Open Letter to Trump Supporters

This blog post has its beginnings on the day of the election. The storylines stemming from mail in vote fraud to Trump’s big court fight to Biden’s victory and Trump’s defeat, culminating in a second impeachment and Biden inauguration. These headlines plus the bitter partisan divide that occurred in 2016 mixed with open conflict in both parties, has created a unique opportunity. The opportunity to make significant changes in how conservatives, more specifically Trump supporters handle their political actions. This is an open letter, an olive branch from an outsider, a former republican myself, an apolitical anarchist.

If you happen to scroll through my blog you won’t find me cheering or jeering Trump. I do criticize him just as I do any politician. Here’s the rub: I’m fully against any government run by anybody in any conceivable way. However, I’m not asking you to abandon Trump or your loyalty to him. There is a short game and long game in this struggle against the neoliberal system we currently live in. The short game is where I want to ally with Trump supporters. The long game will be different for each of us. My long game is to live peacefully without government. I’m not asking Trump supporters to back me on this. What I am asking is that Trump supporters take me on as an ally in the short game which is to tear down this neoliberal system. You may ask me: cool dude but why the fuck do I wanna do this?

Listen closely, the neoliberal system has engineered the government, the congress, the war machine, the media and the presidency to do its bidding. The underlying currents and operators are the corporations who use government monopoly to manipulate the market. In addition to the Military Industrial Complex which influences all levels of society to make war and rack up maximum profits. Trump was an outsider. Trump was molded and fenced in just like every other president. It wasn’t his fault.

The neoliberal system chose to push Trump out of office. It’s clear that his gigantic mouth got him in hot water. Unfortunately, this means the neoliberal system rigged the election. This should piss you off as a Trump supporter. The system betrayed you. One of the thing’s that my anarchist beliefs have in common with your anger is that we both want significant changes to occur. We can work together to make it happen. With a combined 100 million strong coalition of libertarians, anarchists and Trump supporters, we have an irrefutable force for change. We must tear down the fabric of the neoliberal system. In its place, we can separate and set up our own way of life. Trump can be president again. Anarchists can live peacefully away from government. It’s a win-win.

If you are down to join the cause, then we can start planning our road to victory. We can take down this system by attacking its core. We have to embrace alternative currencies. Embrace agorism. We have to build networks of 3D printed guns and bullets. We have build a society that values voluntary interactions. Family values used to be an important conservative value. Let’s make it great again. Once we establish a network and support system, we start to push back on the system by not participating in it. 100 million or even 70 million people refusing to vote or pay taxes could potentially send a strong enough message that we aren’t fucking with this. This isn’t a revolution. It’s an evolution. So, my point is that I’m asking if you want the ability to set up your children’s future in a more stable environment with less conflict. All I merely asking is cooperation. At the end, you get Trump in a powerful position. I get to be left alone. Nobody goes home sorry.

If you are a Trump supporter who read this whole thing, thank you for listening. I hope you will consider it. Just think about how Biden and Harris will try to demonize your beliefs and raise you taxes. The left has already banned Trump from any social media. Their coming for you next. They want to silence the opposition. Don’t let them. Join the liberty movement to fight for your voice and freedom. Nobody can save you but yourself.

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Woke Professional Sports: Ruining Professional Sports Enjoyment

I’ve been a professional sports fan since before I even cared about politics. I have always thoroughly enjoy watching games on TV and going to them in real life. I’ve been numerous professional sport events ranging from Major League Baseball to the National Football League, in addition to both the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League. I never remember much politics being involved within the sports environment. The high political action was usually done at the beginning of the game with the national anthem. But nowadays, almost every league is quite literally cancelling games in the name of political action. I’ve written about Colin Kaepernick before when he first took the knee. I wrote about it again when Kaepernick settle his lawsuit with the NFL over allegations of purpose blocking him from getting a QB gig. (If we’re honest, his QB skills weren’t up to par when he last played.) It seems that Kaepernick’s attitude has spread throughout the leagues.

In my personal opinion, politics and sports do not mix. I think they each serve different purposes. Politics serves to fill the greed and self interest of politicians who don’t give an actual fuck about you. Meanwhile sports is supposed to be wholesome competition and entertainment. Whether or not you enjoy sports, I think everyone can agree that sometimes activities are best without weird and unnecessary interruptions like political movements. Imagine if you’re favorite activity got cancelled for a political movement. You would probably feel the same way. You might be thinking “ok dude, but aren’t athletes allowed to have opinions and thoughts off the field, plus what if I agree with them?”

Yes, athletes can believe whatever they want, they can hold opinions and thoughts without any of my criticism. However, keep those political opinions off the field or court of play. Let me be clear: I don’t care if any particular athlete is communist, democrat, republican, BLM… it doesn’t matter. Just don’t push your philosophy on me in the sport you play. I don’t watch sports to get politically assaulted by politics that I do not partake in nor want to hear propaganda for. Play ball and keep your politics off the field. Sports is purely entertainment so if you aren’t gonna play sports then go retire to do politics. I really DON’T care.

So I haven’t addressed what exactly I’m referring to when I say “woke sports”. Recently the NFL, NBA and MLB all have adopted the policy of allowing players to take a knee and wear political messages on jerseys. In the case of the NBA, there have been games cancelled. The next logical question about all this is why is it such a problem now? I think woke sports has come about for two main reasons and one lesser reason. The first reason is money. Professional sports is a trillion dollar industry. Nearly every league makes billions of dollars. The owners of the teams are extremely wealthy. Professional sport garners huge TV contracts and billions in advertising revenue. Having all this money involved means it comes from somewhere. In this case of the NBA, the money comes from China which is a huge market share. Its the reason why you see Lebron James bending over for Chinese political interests. The second reason is influence. Nowadays, professional athletes have more influence than they ever have. They have social media platforms with millions of followers. They are on TV which can be streamed anywhere and anytime. There is a third lesser reason which is the background of these athletes. Many of them grew up poor and struggling to just survive. This garners a lot of empathy from public. The last ingredient that brings all the money, influence and empathy together is the political climate today.

We know that politics has changed recently into being much more toxic. I believe this is due to people adopting politics into their personality. It also has a lot to do with the technology that brings us news and happenings instantly around the clock. I’m on twitter and every time something crazy like riots happen, I literally can’t look away. Every event is being politicize and instantly streamed or uploaded to social media. Its a real shame that access to events and information is used the complete wrong way. Instead of accessing useful information to help make informed opinions, people would rather just react and give uninformed opinions. I think that sports was insulated from the politicizing of events until Kaepernick starting taking that knee. He was the Trojan horse. Every league had (yes had, in the past tense) rules against political messaging and political protests on the field. Now every league is bending to mob mentality over fear of being cancelled or losing fans who pay the money.

To conclude this post, I think the only and very unfortunate way to help sports league get the message that some or possibly a lot of people don’t like their politics in sports, is by not watching or buying jerseys. This will be really hard for most of us, including myself. But I think if fans are unhappy. we should vote with our wallets and viewership. If the political messaging bullshit stops, I would gladly tune back in. Sports is for entertainment. Politics is toxic and stressful. In all honestly, the ruining of sports by woke makes me blame the government even more. There no reason why we need a president for people to protest. Self ownership and voluntarism could easily replace the current system if people actually realized its never going to change.

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No Excuse for War: Iran’s Lack of Historical Malice

With the killing of Qasem Soleimani, one of the Iranian generals by an American air attack the other day has sparked rumors of World War 3. Iran has now responded with at least 30 ballistic missiles at US bases in Iraq. Soleimani is thought to be responsible for many American soldier. He also thought to be responsible for an attack on an US embassy in Iraq. The problem is that Iran is not and has never been a “problem country”. This is a myth perpetuated by the American government. The country of Iran otherwise known as Persian throughout history has been around for over 2000 years. Iran’s “problems” started recently only in late 1930s less than a hundred years ago. At first it was the British who tried colonize the country. Also Russia has a heavy involvement with Iran as it sits within their sphere of influence.

This post will not be a chronological full-detailed history but rather some points that counter the narrative that Iran is an “evil” country. Iran is a theocracy (Muslim). I want to focus specifically on the US involvement in Iran starting with the coup in 1953 and moving forward to other events such as the Iranian hostage crisis. Then I will cover some of the current events in the past few years.

The 1953 Iranian Coup D’etat

If you didn’t realize that before 1953, Iran had a democracy under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. As Prime Minister Mosaddegh was installing democratic reforms such as social security, taxes on land and the state ownership of the oil companies. When PM Mosaddegh took over the oil companies and made them state owned this angered both British and American interests in oil. The coup later became known as Operation Ajax. This joint operation of the CIA and the British intelligence agency MI6 was simply an effort to stage an overthrow of Mosaddegh and replace him with someone more agreeable to US and British oil interests. That somebody happened to be General Fazlollah. In Operation Ajax, the Shah of Iran, the monarch was to make a decree replacing Mosaddegh with Fazlollah. Fazlollah with the blessing of the Shah made agreeable contracts with the US and Britain over oil. (Click for Source)

The whole overthrow started because of the oil in Iran. Maybe you were alive at the time to experience it first hand. One of the reasons why Iran’s oil became so important because the car industry was really taking off. In addition to the making of plastics with the leftovers of oil production. The world economy had a large demand for cheap oil. Yet we see war hawks both in congress and on social media arguing that Iran is a bully and evil. The CIA quite literally cooked up a protest against a perfectly fine leader. They replaced Iran’s democracy with a monarchy. As one would expect, this monarchy didn’t last more than 30 years. Here is a little timeline of the Coup, so you get an idea of how it all went down.

Iranian Hostage Crisis 

Some people may be familiar with the hostage crisis especially if you lived through it. The crisis was a diplomatic standoff between the US and Iran. The standoff occurred in part because of the overthrow coup that occurred in 1953. Iranian’s never forgot that the US incited the overthrow which saw jailing and eventual killing of all Mosaddegh’s associates. The story of the crisis is as follows: a group of Iran college students that were pro-revolution (aka against the Shah), had stormed the US embassy in Tehran. They took the 52 staff hostage for nearly a year and a half. Embarassingly enough, Jimmy Carter could not get the hostages released. After a failed military rescue attempt, named operation Eagle Claw, it took the election of Ronald Reagan to free the hostages. The important thing to note is that this storming of the embassy was a response to the American presence in the middle east.

America has military bases everywhere around Iran in the middle east especially now. The America meddling in the Iranian political system caused them to become more extreme. After the crisis, the Iranian people took a harder line and elected politicians that reflected the renewed anti-American views. One politician Ayatollah Khomeini who came to prominence had his biographer summarize the crisis as:

“a watershed in Khomeini’s life” that transformed him from “a cautious, pragmatic politician” into “a modern revolutionary single-mindedly pursuing a dogma.” In Khomeini’s statements, imperialism and liberalism were “negative words,” while revolution “became a sacred word, sometimes more important than Islam.” (Click for Source)

Even though, the Iranian political movements had some negative elements such as socialist-Islamic or communist backed groups. I still fail to see where Iran was originally evil? If it wasn’t for US intervention starting in 1953 then installing a monarch that the Iranian people never wanted. The US has framed Iran as evil for its oil.

Iran Contra and Obama Iran’s Deal

In the mid-1980s, Ronald Reagan’s administration illegally sold arms (Guns) around an arms embargo by former President Jimmy Carter because of the Iranian hostage crisis. The money from the illegal arm sales was used to help the contras in Nicaragua fight their left wing government. The more important point here was why Iran needed weapons in the first place was because next door neighbor Iraq decided it would take advantage of Iran’s revolution during the hostage crisis. The conflict which lasted eight years was very much against Iran. Nearly all the outside powers sided with Iraq including the Soviets. This was still during the cold war era so part of Reagan’s motivation for selling arms to Iran was to push back on the Soviet influence. The conflict eventually ended with a UN cease fire after 500,000 causalities. In fairness, Iran was attacked by Iraq not the other way around. Let’s not forget who incited Iran’s anti-western, anti-american sentiments, it was the US in 1953, 1979 and now in 1985! (Click for Source)

The next event I want to cover very briefly is the Obama’s Nuclear deal with Iran. The deal in which the US and UN security council agreed to lift sanctions both economic and nuclear on Iran in exchange for Iran giving up its nuclear weapon program. Of course, the fallout that made headlines was Obama giving away a billion dollars in cash. While this event wasn’t as blatantly interventionist or imperialistic, it did show how deep the divide between Iran and the US. The amount of sanctions that have been imposed on Iran is pretty unimaginable. (Click for Source) Of course, we have to look at the bigger picture to see why America’s bullying created this need for nuclear weapons in Iran.

Conclusion: Big Picture

I just explain in a concise way the timeline of the rise of tensions between the US and Iran. To put it simply: America under Eisenhower decided to have the CIA overthrow the democratic PM Mosaddegh for US and British oil interests. This resulted in the installation of the Shah. The Shah, a monarch was in power for 30 years against the people of Iran’s will. Following that a revolution starting with the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran sparked another overthrow. This time, the Iranians elected to make a hard line toward an Islamic theocracy. It also saw a rise in anti-western and anti-American views. In 1980, Iraq tries to take advantage of a supposedly weakened Iran. Despite most of the western powers siding with Iraq, the Iranians repel the attack. Keep in mind that thus far the Iranian’s haven’t provoked any wars or attacks. The hostage crisis although not the best way, was a protest against the American imperialist in the middle east. From the contra scandal to the Iran Nuclear deal we see that Iran once again is just trying to find independence from the influence and imperialistic intentions of western powers.

Its hard for one to justify war with a country that in reality has only tried to keep to itself. One might think that Iran is the equivalent to Germany in early and mid 20th century trying to conquest the world. But the reality is that Iran is only trying to protect itself with nuclear weapons. No rational government would use nuclear weapons unless there was an immediate threat. Even so, the US is still the only country to drop two nukes. Before we sent bombs and troops to Iran that will likely kill innocent people lets remember that the US actually created the Iran we see today. Personally I’d like to see what happens if we leave them alone and take our bases out from around them.

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Geopolitics: The Strategy of Strategy on the World Stage

The title of this post might seem quite redundant. I was talking to my friend, Mr. Pseu who has a podcast. He often bounces ideas off me and for whatever reason, we were talking about the state of the US-China relationship. I realized during our conversation that many news analyst and just regular people view China all wrong. But more than that they don’t know anything about Geopolitics. Don’t worry, I won’t be going into super in depth lengths here. But before I begin I want to mention a book that I would recommend reading if you are interested in learning more. The book is called War by Other Means written by Robert D Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris. This book thoroughly educated me on geopolitics. In this particular post, I want to explain the basic concepts of geopolitics.

The Power of a Strategy

Many struggle to understand the complexity of world politics. Its not surprising to me either. Its complicated and confusing. However, there is a simple way to understand politics. Politics can be understood by game theory. Game theory is the possible choices and outcome of any given political actor. The game theory states that an actor will either make a rational decision or irrational decision. Depending on what context is known about the actor and circumstances, one can guess what results might come of it. So this relates to geopolitics because we can predict what countries will do with relevant statistics and history of actions. The definition of geopolitics is a simple combination of two words with ‘geo’ meaning geography and politics meaning relations between countries in this case. So geopolitics is international relations in a geographical nature.

The geopolitical relationships between countries boils down to basic strategies used for handling every situation that a country might face. You could also call this foreign policy. However, in geopolitics especially between world powers like the US and China. We have to focus on strategies. Strategies are the instruments used in forming a policy. Its how a country deals with problems. The US is well known for going to war or a proxy war. China is more known for their economic pressure. Every country can use any strategy they would like except not all countries are equal. This means where the US could use pretty much any strategy in the book, a country like Canada will not have the same clout. It even depends on what type of government is in that country. The US has a little disadvantage because democracy tends to be slow-moving. China has an advantage of being a one party, oligarchical run country.

Geoeconomics: More effective than war?

One of the things that is discussed in heavily in the book, aforementioned in my introduction is geoeconomics. This is an important facet of geopolitics. Geoeconomics is what China has actually master quite a bit better than the US. You’ll notice that China rarely uses its military for any sort of international conflict. You can trust that China has one of the biggest military’s in the world and its still growing. However, they don’t need to use it. China has figured out that with its recent economic surge it has gained clout that it never had in previous centuries. The basis of China’s geoconomics is based on strategies using trade and currency. Recently, Trump decided to raise tariffs on Chinese import products. China responded in kind with a raise of tariffs on US goods. But you see China holds a variety of methods and employs them as necessary. Some of the methods are still a work in progress such as forcing the standard reverse currency to be the Chinese Yen. China has state owned banks that have more assets than the biggest banks in the US even topping the World banks. The Chinese are slowly converting other countries through various positive or negative economic pressures to start using yen as the standard. As we know the US dollar currently holds the standard reserve. A switch of that to China would mean that China controls the world’s money flow.

So why is geoeconomics better than war? China pushes around its influence and offers countries either favorable trade deals or unfavorable trade deals depending on what they see fit. Granted the United States does have a bigger sphere of influence. But sphere of influence is only a small factor in geopolitics, I’ll discuss the pivot briefly next section. China is achieving their goals through these geoeconomic strategies more effectively and without the loss of life. The problem for the US is that we don’t do nearly as much geoeconomics as we should. The US has untold power with the standard reserve currency. The US primarily uses sanctions, which sounds bad but in reality can be easily subverted. It would take an whole other blog post to describe how wars have not really worked in favor of the US.

A Pivot in the Right Direction?

President Obama really couldn’t do much right during his presidency. But there is one minor bright spot. He started the pivot to Asia, more specifically China. The pivot is a geopolitical strategy uses economic power to maintain an healthy economic and political relationship with China. This was a step in the right direction. The Pivot if the legislation had passed and if President Trump didn’t shut it down, would have provided agreements with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and other councils in Asia to foster economic growth in Asia. It was actually a rare moment of clarity in foreign policy especially given President Obama’s knack for drone bombing the middle east to bits. Its unfortunate that it didn’t work out because instead starting a trade war that US can’t win, we should be trying help the countries around China be successful so they can manage their own relationships with China. Instead of letting China dictate the relationships of all the countries. The failure of this agreement has basically allowed China to grow its sphere of influence.

Taste of Geopolitics

I hope this general and fairly vague description of geopolitics and geoeconomics was enlightening. The point of this post was to introduce some of the concepts in geopolitics. I think its important to understand that in the context of international relations its important to understand that both sides will probably act rationally in the case of US v. China. When people talk about nuclear war between the two nations, its very unlikely given the co-dependence. US buys way too much imports from China for there to be any actual war unless Trump really turns up the heat on tariffs. Also in order for the US to maintain the dominance that we’ve had, the US will have to adopted some new geoeconomic strategies to counter the Chinese building of power. War isn’t the only way to settle a conflict or protect your interest in a place. If only the war hawks in DC understood this concept…

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PS. You can catch Mr. Pseu’s podcast: The Pseudollectual on Spotfiy or any other major carrier of podcasts. I’d recommend it.

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History Less Traveled: Cold War, Part 4

I highly recommend that you read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 before reading Part 4 of this series. Also please check out my updated Life Experience’s: Advertisement Campaign if you would like to help each other out. 

Today in Part 4, I’m going start domestically and then head abroad to Vietnam. Its going to be a 1200 word journey through some pretty interesting times in American history. The Great Society will consist of a bunch of smaller parts broken down by each law. At the end, I’ll give a brief critique of the results that we see today. After that, we will hit the jungles of Vietnam. Okay, not literally. I want to discuss the reasons for going into Vietnam and the bigger picture of why Vietnam mattered so much for the Cold War. A bit of this discussion will touch on the military industrial complex because in my understanding it plays large role. Lyndon B. Johnson or LBJ has a bipolar presidency, in one part he pushes his domestic vision quite successfully. In the another part, he manages to escalate a war that he can’t win. Unfortunately for me, despite his sweeping domestic legislation, all I see is a great politician but not great results from his work. If only presidents were measured by how much they did, President Trump seems think that is how it works too. I hope he knows that LBJ has him beat.

The Great Society: Immigration

Unlike our current President, LBJ wasn’t a big immigration fan. However, there was law passed for immigration reform. All it did was remove the origin quotas. Which might sound small, but the quotas really kept numbers down especially for certain countries. Now depending on your perspective this could be both good and bad. In general, my feeling is that this was a good thing. There isn’t any reason to block any certain origin or ethnicity. Plus the economy can thrive with plenty of lower wage workers or even better more high skilled ones.

The Great Society: Gun Control

My stance on gun control is well-documented throughout this blog. It doesn’t work. That being said the passage of this particular sweeping gun control measure was in demand because of recent assassinations. However, let me point out that banning guns doesn’t stop criminals from getting them or using them. Ronald Reagan had an attempted assassination in the 1980s. So unfortunately LBJ’s gun control act was in vein.

The Great Society: Education  

Everyone can related to this bill. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act gave us federal funding for schools and colleges. You are probably aware of the billions of dollars in student loan debt that exist today. Well, you can thank LBJ for that. This bill  had really great intentions, make school affordable for everyone. Unfortunately, when one artificially inflates the amount people who can afford college, then the price of college goes up. Its pretty simple economics, basically colleges saw that more students could afford to go college and raised their prices. Therefore, it was a win-win for colleges because the government pays them to take on students and they can make huge profits. Which is problem we have today, college is very expensive. The education act really just saturated the market for college graduates and gave us a ton of debt. Thanks LBJ.

The Great Society: War on Poverty 

In this piece of legislation, LBJ accomplished very little. He created things like minimum wage, medicaid, medicare and various other unsuccessful programs. Granted, he didn’t realize that fast food workers would protest for higher wages. Let’s be honest, government run healthcare isn’t that great, just ask one of our veterans. Aside from the obvious flaws of minimum wage and government run anything, this War on Poverty did nothing but increase poverty. I’ll give LBJ a break because they didn’t do studies on any of this. In hindsight, this wasn’t a good bill. Don’t worry, there is a positive one coming!

The Great Society: Voting Rights Act

This was by far one of LBJ’s most successful bills. In part because it was written by Martin Luther King Jr. The voting rights act removed most of the barriers set by Jim Crow laws and other racist laws to give people of color the right to vote. Its actually hard to explain how big of a step this was. LBJ and Martin Luther King Jr. had a fairly good relationship. Unfortunately King Jr. was assassinated not long after its passage, about 3 years later. This act had a lasting impact on civil rights. I keep saying that LBJ has good intentions and this bill proves it.

 The Great Society: Not great, but just barely decent.

Overall, I would give LBJ a C+ on the Great Society because if your looking at the results, most of them not that great. This isn’t even a personal attack on LBJ, I’m only judging the policies. His voting rights act really carried him on this bundle deal. Unfortunately over the past 54 years its been proven his economic policies are junk. Yet somehow, here we are today with AOC and Bernie Sanders pushing the same junk with a new fruity socialist twist. If you came here for the Vietnam discussion then get ready to lock and load my dudes.

Back in ‘Nam, We didn’t have Starbucks.

Just a little joke to lighten the mood. I mentioned in a previous part, that JFK had sent “advisers” or special forces to help the south Vietnamese. Over the course of the 1960s, first JFK sent as many as 16,000 advisers to Vietnam, then by 1967 there was over 500,000 troops in Vietnam. Over the course of LBJ’s presidency, he was advised by Robert McNamara, his secretary of defense. McNamara encouraged many of the troop increases and bombing campaigns.. He also oversaw many of the weapon development programs. I think its safe to say that we didn’t win the Vietnam war. The guerrilla war fighters managed to out maneuver and out-strategize the greatest military power in the world. In order to understand why the US went into Vietnam, we need to look at NSC-68.

NSC-68 and the Military Industrial Complex

I have rarely given any outside sources because this isn’t a research paper or even an academic essay its a story. However, I believe that NSC-68 is important enough to have an outside source. Here is that source, click on this. NSC-68 in a short summary is a document which was written during the Truman presidency for the purpose of guiding US foreign policy. In no uncertain terms, it says that the US has to build up a substantial war chest of nuclear weapons to keep the Soviet Union from taking over the world. The document created the basis for the national security council which has since advised every President since. The NSC-68 created within the government the actual competition between the US and the Soviet Union. It was made real and it was followed closely. The military industrial complex is that thing Eisenhower warned about in his farewell speech. Unforgettably that warning was not heeded. I think it was outright ignored in fact. In many ways, the Vietnam conflict presented the perfect opportunity for government contracted weapons R&D companies to take advantage. Companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Halliburton…just to name a few.

On the next part I will finish explaining how Vietnam was shaped by these war profiteers. I will also explain how the Vietnam war represented a battle over communism vs. capitalism similar to Korea. You could say that the peak of the Cold War erupted in a hot war with Vietnam. Thanks for reading! Tune back in for Part 5!

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Political Rhetoric is Stupid

Just a warning: This post might be all-over the place.  The reason is because I have nothing really specific to work with but I do know that there is something to political rhetoric being stupid.

I was thinking about my last post and the absolute trash of legislation that AOC and Democrats have come out with. To be honest, I haven’t been impressed by anyone in the government with the exception of the three libertarian congressmen (Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, Justin Amash) There has been a lot of talk in politics. Politics is after all, a debate about the greater good. But today, I think that talk is cheap and action is hard to find. For my taste, I like when politicians, in general, talk the talk and walk the walk. Not to be cliche, but shit-talking only gets so far.

I’m a libertarian-anarchist-whatever you call it. I believe that the best government is actually no government. I often find myself observing the current landscape of politics as a wasteland. You won’t find me supporting any party but I will support ideas that on the right track. Trust me, there hasn’t been many. The most interesting about political rhetoric is that usually just ends up making each side more extreme and entrenched in their own beliefs. On a weird note, it seems like whenever someone questions the party line or beliefs, that party doesn’t look to change direction. They decide to double down on their beliefs pushing them to the furthest extremes.

Let’s use two examples in both the Republican and Democratic parties. President Trump is a great example of the Republicans doubling down on immigration. I’m not gonna lie, I used read to a lot of Glen Beck in my early college years. In 2009, I would have voted for Trump. If you know Glen Beck, he was obsessed with building a wall on the Mexican Border. However, back in 2009, Glen Beck was seen as fringe of the Republican party. George Bush never really considered a wall. Nearly every president in recent years has sent troops to the border. The issue was boiling just below the surface. It seems like after Obama came with his amnesty plan that the Republican party just decided we need to take a harder line. If you take Trump’s presidency out of the vacuum that we often mistakenly judge politics in, then you can see why Trump would run based on “build on the wall”. Just look at Brexit, and the sentiment throughout Europe with mass immigration of refugees from Syria This was going on because of Obama and Russia intervention in Syria. The world in 2016 really started to scrutinize immigration policies more thoroughly as a whole. The point is that Trump basically is a perfect fit for this new thinking about immigration in Europe. Trump’s election is the result of dirty rhetoric by Democrats. How stupid is it that Trump was elected by his haters?

I literally can’t make this stuff up. Now lets do some Democrat rhetoric hard-line. I believe this one started with Bernie Sanders running against Hillary Clinton. Bernie is famous for many things like taking down the 1 percent and getting paid to lose an election then buying a third house. However, the thing about Bernie is that he challenged Hillary Clinton because she was fairly moderate until Bernie brought the hard-line socialist policies. In turn, Hillary Clinton went from running the usual Democrat platform to including universal everything, paid for by the government. This was just start of socialism in the Democratic party. Fast Forward to the most recent midterm elections and you have the election of AOC or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. A millennial socialist. AOC has literally revolutionized the economy of stupid. Every idea that she puts out has Bernie Sanders written all over it. The problem is that whenever she talks, it just stupid bullshit that comes out. At least Sanders made coherent statements half the time.

If you clicked my linked post, then you know the Green New Deal just dropped into Congress like an economy wrecking bomb that it is. This is the summation of all the hard-line socialist policies pushed by Bernie and Hillary. Its really sad too. If you were to go back and read about John F. Kennedy, some young people would probably call him alt-right. JFK was probably the last decent minded democratic president. Before he was shot, Martin Luther King Jr was talking to him about a civil rights bill. That civil rights bill eventually came to pass in 1965 under LBJ. In history I can find democrats who actually did real helpful things for our society. Today, I can’t find a democrat who doesn’t understand that socialism isn’t the answer. Unfortunately, the Green New Deal is the climax of all the President Obama policies and 2016 Presidential campaign.

I said earlier that Trump was elected by his haters. I want to clarify that haters didn’t actually elect him. Unfortunately, Democrats chose to use hatred against Trump himself. Its weird because they hate anything Trump related. Trump proposed to pull out of the wars. Democrats blocked it because they hate Trump. Just a few years ago they were for it. I swear Trump could pass the Green New Deal and Democrats wouldn’t support it because Trump does support it. Its insane. See why political rhetoric is stupid? Its like being in a boxing match where you hit your opponent then hit yourself twice as hard. Chances are, your gonna knock out yourself first.

One last note, if the Democrats keep up hating Trump as person, and don’t attack his actual policies, they are gonna have 4 more years of him. This has been my pet peeve for years. People will focus on the personality of the President rather than his policies. Why does matter what a private citizen does in his own business? His policies matter. Its even dumber to think that we need a popular vote election. We already have it. Its already a popularity contest.

As a Libertarian/Anarchist, my thoughts on all this are pretty simple. Get rid of this shitshow and let people live their lives without interference. I truly don’t feel like society has benefited from government especially now.

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Part 1: Economics 101: Supply and Demand are Essential

I talk about politics and history on my blog quite a bit. These are my absolute favorite topics. I have in past posts talked about economics but it tends to be boring. One of my goals when starting this blog was to educate. So in this post, I intend to educate about some economic policies that relatively misunderstood by the general population. I won’t jump into the hardest concept first because in economics similar to math and science you have to understand the basics. First I want to talk about supply and demand. I know that I have talked about it before. Then I want to move into monetary policy. I might even touch on tariffs which I explained here. It occurred to me that President Trump’s recent tariffs have confused many people. You may or may not realize that tariffs can have very serious effects on our economy. They can also affect how other countries treat us. More on these topics later.

Supply and Demand: How it works?

You might be familiar with a chart that looks like this. (Above) The way to read the chart is simple. First, you have to recognize a basic principle in economics that I call “push and pull”. Its very similar to Issac Newton’s “For every action there is a reaction” because for each transaction or movement of money or just action there is a reaction that also involves a transaction or movement of money.  Therefore if we look at the orange line labeled as supply and the purple line labeled as demand, you can see horizontal axis is labeled Quantity (increasing from left to right). The vertical axis is labeled Price which is increasing from up to down.

To put it simply:

As the supply goes up, the demand goes down. (Price and Quantity go up as well)

As the demand goes up, the supply goes down. (Price and Quantity go down as well)

This chart is the basis for literally everything in economics. Nearly everything can be put into terms of supply and demand. I will give a simple example of how supply and demand works:

Let’s say you own a winery in Napa Valley, California. Let’s say you have two main competitors that are approximately the same size winery as you. All three wineries make similar profits, have similar expenses and locations.

The going-market value for a 750ml bottle of wine is 25 dollars.

Your company price: 27 dollars, Competitor A: 27 dollars, Competitor B: 27 dollars

So right now every company is above value meaning that supply is meeting demand. Every company is able to charge more because of a high demand. Now Let’s say there is a massive drought. Shortage of grapes. Now you and your competitors can’t make as much wine. What do you think happens to the price?

Your company price: 30 dollars, Competitor A: 31 dollars, Competitor B: 32.

If you said that the price will increase because the supply has been depressed while the demand remained the same then you would be correct. Now let’s say the drought is over but a study comes out that says wine is bad for mental health. Suddenly everyone stops buying wine. What happens to your prices?

Your company price: 23 dollars, Competitor A: 20, Competitor B: 23 dollars.

If you said prices will decrease because of the drop in demand and the excess supply of wine then you would be correct. This is a very simplistic example and obviously running a winery is more complicated than I presented. I think that the concept is clear. For every action there is a reaction. For every push there is a pull.

I hope you got supply and demand down pat, because we are going to use it to help explain why President Trump’s tariffs are not as great as they sound. If you want to check out my post on tariffs then click here. In this next section, I will be focusing specifically on the economics.

The “Dead-weight” Tariffs– Tariffs in the context of supply and demand.

If you went to read my tariff post then you’ll have some idea what I’m about to explain here. For the purpose of this section, I’m going to assume you just learned about supply and demand. Let me explain that tariffs are a tax on an import or export (In this case President Trump is putting tariffs on imports) Tariffs actually used to be the US government’s biggest source of income up until the turn of the 20th century. The US approved an (16th) amendment to constitution that made income tax the primary source of government income. Now a days, tariffs only make up about 1-2 percent of income for the government.

An import is a good or product that is shipped or brought into the country. An export is a good or product that is shipped out or sold outside of the country. It’s good to know these terms. Let’s take a look at another chart, this represents tariffs on the supply and demand curve:

It may look confusing but it’s actually really simple. Keep in mind that as the supply goes up, the demand goes down. (Price and Quantity go up as well) Also as the demand goes up, the supply goes down. (Price and Quantity go down as well) Now if we at look chart let’s take the green line into account first. The green line is labeled “Supplier’s share of tax”. In order to explain the green line, I will give a brief example:

So let’s say there is a Steel Maker company and a Railroad Tie company. The Steel Company makes the steel that is needed for the Railroad Tie company. There is also a third foreign steel company located in China. So pre-tariff on the import of steel, the cost of steel for the Railroad company is .50 cents per pound from the foreign steel company. The Steel Maker company located in America has a price of .60 cents per pound. The green line represents that .50 cents that the Railroad company currently buys it steel at.

Now lets look at the red line labeled Customer’s share of tax. Back to our example: President Trump has imposed a 15 cent per pound tariff on imported Steel from China. (Not real, just made it up)  How does this affect our three companies? First let me give one key detail: Railroad company sells rail ties for 25 dollars per tie. So here is the breakdown of before and after the tariff

Company:                    Pre-Tariff Price              Post Tariff Price              Net Change

Railroad company Ties      25 dollars                       30 dollars                   5 dollars

USA Steel Company:           .60 cents                         .60 cents                      No change

China Foreign Steel Co.     .50 cents                          .65 cents                     15 cents

What happened? Well the Railroad company rose it price by 5 dollars. They also switch suppliers since they don’t want to pay more than they have to for steel.  Now refer back to the chart. The distance from the green to red line is known as “dead-weight”. In the chart, the blue triangle in the middle represents the dead-weight. Remember that “customer value” represents the demand side. Also that the green and red lines both represent supply both before and after the tariff is applied. The term dead weight refers the money lost due to the tariff. The Railroad company had to pass its extra cost of 10 cents to its customers. The reason?  The tariff made the foreign steel more expensive, however the American made steel did not get any cheaper so therefore the Railroad company had to pass that 10 cent per pound difference to the customer.  Of course, depending on the well-being of the company it could have also led to job-cuts or reduction assets.

Conclusion:

To recap: Tariffs create dead-weight whereby the tax increases the cheaper foreign competitor above the already more expensive domestic price. The unnatural increase creates a dead-weight because instead of natural competition, the tariff forces  a company to spend more without getting any benefits.

I’m end it here because they will be a part 2. In Part 2 we will finish up with a discussion of President Trump’s policies and the impact it will have with China. Then I will continue to explain some monetary economics that are important to understand.

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Guns: A Guide for Dummies

I am so tired of hearing the racket that is the gun control debate. Nothing could be such a echo chamber as people who probably haven’t shot a gun trying to elaborate policies that honest to god won’t work. Recent events like the Parkland Shooting and many others keep bringing gun control to forefront of national news. I’m not at all interested in going into every detail about what happened or didn’t happen. I want to talk about guns and the people that shoot them. You may not know it or like it but I’ve shot guns and I thoroughly enjoy guns of all types. I own a small set of Nerf guns proudly. More to the point though, I have shot two real guns in my life.

I definitely want to go shooting again but opportunities are rare especially in a city of 8.6 million people. I experienced my shooting at a Boy Scout camp. I shot a 12 gauge shotgun which was such a thrill. I also shot a little .22 rifle. It was your typical pigeon shot. As turns out I was a good shot. My love for guns began way before I shot them at 15 years old. If you didn’t know I received my bachelors degree in history. One of my favorite topics to study is war. One of the first guns to ever come to American soil was a flintlock. Flintlock rifles are ancient but are some of the coolest replicas you will see. To shoot a flintlock, first you load the lead ball with rod down the barrel similar to a musket. You have to cock the hammer an then you put the gunpowder on the pan.  Now you are ready to fire. When you fire, the hammer strikes the flint which creates a spark in turn igniting the gunpowder and propelling the bullet.

I always found the weapons of each decade of war to be interesting. Weapons have a tendency to evolve. Weapon development has contributed to many of today’s inventions for civilian life (a whole other post). Yet, here we are in 2018 with seeming rampage of school shootings. Many people believe that its because of the technologically advanced rifles and ease of access for buying them. To some degree, I will agree that access to buying them is a little bit looser than it should be. However, the simple fix is psychological evaluations along with background checks. As a rule someone who is on psychotropic drugs shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun. The problem that I see is not guns or the background checks or lack thereof.  Gun. Free. Zones.

The stupidest three words ever to put in a sequence. Gun Free Zones– there I fixed it. I have noticed a pattern that all the schools, colleges and places that tend to get shot up are in fact: Gun Free Zones. This is the one common denominator aside from guns in all shootings. Listen, guns are merely a tool like a hammer, knife, truck, or crowbar, these are objects that don’t commit any crime. Honestly, its the gun free zone is that the real killer. For a second just imagine you are a disturbed school shooter. You bought your guns illegal on the black market. Now you need a place to carry out the dirty deed. What place is going to let you spill the most blood without much resistance? Honestly if school or college isn’t in your top 3 then you might be a bad criminal. Needless to say, imagine that same scenario but all the schools have at least 20 people packing heat. If I’m the criminal I’d think twice.

Moving away from being demented human being lets consider my point about other tools that could be used a killing weapons. Gun Free Zone doesn’t cover them. So if you can honestly tell me that you would rather be unarmed than armed to defend yourself and others then wow you are brave. Congratulations. Guns are like nuclear weapons. There is a reason why Trump and Kim Jong Un haven’t already started the nuclear holocaust. Nash Equilibrium. I like to call it: game of outcomes.  The basic principle is that most of the time the best strategy is not to shoot until its absolutely necessary. Kim Jong Un understands that if he nukes the US, we will hit back 1000 fold. The game of outcomes can be used to understand why arming everyone that is not a psychopath would actually be effective in preventing shootings.

Just tell me what the chances that you would shoot between the following options:

1. 100 people, unarmed
2. 100 people, 50 armed, 50 unarmed

My guess is that you wouldn’t shoot in option number 2. Unless you had a death wish. Once again its a game of outcomes.

In summation, the point of my guide is rally against Gun Free Zones which are ridiculous. If you think a criminal would follow the rules than why does everyone speed or not turn on their blinker? Both laws and yet nobody seems to mind when they break them. Its not that crazy or insane to think that Gun Free Zones are the problem. Just please stop this insanity. Please!!!!

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Hiatus Break: Audit The Federal Reserve

Have you ever gone shopping like at the grocery store or for clothes? Any time you go shopping at a place on multiple occasions you probably notice prices change over time. This could be due to any number of factors. I feel like at the grocery store most people have a certain amount of money they like to spend. I know that I do and even with clothes shopping, my wife and I usually set a limit. If you’ve ever felt like every year you go with that set budget you buy less stuff, then you have felt the effects of the federal reserve. So you have to ask yourself did prices go up or did the buying power of my money go down? The answer is probably a combination of both.

If you haven’t read the title or guessed yet this post is about auditing the federal reserve. Now many people have absolutely no clue what this is or what it does. The federal reserve is a private, central bank that regulates our monetary policy here in the US. It is not controlled by the US government. Although the President is able to appoint the Chairperson of the Fed and the other heads in 11 cities around the United States. All of the appointments have to be approved by Congress. This is the only role that the government plays.

The current Fed Chairperson is Janet Yellen whose term is up. This means Donald Trump has to appoint a new chairperson. His selection matters greatly for us. I don’t care who Trump picks but whoever it is, has a big responsibility.  The Federal Reserve controls interests rates, money circulation, debt, bonds,..etc. They tell the US mint how much money to print. They set the circulation levels of the denominations. Keep in mind they have a lot of power without much supervision.

So why Audit the Fed? Well, one of favorite Senators Rand Paul has been saying this for years. The problem with the federal reserve that Rand Paul and others see is that an institution with unlimited power that has no accountability to anyone is a dangerous institution. Do your own research but here something that I learned by reading up on this. Before the 2008 financial crisis the federal reserve not only SAW but actively IGNORED the housing market bubble. They literally just WROTE IT OFF like nothing. The Chairperson of the Federal Reserve at time, Ben Bernanke just flat out denied that it was nothing but aberration!

Then during the crisis they did nothing.  Just a quick reminder that everyone employed by the Federal Reserve is very smart most of them with Ph.Ds in economics. These so called “economic geniuses” failed to act in the face of major crisis that saw trillion of dollars lost and millions of families affected. People lost their houses, lost their retirement and their jobs. Did the Fed suffer any consequences? Nope. Somehow they are still allowed to function!

Auditing the federal reserve would mean accountability. We can’t let them devalue our money and ignore possible crises that could affect millions any longer! We need to hold these professional bank robbers accountable for their crimes against the USA. Auditing the Federal reserve is just the beginning. After we find that they have been fucking us over, we have to get rid of them. Ever since 1913, when the fed was established, we have been getting screwed over by their monetary policies.

Trust me, every day people like me and you are screwed by these pompous assholes. They devalue the dollar on purpose. They decrease your buying power. Why do you think that 30 years everything was cheaper? I can remember growing up and my parents both had steady jobs. Luckily they never got laid off or fired until this year. So we always had a steady income. The financial crisis hit. We went from shopping at Hannafords which isn’t super expensive but its pricey. We started shopping at Audi’s which is much cheaper in comparison. I didn’t realize it til later but the financial crisis drastically decrease my parents buying power. Thankfully we never starved.  But imagine the price paid by poorer families who could barely get by in the first place?

The federal reserve is an evil institution. It cannot be trust. We need to end the Federal Reserve. I hope whoever is picked as Chairperson agrees to an audit which will inevitably lead to ending the federal reserve. Thanks for reading. Please tell your friends and share this post. #EndtheFed #AudittheFed Let’s spread the word.

 

Hiatus Break: NFL Protests and Tax Reform

I have previous written about the original NFL protest by Colin Kaepernick. This post basically tells Kaepernick to put his money where his mouth is. He did exactly that. Now the protest has spread around the league. President Trump has tweeted, spoke and commented on the protest on multiple occasions. In apparent backlash, NFL ratings are down pretty significantly. The owners and players are seemingly at odds. (I’ll get into this more) I won’t just be talking about the NFL protest in this post. I also want to touch on tax reform which is currently the hot issue in Congress. I hold an extreme belief about taxes. I mean extreme by that its a position that isn’t possible in today’s circumstances. However, it doesn’t mean its not achievable eventually through some means. I will lay out my own set of tax reforms in the second part of this post.

I have been an NFL fan my whole life. Quite literally since I was in second grade I remember watching the Jets. I remember wearing Jets jerseys (I still have them). I absolutely love football. Although I never played in an organized manner. If I was athletically gifted I would be a Quarterback in the NFL. Generally I’m one of those people who doesn’t care to mix politics with anything but politics. So when Kaepernick started his protest I wasn’t that happy. Its not that I don’t care about the issues he is protesting or that I dislike him. Its just I watch football to watch football. I don’t care about the political leanings of the players or owners or coaches. Aside from that, they all get paid handsomely (Players) or are extremely wealthy to begin with (owners).

The problem with the protest now is that its gotten way out of control. At first it wasn’t too crazy. The craziest comes from a unlikely source in President Trump. Now Trump himself isn’t shy about creating controversy or saying incredibly inflammatory things. However, the President of the United States typically doesn’t pour gas on a fire like he did with the NFL protests. I basically have two issues here and the main issue is Trump’s position on this. Trump wants the owners and NFL to force the players to stand for the anthem. I think that many conservative thinking people probably agree. They think its disrespectful to the flag and the military. Which I don’t fully disagree.

However, the constitution has a bill of rights. In that bill of rights there is a first amendment. The first amendment is the freedom of speech. Over the years the Supreme Court has ruled that speech isn’t just talking, it can also cover symbolic speech and others. In this regard I have disagree with Trump, he or the government can’t make a law forcing them to stand. Its the players right to protest and there is nothing that Trump or the government can do. However, the NFL could do something like fire the players. But they won’t do that. Let me tell you why they won’t: Backlash would very bad for the NFL probably twice or three times as bad it is now. However, the NFL could force players to stand, its not a violation of first amendment rights. The reason is because the players represent the NFL as brand and the NFL has right to protect its brand from being unnecessarily tarnished especially by its own employees. The NFL also has a collective bargaining agreement which apparently does state that players must stand. If its true, then its over because the players agreed to that agreement and therefore would have to follow it or be fired.

In my opinion, I think that players should stand because of the ratings and money. I mean they are only affecting their own livelihood. If the owners still feeling the pinch then so will they. In the end, its better if they stand and try to protest in a different way or become an activist and use all those millions to do something about the problem. I don’t think anyone can deny that police oppression is real. However, I think the solution lies within criminal justice reform. I won’t get into this because I’m not an expert and I didn’t do any research yet. However, look out for future posts.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Tax reform is one of my favorite topics to discuss. Its because they are a lot of solutions to a problem that seems to never go away. I think one thing that is always missing from the tax reform debate is spending reform. You might say that’s a totally different reform! But actually taxes are based projected government spending.  For example: the government spends approximately 600 to 700 billion dollars on the military each year. In order to cover that they need to raise that in taxes.

Generally the federal government’s budget is anywhere from 2 to 4 trillion dollars. It is supposed to be a certain percent of GDP or gross domestic product. (I have a post dedicated to this subject of GDP) So my ideal tax reform in a perfect world would zero taxes. You may have heard taxation is theft. If you haven’t then its pretty plain what that means. Yes the government is stealing from us. This is a very extreme way to view taxation but its not as crazy as you think.

Originally the US government didn’t really collect taxes. In fact, the US government taxed products and used tariffs up until about 1913. So our government was able to run entirely without any income tax. Income tax is now the largest category of revenue of the US government. Its also the worst way to fund the government. Income tax really sucks. There will never a true, fair way to split up the weight of paying it. Its awful. However, there is no way the government could survive with 20 trillion dollars of debt and absolutely no tax income. That insane.

My proposal is essentially this get rid of the current tax format. Install a universal basic income (See this post). Then install a flat tax starting around 15 percent. No more brackets. No more loopholes. My plan does a lot of things but the two main things is that it cuts spending and will eventually lower taxes! So with basic income it would cut out most of social welfare programs and replace it with a government check to everyone over 18 and not a criminal. This saves approximately 200 million dollars a year. Each year for about 10 years you fix or pay off the debt. Plus the 15 percent over ten years would generate enough income to really pay off the debt and run the country. After ten years you lower the tax rate to 10 percent for another 10 to 15 years. Essentially the goal is to make the government so lean that it won’t need tax money. Its definitely possible over time.

This a simplified version which I think is good start. The details and actual numbers would have to be worked out by someone in a math oriented field. I can only hope that this tax plan eventually happens. Its not a popular one because usually conservative politicians advocate flat taxes. Basic income isn’t too popular either because it sounds a little crazy. But I feel like the two very different approaches really balance each other out. Also you can’t possibly say a flat tax isn’t fair. Its fair by nature. Also it still ensures that the poor pay less and the rich pay more. Which is why I don’t understand why people don’t like it. I guess they would rather get fleeced by the current system.

Thank you for reading! Have a awesome day!

 

 

 

The Deepening Divide: American Political Parties

You might be familiar with the term political parties. I think most people would conjure up images of a donkey and an elephant. Many people associate political parties with democrat and republican. In most countries, there is either no political parties or just one; or there are more than two. America is unique in having only two main parties. There may be some others but America is the best known. The point of this post is just to casually discuss the widening divide of the two main parties. I expect that with my own political compass to probably discuss the lack of a third-party.  Yesterday I was having a conversation with somebody who has some opposing views in terms of politics. The conversation really made me start to think about the political parties. In recent years, it seems that the democrats and republicans have gone to further extremes. Obviously if you were born in 2000 or after you probably wouldn’t notice.

You don’t have to be old to see the extremist stretch of the parties. All you have to know is a little historical context. I’m sure I have explained this before in some other post but its worth explaining again. Political parties started in America in 1776 on about the same day the declaration of independence was signed.  Typically historians will say somewhat ironically that after George Washington’s farewell address is when the parties really got going. I will get to George Washington’s farewell address too. But first lets discuss the political parties at that time. During the time before the constitution was signed, there were two sets of loosely based political beliefs. There was no actual organized parties til much later. The Federalists and the anti-Federalist. (Yes, very creative naming) The Federalists were led (loosely) by Alexander Hamilton. They believed that the constitution maintain a strong executive presence within the federal government. The anti-Federalists who led (loosely, not right away) by Thomas Jefferson. They believed that it should be the states who hold the majority of power not the federal government.

I say loosely lead because there wasn’t any organization not until after Thomas Jefferson’s presidency in 1801 to 1809. Now as for George Washington’s farewell address, this is part where its relevant to political parties: (Irony coming ahead)

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796 Yale Avalon Project

So here is the ironic thing about George Washington and his address, Washington himself was not above joining a party. Throughout his presidency, he tended to call on his secretary of treasury and in the revolutionary war, his first clerk to attend to government business. Alexander Hamilton was one of George Washington’s closest confidants. He also happens to be the de-facto leader of the Federalist party. Washington was actually pretty persuaded by Hamilton’s beliefs. He felt that Hamilton had the country going in the right direction. Washington also did try to stay above the Federalist and Anti-Federalist mudslinging.

If we fast forward to just before the Civil War, we see that political parties have evolved from Federalist and Anti-Federalist to Whigs and Republican-Democrats. The names seem to be different and very much the same even ironic. However, the Whigs represented the Federalist view in many ways. The Republican Democrats represented the Anti-Federalist view. The Whigs dominated the north and the Republican Democrats dominated the south. Abraham Lincoln was the end of the Whig party and the beginning of what many call today’s Republican party. At a contested convention in 1860, Lincoln was able to swing votes to his Republican party from the majority Whigs. From Lincoln time until Teddy Roosevelt, the Republicans and Southern Democrats dominated American politics. Even now, parties tend to be very regional and sectional in popularity. Its one way to define who votes for them. Of course up til 1919, it was only white men who owned land then women’s suffrage was passed.

Teddy Roosevelt was elected by a third-party, one of the few presidents to do so. The 20th century represents a major change in the parties. After Teddy, the political extremes begin to take off. You can contrast the parties in the alternating decades of their rule. The republican decade of roaring twenties saw relaxed government meanwhile the progressive era of 1930s to 1940s  with Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the Democrats dominate because of the Great Depression. The democrats also held power during World War 2 and afterwards with Harry Truman. The 1950s saw the rise of Republicanism in Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was actually pretty moderate by today’s standards. The 1960s saw JFK and LBJ, the latter passing the Great Society, the so-called “second New Deal”. The 1970s saw even more moderates like Nixon and Carter but leaned Democrat. The 1980s is when the extremes pushed higher than ever with Ronald Reagan. Since Reagan, the Republicans have pushed for more tax cuts every year. The 1990s stay relatively moderate with Bill Clinton as a centrist democrat.

My point is that over years it seems like Democrats and Republicans seem to farther apart than ever especially today. I believe this last election really show how deep the divide came. I think when you politicians like Bernie Sanders running, whose view is more socialist than democrat, you have a problem. America always been able to stay the course and not veer to extremes. In part thanks to our constitution and our checks and balances. You know its extreme when Donald Trump is considered an acceptable candidate and is elected. I don’t have a solution to this extreme push to fringes. However, I would propose that we allow more than two dominate parties. I’m a libertarian and I take some opinions from both sides and mold them into one view. I think that being extreme politically is like being ignorant. You can irrationally argue just about anything but you won’t make progress. In order to make progress, you have to accept that there are other ways to achieving the same goals. I think one of the bests to describe the dysfunction of our political parties is that they all have the same goal with a different way to get there.So why can’t we just compromise. The reason is simple. Democrats want big government to control every aspect of our lives except abortions. Republicans want government out of lives except when it comes to abortions. We need to make our goal to make America the best it can be by any means necessary. We need to compromise. Until we can do that then the only thing that will happen is Congressional deadlock and fighting.

Thanks for reading!

Flag Burning: A Burning First Amendment Controversy.

If you haven’t heard already, President-Elect Donald Trump wants to make flag burning a crime. A federal crime. In case you were born yesterday, this is not a new or radical position to hold. Although flag burning is highly disrespectful and controversial, it is protected by the first amendment. The freedom of speech has been interpreted in many ways since the original amendment was written. I wanted to weigh in on the controversy or as I’d like to characterize it a non-story. Before I get into why I think flag burning shouldn’t be penalized, I want to explain in some depth analysis about how the Supreme Court came down on flag burning. If you don’t know already, I’m a huge nerd and love looking at policies and politics. One of my absolute favorite branches of government is the Judiciary branch.

If someone told me I could be whatever I wanted for the rest of my life, I think a Supreme Court Justice or Constitutional lawyer would be in the top 3, right along side NFL Quarterback and Historian. The fact is I love the constitution and its intricacies and I’ve studied many of the men who wrote it. I think the document is a testament to the human experiment. The constitution is ageless, timeless and perfectly logical. The language is quite simply genius. The beauty of our constitution is that it can interpreted many different ways and that allows the US to have flexibility like no other nation before us. I honestly believe that most people don’t truly understand the constitution. The truth is that what they teach you in elementary school up to highschool is all true. The constitution sets up the rules and rolls of the government. The Bill of Rights is much deeper than just guaranteed rights by nature but it’s how the actual laws of this country are defined.

All of this introduction to say that the first amendment was written to protect many different types of speech. I took a constitution law class in college. One of my hardest and most favorite classes of all time. I really got my affinity for the constitution during the class. However, the class required me to memorize approximately 20 to 30 supreme courts cases on a few different topics. I had to know the facts, the reasoning, the ruling , the dissent and sometimes the precedents. So before we can discuss the case of flag burning, we should probably read over the first amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. 

For this particular case, Texas vs. Johnson, we want to focus on “abridging the freedom of speech”.  The freedom of speech is pretty vague phrase which is why flag burning is protected. If you want to read about the whole case, I would recommend doing that here. I won’t be going over the ‘facts’ because it’s not that important other than to say that quite a few states tried to pass laws to make flag burning a crime. Those states, specifically Texas tried to prosecute someone named Gregory Lee Johnson for burning a flag. Now the court decided that the issue with the flag burning was whether or not its protected by symbolic speech. In order to understand the phrase ‘symbolic speech’ in a constitutional meaning, you have to know two other supreme court cases. In other words, the court cited two precedent.

In Stromberg vs. California, this was case where the court decided that California could not ban red flags. It was unconstitutional because it was protected by symbolic speech and due process (a 14th amendment right). It was a landmark case because it gave symbolic speech the protection of due process. Which if you missed that in history class, due process protects the denial of life, liberty or property by the government, outside the sanction of the law. In other words, the government has to have a legitimate reason to pass a law that is vague or unfair.  The second precedent which I believe is slightly more relevant and well-known is Tinker vs. the Des Moines Independence Community School. In this case, the court voted 7-2 in favor of kids wearing black armbands to school as symbolic speech. It is the most cited and often best supported argument for symbolic speech. The students were voicing their opposition to the Vietnam war with the black armbands and the court justified this as their right because “students and teachers don’t shed their rights to freedom and expression at the schoolhouse gates.” This is how symbolic speech has been defined in the past. If you read the actual briefs, the judges cite many cases but these two clearly show how symbolic speech is protected especially as pertains to flag burning.

In Texas vs. Johnson, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling of 5-4. The Majority opinion was written by Justice William Brennan. The dissenting opinion written by Justice Stevens. The court ruled that flag burning was in fact protected by symbolic speech. Why? The court decided that the Texas law used viewpoint to try to justify the ban of flag burning. Court said that viewpoint wasn’t justifiable objection alone. However, it did exempt flag burning to get rid of an old flag. They also said that the offensiveness of flag burning is notwithstanding in a law to ban it. Now to me, this might bring up the another constitutional issue of obscenity, however, I’ll leave that for a different post.

The dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens was that flag burning should be ban because of the flags unique symbolization of the unity of America. Justice Steven was suggesting that national unity outweight symbolic speech and free speech. Whether you agree or disagree with either opinion, I think there is a fundamental problem with Justice Stevens argument. I believe from what I’ve heard that Donald Trump pretty much has the same line of reasoning. The fundamental problem is that suspending freedom of speech or symbolic speech in just one instance, could lead to future expansions of that suspension. What I mean is that if flag burning becomes illegal because it’s a symbol of unity, then eventually that might turn to censorship of the press, the quelling of protests, and the silencing of the people. This flies directly in the face of the first amendment, which says prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom speech.

So I believe the court got this right the first time. Now you ask the question, what does that say about your loyalty to the American Flag and the country itself if you support flag burning? Well, the answer is easy. I am a loyal American who votes and participates in our wonderful republican democracy. I do not support flag burning. I think it’s really disrespectful because our troops have fought for that flag. They have given up everything for that flag to wave in the air. They died for that flag and our country. My grandfather was enlisted in the military during World War 2. He served his country and help make the flag a symbol for peace, liberty and unity. What I do support is anybody’s right to burn the flag in protest or anger or hate or honor. It doesn’t matter the viewpoint of why your burning it. The fact is not everyone will agree with your decision. There is no way to possibly legislate a viewpoint. Its an opinion, not a fact. Therefore I believe that Justice Brennan and the Majority opinion was the correct one. Justice Stevens dissent is fundamentally flawed.

I hope that you found this to be somewhat educational and interesting. I didn’t want to bore out every single detail. I’m also hoping to do more this type of post. Constitutional law is fun to me and its interesting, challenging and tedious. I think its a very cognitive thought producing process that can really expand your argumentative skills and make you consider the simplest facets of life and how they are related to the government. What people say that politics doesn’t interest them, I wish I had the time and attention to explain them that it matters deeply to every individual. The constitution protects our freedoms which allows many people to ignore the fact that politics is in everybody interests especially in democracy. Trust me, the founding fathers experience a government that was unresponsive and didn’t allow them representation. They fought a war to govern themselves. The beauty of the revolution was the ability to participate in your own governing.

Thank you for reading!

On the Basis of Democracy: John Locke, Part 2.

Welcome to Part 2 of on the Basis of Democracy with John Locke. If you missed Part 1, you should read that first. The purpose of this blog post is to simply figured out the origins of Democracy and how it works within our American democracy. In Part 1, I went over some of the ideas of democracy from Aristotle. Political theory is a pretty easy theory to follow because each political philosopher usually builds off philosopher’s of time past. Therefore, the more ancient political scholarship you understand, the more modern/current political thoughts you can understand. In Part 2, we will be discussing John Locke and his ideas on democracy.

Who is John Locke? He is an english born political philosopher. Born in the early 1600s. He was influenced by Aristotle. Locke has a deep range of writings. He is often considered to be one of the fathers of the enlightenment. Similar to part 1, I won’t give a full biography but go to straight to Locke’s ideas about democracy. Starting from his first writing and going forward, Locke’s main premise is the consent of the governed. In his first writing called “Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina”.  In this piece, Locke and his mentor, wrote a constitution meant for the Providence of Carolina in England. It was never adopted. However, the ideas that he mentioned became the basis of political philosophy going forward.

The most influential of Locke’s writings came in his Two Treatises of Government. Instead of trying to paraphrase his great words, I will just show you. Then I will explain how the founding fathers use Locke’s ideas especially in the Declaration of Independence. Here is just a few excerpts of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government:

Sect. 95. MEN being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.

Sect. 96. For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority: for that which acts any community, being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority: or else it is impossible it should act or continue one body, one community, which the consent of every individual that united into it, agreed that it should; and so every one is bound by that consent to be concluded by the majority. And therefore we see, that in assemblies, impowered to act by positive laws, where no number is set by that positive law which impowers them, the act of the majority passes for the act of the whole, and of course determines, as having, by the law of nature and reason, the power of the whole.

If you want to read more of Locke: Click here.

Locke’s main point is that the governed hold the power of the government. Locke believes that a government cannot operate without the consent of the government. This is a basis of democracy. The reason why Locke believes that the consent of the governed is so important is because of the freedom or liberty that it offers. If the government is ruled by the people it can prevent tyrants and better rule the people. Locke is also coming from a monarchy in England and in a time when the dark ages we’re not that far off. In the dark ages, it was a small oligarchy who wealthy that ruled over the poor and working class who had no say. Locke’s ideas are perhaps best expressed in Thomas Jefferson’s document.

Thomas Jefferson was a philosopher in his own right. Jefferson also understood that Locke’s philosophy fit perfectly with the American cause for revolution. If you didn’t pay attention in history class then you want to know to that one of the rallying cries was “no taxation no representation”. The American people were clamoring for representation in the British parliament. The unilateral rule of the British Monarchy over the American colony was directly what John Locke was trying to get at. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson took a page for Locke and wrote this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Thomas Jefferson essentially took Locke’s words and used it as a justification for the revolution of the American people. Locke’s vision for democracy did not just end with Jefferson but kept going. Locke’s idea that the consent of governed is needed in democracy still holds true today. Unfortunately, in today’s America we have gotten lazy. We seem to have ignored the fact that our democracy is supposed represent the people. Many people blame our representatives. We should look at the majority of governed who don’t vote. I think in a very indirect way, Locke is also advocating for participation in government. I feel that political participation has gone down as politics has become more polarizing.

We can blame Trump. We can blame Hillary. We blame our politicans. However, I think that democracy in the words of Locke lies with “the consent of the governed.” I think to wrap up this series, I want to just conclude a few major considerations for the basis of democracy. One basis that Aristotle outlined is the authority over aduits. In other words, Aristotle thought that the people should hold purse strings and keep the government accountable. Aristotle gave us a second basis that is the foundation of our judicial system. The right to a fair trial with a jury of your peers. Locke gives us the basis of the consent of the governed. The theory that democracy should always be run by the people and for the people. The majority of people should have the power to control the government. This means everyone must vote. Everyone must participate. These are the three main bases of democracy as written by Aristotle and John Locke.

This will be end of this series for now. I may continue it with different philosophers at another time. Below you will find my sources especially for the quoted stuff. Thank you for reading!

Citations:

https://www.johnlocke.org/about-john-locke/who-is-john-locke/

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/

 

 

 

On the Basis of Democracy: Aristotle Part 1

I am so happy to be writing again. I took nearly a month off because the election just made me really want to stay out of politics. It was so demoralizing and embarrassing. Just glad that it’s over. Now with the election over and the reaction starting to cool down, I want to swing my blog into more a history based content. My true passion is history. This specific blog post is going to analyze some of the classic political writings and philosophers. Don’t worry I won’t bore you to death with just some biographies. I want to present a logical argument for a representative democracy. My last post touched on this with Alexander Hamilton writing the 68th Federalist paper. Just to recap, Hamilton presents an argument for the Electoral college that says that a small group of people who have the ability to make a decision is better than having it rest just on the everyday person. Hamilton argues that its crops out the corruption and makes sense when trying to determine who should be elected. Hamilton’s brilliant argument became my own in my defense of the Electoral college. I want to build on the representative nature of the Electoral college that makes our democracy so unique.

I want to introduce two figures of political history. One is an ancient greek and the other an Englishmen from the 17th century. Hamilton was so well versed in all political philosophers. It shows in his Federalist paper 68. I think that its important to know about where the founding fathers got their inspiration and at times their whole concept. Many people who I know and meet, are understandably ignorant on political philosophy. Unless you are a political fanatic or you love philosophy then you probably don’t know much about these two figures. For the sake of this blog post, I want present some of the most relevant theories of Aristotle and John Locke that regard democracy.

Democracy is synonymous with America. Democracy in latin means commoner. Democracy is associated with freedom. Democracy is in the words of Thomas Jefferson: ‘We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union’. (If you didn’t know, the preamble of the constitution starts like that) The question or argument that I will be presenting is simply what is the basis for a democracy? Why is Democracy such a successful system of government? These are just some of the questions that may or may not be answered because I don’t believe there is just one answer. History is not an exact science when it comes to the ‘Why’. (Also known as the five W’s: What, When, Where, Who and Why. A simple way to remember how to think about a historical topic)

Aristotle was greek philosopher and lived from 384 to 322 BCE. He wrote on hundreds of different topics ranging from family life to science to politics. One of his political writings is on democracy. First, you have to realize that Aristotle was a student of Plato who had a more utopian view of society. Aristotle was the first realist. He thought that the political community was the top of society. The political community is responsible for the education, health and governance of the rest. In his writings on the best democracy he lays out a few main points. One of these points about political community being a guide: “that human life has a telos and that the political community should provide education and laws that will lead to people pursuing and achieving this telos. Given that this is the case, a regime that allows people to do whatever they want is in fact flawed, for it is not guiding them in the direction of the good life.”  This is just a summary but in simpler terms, Aristotle believes that everyone has a spirit of good in them. This spirit of good needs to guided by the political community aka the democratic government to reach what he calls the good life or happy life.

Similar to Plato, who also believed that there was level of happiness that could be achieved that was above anything in the human experience. However unlike Plato, Aristotle believed that the best democracy was made up of farmers. His reasoning is that farmers or herders are less likely to assemble and own less land.  They offer a democracy the least path of resistance. You might conclude that some of the success of American democracy can be credited with large farming industry starting before and going well after the revolution. Aristotle thinks that a democracy made up of farmers and ruled by “This is a reason why the authoritative offices can be in the hands of the wealthy, as long as the people retain control of auditing and adjudication: “Those who govern themselves in this way must necessarily be finely governed. The offices will always be in the hands of the best persons, the people being willing and not envious of the respectable, while the arrangement is satisfactory for the respectable and notable. These will not be ruled by others who are their inferiors, and they will rule justly by the fact that others have authority over the audits” .  For the purpose of this argument, I think that Aristotle makes an interesting point with  words that I underlined. Let me explain.

What Aristotle means by authority over the audits is that the people must retain control of the budgets of public spending and they should be liable to be persecuted if there is wrongdoing. Aristotle considers adjudication as a right to fair trial by being judged by your peers. I find it so interesting that in ancient greek times, Aristotle is basically laying some constitutional principles that our founding fathers definitely included in our democracy. I also feel that politicians being liable to persecution is not met across the board with all public officials. I think that sometimes politicians are protected for personal gain and to avoid political suicide. Politics is literally a house of cards, because politicians depend on each other more than they let on.

I think Aristotle remains one of the most amazing and interesting philosophers. These writings occurred well over 2000 years ago. It makes you think about just how smart the Greeks were. Let me be honest though, the Greeks did not make the perfect government by any means. Their democracy in Athens was a true democracy with a senate. The voting took place with only land owning men. The politics were corrupt and dirty. There were demagogues that rose up and messed up their elections. However, the greeks set the stage for the Roman Empire which lasted 8 centuries and used a form of democracy for some of that time.

One of things I love about Aristotle is that he is a realist. His perspective mirrors my own in that the most capable people should be in a position to run the government. However, their power should not go unchecked. In a very indirect way, Aristotle is advocating for checks and balances,  the part where he says: “authoritative offices can be in the hands of the wealthy, as long as the people retain control of auditing and adjudication:” . The people need to be in control of the government. I believe this is a problem in our American democracy. We don’t hold the government accountable for anything. When it comes to spending our money or making foreign policy decisions.

To wrap this post up, I want to say in Aristotle’s view of democracy he had envision a simple concept where by the political community and the wealthy educate and govern the farmers and herders. However, the farmers and other common folk hold the purse strings and judge their peers. Aristotle contemplates a fair system of democracy that I believe gave us the foundation to America. America started out as farming settlement in North America. The wealthy men of the settlement decide to wage a revolution and break free from Britain over a variety of reasons including taxes. The ruling class has always been primarily wealthy. However, the biggest change is the modernization of farming which has led to its decline. This is the challenge to our future democracy.

Stay Tuned within a week for Part 2 on John Locke. Thank you for reading! Have a great day!

Citation text: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Argument for the Electoral College

Since the election of Donald Trump, there has been an unprecedented amount of media coverage and debate surrounding the Electoral College. I have not been even slightly swayed by any of these opinions and arguments. I think as a student of history having read parts of the classics like Aristotle and Adam Smith; add to that the reading biographies of influential founding fathers. A student of history knows that the founding fathers read and studied all the classics. The prevailing ideas of the day were based on the enlightenment movement starting in Europe and spreading throughout the world. It was truly a renaissance of ideas that transformed governments. Now we are here about 227 years of democracy later and people are suddenly up in arms about the electoral college? I want to defend the Electoral college as a necessary and proper institution in the American representative democracy. I think the term ‘representative’ is the most important word that validates the Electoral College. My opening salvo can be summarized as the blame game of the system that has worked over 200 years with approximately 56 elections taking place.

My first argument is to say that why must we blame the electoral college? Why is it not the candidates that we picked? The system is merely in place to keep the election fair and offset any disadvantages that typically plague a representative democracy. The two candidates that we’re voted in the primary to run in the presidential election, were by far the most despicable candidates in history. Both of them polarizing. One candidate had 30 years of public office experience with multiple scandals, corruption, and mistakes. The other candidate is an international businessman who went through multiple bankruptcies. He was a television reality star. During the campaign became well-known for vulgar statements about different races and the opposite sex. These unlikable candidates were the only ones who had a shot to win. So why is the electoral college the fault for electing Donald Trump? That brings me to my first argument for the Electoral college.The bad candidates has to make one wonder if it’s actually the electorate that is at fault for putting up the two worst candidates in history. We must remember that the people or the citizens of the United States are in charge of voting for the candidates in the primaries. The primaries can be rigged like the DNC did, however, in an honesty primary you would think the electorate would vote out the bad candidates? Hence, my first argument is essentially this: The founding fathers installed the electoral college because they didn’t feel that the voting  populace could effectively elect the right leaders.

The original source of this argument is from the Federalist Papers. If you paid attention in history class or if you have been reading this blog you probably know about the Federalist Papers. If you don’t then please look it up. The specific number was Federalist paper 68. Federalist paper 68 was written by none other than Alexander Hamilton. In no uncertain terms, Hamilton argues that the President and Vice President should have a ‘small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations’. The translation of that old English is that Hamilton believes its necessary that a small group would choose as a surrogates to make the final decision on the election of the President and Vice President. He even goes on to say this about who the Electoral college will made up of: “No Senator, representative or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States“. Hamilton believes the electoral college can prevent corruption because of these stipulations. Hamilton keeps repeating his argument and each time it gets clearer. This line that Hamilton writes at the beginning of the 8th indentation, is exactly why the Electoral college exists today.

“The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. “

I  would strongly encourage you read the whole Federalist Paper 68 because Hamilton is a master of his craft and gives a very persuasive argument.

My second argument is based on  previous Supreme Court cases that have been decided in favor of the Electoral College. The last time a candidate won a popular vote and lost the electoral college vote was George W. Bush vs. Albert Gore. The case happened over a just few days in early December 2000. However, it was not the first case about the Electoral College. The issue that is typically argued in the Supreme Court is over the 14th amendment. The specific clause in this case is the equal protection clause. The equal protection clause simply protects all people under the law within its jurisdiction. This means that you can’t make law that excludes a specific type of person based on sex, religion, gender, etc;etc. The equal protection clause also includes voting laws and vote counting laws. The first case on how states count their votes and tally it up for the electoral votes was McPherson vs Blacker. In this case, Michigan’s legislature wanted to change the way it calculated it votes for the electoral college. The Supreme Court ruled that the constitution gives the power of the legislatures to choose how electors are counted based on the popular vote. The constitution says the legislatures have power to decide in the second article. It was later expanded by the 14th amendment. In the Bush vs. Gore case it was over the re-count of the vote processes by county or district in Florida. If you recall the election of 2000 was too close to call because of Florida and their ‘hanging chads’. The controversy came from the fact that recount policies were different but the court didn’t find that the equal protection clause was being broken. The reason is that the Florida legislature had let the rules vary by county and district. Granted, Supreme court cases can be overturned. However, the point here is that the laws within our constitution and amendments actually do protect us from any sort corruption or problem that is purely systematic.

My last argument is one of simple logic. I have now presented two legitimizing reasons for the Electoral College. Here’s is my third one, that also doubles as a challenge to those nay-sayers. Let’s say we want to get rid of the Electoral College because it is not perfect by any means. What would you replace it with? My third argument is simply that I truly don’t think that the citizens of the United States would like the replacement. The replacement would be a similar system to almost every European and every other democracy or republic in the world. We would have to discard our two-party system. We would have to allow multiples of candidates on the ballot . The system that we would change to is called a “single vote majority” or a “plurality vote”. This means that the candidate with the largest majority of the vote would win. Straight up. In the case of this election between Clinton and Trump, neither of them would have won. We would have to have a re-vote. There was only three candidates in every state ballot for president. Clinton had 47 percent, Trump had 46, Johnson had 3 percent and Stein had 1 percent. The other 3 percent was for Harambe or Bernie I assume. Depending on the rules, the winner would either have to have 51 percent in our current system with two main candidates. If there was more than 2 candidates, then the winner would be the person who takes the most, in that case it would be a Hillary Clinton victory. It would certainly invite a wider range of candidates. I think its pretty stupid to ask for majority vote when reality is that this specific election might have had a different outcome with a majority vote. This doesn’t mean the future elections won’t also be negative outcomes with a majority vote. If another candidate similar to Trump comes along after getting rid of the Electoral College then we are at the mercy of majority. It’s odd that many of the same people who want to get rid of the Electoral College are in the minority. (Very strange to me?)

To wrap up my post and conclude my point, I want to finish my arguments by saying that the Electoral College actually levels the playing field in every election. The electoral college makes sure that every voice is heard. The states with the higher electoral votes are more populated, like California, New York, Florida, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The states with the lower electoral votes are less populated and it’s not surprising that there is more of them. I believe that if you think population shouldn’t matter then you probably don’t understand urbanization. America used to be a farming society and it has transitioned into a mostly urban society. The cities on each of the coasts and elsewhere hold nearly 50 percent of the United States populace.You can almost guarantee whoever the cities vote for will have a chance to win. If in the off-chance like this  year and in 2000, you can get a coalition of rural states and a few swing states to change color, that is when you get a President Trump. Let’s face the facts the electoral college isn’t to blame for Trump. Remember that Trump was elected in the primary. Trump was basically allowed the majority of Republican and non-Republican voters alike to run for President. If nothing else, Trump used the electoral college to his advantage better than Hillary. I could easily argue that Hillary had an easier path to victory. All she had to do was win either Ohio or Florida plus two other states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Her coalition of Democrat states includes two of the biggest in New York and California.

So please next time you want to blame the Electoral College, don’t blame the system that was put in place and has worked for 227 years. Look at the voters, look at yourself. People vote for the president. People are responsible for the candidates that are put up to run for office. Thank you for reading and I hope this helps people understand why the Electoral College is necessary and proper!

“Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: For forms of government let fools contest That which is best administered is best,” yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 68

Citations:

Quotes From Sources in Bold or Italics.

Hamilton, Alexander. Federalist Paper 68: Mode of Electing the President, March 14th 1788. Lillian Goldman Law Library, 2008. Link Here

Denniston, Lyle. Constitution Check: Is winner take all Electoral College Voting in trouble?, Constitution Center. January 29, 2013. Link Here

Cornell University Law: Legal Information Institute: Bush vs. Gore, Supreme Court. December, 2000 Link Here

The featured picture is the electoral map of the US for the 2016 Election. The red represents where Trump won. The blue represents where Hillary won. Trump won mostly rural areas meanwhile Hillary won mostly urban. Population does matter.