I am currently reading a book about Warren G Harding, who we are told was one of the most terrible Presidents. Harding followed Wilson and preceded FDR, who we are told were great. We were told the complete opposite of truth. It is the tyrants and interventionists and Federal Govt dictators we are taught in school to love and the humble budget balancers and deficit reducers and non-interventionists we are told were weak and corrupt. Government schools and teachers teach government propaganda and that is why 85% of the people have never heard of this 17th Amendment of which you speak.
Yup. It's shocking what little I was taught growing up with California schools about US history, especially what happened in 1913 and our shifting monetary policies. Pulled out on Presidents Day yesterday some US currency to eyeball the faces of George Washington, Lincoln, and FDR and found online JFK's 1963 greenbacks so briefly in circulation. Found some patterns I'd never noticed before.
Yes ... another critical thing happened in 1913. and quite a few historians say the greenbacks are why JFK (and Lincoln) were killed. (the post you linked to says it's private.)
The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G Harding by Ryan S Walters
I heard the author interviewed about it on the Dangerous History podcast.
I understand the book's bias as a defense but found the factual accomplishments and the entire context of the era's history to be another shocking example of the bullshit I have "learned". How government school propaganda still shocks me, I don't know. Natural naivete perhaps. Anyway, it's an easy read for a fresh perspective.
Sadly, due to deliberate sabotage of education and the failure of organized religion to defend some level of moral rigor, where we end up is… where we are.
No system of self-government is suitable for a society when the members of that society can’t govern themselves on an individual level.
For decades we have been taught that hedonism and shallow self-gratification is noble, that self-restraint is for prudes, that denial of present pleasures for future benefit is for fools, and that sensation trumps morality.
It’s time for the awful harvest of all that’s been sown for 2 or 3 generations. The next 50 or 100 years will be a time of harsh discipline. Quibbles over bathrooms, pronouns, mean “tweets” and whose life “matters” will seem, in retrospect, like frivolous, decadent luxuries for moral and spiritual infants.
The brick wall is closer than the braking distance. It’s too late to be discussing changing the tires. Better to use your time making sure your seatbelt is tightly fastened and your helmet is firmly secured.
All very true. When you valorise each and every kind of liberty, you 'liberate' human appetites that would be better repressed. The fact that almost an entire generation of the 'educated' can be captured by the Social Justice religion tells us 2 sobering things. 1) the liberal dream of a society made up of freethinking individuals was always a chimera 2) some kind of religious fervour is the natural condition of mankind in the long run. The hard truth is that most people are not really all that well suited to total individual freedom. They need good rules and communal mores to steer them. How does Western civilisation recover from this age of self-absorption and hyperbolic liberalism? It doesn't. Liberal individualism was great for most of its three-century-long trajectory. But it always carried the seeds of its own demise and now its day is done. All civilisations eventually fail; this is how ours does. And as you say.....and here we are.
I think the big problem has been the promotion of liberty beyond all else, and the separation of action from consequences. It's great to have liberty, as long as you accept the consequential responsibility. This is the price. In the past, a man was free to refuse to work, but had to accept the consequences of poverty and starvation. The modern concept of human rights, which is a gross distortion of Christian morality, basically requires that we absolve all people from the consequences of their actions - as if they were children. We are infantalizing society, and as everyone knows, children are not capable of ruling themselves.
That is an important point. Liberty hasn't been the problem, the problem has been government officials running on a platform of "We will use other people's money so you don't have to bear the costs of your decisions." In other words, politicians destroyed the liberty of others to remove the consequences of the decisions of their voting block. That doesn't change so long as politicians have the power to take money from some to pay off others.
Yet for some reason people keep complaining about liberty as though that was the problem and not government.
And this is what my favorite author, Anna Sewell, had to say about liberty in "Black Beauty":
"My boy, Liberty does not come from colors, they only show party, and all the liberty you can get out of them is, liberty to get drunk at other people's expense, liberty to ride to the poll in a dirty old cab, liberty to abuse any one that does not wear your color, and to shout yourself hoarse at what you only half-understand—that's your liberty!"
Yes, but most people don't know that liberty requires self mastery. They see liberty the way a child sees liberty, as in "I get to do what I want". Self mastery requires understanding and accepting the consequences of your actions.
It's not individualism causing the problem, though. It's collectivism. All of wokism is about various victim identity groups, where membership in those groups outweighs individual things like character, talent, knowledge, competence, intelligence, and the like. The rights of individuals are being ignored in favor of some or other judge's opinion about what the greater good demands, and we end up with a situation where we have rights that mean little to nothing in practice.
If people are not suited to individual liberty, it is a good bet they were never given any. When you treat people as perpetual children who can't make good decisions, they never learn to do so. The ability to live in freedom requires the opportunity to live in freedom. One does not develop freedom skills being a slave.
There is a difference between liberty and being a libertine. The latter is not liberty.
Our problem is not and never has been having too much liberty. Our problem is that we have too little, and that we have come to expect others to keep us safe instead of having to truly grow into adults. We have a government apparatus that seeks to keep us all as perpetual children forever, making all of our decisions for us, when they are actually some of the most infantile and incapable decision-makers one could imagine.
People have to be taught how to live freely. Our schools are more interested in creating obedient slaves, and in using their inability to handle any freedom as further justification for more stringent slavery. The problem is not and never has been having too much liberty. That's just what those who tell us that they are going to take our liberty for our own good tell us. As always, they're lying.
I think we're talking at crossed purposes here....and may even agree more than it looks. The problem is that the word 'liberalism' has come to mean too many different things to different people. What I'm talking about is the kind of liberal individualism that has descended and corrupted post 1960s into narcissism, rights, rights rights, "what about me" me me me. Always me. Never mind about wonderful little 'me' having any responsibilities towards society or anyone else but 'me'. And this 'me'-type 'liberal' narcissism leads straight to 'me'-type 'indentity' narcissism and 'what about me' competitive victimhood. Do you GET me now? If not I'll just give up!
You ought to be careful about letting the left decide what words mean and using their dictionary in that fashion. Ceding the language to those who are the inspiration for the memory hole and Ministry of Truth is ceding your ability to think of things in an abstract way. The 1960's "liberal individualism" you describe has nothing to do with liberal individualism from the mid 1700's. The left redefined water as poison, and the response was "Oh, I guess I hate water then."
I partly agree with you that the modern use of the term liberalism as a pejorative is problemmatic....but it does now have a wide currency in the terms inwhich I was using it in my original comment. I think you know the poisons I was describing....what is your better term for them (that others would easily recognise)?
Also I suspect that the original 1700s liberalism did actually carry within it the seeds of its poisonous 21st century mutation...300 years on it has mutated into something better described as 'hyper-liberalism' in other words.
In reverse order, the 1700's (1760's really) term comes from Smith predominantly, although Hume and a few other Scotts around the time after Smith pick it up. It starts being used in the political sense of "liberal policy" right after Smith uses it so. I don't think anyone could read Wealth of Nations or Theory of Moral Sentiments (or any other of Smith's works) and describe the liberal system he describes as "hyper-liberalism".
I think instead of using liberalism as appropriated by the American left we should use "leftist", "socialist" or even "Marxist/Communist". That is really what they are doing, taking the idea of freedom from state control and instead forcing everyone else to pay for everyone else's choices (that is, divorcing natural results from behavior).
Liberty and liberal systems (likewise Scottish/American Enlightenment) do not guarantee that people won't do things other people don't like, but it absolutely does not mean that people can do whatever and not have to suffer the consequences, whether those consequences are non-human (drugs are bad, m'kay) or human (no one wants to be around you anymore). It just means that the state doesn't get to choose what people are allowed to do when those people's behavior does not harm other people. There's a fair bit of grey area there, but the way the state has been behaving the past 10-100 years has been squarely on the "to hell with liberty, you will do what we want" side of things.
Rights always come with responsibility, and that is part of the preparation that people need to live as free adults. Understanding that consequences follow actions and that it is no one else's job to protect you from them does not work with the "modern" approach to parenting, where kids are never allowed out of sight, and where the idea of letting them climb the tree and maybe fall out and get injured is unthinkable.
Parenting has always been a balance between the mom's desire to wrap the child in bubble wrap and protect him from everything and the father's desire to let them go and experience life, including the negative aspects (boys particularly). Now we live in an age where masculinity comes with qualifiers like "toxic," and male behavior in general is pathologized... and so the women's nurturing is not tempered with "life is not fair" lessons, and you get children who never really grow up.
It used to be that parents would incrementally give more and more freedom to the kids, who would learn the lessons, and on to the next stage. Things that were normal in my Gen-X childhood (and for generations prior) would get parents a visit from CPS if not outright arrested these days... and kids that grow up protected from the world grow up into adults who expect that the world owes them a living, as children think. Children, of course, are the ultimate narcissists, and it is no longer being trained out of them.
That's my impression from over here in the bleachers, anyway. I never had kids, but I can see what is going on.
Just not so that moms think one way and dads the other. Within my mothering has been a general balance of nurture and letting my son make his own mistakes and corrections. No question that many of today's parents are not letting their kids grow in a natural way, but please don't let stereotypes undercut your good reasoning here.
It's by no means absolute. My own mother was not like that either. On average, though, I think you would find that more moms are unwilling to countenance the idea of the kid taking risks than fathers. Neither one has a monopoly on making the right decision all the time... I think the answer lies in between somewhere.
Like you, I'm not a parent, but something I'm seeing "from the bleachers" is that we have been duped into ignoring the "spare the rod, spoil the child" maxim of our forebears.
Centuries of parents followed that advice - and now that we are a good 2-3 generations from abandoning it, we're seeing the consequences.
Well said. Esp the commentary an religious fervor. There is a hole to be filled, and it's created a vacuum by not filling it with truly biblical and good moral judgement.
"How does Western civilisation recover from this age of self-absorption and hyperbolic liberalism?" I'm sure our future Chinese rulers will take care of it.
Well put. Man is naturally a religious creature. Once God was killed, man had nothing to worship but himself. There is no remaining ethic but the will to rule, by any means necessary.
The easiest test to see if a society is able to self govern, is the shopping cart test. If you find a parking lot of a big box store, a grocery store, a whatever store that uses shopping carts; And if some significant fraction of carts are left strewn to and fro, rather than returned to their proper receptacle, then you know those people are not capable of self government.
In Texas, the legislature meets every 2 years for 178 days. My uncle jokes that they messed up the transcribing of the state’s constitution and it was supposed to be 2 days every 178 years. Less is more when it comes to government.
As an aside, we in rural Texas have not only great electric services, we have affordable super fast high speed fiber optic internet. Why? We own the utility. All utilities in rural Texas are co-operatives. In fact, unfortunately, the cities don’t have this, and so during the 2021 freeze, we had rolling blackouts to supplement the cities’ utilities which are poorly run and mismanaged like any other crony-corporate enterprise.
The senate should all go home and not reconvene for 10 years. A moratorium should be place on any new legislation for that same time. Let these grifters go earn an honest bucks for a change.
How about every 4 years to approve administration cabinet members and proposed treaties. Only called back for special session in cases of war or impeachment.
The less they meet the better. They’ve outlived there purpose. All they do now is graft and insider trading. Get there family members and friends cushy high paying gigs. They are worthless.
I’m also in rural Texas and have a large electric co-op. In the 2021 winter debacle we were completely without power for 76 hours, no rolling blackouts! The mismanagement reaches far beyond city utilities…ERCOT had a direct hand in this mismanagement state-wide and all of us paid the price.
Sadly, only three days of black out isn't too bad all told. Up here in PA it is not at all uncommon for my rural parents to lose power for up to a week at a shot, generally 2-3 weeks total every winter. The incentives to avoid it just are not there, on many levels.
True, 3 days isn’t bad. Problem in this case is that temps remained in the teens for that entire time and people’s wells and pipes froze (no water, no toilets, etc.) Our cast iron booster pump cracked, for instance. It took up to 3 months in this area to get all the pumps and chattered pipes fixed! (No city water.) Many folks now have generators because of that fiasco.
Oh, yea, I didn't mean to imply it was good or ok, more just "Yea, it gets worse." Even in places where we know we get snow, every year, accompanied by very low temperatures, with lots of trees right next to the lines that will get knocked into said lines with a mild gust of wind... they just let that all go until suddenly there is no power and they are so backed up they can't get it all done. Getting a generator is definitely a good idea, or investing in a wood stove to keep the internal house temperatures above 50 or so.
It definitely is a nightmare when you get those freak swings of temperature that push you way past your preparation. It'd be like it getting down to -15 F here. In MN we put up with it, but in PA it would be awful.
Given the state of our country and politics, it’s a good idea to prepare for the worst. Many in our area had a hard lesson on self preparedness! We were ok (we grew up in 3rd world countries & learned self-sufficiency early on), but many were not. It did identify any gaps in our preparedness, though, and those have been plugged! I cannot imagine dealing with -15 F, though…you guys are tough!
We figured out a way to keep the well from freezing- get some of those religious candles they sell at the HEB. Put two or three in your well house if it’s going to be below 25 for more than a few hours. They burn for 3-4 days and will increase the temperature in the well house 20 degrees, enough to keep it from freezing.
And start going to your co-op meetings. You have the power to effect change.
We definitely go to the co-op meetings! Always fun hearing the common folk lambast the leadership there. Good idea on those candles, too. We ran propane out to our well house but our neighbors didn’t so I’ll suggest that to them.
Yep. Texas could have a wonderful electric power system. Unfortunately ERCOT seems to think its job is to import bad ideas from elsewhere.
Here is an arena where I part company with our author and his thoroughgoing libertarianism--there really *are* a few things that are natural monopolies, and I number electric, water, and sewer among them. Oh, and local roadways.
Well, as little from DC as possible. If it's something that really would be better run at the highest level, AND IF there is constitutional warrant for doing so (e.g. delivery of letters), then sure.
But no matter how good the idea sounds, if there's no constitutional provision for the federal government to have that authority, then absolutely the only way to get there is to pass a constitutional amendment - - not engage in stupid bullshit legal hand waving such as was done in Gonzales vs Raich.
Texan elected official here...we do things right here, for the most part, but the Feds have co-opted so much that it really doesn’t matter what we do on a local level. Plus the big counties are corrupt and owned by Soros and the other oligarchs and are driving policy. T: you and I know what the remedy is but I can’t say its name.
In Maine, our entire legislature and much local governance has been hijacked by what appears to be Soros-funded globalism. The pop of this state was urban/rural purple before Covid, now it’s pushing blue, and the DNC used the Roe decision to smear even pro-choice Republicans during the midterms.
It feels, frankly, like we’re f*****, and I’m looking for an escape hatch. If the legislature elects the senators, we will get John McCain (oh, excuse me, King and Collins) anyway.
You are right. If state legislators today got to choose their senators, they would choose those who's goal was to get federal largess to their states. We need to repeal the 16th amendment as well. We need to starve the beast.
Today we are cutting off our cable tv. Nearly $200.00 a month for hardly anything we want to watch. Those we do we can find the app like passport. That’s the only one I will purchase for the moment. I can cast stuff onto my tv from my phone or tablet. If we want to return we can get a package with only 15 channels we choose. I doubt we will.
You won’t miss it. Network TV is a mindless circle of commercials and propaganda. Every so often a streaming service produces some decent entertainment, but even that is rarer and rarer these days, as propaganda must be inserted. Best to watch shows or series produced before 2000 on a borrowed account of a friends streamer for an occasional tv fix. Funny, as the amount of tv options have multiplied 100 fold I read more now then at any other time in my life.
We borrow our daughter’s NETFLIX. I have 2 British tv and movie apps plus Masyerpiece on Prime. I used to DVR quite a lot, but looking the past year, I hardly DVR anything anymore. So it’s gone. If I can’t pick anything out of all this, I’m not looking hard enough. 🙄🤔.
True. We don't pay any TV licences and apart from an odd movie or a comedy special we just watch long form interviews on places like rumble, youtube, spotify etc. Much more informative and interesting!
I don’t actually care for movies. Never have. Can’t remember the last one I went to or watched. 🤷♀️. I like series watching. Documentaries. Science stuff. I’m picky as I said but long winter dark nights I need something that doesn’t put me to sleep like reading at night does. Short stuff. LOL. 😀
I like NOVA and NATURE, Secrets of the Dead on PBS. I don’t watch their news or political stuff. Woke. Amazon prime and Netflix have a lot. Depends on what you like. I like science ones and history. Separate apps then with some. My secret pleasure is British police procedurals. Detectives, forensics etc. Don’t like Americans police stuff.
While I am not sure repealing the 17th would erase all our ills, it certainly would bring back much needed attention to the local elections. I am not certain we can escape the tyranny of those that now perceive all things government as free - nor are we likely to convince them to give all of that up by explaining how truly not free they are for everyone.
The year 1913 also brought the federal reserve scheme which funded the terrible violence we suffer and another amendment, the 16th, which I believe was never properly ratified. It would be good to get rid of all three things. And you would be able to negotiate if you have three requests for redress rather than one.
But I wonder if the people who have power are going to give it up. Their predecessors murdered JFK, RFK, and MLK Jr so if they felt the need don't you think they would scrap the whole limits to power thing? They already govern with plenary power unless a court expresses sadness.
NOT a simple coincidence....the deliberately mis-named Federal Reserve "bank" was created to enable both the IRS, and individual Federal income tax. A scheme whereby us wage & debt slaves actually PAY for our own enslavement, to the enrichment and empowerment of the 1%.... ALL part of a carefully crafted GLOBALIST COUP D'ETAT....but I digress, we all know this story, right?....
beat me to it. I'd say the federal reserve act had as much to do with the debt and spending rocket line as the 17th amendment, so I'd start there, but you make a good case, gato, for its concurrent repeal, and kudos jim for pointing out 16th was not ratified.
the clear additional issue also is that our election systems are corrupted, so without trust in those, we cannot have democracy or representative federalism.
but at least states have to balance budgets, which has already become a major problem for california, which has lost an enormous chunk of its population since the covid scam -- proving your point already, gato -- and their tax revenues have nose-dived. current view is they're about $24 billion below expected 2022-23 to 2024-25 leaving a $68 billion budget deficit. 🍿
We got here because to many living-in-fear control freaks decided to corral all the wealth and then get rid of the citizen because he would no longer be needed. Fifty states operating on their own, for their own best interests would be a much improved system. The DC Swamp could be scaled down from the size of Africa to that of Rhode Island.
Perhaps instead of always adding more and more useless laws, getting rid of a few, like the 17th amendment would be a win for the citizen. Less government is always a positive step.
If most US government employees are max-jabbed they likely will have a much shorter lifespan and their swamps from DC top each state capitol may soon be depopulated. All those "free" jabs they and their families get from covid to the new "bivalent" annual flu shots at their current rising sick and dead rates I expect at least 30% to be dead within 7 years.
What does it mean when a business owner has a debt and their debt increases steadily over the years?
It means that their business is not run properly and is not balanced. It also means that their business exists at the expense of others. It also means that they are no longer the full and uncompromised owners of their business.
In terms of future opportunities, it means that their business systematically loses competitive edge. It also opens up to the possibility of sudden unforeseeable detrimental market impacts, e.g. when new legislation is adopted, market players change their policies, or force majeure events force rapid responses beyond the financial capacity of the indebted business.
"it’s supposed to be just about impossible to get things through the senate. that was a core protection for we the people and for the power of the states.
this is a feature, not a bug."
This quote should be on a plaque that legislators have to touch every time they enter the Capitol building.
Does anyone know what el gato malo's beef is with capitalization? And does anyone else here find text much more difficult to read without it? el gato malo, while I fully support authentic self-expression, for two cents, I also propose that you may be primarily disrespecting the reader by eschewing it.
Even I don’t mind it, and I’m a stickler for proper grammar (although not for Latin rules applied to English). e e cummings was the first to do it, wasn’t he?
When I first started reading him I didn’t know any better and just thought he was a zoomer. After reading him for about a year now I’ve deduced that that isn’t the case and it’s just what he does 🤷🏼♂️ I find it difficult occasionally as well but it is what it is
I’m always up for a good 17th Amendment rant, ever since Jonah Goldberg got me hip to it years ago. Say what you will about his current positioning, he taught me more about conservative philosophy in the first years of his podcast than… well, ever.
I’m not sure this kind of fantasizing is useful. The chance that 17th will be repealed is precisely zero. The federal government is not going to hand any power back to the states.
FedGov began expanding its power before the ink was dry on the Constitution. After barely a decade the Supreme Court just decided out of thin air it could strike down laws. The 10th Amendment was basically DOA.
And now we think we can get back to the framers intentions? It’s not even clear that the much vaunted framers really wanted a weak federal government. Some did. But much of the pitch by the federalists was a con job. Murray Rothbard calls in a counter revolution.
The states will have to take power, first via nullification and inevitably, secession.
They tried secession already. It didn’t work out so well.
Watching the whole freak out about Nikki Haley’s comments about the civil war was illuminating for me. The necessity of saying that the “civil war was about slavery” is required to make sure that the threat of secession is always linked to the truly hideous idea of slavery. More than the 17th amendment, I’m sure that the vast expansion of the federal government and federal power can be linked to the civil war. But as long as we can just keep chanting that the “civil war was about slavery” and “Lincoln was our greatest president”, nobody will stop to question the implications of what the civil war allowed the federal government to do.
The claim a tyrant murdering 800,000 of countrymen 160 years ago killed self determination forever is the silliest argument against state secession.
It will happen, it’s just a question of when. All that’s needed is for conservatives to wake up and realize they’re not going to “take our country back.”
There’s no need for a war. And I don’t believe there will be one. The crumbling empire can’t even mount one. The world is decentralizing since the end of WWII, mostly peacefully. There are 3 times more counties in the world than there were in 1945.
Let them bleat about bringing back slavery or whatever. The point is absurd on its face.
Texas has a popular and robust independence movement. It will happen.
Idk if you’re familiar with Tom Luongo, but along his lines of thinking, US secession would basically hand the globalists the world on a silver platter. At least at this point.
I like both Bob Murphy and James Lindsay. I'll listen to this with great interest.
I lean toward the peaceful going of our own ways. I'm sure James Lindsay has his reasons for believing that is not the way to go, as was the case in the antebellum period. There were many who cautioned that secession, while possible, should be approached with much caution. I get it - there are a lot of moving parts to this discussion.
Maybe, hopefully. But realize it’s a bluff. The left will never support political decentralization.
A couple years ago I attended panel discussion of the independence movement leaders of TX, NH and CA. Calexit says they’re not allowed unless the other states give them permission. Ridiculous.
Tim, I believe we are in the middle of regime change planned by the DoD. I believe the plan was designed by Steve Pieczenik, who first worked for Kissinger on regime change in the '70s and then moved over to the DoD to work on regime change.
Pieczenik wrote up his plan as two "novels" published in the early '90s. Part 1 is the novel Blood Heat, about a deliberately-caused pandemic. Part 2 is about states seceding in response to a corrupt and unresponsive federal government. It's the novel State of Emergency.
So I believe El Gato's federalism recommendation is actually going to happen. I agree with you there won't be a war. And I agree the crumbling empire couldn't even mount one. The whole border dispute in Texas was the opening act.
There’s zero chance FedGov will willingly return any power to the states. The states will have to take it, which they will.
The border dispute reveals the mechanism by which it will happen. FedGov retaliated by suspending gas licenses in Texas. This affects private money interests. People who would rather stay on the sidelines.
Now Texas is building a $10B 80 acre military base near Eagle Pass. How will FedGov respond? Eventually it will start withholding federal funds, for roads or whatever. If not for border issues, for nullification of federal gun laws or something else.
These reprisals will further change the political calculus in Texas. Texans won’t stand for a beat down. Eventually a supermajority will support Texit, and it will happen. It’s hard to say how soon. But these things tend to take everyone by surprise. See Brexit.
Expect California and others aligned with their policies to pour people into Texas, to change the vote, if the development you describe starts to take off.
They're coming. I'm in Austin, so trust me, I see it. It tends to be the less communist ones coming. There are also some leaving because of laws (abortion, trans, guns, etc). I don't think it will tip the balance, especially since hispanics are breaking red.
True about migrants, but an independent Texas will easily solve this. We’re already shipping them to shitty states. I can’t make other states’ problems my concern.
You are correct, of course. Power has to be taken back from them. They aren't going to give it back to us, willingly.
I keep saying, to anyone who will listen (mostly my long-suffering wife) that we need to start by negating everything government does at the local level. We pay for police services and schools and such but they aren't doing their part. In fact, they are doing precisely the opposite. They are purposely giving us inferior products and making us pay more for them. They are literally working at cross purposes to our interests. A critical mass needs to come to the realization that we don't need them. They are a drain on our economies and our lives. We need to nullify every power that we have delegated to them and resume those powers directly.
This is the starting point. Simply repudiate the arrangement. They have already done so; we simply need to recognize that fact and act accordingly.
We clearly are not going to win a war against them. We need to negate their rule in every way possible until their ability to rule is effectively nullified. We need to put pressure on them in every way possible. Our states, if they truly want to take back power from the federal leviathan, should help us in this effort. Do as Texas has done and nullify every federal overreach and call out every federal dereliction of their duty to the true parties to the Constitution (the several, sovereign, States).
I also agree that the "contract" was essentially abrogated before the ink was dry. It was never a contract to begin with. Nobody signed it; nobody actually agrees to it.
This discussion is useful to the extent that people can begin to understand what has happened, and why. The "what" is simple enough to understand; the "why" is subject to much speculation.
I agree that the solution will be through a combination of nullification and secession, either implicitly or explicitly.
Genuine question, not trying to be snarky whatsoever. But what would have been the purpose of the Supreme Court if not to strike down laws found to be unconstitutional?
The states could do it without the involvement of any part of the federal government.
There is a convention of states movement for the purposes of amending the constitution. It requires 2/3 of state legislatures to pass motions calling for a convention of states for amendment proposals (US Constitution Article V).
After which, any proposals passed out of the convention would be sent to the states for ratification, and upon ¾ ratification becomes a new amendment.
They could, but they won’t. If there was anything close to 3/4 support, you wouldn’t need a convention.
Also, an Article V convention would be very risky. It’s more likely than not to be a disaster for liberty. You know that there will be plenty of states arguing that 2A is an outmoded relic, for example.
State secession doesn’t require any support from any other state. I guess you could say it requires them not supporting a murderous war.
When 70% pay little or nothing , it’s no wonder why we constantly hear “ the govt needs to pay for( fill in the blank)”. I used to tell people who said this to me that they were the govt source of income and ask them what’s it worth to them, and how much were they willing to pay? Blank stares back usually.
Now it’s just greedy corporations and tax the rich
I am currently reading a book about Warren G Harding, who we are told was one of the most terrible Presidents. Harding followed Wilson and preceded FDR, who we are told were great. We were told the complete opposite of truth. It is the tyrants and interventionists and Federal Govt dictators we are taught in school to love and the humble budget balancers and deficit reducers and non-interventionists we are told were weak and corrupt. Government schools and teachers teach government propaganda and that is why 85% of the people have never heard of this 17th Amendment of which you speak.
Wilson and FDR were two of the biggest bad guys of American history.
couldn't agree more. The "great ones" alway enlarged the central government powers and got us into wars (and of course those go hand in hand).
Yup. It's shocking what little I was taught growing up with California schools about US history, especially what happened in 1913 and our shifting monetary policies. Pulled out on Presidents Day yesterday some US currency to eyeball the faces of George Washington, Lincoln, and FDR and found online JFK's 1963 greenbacks so briefly in circulation. Found some patterns I'd never noticed before.
https://ajvalleyheartsdelight.substack.com (post on 2/19/24)
Yes ... another critical thing happened in 1913. and quite a few historians say the greenbacks are why JFK (and Lincoln) were killed. (the post you linked to says it's private.)
https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/fract.htm
I'm new to Substack. I think I've got it not marked private now.
you may need to edit the link? it's still not letting me see it. and welcome to substack!
I had no problem accessing AJ's substack. That post was an interesting and informative read.
I'll try again ... perhaps a cache issue here.
https://youtu.be/HNGXsgLRkXU?si=JqL73MqEVxRte6ql
ha!
what is the book?
The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G Harding by Ryan S Walters
I heard the author interviewed about it on the Dangerous History podcast.
I understand the book's bias as a defense but found the factual accomplishments and the entire context of the era's history to be another shocking example of the bullshit I have "learned". How government school propaganda still shocks me, I don't know. Natural naivete perhaps. Anyway, it's an easy read for a fresh perspective.
Sadly, due to deliberate sabotage of education and the failure of organized religion to defend some level of moral rigor, where we end up is… where we are.
No system of self-government is suitable for a society when the members of that society can’t govern themselves on an individual level.
For decades we have been taught that hedonism and shallow self-gratification is noble, that self-restraint is for prudes, that denial of present pleasures for future benefit is for fools, and that sensation trumps morality.
It’s time for the awful harvest of all that’s been sown for 2 or 3 generations. The next 50 or 100 years will be a time of harsh discipline. Quibbles over bathrooms, pronouns, mean “tweets” and whose life “matters” will seem, in retrospect, like frivolous, decadent luxuries for moral and spiritual infants.
The brick wall is closer than the braking distance. It’s too late to be discussing changing the tires. Better to use your time making sure your seatbelt is tightly fastened and your helmet is firmly secured.
All very true. When you valorise each and every kind of liberty, you 'liberate' human appetites that would be better repressed. The fact that almost an entire generation of the 'educated' can be captured by the Social Justice religion tells us 2 sobering things. 1) the liberal dream of a society made up of freethinking individuals was always a chimera 2) some kind of religious fervour is the natural condition of mankind in the long run. The hard truth is that most people are not really all that well suited to total individual freedom. They need good rules and communal mores to steer them. How does Western civilisation recover from this age of self-absorption and hyperbolic liberalism? It doesn't. Liberal individualism was great for most of its three-century-long trajectory. But it always carried the seeds of its own demise and now its day is done. All civilisations eventually fail; this is how ours does. And as you say.....and here we are.
I think the big problem has been the promotion of liberty beyond all else, and the separation of action from consequences. It's great to have liberty, as long as you accept the consequential responsibility. This is the price. In the past, a man was free to refuse to work, but had to accept the consequences of poverty and starvation. The modern concept of human rights, which is a gross distortion of Christian morality, basically requires that we absolve all people from the consequences of their actions - as if they were children. We are infantalizing society, and as everyone knows, children are not capable of ruling themselves.
That is an important point. Liberty hasn't been the problem, the problem has been government officials running on a platform of "We will use other people's money so you don't have to bear the costs of your decisions." In other words, politicians destroyed the liberty of others to remove the consequences of the decisions of their voting block. That doesn't change so long as politicians have the power to take money from some to pay off others.
Yet for some reason people keep complaining about liberty as though that was the problem and not government.
And this is what my favorite author, Anna Sewell, had to say about liberty in "Black Beauty":
"My boy, Liberty does not come from colors, they only show party, and all the liberty you can get out of them is, liberty to get drunk at other people's expense, liberty to ride to the poll in a dirty old cab, liberty to abuse any one that does not wear your color, and to shout yourself hoarse at what you only half-understand—that's your liberty!"
https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/125/black-beauty/2252/part-3-chapter-42-the-election/
It is awkward how much people misuse the word "liberty" to mean many different things.
So true -- especially that which it does not mean.
ie socialism
Liberty, by definition, demands self-mastery. You describe, IMO, license within a welfare system.
Yes, but most people don't know that liberty requires self mastery. They see liberty the way a child sees liberty, as in "I get to do what I want". Self mastery requires understanding and accepting the consequences of your actions.
"A religious and moral people..."
It's not individualism causing the problem, though. It's collectivism. All of wokism is about various victim identity groups, where membership in those groups outweighs individual things like character, talent, knowledge, competence, intelligence, and the like. The rights of individuals are being ignored in favor of some or other judge's opinion about what the greater good demands, and we end up with a situation where we have rights that mean little to nothing in practice.
If people are not suited to individual liberty, it is a good bet they were never given any. When you treat people as perpetual children who can't make good decisions, they never learn to do so. The ability to live in freedom requires the opportunity to live in freedom. One does not develop freedom skills being a slave.
There is a difference between liberty and being a libertine. The latter is not liberty.
Our problem is not and never has been having too much liberty. Our problem is that we have too little, and that we have come to expect others to keep us safe instead of having to truly grow into adults. We have a government apparatus that seeks to keep us all as perpetual children forever, making all of our decisions for us, when they are actually some of the most infantile and incapable decision-makers one could imagine.
People have to be taught how to live freely. Our schools are more interested in creating obedient slaves, and in using their inability to handle any freedom as further justification for more stringent slavery. The problem is not and never has been having too much liberty. That's just what those who tell us that they are going to take our liberty for our own good tell us. As always, they're lying.
I think we're talking at crossed purposes here....and may even agree more than it looks. The problem is that the word 'liberalism' has come to mean too many different things to different people. What I'm talking about is the kind of liberal individualism that has descended and corrupted post 1960s into narcissism, rights, rights rights, "what about me" me me me. Always me. Never mind about wonderful little 'me' having any responsibilities towards society or anyone else but 'me'. And this 'me'-type 'liberal' narcissism leads straight to 'me'-type 'indentity' narcissism and 'what about me' competitive victimhood. Do you GET me now? If not I'll just give up!
You ought to be careful about letting the left decide what words mean and using their dictionary in that fashion. Ceding the language to those who are the inspiration for the memory hole and Ministry of Truth is ceding your ability to think of things in an abstract way. The 1960's "liberal individualism" you describe has nothing to do with liberal individualism from the mid 1700's. The left redefined water as poison, and the response was "Oh, I guess I hate water then."
I partly agree with you that the modern use of the term liberalism as a pejorative is problemmatic....but it does now have a wide currency in the terms inwhich I was using it in my original comment. I think you know the poisons I was describing....what is your better term for them (that others would easily recognise)?
Also I suspect that the original 1700s liberalism did actually carry within it the seeds of its poisonous 21st century mutation...300 years on it has mutated into something better described as 'hyper-liberalism' in other words.
In reverse order, the 1700's (1760's really) term comes from Smith predominantly, although Hume and a few other Scotts around the time after Smith pick it up. It starts being used in the political sense of "liberal policy" right after Smith uses it so. I don't think anyone could read Wealth of Nations or Theory of Moral Sentiments (or any other of Smith's works) and describe the liberal system he describes as "hyper-liberalism".
I think instead of using liberalism as appropriated by the American left we should use "leftist", "socialist" or even "Marxist/Communist". That is really what they are doing, taking the idea of freedom from state control and instead forcing everyone else to pay for everyone else's choices (that is, divorcing natural results from behavior).
Liberty and liberal systems (likewise Scottish/American Enlightenment) do not guarantee that people won't do things other people don't like, but it absolutely does not mean that people can do whatever and not have to suffer the consequences, whether those consequences are non-human (drugs are bad, m'kay) or human (no one wants to be around you anymore). It just means that the state doesn't get to choose what people are allowed to do when those people's behavior does not harm other people. There's a fair bit of grey area there, but the way the state has been behaving the past 10-100 years has been squarely on the "to hell with liberty, you will do what we want" side of things.
I think so.
Rights always come with responsibility, and that is part of the preparation that people need to live as free adults. Understanding that consequences follow actions and that it is no one else's job to protect you from them does not work with the "modern" approach to parenting, where kids are never allowed out of sight, and where the idea of letting them climb the tree and maybe fall out and get injured is unthinkable.
Parenting has always been a balance between the mom's desire to wrap the child in bubble wrap and protect him from everything and the father's desire to let them go and experience life, including the negative aspects (boys particularly). Now we live in an age where masculinity comes with qualifiers like "toxic," and male behavior in general is pathologized... and so the women's nurturing is not tempered with "life is not fair" lessons, and you get children who never really grow up.
It used to be that parents would incrementally give more and more freedom to the kids, who would learn the lessons, and on to the next stage. Things that were normal in my Gen-X childhood (and for generations prior) would get parents a visit from CPS if not outright arrested these days... and kids that grow up protected from the world grow up into adults who expect that the world owes them a living, as children think. Children, of course, are the ultimate narcissists, and it is no longer being trained out of them.
That's my impression from over here in the bleachers, anyway. I never had kids, but I can see what is going on.
Just not so that moms think one way and dads the other. Within my mothering has been a general balance of nurture and letting my son make his own mistakes and corrections. No question that many of today's parents are not letting their kids grow in a natural way, but please don't let stereotypes undercut your good reasoning here.
It's by no means absolute. My own mother was not like that either. On average, though, I think you would find that more moms are unwilling to countenance the idea of the kid taking risks than fathers. Neither one has a monopoly on making the right decision all the time... I think the answer lies in between somewhere.
Like you, I'm not a parent, but something I'm seeing "from the bleachers" is that we have been duped into ignoring the "spare the rod, spoil the child" maxim of our forebears.
Centuries of parents followed that advice - and now that we are a good 2-3 generations from abandoning it, we're seeing the consequences.
Well said. Esp the commentary an religious fervor. There is a hole to be filled, and it's created a vacuum by not filling it with truly biblical and good moral judgement.
"How does Western civilisation recover from this age of self-absorption and hyperbolic liberalism?" I'm sure our future Chinese rulers will take care of it.
Well put. Man is naturally a religious creature. Once God was killed, man had nothing to worship but himself. There is no remaining ethic but the will to rule, by any means necessary.
The easiest test to see if a society is able to self govern, is the shopping cart test. If you find a parking lot of a big box store, a grocery store, a whatever store that uses shopping carts; And if some significant fraction of carts are left strewn to and fro, rather than returned to their proper receptacle, then you know those people are not capable of self government.
That should be the voter eligibility test.
The degradation of culture is not organic. As the empire crumbles expect it push harder to destroy civil society.
well said!
In Texas, the legislature meets every 2 years for 178 days. My uncle jokes that they messed up the transcribing of the state’s constitution and it was supposed to be 2 days every 178 years. Less is more when it comes to government.
As an aside, we in rural Texas have not only great electric services, we have affordable super fast high speed fiber optic internet. Why? We own the utility. All utilities in rural Texas are co-operatives. In fact, unfortunately, the cities don’t have this, and so during the 2021 freeze, we had rolling blackouts to supplement the cities’ utilities which are poorly run and mismanaged like any other crony-corporate enterprise.
The senate should all go home and not reconvene for 10 years. A moratorium should be place on any new legislation for that same time. Let these grifters go earn an honest bucks for a change.
How about every 4 years to approve administration cabinet members and proposed treaties. Only called back for special session in cases of war or impeachment.
The less they meet the better. They’ve outlived there purpose. All they do now is graft and insider trading. Get there family members and friends cushy high paying gigs. They are worthless.
I’m also in rural Texas and have a large electric co-op. In the 2021 winter debacle we were completely without power for 76 hours, no rolling blackouts! The mismanagement reaches far beyond city utilities…ERCOT had a direct hand in this mismanagement state-wide and all of us paid the price.
Sadly, only three days of black out isn't too bad all told. Up here in PA it is not at all uncommon for my rural parents to lose power for up to a week at a shot, generally 2-3 weeks total every winter. The incentives to avoid it just are not there, on many levels.
True, 3 days isn’t bad. Problem in this case is that temps remained in the teens for that entire time and people’s wells and pipes froze (no water, no toilets, etc.) Our cast iron booster pump cracked, for instance. It took up to 3 months in this area to get all the pumps and chattered pipes fixed! (No city water.) Many folks now have generators because of that fiasco.
Oh, yea, I didn't mean to imply it was good or ok, more just "Yea, it gets worse." Even in places where we know we get snow, every year, accompanied by very low temperatures, with lots of trees right next to the lines that will get knocked into said lines with a mild gust of wind... they just let that all go until suddenly there is no power and they are so backed up they can't get it all done. Getting a generator is definitely a good idea, or investing in a wood stove to keep the internal house temperatures above 50 or so.
It definitely is a nightmare when you get those freak swings of temperature that push you way past your preparation. It'd be like it getting down to -15 F here. In MN we put up with it, but in PA it would be awful.
Given the state of our country and politics, it’s a good idea to prepare for the worst. Many in our area had a hard lesson on self preparedness! We were ok (we grew up in 3rd world countries & learned self-sufficiency early on), but many were not. It did identify any gaps in our preparedness, though, and those have been plugged! I cannot imagine dealing with -15 F, though…you guys are tough!
We figured out a way to keep the well from freezing- get some of those religious candles they sell at the HEB. Put two or three in your well house if it’s going to be below 25 for more than a few hours. They burn for 3-4 days and will increase the temperature in the well house 20 degrees, enough to keep it from freezing.
And start going to your co-op meetings. You have the power to effect change.
We definitely go to the co-op meetings! Always fun hearing the common folk lambast the leadership there. Good idea on those candles, too. We ran propane out to our well house but our neighbors didn’t so I’ll suggest that to them.
Yep. Texas could have a wonderful electric power system. Unfortunately ERCOT seems to think its job is to import bad ideas from elsewhere.
Here is an arena where I part company with our author and his thoroughgoing libertarianism--there really *are* a few things that are natural monopolies, and I number electric, water, and sewer among them. Oh, and local roadways.
Well, as little from DC as possible. If it's something that really would be better run at the highest level, AND IF there is constitutional warrant for doing so (e.g. delivery of letters), then sure.
But no matter how good the idea sounds, if there's no constitutional provision for the federal government to have that authority, then absolutely the only way to get there is to pass a constitutional amendment - - not engage in stupid bullshit legal hand waving such as was done in Gonzales vs Raich.
Agree, but should they be run from DC or the County seat?
Tell your uncle to run for office!
Texan elected official here...we do things right here, for the most part, but the Feds have co-opted so much that it really doesn’t matter what we do on a local level. Plus the big counties are corrupt and owned by Soros and the other oligarchs and are driving policy. T: you and I know what the remedy is but I can’t say its name.
In Maine, our entire legislature and much local governance has been hijacked by what appears to be Soros-funded globalism. The pop of this state was urban/rural purple before Covid, now it’s pushing blue, and the DNC used the Roe decision to smear even pro-choice Republicans during the midterms.
It feels, frankly, like we’re f*****, and I’m looking for an escape hatch. If the legislature elects the senators, we will get John McCain (oh, excuse me, King and Collins) anyway.
You are right. If state legislators today got to choose their senators, they would choose those who's goal was to get federal largess to their states. We need to repeal the 16th amendment as well. We need to starve the beast.
The Free State Project is right next door.
https://www.fsp.org/
Or join me in Texas if you prefer the heat!
(should be) required reading for every citizen (assuming each state's legislature approved of such an assignment)
Today we are cutting off our cable tv. Nearly $200.00 a month for hardly anything we want to watch. Those we do we can find the app like passport. That’s the only one I will purchase for the moment. I can cast stuff onto my tv from my phone or tablet. If we want to return we can get a package with only 15 channels we choose. I doubt we will.
You won’t miss it. Network TV is a mindless circle of commercials and propaganda. Every so often a streaming service produces some decent entertainment, but even that is rarer and rarer these days, as propaganda must be inserted. Best to watch shows or series produced before 2000 on a borrowed account of a friends streamer for an occasional tv fix. Funny, as the amount of tv options have multiplied 100 fold I read more now then at any other time in my life.
Left cable TV in 2004ish. Whenever I see it in at a relatives or when we stay at a hotel, I'm reminded of what a good decision that was!
Ours has been off for 8 years
1000 channels and nothing to watch. There is a goldmine out there in the making of content that people actually are willing to pay for.
1000 channels owned by 4 companies. It’s a joke
We borrow our daughter’s NETFLIX. I have 2 British tv and movie apps plus Masyerpiece on Prime. I used to DVR quite a lot, but looking the past year, I hardly DVR anything anymore. So it’s gone. If I can’t pick anything out of all this, I’m not looking hard enough. 🙄🤔.
If you're sick of cable TV, you'll want to toss Netflix next. Wait for it.
Naw. I’m picky what I watch. Keeping it for now.
Why watch tv at all? Movies are fun on occasion, but television seems to just drain time and brain cells.
True. We don't pay any TV licences and apart from an odd movie or a comedy special we just watch long form interviews on places like rumble, youtube, spotify etc. Much more informative and interesting!
Same
I don’t actually care for movies. Never have. Can’t remember the last one I went to or watched. 🤷♀️. I like series watching. Documentaries. Science stuff. I’m picky as I said but long winter dark nights I need something that doesn’t put me to sleep like reading at night does. Short stuff. LOL. 😀
I totally get that. Where do you find good documentaries?
I like NOVA and NATURE, Secrets of the Dead on PBS. I don’t watch their news or political stuff. Woke. Amazon prime and Netflix have a lot. Depends on what you like. I like science ones and history. Separate apps then with some. My secret pleasure is British police procedurals. Detectives, forensics etc. Don’t like Americans police stuff.
I haven’t had cable since 1995 😂 I don’t have a TV. It’s funny to see people’s expressions when I tell them that I don’t own a TV.
I’m sharing this with everyone on my email list. I wish I could push Like a thousand times. Thank you El Gato!
While I am not sure repealing the 17th would erase all our ills, it certainly would bring back much needed attention to the local elections. I am not certain we can escape the tyranny of those that now perceive all things government as free - nor are we likely to convince them to give all of that up by explaining how truly not free they are for everyone.
The year 1913 also brought the federal reserve scheme which funded the terrible violence we suffer and another amendment, the 16th, which I believe was never properly ratified. It would be good to get rid of all three things. And you would be able to negotiate if you have three requests for redress rather than one.
But I wonder if the people who have power are going to give it up. Their predecessors murdered JFK, RFK, and MLK Jr so if they felt the need don't you think they would scrap the whole limits to power thing? They already govern with plenary power unless a court expresses sadness.
it's also the year we first got an income tax.
truly, a year that shall live in infamy.
Which enabled the US to prolong WWI, which brought Hitler and Lenin into power. Wilson is the worst US president, edging out Lincoln.
I blame the government. Free market anarchists don't do these things.
And the feral reserveless scheme financed the big war in Europe. Millions dead, followed by the great "Spanish" flu.
NOT a simple coincidence....the deliberately mis-named Federal Reserve "bank" was created to enable both the IRS, and individual Federal income tax. A scheme whereby us wage & debt slaves actually PAY for our own enslavement, to the enrichment and empowerment of the 1%.... ALL part of a carefully crafted GLOBALIST COUP D'ETAT....but I digress, we all know this story, right?....
beat me to it. I'd say the federal reserve act had as much to do with the debt and spending rocket line as the 17th amendment, so I'd start there, but you make a good case, gato, for its concurrent repeal, and kudos jim for pointing out 16th was not ratified.
the clear additional issue also is that our election systems are corrupted, so without trust in those, we cannot have democracy or representative federalism.
but at least states have to balance budgets, which has already become a major problem for california, which has lost an enormous chunk of its population since the covid scam -- proving your point already, gato -- and their tax revenues have nose-dived. current view is they're about $24 billion below expected 2022-23 to 2024-25 leaving a $68 billion budget deficit. 🍿
https://californiaglobe.com/fr/california-loses-another-817000-residents-in-2022-to-other-states/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/severe-revenue-decline-california-faces-133000258.html
https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/californias-population-drain
https://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2023/4819/2024-25-Fiscal-Outlook-120723.pdf
We got here because to many living-in-fear control freaks decided to corral all the wealth and then get rid of the citizen because he would no longer be needed. Fifty states operating on their own, for their own best interests would be a much improved system. The DC Swamp could be scaled down from the size of Africa to that of Rhode Island.
Perhaps instead of always adding more and more useless laws, getting rid of a few, like the 17th amendment would be a win for the citizen. Less government is always a positive step.
If most US government employees are max-jabbed they likely will have a much shorter lifespan and their swamps from DC top each state capitol may soon be depopulated. All those "free" jabs they and their families get from covid to the new "bivalent" annual flu shots at their current rising sick and dead rates I expect at least 30% to be dead within 7 years.
What does it mean when a business owner has a debt and their debt increases steadily over the years?
It means that their business is not run properly and is not balanced. It also means that their business exists at the expense of others. It also means that they are no longer the full and uncompromised owners of their business.
In terms of future opportunities, it means that their business systematically loses competitive edge. It also opens up to the possibility of sudden unforeseeable detrimental market impacts, e.g. when new legislation is adopted, market players change their policies, or force majeure events force rapid responses beyond the financial capacity of the indebted business.
In short, not a good idea.
"it’s supposed to be just about impossible to get things through the senate. that was a core protection for we the people and for the power of the states.
this is a feature, not a bug."
This quote should be on a plaque that legislators have to touch every time they enter the Capitol building.
Does anyone know what el gato malo's beef is with capitalization? And does anyone else here find text much more difficult to read without it? el gato malo, while I fully support authentic self-expression, for two cents, I also propose that you may be primarily disrespecting the reader by eschewing it.
Cats don’t have thumbs.🐾
Maine Coon Cats have thumbs....lol
Still not fully opposable for capitalization. 😁
There is no reason, no incentive for el gato malo to grow thumbs...however, given the legitimate incitement....... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmJhv6W_URY&ab_channel=ProperVideos
One paw on the shift button, one on the letter? --Who types with their thumbs?
I love it. It feels like a rebellion against unnecessary grammatical rules. And I have never had a problem reading because of it.
Even I don’t mind it, and I’m a stickler for proper grammar (although not for Latin rules applied to English). e e cummings was the first to do it, wasn’t he?
There is nothing unnecessary about capitalization. It is a useful improvement in orthography that helps with readability.
When I first started reading him I didn’t know any better and just thought he was a zoomer. After reading him for about a year now I’ve deduced that that isn’t the case and it’s just what he does 🤷🏼♂️ I find it difficult occasionally as well but it is what it is
I’m always up for a good 17th Amendment rant, ever since Jonah Goldberg got me hip to it years ago. Say what you will about his current positioning, he taught me more about conservative philosophy in the first years of his podcast than… well, ever.
I would suggest that the 17th Amendment is unconstitutional.
How can that be? By its mere existence in a Constitution that itself supports an Amendment process?
Amendments are to address defects in the Constitution, NOT to change the structure of it altogether.
I’m not sure this kind of fantasizing is useful. The chance that 17th will be repealed is precisely zero. The federal government is not going to hand any power back to the states.
FedGov began expanding its power before the ink was dry on the Constitution. After barely a decade the Supreme Court just decided out of thin air it could strike down laws. The 10th Amendment was basically DOA.
And now we think we can get back to the framers intentions? It’s not even clear that the much vaunted framers really wanted a weak federal government. Some did. But much of the pitch by the federalists was a con job. Murray Rothbard calls in a counter revolution.
The states will have to take power, first via nullification and inevitably, secession.
They tried secession already. It didn’t work out so well.
Watching the whole freak out about Nikki Haley’s comments about the civil war was illuminating for me. The necessity of saying that the “civil war was about slavery” is required to make sure that the threat of secession is always linked to the truly hideous idea of slavery. More than the 17th amendment, I’m sure that the vast expansion of the federal government and federal power can be linked to the civil war. But as long as we can just keep chanting that the “civil war was about slavery” and “Lincoln was our greatest president”, nobody will stop to question the implications of what the civil war allowed the federal government to do.
The claim a tyrant murdering 800,000 of countrymen 160 years ago killed self determination forever is the silliest argument against state secession.
It will happen, it’s just a question of when. All that’s needed is for conservatives to wake up and realize they’re not going to “take our country back.”
There’s no need for a war. And I don’t believe there will be one. The crumbling empire can’t even mount one. The world is decentralizing since the end of WWII, mostly peacefully. There are 3 times more counties in the world than there were in 1945.
Let them bleat about bringing back slavery or whatever. The point is absurd on its face.
Texas has a popular and robust independence movement. It will happen.
Idk if you’re familiar with Tom Luongo, but along his lines of thinking, US secession would basically hand the globalists the world on a silver platter. At least at this point.
I’m familiar with Tom, but I have not heard his version of this argument. James Lindsay has been embarrassing himself on Twitter with the same claim.
Here Bob Murphy grinds it to dust:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-human-action-podcast/id884207568?i=1000644801327
I like both Bob Murphy and James Lindsay. I'll listen to this with great interest.
I lean toward the peaceful going of our own ways. I'm sure James Lindsay has his reasons for believing that is not the way to go, as was the case in the antebellum period. There were many who cautioned that secession, while possible, should be approached with much caution. I get it - there are a lot of moving parts to this discussion.
I also think that if Trump wins the coming election we may actually see the MSM normalizing the idea of seceding.
Maybe, hopefully. But realize it’s a bluff. The left will never support political decentralization.
A couple years ago I attended panel discussion of the independence movement leaders of TX, NH and CA. Calexit says they’re not allowed unless the other states give them permission. Ridiculous.
Tim, I believe we are in the middle of regime change planned by the DoD. I believe the plan was designed by Steve Pieczenik, who first worked for Kissinger on regime change in the '70s and then moved over to the DoD to work on regime change.
Pieczenik wrote up his plan as two "novels" published in the early '90s. Part 1 is the novel Blood Heat, about a deliberately-caused pandemic. Part 2 is about states seceding in response to a corrupt and unresponsive federal government. It's the novel State of Emergency.
So I believe El Gato's federalism recommendation is actually going to happen. I agree with you there won't be a war. And I agree the crumbling empire couldn't even mount one. The whole border dispute in Texas was the opening act.
There’s zero chance FedGov will willingly return any power to the states. The states will have to take it, which they will.
The border dispute reveals the mechanism by which it will happen. FedGov retaliated by suspending gas licenses in Texas. This affects private money interests. People who would rather stay on the sidelines.
Now Texas is building a $10B 80 acre military base near Eagle Pass. How will FedGov respond? Eventually it will start withholding federal funds, for roads or whatever. If not for border issues, for nullification of federal gun laws or something else.
These reprisals will further change the political calculus in Texas. Texans won’t stand for a beat down. Eventually a supermajority will support Texit, and it will happen. It’s hard to say how soon. But these things tend to take everyone by surprise. See Brexit.
Expect California and others aligned with their policies to pour people into Texas, to change the vote, if the development you describe starts to take off.
It's block-busting Detroit-style, writ large. Prepare accordingly.
Block busting is a good analogy.
The Left has always used freedom to impose slavery.
They're coming. I'm in Austin, so trust me, I see it. It tends to be the less communist ones coming. There are also some leaving because of laws (abortion, trans, guns, etc). I don't think it will tip the balance, especially since hispanics are breaking red.
Hyperinflation will fix it, to some degree. What can't be fixed is the hordes of migrants allowed to flood the nation and depend on FedGov handouts.
True about migrants, but an independent Texas will easily solve this. We’re already shipping them to shitty states. I can’t make other states’ problems my concern.
Sure, you will solve it just as easily as Israel has solved their Gaza problem.
You are correct, of course. Power has to be taken back from them. They aren't going to give it back to us, willingly.
I keep saying, to anyone who will listen (mostly my long-suffering wife) that we need to start by negating everything government does at the local level. We pay for police services and schools and such but they aren't doing their part. In fact, they are doing precisely the opposite. They are purposely giving us inferior products and making us pay more for them. They are literally working at cross purposes to our interests. A critical mass needs to come to the realization that we don't need them. They are a drain on our economies and our lives. We need to nullify every power that we have delegated to them and resume those powers directly.
This is the starting point. Simply repudiate the arrangement. They have already done so; we simply need to recognize that fact and act accordingly.
We clearly are not going to win a war against them. We need to negate their rule in every way possible until their ability to rule is effectively nullified. We need to put pressure on them in every way possible. Our states, if they truly want to take back power from the federal leviathan, should help us in this effort. Do as Texas has done and nullify every federal overreach and call out every federal dereliction of their duty to the true parties to the Constitution (the several, sovereign, States).
I also agree that the "contract" was essentially abrogated before the ink was dry. It was never a contract to begin with. Nobody signed it; nobody actually agrees to it.
This discussion is useful to the extent that people can begin to understand what has happened, and why. The "what" is simple enough to understand; the "why" is subject to much speculation.
I agree that the solution will be through a combination of nullification and secession, either implicitly or explicitly.
Genuine question, not trying to be snarky whatsoever. But what would have been the purpose of the Supreme Court if not to strike down laws found to be unconstitutional?
To decide cases, like any other court. That’s all the power the constitution granted. No power to strike down laws.
If you’re interested to learn more look into Jefferson’s reaction to judicial review. Here’s a decent little page with some poignant quotes: https://www.johnlestes.com/judicial-review/jefferson-fought-judicial-review/
The states could do it without the involvement of any part of the federal government.
There is a convention of states movement for the purposes of amending the constitution. It requires 2/3 of state legislatures to pass motions calling for a convention of states for amendment proposals (US Constitution Article V).
After which, any proposals passed out of the convention would be sent to the states for ratification, and upon ¾ ratification becomes a new amendment.
They could, but they won’t. If there was anything close to 3/4 support, you wouldn’t need a convention.
Also, an Article V convention would be very risky. It’s more likely than not to be a disaster for liberty. You know that there will be plenty of states arguing that 2A is an outmoded relic, for example.
State secession doesn’t require any support from any other state. I guess you could say it requires them not supporting a murderous war.
It doesn't matter how many proposals come out of the convention (nor what they are), and it's not risky.
Everything coming out of that process would still require 3/4 ratification by states, which prevents any convention from being risky.
Okay sure, none of the proposals are risky, because none of them will pass. Repealing 2A has a much better chance than 17A though.
When 70% pay little or nothing , it’s no wonder why we constantly hear “ the govt needs to pay for( fill in the blank)”. I used to tell people who said this to me that they were the govt source of income and ask them what’s it worth to them, and how much were they willing to pay? Blank stares back usually.
Now it’s just greedy corporations and tax the rich
Most people have no concept of the idea of government spending. They think the government can just create money out of thin air with no consequences.
(The first part is true, government can, the second part is not, there indeed are consequences.)