One Country - Two Constitutions?

by

        M. Richard Maxson

       At the end of the 19^th century, with the rise of the industry, the elite began to theorize in the political and social ideas of the time. They debated the allure of Socialism, which has its origins in the 1789 French Revolution, then with the publishing of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels in 1848 expressing what they termed "scientific socialism." There was even more debate of the pros and cons and comparisons to our Constitution. In the last third of the 19th century, when social democratic parties arose in Europe, drawing mainly from Marxism there were those in this country who wanted “change.”

       Before his election to the presidency in 1912 Woodrow

Wilson was a believer in these leftist views of government. As a young scholar he had contemplated a series of constitutional amendments to reform America's national government into a kind of parliamentary system. This went completely against the what Americans had fought so hard to endure in our civil war. He quickly realized that is planned to amend the constitution was going nowhere.

     He then went in a slightly different direction to “change America”. He created the idea of a “living constitution”. This “new” constitution, with it’s roots in the leftist political and social science of the late 19th century was born. Wilson believe the old constitution was just that old. It was difficult to amend. The liberal constitution would be easily amendable to experimentation and adjustment. While keeping the outward forms of the old constitution the idea of living constitution would change utterly the spirit in which the original constitution was understood. This goal of a “new” constitution has been at the very forefront of progressive politics for over 100 years.

      What is the difference in the Progressives approach to our country? There are normal politics and there are regime politics. Normal politics takes place within a political and constitutional order and concerns the means not the ends. Regime politics is about who rules and for what ends or principles. It questions the nature of the political system itself. Who gets the rights? Who gets to vote? What do we honor or revere as a people? With regime politics, all traditions are out the window. Nothing matters except from now... onward.

      This was the beginning of America slowly evolving into two peoples. The patriotic conservative vision of America is based on the original constitution. This is the Constitution grounded in natural rights of the Declaration of Independence. It has been transmitted to us with amendments and is still considered the original constitution. Those who favor this are know as “originalists.”

      The other vision is based on what Progressives and liberals for 100 years have now called the living constitution. They believe that the original constitution is dead, or at least on life support, and in order to remain relevant to our natural life, the original constitution must be infused with new meanings and new ends and therefore with new duties, rights, and powers. An example - new administrative agencies must be created to circumvent the structural limitations that the original constitution imposed on government. Rather than the people deciding through constitutional amendments, these new agencies would swiftly make the changes those in power deem necessary without debate.

      There's also a vast divergence between liberal and conservative understandings of the first amendment. Liberals are interested in transforming free speech into what they call equal speech ensuring that no one gets more than their fair share. The Democratic party's platform calls for amending the first amendment. There's also a big difference between the liberal constitutions freedom from religion and the conservative constitutions freedom of religion. In a living constitution there is no second amendment.

      Until the 1960s most liberals and progressives believed it was inevitable that their living constitution would replace the conservative constitution through a kind of slow motion evolution. But during the sixties defenders of the old constitution began to fight back and began to call for return to America's first principles. The conservative campaign against the inevitability of the living constitution gained steam and when it became clear to the left by the 1970s and 1980s that the conservatives and their constitution were not going away, the war was on.

      Confronted by the growing popularity of the conservative constitution and American originalist patriotism, the left radicalized. As a result the gap between the left the living constitution and the conservative original constitution became a gulf. We became two countries. Each constitutionally different. With this, America may be leaving the world of normal politics and entering the dangerous world of regime politics, a politics in which our political loyalties diverge more and more into separate camps, much as they did before the Civil War.

      How do we get back to thinking like one country? How can America's political civil war be resolved. According to Charles Kesler, professor of government and political philosophy, “One can think of only five possibilities. The first if some jarring event intervenes, a major war or huge natural calamity, it may reset our politics. A second possibility is that we can change our minds. Persuasion are some combination of persuasion and moderation may allow us to end or at least endure our great political division.”

      Since 1968 the normal has been a divided government. For the last 50 years no president has persuaded the American electorate to embrace his party as the national representative, of their vision of the constitution as the norm, worthy of long-term patriotic allegiance.

      “The third solution to our national problem would be a vastly reinvigorated federalism. A return to our roots. Unfortunately, since in the previous century we have abandoned so much of traditional federalism, it is hard to see a federalism could be revived at this late juncture,” Kesler lamented.

       “The forth possibility is secession, a danger to any Federal System and something about which James Madison wrote at great length and the federalist papers. With any Federal System there's a possibility that some states will try to leave it. Secession would be extremely difficult for many reasons. Not the least is that it could lead to the fifth and possible worst possibility, civil war.”

      The American constitutional future seems to be approaching some kind of crisis. A crisis of two constitutions. Let us hope that we and our countrymen will find a way to reason together and compromise, allowing us to avoid the worst of these dire scenarios. Our citizens, our founders, and our history, our country as we have known it, depends on it.

A Historian Puts the Trump Presidency in Prospective

By

       M. Richard Maxson

      Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno. The author of more than two dozen well-received books. His insight into politics and the forces behind the politicians which are the actual rulers of America are crystal clear.

• On the election of Donald Trump:

      “Trump was greeted by the Washington media and intellectual establishment as if he were the first beast in the book of Revelation, who arose “out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. Never before in the history of the presidency,” Hanson writes, “had a commander in chief earned the antipathy of the vast majority of the media, much of the career establishments of both political parties, the majority of the holders of the nation’s accumulated personal wealth, and the permanent federal bureaucracy. The deep state and media despised him “because they were often one and the same thing.”

      “Besides the Washington press and pundit corps, Donald Trump faced this third and more formidable opponent: the culture of permanent and senior employees of the federal and state governments, and the political appointees in Washington who revolve in and out from business, think tanks, lobbying firms, universities, and the media. Or as the legal scholar of the administrative state Philip Hamburger put it: “Although the United States remains a republic, administrative power creates within it a very different sort of government. The result is a state within the state — an administrative state within the Constitution’s United States.” The power of the deep state is twofold: it has the unlimited resources of government at its call in any fight against individuals. And it knew how government worked and could be manipulated.”

• On why the Deep State hates Donald Trump:

      He is a disrupter - “Trump was not so much critical as ignorant of the deep state’s rules and its supposed sterling record of stable governance. Trump proved willing to fire lifelong public servants. He ignored sober and judicious advice from Washington “wise men.” He appointed “crazy” outsiders (rather than the same old faces) skeptical of establishment institutions. Because Trump ran against Democrats, the Republican establishment, and the deep state, in victory he had few Washington insiders left to pick from. He purged high government of its progressive activists. And he embraced deep-state heresies and blasphemies such as considering tariffs, questioning NATO, doubting the efficacy of NAFTA, whining about federal judges, and jawboning interest rates. And he also left vacant key offices on the theory that one less deep-state voice was one less critic, and one less obstacle to undoing the Obama record.”

• On why the Washington elite despise him:

      “Trump doesn't have the credentials. The last few presidents have come from Harvard or Yale Law schools or their business schools and if Trump succeeds without that resume and it's a commentary on the people who failed to win it. That's one thing he doesn't need them he doesn't consult them are all your he doesn't call and a wise man of Washington or New York or Ex- presidents. He just barrels ahead.”

• On why members of his own party despise him:

      “The Republicans especially and never Trump people say this cannot happen because we have not been advising or him. He's not listening to our commentary on television, or whatever. We are not going into the oval office he's not reading our Op-Eds. It's a frightening thing on his success because it's a referendum on the status quo.”

• On his chances for re-election:

      “First, to be reelected he must pound on the economics, the economics, the economics. and he's going to have to put it more on a moral terms that what ever you think of his commentaries, his presidency has changed the lives of millions of Americans who have jobs and higher wages.”

    “Second, he has to emphasize that this is not the Democratic party that we have known through the years. This is a party of infanticide, reparations, sanctuary cities, a 16 year old vote, and Socialism. The fact that only Trump is the only one standing between you and a socialist agenda and that's going to be a powerful argument.”

      “At the end of two years, this base of support for Trump remains solid. This is in part, Hanson notes, due to Trump’s recognition that “the America ‘era’ was not ending, but at that time enjoying the strongest GDP growth, job reports, energy production, business and consumer confidence, and foreign policy successes in fifteen years. The latest figures show that this administration’s economic policies have resulted in the highest number of job openings ever recorded in the United States, with more women and minorities employed than ever before.”

      Henry Kissinger, quoted by Hanson, best sums up what Donald Trump may come to represent: “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretense.” We can only hope that he is right. While Washington’s political theater continues, the country waits, and waits, and waits for elected Congressional officials to do their jobs - the business of the country.

The Conspiracy Continues

by

       Zeno Potas

"Over the course of the last two years, I have communicated with current and former government employees who told me that a number of operatives at various three-letter agencies have been actively working to undermine first the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, and then his presidency. Most of them are Obama appointees. All of them doing so for political reasons." - Robert Barr


      It is now a known fact that President Trump’s campaign was spied on by the previous administration. While not running for re-election, the fact remains that the Obama administration and the Democratic party decided to spy on the presidential campaign of the opposing party. President Obama and others may need to be subpoenaed to answer questions throughout the course of this investigation on what now appears to be his personal involvement in this treasonous plot. All of this happened when he was in office and none of it could have proceeded without him knowing. It’s serious. It’s not fake news. 
 
      It was well documented between the election and the inauguration, Mr. Obama, many in his party, and other co-conspirators did everything in their power to, not only to tamper with the constitutional transition of government, but to set up obstacles and “land mines” to insure the failure of the incoming administration. They even bragged about it as they did it! The objective was to cause the incoming president to fail and/or be removed from office. The extent of the conspiracy is massive and the whole truth may never be known as the elite responsible, the shadow government, has so much control over the minds of the masses that they can actually convince a large chunk of the citizenry that blue is red, i.e., falsities are facts.

      The Russia collusion investigation was the vehicle and they seemingly had that locked down. The plot was made international with the Steele dossier and the accusations were broadcast 24/7 from the shadow government’s outlets. (“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” - Lenin) The problem is, that it was a lie, a sophisticated one, but a lie. 
 
      Then there was WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks released Podesta’s emails, which were hacked six months earlier. Enter the Deep State. Our intelligence community told us, Russia was in effect running a campaign to help Trump and WikiLeaks was being used as a Russian front. Additionally, leaked transcripts attempting to show that WikiLeaks was actively trying to boost Trump’s campaign and tank Hillary Clinton’s. Again, Americans were fed a meal of lies – false truths if you will. It WAS Russia.

     The name of the spy the FBI used to gather information on the Trump team during the 2016 election is Stefan Halper, a CIA operative that’s been named as the source, and his past activities, including the reported actions he took in 2016 to supposedly gather intelligence from the Trump team. Spying on a political campaign, in this country, by a government agency should run shivers down the spine of any American. It rips at the fabric of a free society.

       Fortunately, the elite underestimated the intelligence of some Americans – again. They still believe the fact that 87.3% of the world population will believe any oddly specific statistic you give them. They ignored the other 12.7% that are still using critical analytical thinking to make an informed decision. Patriotic Americans found the truth. Enter the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers with relevant technical expertise and with this expertise came the “Russia-did-the-hacking to assist Trump assessment,” a study of the available forensic evidence. The VIPS’ analysis of the known download speed of one batch of Democratic emails concluded in July that the emails were likely extracted by a local download, not an external hack over the Internet, i.e., an inside job by someone with direct access to the computers. But the VIPS findings were largely ignored by the U.S. mainstream media, which has treated the original “assessment” by those “hand-picked” analysts as unchallengeable!!! 


      The release of the AG’s special prosecutor’s report did nothing to stop the shadow government’s minions such as Adam Schiff, who in response to the Mueller Report finding no evidence of Russian collusion, and a request from all Republicans to step down as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, simply continues to investigate links between Russia and Trump.


      The arrest to silence WikiLeaks Julian Assange at this time is not a coincidence. We seeing signs that the Deep State is in desperation mode, with few options left in trying to prevent their long-standing crimes from being revealed and prosecuted. This ruling class of elites employs the services of people in various spheres of human activity, including politics, banking, industry, science, military, intelligence, education, judiciary and media. With their virtually limitless wealth, power, and knowledge, they control key players through bribes, threats, and blackmail. If the past is any reference, prosecution will never happen.

Obstructionism Derailed

By

       M. Richard Maxson

"I have a concern that we're in this mad cycle of mutually assured destruction, and if our attitude is we're not going to do anything — even if it's meritorious because it might redound to the benefit of this president — I think that we are only going to increase the level of already very significant cynicism people have about whether the system can work. If that happens, it's actually Democrats who will suffer the most" 

                                            - David Axelrod, Barack Obama's longtime political strategist

       Democrats, enraged by the 2016 election, have sought to obstruct and delay the functioning of the American government by leaving key presidential appointment vacant. For the first time in memory, the minority party in the Senate has exploited procedure to systematically obstruct the president from staffing up his administration and it has gone on for over two years! Top Democrats have admitted that their obstructionism is political at its core. We aren’t talking about limited opposition to a few high-profile nominees or unusual circumstances. It’s mindless, undiscriminating, almost endless obstruction for the sake of obstruction. Even uncontroversial lower-level nominees whom literally no senators oppose are not spared and when they do come up for a vote, as the Democrats usually vote FOR the nominee.

       Here is what is happening: Democrats are requiring that Republicans check all the procedural boxes on most nominees, even those they intend to eventually support. That requires the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, to request a formal “cloture” vote to move forward. An “intervening day” is then required to allow the cloture request to “ripen.” Next is a vote to impose cloture followed by 30 hours of “post-cloture” debate before a final vote. Democrats have refused to shorten the debate time — to “yield back,” in the parlance of the Senate — though in most cases there is little to debate. In the end, many Democrats end up voting for the nominee.

       The Senate, under the Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations combined only had to hold 24 total cloture votes on nominations. That’s the once-rare procedural step that unlocks an up-or-down confirmation vote even though a minority has sought to block it. In President Trump’s first two years the Senate had to hold a stunning 128 cloture votes to advance nominations. The Senate proposal would only reduce the time a minority can keep delaying lower-tier nominations after a majority has invoked cloture.

       This new, across-the-board obstruction is anti-American and unfair to the American people who expect a functioning government. With the exception of the acrimonious Civil War era, the Senate has always deferred overwhelmingly to presidents who need to staff the executive branch. Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have been extremely hesitant to change Senate rules and traditions, but they finally had enough. So after more than two years of putting up with the Democratic obstruction or resistance or whatever other Leftist catchphrase they want to call it, Senate Republicans finally voted to curtail abuse of Senate prerogatives and restore the principle that most presidential appointees can be confirmed with a simple majority vote. In other words, most people nominated by the president for government positions will now actually get a fair up-or-down vote, just as the framers of the Constitution envisioned.

      In most previous administrations, the Senate has confirmed almost all political and judicial nominees. The Senate’s confirmation power was intended to stop only those who were patently unqualified. Obviously the ones nominated were qualified as the Democrats eventually vote for them so their obstruction is completely political. This is a fundamental and unpatriotic break with the past. It also puts Americans in danger.

      Crucial jobs are still being held empty out of political spite. Here are just a few examples of what the Democrats abhorrent behavior has not done:

• It’s been 354 days and counting for the president’s nominee to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

• There is still no assistant secretary of state for East Asia, despite the critical need to coordinate our foreign policy toward a threatening China.

• Two-hundred eighty-seven days and counting for the under secretary of state for management.

• There is still no confirmed president of the Export-Import Bank, which makes loans crucial to finance big-ticket U.S. exports such as airplanes.

• There is still no undersecretary of state for economic growth, despite massive change in the way we trade with the world.

• It took six months of partisan delays and several railroad accidents before Democrats let the Senate confirm a federal railroad administrator, even though none of them actually voted against the nominee in the end.

• Noncontroversial lower court nominees have languished for months for no discernible reason before they, too, were confirmed unanimously.

      These are just a few examples of the historic obstruction by Senate Democrats but without missing a beat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tried the old Communist tactic of shifting the blame when the facts are plain to see by stating that it was a “sad day in the Senate’s history,” adding that he was sorry “that my Republican colleagues have gone along with Sen. McConnell’s debasement of the Senate.”

      Americans know hypocrisy when they see it. This is a classic case of "projection," where one takes their own conduct and accuses someone else of engaging in it. This shows something Constitutionalists have long known: For Democrats, forwarding their Leftist agenda and destroying the other party is more important than the prosperity of the nation. We disagree, because we know that partisan bickering is never worth cheating Americans out of policies that help them and their communities. Patriots want a strong prosperous country, not Progressive Socialism at all costs.