The time in which we live is very frustrating. I hear long-time favorite talk-show hosts spouting pro-war propaganda, and I think some of them have lost their minds. Worse, they’re so out of touch that I don’t know how they can be reached or how they can be made to understand. In terms of argumentation, we’re at an impasse, but I’m not given to easy surrender. It seems that they’re confused about the real nature of the enemy confronting us, so much so, that the critical, imperative nature of what I wish to convey to them and to you no longer permits the time-honored process of argumentation and debate; point and counterpoint. We simply no longer have the time for such niceties. We’re hurtling toward a kinetic World War in which the use of nuclear weapons is being discussed in ways that suggests the proponents of war actually think it’s feasible and even desirable. No. They tell us to recall Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and a litany of Cold-War era leaders who managed to guide us, just barely, away from the gaping abyss. It’s as though they somehow believe that the leaders we now have are in any way comparable to those of my youth who managed to extract us from the most dangerous period in history(excepting the present.) I don’t know any other way to say this. I hope somebody will tap Mark Levin on the shoulder and whisper in his ear, explaining gently that there’s no way to defeat any foreign enemy while our own republic has been overthrown: The enemy is here.
Mark Levin is a reasonable guy, and he’s a smart fellow, and while I love his passion in some instances, this is certainly a time in which cooler heads ought to prevail. Levin actually compared Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Winston Churchill. I cannot, in any conceivable way, stretch the whole of my knowledge of history of the Second World War or the more recent history of the grubby comic of Kiev in order to construct any valid parallel between the two. It is not that Churchill was without his flaws, nor that Zelenskyy might not have some virtue tucked out of sight somewhere, but that there is no way in which one could possibly be mistaken for the other. None. As fatally-flawed as this comparison may seem, it’s hardly the worst among Levin’s highly emotional rantings on Ukraine.
Levin is correct inasmuch as he notes that Putin is a villain, but he also overstates the case. He refers to him as a murderer, but I’d be tempted to ask Levin: What of Obama? Obama ordered the drone-strike of countless people, including women, children, and other innocent civilians. Even in our wretched evacuation of Kabul, Afghanistan, Biden didn’t miss the opportunity to conduct a drone strike against an innocent man and his family, as a scapegoat for the bombing that claimed the lives of our servicemembers at the airport. Is Levin ready to put Biden on trial? No? Why not? Are American leaders the only ones permitted to have innocent blood on their hands in the service of the reputation and interests of those leaders? This is hardly a defense of Putin, but I mention it to illustrate a larger point, and it’s one that Levin seems stubbornly committed to ignoring: We’re not necessarily the good guys in this instance, not because of our people or because of our soldiers, but because our government is no longer ours.
Levin seems to be oblivious to the crimes committed by the Ukraine government against its own people in the Eastern provinces over the last decade. He also seems unaware that it was our government, under Obama, that saw to the overthrow of a legitimately elected leader, President Viktor Yanukovych. By legitimate, I mean at least as legitimate as Biden. The “color revolution” executed by our government in Ukraine in 2014 with Victoria Nuland at the helm should cause any thoughtful person to pause. Was the previous leader a Russian puppet? Perhaps, but certainly no more than his successor was a Western puppet.
The greatest error by Levin finally seemed to cross his mind at the end of his opening hour of pro-war propaganda on Tuesday: He noted that he doesn’t trust ‘these guys” (meaning the whole Biden administration) and that this is part of the problem. I don’t think Levin yet realizes how true that is. It’s more than a part of the problem, however. It is the whole irreparable heart of the issue. You see, it is impossible to consider what the actions of the United States have been, or ought to be, in light of its current leadership. To pretend for one moment that Rishi Sunak is in any way comparable to Margaret Thatcher is terrible judgment enough, without going a step farther, and to imagine the current communist pope, Francis, is in any way on-par with John Paul II is equally abominable, but to imagine that Joe Biden in any sense compares favorably with Ronald Reagan should be a black spot on Levin’s soul for which he’s never forgiven. It’s not simply wrong, but instead, it’s catastrophically foolish and farcical. It’s the kind of desperately dishonest sort of thing often said by people who know they’ve lost an argument.
Biden not only fails to be Reagan, he fails even to be Carter. Whatever I think of Carter, I don’t believe the man had been a traitor to his country. As I asked of Levin on Twitter, naturally unanswered, if we admit that everything the Biden administration is doing domestically is driven by a political agenda that seems intent on destroying the country, our country, why on Earth would we imagine that their international aims would hold any other objective? Levin even mentioned at one point that foreign policy is non-political, “like Justice is supposed to be.” That should have been the moment that it dawned on Levin. That should have been the switch that turned on the lightbulb that would have stopped him in his rhetorical tracks.
Dear Mr. Levin: Our justice system is entirely politicized, and in fact could be said to be a racketeering operation every bit as detestable as the sorts of criminals it had been their mission to pursue, prosecute, and punish. What in the Hell do you think makes the State Department any different in any way? They’re part of the racket too. They’re part of the same sick political agenda. Our diplomatic corps are staffed with the same sort of impeccably corrupt criminals that run everything else in this fatally corrupt, criminal operation known as the United States federal government.
Levin is perfectly capable of seeing and lamenting the catastrophic nature of our current administrative state. He knows that on the domestic front, it’s all crap, crime, and corruption all of the time. All of it. He looks at what is being done to the American people, and he can clearly identify the fact that it’s a purposeful, intentionally wanton destruction of the greatest nation that’s ever been, and that it’s as though the government is carrying out a war on its own people at home. He sees it. He knows it. He understands it. He reports on it to his listeners and viewers daily.
Somehow, he is unable to fathom that this same institution might likewise be acting against the interest of the American people on the international front. Why? Does he think Mitch McConnell is motivated by concern for the people of Ukraine? For the people of America? Does he think Chuck Schumer is any less demonic in his intentions in foreign policy than in the domestic sphere? What sort of sophistry must one accept to draw such an absurd conclusion?
At the same time, Levin detests the argument made by some that we have no business securing Ukraine when we haven’t secured our own borders. He says it’s got nothing to do with it. Doesn’t it? Our Southern border is now being flooded with Chinese nationals. What does Levin think their purpose is? The whole point is to flood us with prospective saboteurs. While Levin rightly notes the real danger of China to the future of the United States, he seems not to notice that Joe Biden is fatally compromised in both Ukraine and China. China is only too happy to see so much of our own war materials and equipment sent to Ukraine to be used up killing Russians. We’re having a shortage of 155mm artillery shells, the same kind fired by the howitzers I worked on in Europe in the 1980s. It’s our most important land-based field artillery type, having a huge investment in both towed and self-propelled pieces to fire these rounds. I thought about this as I learned the explosion and fire at the Schumann & Co’s foundry in Bedford Ohio on Monday, a company that deals with brass, among other things, which is a critical component in the manufacture of these shells. I have no idea if Schumann has any part in the manufacturing of such components, and it’s probably coincidental, but I’d just read an article about the artillery round shortages, and it struck me as odd. Are any of the myriad of derailments, industrial fires and explosions, along with other oddities like the many fires at food processors and poultry farms part of a war of infiltration and sabotage? Don’t tell me the border has nothing to do with it. It’s the first line of our national defense.
This must then be our inescapable conclusion, and it’s one Levin seems not quite willing to accept: Our chief enemy is here. Our chief enemy, the only one that can truly destroy our formerly beautiful constitutional republic, is the enemy within. I am willing to say it, while others cannot muster the voice for it: Our own government has united with other elements as a joint enemy against the people of the United States, the true irony of which is that the American people are being leveraged and taxed to pay for their own destruction. When we send $200 billion to the defense of Ukraine, after you consider how much is siphoned off for purely corrupt purposes, surely less than half makes it to Ukraine, and some of that makes its way back in the form of donations to all the DC dirtbags who voted for the funds to go to Ukraine.
Levin offers that $200 billion is a cheap price to pay for the destruction of the Russian Army. This is pure neocon claptrap. What threat does the Russian Army pose to the people of the United States? Are we expecting them to pour across our borders? No. What we expect are the bombers, ICBMs, and hypersonic missiles. Our $200 billion has done nothing to reduce the threat posed by that set of Russian weapons systems. Instead, the ongoing destruction of the Russian Army merely increases the likelihood that such weapons will be employed against us if Putin becomes desperate, and/or the Russian people become vengeful at the loss of their men to American artillery shells.
Meanwhile, the enemy most lethal to the American people rampages in Washington DC. It cracks the whips against the backs of the very people it wishes most to destroy: Us. While Mark Levin advocates continuing funding of the war in Ukraine, and resorts to cheap scare-tactics about an eventual draft, the truth he and some others seem to avoid is that we are now being ruled by an occupying government that bears no allegiance to the American people, or to the constitution for which it provides conveniently sporadic lip-service. We find ourselves in the unenviable position of the defenders of the gate of Gondor in the Lord of the Rings. We are confronted by obvious enemies before us, but the minds of our leadership are long overthrown, like Denethor, Steward of Gondor. We are unfit to make war with anybody while our nation is governed by enemies. We don’t need to seek out enemies in Russia or Ukraine, or much of anywhere else. They’re here, right here, in the USA. DC is overrun by them, and they’re running the show.
Why does Levin sound like the establishment on Ukraine?
I really didn’t see this coming. I was on my way home from another day of work on Wednesday as Levin’s show began. As he began talking about the events in Ukraine, it came to that moment when he said that he’d be having Lindsey Graham on in his third hour to discuss the Senator’s notion that Putin needs to be taken out, an idea with which Levin heartily agrees. As I listened to him go on about his disdain for “nationalist-populists” and so on, before too much time had passed, a thought formed in my mind that I simply couldn’t escape. At first, I thought, and may even have said aloud in answer to the radio: “Mark, you sound just like the establishment against which you always rail.” A commercial came on as I pondered that thought a little longer, and then it struck me. It’s not that Mark Levin merely sounds like the establishment. He is the establishment, or at least its errand-boy, perhaps unwittingly.
Do I think Mark Levin is deep within the DC establishment? No. On the other hand, he’s in their circle, perhaps loosely, and he’s put himself in a position through which they will attempt to exploit him, and thereby, his audience. When he speaks, millions listen attentively. They listen because he offers a view from inside politics, as a former chief of staff to an Attorney General of the United States. Though his connections into the mechanisms of state are dated and most will have long since retired, that doesn’t mean the existing establishment hasn’t cultivated a connection to him through which they hope to propagandized and manipulate his audience.
Do you need proof? Every time the Republican establishment needs something from him, he gives it, with few exceptions. They know there will be some times and some areas of policy on which he will be unapproachable, but they know when election time rolls around, for the most part, they can count on him to carry their water. He helped give us a whole string of Senators under the vague umbrella of the Tea Party movement, but most of them went on to betray us in varying degrees. In 2020, he brought his audience Lindsey freaking Graham. He pushed Lindsey for re-election. He should have given him a strong kick in the ass and run him off. Instead, Levin played the good soldier and brought Graham on his show, and while you could almost hear part of Levin holding his nose, he did it nevertheless. In 2016, when Ted Cruz needed a “constitutional expert” to vouch for his eligibility to run for President, he went immediately to Levin. In what I regard to be the biggest single betrayal of his audience in the whole of his career on the radio, he cobbled together some nonsensical explanation that “Natural Born Citizen” was “just a citizen.” It was embarrassingly infantile and nonsensical, and it took a long time for me to get over it. I had been researching the issue(and continued to for some time before publishing my article) when Levin made this pronouncement, and knew him to be full of piss and wind on the issue that day.
I knew then that Levin would bend things to support his own agenda, and that while it wasn’t perfectly aligned with the establishment, it was nevertheless amenable to them in some instances. What happens to Levin seems to be that he’s so invested in winning that he’ll make friends with alleged enemies if he thinks it will help him advance his cause, but the problem with this approach is that often, it’s self-defeating, not only to Levin, but also to his audience. As another example, he’s friends with Senator Mike Lee, (R-UT,) a guy who makes many good arguments, but unfortunately also is the Senator from Google. He’s thoroughly compromised by the funds and lobbying that rolls in the door from that company. Levin won’t tell you about that. He’s protective of Lee on that issue. It’s as though it doesn’t exist.
Another good example is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, (R-CA,) another establishment stooge and first-rate swampster. Levin brought this stooge to you in 2020 also, just as he did Speaker Paul Ryan(R-WI) in previous election years. On Wednesday evening, Levin bashed McCarthy, after mentioning he was seemingly interested in coming on the show an longer. Of course not, Mark, he got what he needed from you in 2020, pre-election. Check back in with him this coming Fall! Ryan is the definition of a swampster, a Republican who’s married into a thoroughgoing Democrat family(and his sister-in-law is the Biden SCOTUS-pick, Ketanji Brown Jackson,) and who spent as little time in Wisconsin as was humanly possible. In that respect, Ryan was a good deal like another swampster Levin brought you on his show when she was seeking election to the house: Elizabeth “Liz” Cheney(R-WY) spends even less time in Wyoming than Ryan spent in Wisconsin. Do you see how the Republican establishment exploits him? How is this possible for an alleged Tea Party guy, a constitutionalist?
I don’t believe Mark Levin is a part of the DC UniParty, but his orbit crosses theirs, whether he’ll admit it or not. He makes mention from time to time on-air about how they reach out to him, and want to come on the show, but most of the time, if an election is tight, and he thinks he can help a little, he’ll bring them on. It’s what it is. Is he an evil guy? No. Absolutely not. The problem is that when you get into bed with these people, it’s hard to get away. I also wouldn’t say he provides strictly establishmentarian propaganda. He does provide much very good content, but I’m afraid that very often, too many of the wrong people have his ear. He gets “insider” information from some people who are truly swampy. How do I know? I hear it on air. I can tell what sorts of people within the bureaucracy or in the Congress have his ear. For Pete’s sake, he brought John Bolton(!) to Donald Trump. He admitted on-air that Bolton had lobbied him strongly to get in on the NSA job with Trump. Bolton was a catastrophe who spent his whole time in that job undermining Trump’s foreign policy agenda. Levin admits it now, belatedly. If I were Trump, I’d never listen seriously to another recommendation from Levin on personnel. Ever. Thinking about it, maybe neither should you.
Now Levin is taking information from the same crowd with respect to Ukraine. He can see the Democrats are a catastrophe, but he can’t see that the information he’s being passed comes from the same sort of corrupt sources that brought Trump a recommendation of John Bolton via Mark Levin. He remarked the other day that some fan had asked him in public whether he believed anything about it, because the media is so corrupt. Levin explained to his audience that he’d told the man that the whole of the International Press isn’t corrupt too. You see, he doesn’t see it. The politicization of media hasn’t stopped at the water’s edge, any more than politics itself has stopped there. Levin seems to be having a weird kind of “bromance” with Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, but the problem is that much of that upon which Levin bases his admiration for Zelenskiy has been debunked. It turns out that Zelenskiy may be just as corrupt as his predecessor, if not quite as wealthy. He’s tied-in with Ihor Kolomoisky, another corrupt Ukrainian oligarch. Somehow, these facts escape Levin, or he’s not mentioning them because of his admiration for the Ukrainian president. Either way, it’s a dangerous lack of perspective.
Levin has always had his strawmen and his foils. Lately, he’s been concentrating on the “nationalist-populists,” decrying them as Putinophiles, or something in that vein. I actually hate when he does this. Name names, for Heaven’s sake! In the case of “nationalist-populist,” I’m pretty certain he means Steve Bannon of WarRoom fame. There seems to be real heartburn there, and Bannon, for his part, doesn’t help when he tosses out phrases like “Neocon” because it seems to trigger Levin’s antisemitism alarms. Levin needs to get a grip. Virtually nobody who uses the term “Neocon” means anything to do with Jews, and most of them won’t even know the relationship between “Neocons” and Jews in the purely historical sense. It’s much like “establishment” in the sense that you might not be able to name an actual “neocon,” but you can identify their policies in action and advocacy when you see them, and while the original description “neocon” may have applied specifically to a particular group of Jews, it’s been clear for some time that their basic set of military and foreign policy issues have been adopted by a wider group of interventionist Republicans, many of whom are clearly not Jews.
It’s maddening. Levin is so close to the truth about Ukraine, but he’s being strung-along by his emotions, his admiration for Zelenskiy, and his cold-war-hardened hatred for all things Russia, particularly Putin. When you add to it what’s being pumped-out in the mainstream narratives, even by Republicans, especially swampsters, he just can’t shake it loose. I’m afraid that until Levin overcomes these demons, he’s simply incapable of bringing you full and sensible information on Ukraine, and that’s simply the most disappointing development in media in a long, long while.
At the end of his show, in the last hour, Levin had Graham on his show to talk about taking out Putin. If you listen, you can hear Lindsey Graham ingratiate himself to Levin with the slobbering remarks near the end of his appearance. One could almost hear Levin’s heart melt. I could vomit.
Here’s the full podcast(The Graham interview begins at the 1:28:55 mark):
Oh, and Mark? Ronald Reagan never once called for taking-out Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko or Gorbachev. He knew that the last thing a nuclear-armed country run by a totalitarian government needs is any sort of instability of that sort. Do you think the people who would take out Putin would be any more stable or less dangerous to the United States? No. Reagan knew better than nonsensical ideas like that. You should be ashamed of yourself for associating such a foolish idea with the temperament and wisdom of Ronald Reagan.
Levin lays out the initial case on March 5th 2017 for Spygate
Only one day after I reflected on Mark Levin’s amazing ability to sift through piles of mainstream media reports to assemble the hidden truth, he very nearly did it again on Friday evening’s broadcast. He still hasn’t clarified for his audience that the claims of cluster-bombs and thermobaric bombs are unverified, unconfirmed reports, much to my chagrin, but in discussing the goings-on in Washington DC he swerved ever so close to the truth, again. I keep hoping he’ll step back from the Ukraine story just a little farther, just enough to clear his senses and conquer his emotions. If he does, he’s a man with the resources and skills to finally sort out the truth of this mess. At this point, Levin should begin asking himself that question that any good lawyer must do when trying to formulate a theory of a case: What’s the motive driving the behavior of the Biden administration in Ukraine? I believe Levin is so close to the truth that if he sets aside his emotions about Ukraine for a few moments, and sinks his teeth into all of this, it’s game over. He’ll sniff it out, and he’ll realize that what’s happening in Ukraine isn’t purely about Ukraine or Putin at all. That’s the side-show. That’s the pay-off. That’s the clean-up on aisle twelve. He came very near to the central issue, and I hope he soon realizes it. I believe he could very well blow the lid off of Washington DC for a generation or more. Today, at the last possible moment before the “Eureka!” that should have come, he swerved off down another emotionally-driven side issue. He’s so maddeningly close that I almost wish he’d happen by this website. It’s time for Mark Levin to return to his lists of facts and his prosecutorial style.
As a reminder, if you haven’t see it before, or simply need the refresher, this is what it’s like when Levin gets on one of his epic tears, here laying out the case that the Obama administration spied on Trump from Fox and Friends on March 5th, 2017, five years ago today:
The questions you must ask require that you first recognize that the Ukraine catastrophe is not an isolated event, separate and apart from all other events. I urge Mark Levin and anybody else digging into this to consider that we see all the same players involved in all of these matters, from Ukraine during the Obama administration, to the Russia Hoax of the Trump campaign, to SpyGate that extended into the Trump administration, the “Mueller Probe,” the first impeachment, the January 6th event, the second impeachment, and the election theft of 2020. What’s conspicuous by its absence from this list, that we ought not to omit? Once we add it to the list, the smoke begins to clear, and it all begins to make more sense: The Iran Nuclear Deal. Remember that the Iran Nuclear Deal was only made possible by a sell-out Republican Senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker(RINO,) who concocted a bill that allowed the Senate to bypass the treaty clause of the constitution, ignoring the necessity for a two-thirds vote for its ratification. Combine it all with the situation in Ukraine, and the behaviors of the Biden administration, and it all makes so much more sense.
I won’t tell you that I have all the details, but instead, I’m going to paint a broad-strokes picture. It would take somebody like a Levin to assemble a clearer picture, and indeed, today, Mark Levin provided another piece of the puzzle. He is so, so very close, and I believe if he returns to his dispassionate review of facts, and digs into this a bit harder, he’s going to put it together. I can almost hear the beginnings of the percolating of connections as he covers some of the facts. What Levin revealed is that the Biden administration is permitting the Russians to negotiate with Iran on behalf of the United States for the new nuclear deal. Remember the pallets of cash? There’s going to be much more. Much, much more. Biden has made concessions to the Russians, which is why this administration won’t do anything about Ukraine. It’s part of the deal. This is the part Mark Levin isn’t quite guessing yet, at least not clearly. Levin made mention of Ted Cruz’s National Security advisor, Victoria Coates. I hope he posts a link to the paper or article from which he’s drawing this information. (Update: One of my sharpest followers on Twitter found the story here. Thanks @ginthegin! If you don’t already, give her a follow!)
There is more that stinks in Ukraine than just the money-laundering of the Obama-Clinton-Biden gang. I told you nearly one week ago that based on reports of Biden providing security intelligence to the Russians via China, that I believed this was being done purposefully because Putin is going to carry out the cleanup in Ukraine, in exchange for the ability to have his way with that beleaguered, historically corrupt former Soviet satellite. This is the reason for the ineffective and purposefully ineffectual sanctions against Russia. In the end, I expect the Russians to control at least the Eastern half of Ukraine, if not the whole. This is being done with a wink and nod from the Biden administration. Why?
What would make people of this supposed stature so desperate that they would give up their money-laundry in Ukraine? What would make people like this yield and let the RUSSIANS(!!!!!!) carry out negotiations on behalf of the United States with Iran? What would make them do so? Talk about “COLLUSION!”
This is speculation, but Russia would be free to discuss anything they liked with the Iranians, even things quite damaging to the Americans involved, without any worry that it would ever be disclosed. There’s no FOIA to worry about in Russia. There’s nothing they couldn’t hide within these negotiations. As long as the final product is something they can shove through the Congress in the next few months, the sausage-making aspects of the agreement will remain forever opaque. The American people will never know, but Putin will have a permanent lever to use against these people. That lever will be whatever the Iranians already have, or at least knowledge of it. I don’t know what the Iranians have on the American Political Mafia, but it’s big. One rumor several years ago, a rumor I could not confirm, was that they had Osama bin Laden. Alive. It sounds just as fantastic now as it did then, but there was always something about the story that rang true. Of course, an extraordinary story of that sort would require equally extraordinary evidence, so I won’t posit this as the actual dirt, but if you use it as a proxy for the kind of dirt they must have, it would require something of that magnitude to explain the behavior we’ve witnessed.
The problem is that Putin was always going to demand “cash on the barrel-head” from these people. There will be no IOUs with Putin from this gang of American political mobsters. He needed payment up front, which meant: No sanctions of lasting consequence; any sanctions must be a functional fan-dances, but also, no interference in or substantial aid(particularly lethal) to Ukraine. Putin is going to clean up the evidence for these “DeepState” players, but the price is that he gets Ukraine, and who knows what else, ultimately. They pretend Putin’s insane. That’s misdirection and misinformation: He’s as coldly calculating as he’s ever been. He’s still a murderer, but right now, he’s their contract-killer.
Why? Why would they give up all of this? In part, the answer lies in the clean-up Putin is doing, but the greater will be in the clean-up he’s doing for them on the new Iran Deal he’s negotiating on their behalf. Levin has the first part of this figured out. He sees that the reason the Biden administration is doing nothing effective with respect to punishing Putin is because they’re in league with Putin. He may not be a team-mate, precisely, but he’s a contractor. He’s a hired hit-man. He’s behaving as their agent. If he disappears or outright kills Zelenskiy, so much the better. Despite what you may have heard, Zelenskiy is no angel either. He just has better press than his predecessor, and slightly less corruption. Rather than seeking to protect Zelenskiy, the American mobsters may very well want him taken out.
Why? I think they’re desperate to make the new deal with Iran. I think the reason Obama and Kerry and others spent so much time trying to talk to the Iranians during Trump’s presidency was to say “look, we’ll fix this, don’t burn us, we’ll fix it and we’ll get you greater concessions and even more cash. Just stick with us until we ditch Trump.” Remember Obama’s world-wide private shuttle-diplomacy during Trump’s presidency? Obama and his crew are being blackmailed by the Iranians. For what? They used Ukraine as a cut-out and as a money laundry. We’ve all assumed it was for mere greed on their parts, but was it something more? Who else was in on the grift? The reason they had to bring Putin in was because the Iranians no longer trust the Obama-Clinton-Biden gangsters. If you can imagine it, the Iranians consider Putin to be an “honest broker,” or at least a devil they’ll trust. He stands to gain mightily in all of this, as he’ll undoubtedly make sure Russia provides them the nuclear expertise to finally build their own nuclear-tipped ICBMs.
This is why they had to dispense with Trump. It has to be. Their actions were so outrageous, they pulled every string, they called in every marker, they sacrificed sleepers, and they made their play to steal the election with no regard to how obvious it would be. They pulled in every RINO, every DeepStaters, they used their corrupt federal judges, they played all their crooked friends at DOJ, including Bill Barr. They worked every line. Had they gotten Garland onto the Supreme Court, they’d have had this crook in the most important court. That doesn’t mean they didn’t sneak one in anyway.
You wonder why Amy Coney Barrett and Bret Kavanaugh now look to have been dud picks? Can you see it? Washington DC is full of people, everywhere, and in every guise, who are on the hook with this crowd. They played every angle. If they’re ever discovered and proven guilty, they’re on the hook for more than election fraud. This is treason, pure and simple. This is their gang making war against the United States and her people.
What is it that the Iranians have on these people? That’s what really lies at the bottom of this cesspool. If Mark Levin figures out that piece of it, and if he can substantially tie it back to the rest of these pieces, he’ll blow the lid off of it all like he did five years ago this week, when he put together the Spygate story, at least the basic guts of it. I fear for Mark. These people are ruthless. They’ve killed other prominent people to hide their crimes. If he uncovers too much, will he end up like Antonin Scalia? (Dead in bed with a pillow over his face? No autopsy, assumptions about his heart conditions and age, a quick cremation, and a family that looks as though they’ve been told: “Hey, everybody can be gotten-to?”)
I know this must all sound a little bit crazy, but I want you, my reader, to think carefully about what you’ve seen over the last dozen years. Why did Lindsey Graham do a two-year stint as chairman of a committee, shifting from another when he did? Mitch McConnell didn’t make that play accidentally. He put Graham there to guide through nominees for a particular purpose. It’s all very peculiar once you think about it. Lindsey Graham’s tough-talk about Putin is a smokescreen. The last thing he wants is Putin dead. That was a message to Putin. It was a signal, but not the sort you’d think based on its content. There’s a reason Kamala is being sent to Europe again, and it has nothing to do with peace. It has everything to do with avoiding the ever-listening ears of the NSA. Who better than the 3rd Term of the Obama Administration to understand the capabilities of our surveillance? It has to do with the fact that you never say over any electronic communications platform that which you do not want overheard, intercepted, or copied by anyone.
The freedom of the Ukrainian people is being sacrificed on the altar of the American political mafia that is the DC UniParty. Putin is not a mad-man. He’s a hired gun who will be paid handsomely for his efforts. Crimea was the first installment. At least the Eastern half of the Ukraine will be the second installment. Ask yourself what Rosemont Seneca was really all about. Why did it have dealings with EcoHealth Alliance? Ask yourself who really got paid after Rosatom secured the Uranium. It’s the same crowd. They’re in on all of it. “I’ll have more flexibility after this election.” You’re witnessing treason.
If somebody ever puts the full story together, we’re going to discover that these people are willing to see all of us reduced to glowing, irradiated ash, hopefully before they resort to that action.
As one positive note, it’s clear that Levin has finally realized that Bill Barr isn’t a good guy. Score that as a win. One of Levin’s biggest weaknesses is that he’s too easily played by the personal congeniality of these monsters, and they exploit it, and him, repeatedly. Their real aim is ever to exploit his audience. Dearest Mark needs to view them all as ruthless killers, smile at them, make nice, and assume they’re preparing to stick a shiv between his ribs, striking them first instead. (Figuratively speaking, of course.) We need Levin at the top of his analytical game, more now than ever. Maybe this time, it will fall to somebody else to figure it all out. There are amazingly enterprising researchers and investigators still around. The excellent reporter Julie Kelly comes to mind. She’s a pitbull when she sinks her teeth into a story. Let’s hope one of them picks up the mantle if Levin fails to spot it this time. I’m still hoping Mark will put it together. He’s a sharp guy, and I think he’s really close now. It’s too simple and it would be foolishly naïve to think it’s only about the left’s normal agenda of destroying America. It’s bigger than that, and it’s more brutally criminal than that. These people are personally invested in seeing this through in a way that suggests they’re covering-up something much more diabolical than the usual political subterfuge. There’s a reason Obama isn’t enjoying retirement, and it isn’t because he dreams of spending his days wrecking America from his basement in Martha’s Vineyard. His third term is about the survival of the American political mafia, or the “Deep State,” if you prefer. They’re all in now. Everything is on the line. Everything.
Update:At the time I wrote this post, Levin’s show of Friday, March 4th, 2022 was not yet available on his audio rewind page. It is now. Listen here.
Editor’s Note: For those who think the notion that Vladimir Putin could be “in on it” with these people is a ludicrous proposition, I’d remind you: Nothing in geopolitics is ever as it seems. Remember when Putin was loved in Hollywood? No? Remember this, from the era of Hillary’s infamous reset button:
The difficult chore of maintaining credibility in the era of FakeNews
It started in a big way last week. Dan Bongino violated his own self-imposed “72 hour rule” with the story of the Snake Island story from Ukraine. Before the weekend was over, he’d discovered that he’d been misled like so many others, promptly informing his listeners of that fact on Monday. Dan’s “72 hour rule” is that when some new story of bomb-shell proportions comes along, he tends to hold onto them in order to verify the stories multiple ways before repeating them to his audience. Many others have seemingly been duped, repeatedly, and it’s a real problem, because while they may not be the ones originating the story, they’re the ones repeating it to their audiences. From the point of view of their audiences then, for all intents and purposes, they are originating the stories. On Tuesday, as is my habit while driving home, and as soon as I walk in the door, I tuned into Mark Levin’s show. Levin, long my runaway favorite among talk-show hosts, began in on a story in which he described the workings and effects of thermobaric bombs. He explained that Russia was using them. He also explained that Russia was using cluster-bombs against civilian areas, despite the bombs having been banned for use against civilians. Within less than twenty hours, these reports had been smashed when Bongino said on air on Wednesday that these reports hadn’t panned-out. A little digging revealed that this had been a completely unconfirmed report, and initially, there was a video discounted as fake by the gentleman in charge of the political subdivision in which it had allegedly occurred. The claims about cluster bombs are likewise unconfirmed, except that in Eastern Ukraine, there’s some evidence the Ukrainian forces have used them. At this moment, there is still no firm evidence that either side has used them, but even as of this moment, you can surf over to Levin’s site for his Tuesday Recap page and find the unverified claims about their use by Russia, along with the false claim that these weapons are altogether forbidden. He also claimed during his on-air description that the thermobaric bombs constitute a chemical weapon, which they most certainly are not. All of this made it plain to me in a very painful way that my favorite among talk-show hosts, Mark Levin, a guy I have enjoyed more even than Rush over the years, had now joined the legion of outlets I generally consider #FakeNews. It’s both shocking and saddening to me. We have so few media outlets we can take at face value. Whether by negligence or intent or because they’ve simply been fooled by others, it’s clear now that just when we need them most, most all media, even supposed “conservative” media, lie to us in varying degrees. Though I neither feel it should be my place, nor do I feel I have the heart to do the matter full justice, I must now take on “the Great One,” for the sake of my own integrity.
This is and has been the greatest disappointment of the last several years, and it began during the era of Trump, not because of anything Trump did, but because since the rise of Trump, any pretense at objectivity has been ditched in mainstream media, from CNN to MSNBC to Reuters to FoxNews. Media outlets have become so uniformly unreliable in so many ways for people like talk-show hosts, who must rely upon valid and factual news stories to fuel the discussions they will spawn with their audiences. The underlying information is so frequently inaccurate that talk-show hosts are finding it difficult to stay ahead of the fake news injected at light-speed into the conversation. Don’t misunderstand me to have said that I believe Mark Levin or Dan Bongino are liars, but that they now serve as a conduit through which lies are smuggled to their predominantly conservative audiences. I don’t believe this is their intention, but I suspect that applies to many other talkers. It’s that they’ve come to rely on sources that are corrupt or corruptible. It’s happened to me a time or two over the last eleven years here on this blog, usually in very small ways I’ve rushed to correct. The problem is that at the speed with which information now propagates upon its release in modern media, a lie can do real damage to our world, in ways that could be measured in millions of lives.
When the pandemic coverage had begun in 2020, I’d already suspected Fauci of giving us all a load of internally inconsistent nonsense. From a logical point of view, many of his pronouncements didn’t make sense. His answers were either unnecessarily evasive or expressed with unjustifiable certitude. Some of it was simply nonsensical. Mark Levin was among the first people in conservative media who featured Fauci as a guest, on his show on Foxnews. Fauci used Levin’s credibility with his conservative audience to ensnare them with his now largely-debunked and almost completely refuted narratives. I dare Mark Levin to now go back and re-watch the garbage he permitted Fauci to spew under the banner of “Life, Liberty and Levin,” and tell me that somehow, he feels unashamed for having failed his audience. He should feel pain if he now re-watches that episode, particularly considering that people made life-and-death-level decisions based on Fauci’s pronouncements early on. Mark Levin is a trusted source among conservatives like me. You can do the math. The fact that Fauci was saying these things on Levin’s show made them seem more reliable. Silly, gullible me. While I still didn’t trust Fauci, I did trust Mark Levin, and Fauci had now been given Levin’s virtual imprimatur. Fool me once…
Less than one year later, on January 6th, 2021, I listened as Mark Levin came on the radio and raged against the rioters at the Capitol on that day. He railed against the people at the Capitol, as if they were the terrorists my gut said they hadn’t really been, at least most of them. I listened, and I began to get that sickly feeling of disappointment. Was Levin falling for another false story? Since then, Levin has clearly realized, due to in-depth reporting by people like Julie Kelly, that he wasn’t getting the full story then, either. This entire episode had been frustrating to me because I actually know a man who observed some of what went on at the Capitol that day, during the event, from outside the Capitol, where he could see much of what was going on. While he never went into or anywhere near the scrum going on outside, he was in a position to see that there were numerous and obvious provocateurs. He told me that at one point, it became clear to him that at least some of the Capitol Police appeared to be acting in collusion with some of the provocateurs. Many innocent dupes followed the provocateurs into the Capitol, and my friend could see this happening. Some of the dupes were even drawn into a melee with police by the provocateurs, which happens quite easily in a crowd this size. As these events were happening, I was in my office listening to accounts of it, live on the radio, wondering immediately if this was another DC-UniParty setup. Why wasn’t that Levin’s first instinct? He has enough experience to have spotted it. I live half a continent away, but I can smell DC BS from the other side of the planet these days. This event had that stench from the beginning. Despite our shared experience of the last several years, for more than a few radio hosts, it wasn’t so obvious for some reason, but should have been. Instead, we got the usual “we condemn all violence” business, in a fashion no different than Chris Wallace repeatedly demanding that Trump denounce white supremacists on the debate stage, starting from the ridiculous premise that Trump were some sort of racist who now needed to renounce such associations. Conservatives must lose their fear of these smear-jobs, because it cripples them, not only politically but also intellectually, which is the intent of the smear-artists. For all appearances to the world, Levin and many other hosts were pushing the mainstream media, DC UniParty narrative, again.
Levin is a passionate advocate for positions in the information sphere, as am I, which is undoubtedly a large measure of what draws me to his broadcasts daily. I don’t make decisions about issues or candidates on the basis of emotion, but instead take a firm and careful accounting of them. Once I’ve done so, I then apply my passion to the conclusions I’ve drawn in explaining an issue or advocating a particular stance. The problem that arises for people like Mark Levin, Dan Bongino, or anybody else in the broadcast space is that things move incredibly fast. Information blasts in and out, and it is updated and superseded by better, more accurate information, but also sometimes more bogus, inflated, and hyped information. It happens constantly. In this environment, one is going to make judgments about the newsworthiness of a story in an accelerated frame of reference, and it will necessarily lead to a much higher rate of error than it will, for instance, on a lowly blog published in the backwaters of the Internet. Some of the posts here are composed, fact-checked, and pushed out in thirty minutes or less, but those are rare. In the main, the postings on this site will have taken hours to compose, sometimes days, or longer, and I’ve been known to table a story indefinitely if I think my information isn’t solid enough. If you were to have access to what’s here, you would see that I have almost half as many posts in “draft” status as the almost fourteen-hundred posts that have been published over the span of years. Those drafts are posts you cannot see, and many of them you will likely never see, but this is the process. If a story just doesn’t stand up as I think it should, it’s never published. That’s born of the luxury of knowing I’ll almost never be “first” with a story, and that all I can offer is a unique perspective, or new details you hadn’t been presented before, and because the speed at which I present information is far less important to my audience than the idea that I get it right.
Levin sometimes has excellent instincts. In March of 2017, based on a smattering of seemingly unrelated stories across several media outlets including McClatchy and the New York Times, Levin’s good instinct for political chicanery by Democrats led him to piece together the story we’ve all come to know is SpyGate, which actually encompasses a whole universe of sub-scandals, from spying on the Trump campaign and presidency, to the use of that information to concoct two fake impeachment narratives. The chicanery also revealed what should be the biggest scandal of all: The corruption of the FISA system by actors within the Justice Department and the FBI, along with others both directing and participating in these activities in the administration, and on the FISA court. What Levin’s instinct (and experience within the DOJ)provided him was the starting point for unveiling what should be known as the greatest scandal in American history, but for the fact that the corrupt and corruptible media will never willingly report on it. Claims that Levin is incapable of stellar research and investigation are to be ignored. It’s clear he has the experience and clear-eyed thinking to analyze such things. Why does it seem, of late, that he’s not nearly so clear-eyed in his appraisals? We can always forgive errors born of honest intent, but the problem is that media will attack even for those sorts of instances.
Levin bitterly complained after a small error in his most recent book, runaway New York Times best-seller American Marxism, was made out to be a mortal sin by a few among the chattering class in the leftist mainstream media. In general, his books are extremely informative and well-written. They’re amazingly well-researched and thoroughly documented. Few authors go to the lengths to provide the citations that Levin routinely does within the pages of his books. The problem is that when those critics reviewing your books are doing so with a political bias and intent, what you get instead of honest critiques are partisan hit-jobs. Levin made the error of writing “Franklin School” instead of “Frankfurt School,” as if that’s not an easy mistake to make and and a more difficult error to spot in editing. From the point of view of the full-tilt leftist media, this was the worst scandal in literary history, and they used it to libel him mercilessly. There’s a vast difference between an innocent error and the intentional falsehoods leftists publications gin through their presses and websites daily.
One of the problems is that in broadcasting, information moves extremely rapidly, and if you let yourself become emotionally invested in your conclusions about a given story too quickly, you’re going to get burned, quickly losing the trust of your audience, particularly if you don’t forthrightly confront the story’s inaccuracies or plain falsehoods promptly, as Bongino did on Monday and again Wednesday. In the case of Mark Levin, I’ve come to a crossroad due to this trouble. As a matter of loyalty for all his years of hard work, honest advocacy, and excellent programming, I am easily persuaded to give him another chance. And another. And probably several more. The crisis I’m beginning to experience is that this has become something of a trend, but more importantly, he surely became aware between his broadcasts of Tuesday and Wednesday that the use of thermobaric or cluster bombs (by either party) in the war in Ukraine are unconfirmed. I listened intently to the whole of his Wednesday broadcast, as I do most days, waiting for him to step right into the matter and clear it up. He never did.
Another sin of Levin’s is made up of his best intentions to advance conservatism. On many more than one occasion, due to his desire to defeat the left, he’s let alleged conservatives on the air, generally Republicans seeking election/re-election, who come on to use his platform in a political season, often seeking his endorsement or even just the legitimacy among conservatives lent to them by appearing on his airwaves. Lindsey Graham? Kevin McCarthy? There are more. Too many, really. I remember yelling at my radio, riding down the road “Mark, why do you bring these RINOs on your program? They’re going to screw you and betray us as soon as they’re re-elected.” Well? Have they? Yes, sadly they have. Levin himself was gently commenting on this recently. He knows. What he may not realize is how thoroughly it harms his credibility.
Since the beginning of the Russian attack on Ukraine, Levin has begun to bang the pots and pans indicating he’s very much in favor of some kind of intervention, or at least assistance to the beleaguered people of Ukraine. It’s leading him to accept too quickly the dis/misinformation he’s getting from some source(s), perhaps at Foxnews, or perhaps elsewhere. This has begun to seriously impact his credibility. On Wednesday evening, my worst fears in this vein were realized when he began gushing over Never-Trumper FoxNews Pentagon Correspondent, Jennifer Griffin, who’s a known leftist, clearly committed to corrupting news over at FoxNews. She’s one of the demons involved in the fake, ridiculous story about Trump at Normandy back in 2018, in which he allegedly called service-members who died there “suckers.” At the time of the story, Griffin said she was “unable to confirm the more salacious details,” implying she had confirmed the less salacious details, which naturally, she hadn’t. The whole story was later debunked, but as usual, the debunking never received coverage to scale of its the story’s original propagation. If this is one of Levin’s routine sources on national security matters, then nothing he says on the subject is even remotely reliable any longer. I get it: He’s not a reporter, but he still has some obligation to the facts, and he needs to be more discerning in selecting his sources. Neither Griffin nor Baier, both to whom Levin seems to have some unusual attachment, are what I would consider reliable or even particularly passable sources. Before going on an anger-fueled rant about how he’d happily provide his own weapons to the people of Ukraine, perhaps it would be a good idea to verify the reports of cluster-bombs and thermobaric bombs allegedly employed by the Russians. When it turns out, less than one day later, that the stories were either false or at least unverified, what then can he say to pull back on the bombast? It’s too late. Elvis has left the building. The best he can do is to retract the story later, but how does he then retract the bombast? He almost certainly won’t. He’s likely to leave that part stand, despite being at least partially motivated by the false stories. This is the danger of the passion when driven by unchecked or unverified information. As of now, he’s still letting the thermobaric and cluster bomb stories stand. I suppose he hopes we won’t notice, or that the unverified stories will become verified, or even mooted by future verified use.
Bongino was more measured Wednesday, having mostly abandoned the narrative that Putin had become unhinged and “irrational,” instead pulling it back to “unpredictable.” The interesting part about that is that in times past, Bongino had criticized Biden for destroying any “strategic ambiguity,” while praising Trump for having maintained it. “Strategic ambiguity” consists, in part, of unpredictability. On Monday and Tuesday, he had relentlessly pounded on the idea that Putin was perhaps irrational or even insane. It doesn’t help that this has been the mainstream media and UniParty narrative. Here is Hillary Clinton from Tuesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show:
Notice that Clinton questions Putin’s state of mind too. It’s foolish to assume your enemy is a crackpot because he’s become less predictable. In time of War, I would in many respects seek to make myself as unpredictable as possible to adversaries and enemies. It would be my intention to keep them guessing, and I’d want them to worry mightily about my willingness to ratchet-up the intensity or scope of the war. Bongino likes to talk about how President Trump had maintained a cloak of “strategic ambiguity” around his foreign policy intentions. Why would Putin behave differently? In contrast, Clinton famously had her reset button with the Russians while serving as Secretary of State, a job she was woefully ill-equipped to perform. Fortunately for her, it did give her access to bilk much of the globe with her Clinton Foundation. It was strictly a cash-and-carry operation, and there was no “strategic ambiguity” in it. Her mission was to cart away cash, and Russia fully understood it.
The other thing clear in the video is that the DC UniParty establishment is trying to capture the mantle of Ronald Reagan, as they continue their anti-Trump narrative. People like Levin and Bongino need to think very carefully about who’s providing the information they now rely upon to make pronouncements about Ukraine. If I could ask either man a question, I think I might pose it this way:
Consider the following list of names: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Mitt Romney, Adam Schiff, Susan Rice, Eric Swalwell, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Fiona Hill, “Colonel” Vindman, Victoria Nuland, Ron Klain, and Jake Sullivan.
Now consider the events in Ukraine since roughly 2004. Then consider the activities of that list of people(and other cohorts) over the intervening period. Then, consider the following facts: In 2014, with funding and assistance from the US State Department, US DOD, and various US intelligence agencies, there was a coup d’etat in Ukraine. Essentially, the US fomented and funded regime-change in Ukraine. Ever since, the narrative in DC by the establishment, particularly the Democrats, has been “Russia, Russia, Russia.” Even Mitt Romney talked about Russia in his debate appearance, but Obama immediately deflected the question by mocking Romney. Had Romney inadvertently let a cat escape the proverbial bag?
Now ask: How many of the people listed above were involved in the RussiaHoax/SpyGate, the First Impeachment of Trump, the Second Impeachment of Trump, and how many had a hand in the January sixth story, events, and subsequent narrative? How many are now pushing the official DC UniParty’s Ukraine narrative, in concert with corrupt and corruptible media?
The media lies endlessly to us, and those lies don’t stop with events beyond the water’s edge. Meanwhile, I have to hear Levin questioning the patriotism of Americans who are questioning the official DC narrative, or suggesting they’re Russophiles or similar garbage. That’s what I expect from Hillary Clinton, so that when I hear it coming from the radio in Mark Levin’s voice, I must ask him: “What in the Hell are you thinking?” Why would Mark Levin now take up the “Russia, Russia, Russia” allegations of Hillary Clinton only to aim them against members of his own audience? On the basis of information from which sources? Jennifer-freaking-Griffin???
These two men have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity for intense investigations and research, but they’ve been steered in the Ukraine story largely by emotion, driven by many false stories, false narratives, and imagery that’s been created but unsubstantiated in far too many cases. In media generally, we’ve been shown a story about Miss Ukraine, bearing arms and ready to fight, but the rifle she’s pictured with is an airsoft rifle, (airsoft being a sport she enjoys.) We’ve been told about the “Ghost of Kiev,” by such low-lifes as Adam Kinzinger, that has turned out to be an utter hoax. The Snake Island story turned out to be propaganda in the larger dimension: It appears that rather than having been killed after telling their Russian attackers to “Go F’ themselves,” they laid down their arms in surrender, and are now all safe, albeit disarmed and removed from the battlefield. We’ve had a member of the Ukrainian Parliament tell the world that she’s fighting “not only for Ukraine, but for the New World Order.” We’ve had every manner of false story propagating, not merely from the combatants, but particularly from the Western media. The number of fabricated, concocted stories coming out of the war zone are far too numerous to list here. Even the imagery is frequently suspect, as reported elsewhere on this site.
That Levin and Bongino walked into some of these stories is no surprise. I too was sucked into one of them early on. The Snake Island story recalled the bravado and courage of the Alamo, until it didn’t. What’s been surprising and disappointing is how thoroughly Levin has been entirely swamped by some of it. Bongino corrected the record, in his defense and to his credit. So far, Levin has not, and he’s not backed-off his bombastic declarations about his willingness to ship arms to a country that has been a playground for the DC UniParty’s money-launderers. The alleged brave acts(it’s not that I doubt the bravery of Ukrainians, but only the veracity of this narrative) are being pushed in media with a reckless disregard for fact-checking and verification, which is the definition of war-time propaganda. The “fog of war” only clears if we work to make that hapen. It’s important for talkers to right their ships when they get a story wrong. Sometimes, it’s understandable and forgivable if the host makes amends by leading with the truth or a correction at the next available opportunity, as Bongino has done this week. We need solid information, and while I still want the passion both men bring to their respective endeavors in media, I have to insist that they improve their information-vetting, by reconsidering the sources they now employ. Clearly, some of those sources are of dubious veracity. I enjoy the presentations of each man, both interesting and entertaining, as well as bracing and motivating, but I need the foundation to be solid. Everybody makes mistakes, me included, but there are innocent errors and errors of incomplete information, but there are also errors born of haste, undue passion, lack of due diligence and malice. I expect the former to happen from time to time, and they are entirely generally to be forgiven upon forthright correction. The other sort, when they become habitual, threaten to turn an outlet or a show into nothing better than another mainstream media outlet: Corrupt or corruptible. This also applies to many others in the conservative space. In a moment of excess passion, it could easily happen to me. We must fight against this kind pollution of facts driven by our own intemperance, but we must also hold outlets and hosts accountable. I need Levin to correct the record, telling his audience that reports of thermobaric bombs or cluster bombsintentionally targeting civilians are unconfirmed, unverified reports at this time. In fact, their use at all remains unverified. These weapons are indeed nasty, but the US has employed cluster-bombs too. Ask the Iraqis. Ask the Afghans. What makes their use illegal, like so many weapons of war, is their use in the intentionaltargeting of civilians. Under various international treaties and conventions, doing so constitutes a war crime. It’s important for Levin to fix this at the next opportunity, and as ever, at least for the moment, I’ll be listening this evening to see if he will.
Donald Rumsfeld once [in]famously remarked that “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” This remark was accurate, even though it was widely and wildly criticized by leftists who have no understanding of national defense. The sentiment is easy enough to understand: You do not always get the luxury of preparing endlessly for war. Sometimes, the need to go to war supersedes your ability to abstain from or delay it for more ideal conditions or state of readiness. Sadly, this is sometimes true of presidents as well. If the United States were to be attacked suddenly by nuclear strikes originating in Russia, for instance, it really wouldn’t matter who the president at the time might be. That president would be expected to respond with equal or greater ferocity, irrespective of party or politics. The problem we now face as a country borders on the galactically absurd. We have in the Oval office a foolish, apparently dementia-addled old man, who is apparently not in good control of his bowel, never mind his mouth or intellectual capacity. He ought to be removed under the 25th amendment, come what may, but the people who’ve been using him as their meat-mask have no intention of seeing that happen. We are in mortal danger, but under this President, Joe Biden, we cannot risk any unnecessary wars. It is the height of unconscionable madness to permit it. I realize that sometimes, a country must go to war with the president in charge at the time, but this is not that situation, and I condemn any who would suggest otherwise. No, we must not now go to war with the president we’ve got.
Ukraine is under attack by a hostile, monstrous actor. Vladimir Putin is despicable, but he also has the advantage of owning the superior forces over the terrain in question. It’s not a matter of caring, because any person can look in horror at the Hell Putin now imposes on the people of that stricken nation and understand the misery they now suffer. It’s a matter of practical reality. We are in no position to do anything unless our answer is a nuclear first strike against Russia, but that’s an intolerably bad option for all of the obvious reasons. We have no significant bases nearby from which we could operate the number of air sorties needed to put up any sort of sustained defense of Ukrainian airspace, though it is possible we could park an aircraft carrier battle group in the Black Sea. That’s an extraordinarily risky proposition when you intend to poke the Russian bear within easy reach of their air assets. We are poorly positioned, and Putin knows it. He’s been watching and assessing NATO for decades. He knows our NATO allies have barely maintained their responsibilities in the alliance. He knows they’ve all been cheating. He knows they are all incredibly weak, and weakened more by their oppressions of their own populations as part of their COVID responses. He knows they’ve repressed their own dissidents, and he can legitimately throw the political dagger of “hypocrisy” at them with no trouble.
He also knows that America is now weak, with obviously weak and ineffectual leadership that is more concerned with punishing their own countrymen than in prosecuting a war in a country most of the corrupt US leaders would sooner see destroyed, in part to hide their corruption over decades. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Mitt Romney along with their adult children and many others in the DC cocktail-party circuit would be only too happy if Ukraine’s current leadership came to an obscure and quiet end. Between 1999-2014, the Clinton foundation carted over $10 million dollars from the oligarchs there. They’ve used it as their personal piggy-bank for more than two decades, laundering money in and out of that small and easily corrupted country. Their current president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is apparently an actual reformer, and none of them can tolerate that, particularly Putin, who has used it as the base from which to compromise Western politicians, particularly Americans, none of whose names are Trump.
The only question in Washington DC is how to play it for maximum waggage. (As in wag-the-dog.) None of the people now in charge in DC have any intention of rescuing Zelenskiy. The truth is that they want him gone for all the same reasons Putin does. He can’t have Zelenskiy or his reformer government burning his purchased assets in Washington. It’s better to make it all just go away, and to bury any evidence or witnesses with it. Others had suggested that the Russian “Invasion of Ukraine” narrative had been an entirely invented story line to give Biden a moment to talk and act tough to distract from the massive failures of his administration, but as facts on the ground now demonstrate, the threat was always very real. Maintaining an Army in the field is expensive, and the larger the force, the more expensive and difficult it becomes. When it was clear that Putin had more than one-hundred-thousand troops deployed along the borders of Ukraine, it became clear to me that this was more than idle bluffing.
It could be observed that the pronouncements from both the White House and the State Department seemed almost to goad Putin into attacking. On the one hand, they made threats that all parties knew were idle, while on the other, they openly admitted their inability and unwillingness to do much to stop it. “You’d better not, or we’ll kick your ass, even though we’re in no position to do so, and really don’t have the resolve to do so,” they effectively blustered and admitted at once.
There’s one other issue I’d like to tackle, and it’s with those who seem to be insisting “we MUST do something.” This element doesn’t seem to like that the vast bulk of the American people seem understandably to have no interest in doing much about the situation in Ukraine. Polls seem to suggest that something like thirty percent of Democrats and twenty percent of Republicans believe the US should have any significant role in Ukraine. To this element in our country, I suggest they take a look around and smell the crap they’re shoveling. One, a radio host I have always liked, pointed out for the second consecutive day that after all, ours is a volunteer military, as if that means something to the argument for going to war, and he’s right, it does: A volunteer military requires the people to follow orders just like a conscripted military, with the difference that what makes that volunteer force viable is their understanding that their chain of command will not make frivolous or futile use of them. It’s one of only a couple of times in my history of listening to Mark Levin that I very nearly turned him off. I know there are dolts who have come to believe, inexplicably, that the killer Putin is some sort of good guy in disguise, but I’m not one of those, and Mr. Levin ought to be more careful before he begins to conflate America First patriots with these.
I don’t know what’s in Mr. Levin’s head when he says a thing like that. I was a volunteer too, when I was fortunate enough to have a great commander-in-chief in President Ronald Reagan. Neither was he without flaws. Eight days before I reported for Basic Training, 241 servicemembers – Marines(220), Sailors(18) and Soldiers(3) – were slaughtered in Beirut. When I went through boot camp, the mostly Vietnam combat veteran drill instructors all believed we were inevitably going to war. We believed it too. They drilled us like it, and they trained us with a vigor and intensity prior classes that year probably hadn’t experienced. They were tough as nails, maybe more than usual, because they believed we trainees would be called upon to go to Lebanon. That call never came, but I believe to this day that every one of us who graduated that training cycle were beneficiaries, because they more scrupulously got rid of the duds, pushed us to the physical, emotional, and intellectual limits, making us better soldiers. The point is that President Ronald Reagan did not send in more Marines, Sailors, or Soldiers. In point of fact, he pulled them out. When that was the result, I remember that the sentiment in the military community was not all that happy about it. Nobody wants to see their fellow servicemembers slaughtered, particularly to no purpose, and definitely without punitive response. At the time, it didn’t sit well, even though it was potentially our necks on the line had Reagan sent more troops instead of withdrawing them.
In the longer run, however, I came to take a more mature view of what Reagan did, or more properly, didn’t do. He evaluated the terrain, he looked at who we faced, and what the probability would be that more troops would merely make for more concentrated targets, far from home, to be attacked by small groups or individual suicide bombers where the mission was already murky and hadn’t borne the expected fruit. He looked at our allies in the region, and how he might augment and support the mission, and finally decided there wasn’t an attainable military objective that could be reasonably achieved without unreasonable losses. In short, President Reagan made an entirely rational choice. He likely wanted retribution against them as much as any of us. He wrote the hundreds of letters to wives and mothers and fathers and children. He knew the unambiguous costs. Strangely, I would later intersect with Reagan’s foreign policy again, in April 1986, when a Berlin discotheque was bombed, killing US Servicemembers. It was a strange turn of events that led my unit to serve briefly as replacements in Berlin in September of that year. Reagan did exact a punishment on the bad guys in this case, being Ghaddafi and his ring of terrorist henchmen, within ten days sending a bombing raid to Tripoli that nearly got the “Colonel.”
My point in all of this is that it’s very easy to look at the situation in Ukraine and desire to be able to put a stop to it. The sickening truth is that when we pretended, starting with President George HW Bush, that there was some “peace dividend” to be obtained from the end of the Cold War, it was foolishness, and an instance of utter stupidity that only anti-military pukes like the Clintons could love. They exploited it, too. Rather than realizing that the “peace dividend” from the ending of the Cold War was peace itself, we pretended that we could reduce our defense spending. Adjusting for inflation, to spend at our Cold War defense-spending peak in 1986, a year in which we spent an astounding $295 billion, in today’s dollars, we should be spending roughly $1.2 trillion. Instead, in 2019, we were spending roughly $740 billion. At the turn of the century, after two terms of Clinton, we had fallen to $320 billion when we ought to have been closer to $500 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, and the percentage of GDP expended on our military had fallen from 6.63% in 1986 to 3.11% in 2000. Even now, we’re only slightly better, at 3.41% of GDP, as of 2019, so that we’re at slightly more than half as much military spending as a percentage of our GDP than we had been in 1986, a time when many, myself included, believe the US Army was at or near its peak in training and morale. (See stats here.)
Europe is far worse. Trump was not only right about European nations’ contributions to NATO, but their underlying defense expenditures are cratering. Since Trump left, they’ve fallen off a cliff, with reports that the German Army couldn’t deploy sufficient forces to repel successfully much of anything. In short, Europe has left themselves virtually defenseless, with the brief exception of the period of Trump’s presidency, with only new NATO member Poland substantially upholding the promise of expending at least two percent of their national GDP on defense. The United States has been bearing the burdens of defending Europe for most of a century now, yet we cannot get them to pay to defend themselves, and there is no will under the current administration in Washington DC to hold NATO’s feet to the fire. In 2020, Germany barely attained 1.57% of its GDP in defense spending, and that was after extensive prodding from President Trump. When he took office, the Germans were spending roughly 1.1% on defense. In short, don’t look to Berlin for help.
This is the realistic assessment of the terrain in Europe: NATO has fallen into severe disrepair, from the end of the Cold War, until Trump came along to prod them beginning in 2017, but has since fallen back into the same rut, with the blame naturally being placed on CoVid19. At this point, the United States should be telling NATO: “That’s it. We’re cutting you off. We’re bringing home our troops unless you get to your spending goals AND make up for all the years of shortfalls within the decade.”
Of course, we’re no more likely to get that from this administration that we are to have a competent president, never mind commander-in-chief. More, this administration is incapable of waging an effective war of any kind, anywhere, at any time. They’ve diverted our military into concerns with all things “woke,” and if you think this is Ronald Reagan’s military of 1986, technology notwithstanding, you need your head examined. Quickly. Yes, of course we still have some good war-fighters in our military, but they’re now a pathetic minority within the ranks, and in the officer corps, they’re getting pretty thin as the service academies have been infiltrated by more and more social justice schlock, as modern “education” theories take precedence over what had traditionally worked. I would like you to watch the first six and one-fourth minutes of this episode of Bannon’s War Room. In those first few minutes, he presents what he calls his “cold open,” and in it are various clips, including three recruiting ads, one for NATO, one for the Russian Army, and one for the US Army. If you don’t see the problem, again, you need your head examined:
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been reporting to you the state of our nation, and more generally, or our globe in one way or another for more than a decade at this web address. While my posts have been more infrequent in recent years, it’s not for a lack of concern. People are foolishly insisting now that “we must do something,” but look at the state of our country. I ask them: What would you have us do? We have feckless leaders, corrupt and intransigent to the suffering and travails of the American people. We have a military that, but for a brief reprieve under Trump, has been diminished and demolished, it’s morale wrecked along with its ethos. We have a corrupted Justice Department that behaves as the hitmen for the government mafia. We have an FBI that actively plots to entrap citizens, in shenanigans of that agency’s complete contrivance and invention. We have a Department of State that openly plots against elected presidents it does not like, and we have an intelligence community that actively seeks to surveil and undermine a president it did not and would not obey. We have an opposition party that barely musters any sort of fight against any of this, in large measure because they’re not really opposed. We have public health officials who collude with big pharma to poison the American people and hide the data. We have whole segments of the population committed to destroying the country from within, including local officials, many bought-off by globalist pigs like Soros and Schwab. You actually expect, in this condition, and in this state of being, that the remarkably few American people who realize what is going on, to volunteer their children into a war on behalf of this? Of this???
Do not tell me that we must go to war with the President we’ve got. I’m heartbroken at what I’ve seen thus far from Ukraine, like any other compassionate, thoughtful human must be. I know that Putin’s mission is to exterminate Zelenskiy and his entire cabinet. His intention is to expunge them from the face of the globe. Worse, the scumbags running Washington DC have every reason to help him do so. There’s too much evidence of theircorruption over in that tiny country. There’s too much evidence of how they were controlled from the Kremlin. They don’t want to save Zelenskiy or Ukraine. They want to bury Zelenskiy and his cabinet, they’re willing to burn Ukraine to the ground to do it, and they’re helping Putin carry it out. Meanwhile, the American economy is spiraling into a stagflationary period that will make the Carter years look like a boom. (It was once a joke that Jimmy Carter was thankful to Obama, and then Biden(but I repeat myself) for knocking him from the top of the “worst president’s ever” list, but nobody’s really laughing any longer. We’re in freefall, and every sensible person knows it.)
In the midst of all of this, those of you who wish to “do something” need to get a grip on your emotions, and understand what we’re really up against now. We’re fighting for the survival of this country, right here, right now. That great wealth or influence might offer insulation to some is no excuse for the indifference in the sentiment contained in the idea that Americans are somehow defective if they don’t wish to rush off to war against Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. We know it’s another nasty set-up, just like all the ones deployed against us here at home. We know the score. We know, because every damned “conspiracy theory” (or most of them) of the last two decades have been proven mostly true. We know Zelenskiy is the good guy. We know. Meanwhile, we listen to buffoons like Lindsey Graham, whose military experience consisted of walking papers around a Judge Advocate General’s office, pontificate about the privations we will suffer due to this crisis. It’s not enough as it is, you see; Goober would have us suffer more.
Now I have to endure a berating monologue from a radio host I have long supported because I’m in no hurry to see my younger, ill-prepared brethren in uniform sent off to do something somewhere? For what purpose? To what end? For the sake of the need to “do something?” No sir. I will not support going to war with this class of criminals who run our country. I will not support the spilling of so much as one drop of their blood on behalf of these cretins. They’ve spent decades demolishing the country, and it’s not just the Democrats, though they’re today the mob bosses in charge. When we had a president who was not part of their mob, they tried, like the gangsters they are, to take him out in any way that they could. They used their vast criminal enterprise, posing as lawful suits at the bar of corrupt courts, undermining the integrity of our election, all because Trump had to go.
Years ago, I counseled young people to serve a term of enlistment in the military if their life plans were not firm after finishing high school. I told them it was the best thing they could do for themselves, while also serving their country. It was true in my time, but it hasn’t been for most of a half-generation. Even in Trump’s time, the military was already thoroughly undermined from the top, ever since Obama purged the Generals now more than a decade ago.
I truly do feel terribly for the Ukrainian people. I know that like most ordinary people everywhere, they simply want to be left to live their lives, mostly in peace. I know their current president is a reformer, and if it were possible, I would try to rescue he and his countrymen from the Russians. The problem is that it is not currently possible. More, the people running this country don’t actually want it saved. I am as powerless to change that today, in the here and now, as any other American. Shall we overthrow this government so that we can retroactively spend the defense dollars we should have spent, and undo all the stupidity and malfeasances of the last three decades? How will that help Zelenskiy? More, we didn’t raise a credible effort to overthrow this government when it conspired against the President we elected. We didn’t raise a credible effort to overthrow this government when it obviously conspired with various state and local officials and NGOs to steal our presidential election and elections for lower offices. It’s not merely Joe and Kamala who are illegitimate. Chuck Schumer is illegitimate in his leadership position, because neither Mark Kelly nor Rafael Warnock, among others, actually won their races. Nancy Pelosi is illegitimate, because there were at least a half-dozen closely contested races that were likely impacted by the same cheating. Do you really believe John James lost his Senate race in Michigan? I don’t.
No, Mr. Levin, don’t tell me we should spill blood or treasure, no matter how strongly we might feel about it, for the sake of Ukraine or President Zelenskiy. Until we spill all the blood and treasure needed to rescue our own fallen nation, don’t dare speak of it to me. You haven’t earned the right. If you wish to characterize me as America First, as though it were a slur of some kind, so be it. I’ll stand by it. Don’t worry, I won’t burn any of the autographed books that fill half a shelf, in part not only because I hate book-burners and wanton, pointless destruction, but also because, with the way things are rapidly heading, I may need them soon for that purpose to cook my supper. Shall we go to war with the president we’ve got? Respectfully, that depends on the contextual meaning of “with,” sir. With him in Ukraine?
Hell no.
Editor’s Note: I’ve been a big fan of Mark Levin for a long time, and in the past, I’ve contributed to the Landmark Legal Foundation, of which he served as President for several years. I don’t mean here to personally attack Mr. Levin, but I fail to understand his point of view on this particular issue. I always feel badly when I find myself at severe disagreement with the Great One, but on this point, I will not demur. Our country cannot now defend itself, and its leaders prevent its agents and officers from defending even our Southern border. They file suits at law against states, like my own, who attempt to enforce the laws of the United States, and even when ordered by courts to do so, effectively play a stalling game, and a game of “you can’t make me” with federal judges who dare to rule against them, up to and including the Supreme Court. So long as we have a lawless government, I support only wars of immediate existential circumstances for the United States. I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States, and it does not expire, no matter who now has claimed the authority to ignore it.
I watched much of Lindell’s CyberSymposium in South Dakota this week with great interest. (I’ve attached some of the most compelling videos at the end of the article.) There were some problems, and his symposium came under attack, and reportedly, Lindell himself was the object of some sort of attack. (I’ve attached some of the most compelling video at the end of the article.) In the end, I don’t know if anybody is going to attempt to claim the five million dollars he offered as a challenge. I don’t even know if that really matters. Instead, what emerged for me most of all was something deeply troubling. I’m not referring to the Cyber-attacks launched against his event. I’m not talking about the various ridiculous media hit-pieces launched even before the event had really begun. All of that is terrible. I saw an examination of images purported to have been snapshots of drives from Mesa County, Colorado Dominion EMS Servers. If real, this would be damning. It was incredible. The mathematical presentations of Dr. Douglas Frank, and Seth Keshel were sobering. All of this was incredible. With mock elections, his team showed how elections could be hacked and results changed. There was every kind of information, although I’m still not clear on what happened with the P-CAPs. As good or as bad as it may have been, depending on your perspective, what is undeniable is that while he was presenting, other parties, potentially including a Federal District Court judge, colluded or conspired(or just coincidentally by an act of seeming unnatural, implausible synchronicity) did everything they could to defame him and his event from minute one. They announced at the outset that two of the news outlets covering it (Newsmax and OAN) had been sued by Dominion Voting Systems, that morning, apparently for daring to cover the event. Yesterday, a Federal Judge ruled that a case against Lindell by Dominion could go forward. Terrible. All terrible. As much as that may teach us about the people arrayed against Lindell, none of that bothers me nearly so much as the other thing I learned: They really wanted it silenced. FoxNews was crickets. Talk radio was dead silent. The podcasters of note said not a syllable. Not one. Despite taking who knows how many millions of his advertising dollars, on FoxNews, Lindell couldn’t beg a mention of his Symposium, or even buy it. On Levin’s and Bongino’s shows and platforms, I heard not a word. Not one. In fact, they all seemed to be studiously avoiding it. Lindell was abandoned by most of his media “friends” before the event ever began.
I don’t know the truth of it, but I know this: The conservatives in our country have become wholly unreliable, not in terms of the information they provide, but in terms of their willingness to walk out even a little way onto a limb. So terrified are they of having it sawn off behind them that they cannot summon the courage even to mention the event. It’s as if it didn’t exist. They don’t want to touch it, and I understand all the reasons. I really do. For one thing, they can see how Dominion Voting Systems is behaving: They’re using lawsuits as a kind of weapon, and with most of these people, it’s working. It’s working because rather than even come up to the line, tempting a lawsuit, these hosts/outlets pretend not to see the issues at all. For another thing, they don’t wish to risk their reputations on Lindell’s theory of the case. If Lindell doesn’t prove out, they’d have egg on their faces. I understand all of that, and a few things more, but here’s the problem: They didn’t even report the existence of the Symposium. Surely, that can’t be considered defamatory. Surely, it is possible to report on the Symposium without liability for what was said there, and certainly, reporting on it cannot do damage to one’s own reputation if one remains objective. Think of it. Even if, as an example, Bongino thought the Cyber-Attack theory was all wet, there’s nothing that prevents him from reporting on it, and so-saying, is there? Or is there? If Levin thinks the whole exercise is moot at this point, he should say so, rather than remaining silent on Lindell’s efforts while running Lindell’s ads and pushing his American Marxism(of which I’ve purchased three copies.) And then there’s this: If they report on the event, even as skeptics, do they risk alienating the portions of their audiences who find Lindell’s case persuasive? So you see, it’s potentially a lose-lose. What this means is that for all their posturing as brave purveyors of the truth, they were most comfortable saying absolutely, positively nothing about Lindell’s event.
I knew FoxNews had become crap. I knew it years ago. I just hadn’t realized how far the rot had spread. It’s not that I believe Lindell fully “produced the receipts,” as some might say, but that the event happened, and that all the silencing tactics were in full force, and that all the stops were pulled out to shut him up, and this wasn’t done for nothing. If the validity of the disk images holds up, there is definitely something to be investigated in Colorado, but more than that, I think even Dr. Shiva’s presentation served to undress the Big Lie of government laundering its censorship through social media platforms like Twitter. There was much value in this Symposium, whether it produced the full results Lindell had wanted or not. Legislators or their representatives from all fifty states were there. They compared notes on how to proceed with audits and so on. Even if one doesn’t buy a word of Lindell’s theory of a Chinese-sponsored/operated Cyber-attack using Dominion Voting Systems, there are certainly substantial issues to be pursued, whether they involve the Chinese or Dominion or neither.
It’s worth watching. You can find it all on FrankSpeech.com. Where you won’t learn about it is on Bongino or Levin or FoxNews, at least as of the Symposium’s ending on Thursday. Only One America News, Real America’s Voice, and Newsmax gave it coverage. OANN was wall-to-wall, as was RSBN. Mike Lindell is a patriot, and he believes in his cause. Whatever else one might say about him or his symposium, he was all in. It’s just sad that so many other conservatives upon whom we rely daily aren’t equally committed. Meanwhile, some conservatives lecture us about imposing “real material losses” on the left, but apparently aren’t willing to risk any losses of their own. Me? I’m headed over to mypillow.com to purchase another bath sheet. They’re excellent.
Here’s Dr. Frank’s excellent presentation:
Here’s Seth Keshel’s presentation. It’s more proof we must audit all 50 states:
Dr. Shiva’s presentation on censorship laundering by the new fascists:
Lindell’s Day Three Opening Remarks:
Colonel Waldon on attempts to damage the Symposium:
Introductory Film played throughout the Symposium:
Editor’s Note: I do not take any advertising from anybody in particular, as it’s whomever buys ads with the ads service that shows up on these pages. I have no idea if any Lindell product has ever shown up here, or if they ever will. This site is too small a fish to be visible in that pond. I was, however, very serious about the MyPillow bath sheet: Best towel I’ve ever owned, and now, I’m going to buy another.
This evening, my favorite talk-show host took to the airwaves and condemned the violence that occurred today on Capitol Hill. As I’ve pointed out earlier, this looks like a set-up job by the DC UniParty, and while Levin(and others including particularly the President,) is right to condemn the violence, and while I make no excuse for those who launched this assault, such actions being repugnant in a constitutional, representative republic, I nevertheless have serious misgivings about the focus on this incident for several reasons. Levin rightly points out that we have no room to condemn Antifa and BLM if this sort of thing goes on with alleged conservative actors. I agree. On its face, this was egregious behavior, and it appears that at least one young woman paid with her life. The other point Levin made is that those who carried this out must be identified and prosecuted. Again, I agree. There is substantial evidence that the people who instigated violence at the Capitol today were in fact camouflaged members of Antifa and other various anarchists. I am not here suggesting that absolutely no Trump supporters took part, but I have serious doubts about the contention that is widely the case. More than all this, however, the problem comes in when Mark Levin argues that we must never violate the law. Never? Not even unjust law? Would violations of the law be impermissible even in a growing tyranny? You see, I believe we’re in a sucker’s trap. I think this is the problem for which Levin and others, myself included, have offered no solution. We are in a constitutional crisis, but I think even Levin, for all his wisdom can’t quite see it: Once the power of the state is perverted to the extent that official actors now participate in the fraud against the people, how then do the people ever correct it without resort to violence?
I do not say this lightly. We now find ourselves in the situation in which a large proportion of the country now believes the election was rigged and stolen, and not merely by private actors, which would be abominable enough, but with the assistance and collusion of actors in the offices of local, state, and federal governments. Once you cross that particular line, it seems to me there is no going back, and no way in which to resolve it peaceably. Again, I do not make this argument lightly, and I also do not contend that my evaluation is perfect, or infallible, but again, I must insist that those who argue we must never resort to violence must now step forward to explain how it is we’re to logically, rationally, and legally overcome all that’s been arrayed against us.
Let us suppose for a moment that those of us who believe this election was wholly fraudulent are correct. What then? How do we undo it? As Levin himself pointed out in rightful criticism of Senator Rand Paul’s(R-KY) suggestion that this is a states’ issue, essentially, Paul laid down the notion that this isn’t something to be addressed at the federal level, and that the remedy lies within the individual states. As Levin contends rightly, what good is state law if it’s going to be ignored by states’ office-holders? You see, it’s a farce to suggest that if the legislature of Georgia wants to fix the election issues, all it needs to do is pass some laws, if immediately thereafter, their Secretary of State enters into a consent agreement with agitators for the opposition that effectively nullify the very laws they’ve enacted. What good then is law?
Levin would rightly argue that we should be able to rely upon the courts as a backstop to enforce and uphold the law. Will they? All evidence from this election cycle suggests that the courts either have no stomach or are ideologically inclined to justify these transgressions of law. You see, this becomes the inescapable and gaping hole in Levin’s argument. Of course, it’s not only Levin who makes this argument. I would, in ordinary times, make the same basic argument, but look at the scale of what’s been done, and what actually confronts us. This is not an insignificant one-off in a single small jurisdiction that can be remedied by a single population of an isolated locale. This issue is much broader, involving all three branches of government, and at all levels of governance. All of it is further buttressed by media institutions only too happy for the current course of things, since they are almost entirely corrupt too.
Like so many of my readers, I’ve raised my hand and recited the words of an oath to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States. To suggest, however, that we’re not in a constitutional crisis merely because we still maintain the façade of law and constitutional order is preposterous. It is quite clear that what we are seeing at present is a complete devolution of the constitutional order, or what Levin terms a “post-constitutional” disorder. While in the classical definition of the term, we’re not in a constitutional crisis, we nevertheless find ourselves in some sort of crisis, whatever adjective you might prefer to define it. This is an untenable circumstance, whatever particular label we may choose to affix to it. The simple fact is that we men and women who comprise the bulk of the population that holds up this country, whose children before themselves fight this nation’s wars, spilling their blood all across the globe, find ourselves in the position that we cannot rely upon law.
My questions for those wiser than I, can be only that which others around me find themselves asking of our thought leaders:
What now? What are we to do? What am I to do? I’ve voted. Over and over. I’ve elected people, and they betray us, or find themselves betrayed. We appoint what we think are good judges, yet they fail and abandon our constitution when the going gets tough. We follow all of the rules. We play fair. We volunteer and participate in public affairs in various ways. We man the polling places, but find ourselves ejected so we cannot even view the process. We do everything we can reasonably do. We short our own lives by contributing grocery money to these politicians. What more are we expected to do before we turn aside from the law? How can I overcome an enemy who will not obey the law? How can I get recourse when all the modes are ineffective or subversive?
I am not suggesting that I want an easy answer, but I must insist on a plausible answer. Mark Levin famously wrote a tremendous book called “The Liberty Amendments.” I have one copy I read, and another autographed copy put away as a valued keepsake. What good is it? I’m being quite serious. What good is such an amazing idea? Yes, there’s a very slow movement of people toiling to get a convention of states together, and they’re making very slow progress, but it’s slowly waning because such a project takes decades, and most people can’t engage and maintain attention for the length of a two-page article. By the time a project of that sort bears fruit, America, as we have known it, will be gone. That is not intended to disparage the effort, but it offers no relief for the crisis in which we now find ourselves. Let me list the broad categories of problems, on the assumption that you’ve lost count:
The media is completely corrupt and is indeed an enemy of the people
Big Tech is dominated by leftists who are in league with or indeed comprise a portion of the subversives
The administrative state or bureaucracy now effectively makes, enforces, and judges law, combining all the powers of government into an unelected branch
The Congress is bought and compromised by people who do not share our interests
The Congress is run by unelected staff and consultants who feather their own nests
The Congress is completely out of control and we have no means by which to directly remove them when they transgress the constitution
The executive branch is out of control because it relies too heavily on executive orders, in part due to the intransigence of Congress and the courts
The courts are useless, concocting law when convenient, or ignoring law when its not
That’s just the start, of course, but you get the point. Then, in the last twenty minutes of his show, Levin received a call from a gentleman who raised essentially the same question, analogizing the situation to a football game in which the game is rigged, the opponent cheats, the referees collude with the opponent, and the commissioner offers no relief. To his credit, Levin said in response that there are no easy answers.
But he will not advocate violence. He will not call for a civil war. He will not call for lawlessness.
Fine. How then, captured by at least the laundry list of deficiencies only briefly outlined above, are we ever to overcome it?
No answer.
You see, this is the point at which I have begun to part ways from Mr. Levin. I am not a violent man. I abhor violence, and I truly revile senseless destruction of any sort. I came of age in a world where two global powers constantly contemplated wiping one another from the face of the globe, with me as the forward-stationed cannon-fodder. I saw men injured, maimed, and killed, just in training for that war that never came, at least not in that form, so I know too well the costs of violence.
That said, Levin mentioned that all of this is coming to a head. Indeed. What then? You see, I believe in self-defense, and I also believe in the defense of my nation. At what point do we, as individuals, make the decision that we’ve done all that we can peaceably do, but that action is now required that must risk more than peaceful protest and public political activism? Levin closed the show by stating bluntly that he will never advocate violence.
Never? Under no circumstance? Inconceivable?
You see, this is where I do part company from Levin. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and all those other men of that period also parted company from Levin. I think part of the problem, and it’s much broader than just Levin, is that if you’ve had your business closed by a lockdown in one of these deep blue hellholes, or had your vote stolen/nullified in one of these compromised states, you may have a different view. If you’ve watched your country systematically demolished, but haven’t the means to make an escape to safer shores, you may view this differently. If your children have been propagandized right under your nose in the college or primary schools for which you’ve paid through the nose, only to see them turned against you, I suspect you may feel differently.
Mark Levin doesn’t know me. I have some reason to think he may be slightly aware of me. Over the years, when I’ve been able, I’ve contributed to many of the causes and candidates he has recommended, but that doesn’t mean he owes me anything. What I do think he owes his audience, me included, if it’s anything at all, is some sort of explanation of what we are to do. Most of my readers are regular listeners to his show. I’d wager that at least half my readers have subscriptions to BlazeTV and have had subscriptions all the way back to the start when it was LevinTV. There isn’t a book he’s written of which I don’t have at least two copies, all in hardback(usually one dog-eared and marked-up as a study tool, and one in pristine condition, often autographed and kept as a collectible) save for “Men in Black” and “Rescuing Sprite” which were available new in paperback only by the time I became aware of them. I receive mailings from Landmark Legal Foundation to which I am a contributor when I find a few spare dollars to send. My point is that like so many of my readers, I’ve availed myself of Mark’s work and supported it frequently. I don’t religiously purchase from his advertisers, but if I am purchasing an item in the same category as one advertised on his show, I always choose it and make sure the seller knows where I heard about their offerings. Like most conservatives, I am loyal to those who serve our nation while entertaining, educating and edifying me and those around me.
I don’t know if Mr. Levin will ever see this piece, but if he does, I suspect it will pain him a bit, as it does me to write it. I love his show, and I love his sense of humor, and I enjoy his taste in bumper-music. He adds value to my life, every day, but I’m afraid that on this day, I need a little more. Given all that confronts us, to say that I’ve been demoralized is to understate the scope and the intensity of the issue. It’s not that the fight has gone out of me, because I love my country, and I’ve done more on behalf of my country and countrymen than most by a fair piece, and maybe that’s why the demoralization now feels so intense: You can’t know how much you love a thing until you’ve risked your neck for it, toiled for it, shed blood, sweat and tears for it, and sworn your allegiance to it, all to see it collapsing around you. I know Mark doesn’t have all the answers, but the answer cannot be just to lie here, supine, and take whatever it is that they dish out.
Now the leftists will, it seems, control all of the federal government. Top to bottom. Side to side. They are already planning all the mischief they intend. They have legislative packages ready to go, to send to the desk of…President Biden, the imposter, who will happily sign what they send him into law. Levin says he will never advocate violence. It sounds great, until you realize what it means in full. They will come for our second amendment and all the implements of its exercise. They will not amend the constitution. They will simply shove it down our throats with a packed court and a stolen Presidency and Senate. I will not be made defenseless. If the disposition of the Polish Jews in Warsaw taught no other lesson to posterity, it must be that one. I also will not be reduced to a rat, left to shelter in my nest, clutching my implements, while waiting to be “evacuated.” In New York, the legislators now introduce a bill to detain and take into custody any people who might carry or pass any disease.
What answer is there to such things — to prevent the execution of such things? If the law is no further impediment to tyranny and abuse, what remains? I don’t revel in the asking of this question. I detest the fact that I find myself in this position. But wishes are not reality. There is a reason that civilized nations consider violence as the last resort. The question is rapidly advancing to the forefront: Have we arrived at a time of last resort?
What, concretely, am I to do?
Editor’s note: I’ve had a question from a reader asking “what is the classical definition of constitutional crisis,” mentioned above. Generally, a constitutional crisis is any of a number of possible situations in which the constitution provides no answer to some sort of underlying contradiction. It’s essentially a sort of structural problem, and it can have many types of causes. In this way, one might consider our current circumstance to be a constitutional crisis, because the constitution certainly offers no clear remedy when it’s apparent that some or all branches may have essentially discarded its provisions, restrictions, or prohibitions. Still, I think the term intends to countenance those sorts of issues that can arise out of parties exercising their powers, privileges, rights and so on and what happens when those come into clear conflict. I understand why legal and political theorists might not consider our current situation to fit within the loose definition of a “constitutional crisis,” as they might define it, but we’re certainly in a crisis, inasmuch as it’s difficult to find anybody in Washington DC willing to live within its bounds. Maybe a better term here would be “constitutional catastrophe,” because whatever you call it, this situation is likely to result in the dissolution of the republic. Most consider the attempted secession of the Southern states in 1861 to have been a constitutional crisis, because, among other reasons, the constitution is silent on how or if states may leave the union, having previously entered it. I have always thought that among the flurry of amendments after the Civil War, Congress ought to have passed one describing a legal procedure for secession. (I don’t think parties should be forced to remain married once their differences have become irreconcilable, or partners compelled to remain in a business partnership once they’ve become irreconcilably averse to said relationship, but that’s another story for another day.)
Antonon Scalia would spit on John Roberts’ grave if their places were reversed, but then, so John Roberts has done, many times. Chief Justice John Roberts has taken part in the defiling of the United States Constitution. I consider his acts as the Chief Justice to be those of a usurper. I consider his acts to be treasonous. John Roberts has defecated on the Constitution. You might ask how, but by now, the method should be obvious: Pretending that an authority he does not deny the executive possesses is open to his judgments about the motives for the exercise of that authority is a legal abomination. John Roberts isn’t a justice. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. John Roberts is a dictator in a black robe, a member of a theocracy the power of which is a judicial oligarchy best described by Mark Levin in his book Men in Black. Worse, the things Roberts has now countenanced under the alleged purview of “justice” have essentially wrecked the moral authority of the very institution he’d been empowered to administer. He’s despicable. There is no way for him to redeem his performance. There is no way for him to undo the damage he has done but to immediately resign his seat on the bench. John Roberts’ actions in this and other cases have destroyed the court’s last claim to legitimacy. Marbury v. Madison was bad precedent, and this is its ultimate debacle.
More, this judicial dirt-bag may have taken part in a plot to unseat or prevent the seating of the current president of the United States. He appoints the members of the FISC(Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) who oversee and ultimately issue FISA warrants. It now seems clear that there may have been misconduct by members of the FISC in issuing some of the warrants, but more importantly, all of the FISC judges involved in the potential malfeasance were appointed to those positions by Chief Justice Roberts.
It has been rumored that he is compromised. Whether this is the case, or he is independently malevolent, it is obvious that Chief Justice Roberts must be removed from the high court. Since we have an entirely partisan House of Representatives, it would be they who would need to impeach him, and they’re not inclined to act in any way that might even tangentially permit Trump to appoint another Supreme Court Justice. More than this, however, it seems quite plain that Roberts has been doing the bidding of Obama, Pelosi, and Schumer all along, anyway, so there’s no way Pelosi is going to move to impeach him. No, we will have to elect a new Congress, and we will need to insist that he be impeached.
John Roberts is a counter-revolutionary scum, seeking to subvert our constitution. There is no point for people to talk about the legitimacy of this court. So long as the likes of John Roberts is among its members, its legitimacy is moribund, if not dead. People may follow the law as a matter of duty a little longer, but Roberts is piling the kindling that could ignite with but the most insignificant spark. Mark Levin is this very moment commenting upon the fact that people are now incensed about the direction of the nation and the dire circumstance in which we now find ourselves. He’s right: We cannot pretend we hadn’t been warned. This is now a real crisis, and those of us who have seen it coming have been ignored until it may now be too late to undo it.
I think Trump should ignore the court and do it anyway. We need to give him the House back.
It’s become pretty clear that the permanent government in Washington DC is corrupt beyond repair. Tuesday, it was reported that a “Secret Society” was formed at the Federal Bureau of Investigations in order to stop Donald Trump from winning the 2016 election in the first instance, but having failed that, in the second instance to see him removed from office. The most damnable aspect of this is that the latter is still ongoing. Before losing perspective, remember that I’m not a particular fan of President Trump, and certainly no apologist for him, but in this instance, it’s certain that the forces arrayed against him are acting outside the bounds of the Constitution of the United States, and they’re showing no signs of relenting. Worse, because the Attorney General of the United States has recused himself from the “Russian Collusion” investigation, there’s nobody who can put a stop to this madness. What we have is an open-ended coup d’état in progress against the current President of the United States, putting the entire nation at risk. Left unchecked, this silent executive branch revolt threatens to demolish our constitutional republic, and every legitimate officer of the United States federal government has taken an oath to prevent this. I really don’t care about the political differences I may have with President Trump from time to time in this context, because my loyalty is reserved to the republic, and I renew my pledge each and every day: “…and to the Republic for which it stands…” Attorney General Sessions had ought to review his own oath. Members of Congress had better review their oaths. It is time to fulfill them, and Americans are right to demand it. Mark Levin has been right to call this a “Silent Coup,” and heads must roll.
Naturally, it’s worse than just the text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. That’s merely the point at which we enter into this issue. When it became public knowledge last week that there was a classified memo by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, headed by Devin Nunes, there erupted a call for the document to be released to the public by various House members and also people in the media, such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham on their respective shows on FoxNews. This memo purportedly gives some indication of just how corrupt the permanent ruling class in Washington DC has become in administering the Federal Government. On Facebook and Twitter, the phrases “ReleaseTheMemo” and “ReleaseTheDocument” became explosively popular hashtags. On Tuesday, the ranking member of Nunes’ committee, Adam Schiff(D-CA,) together with fellow Californian Senator Dianne Feinstein(D-CA,) sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, CEOs of Facebook and Twitter, respectively, requesting that they investigate the allegation that “Russian Bots” were driving the meme on those two platforms.
If you read the letter carefully, you will notice that already, Feinstein and Schiff are trying to distribute their own characterization of the memo, by way of defaming it. Also, a question arises as to how Senator Feinstein has access to the memo to the extent she can comment about the character of its contents, since the memo is supposed to be classified and reserved at this point only to House members. So why is a Senator commenting on the character of the memo? It implies directly that she’s seen it. Did Schiff disclose a classified document improperly to a colleague in the Senate? More, when did members of Congress get the authority to make requests that sound more like demands of corporations? These people certainly appear to be desperate to stop the disclosure of the memo in question to the public, and the reason for this is clear: It will demolish the entire Democrat Party. On Tuesday evening, both Schiff’s and Feinstein’s offices were hanging up on a deluge of callers letting the two Democrat hacks know that they were not “Russian Bots.”
There seems little impetus in Washington DC to release the memo, despite all the obvious evidence that the government is completely out of control. Many Republicans seem more intent on fighting with President Trump than in pursuing the reckless, treasonous cabal that has sought and continues to seek to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States. I cannot stress this point nearly enough: These people are traitors, and they have committed treason, and if they are not brought to justice, the United States Constitution is dead. If these conspirators are permitted to evade the full measure of justice, and if their masters are likewise able to escape detection and prosecution, our constitution is dead. The country over. In such a circumstance, there is no longer any moral law to restrain any person of integrity. This must be an instance in which the great multitude of the American people must proclaim: “No justice, No Peace!”
Your country is being stolen from you. At this moment, they are conspiring to steal the law from you. They are conspiring to steal a duly elected President from you. You may not like Donald Trump so well, but if you now stubbornly cling to #NeverTrump in spite of the current circumstance, you are forsaking your country. Even if you are not a Trump fan, you must know what is at stake. This is the sort of occasion for which sincere pledges of allegiance and oaths to protect and defend the constitution were made. The last time this nation faced such a thorough mortal threat to its very existence from within, the year was 1861, Lincoln had been inaugurated, and the Civil War had commenced. I do not mean to say that Donald Trump is equivalent to, or even like Abraham Lincoln, as it is all too plain that he is not, but just like Abraham Lincoln, he is the duly elected President of the United States, and the conspiracy against him is no less broad or deep than the conspiracy that resulted in Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. In fact, it is fair to say that while these conspirators have not yet resorted to violent means, it is certainly true that the conspiracy is wider in scope, and worse, it is secreted within the government of the United States.
None have yet asserted it, but it is possible that Robert Mueller is a party to this conspiracy. Attorney General Sessions must immediately step in and put an end to Mueller’s bogus investigation. He must dispatch the US Marshals to secure all pertinent evidence in the Department of Justice, including at the FBI, and within the NSA and CIA, and any other agencies in which there were participants in this attack on the United States. Make no mistake about it: This was(and remains) a serious attack on the integrity of a US Presidential election, not by Russians, but by agents of our own government, perhaps in coordination with members and officials of the political party in power over the executive branch at the time. More, there is now evidence that at least two of the conspirators were involved in getting the Mueller investigation going, and getting Mueller appointed by another person who may either be another conspirator, or may have been incompetent in acting as their puppet. This entire ordeal stinks of wretched, skulking treason, and Robert Mueller is tainted with its stench. It is time for Attorney General Sessions to formally rescind his recusal, and to appoint a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of this conspiracy, and setting to right all those instances in which justice was thwarted or obstructed, and to bring to justice those who had any part in it. This must include any members of previous administration(s) who were even tangentially connected, and it must bring charges against all the participants, no matter how highly they had been placed in former regimes. It may be that there are members of Congress, judges, and elected or appointed officials of the executive branch who will be rounded-up under this mandate, but this must be ended, and ended with swift and unyielding reverence for our constitution.
Editor’s Note: As I finished typing up this posting, Mark Levin‘s broadcast of Wednesday evening had begun. His first hour focused on this subject, and it was Levin who coined the term “Silent Coup” in this context, so he should be credited with that. I’d urge you to listen to that first hour, as it covers most of the facts we now know, and in truth, it had been Levin who first began piecing together this story of treachery and treason nearly one year ago. You can listen to Levin’s audio rewind in the player below:
I’ve remained still these last weeks waiting to see the outcome of things in my own world. My wife suffered a heart attack in early December, and while she survived and is on the mend, it put me into a pensive mood during which I’ve said little while simply absorbing what’s going on in the world around us. I don’t have all of the answers, but what I do know is that we have a choice to make. It struck me with a certain clarity when I realized that for all the efforts of good and conscientious conservatives, we’re barely making a dent. The American people are thoroughly dispirited in a way not seen since Carter, and maybe even the pre-war era of FDR’s long and loathsome administration. Nothing is improving. Jobs are scarce. The printed currency is piling up, and with it a stack of IOUs that would reach from Earth to the no-longer-planet Pluto. What strikes me most is the unwillingness to choose, perhaps because all of the options seem so depressingly bad. We are now at a stage in our civilization’s collapse that we must fight, reform, or surrender. Make no mistake about it, as while we defer the choice, the available options only become more severe in their fullest meanings. In time, the choice will be taken from us, and surrender will be replaced by slavery, whether we’d choose it or not. Even now, the embrace of the police state is transforming from a gentle, confidence-instilling hug into a death-grip from which it seems there may be no escape.
Maybe it’s time you had that blunt bit of talk with loved-ones who may not realize what’s afoot. I know I’ve tried. Some never listen because it’s too painful. More often, because it is a complicated problem with implications that will reach into every life, most refuse to consider it. Our nation is well on its way to becoming Rome. We witness now the harbingers of our moral collapse, with an unconscionable display of motherly pride in a son who literally prostituted himself to homosexual pornography to support her household. Lot’s wife had at least the advantage of a husband who would tell her to avert her eyes. This scandalous decline in our cultural moral standards has left us with a nation that is rudderless not only in Washington DC, but in Everytown, USA, where plain, ordinary citizens no longer seem to muster much moral indignation about anything of consequence, while others rush to uphold the vile, the obnoxious, and the nonsensical.
Don’t misunderstand me: There are still many Americans who feel as I do, and you may well be among them, yet we are a declining proportion of a population overwhelmingly beset with endless distractions that will mean nothing when they find themselves at some future date languishing in the gutter. I don’t believe it must end this way, but if we don’t choose another course, and soon, it will end this way. As one friend constantly reminds me, “nothing ends well or it would never end.” There’s a certain pragmatism to that view against which I would like to rebel, but like most of my readers, I feel the crushing weight of history pressing down upon us.
Will we fight? Will a beleaguered people take up arms? Many an American has made oaths, not all of them idle, about the nature of how they will go down, but I wonder if when faced with it, how many will simply fold. More, one could wonder if this is not precisely what certain statist elements are attempting to provoke. Against the combined forces of the modern government, who could long endure? Who would desire this sort of outcome? Who would want a fractured nation consumed by civil war? Still, if it became the only viable option for our survival, I wonder how many would stand and fight, and for what they’d be fighting.
Will we surrender? Will we yield to the historic march of statism, giving up first the last measures of our personal sovereignty; our property, such slim wealth as we may have managed to preserve, and all personal discretion to a police state that will command our every action, and make our every choice? The evidence today would suggest that this shall be our path. Despite its clear predatory aims against our liberties, observe the fact that at least one-third of Americans still believe the failed roll-out of the monstrous “Obama-care” should continue. Such people do not deserve freedom, and will not long cling to it, precisely because such measures of freedom they tend to demand are merely vestiges of the concept.
Will we reform? Here lies the last option for salvaging the nation, yet it is also the historically slimmest probability. The singular advantage we may possess when compared to all the collapsing civilizations that have before us descended into ash is that our basic law has been so difficult to amend that it has succeeded only twenty-seven times in more than two-hundred years. What this means is that some vital portions have been left intact, leaving to us an escape-clause of sorts, and a method by which to reach from the grave’s brink at the last moment to reform our dying civilization. This makes us undeniably unique with respect to opportunity, but the question remains as to whether we can summon the character in sufficient numbers to reach for that constitutional kill-switch.
I have become convinced that while we may tinker around with this office or that, and while we may occasionally elect a competent, sincere conservative, the federal authorities in Washington rule almost without respect to our laws, never mind our wishes. Mark Levin has stated often and with growing impatience that we will almost certainly fail to reform by focusing on the federal government and its elected office-holders. We must reach into the constitutional tool-kit and utilize its most powerful weapon against the centralization of power in Washington DC: Article V. holds the entire mechanism for reforms we seek. It is not an easy road, and there will be no instant gratification, but if we are to overcome the gaping maw of the all-powerful government now consuming us, it is upon the authority of Article V that our salvation may rest. If you’ve not yet read The Liberty Amendments, I would urge you to consider picking up a copy soon.
Even now, we can observe the Obama administration’s predatory, despotic intentions. While a review board declared that the NSA’s spying on US citizens should cease, the Obama administration rejected the board’s conclusions. While we watch, the Obama administration makes it plain that they are checking their enemies list and checking it twice, and the only way to escape it is to be perpetually nice to the administration and its aims. No dissent of any sort will be tolerated, whether you’re Dinesh D’Souza or a Tea Party activist. Worse, the Republicans on Capitol Hill are joining in, with Mitch McConnell saying the Tea Party needs a punch in the nose. There is really no longer any question about it: The war on the American people, their culture, their traditions, and their dreams is in full force, never mind the complete destruction of any prosperity they had once known. There is no accident in it, and it’s all going according to plan. My question for you remains: Will we submit to this historic script, with our part as helpless victims played to the hilt?
It’s time for us to consider whether we will be led down that same old path. We’re barely more than nine months from the mid-terms, and the evidence is that we are yielding momentum as the Republicans in Washington DC continue to throttle our efforts. One might wonder how this can be, but I understand it: We are exhausted, our morale has taken a beating, and more and more of us find we’re under an economic strain that makes other efforts seem too tiring. Some of us have noticed the expanding police state, deciding it best to lie low and to refrain from open activism. Myself, I feel as though I must now get all of my personal effects in order, in the manner of a soldier preparing for a deployment to war. Sometimes, I wonder if that’s merely my perception, but something tells me I’m not alone.
Like any other movement, it’s time to assess our position, our options, and our next move. Waiting for the “Republicans” to save us clearly won’t yield any fruit, so we must ask whether we now huddle in darkness waiting for the end, or instead rise in some fashion. I credit Mark Levin for reminding us of the one way out of all of this that remains, but now the challenge is before us: We have a choice, and we’d best make it before it’s made for us.
Unsure as I am as to how much longer I will be able to maintain this blog, it is my intention to cover a few topics of significant gravity, whatever else may come next. There are certain things a man must be willing to discuss, whatever the cost, because the cost of silence is infinitely higher. What I will address hereunder is one such subject, dire though its context may be, simply because you should be made aware of it. As you already perceive at an almost instinctual level, we are losing the United States. As many of us have feared for at least the last five years, this will be due neither to an outside attack, nor even to the creeping, rotting decay now consuming our culture. Instead, we may now lose the country to the direct predations of an attack from within, launched by those entrusted with defending it. This attack is likely to come in the form of the final, functional abolition of our constitution. The precedents will have been set, and the last of the remaining constitutional checks and balances will have been removed by fiat. Barack Obama intends to seize vast unconstitutional powers, and we shall see the rise of a dictator in the full blossom of his tyrannical authority.
The final assault on the fabric of our constitution will be launched by constitutional law professors working in concert with an aggressive executive who will with crisis-born pretense impose his dicta upon this nation. The script is already written. The pieces are nearly in place. “Go-time” is drawing near, because this will be his last great opportunity to finally, fundamentally transform this nation into a cesspool of totalitarianism. Conservatives will call for his impeachment, to no avail, as the US Senate is controlled by his philosophical cohorts. There will be no undoing this peaceably, whatever some, even those near and dear to us may claim. I believe the probability is unusually high that we will now witness the final days of the Republic you had known, and this historic human tragedy will be visited upon the people of the United States by Barack Hussein Obama, a criminal now ensconced in the office of the United States Commander-in-Chief, who has previously hinted at his dictatorial inclinations.
Mark Levin has discussed this, even on Thursday, explaining how Barack Obama will make a claim of constitutional authority for which there is no reasonable or valid claim anywhere in its text. Levin still clings to a thread of hope that somehow, we will at some future date reverse this disastrous, wretched attack on our Republic by restoring it through constitutional process without reference to Washington DC. If he will have been correct, at some future date, we would find ourselves able to reverse this attack by virtue of constitutional amendments instigated by the states, but such will not be plausible, or even possible, if Barack Obama makes this lethal claim of authority. For years, leftists have been making the claim that there lies within the fourteenth amendment the authority for a President to ignore the debt ceiling in satisfying the debts of the United States. While such claims have no rational basis, the amendment itself stating nothing of the sort, and with a Congress composed of sufficient statesmen of both parties in both houses who would oppose it, there might be a chance. Sadly, we no longer have such a Congress. The President need not worry about opposition even from the House, where Republican leaders continue to plot the undermining of the country in concert with Barack Obama.
Here’s the segment of Levin’s show in which he discusses the threat posed by Obama’s anti-constitutional plot:
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While many of us may have been surprised pleasantly to see Boehner and Cantor standing somewhat more firmly than in recent budget impasses, they are merely playing their assigned roles now. If Levin’s warning is correct, they will scarcely be relevant to what is about to happen to our Republic. Barack Obama has been talking-down the stock market, and he’s brought the captains of finance into his offices for discussions. Wall Street wants the borrowing and printing to continue unabated. They’re making out like bandits, robbing us blind by paying paltry sums of interest on money being dumped by the wagon-load into the markets. They want the gravy-train to continue, and the President is willing to let them for now. You see, like all such men of finance, they have accepted a well-worn lie about the power of capital and the efficacy of money. They believe money is the source of all power, and that as the cliche goes, it “makes the world go ’round.” They have certainly adopted happily the notion of the bastardized form of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” The problem is that their thesis is wrong, and in the end, they’re going to learn it. Money is not a cause, but merely an effect. You see, Barack Obama studied under a different philosophy, one that references directly the most ruthless of his philosophical antecedents, Mao Zedong, who in brevity offered:
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
The Wall Street types don’t understand this. Obama understands this too well, having been mentored by radicals Ayers and Davis, who taught him the value of force, and who understood that only violence and its threat actually enforce political power. The men of high finance are those who have learned that money can buy anything, but their lessons were corrupt. They believe politicians are always open to bribes, and why wouldn’t they? What they do not understand is that there exists a class of true believers, some good but many evil, who are not subject to this sort of temptation because of the strength of their beliefs. I now believe Barack Obama may well be one such man, because his vision for America trumps any number of dollars you might offer him. Bother now to ask yourselves what sort of historical monsters could not have been tempted from their pursuit of naked power for any amount of wealth, knowing that on their path, they will have access to all the wealth they could ever need. Attempt to understand by asking of yourself: “How does an unarmed man in the proverbial dark alley bribe a pistol-waving mugger to take only some of his cash?” This is the question these captains of finance and wizards of stock markets have blinded themselves from seeing. They still think there’s something to negotiate. Suffice it to say that by the time Obama is done with them, they will have asked themselves that question, even if much too late to matter.
Ask the Swiss bankers who folded like cheap napkins when Obama’s IRS went demanding account information on Americans. How many potential opponents were then neutered forevermore? What do you think that was about, anyway? What do you think Dodd-Frank is about? Those who couldn’t wait to heap more regulations on the financial industry will soon learn the full impact of that law. So will the average American when he learns his deposits are subject to be frozen or seized by whim of the chief executive and the Secretary of the Treasury acting at his behest.
All Obama now needs is an excuse, and the Republicans in Congress will give it to him, and he will be justified by all the lunatics who call themselves “constitutional scholars” he has brought along with him. These will be people who do not need the arm-twisting that was used on John Roberts in order to see things the President’s way on Obama-care. These are other true-believers. They see their arguments as being full of the same holes you and I see, but that doesn’t matter so much as the fact that they will make them, insistently, irrespective of all facts, all standards of language, and all legal precedents. Their only job is to buy Obama the time he will need for the controversy over his intended act(s) to die down, and for Mr. and Mrs. America to return to their football, their NASCAR, their baseball games, their “reality TV,” and the myriad other distractions that will seem more pressing and much less boring than an argument over the President’s constitutional authority or evident lack thereof. In that moment, the Republic’s death will be imminent.
If the President can concoct any old excuse to ignore his constitutional limitations, no matter how perfectly absurd or patently unreasonable the justification, the constitution will be dead. Absent the constitution, the Republic will no longer exist, and what you had known as the United States of America might still linger a while, even years, but its fundamental core, and its beating heart will have been stilled even if there is still a dimming signal for a while emitted by its expiring brain. What will he do? Clearly, all the evidence exists that he intends at some point to initiate a maneuver by which he will claim an extraordinary authority in the face of a real or concocted emergency from which he will promise to save us all, while driving the final nails in the casket of the Republic. Worst of all, he is now and has been conspiring to create that crisis. The time has now arrived for this nestling to take wing.
He has been talking a good deal about how Congress must pay the debts it has previously incurred, but this too is tortured language because Congress hasn’t incurred a debt until it’s borrowed the money. What he intends is that by the “full faith and credit” clause of the fourteenth amendment, he will simply issue an executive order seizing control of the treasury. There is some precedent for this, having been done in lesser measure by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, claiming the aegis of a vast emergency “almost as great as that of war,” and using the “Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917” as subsequently amended. Obama will make the same tyrannical claim, but he is much more self-assured than even Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he intends to carry it to its logical conclusion this time. He will ignore the legal debt ceiling, claiming the fourteenth amendment compels him to act. Close attention to the amendment reveals that only Congress is mentioned in that amendment, and there is no mention of additional executive authority. This is the moment of the trick. This is where he will step across all constitutional boundaries and forevermore become a dictator, and since he will be largely unopposed, who will object? Harry Reid? John Boehner?
What the last week has taught the President is that he is running out of time. The mood of the country is such that he now rightly expects that on our present course, he will not re-take the House in 2014, and he will be lucky to hold the Senate. If he loses the Senate, his chances to take such actions will have elapsed, because Congress and the Republicans would be in a position to at least theoretically impeach and remove him from office if he threatened the Republic. His time is dwindling, and his opportunities to take these steps are expiring as well. Now may be his last, best hope to finally and irreversibly transform the United States to its fundamental core by wrecking the constitution that had been its beating heart, however bruised and damaged, for these last two-hundred years. He and those who have helped him obtain office and maintain it are too close, having come too far to let it all slip away now. Their goal is within reach. All they need now is to grab it.
“As to the proposition that the 14th Amendment provides some authority for the President to circumvent Congress, this is a preposterous claim. The relevant sections of the Fourteenth Amendment states:”
“Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”
“Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”
“Notice that section 4 was intended to deal specifically with war debt accrued by the Union in fighting against the Confederacy during the civil war. The leftists who advocate on behalf of section 4 as a proscription against a debt ceiling are lunatics. It not only requires the setting aside of the context of the amendment, but also ignoring the subsequent section, that specifically empowers Congress to enact legislation pursuant to this amendment.”
We need not wonder any longer as to whether this amendment provides an actual constitutional basis for the actions Obama now contemplates. Flatly, it does not, and only the sort of tortured mind that labors in the basement of the Brookings Institute in devoted service to all things statist could imagine otherwise.
I relate this information not to frighten readers, but in order to arm them with the facts. The media will launch endless arguments if Obama should attempt this, and they will, along with academia, conspire to provide him the needed delay. Mark Levin still expresses the opinion that his prescription, using Article V of the US Constitution to amend it without the cooperation of Congress, and one must certainly give him all due credit for bringing that strategy to life, and we must try it, but I fear that Dr. Levin is grasping at straws in light of this development. What evidence exist to suggest that this or any Congress would act to obey Article V of the US Constitution. (By some counts, Congress has already received sufficient petitions from states to recognize a convention of the states.) If Obama attempts this, and Congress and the courts permit him to get away with it, the constitution will be dead. At that point, Article V is most probably moot, along with the rest of our founding document, and the supreme law of the land will have shifted indefinitely (and probably permanently) from that noble piece of aged parchment to the whim and will of Barack Hussein Obama. Game over.
You may wonder how he will justify all of this, but you need only let your imagination expand to the limits of what this malignant narcissist sees as his mandate and his authority. He is conspiring even now to collapse the US economy, which is why he now speaks specifically of “economic collapse.” This is why he’s going out of his way to scare the fire out of Wall Street. He and his friend Ben Bernanke have built the biggest bubble in the history of man, and he intends to burst it. Even before Labor Day this year, the price of gasoline had begun to fall. It’s still falling, and in the main, this is because general demand is low as the economy remains barely above water. To the degree the economy remains afloat at all, it is riding on an over-inflated life-preserver made up of borrowed money, leveraged assets, and consumer credit stretched to the breaking-point. College student loans now represent trillions of dollars of debt, since the government took over the administration of Federally-Guaranteed student loans. How hard do you really think Obama will need to work in order to explode the entire US economy by the 17th of October, when we reach the legal debt ceiling(which we’ve already actually surpassed, illegally?) That good old debt clock to which only a few Americans pay even scant attention has been frozen in place for more than four months. Do you really believe they haven’t exceeded it?
Obama was never going to negotiate with the Republicans. If they had passed a “clean” continuing resolution, he’d have concocted some reason to reject it with Harry Reid’s help in the Senate. Of course, at this late date, the Republicans would be foolish to do anything but stand fast, or risk losing such credibility as circumstances have afforded them. At this point, all they can do is press for maximum advantage, while trying to arouse popular sentiment against the President so long as they are able. Once before in our history, the financiers conspired with a president to set us on a similar course in justification of all he would thereafter do, but now we have a president who has set them up, and he’ll be using them for his purposes in a manner that the likes of Chairman Mao would approve.
By undertaking this approach, Barack Obama is signaling that he is ready to go for it all. In this moment of national turmoil, we will emerge either as a dictatorship with a smiley-face concealing big government’s scowl like a putrid death-mask, or we will find we had somehow prevailed and the President will become the longest serving lame duck in our nation’s history. This will be for all the marbles. It is at this point that we must reconsider that great intellectual benefactor of the Republic who urges us to follow the path laid down in Article V to reforge our Republic. Dr. Levin educates as much as any in the public eye, and his breadth and depth of knowledge on the subject of constitutional law knows few bounds. Still, in light of Obama’s presumed aggressive strategy against the Republic, one wonders if an Article V undertaking would gain any traction so long as we suffer under an Executive that willingly denies, ignores, and tramples the constitution. What good would it be if the United States government would refuse to recognize amendments instigated by a convention of the states and subsequently ratified by them?
At long-winded last comes the danger: If Obama undertakes this strategy as some now urge, and others now dread, our President will be in open insurrection against the Republic. He will be acting in clear opposition to the plain language of the supreme law of the land. At stake will be the question: “What is the supreme law of the land? The constitution, or the contrived edicts of Obama?” If the latter is permitted to stand, the United States of America will have perished. I have no hope that a popular majority of Americans now possess and will maintain sufficient outrage to compel a presidential retrenchment, else Obama-care would never have become law, much less seen its first days of implementation. This begs the question I would not now ask you to answer aloud: “What are you prepared to do?” Civil disobedience? What? Don’t answer this in words, but instead ponder the question, and decide for yourselves now what your answer will be when it comes to the real asking.
If Barack Obama is permitted to abscond with our constitution and its checks on his power, we might just as well bulldoze that memorial our aged heroes have visited, for its very meaning – their meaning – will have been lost along with the proposition that ours is a nation of laws but not men. This is what Barack Obama seeks most to overturn, and with it, to bear forth that most fundamental transformation with which he’s been threatening a nation and her people. At present, the best the American people can hope is to dissuade him from that course by open chastisement and vocal disapproval. The time may be drawing near when we will be compelled by events to answer that most dangerous question, and with its answer, to decide in finality whether we will remain a free people or submit to a brutal despotism of historic proportions. The choice remains yours.
In an explosive moment on his Wednesday evening show, radio talk-show host Mark Levin warned the people behind the government shutdown not to mess with the World War II vets at their memorial on the mall in Washington DC. He’s right: Obama’s thugs are doing his bidding. There was no reason to put up “Barrycades” around the memorial. It was funded privately, and there’s generally no security there anyway. It’s an outdoor site, so one might just as well put up fences around the Capitol steps. This is simply an attempt to inflict pain on the American people and her veterans who risked all so that moral midgets like the President and his cohorts in Congress could claim some sort of political victory. Levin warned that he’d bring a half-million people to the memorial if one veteran was harmed or man-handled or arrested. Levin is right, and we should not permit our public officials to behave like bullies. Barack Obama is despicable. We are coming to a time of mass civil disobedience to this would-be emperor, and it’s overdue. We are Americans, and there’s no reason to accept this from any politician. Here’s the audio, courtesy DailyCaller:
Levin is right. There’s no justification for this treatment of men who served their country with honor and distinction. There’s no possible reason to hurt them, or deny them what might be their last opportunity to come to this memorial, except as a shameless political maneuver. This is what has become of the United States of America under Barack Obama. The President should be ashamed.
Given the direction of our republic into complete cultural, economic, and political collapse, it may be that drastic circumstances must call for equally drastic measures. On Friday night, Hannity aired a one-hour special with a studio audience on Fox News Channel that featured Mark Levin and his latest book: The Liberty Amendments -Restoring the American Republic. Hannity put up Levin’s proposed constitutional amendments for review by the esteemed studio audience, but the first matter to be examined was Levin’s proposed method of amending the constitution: Rather than wait for Congress to repair itself, a hope based entirely in futile notions about the ability of the American people to somehow force the change, he instead argues that Article V of the constitution already provides the means by which to amend it without the approval or consent of Congress or any other branch of the federal government. He is proposing an amending convention, convened by two-thirds of the states, with any produced amendments requiring ratification by three-fourths of the states.
For those who are somewhat confused about all of this, I would refer you to Article V of the US Constitution that provides for the two legitimate procedures by which to amend the constitution:
“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”(emphasis added.)
Bluntly, two-thirds of the legislatures of the states can initiate this process. Three-fourths have the ability to ratify them, just as if the Congress had proposed them. The difficulty of this process alone makes it entirely unlikely that the process might become a so-called “runaway convention.” As Levin responded on this point when asked during the course of the Hannity show, the simple fact is that there is nothing revolutionary about this process except that we, the people, have never initiated it, and it could be initiated at any time. Perhaps it is time we start.
Some of the comments on my last article on this subject seemed to raise the same objections, and while I understand the reservations, the simple truth of the matter is that if the statists existed in sufficient numbers that they could hijack this process, they would have initiated it themselves some time ago. There are clear dangers, but I think what Levin has here accomplished is marvelous for one particular reason, as became clear in a question from Breitbart’s Joel Pollak during the course of the show: The eleven amendments Levin proposes do not confront any political issue in particular, apart from perhaps taxation. Instead, they are all structural and procedural issues with respect to the federal government. Rather than attack a particular issue where the federal government can be shown to be out of control, they each confront defects in the original document, or in one case, reverse a defect imposed by previous amendments.
In focusing so tightly on the constructs of our federal government, Levin avoids the pitfalls of specific divisive political issues, leaving them to be resolved by virtue of a political process amended and restored to the framers’ intentions. In this sense, the proposal is at once elegant and simple. It is elegant inasmuch as it addresses the central failings of our national political process and the aggregation of power in the federal bureaucracy, and it inserts new forms of protections against a runaway federal establishment that imposes law and regulation with no effective check by those it purports to serve. The reversals born of such a slate of amendments would be slow but intractable, as power would necessarily begin to shift from the central government to the states. His proposal is simple because it relies on a process that is already part of our constitutional system, and need not be invented, nor rely on the approval of the federal establishment that would naturally resist it.
One of the criticisms that was raised had been about the repeal of the seventeenth amendment. Terry Jeffrey of CNSNews.com asked if returning the selection of Senators to the states’ legislatures wouldn’t hurt the civil engagement of the populace. My answer would be somewhat different than Dr. Levin’s, because I would tend to consider it this way: Which elections need the most bolstering in terms of civic participation? National or state and local? I would suspect that if electing one’s state representatives and senators would be crucial in electing members of the US Senate, interest in state legislative elections would be certain to grow. I might also point out that in many respects, this might well serve conservatives most of all, since it is we who tend to show up reliably in off-year and state/local elections. The so-called “low information voter” does not. To the degree this would draw more to the process, it may also help reduce the total number of such uninformed voters by engaging them in their state governments, thereby lifting the veil of ignorance behind which they may now suffer.
Indeed, one could argue that the seventeenth amendment had been contrary to the framers’ intent, not merely because it repealed their process, but because of its net result in muting the states as voices in the federal government. It is fitting then that even in Article V, the point is demonstrated by its closing clause:
“…no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”(emphasis mine.)
It could be said hereby that the seventeenth amendment deprived all the States of any form of suffrage in the US Senate. After the seventeenth amendment, States effectively have no direct suffrage of any form, thus rendering them voiceless in the federal government that had been their creation.
Naturally, there were ten amendments more than the repeal of the seventeenth discussed, including an interesting proposal that would permit the overturn of federal regulations by the states. There were also term limits for Congress, and there were term limits for the federal judiciary. There was even a method by which the states could overturn Supreme Court decisions. What all of these proposed amendments share is a singular focus on the construction and process of the federal government. That is a brilliant approach to reform that would have the effect of more slowly and carefully reversing our course.
I’ve given a great deal of thought to Levin’s proposal, as I have proposed some of these same ideas in some form in the past. As Levin points out, the Congress and the Courts, never mind a runaway executive have no reason whatever to reform themselves. If they are to be reformed, we will need to be the instigators. This then ought to be our mission, the effort of our time. If we are to be blunt about our nation’s prospects on its current course, it must be admitted that the future looks bleak. None should think this is a project that will be done in a year or in an election cycle. The fact is that this process begins with local and state politics. It means getting our state legislatures in shape so that the delegates they would send must be of a mind to author the kinds of amendments that Levin proposes here.
I realize there are risks implicit in any move to convene delegates for the purpose of amending the constitution, but the simple fact is that the constitution has been amended in a de facto methodology by the results of extra-constitutional rulings of the court, outrageous legislative initiatives in Congress, and the tyrannical fiat of executive whimsy that threaten every right of the American people. We are already nearing the precipice from which there will be no return, where plummeting into the abyss will be merely a matter of inertia. If George Mason insisted on this second procedure as the last effective rampart against federal tyranny, then I say we must exercise it. The only alternative is almost too terrible to imagine, and violence will be the only feasible outcome. There are many who make bold oaths, explaining that they would be happy with that occasion, but I wonder how much of that is bravado. Perhaps it is easier for some to make idle pronouncements than to stand forth and make serious efforts aimed at avoiding that sort of catastrophe.
When I consider even the simple repeal of the seventeenth amendment, I realize Levin is right. Such an amendment could never pass a Senate now subservient only to the Washington DC establishment, so that to restore the voice of the states, it will require their insistence and instigation. If you missed this episode of Hannity, I hope FNC will make more of it available. Here is the opening clip:
When I think about Mark Levin’s forthcoming book entitled The Liberty Amendments (sure to be a bestseller,) I become a bit frustrated. Among conservatives, what I hear most often in thoughts expressed about the book is either that his proposal is simply too hard, or that it’s too dangerous a prospect to seek to amend the constitution through the convention process detailed in Article V of the constitution. What I perceive among conservatives is a collective sigh and shrug, in admission of slinking retreat from the battlefield. I understand that frustration, and I know too well why so many conservatives feel like surrendering, so thoroughly exhausted from fighting what seems a losing battle. On the other hand, I must ask my brethren if it’s wise to relent so easily. After all, if we’re serious about saving the country, it’s going to have a cost in dollars, sweat, and sadly, perhaps some blood. If you have any illusions about it, you’re not really in this fight. What conservatives should recognize is that Levin’s approach may be all that can avoid civil conflict, and that avoidance will lead to subjugation or civil war. Some may think it is impossible or even suicidal to amend the constitution by the convention process, but we mustn’t let fatigue, fear or sloth stop us.
Although the book has not yet been released, Levin has discussed the broad concepts involved on his daily radio talk-show. He’s even made the first chapter available for download on his website. Some callers seem enthusiastic, but there is another group of callers who seem somewhat confused, or even to be overwhelmed with misinformation with respect to “opening up the constitution” either to gross re-write or outright replacement. While amendments that are broad are certainly possible, what must be understood is that under Article V, any such amendments would need to be ratified by thirty-eight of fifty states before being adopted as part of our constitution. With that sort of broad-based approval being required, it’s hard to imagine something tyrannical or fundamentally anti-American gaining traction. Impossible? Strictly, no, but with millions upon millions of watchful Americans, it’s hard to conceive of the process being hijacked in such a manner. While it is easy to understand such fears, it’s not very likely that due cause for them would materialize.
Instead, most fears I’ve heard expressed on the subject are born of a general fatigue and frustration, inasmuch as most Americans so-concerned do not believe anything fruitful would be obtained from such a process, or that such a process would ever be permitted to come to pass by the political powers running Washington DC. My fellow conservatives point to the basic sloth and lack of political study or engagement of most of their fellow citizens as evidence for the cause of a presumed failure-to-launch for such a movement. It’s hard to disagree with this pessimistic view of the efficacy of any such effort given the obvious problem we have in this country when one considers even voting turn-out in national elections: Most people don’t want to be troubled with politics, and will simply obey whatever laws are passed by whichever politicians manage to pass them, irrespective of their effects.
One of the reasons for doubt among so many conservatives is an intense understanding of how hard it has become to penetrate the veil of pop-culture distractions behind which most Americans live their daily lives. It has been a lament of my own for years past counting that too many Americans are more concerned about trivial, inconsequential matters like television shows or sporting events. Many Americans reorganize their lives around such things, but despite having the intellectual capacity to comprehend all the statistics of sports, or to track the endless permutations of reality television, most Americans simply can’t be bothered with the work of self-government. How often do I read such laments in the comments on this site?
The trouble then may be us. We are obviously too interested in the direction of our country, if judged by the standards of so many of our countrymen. What we must ask is if there is any way to capture and hold their attention for such a monumental task. Such an undertaking would not be likely accomplished in a span less than a decade, because we would first be required to put in place state legislators in sufficient numbers who would carry this forward. The simple truth is that for any of this to happen, we must put it into action. We, who have continued to struggle as the country’s economic beasts of burden, dragging the nation along despite more outrageous loads being heaped upon us must finally decide whether we will be crushed under this cargo or instead unload it by a conscious effort to do away with it.
I no longer argue with leftists. I find that they are as intransigent in their opinions as any brick wall, but what I have discovered is that there exists a vast swath of America’s population that simply doesn’t care. For now. As the country begins to devolve and ultimately dissolve, the statists will become increasingly desperate to hold it together, and this will lead them to inflict more and more outrageous measures. As they do, the American people will begin to wake up, and we will need to be there, ready to welcome them into the fold. Nothing drives political involvement like self-interest. Why do the Democrats concoct phony wars on women, wars on minorities, and wars on the environment? It is all aimed at capturing votes through a perceived self-interest. Knowing this, we must be prepared to gather such of our people as we can in order to gather steam as the opportunity presents.
As Levin has explained, there is no need to fear the Article V amendment convention he proposes. George Mason insisted upon it as the last peaceful recourse against a despotic Congress. When the two parties now openly collude, Mason’s gift to us may yet be the salvation of our nation if we have the requisite diligence to pursue it. It would be simple to walk away and await our doom, accepting what may come with grim resolve, but I must ask my fellow conservatives if that is the fate we will accept. If it is true as seems to be the case that the Republicans now collude in the growing despotism of an ever-larger, entrenched surveillance and welfare state, commanding and controlling our lives, Levin’s approach may be our sole remaining peaceful opportunity. I don’t know if the sloth born of complacency will stop us from saving the country, but it shouldn’t stop conservatives from trying. It may be all that remains in the kit. We can take the country back, and the wisdom of our founders provided us one last method. I’d urge readers to consider Levin’s book with the diligence it deserves, equal at least to his supreme diligence in writing it.
Mark Levin introduced his audience to the conceptual aim of his forthcoming book on Wednesday evening. Titled The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, the book is set to be released on August 13th, although it can be pre-ordered on Amazon now. His basic premise is this: In all the history of the United States, governed under the constitution arising from the convention begun in 1787, and completed in 1791, there have been twenty-seven amendments successfully ratified, all arising through the Article V. process that permits two-thirds of both the House and Senate to propose an amendment, leaving it to three-fourths of the states to ratify and enact it. Dr. Levin rightly points out that the second course offered by Article V has never been exercised, and it is this recourse by which we must seek our national restoration. The second alternative is to seek a convention to amend the constitution, without interference or obstruction by the Federal Congress. In suggesting this alternative, Levin explains why this process was created, and how we might now use it to bring the Federal government to heel. It’s admittedly a long shot, but it may be the only course now remaining.
For those not familiar with Article V, here is the entire text, with the relevant clauses emphasized:
“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”-US CONST ART V
Many fear that such an amending convention would result in a chaotic process that would effectively rewrite and thereby overthrow the existing constitution, but as Levin explained Wednesday, there need be no such effect because any amendments proposed would still require the approval of three-fourths of states(thirty-eight of fifty,) in order to be ratified. In his coming book, he is introducing eleven “Liberty Amendments” as a means to put in place much-need restraints on our increasingly out-of-control government.
I sincerely hope that among them, he will call for the repeal of the seventeenth amendment, a blight on our system of checks and balances from which this country now suffers mightily. Over the course of this blog, I have introduced other ideas for amendments, and as a matter of curiosity, but also as a matter of interest as an activist in pursuit of liberty. We desperately need to think about this, and to bring this to the attention of our fellow Americans, who may not understand it, may not recognize its value, and may not otherwise be exposed to the reasoning for taking this approach.
Levin’s explanation is simple in broad terms: The Federal government has grown to an extent that it can no longer be relied upon as the instrument by which it will be disciplined. Even if the task seems impossible, both as an educational and preparatory exercise, it is important to pursue this course. As Levin explained it, if the Federal government’s current course causes the catastrophic results we can reasonably expect, it would be best if the American people already had freshly in mind the manner by which to force reform down the Federal government’s throat without resorting to violence and upheaval.
We conservatives know where our government’s current path will lead, and we’re also informed as to the unambiguous intransigence of the current Federal leviathan. We cannot rely on Washington DC, or any of the branches of our Federal government to restrain or discipline themselves in any way. Even in such a states-based effort, the Federal establishment in Washington would do everything it is able to impede, obstruct, and ultimately blunt the effects of any such effort. As Levin further contended, if the Federal government, specifically the Congress, endeavored to break with the rules of the process as outlined in Article V, this would indeed act as a probably trigger for the last resort to which a free people may turn in the face of tyranny. After all, if the Federal government itself became so lawless that it would ignore specific constitutional processes, that government is itself in anarchy and may no longer lay legitimate claim to the authority to govern.
Government needs a good spanking, and we cannot rely on this pack of spoiled children and their enablers to deliver it. We will need to rise up, to educate, and to use the processes already available under the constitution to impose our will on the government, whether it can be accomplished by efforts in time of peace and relative prosperity, or will be delayed until exigency demands it, and dramatic reform may no longer be denied. As has been oft-quoted by government officials, particularly in the judiciary, the US Constitution is not a “suicide pact,” but this works in both directions. It is not a suicide pact most of all for we the people, and it is time we reassert it supremacy as the foundation of our law, and the basis for our nation’s long-enjoyed prosperity and liberty.
This makes all the more important the efforts of grass-roots groups, such as the Tea Party and any sort of “Freedom Faction” that might arise to challenge the existing establishment, because this approach will require the broadest demands of the people working in every state in the union. None should be deluded into thinking such an undertaking will occur in one election cycle, or any number of them, without a persistent and unrelenting dedication of purpose. Once again, let history record that we had been the people equal to the task of self-governance. Let it be said of us that we gave it our fullest measure of devotion, for the country and the constitution we still love and revere, that our children and grandchildren might yet inherit its fullest blessings.
Note: Site modifications and updates are still being brought online in phases. Some of the largest chores are yet to be done, and I intend to carry them out Friday night or in one case, Saturday night. Visitors in the wee hours of the morning are likely to experience sporadic outages. Thank you for your continued patience.
As readers of this blog know well, many conservatives are fuming over the GOP’s sell-out on immigration, but the truth is that the betrayals have been far more numerous than this single issue. Since taking back the House in 2011, mostly powered by Tea Party vigor, the Republican Party has been unresponsive to the concerns and legislative priorities of conservatives generally. There’s no need to recite the litany of betrayals here, but with immigration and the budget as well as debt ceiling surrenders, the GOP hasn’t been carrying out its mandate to obstruct Barack Obama’s agenda to fundamentally transform the United States. On FoxNews, near the close of a segment on America’s News Headquarters, Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin answered a Twitter question from Josh Painter about the possibility of breaking away from the Republican Party along with Mark Levin to form something he called provisionally the “Freedom Party:”
As a matter of full disclosure, while I haven’t met fellow Texan Josh Painter, he is indeed a friend of this blog and many of you will be familiar with his web site. His question was not surprising, because his tweets over time indicate his own heightened disgust with the GOP establishment and the betrayals they have heaped upon the conservative base. Governor Palin answered the question, making plain her own dissatisfaction with the manner in which the Republican Party has been ignoring the will of common sense conservatives. Here is that response(H/T Daily Caller):
It’s clear from her response that she too is feeling betrayed by the GOP in Washington DC, and in truth, Gov. Palin has had to fight against corruption in the Republican Party through much of her political career. It’s no coincidence that she finds favor among the conservative base that so dutifully supports the GOP often times for a lack of better options. Should the moment arrive that conservatives finally decide to abandon the GOP, I suspect Gov. Palin would be among the first to break ranks simply because like so many of us, she does possess that independent, slightly libertarian streak that courses through most real conservatives. A party named for its primary object makes sense to me, and apparently, to Gov. Palin too. Whether a break-away party materializes, we must be prepared to move to support it because quite bluntly, the GOP has been unwilling to move in our direction despite the fact that when conservatives run as conservatives, they win. Combining the intransigence of the Republican Party with its long string of abuses and betrayals of its conservative base, abandoning it may be the only rational choice conservatives may now make.
Painter’s idea of a “Freedom Party” is right up my own alley. I have discussed this sort of thing, and the idea of a political party seeking to re-establish liberty in America is more than a little attractive to me. For too long, we have suffered at the hands of two political parties that seem too often to be extensions of one another rather than actual opponents on an ideological or cultural field of battle. As is clear from the title of this posting, you know my feelings on the matter, but I’d like to gauge yours with a brief poll:
I realize that at this very moment, you are being attacked on all fronts. Our voices have earned us a temporary reprieve on gun control, but they’re trying to tax sales on the Internet again, and they’re pushing a ludicrous, maniacally self-destructive immigration bill. I realize we’re all a bit depressed by the unrelenting onslaught of big government, and I would understand if fatigue had set in for many of my friends and fellow conservatives. Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t have time to be depressed. We might survive an Internet sales tax, but conservatism will not survive the immigration reform bill now being pushed by the “Gang of Eight” senators, or probably the version being pushed in the House by none other than Congressman and former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan(R-WI.) The immigration bill must be stopped if conservatives are to retain any political future.
There’s a very good reason the DC establishment has co-opted these “fresh faces:” They know you won’t listen to the likes of John McCain or Lindsey Graham, but you might be convinced to listen to Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio. They walk these younger guys off a plank, in part because they’re more effective than the old bulls, but also in part to dominate them and keep them in check. If Rubio and Ryan are ultimately damaged by the immigration debate of 2013, who will benefit? Setting the inside politics aside, however, let’s be blunt about the ramifications of the immigration bill: If it is enacted, it will destroy movement conservatism as an electoral force for a generation or longer. For conservatives, this is a fight for survival and it must be fought with all hands on deck.
Naturally, there are others who see danger in this bill. Among them are African-American groups who see the potential for making themselves less vital and more disposable to the Democrat Party. Wouldn’t it be astonishing to find that in the House, we may see the Congressional Black Caucus moving to oppose any immigration bill because it represents an almost complete displacement of their power base in the Democrat Party? It is said that politics makes for strange bedfellows, but in this case, we may see an alliance of the extremely liberal members of the CBC with House conservatives to put the axe to immigration reform. Honestly, if it weren’t for the mortal damage this bill would do to our nation, I’d almost be inclined to let it go through unchallenged just to make the Congressional Black Caucus moot. Apart from the fact that the CBC would likely be an unreliable ally, the fact is that this bill would do immeasurable damage to the country and leave us wide open to more of the same we’ve faced over the last decade, with the added “bonus” of the “Californication” of the rest of the nation inside a decade. States that are now light red would become deep blue, and states that were solidly red would become purple or even blue, in the case of Texas, and Arizona. You can forget winning the White House. Just forget it.
This bill’s rejection is as important to the survival of conservatism as was the presidency of Ronald Reagan. If we don’t find a way to stop this, it will finish conservatism for the next two decades. More, it will dispirit conservatives and we will lose the House in 2014, resulting in two years of a lame-duck President who will never be held to account and who will then have two years of a majority in both houses of Congress, a condition that we will find impossible to reverse. If you have any doubts about the seriousness of the implications of this issue, I’d commend to you this clip from Tuesday’s Mark Levin Show. In this clip, Dr. Levin sounds many of the same warnings, and for many of the same reasons I have brought to you previously on Tuesday. You can download the entire show from Mark Levin Show Audio Rewind. Here is the relevant clip:
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If you understand what Dr. Levin has explained, then you must see the seriousness of the threat posed by this bill. We must begin to attack the provisions of the bill, but also the basic concept that they are trying to shove another de facto amnesty down our throats, once again with promises of improved security for which they have no real intentions to enforce. More, it will weaken our security in the face of continued attacks by radical Islamists, with no end in sight. One of the provisions of the Rubio-Schumer bill actually requires that this amnesty must not be applied to any who arrived in the US illegally after December of 2011. The idea is that this prevents the law from acting like a magnet in the short run to draw more immigrants across the border in a mad rush for amnesty. The problem is that there is absolutely no way to demonstrate when they arrived. That’s right, we’re going to take their word for it, since they are by definition undocumented. How many do you suppose will proclaim that they had arrived after that date? Even if there was the slightest willingness on the part of some to faithfully apply such a provision, what is to prevent Barack Obama from simply waiving it? Nothing. There is nothing to prevent the whole thing from blowing up in our faces.
Paul Ryan discussed with Joel Pollak at Breitbart the questions surrounding the immigration bill, and Ryan claimed dishonestly that this would create new economic growth. As I explained on Tuesday in my rebuttal to Senator Rubio, such an argument is a farce. There is no net economic benefit to the people of the US from immigration, and in fact, a notable economic detriment. As Dr. Levin rightly observed in the clip linked above, if we are looking for unskilled labor on the cheap, we could just as easily begin cutting welfare-state benefits to our own citizens and realize a real economic gain, since we would be removing people from the roles and they would begin to fill all of those jobs “Americans aren’t willing to do.” I imagine that if their option is starvation, booted from clutching bosom of the welfare state, they will damned-well become willing.
This isn’t the time to consider immigration reform that will merely strengthen the Democrats in perpetuity. This isn’t the time to create new and larger holes in our security in exchange for contrived and demonstrably false economic advantage. We are at a point in American history that if we do not rise to fight against this, the loss of our country and all the liberties we have enjoyed is certain. I understand there are those who will see the looming Internet sales tax proposal as the worst threat facing us at present, but I must ask those of that view to reconsider: The Internet Sales Tax can be repealed if it’s enacted, but amnesty is forever, and so is the electoral advantage to be gained by Democrats if it should pass. When even the leftist political site Politico notes the grotesque advantage the immigration bill represents for Democrats, we are right to try to stop this at all costs. The simple fact of the matter is that we can defeat this bill or prepare to yield our shrinking liberties. It’s as simple as that.
Breitbart is carrying informative stories on the bogus “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” bill that is being pushed by the “Gang of Eight” senators. I would urge readers to pay close attention to Breitbart.com for more news on the issue. Byron York of the Examiner is also doing fantastic work exposing the gaping holes in this bill. Breitbart’s William Bigelow has revealed another fatal flaw in the supposed reforms offered by the Rubio-Schumer/Gang-of-Eight bill that will leave a giant opening for the administration to do absolutely nothing in enforcing the allegedly strict measures contained in the new law. As reported by the Byron York, via the Examiner.com, the feature of the bill described by Marco Rubio on Mark Levin’s show last week that would create a commission including the four border-state governors is nothing less than a sham. There are no teeth to the provision, and no means by which to guarantee that provided there are recommendations by a commission of four governors, but also six bureaucrats selected by the President, any of these recommendations would see the light of day. York explains:
“It sounded tough, intended to convince skeptical conservatives that reform would be based on stringent border security. But as it turns out, the structure Gang sources described is simply not in the bill.”
York continues:
“In the legislation, the Commission would be formed if the Secretary of Homeland Security “certifies that the Department has not achieved effective control in all high-risk border sectors during any fiscal year beginning from the date that is five years after the enactment of this Act.” The Commission’s “primary responsibility,” according to the bill, “shall be making recommendations to the President, the Secretary, and Congress on policies to achieve and maintain the border security goal” of 100 percent surveillance and 90 percent apprehension. The Commission will have six months to write a report “setting forth specific recommendations for policies for achieving and maintaining the border security goals [specified in the bill].” That report shall contain, according to the bill, “recommendations for the personnel, infrastructure, technology, and other resources required to achieve and maintain [those goals].””
As if this isn’t bad enough, York then delivers what should be the final nail in the coffin of this horrible legislation:
“The bill requires that the head of the Government Accountability Office then review the report to determine whether the Commission’s recommendations are likely to work and what they will cost. And then — the process stops. “The Commission shall terminate 30 days after the date on which the report is submitted,” says the bill.
“There is nothing about the Commission going from “being an advisory panel to a policy-making one.” The strict trigger that Gang sources advertised as being in the bill just isn’t there.
“As far as the “money set aside in escrow” for the Commission and its enforcement plan, the bill specifies that $2 billion “shall be made available” to the Secretary of Homeland Security “to carry out programs, projects, and activities recommended by the Commission.” It is not clear whether there is any directive for the Secretary to actually do anything.”(emphasis added)
What this all means is that when Marco Rubio appeared on Mark Levin’s show on Wednesday of last week to explain the bill, he misled the audience and presumably the host. Levin asked tough questions despite being friendly with the Senator, but it seems that Senator Rubio “dissembled” a bit on some of the details. The Daily Caller quotes Rubio from his appearance on Dr. Levin’s show:
“If, in five years, the plan has not reached 100 percent awareness and 90 percent apprehension, the Department of Homeland Security … will lose control of the issue and it will be turned over to the border governors to finish the job …. which is not a Washington commission, made up of congressmen or bureaucrats. It’s largely led by the border state governors, who have a vested local interest in ensuring that that border is secure … and there’s money set aside in the bill for them to do it.” [Emphasis added]
“True, the bill does create a $2B pot of money for the DHS to use to carry out the commission’s recommendations–but there’s nothing that compels the DHS to actually spend it on all of them, or any of them, let alone to actually achieve the “90 percent apprehension” goal.
“Nor, if the goal isn’t reached, does the bill delay the issuance of green cards to the already-legalized former illegals (as Rubio at one point seems to suggest to Levin).
“Oh, and the commission isn’t “made up of the governors” of the border states–they only control four of the 10 commission seats. The other six are “Washington” appointments (see pages 14-15)
“Aside from those things, everything Rubio said about the commission was true.”
Whether the statements of Senator Rubio were intentionally misleading, or whether he is simply being led around by the nose by staff or other senators on the plain language of the bill, what is deeply troubling is that by appearing on the Mark Levin Show, repeating falsehoods(whether or not he knew them to be falsehoods,) Senator Rubio has done much to contribute to the lack of ill will and distrust over this legislation. Whatever other supposed virtues this legislation may have, it’s wrecked by the propaganda being spread in this instance by Senator Rubio.
As this goes on, Rubio’s own spokesman, Alex Conant, is on Twitter comparing immigrants, legal and illegal, to slaves, H/T Twitchy:
@conncarroll We haven’t had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery.
If this is the attitude of Rubio’s spokesman, one must wonder about the strategy being employed by Rubio. The claim that immigrant are akin to slaves is a ridiculous notion, and frankly, Rubio should fire Conant. It leaves open the question as to whether Senator Rubio might endorse such notions, and while I doubt that to be the case, it won’t help the Senator’s cause. Likewise, it isn’t helpful when one sees a conservative senator going around arm-in-arm with Charles “Chuck-U” Schumer(D-NY,) one has every reason to believe that Rubio may have relied on the characterization of the bill provided by the likes of Schumer. I wonder if Rubio isn’t being made a patsy, but then again, I’m not sure it matters because there is something disturbing about a purportedly “conservative” senator relying on the explanations of the legislation of anybody. Why isn’t he reading the language?
Schumer has taken a slightly different approach, going on the offense and claiming that some would use the occasion of the Boston Marathon Bombing to stall or obstruct the Immigration Reform legislation. I must say that given the disclosures about the actual provisions of the bill revealed over the last week, I sincerely hope some conservative senators will do precisely that. It makes no sense to pretend that this ridiculous immigration bill will accomplish anything but to make our nation less secure, and the Boston bombing clearly exposes that for the average citizen. The dishonesty being employed by proponents of this legislation is very much like an Obama campaign, and that’s all the more despicable when you think that a rising star in the Republican party may have diminished himself into nothing more than a flash in the pan. That’s a sad prospect, one that could be headed-off if these politicians would simply read the legislation they’re advocating. Senator Rubio owes us an explanation for the incomprehensibly misleading statements made on Levin’s show, but one probably won’t be forthcoming. Draw your own conclusions as to the reason(s).
We ought to become acquainted with how we conservatives must appear to GOP establishment politicians, analysts and strategists. At every instance of their serial abuses of the grass-roots, conservatives “go wobbly” and buckle, ultimately returning to the fold. They know how to pull at our heartstrings and seize on our desperation in order to get us to back down from our outraged, uppity high horses. They play the loyalty card, the race card, the poverty card, and anything else they can contrive in order to convince us to return their waiting arms in order to comply with their wishes, but it’s the whip they hold to which we ought pay more attention. They don’t see us as equals, but as a herd of inferiors to be managed, and in order to do so, sometimes they recognize the need to grovel a little. It should sound familiar to conservatives any time they listen to the latest establishment attempts at re-framing their disgusting behavior into something born of the “best intentions.” Just like serial domestic abusers, the establishment always make a rationalized, dishonest appeal in order to avoid charges of abuse, and just like the real victims of domestic abuse, we conservatives keep going back when they offer their excuses:
“I didn’t mean any offense. I didn’t want to hurt you. It was all just one big confused misunderstanding. I’m sorry you took my actions as a sign that I meant you harm. Nothing could be further from the truth. Can’t we just get along and make it all better? We can seek counseling. I’ll enroll in AA! You know I really love you, and I only do these things because I love and need you so much. I didn’t want you to make the choices you did because I only wanted to protect you[from yourself.] Baby, this will never, ever happen again.”
Of course, that’s what they say, but it’s not what they mean. For example, Karl Rove is trying to undermine Iowa Congressman Steve King in any attempt to run for Senate in the next election cycle, and he’s happy to point to dishonest statistics about King’s re-election campaign in 2012. What Rove won’t tell you is that King’s re-election bid was as narrow as it had been because Democrats made his district a priority, dumping millions of dollars of anti-King advertising into the district. As Mark Levin pointed out during the second hour of his Friday show, Rove wasn’t satisfied with mere distortion when availing himself of the podium of Sean Hannity’s radio show. Instead, he resorted to outright lies. Here’s audio from Dr. Levin’s show:
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This process by which the establishment wing of the GOP attacks grass roots targets should seem familiar to readers. It should also sound familiar to anybody who has ever worked in law enforcement, social services, or even listened to a few tapes of 9-1-1 calls. Millions of women and not a few men have lived through the self-imposed nightmare of returning again and again to an abusive spouse(or significant other) in order to retain some semblance of normalcy and predictability in their lives. They just want the beatings to stop. They just want it to end, but so desperate to hold onto some part of their lives, they frequently return for another dose, often ending in tragedy. After all, haven’t we conservatives behaved with freakish precision like sufferers of what had been known formerly as “battered wife syndrome?” Do you doubt me? Imagine Karl Rove in a plain-white sleeveless undershirt. You get the picture.
Many people ask the obvious question about battered spouses: “Why do they keep going back?” If you’re a member of the Republican party, but also a conservative in principle and philosophy who has become annoyed or offended by the direction of the GOP, it’s time for you to ask that same question of yourself. Some will say I have been too crass in posing such an analogy, but I think it’s fitting because it seems to me that when it comes down to the point at which rational people would flee for the sake of self-preservation, too often, we stop and return to the scene of the abuse, knowing what must be coming eventually, despite all the promises of reformation. We’ve heard the rationalizations:
“It’s better now. Fault has been admitted, and we’re seeking counseling, and I’m treated much better now.”
All of these are preludes to the real confession of helplessness that follows:
“Besides, what else was I going to do? Leave? Where would I go? What would I do? Better to stay put.”
With respect to the Republican Party and its miserable, corrupt establishment, who among conservatives hasn’t contemplated some version of these notions in order to trick themselves into holding the nose and walking back in to the booth to pull the lever for the GOP’s preferred candidates? Right. Me. You. Virtually all conservatives have gone through this one or more or even dozens of times, and each time, we knew with virtual certainty what would be coming: Another attack by the establishment on the grass-roots, or another surrender by party leadership to the leftist agenda would soon be in the offing. Once the electoral objectives are met for the cycle, we and our issues are discarded and off we go with the next Republican-led effort at big government statism, and further support of a purely leftist agenda. It happens so often that we cringe now when a Republican hand is raised, expecting it to smash down on us as it has done so many times before.
Many were outraged by the actions of the GOP establishment in 2011-12, but in the end, how many of us did their bidding anyway? We keep coming back. Even a dog learns that if you recall him, only to bash his nose with a rolled-up paper, approaching you is something to be done at his peril. Eventually, the dog won’t come back at all, and no amount of false praise or treats will make him return when called because he has learned recall is the prelude to another beating. Are we conservatives not more able to recognize our antagonists than are dogs? Do we not possess the requisite self-esteem to leave?
What we have done is to reinforce the behavior of our batterers. It’s gotten so bad that fleeing for a night or a week to the political battering victims’ shelter of the blogosphere or talk radio to voice our displeasure will no longer be enough. It’s time finally to press charges and stand up for ourselves and go, never to return. Yes, there will be hard times as a result, but the long-run dangers of staying are worse, and at some point, for people who claim to be concerned with the welfare of their children, shouldn’t we correct the environment in which they will be growing?
I say “we must go.” Otherwise, how many black eyes will we endure? How many betrayals? How much infidelity must we accept? We might claim that we had no choice but to stay, or to return, but after the tenth 9-1-1 call to Rush Limbaugh, our whining begins to lose its impact. Do you think the GOP establishment hasn’t noticed our regular return to the fold, irrespective of what they do to us next? We fall for their sweetened tone because we want to, and because it’s harder to strike out on our own than to come back and live in terror of our next beating at their hands. It’s time to recognize that it is our fear of the uncertainty that fuels our repeated returns, but also that in so doing, what we are guaranteeing instead is a certain result that will only grow worse. We must ask instead how much we value such predictability, if it amounts only to the certainty of our next beating. It’s time for conservatives to reject the continued abuse at the hands of their tormentors in the Republican establishment. It’s time to break the cycle.
Note: It’s not my intention to minimize domestic abuse, but instead to demonstrate how conservatives have responded to their abusers in the same way many victims of real domestic abuse react to their plights. I don’t intend to compare the horrors inflicted on such victims with the political victimization that goes on the Republican party, except as an illustration of how dependent conservatives have become on their abusers. The immediate results of the political context I’m discussing in no way measure up to the terror under which victims of domestic violence live, but I will point out that in terms of the country and its future, the dire consequences of permitting the abuse of the GOP establishment to continue will be no less severe on a national basis.
It was inevitable that given the shellacking Karl Rove has taken over the last few days that he would use any opportunity to advance the idea that he is a conservative. As I posted earlier on Friday evening, Rove made claims to conservative credentials on O’Reilly that were later debunked. Mark Levin took the debunking to a new level in the second hour of his show, making it plain that Rove was being disingenuous, to say the least. Here’s the audio:
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As Dr. Levin explains later in the same hour, he’s now attacking conservatives with blatant lies. You can listen to the entire show here.
There should be no mistake about what Mark Levin believes, or even the vast reach of his influence over the debate about government. Many left-wingers and not a few establishment Republicans accuse Dr. Levin of being a yelling mad-man, but that ignores the extent to which he influences the public debate. At an event last year in support of Ted Cruz, in the run-off that made him the Republican candidate, one attendee asked quite simply: How can we stop the construction of Ameritopia? What was stunning wasn’t the fact that the Senate Candidate knew full well what the questioner meant, being a friend with Dr. Levin and a campaign season guest on his show, but that all around the room, heads nodded up and down, because they knew the meaning of the question too. When the Senator answered, he demonstrated an understanding of the implications with respect to the US constitution, but unlike your typical rally of Democrats, the audience understood his points in part because some of them are lifetime students of our civil society, but also because among them were many listeners of Mark Levin’s show.
On Tuesday evening, frustrated with the talking points and narratives of establishment Republicans who wish to blame conservatives for last November’s losses, Levin launched:
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Dr. Levin holds a special contempt for so-called RINOs, or as I have recently dubbed them, “Mini-Dems.” They don’t believe in conservatism, or near as one can tell, much of anything. Instead, theirs is the worship of a brand of vague pragmatism that ends in Republican defeats. Of course, Dr. Levin realizes the RINOs aren’t going away, but here I think the larger point is that the underlying strategies and arguments that comprise RINOism are dead, as demonstrated by their repeated failures in election after election.
Levin’s reach into the blogosphere is deep and wide, as almost daily, some blogger somewhere, much as I’m doing now, is posting a vital clip from his show, and this acts as a spark for debate, not merely between left and right, but more importantly in the wake of last November’s election defeats, between and among Republicans and conservatives. This is because Levin spares no feelings, or at least not many, in making the essential and incisive points that establish the conditions of the debate. This may explain more than anything else why Levin’s show has grown while others have remained fairly static. He engages one’s mind, and he demands you follow the logic. He makes no apologies for supporting the Tea Party, or the conservative wing of the party, as Levin came up in politics in the watershed year of 1976, campaigning for Ronald Reagan. Though Reagan lost that election, it set the stage for his nomination and election in 1980, and Levin was there to learn the critical lessons.
Most listeners to Levin’s show comprise a group of studious, committed pupils, attending a a constitutional classroom in which the principles behind the founding of the country and the framing of its constitution are the daily lesson plan. What’s more, while it’s relatively early to draw this conclusion, as conservatives are searching for answers to their current political morass, it seems as though more are turning to Levin for the answers. It’s not as though Levin claims to be an all-knowing font of wisdom on what ought to be conservatives’ course, but his determination to fight and keep moving is enough because what becomes plain to his listeners is his unfailing commitment to see the battle through, whatever form it takes. Part of this may owe to the fact that in the wake of the 2012 election, conservatives are looking for a strong, articulate leader to make their best case for liberty, but I believe it’s a good deal more substantive than that. Levin seems almost instinctively to understand what the left will try next, which may explain why the stories he reads on one day so often become the topic of discussion throughout the blogosphere on the next day.
It’s been true on this site, almost from its inception, and on many occasions, I have brought readers audio from Dr. Levin’s show. My readers will have no idea on how many occasions Dr. Levin had stolen my thunder by covering a stories that I had in draft form as Levin’s show began, only to later discard them because on topics of substance, he generally leaves so little to be explained. That’s fine by me, but it highlights another important point about Levin: He’s plugged-in, and he works tirelessly outside the confines of his show, not merely to prepare for his daily three-hour lesson in liberty, but because in other efforts, he’s at the tip of the spear. The Landmark Legal Foundation is his other instrument of our republic’s defense, taking up cases of constitutional import on behalf of a grateful people. This level of involvement means that unlike so many other talkers, he’s in the trenches with us, and often as the point-man out ahead of us, spotting danger and directing the initial engagements.
Given all this, you’d think more Republican politicians would heed his advice, but where Dr. Levin is fearless, all too often, elected officials won’t follow his lead, out of a fear frequently masquerading as an overabundance of prudence. Levin understands this, and he often asks politicians questions that he then suggests they not answer, instead completing the thought on his own, knowing the precarious state of any official’s office. Levin’s show is probably also the largest network of plugged-in conservative activists in the general right-wing sphere, and his audience is unashamed to lean on politicians and to begin with the phrase: “I heard on Mark Levin’s show that you were going to vote for…” It is for this reason that so many of the DC Republican establishment tunes into his show, and while most won’t admit it, the fact is that they are well aware of Levin, and they feel his electoral influence. Politicians on the receiving end of his support love to hear the phrase “Levin surge” pronounced on their behalf, just as they cringe when they pop up on Levin’s radar for the sake of a well-deserved critique. They know they’re about to find their email and voice-mail full, and they’re going to get it both from Levin on the radio as well as from their constituents.
What may make Levin the most compelling and influential of the talkers and political media figures is that he expresses his contempt for the malfeasance of politicians and parties in the context of legal concepts on which he daily refreshes his audience. Apart from this blog, and rare few like it, you will not often witness a discussion of the principles underlying our supreme law. Law can be a minefield as any layperson will know, but there’s something precious about the ability to breath life into the collection of words, explaining their meaning and the context in which they were formulated in a manner that both educates and engages listeners. Very often, listeners to Dr. Levin’s show evince a reverence for our republic’s charter that is both touching and sincere, but also ironic in light of how easily their alleged “betters” dispense with both its words and spirit inside the beltway.
This kind of reformation movement isn’t religious, but its most ardent supporters would contend that while they may cling to their guns and their bibles, they haven’t turned-loose of their constitution either. Listening Tuesday evening, as Levin mentioned the effect he suspected his show might have on the national dialogue, I wondered aloud in response to my deaf computer screen as to just how many of the people I know are now loyal Levin listeners, and the truth is something staggering. I may live in rural Texas, where we tend to value liberty more than the average, but even friends from the distant large cities, in this state and out, all seem quite familiar with Levin’s show, his daily “lesson plans” frequently filling my morning inbox: “Did you hear what Mark [Levin] said last night?” There’s no denying he’s a bold and entertaining talk radio phenomenon, but more than this, he’s also the commander of constitutional defense headquarters on a national scale. When people seek the low-down on the latest Obama executive usurpation, they tune to one show on the dial and in streams across the Internet, because for better or worse, they know they’ll find the answers.
Dr. Levin can be heard Monday-Friday, 6-9pm Eastern, both on terrestrial radio and streaming from his site, as well as affiliates. If you miss the live show, he also offers free downloads of his podcasts here.
There must be something in the water in Washington DC, and I think it’s about 80 proof. Speaker John Boehner has led the abandonment of principle once again, and I can’t believe these are allegedly our guys. This evening, the rotten Republican leadership sent down the word that Republicans ought to support a bill that eliminates Senate confirmation for an additional 169 Executive branch positions, meaning that they just let Barack Obama have his way with 169 more positions he can fill, unchecked by Congress, and able to appoint the most maniacal leftists he can dig up. Thankfully, it was a roll-call vote, and you can look to see how your Representative voted. My own Representative voted “Aye” on this hogwash, and before this evening is over, his office is going to hear about it, and tomorrow, his offices both in the district and in DC are going to hear about it. The purpose of confirmations is that there should be Congressional oversight on these appointments so no President can become too powerful. Boehner and the boys just voted to reduce their own power but according to Mark Levin’s sources, there’s a reason they did so: Mitt Romney told them to do it on the basis that he would like it if he were to become President. What?!?
The purpose of this collection of elected jack-wagons is not to dispense with the Constitution, or to weaken the legislative branch on the basis that somebody from their party might become President at some date in the future. It is their job to protect and defend the constitution, and that means to uphold its intent, which includes the Congressional responsibility of oversight over Presidential appointments. Who in the world do these people think they are? It’s not their job to “remove obstructions” to the process. For the love of Pete, why don’t Boehner and McConnell just get together with Obama and give him all power of Congress, since Mitt Romney might want to be dictator someday? This is preposterous. It truly is disheartening, but more than that, it’s a bit more evidence that we cannot salvage the Republican party. It’s broken. It doesn’t represent us in many cases, and it certainly doesn’t represent our interests when our elected Republican majority throws we and our constitution under the bus in the name of expedience.
Others may take a somewhat less terse approach, but I no longer give a damn about holding back “for the sake of party unity.” When they sell us out, I am going to scream it. What party unity? The only “unity” I see in this matter is that between John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Hussein Obama: They’re united against us! I heard part of Mark Levin’s commentary on this, so I’ve decided to share it with you.
Clips 1 & 2:
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Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to know what’s wrong with the Republican party, look nowhere beyond this instance of dire stupidity. Or is it something else? Barack Obama is a dangerous thug wearing the office of President like the robes of a king, and yet the Republican leadership in the House just gave him a pass on 169 appointments. Their excuse is that Romney wanted it? What if Romney doesn’t win???
Even if Romney does, do we want him filling those jobs without Congressional oversight, or the ability of the American people to call their Senators to object to appointments? What happens when Romney begins filling these jobs with RINOs? What happens when he fills them with more of his friends, in payment for their support? What are we to do then? I’ll tell you: We should thank John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and all the other all-star losers in the Republican party who voted for this garbage.
Your voice as a check on the power of the Presidency is being stolen from you, but the they’re not finished. They intend to bypass the confirmation process for up to an additional 270 positions. That’s 440 total possible instances in which some President will have no need to worry that he’s appointing a louse, whether it’s the current jerk, or some future occupant of that office. Do you not see what they are doing to us? Do you not realize it? They are systematically converting the courts and the Congress into a mechanical auto-pen for the office of the President. In short, they’re building a dictatorship, and I don’t much care whether the dictator has a “D” or an “R” behind the name. It matters not one whit to our liberty what party a tyrant might claim.
The Republican establishment is a part of the disease in Washington DC, and with incidents like this, it’s becoming apparent that they’re the larger part. Obama and the Democrats can only get away with this because guys like Romney, Boehner, and McConnell let them, and this sell-out is a prime example.
We pay the price, every time.
This isn’t about Mitt Romney. This is about the separation of powers under our constitution, and the role of the Senate in confirming Presidential appointees. It doesn’t matter that Mitt Romney may become President. It doesn’t matter if Ronald Reagan were to rise and somehow become President again. This is a bad idea, no matter who the President is, and the fact is that at present, the occupant of that office is Barack Obama, and it may just be him again. Defending the separation of powers is something our Congress ought to do, and on Tuesday evening, the Republican “leadership” in Washington DC failed us again.
Ted Cruz won Tuesday’s Senate run-off against Lt.Governor David Dewhurst in convincing fashion, defeating the Austin moderate by a margin of nearly ten points. That’s a stunning win given how his campaign was outspent by Dewhurst, and it speaks to the commitment of activists all across the state, and a few notable conservatives who showed up to campaign for Cruz, including Sarah Palin, and Jim DeMint, but also that big voice on the evening airwaves, Mark Levin. Tea Party Express worked tirelessly to get out the vote, and Amy Kremer must be ecstatic and exhausted. Nevertheless, Cruz must still win the general election in November, but it’s a refreshing change to see that Austin insider David Dewhurst didn’t walk away with the nomination. Texas conservatives and Tea Party patriots won a huge victory Tuesday over the Austin establishment!
Twitter was awash in comments all evening, and when various media outlets began to call the race, it was quickly a party of sorts as faithful re-Tweeters spread the word and celebrated.
“Congratulations to Ted Cruz! This is a victory both for Ted and for the grassroots Tea Party movement. This primary race has always been about the kind of leadership we need in D.C. Our goal is not just about changing the majority in the Senate. It is about the kind of leadership we want. Ted Cruz represents the kind of strong conservative leadership we want in D.C. Go-along to get-along career politicians who hew the path of least resistance are no longer acceptable at a time when our country is drowning in debt and our children’s futures are at stake. The message of this race couldn’t be clearer for the political establishment: the Tea Party is alive and well and we will not settle for business as usual. Now, it’s on to November!”
For his part, Ted Cruz thanked Governor Palin, Senator DeMint, and all of his supporters and endorsers via Twitter immediately after the race was called, and Texas conservatives were able to bask for the remainder of the evening in the warm glow of victory! Saturday, in attendance at a small, hastily assembled Cruz campaign stop in Waco, he noticed my Texas4Palin t-shirt, plastered with Cruz buttons, and he said: “Governor Palin really energizes a crowd, doesn’t she? She’s really terrific!” It was easy to see that he was thankful for her support, and appreciative of all the Texans who turned out for him at his stops around the state.
For my part, thanks to all of those who have re-tweeted my messages on Twitter in support of Ted Cruz, and thanks on behalf of a grateful state to Governor Palin, Senator DeMint, Mark Levin, Amy Kremer, and all of the others who so tirelessly labored to get our candidate the win. It’s grass-roots activism at its finest, and I have had the great privilege of helping in a cause in which we dared not fail. Thanks to the candidate himself, who ran a clean campaign in the face of withering, fraudulent attacks and dirty tricks from his opponent. Congratulations to all!
Way to go Texas! Now let’s help conservatives in other states as well!
I hate that this is the case, but I must say that the antics of Lt. Governor David Dewhurst are despicable. Dewhurst began running a new ad this week on the Internet featuring a woman crying about her son who killed himself, implying that Ted Cruz was somehow to blame is a scandal. I find it offensive that any politician seeking to be the Republican Senate candidate would run such an ad, but I cannot believe any even vaguely conservative Texan would knowingly vote for this man. The internal polls must not be looking all that spiffy for Lt. Gov. Dewhurst. It’s time we go to the polls and give him a taste of how bad it can get.
On Wednesday evening’s show, Mark Levin also addressed this latest attack ad by Dewhurst. Here’s audio:
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Dewhurst is an amoral politician who seeks only power. The worst part may be that a large number of Democrats may be voting in this run-off as Republicans in order to skew the vote in Dewhurst’s favor, and he’s quietly courting their support. Democrats clearly realize Dewhurst is a guy who will frequently go their way in tough votes in the Senate like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or Lindsey Graham. They expect he will be a reliable aisle-crosser.
What this means is that you had better turn out for Ted Cruz, or the liberal Republicans and the Democrats will combine to elect another squish.
To the polls, Texas Conservatives!
In related news, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and South Carolina’s Senator Jim Demint will be rallying in support of Ted Cruz on Friday at the Woodlands, near Houston, and I will be there to join in the support!
Texans, get out there and show your support! Show David Dewhurst he can’t get away with skewing reality this way, and vote for Ted Cruz!
