Populism.

The general theme of this blog is populism by which I don’t mean something (a) all that elegant or (b) that harks back to some grand ideas from ancient Greece.  “Hell no” about sums it up.

In the simplest of terms, public officials — and all people — should ride for the brand, as we are instructed by the Code of the West.  Times was people did that for the most part but no mas.

In 1972, I once had a duty as a lieutenant in the Army Reserve to escort inspecting generals around an NCO leadership academy at Ft. Wolters, Texas.  One such gentlemen was BG Walter Stark, a decent sort, who had been a platoon leader in Europe during WWII.  On the last day of the war he saw another soldier killed by a splinter from an artillery round.  I asked him what it was that he looked for when he inspected any unit and his answer was simplicity itself.  He said he merely looked to see if people are doing their jobs.

In the America of our day it is simply the case that our officials, editors, journalists, scientists, and academicians are not.  ZeroHedge commenter gcjohns laid it out in a few choice words:

The Petty, vain, venal, neurotic, obsessive, corrupt and cowardly denizens of our national political apparatus inherited the greatest concentration of wealth, industry, goodwill, and military power in 6000 years of history and squandered it in a single generation.

They believe themselves superior.

He left out “vicious.” 

If the political class were doing its job this would not be happening. But it’s more than mere negligence or nonfeasance.

Prosecutors abuse their powers and engage in disgraceful punitive prosecutions and ignore centuries of experience with the criminal class.  As someone aptly remarked, inconveniencing the Congress for three hours isn’t an insurrection.  But by golly the FBI went into full fox hound mode and hunted down hundreds of unsuspecting citizens who were still under the impression they had vestigial rights under the First Amendment.  Those poor people have been subjected to selective, draconian prosecution and kept in the most disgusting conditions.  In a federal facility no less. 

The most heinous crime of January 6th was the cold-blooded murder of Ashli Babbitt, unarmed and no threat to anyone, least of all the killer.   But that killer remains uncharged and for a while sequestered in plush quarters at a nearby military facility.  I’m surprised he wasn’t promoted.

As Gregory Hood put it:

If BLM took over the Capitol, once the mob went home, congressmen would kneel in submission. Journalists would praise the takeover. Corporations would give billions.

Which was the response to the actual AntiFa and BLM riots in 2020.  Looting, arson, and murder afflicted city after city but the government response at all levels was anemic at best.  But Kyle Rittenhouse got jammed up in a criminal case involving the clearest case of self defense know to man.  The notion of the sovereign’s duty to preserve public order — its most sacred obligation after protecting the nation from invasion — has flown out of the window.

Taking a longer view back in time, what we see is the dismal record of the Supreme Court, whose signal accomplishment has been to stand the Constitution on its head.

Our own Chilton Williamson wrote

“As Kent Masterson Brown (“Secession: A Constitutional Remedy That Protects Fundamental Liberties”) suggests, the meaning of the Constitution in respect of the relationship between the central government and the states is so extravagantly clear that neither intellectual density nor even incompetence can explain how the compact theory [Madison, Jefferson] was gradually overwhelmed and defeated by the nationalist one [Hamilton, Webster, Lincoln].  It was raw mental and political will that did the trick, abetted by intellectual dishonesty, demagoguery, and sheer mendacity.”  (Emphasis added.)

Justice Robert Bork wrote that in the 1930s the Supreme Court simply ceased to enforce the Interstate Commerce Clause in Article I, § 8, thus opening the door to every harebrained nostrum, panacea, skim, scam, and piñata party beloved of bought congressional grifters, journalists, and academic toads.  Now ignoring it is holy writ for every court, bar association, law school, and just about every lawyer west of Coney Island.  If an automobile hood ornament ever moved across a state line then every last detail of the entire automobile industry can be regulated and Congress can ban fossil fuels, mandate electric vehicles, and kill your car’s engine if you get rebellious. 

According to the Constitution of 1791, the federal Congress was only to exercise certain enumerated powers and what isn’t on the list is, as the Tenth Amendment makes crystal clear, a power reserved to the states and the people, unless specifically denied to them.  The words “Social Security,” “Medicare,” “homosexual marriage,” “health care,” “abortion,” “women’s health,” “regime change,” “rules-based international order,” “responsibility to protect,” “leadership of the free world,” “American exceptionalism,” “student loans,” “fossil fuels,” “climate change,” “net zero,” “food stamps,” “grants in aid,” “education,” “schools,” “renewable energy,” “agency rulemaking,” “drag queen,” and “open borders” are nowhere to be found in the list of enumerated powers. 

But there sits Fedzilla taxing us in our food and drink and scraping the marrow from our bones to finance every idiotic idea that pops into the brain of McConnell, Pelosi, Schumer, Romney, Schiff, Garland, Blinken, Clinton (X2), Mayorkas, Nuland, Bush (X2), Obama, Comey, Warren, Waters, Sanders, Fetterman, Biden, and Ocasio.  Inter alia. 

Nowhere does the Tenth Amendment say if you can’t find the congressional power you so desperately want that you can get out your flashlight and search it out in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.  But, contrary to the clear language of the Tenth Amendment and the crystal clear constitutional scheme for an emasculated federal government, the Court has done just that. And We the People get steamrolled.

Then we have our industrial base which been horribly depleted by the practice of offshoring whereby the geniuses from Harvard, Bryn Mawr, and Georgetown decided it would be a terrific idea to ship 40,000+ factories to the shores of a communist dictatorship (China, not Canada) where their intellectual property was promptly extorted by the benevolent commies who are now our strategic competitors.  To put it mildly.  Good job, guys and gals!

Our now Starbucks and Tik Tok nation is afflicted by lunatic congressional spending, gigantic debt, inflation, monetary debasement, and unfunded liabilities.  The size of the national debt is so large that a rerun of Volker’s 20+% interest rates to tackle inflation in the ’80s is impossible, given that debt service alone at a modest 7, 6, or even 5% interest rate would consume a huge proportion of all federal tax revenue.  Factor in the largest military budget in the universe and what’s left for the peasants?  This is what you call wise stewardship.

In addition, the inevitable economic slowdown from higher rates will prove intolerable to the magicians in the Eccles Building so the rates will head south again juicing inflation and the Bubble Everything Economy.  QE will return to fulfill the sacred federal obligation to play Santa Clause to all newly arrived dependent Salvadorians, Pakistanis, Nigerians, and the occasional citizen and the result will then be high inflation, low growth, (more) malinvestment, (more) corporate buybacks to beat the band, and stagflation.  Or default. 

Uh oh. 

Add in the impending loss of the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency because the rest of the world’s sick and tired of our exporting of inflation, sanctions [nonsense], arrogance, mewling about “our democracy” and “our values,” and pointless, ruinous, murderous wars of choice all over the world. 

Reread gcjohn’s comment above, please.  Especially in light of the utter madness of ESG, renewable energy, climate change, sexual mutilation of children (children for Heaven’s sake), wide open borders, diversity madness, and relentless attacks on free speech, the founding people of this country, our history, our culture, our traditions, our laws, our religion, and our (mostly) science.

As I like to ask, If you wanted to utterly destroy one of the most noble experiments in self government, what would you differently from what is being done by our vicious, smug, clueless, grasping political class so hell bent on a top-down “solution” to every problem?

So that’s my general state of mind on populism.  The early progressives pushed for initiative, referendum, and recall as a remedy for official arrogance and betrayal of the people.  But our situation has deteriorated mightily since then and far more skepticism is in order now. 

The Democrats have stopped taking their thorazine and the Republicans would rather set their hair on fire than fight for anything meaningful.  Hell no.  Think John Boehner and Paul Ryan and you have pretty much got the template of the feeble, “let’s make a deal” Republican.  As for conservatives, someone aptly observed that they’ve never conserved anything, though Reagan and Trump occasionally gave the leftist destroyers a case of the vapors.

Here in Wyoming we’re blessed by the Freedom Caucus and the real conservatives therein.  The thought is in some quarters, however, that a few recent local Republican Party elections will move the Cowboy State center of gravity to somewhere more insipid and “safe.” 

Well, good luck with that.  If you think about what I’ve written here ask yourself whether a “return” to “traditional Republicanism” is going to get us back out of the shoals into which we have sailed.  Personally, I think the forces at work in our country are nothing less than satanic and they are inspired in no small part by the ghastly George Soros, the Klingon Battlecruiser Commander, Klaus Schwab, and a host of their vicious, destructive acolytes.  A revived more poisonous socialism seems to be in the cards with not a little whiff of world population control/reduction in the breeze. 

Alas, so far, the nation seems to be unable to recognize how close we are to slipping into the totalitarian maw.  Probably prosperity softened our spines, as well as an understandable memory of a time when we were a Western nation run by patriots.  The notion that we’ve been taken over by our enemies just doesn’t compute with some. 

The second-century Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius wrote that “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.” 

Let’s begin there then.  Let’s wake up to the incredible threats we face.