a) All editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens.

(b) Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State. They must not be published in the German language.

(c) All financial interests in or in any way affecting German newspapers shall be forbidden to non-Germans by law, and we demand that the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper and the expulsion of the non-Germans from the Reich.

Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed. We demand legal action against those tendencies in art and literature that have a disruptive influence upon the life of our folk, and that any organizations that offend against the foregoing demands shall be dissolved. 

At first blush, the Left will jump up and down with glee, because this sounds just like Trump’s “fake news” dismissals. Trump is obviously waging a “campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press.” That’s the Right! Right?

Key word here is “legal.” Trump has taken no legal action to silence his political detractors from telling the lies that they do. He simply ridicules them and makes them look silly, which they are. The position on the Right is, and has always been, for a free and unfettered press. However, the Left has introduced many legislative acts to restrict opinions with which they disagree. The foremost of these was the fairness doctrine, which required that if a political viewpoint was given airtime on TV or radio, that equal time be given for the opposition view. Due to the cost and administrative overhead required for this to work, most broadcasters chose to just avoid political content altogether. This gave the networks a virtual monopoly on what news reached the public, because there was no venue for any opinions except those of the broadcasters. For example, it would have been unlikely that Nixon would have been impeached if there had been a right-wing news source that could call the Left out on the numerous lies they told during Watergate, and who could have explained the issue in its full context. 

The Fairness doctrine was repealed in 1987, and shortly thereafter a young fellow named Rush Limbaugh changed the political discussion in this country forever. The Left has repeatedly tried to legislate the fairness doctrine back into broadcast law, because the damage that independent talk-show hosts wreak on their agenda is the biggest threat to them. The Left has tried to counter this with a talk-show format of their own, but it just lacks the financial attractiveness, because it doesn’t draw an audience. The reasons for this are pretty interesting, and worthy of a blog article in their own right.

Then we look at the behavior of Leftist students on college campuses. If a conservative speaker is invited to address the student body, the Left just lose their friggin’ minds. They demonstrate, riot, protest, boycott, chant and do everything possible to disrupt the presentation. That this behavior is tolerated and even condoned by the faculty on these universities just shows that the inmates are running the asylum. College is supposed to teach you to think independently, to listen to and acknowledge dissenting opinions, and to challenge those opinions in the public marketplace of ideas. If the Left was so confident of their position, they would easily be able to demonstrate why the Right’s arguments are flawed. But they don’t. They do everything possible to silence the Right, to ensure that the student body has no exposure to the Right’s ideas, and in so doing remove the right of the students to examine both sides of the political spectrum. The Left has placed itself in the position of defining the Right, instead of allowing the Right to define itself, and by doing this, the Left ensures that it can control the narrative.

The very act of equating those on the Right with Nazis and racists is one of the prime tactics to silence the opinion of the Right. Physical violence is used against people who wear conservative clothing, like a MAGA hat, even at the grade school level. Against welfare because you think it encourages people not to work? You must hate black people. We need to cut wasteful government programs? You despise poor people. You weren’t in love with Trump, but really didn’t like Hillary, so you voted for him? You obviously want to turn America into Nazi Germany AND you hate women. If a local Conservative prayer group want to have a public rally, show up and be violent, and then condemn the conservatives as violent if they defend themselves.

These acts against free speech are completely the tactics of the Left. You rarely if ever hear about anyone on the right proposing legislation to silence dissent, rioting to stop someone from speaking, or physically attacking people for an opposing viewpoint.

This point of Hitler’s is owned by the Left.

24. We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.

The Right demands religious freedom, as long as they don’t violate the law. If your religion requires human sacrifice, it’s probably not going to be tolerated. But the Left is far more militant. The Left is offended by any portrayal of Christianity or Christian values, and actively seeks to silence Christian voices and remove them from the public. The Left has condemned and banned overt expressions of Judeo-Christian values on our coins, in our courtrooms, in our schools, on our streets and in our day to day speech. We’re not allowed to wish someone a merry Christmas, lest they be offended. Nativity scenes may not be erected on public grounds. Crosses have to be removed from public memorials. 

Hitler’s caveat that religious freedom not “offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race” can easily be rewritten to match the Left’s to say, “offend the moral and ethical sense of the Progressive Movement.” The Left owns this one.

25. In order to carry out this program we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the State, the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations.

The Left is constantly promoting restrictions and Regulations and governmental oversight. Nothing happens in America that the Left can’t find fault with in some way, and to which it doesn’t seek to insinuate itself. It demands a strong central authority, whether it be in the field of education, transportation, commerce, energy, trade or anything else. The Right on the other hand, believes that problems are best solved at the lowest possible levels, where the stakeholders are actively involved in the decision making. Central Authoritarianism is the hallmark of the Left.

----------------------

That’s the 25 points of the Nazi platform, but we can draw additional conclusions from the behavior of the Nazis. They routinely engaged in marches and protests as the Nazis rose to power. Their protests frequently turned violent, and they built up a paramilitary organization to engage in such street violence in an organized fashion. Dissenters were beaten and their shops vandalized.

Which political movement today is engaging in this sort of behavior? It’s ironic that the “anti-Fascist” groups are acting just like the fascists they abhor.

Hitler did not accept the free market economy. Businesses continued to be privately owned, but they were prevented by law from making more than a modest profit, and their production and operations were directed by the State. All raw materials were distributed as the State saw fit. Minimum wage laws dictated what employers would pay their workers. The German government and not the nominal private owners exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. 

Which political movement today advocates for tight control of industry, and interferes with the employment contract between an employer and a worker? It certainly isn’t the Right.

Racism

One of the tactics of the Left is to label the Right as Racist. Hitler was racist, so the Right is like Hitler. Once again, this flies in the face of facts. The Republican party was founded on a platform of abolishing slavery. The Democrats resisted it. From 1869 to 1935, every black elected to congress was a Republican. The KKK was founded in 1865 by Democrats, and in living memory the late Democrat Senator Robert Byrd was well-known to have been an unapologetic grand wizard of the KKK. More Democrats opposed the civil rights act than did Republicans. Leftists accuse the Right of racism to fight voter ID laws, ignoring that only a racist would think that only white people are capable of getting an ID. Republicans have placed Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court, and have run Colin Powell, Frederick Douglas, Herman Cain, Ben Carson, Alan Keyes as presidential candidates. Michael Steele was the Republican party leader. Jeanette Núñez, Boyd Rutherford, Jenean Hampton, Evelyn Sanguinetti, Carlos López-Cantera, Jennifer Carroll, John Sanchez, Abel Maldonado, Michael Steele, Jennette Bradley, Bobby Jindahl, Duke Aiona and Joe Rogers are among the many minority Republicans elected as State Governors. 

Faced with the historic evidence, the Left likes to say that today’s Republican party is racist, that the roles have reversed since the civil rights movement. Sorry, that dog won’t hunt. The Right’s stance on Immigration has nothing to do with race, no matter how much the Left would like to drive that narrative. It has everything to do with the rule of law. It’s not a campaign against brown people, it’s a campaign against drugs, crime and lawlessness. The fact that the threat of uncontrolled immigration comes from Mexico and most people coming across the Mexican border are not white doesn’t logically follow that racism is the motivating factor in trying to control immigration. The Right’s stance on affirmative action refutes the Left’s racist premise that minorities can’t succeed without government assistance.

Is it racist to not acknowledge race, but to treat all people as equal citizens? The only racists in the room are the ones trying to curry special favors and special treatment for people because of their skin color. That’s not the Right.

Gun Control

The history of gun control in Nazi Germany is complex. Hitler didn't start it. Guns were outlawed in Germany in 1920. The upheavals after WWI caused the government to confiscate firearms for pubic safety in 1920. This was repealed in 1928. In 1933, Hitler established a policy to seize all military firearms from anyone who was not a member of the Nazi party to disarm the Jews who were increasingly being targeted. This closely mirrors early gun control laws in the USA, passed by southern democrats to disarm blacks so they couldn't defend themselves. Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews is a comprehensive look at how the Nazis enacted progressively more severe firearms laws that prevented the population from resisting their tyranny.

If the Left were as worried about Trump as Hitler as they seem to be, you would think they wouldn't be trying to enact so many firearms laws, so they could resist him when it became necessary. Which party wants to enact firearms restrictions, the way Hitler did? The Left.

So let’s see the scorecard:

Fascist/Nazi	Communist/Socialist/Liberal	Capitalist/Conservative
1,2,3: German self determination	No	No
4. Citizenship and race	No	No
5. Different laws for aliens	Yes	No
6. Citizenship and public office	No	No
7. Welfare and labor	Yes	No
8. Deportation of aliens	No	No
9. Equal rights	No	Yes
10. Labor Controls by Government	Yes	No
11. Abolish unearned income	Yes	No
12. Confiscate profiteering proceeds	Yes	No
13. Nationalization of Trusts	Yes	No
14. Industry profit-sharing	Yes	No
15. Mandatory pension increase	Yes	No
16. Redistribute Large merchant enterprises	Yes	No
17. Nationalize production land	Yes	No
18. Punish profit and banking	Yes	No
19. Abolish statutory law	Yes	No
20. Public education and social indoctrination	Yes	No
21. Nationalized health care	Yes	No
22. Reduce the military, replace with civil force	Yes	No
23. Government control of the press	Yes	No
24. Freedom of religion, with caveats	Yes	No
25. Centralize government authority and control	Yes	No
Gun control	Yes	No

Nazism, Socialism and Capitalism are three completely different things. To say that one is a Nazi simply because one is not a Communist/Socialist is disingenuous and nothing but a propaganda tool promoted by the Communist International since Hitler effectively declared war on international Communism in 1936. To equate the Nazis or Hitler to the modern Conservative movement completely ignores the facts of history, and the glaringly obvious fact that Nazi Germany had far more in common with the stated goals of Socialism and the modern Left, and almost nothing in common with today’s Right.

The basic premise and fundamental assumption of “Secret Hitler” is deeply offensive to conservatives, and does nothing but demonstrate the historical, political and sociological ignorance of people who accept it without question.

And stop equating Trump to Hitler. That’s just stupid.

Additional reading:

Dinesh D'Souza explains the philosophical origins of Fascism

Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

Nazism, Fascism, and Socialism Are All Rooted in Communism

Reader: Nazis are not Conservatives

The Nazis Were Leftists, Deal With It

Hitler's Handouts

The Original Fascist

Woman Born In Hitler’s Germany Tells Liberals They Remind Her Of Nazis

Why the Left Cries 'Fascist!'

Hitler Was a Socialist: A Comparison of NAZI-Socialism, Communism, Socialism, and the United States by Dumitru Sandru 

What is Fascism and Who is a Fascist? by Thomas Sowell

Eight Startling and Uncomfortable Ways the Democrat Party Emulates the Nazi Party By Steve McCann

Putting the Climate Change Refutation Together

Every now and then I have the audacity to point out on a public forum that climate change isn't "settled science" and immediately get castigated by the religious zealots who subscribe to the Church of Man-mad Global Warming.  I've had numerous debates on this across the spectrum, and have written here some conclusions I've arrived at through my own study of the science, based on my background in applied physics and general science.  Rather than bombard my naysayers with multiple links to my criticisms of various tenets of the Faith, I've decided to compile them here for the ease of the casual reader.

I'm not kidding when I call it a Church.  I explain why here.

Much of the basis for the Church of Man-made Global Warming is the assumption that there's a scientific consensus, and that the science is settled.  This is an outrageous lie that has been promoted by the mainstream media, and has no objective basis in fact in any way.  I trace the genesis of this lie and show it to be false here.

I'm an electromagnetic compliance engineer.  It's a physics-based discipline with rigorous scientific reporting requirements. It overlaps the realm of atmospheric physics when you start discussing the electromagnetic (IR) absorption behavior of certain gases. I did an overview of the criticism of this here, and later explained in detail why additional CO2 won't have a measurable effect on atmospheric temperatures.  In the same article I also discussed the historical correlation of CO2 and temperature and shown that the conclusions are exactly backwards of what the climate scientists assumptions are.

But is my explanation accurate?  Unlike a lot of things in climate science, this is one that we can test and draw conclusions.  I explain how to set up and conduct such a test here, and a little about how to evaluate the results.  It's enough for a student seeking a thesis topic to run with, but it needs some more fleshing out.

I also pointed out with a lot of math how ocean temperature controls atmospheric temperature, but atmospheric temperature has very little ability to warm the ocean.

Unwilling to admit that they have a shifting narrative, Man-made Global Warming apologists insist that their message has been consistent and that any suggestion that they really were worried about a coming ice-age 50 years ago is dismissed. I took a little time to research the many peer reviewed papers from the time to bury someone in a coming ice age hysteria.

As I write this, I realize that I need to put together a discussion of sea levels that discusses things like continental rebound, tectonic movement, subsidence and measurement uncertainty.  Things that are never mentioned when evidence is presented to sustain the hysteria that we're going to be underwater soon.

A Heretic in the Religion of Climate Change

Man-made Global Warming is a religion. Why do I say that?

A religion is a belief system based on faith that's not easily provable. The adherents to a religious belief system typically base their belief on the testimony of others who they accept as having superior knowledge. Even though the average believer lacks the means to test and verify the belief themselves, they accept the orthodoxy presented by the high priests of the belief system, and can often quote the tenets of the faith scripture and verse.

Should someone challenge the belief system, the resultant response is angry condemnation. The naysayer is vilified, condemned as a heretic. The incredulity that anyone could suggest that the religion is wrong results in anger and public mockery. 

Science has never been a popular discipline for the average person. While some people are fascinated by how the universe works and eagerly consume every scrap of investigation on virtually any topic in science, most people neither know nor care, and are unwilling to exert the effort to educate themselves. Just 200 years ago, science and mathematics was the realm of the wealthy, of little practical use to the average person eking out a living from the land. Today, though scientific literacy is much higher in the average person in the industrialized world, most people don't really care why these technological marvels that populate every facet of our existence work the way they do, they just want their cars to go, the lights to be on, their phones and computers to work, and the TV to deliver entertainment directly to our living rooms.

Scientific discovery has yielded some fascinating results, and the entertainment industry has found a way to monetize this by delivering science to you packaged as entertainment, using flashy, state of the art video production and an entertaining host. Because of this, many people fancy themselves scientific experts with no practical understanding of how to develop a theory, design a test for the theory, and evaluate the results. While a lot of people can probably recite the scientific method, there's a lot to it that's unsaid which you really can't appreciate until you actually practice it day in and day out.

My background is in a field of hard physics, testing the electromagnetic characteristics of commercial products to ensure they meet industry requirements. To do that, I have to have a laboratory full of sophisticated equipment, and moreover, I have to prove on a regular basis that the results I get are reproducible to those arrived at by other labs with similar capabilities. 

There's an old saying: In theory, theory and reality are the same. In reality, they're not. One of the most difficult challenges in my field is when we have a standardized test article for performing interlaboratory comparisons. These are either objects with a specific emissions spectra, or articles that behave in a certain defined fashion in the presence of electromagnetic fields. Theoretically, each lab should produce the same results when testing these articles to a certain standard. Yet this is rarely the case, and many engineers pull their hair out trying to identify why this is so. The generally understood reason is that this can be a chaotic field - where small changes in input conditions can generate huge differences in behavior. Finding the culprits and correcting for them can be frustrating and educational. If two labs have different results, who's right? Why? Or maybe both labs are wrong? This can lead to heated discussions, and this in a field where all the input conditions can be controlled, and the only thing preventing a rigorous exploration of differing input conditions are time, space and money.

When it comes to climate science, everything is theoretical. We only have one data point of reality, and we have no way of altering the input conditions to test behavior. We can run computer simulations, but there's no way to know if our computer simulations account for every possible input condition -- and in my experience with practical science, they can't possibly -- or if the simulation isn't just a complicated exercise in curve-fitting. It's not like we can take a perfectly optimum Earth-like planet and pump its CO2 levels up and see what happens, with another identical planet sitting by as a control.

So what differentiates science from religion? I doubt many people reading this have a firm grasp on quantum mechanics, but we accept that as science, even though most of us - myself included - lack the mathematical background to understand it. If we get right down to it, the lay person's understanding of quantum mechanics is a religious belief, based on what the high priests of physics tell us. The reason it really doesn't fall into the religious category, though, is that if you scoff at quantum mechanics, or propose a different set of rules to govern it, you don't get branded as a heretic. So many people are scratching their heads over the theory in the first place that any hair-brained explanation is no more unbelievable than what mainstream science proposes. People readily admit they don't understand it, and so aren't willing to haul out the torches and pitchforks to defend it against the heretic.

One could even say that most people have a religious belief in electronics. They don't understand it, lack the educational background to understand it, and take what the experts say about it on faith. The difference is that electronics works. Even if you don't understand it, those who do can demonstrate that their understanding yields predictable results every single time - to the point where we actually get angry when our electronic talismans fail to live up to their billing.

But climate science is an obscure field of scientific study, not what one would consider "mainstream." It cannot be experimentally tested with rigorous controls in a laboratory environment. There's no way to know if the input variables are accounted for or fully understood. The interactions and feedback mechanisms between the various input variables are complex and chaotic* and poorly understood. Computer simulations rarely come close to modeling previous observed behavior, and so are "tweaked" until they reproduce that which has been observed. This sort of model has some value, but cannot be relied upon for predictive value, as there is no way to quantify how closely the model actually represents reality, or how much the model's behavior is a result of an exercise in curve-fitting.

As an aside, a classic example of curve fitting can be seen in trading the stock market. If one examines any historical stock chart, apparent patterns leap out. This is partly because the human mind is very good at seeing patterns in chaos - even when no such pattern really exists. These stock price patterns have been retroactively analyzed in a myriad of ways, each of which has many adherents who use them to time stock trades. Moving Average Convergence/Divergence, Multiple Moving Averages, Fibonacci levels, any number of patterns all can retroactively show that if you trade on this or that signal, you'll have a successful trade. Except it rarely works that way as a predictive tool, and when the "signal" supposedly occurs you might as well flip a coin over whether it will be a win or loss. In retrospect most of the signals are false. But you don't see the false signals in the historical charts, because our brains are only geared to see the successful ones. This same problem arises to some degree in any statistical analysis of data, and the more chaotic inputs that drive the data, the more patterns and false signals will likely be observable. There's probably no data set with more interacting chaotic variables than the climate record. Even the stock market with thousands of independent traders affecting stock prices is a model of predictability by comparison.

Since climate science is based on observation and analysis of a single data set with no mechanism available to perform experimentation and reproducible independent studies (there's only one data set), climate scientists are understandably inconsiderate of such things as uncertainty calculations and identifying sources of error. Since there's only one data set available, the climate scientist has no need to explain discrepancies in the collected data, analyze sources of error that may skew the data or calculate the measurement uncertainty based on multiple independent sources. These exercises are the bane of every lab manager's existence, and even in the most stringent environments often amount to nothing more than a scientific wild ass guess. Climate scientists can make a show of identifying measurement error, and have even used it as an excuse to modify their data. However, an interesting thing is that if all your identified measurement errors only adjust your data in a direction to reach a preconceived result, you're not being objective, you're curve-fitting.

What differentiates man-made global warming from scientific theory is an intolerance for dissension. Science relies on skepticism and criticism. Science only moves forward when someone says, "Hey, wait a minute!" It doesn't matter how elaborate your theory is, how many peer-reviewed papers its been written up in, how much data you have to support it, if anyone comes in and drops a single fact in your lap that disproves it, then your science is worthless, and you need to start over. A scientist -- well, a reputable scientist -- needs to be able to explain all the data. When someone presents a refutation, it's up to the scientist to demonstrate why the refuting evidence doesn't apply, why it actually fits into the theory, or how the refuting evidence is wrong. 

This can be very difficult for climate scientists who are experts at paleo-climate and historical weather patterns and weather/climate data collection. These people work in a field immersed in data and spend a significant amount of time studying and explaining the data patterns. They're not full-time physicists. They're concerned with patterns and explaining those patterns. They make assumptions that may or may not reflect the actual physics involved. I happen to work in an esoteric field of electromagnetics, not climate science. But when a climate scientist comes to me and makes a statement of how a certain gas acts in response to an electromagnetic input that's the underpinning of an entire hypothesis, I'm certain that I'm more equipped to understand that electromagnetic interaction between the terrestrial IR emissions and the gas than the climate scientist is, and if it doesn't work the way the climate scientist assumes, then I know that the foundation of their hypothesis is flawed.

You can see the religious zealotry when you honestly suggest that maybe the science is flawed. Try it. Here's a taste of what I have experienced by making such a statement on a science forum recently:

"Shut the fuck up, boomer."

"Just because you say so it doesn’t make it so." (Really? That cuts both ways, doesn't it?)

"u be dumb."

"Pay no attention to troll bots"

"only fools and Fox news think climate change is a hoax"

"are you willfully ignorant? Or just plain fucking stupid?"
"maybe your drugs are cleaner..."

Of course, this is also accompanied with numerous links to sources to support the man-made global warming narrative, i.e. quoting from scripture. They don't understand it well enough to make the case on their own, so they appeal to the authority of the high priests. One of the leading sources of scripture is the pseudo-scientific blog Skeptical science, which is neither skeptical or scientific. It's completely on board with the man-made global warming narrative, and neither harbors nor entertains any skepticism at all. Its science is cherry-picked and lacks objectivity. Like any religious screed, it appears to attempt to bury criticism and ironically, skepticism, by sheer volume, ignoring the scientific axiom that it doesn't matter how much data supports your hypothesis, it only takes one fact to topple the whole thing.

So why do people have the religious adherence to the orthodoxy of man-made global warming? Well, the primary driver of this is fear. Like the ancient pagans, we're afraid of the doom that has been predicted by a select few climate scientists. We seek to stave off this doom by sacrificing as the high priests instruct us, in an attempt to placate the impending doom so that it passes over us and leaves us unharmed. The sad fact is that when you instill fear in someone, there's good money to be made in offering a solution to their fear. Whether the predictions of climate change are real or not, no one can deny that some people have become very rich in the effort to avert it. Whether it's green technology that isn't economically sustainable on its own, or a carbon exchange scheme similar to the stock market where the market makers get a cut of every trade, if you make enough people scared enough, you can make some big money.

To make this work, you need several things to line up for you: 

You need a population that's basically scientifically illiterate, but not so illiterate that they can't follow a well-considered line of reasoning. People who are capable of understanding the concepts, but incapable themselves of testing the concepts or analyzing the data on their own and formulating their own theories. 

You need a way to control the narrative, and deliver the accepted narrative to the population. Journalism 101: If it bleeds, it leads. Disaster is good news.

You need to be able to suppress and marginalize dissenting opinions. Many many highly qualified scientists, including doctorates in physicists and climatology from well respected universities around the world, some Nobel prize winners, refute the narrative of man-made global warming. They're easy to find. Why do they never get any air time to present their views to the average news consumer?

Once you have these three things, the stage is set for you to proselytize your religion without interference. When you have enough converts, you can influence political discussions and political decisions. And someone is going to get very rich as a result.

How do you know if you're a religious zealot or a serious scientist? If your initial response to a skeptic is to scoff, call names or try to shout down the skeptic and marginalize them by public shame, you're a religious zealot. If you don't understand the science well enough to be able to discuss it in your own words, but insist that your position is the only correct one, you're a religious zealot. If you quote from the sacred scripture of man-made global warming, and dismiss refutations without being able to demonstrate why they're in error in your own words, you're a religious zealot. If you publicly endorse your high priests as oracles of knowledge, and dismiss other dissenting experts - no matter how prestigious or well-qualified - you're a religious zealot.

What can you do? Educate yourself. Not in a circular reasoning exercise of confirmation bias, but actively seek out dissenting opinions and try to figure out for yourself why they're incorrect, if they are.

Lose the opinion that only climatologists are qualified to discuss climatology. Science doesn't work like that. All disciplines interact with all others, and a physicist probably has all the necessary qualifications to speak authoritatively on certain aspects of climate science as anyone else (I pick on physicists here because my field is physics-based, and many of the high-profile skeptics upon whose shoulders I stand are physicists).

Follow the money. Who stands to gain?


________
* When I say something is chaotic, I'm using the classic definition: tiny changes in input conditions can yield staggering differences in outcomes.

Testing CO2 Assumptions

Are you, or do you know a college student who’s looking for a thesis project? Here’s one for you.

CO2 is purported to be the lynchpin surrounding the theory of manmade global warming.  According to the theory, CO2 is a very effective gas at absorbing IR radiation, causing the atmosphere to warm up.  Based on this theory, the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more warming will occur. Computer climate models assume a constant correlation between CO2 levels and atmospheric warming (typically that a doubling of CO2 results in a 1°C change of temperature).  The question is whether that relationship is experimentally valid. Let's stop arguing about it and test it.

To warm the planet, changing CO2 levels must change the net heat balance between what the Earth receives from the sun and what it radiates back to space. 

CO2 is a chemically stable, colorless, odorless gas that is generally evenly mixed with and distributed among other atmospheric gases.  It is an essential gas for life, without which plants will die, collapsing the ecosystem that relies on plants to provide the base of the food chain.  High concentrations of CO2 can degrade respiratory performance and lead to death.

Hypothesis:  CO2 absorption is so efficient that atmospheric CO2 absorbs all the available IR energy in its absorption spectrum many times over before leaving the atmosphere.  Since all of the available IR energy in the absorption spectrum has been absorbed already, adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will have a negligible effect on global atmospheric levels. Without a source of additional heat, no amount of additional warming will occur by adding CO2 beyond the current levels, because all the available energy in the CO2 absorption levels has already been absorbed and contributed to warming the atmosphere

Please see my other article detailing the physics behind CO2 absorption.

The experiment:  On a controlled test range, measure the spectral loss due to CO2 absorption over a given distance.  Calculate from that how far an IR emission can propagate before there is no measurable energy in the CO2 absorption frequencies.

What you will need: 

1 FTIR spectrometer.  You can get these from E-bay for under $500, and they run up into the thousands

1 broadband IR source

1 CO2 level meter.

(optional) cannisters of compressed CO2 gas.

A suitable site for the experiment.  A large, empty climate-controlled warehouse, manufacturing facility or aircraft hangar would be ideal. A blimp hangar or gymnasium would be an excellent location. An open area test site outdoors would be acceptable, with a change to the test protocol.

For experimenting in doors, make the facility as cold as possible, with as low humidity as possible. Have as few people as possible in the facility during the experiment, as CO2 exhalations in a confined area can dramatically change the atmospheric CO2 concentrations in an enclosed space in a very short time. Experimenting indoors provides the opportunity to test varying levels of CO2 and observe the effects on the spectrum.

If experimenting out of doors, an arid climate area with extremely low humidity is preferable, and all measurements should be conducted after dark, preferably in winter or after a cool day, so that IR emissions from the Earth do not adulterate the measurements. Experimenting outdoors provides the opportunity for measurements at longer ranges than you would typically be able to achieve indoors.

Assumptions:

Only the direct propagation path will be considered.  Any given point of the Earth’s surface emits IR radiation in all directions, giving an infinite number of paths for IR energy to leave the atmosphere.  Since all points are emitting IR energy and contributing to the total energy leaving the atmosphere in any given direction, the vertical path from an emission point to the edge of the atmosphere will represent the integrated aggregate of all points contributing to the measurement.  In other words, what is lost because the emission is omnidirectional is recovered because all the other emission points are likewise omnidirectional and contribute their emissions to the radiation from any point in the atmosphere as if those emissions originated as a vertical column.

In any free space electromagnetic measurement, the antenna factors must be calibrated to accurately measure the signal loss over the transmission distance.  For the purpose of this experiment, we can dispense with antenna correction factors, because we can use the spectrum itself as a control. CO2 is transparent to IR radiation at 13µm and 17µm wavelengths. Range measurements at these frequencies can provide a range calibration factor for measurements taken across the CO2 absorption spectrum between these frequencies.

Based on data compiled by the National Institute of Standards concerning the absorption spectrum of CO2, I predict that we should see a loss of 10dB in the CO2 absorption spectrum at a distance of 166 meters with CO2 levels at 400 ppm.

Measurement 1: 

Place the FTIR spectrometer receiver close to the IR source, to minimize the amount of CO2 between the receiver and the source.  If possible, a transmittance path in vacuum would be ideal.  You should see no change in IR emission levels between 13µm and 17µm wavelengths.  Record the levels across this spectrum.  This is your reference baseline.

Measurement 2: 

Move the FTIR spectrometer to a set distance from the IR emitter.  Measure and record the CO2 levels of the test range and record the spectrum between 13µm and 17µm wavelengths.  You should see a drop between 14.5µm and 15.5µm.  This is due to CO2 absorption.

Make a variety of measurements at different distances, recording the distance, spectrum and CO2 levels at each measurement.

If operating indoors, establish a baseline measurement at ambient CO2 levels at the longest distance.  Release gas from the bottled CO2 to double the CO2 levels on the range and repeat the measurement.  Use fans to disperse the CO2 evenly throughout the room.  Pay attention to CO2 levels and the chart above for safety.

If operating outdoors, see how far the FTIR spectrometer needs to be placed from the IR source to achieve a 10dB loss in the CO2 absorption band.

After all the measurements have been taken you should be able to graph the signal loss due to atmospheric CO2 absorption by distance and be able to project the losses to greater distances than those measured. Typically, the loss in dB will double when you double the distance. Keep in mind that electromagnetic losses due to distance are logarithmic, not linear.  Determine the distance necessary to achieve a 60dB loss in the CO absorption spectrum vs your control frequencies, representing a measurement of 1/1,000,000 of the original power – effectively zero.  Since this will be well below the measurement threshold/noise floor of your FTIR spectrometer unless you have an exceptionally hot IR source, you could safely say that adding any more CO2 or distance will not measurably change your readings.

In your conclusions, be sure to acknowledge that your measurements were conducted horizontally, and so had a constant partial pressure of CO2 across the range.  Calculate and correct for this in the vertical atmospheric column, where pressure changes with altitude.  If the theoretical model is accurate, you should be able to draw conclusions well before you have to deal with the atmospheric pressure step that happens at the tropopause.

One criticism of this experiment will be that the effect of the nonlinear "skirts" of the CO2 absorption spectrum will get wider as CO2 levels increase.  This can be measured and put to rest by calculating the total power density received by the spectrum analyzer at various levels of CO2. Additional experimentation may be interesting using a tube between the IR emitter and receiver, and calculating the spectral density at a variety of levels of CO2.  I believe you will find that the assumption that doubling the CO2 levels causes the absorption bandwidth to be wider breaks down pretty quickly as CO2 levels rise.

A Better Solution than Term Limits

One thing that everyone can agree on is that Congress is no longer responsible to the people. Our founding fathers never envisioned that a position in Congress would be a lifetime career. It’s been observed that you should change Congress like you would change a diaper – and often for the same reason. It’s clear to everyone that being an incumbent in Congress gives a politician an almost overwhelming advantage against any challenger. Big ticket donors won’t contribute as much to an unknown candidate. The incumbent’s party connections ensure endorsements, access to finances, and networking connections that are simply unavailable to any challenger.

The standard solution that everyone seems to be putting forward for this malaise is term limits. By term limiting our Congressman to two terms in the Senate and three to four terms in the house the assumption is that it will have a higher turnover of politicians, fresh ideas, and break the power monopoly of the senior members of Congress.

This is been tried at lower levels. Currently 36 state governors and 15 state legislatures have term limits. In nearly every instance, we hear stories of problems that term limits have caused, and in some cases they’ve been proclaimed to have been a disaster. By term limiting a member of Congress you're guaranteed that at any given time a certain percentage of your Congressmen will be lame ducks, with no responsibility and no answerability to the electorate that placed them in office. With the sure knowledge that their political career is at an end at the end of their term, they'll be less concerned with addressing the needs of their constituencies or legislating responsibly, and more concerned with padding their resume, networking contacts and cashing in their political capital for lucrative positions as lobbyists or board members of companies that benefit from government engagement. The opportunity and temptation for corruption will be nearly irresistible, and no mechanism could conceivably prevent it.

There’s a much better way than term limits to get control of our Congress.

If you have an employee who doesn't perform the job he or she was hired for, what happens? The answer is simple, that employee is removed. If you have an employee who's given financial responsibility within the company, and that employee wastes money, drives the company into debt and doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of balancing the company’s budget, what happens? The answer is simple, that employee is removed.

To make a rule that all employees will lose their job after a fixed period of time, because some employees are incompetent, corrupt or gain too much power in the Corporation is a stupid way to run a business. It's an equally stupid way to run a government. There are politicians and legislators who do an outstanding job for the people. They work within the budget and stay within the constitutional limits of their job. These are people that we want to keep in government and encourage them to do so.

This is all we have to do with our politicians: establish a minimum level of performance, and if they haven't met that performance when their contract comes up for renewal, they're ineligible to renew. The minimum level of performance is simple and obvious: the politician must adhere to the Constitution and may not increase the public debt. If a politician votes for or signs into law a piece of legislation which he or she has no constitutional authority to pass, that politician shall not appear on the ballots of the next election. If the body politic increases the public debt, all those politicians that supported that debt increase will be ineligible to run in the next election.

This, of course, will generate a number of consequences, but they won't be unintended. Who should decide whether a politician has met his constitutional and fiduciary requirements to appear on the ballot? The obvious answer would be the state auditors who are responsible for controlling the elections of each state, with the backing of the state’s attorney generals. Making the auditors the gatekeepers to the ballot exposes them to the potential of a tremendous amount of corruption. This is where citizen watchdog groups and the courts play a role. Should an auditor decline to place an incumbent on the ballot on the basis of their performance, the incumbent would obviously sue. This would put the auditor in the position of justifying his decision before the appropriate judiciary body. Should an auditor place in incumbent on the ballot who has obviously failed to meet the constitutional and fiduciary requirements, citizen watchdog groups can sue to have that incumbent removed, and once again the case will be heard before the appropriate judiciary body.

This will have several beneficial side effects. Challenging a ballot appearance will be an expense for the incumbent, as well as an embarrassment in a campaign that their opponent could use against them. The easiest way to avoid such a problem would be to ensure that they are constitutionally covered whenever they vote for a piece of legislation. I can’t imagine any scenario where a politician who is constantly looking over his shoulder is a bad thing. Challenging a politician on increasing the debt would be much easier, because accounting and the numbers don’t lie and aren't prone to subjective interpretations as constitutional law may sometimes be. This allows for politicians to increase the public debt in times of national emergency, with the full realization that it will cost them their careers.

Today, Congress is immune from the consequences of passing unconstitutional laws. Unconstitutional laws are rarely brought before the judicial branch because of the expense of litigation and the necessity to show harm to a plaintiff because of these laws. It also opens the door for Judicial activism when such a suit is brought, allowing judges to strike down portions of a law and leave others in place to suit the narrow confines of the lawsuit before them. Making incumbent candidates responsible for their legislation in the upcoming election, with the potential that challenged legislative acts may appear before the judiciary gives a path of judicial review over Congress that's currently missing. This would be a mechanism to improve the checks and balances between our three branches of government.

All of the arguments in favor of this mechanism apply equally to executives as to legislators. The 22^nd amendment should be repealed, and the incumbent president be subjected to the same requirements for ballot eligibility as the legislators.

One of the advantages of this idea is that it wouldn’t necessarily require a constitutional amendment to implement. Article I of the Constitution gives the states the authority for qualifying candidates. If a state’s laws allow for the auditor, with the concurrence of the state attorney general, to disqualify an incumbent candidate on the basis of their performance, there’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution which specifically prohibits them from doing so. This theory has been challenged recently with state attempts to require candidates to release their tax returns and has been struck down by the Supreme Court. That’s not to say that the Supreme Court would not uphold a performance qualification requirement, as performance in a public office as a matter of public record, and challenges to income tax revelation have been based on the fourth amendment and privacy.  It can easily be tested at a state level and, if successful, other states would follow suit.

In the event that state laws requiring a minimum level of performance to qualify for a ballot don't pass Supreme Court muster, the solution, as with term limits, will required article V convention. Should it go to an article V convention, we should assiduously avoid term limits for the inherent unintended consequences that they will bring and build in a performance mechanism such as that proposed here that will force Congress to face consequences for their legislation.

America Doesn't Deserve Our Constitution

It’s all over social media. People from left and right are ecstatic that President Trump just signed a bill making animal cruelty a federal felony. Who doesn’t love animals and who can object to criminalizing cruelty to animals?

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t about animals. I love animals, and I would happily string up any low-life that tortures animals for fun. But we have to step back and ask ourselves, do we care about the Constitution or not?

The US Constitution, Article 1 section 8 lays out the enumerated powers of Congress:

1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence[sic] and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

4: To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

6: To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

9: To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

10: To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

11: To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

13: To provide and maintain a Navy;

14: To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

17: To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And

18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Nowhere in there is there a single word that suggests that Congress has the power or authority to criminalize animal cruelty. Therefore, under the tenth amendment:

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

It’s an issue for the states to legislate on.

Recently I saw a comment about DUI checkpoints, and many people opined that they would be happy for the inconvenience of a checkpoint if it helps keep drunk drivers off the road. They don’t seem to have a problem with warrantless searches and seizure without probable cause, in clear violation of their fourth amendment rights.

Our federal budget is wildly out of control. Congress authorizes spending, and most of the federal spending today has no constitutional authority supporting it. But nobody asks our elected officials to account for the constitutionality of their pork projects, their welfare or their bloated departments. We’ve gone way past the point where the population has realized they can vote themselves bread and circuses. The elected officials in Congress have no incentive to uphold the Constitution. They stay in power buy wielding their governmental influence to get enough money to buy a propaganda machine to dupe the tax serfs into keeping them in power.

If the President doesn’t like what Congress does or doesn’t do, he does what he wants anyway with executive orders. Nobody cares if he usurps the powers of Congress. Congress doesn’t care, because it would be bad publicity to get into a constitutional face-off with the President, and bad publicity is how you lose elections.

Our federal courts issue injunctions against laws and executive orders they don’t like. The Left has for decades sought to get from the judicial branch what they couldn’t possibly pass as laws in the legislative branch. Nobody cares that the Judiciary usurps the powers of Congress and legislates from the bench.

Once upon a time in America, everyone knew the Constitution. They understood the limits of the powers between the three branches of government and understood that the government couldn’t do anything not spelled out in the Constitution. There was a nationwide effort to make alcohol illegal, which was a dumb idea, but at least they had enough respect for the Constitution to know they needed to pass an amendment that gave Congress the power to do it. But they stopped teaching our children the Constitution in civics class. They started teaching some nebulous feel-good history cum culture called social studies instead. The result is a whole generation who pays lip service to their “constitutional rights” without having any idea what those rights actually are or understanding that they do not come from the government. They think the first amendment gives them the right to say anything they want on Facebook or YouTube, not understanding that the first amendment only keeps the government from passing laws about what can and cannot be said. Facebook and YouTube aren’t the government, and to use these services, you have to agree to their terms.

People get the government they deserve. Congress has an all-time low approval rating; but come the next election cycle most of the bad actors will remain seated. Few people call them to account for their behavior under the Constitution, and those who do are shouted down and ridiculed by the masses who apparently care nothing for the Constitution and the very clear limits it places on government.

If you don’t learn the Constitution and demand that our elected officials operate within its bounds and remove them from office if they don’t, then you don’t deserve the Constitution. You honestly deserve to be the powerless tax serfs you have become, subservient to leaders you think you elect, instead of having public servants working for you. You rightfully deserve the feudal chains that have been placed on you by our elected nobility, dressed up with modern terms to make you think you’re a free man. 

You need to demand that the schools and universities stop indoctrinating our children with failed political, economic and social ideologies. Today we spend record amounts of money on education to teach our children to not only be happy little tax serfs, but to openly advocate for it and condemn and attack those who prefer to be freemen who repudiate a government that doesn't even follow its own rules.

We once had a pretty good thing going here in America, where every man was free to be who he could be. Now we’ve accepted a crony capitalist oligarchy which exists to fleece the tax serfs and ensure that the competitive advantage always stays in the hands of those who can buy the best politicians. You did this. You allowed it, by not demanding that the branches of government stay in their constitutional lanes. The American people can take back their government in less than a year, but first you have to be willing to forego laws that you like and make you feel good, if they lack a constitutional foundation. We either follow the rules, or we bow in obedience to our noveau feudal lords. The choice is yours. Learn your Constitution. Demand your elected officials follow it. Remove them if they don’t, even if you like them, they’re from your party, or bring the pork home to your district. 

The Civil War: Yeah, it was About Slavery

Gordon was an escaped slave who joined
and fought for the North in the Civil War

It’s been 155 years since the Civil War. It’s been going around for years that the South didn’t secede because of slavery. Revisionist historians have delved deep into the culture, the politics, the sentiments of the day and have served up well-researched treatises on the causes of the civil war, the political strife leading up to it and the sentiments that caused it. We’ve had people writing revisionist books that cherry-pick and take out of context passages from Lincolns writings and actions, to try to show that he fought the war to keep the country together, not to free the slaves. We’ve seen people point out that the emancipation proclamation didn’t free all the slaves in America, only those in unoccupied confederate states. Ergo, Lincoln didn’t care about freeing the slaves. We’ve seen revisionists rename the conflict the “War Between the States”, “War for Southern Independence” or the “War of Northern Aggression.” 

All of this revisionist history is designed to overload the senses of the casual scholar, confuse the issue, cast doubt on the conventional wisdom and regenerate the narrative to paint the Southern cause in a more acceptable light. And it’s all poppycock, and easily swept aside with one question and one fact.

The question: Would the Civil War have happened if there had been no slavery in the United States of America?

This is the root cause. There is a common technique in Quality Systems theory for discovering the root cause of any problem called the 5 whys. Ask why something happened, and then ask why the first reason happened, etc. Eventually – usually within five iterations – you get to the root cause. If you apply the five whys to any of the revisionist reasons for the Civil War, you will eventually always come back to slavery.

What few realize today was that the road to secession was a long one. The various states didn't jump up one day and all declare their break from the US Constitution. It was a process that took nearly a year from the time that South Carolina seceded until Kentucky seceded. These states that later followed the other's lead cited their outrage that the Union was using military force to enact their will on those states left because of their slaves. The notable point of this oft-cited cause is that it seems that only slave states shared this outrage. If the cause really concerned the rights of states to secede, then whether a state was slave or free should have had no bearing on its outrage over union over-reach.

The fact: Every single state that seceded from the union published a declaration or ordinance of secession. Of those declarations that gave reasons for their secession all either cited slavery as the prima facie cause of secession, the election of Lincoln and the fear that he was an abolitionist, calling him a "sectional party." Lincoln's personal interest in freeing the slaves was subordinated to his understood duties and limitations under the constitution. Lincoln understood that he could not constitutionally abolish slavery, and said as much many times both before and after he took office.

Lincoln was elected easily by 28 electoral college votes, breaking directly in terms of slave vs. free. The fact that he was elected showed the South that the winds of public opinion were turning against them and slavery. The recent admission of Oregon and Minnesota into the union was shifting the political power towards the North, and southern slave states knew they would be soon outnumbered in electoral votes, as the populations of the increasingly urban free states boomed and shifted the electoral power north. Lincoln's election was proof of this, and it became plain that the South would never regain their influence in the House or the Oval office, the Senate would always hang by a thread, and the subtle pressure to punish slave holding states in petty fashions would only increase.

South Carolina, December 24, 1860:
“We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

“For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

“This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.”

Mississippi, January 9, 1861:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. "

Alabama, January 11, 1861:
"Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [i.e. slavery] and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and manacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security, therefore:"

"And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States,"

Texas, February 1, 1861:
"WHEREAS, The recent developments in Federal affairs make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the interests and property of the people of Texas, and her sister slave-holding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was intended, our shield against outrage and aggression; THEREFORE,"

Virginia, April 17, 1861:
The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States:

Arkansas, May 6, 1861:
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:

Arkansas was adopting the "Hang together or hang separately" paradigm. Having the North win the war that was already being fought would certainly be ruinous to the slave holders of Arkansas.

Kentucky, November 20, 1961:
". . .the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, . . ."

Yes, folks, the idea that blacks aren't inferior and shouldn't be enslaved was considered an ignorant prejudice.

Any attempt to whitewash the civil war as being about anything but slavery ignores the context. If there were other causes, they weren't addressed by the requirements that the rebel states needed to comply with to be readmitted to the union. As soon as the Federal occupation ended, many state governments in the South proceeded to pass Jim Crowe laws.

Yes, the politics leading up the Civil War are fascinating to study, but whether you use the 5 whys method of root cause analysis, or just look at the cited reasons for the secession of the Southern states and their subsequent behavior, no matter how you slice it, it comes up slavery.

Democrats Behaving Badly

It's no secret that Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real malady. Those who suffer from it have been observed to be completely irrational, and cannot tolerate normal social interactions which may cause them to be emotionally triggered.  This has affected our national dialogue.  Both sides will freely admit that communication between those with opposing views has completely broken down, but each side blames the other.

I for one, am not a huge Trump supporter.  I think we could have done better, and we had a chance to do better, but were drowned out by louder, less thoughtful voices.  That being said, I am immensely grateful that Trump won the election instead of Clinton Crime, Inc.

If there's a communication breakdown, it's not my fault, nor the fault of anyone I know on the right. I'm quite happy to discuss my points of view with anyone willing to listen, and every conservative I know is the same way.  What I see is those on the left demonizing, vilifying, ostracizing and abusing anyone on the right who makes the mistake of publicly disagreeing with those on the left.  Does "tolerance" mean only if you agree with the left? What is it that makes liberals think that such behavior - including overt acts of violence - is acceptable?

Anyway, the problem is that when you mention this to liberals, they immediately deny it, and challenge you to prove it.  Okay.  Challenge accepted.  On this page, I'll keep a running journal of Democrats Behaving Badly that I encounter, to demonstrate that these are not one-off incidents, but a disturbing trend and subculture that has infected our political discourse and needs to be stopped before it leads to open violence.

Nov 3, 2020

Biden Supporters Burn Down Apartment Building in Portland

Oct 13, 2020

Democrat mayor forces police chief to resign after pro-Trump comments by chief’s wife

Sept 18, 2020
162 Democrats Vote Against Amendment to Protect Jewish Students from Antisemitism at School

 Feb 22, 2020
Couple Used Car To Run Kids On Bikes Off The Road Because They Had Trump Flags, Cops Say

13 Feb, 2020
New Hampshire man arrested after allegedly assaulting pro-Trump teen at polling site

12 Feb, 2020
Woman Attacks Retired NYPD Cop Wearing Birthday Hat, Mistaken For MAGA Hat

21 Jan, 2020
Florida man may have killed Trump-supporting boss over politics

7 Jan, 2020
Couple Says They Were Targeted By Vandals For Supporting President Trump

17 Oct, 2019
Video Exclusive: Minneapolis Hard Times Cafe Doesn’t Welcome Trump Supporters

15 Oct, 2019
Leftists Threaten To “Bring Out The Guillotine” If Theaters Show Jordan Peterson Documentary

11 Oct, 2019
Anti-Trump Mobs Attack President’s Supporters After Rally — Burn Piles of MAGA Hats in Streets

8 Oct, 2019
Extortion: Minneapolis Mayor Tries to Shut Down Trump Rally With 'Outrageous' Security Fee

1 Oct, 2019
Police charity event on hold after chief withdraws because Republicans were invited: report

12 Sep, 2018
Congressional Candidate attacked by knife-wielding man shouting anti-Republican comments.

1 August, 2019
Liberals Say Man Brutally Beaten for Wearing MAGA Hat Deserved It: ‘He Shouldn’t Dress That Way’

23 Jun, 2018
Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders kicked out of Virginia restaurant by owner

20 Jun, 2018
Video shows DHS boss Kirstjen Nielsen being heckled, harassed at DC restaurant

5 Nov, 2017
Rand Paul Assaulted by His Neighbor

14 Jun, 2017
HuffPo Pulls Article Calling For ‘Ultimate Punishment’ Of Trump

14 Jun, 2017
Gunman Targets Congressmen: House Majority Leader Shot

24 May, 2017
Bay Area college professor used a U-shaped bike lock in beating Trump Supporters 

14 Feb, 2017
71-year-old staffer for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was hurt during protest

1 Feb, 2017
Milo Yiannopoulos speech at the University of California-Berkeley was cancelled after rioters set the campus on fire and threw rocks through windows

31 Jan, 2017
Trump supporter knocked unconscious during airport immigration protest  

20 Jan, 2017
Ralph Lauren Is Already Receiving Backlash for Dressing Melania Trump

20 Dec, 2016
Trump Supporter Beaten, Dragged By Car

11 Nov, 2016
Assassination threats against Trump flood Twitter

10 Nov, 2016
High schooler assaulted for supporting Trump