On the Civil War

If it was just a theoretical argument in a debating society or law school then I could see arguments that the South had a case. Clearly the Fugitive Slave Act was constitutional and it was not being enforced. Essentially a Resistance operating both outside of and within the government, especially but possibly not exclusively at the state level, was defying the law. Almost everyone believed that states had a right to secede from the Union. New England had an active secession movement at the time of the War of 1812. Against that are two, ok three, things.

1. The Union was new and loved and that was as true in most of the South, which was recently settled frontier as much as the North was. While once the war became seen as a defense against Northern invasion many or most whites in the South rallied, at least for a time, to the Confederacy, Unionist sentiment was strong not only in Western Virginia but in other regions such as Northern Alabama. North Carolina, whose state motto could be "We aren't South Carolina," only seceded after all surrounding states did and the Confederate army had moved in.

2. The legal fiction that Lincoln relied upon in invoking the Militia Act, that combinations to powerful to resist had seized power in state governments, had to modern eyes if not to those of the time some element of truth. The wealthy agricultural interests of the Slavocracy were dominating the state governments and acting against the interests of free white labor.

3. Dred Scott. The fact is that the South forced the crisis. In the worst way at the worst time and under the weakest pretext they dragged the country into the war. Given the consequences, proportionately in modern terms think of over 6,000,000 dead, they invalidated any theoretical argument that they could have made before resorting to the appeal to blood. Like the Palestinians after their campaign of terror their arguments about prior legal standing are rendered void.

The remarkable thing is that there was comparatively little resort to guerrilla warfare and despite some generations of bitterness and the abuses of Jim Crow the post-Reconstruction settlement worked and enabled the growth of a modern society that, despite the efforts of race baiters, is proving vibrant and tolerant.

On The Electoral College and Progressivism

The Electors are selected by the state legislature. Under the state constitution the legislature may be bound to honor the popular vote and select a slate of Electors proposed by the political party that wins the popular vote in that state. There are states with GOP majority legislatures where the public votes for a Democrat in the election. Under the state constitution that state legislature has to select the slate proposed by the party that the legislature does not belong to, even though that legislature was selected by the same voters and possibly in the same election or one a year earlier. Originally most state legislatures in America were elected annually, and the voters knew that their choice would then appoint the Electors for the President. That made the separate popular vote for the POTUS superfluous. Once the Electors are appointed they can vote as their conscious directs, for any candidate.

Ideally people would vote for only a limited number of offices, and most of those in small local districts, to ensure accountability and control by the citizenry. Voting units with hundreds of thousands or millions of voters produce corruption gerrymandering and expensive media driven campaigns subject to external manipulation. It was intended that people would vote for their Representative in Congress, from a district of less than 50,000 persons and fewer voters, and no other national offices. The other offices people voted for were their governor, state legislature, usually two chambers with one at least smaller than the congressional district, the local mayor and alderman, the local sheriff and judge, and the coroner. That totals nine offices, with most elected annually. The state legislatures selected the United States Senator as well as the Electors for the Presidency and the higher state judges.

The states had an incentive to jealously limit corruption and abuse by the federal government and the federal government had an incentive to jealously limit corruption and abuse, which is inevitable, in the states. What the Progressives did by transferring power to the federal government, in part by downgrading the states through the direct election of Senators and the ostensibly apolitical Civil Service system, was to infect the federal government with the corruption, self serving bureaucratic machinery, and partisanship that was the hallmark of state level government. Children are taught that the Progressive Movement through the Wisconsin Plan professionalized government in a manner that strengthened Democracy and reduced opportunities for abuse. That is a lie. What it did was eliminate local control over the government and reduced the voters to dependents subject to coercion bribery and manipulation by national level parties. Voters no longer could even control their local and state governments, who became mere conduits to administer federal money and programs, let alone the federal government that became essentially unchained from subordination to the citizenry.

On Thrift

Many many years ago (50+/-) I joined my father for lunch at a Chock Full 'o Nuts (I loved the nutted cheese sandwich) near Columbus Circle. When we were walking back to his office he asked me if I had noticed anything about the other men in the restaurant. I answered, "Yes, they were all wearing good suits." My father replied, "Every man sitting at that counter was worth at least 40 million dollars. Yes, their wives would not let them out of the house badly dressed but unless they are having lunch with a client they eat at Chock Full 'o Nuts." Half a century ago 40 million was a lot of money.

What The Third World - and America - Needs

The Clinton Foundation was Colonialism. Instead of providing goods and services to those in need it spent its money on "infrastructure" meaning bureaucracy to manage a few projects. While the projects, things like cookstoves or clean water, themselves may be worthy they are MacGuffins. What the Third World nations lack is clean honest and effective government. That is the one thing that Clinton could not provide. NGOs provide Governance by foreigners as a substitute for Government by locals.

The concept of Citizenship is the foundation of the American Experiment, with credit to the Swiss for inventing it in the modern context first along with Federalism. There is no more important job for our politicians and our schools than in reiterating this constantly.

What the 3rd World needs are Missionaries, of the old fashioned kind. They do not even have to promote a religion that I adhere to but that is OK.

Red Flags and False Reports

If anyone reports a person under Red Flag law and after the police arrive unannounced and forcibly remove the target's firearms that targeted person is found to have been lawfully in possession of those weapons and no danger to the community that would justify a court order depriving them of their right to bear arms then the person who made the Red Flag call should face a charge for attempted murder by use of the police as a deadly force proxy. If any person is injured or killed in the forcible entry precipitated by the Red Flag call then the caller should be charged with Assault or Murder.

My expectation is that we soon see a wave of calls sending the police to the homes of Conservatives after unfounded and malicious reports of Domestic Abuse, copycatting the call that was made to then prospective Prime Minister Boris Johnson's house in England, as well as false reports of Child Abuse or Racial or Sexual misconduct framed so as to drive people out of the public square and out of business.

Actions must have Consequences.

If you really believe that you know that someone is a danger to yourself or other human beings, especially to minors or others not competent to act alone, then go to the police and share your reasons. If you make a convincing argument, not just saying "Those evil people cook dead flesh on their bar-b-que, have a Trump sign, and post hunting pics on social media," then the police may act. If they have grounds to go to the District Attorney and the DA feels there are grounds to get a court order then a hearing should be scheduled in a court of law. In that case a police officer can come during the day to knock on the door and invite the target to come down to the office and bring a lawyer. In that case if there are no grounds found to remove the weapons then no one is hurt, except in the wallet to pay for that lawyer. The neighbors may not like each other but unless there is more harassment that should be the end of it. If the police are lead to believe that there are reasons to believe that a no notice forcible entry is needed then if it turns out the neighbor was right, there was a meth lab in that basement and those people were crazy dangerous, then well done to the good citizen who made that call. If on the other hand there was no good reason to cut out the due process of law and instead opt for the emergency response then the false or exaggerated report should be treated as a criminal act.

The language shielding a person making a charge based on their personal feelings rather than on objective evidence mirrors that of campus or workplace sexual or racial and other protected category hostile environment complaint proceedings, that are themselves ripe for abuse in soliciting false charges. If right now someone posted an article on Salon or a similar Left wing site stating that it is impossible to feel safe if those who identify as cisgender heteronormative white males have access to firearms then I predict that would be taken seriously, it would gain thousands of "Likes" and Shares, and celebrities and politicians would repeat the argument.

Hong Kong Faces The Dragon

China is resuming its normal history of repression and dissolution with a North and South ebb and flow as it has had for 3,000 years. Within the last 160 years the Manchu were crippled and discredited by the Southern coastal syncretic Christian Taiping Rebellion. That was crushed but the Manchu fell and in the 1920s Chiang Kai-shek's KMT marched North to unify China and 20 years later Mao's CCP marched South. For 70 years the CCP has held power and gotten the Chinese people to endure their brutal regime by reminding them of the suffering from Warlords, the Civil War (even though that was caused by the CCP), and foreign invasion by Japan.

Will the CCP order the invasion of Hong Kong with massive loss of life and the crippling of banking and commerce? Probably yes. The final trigger I predict will be when the local police refuse to attack their own people. Xi knows that is when the Resistance becomes a Rebellion that is either crushed or it sweeps away the regime. Trotsky in a brilliant passage described how the Russian Revolution began when the Cossacks allowed the protesters to crawl to safety under the bellies of their horses.

The demonstrators today rallied in front of the main police station on HK's Nathan Street. If the CCP orders the police to respond and they refuse then I expect the troops from a distant region that have likely been assembling outside HK for the last weeks to enter. Just as with Tiananmen Square where troops from Inner Mongolia were used after the students fraternized with the local garrison I think that the Chinese will use poor country boys who hate the coastal city dwellers.

What can the people of HK do to resist? We may imagine technical wizardry in laboratories allowing them to hack into computers and communications, wreaking havoc, but ultimately boots and low tech savagery will win.

Is the fascist CCP regime doomed? Ultimately yes. That however will be of small comfort to the dead and those who suffer, both in China and outside, from likely years of repression rebellion poverty and quite possibly war.

On Fallibility

One benefit of the Trump presidency is that it shatters the myth that the POTUS controls this vast flawless apparatus that makes him omniscient and omnipotent. Tin pot Wannabe Gods like Barry of the styrofoam™ pillars loved to feed that idea. With Trump it was possible that the first weeks he was in the White House no one would tell where the bathrooms were and he was lucky if the driver took him to the right airport. Many otherwise sober adults thought that Trump could walk into the Oval Office and push a button and then say, "OK I want the facts on the Kennedy assassination, and Area 51, and Obama's transcripts and birth certificates, oh and by the way, what happened to Judge Crater?" Trump is like most CEOs and managers. He spends a lot of time looking for someone who will tell him what is really going on.

Comment on Instapundit: GOOD LORD: Shocking photos show massive fireball caused by explosion at Russian ammo dump said to house tens of thousands of artillery shells.

But we have dinner reservations at the officers club!

When I was a junior officer in the Combat Systems (Weapons) Department of an LHA (big troop transport) 35 some years ago we took on a FAE (fuel air explosive) bomb for the Marines. It was stored all by itself in a cargo hold at the bottom of the ship. One day I was wasting time in the Department office when an Aviation Ordnanceman came in and knocked on the inside of the door. It was his job to go down to the cargo hold and look at a tiny glass window on the outside of the shipping container for the bomb that was strapped down onto the deck of the space so that it would not bounce around. The Petty Officer looked at the Department Head, who was a Lt Commander and a very nice guy who never wore his academy ring, and the AO said "It looks pink Sir." The boss, who never cursed, said "The hell you say." Then the Commander, myself, the Gunners Mate Senior Chief, who was also a fine soft spoken man from Muleshoe Texas who happened to be completely tattooed from neck to legs, and a Lieutenant who was there as Assistant Department Head to make my life miserable because he had gotten tennis elbow at the naval academy and was late getting to sea to qualify but was still senior to me all ran and climbed the vertical ladder down to the cargo hold and each took turns looking in the little window. Another junior officer in the department who was going to EOD Dive officer school, which is considered the longest and hardest course in the Navy, also came to take a look. The hint of pink meant that the FAE might be leaking or unstable. If it exploded the good news would be that we might be dead before we knew it. It would have cracked the ships keel. So if the initial explosion did not kill us then we would have had a less pleasant death. We climbed out of the hold and frantic signals were sent to Washington, who unfortunately was dead. But then a team of qualified EODs did fly out fast enough to secure and then remove the bomb. Knowing that you are on a ship with that thing cooking a couple of hundred feet beneath you is an interesting feeling.

Just remembered the future EOD Dive officer who was a very good guy was actually in the Engineering Department next door but he spent time hanging around our friendly department to avoid getting screamed at by the Chief Engineer.

On President Trump and the Death Penalty

Trump demands death penalty for all mass murder hate crimes while condemning 'white supremacy'

Mental Illness has become a shell game defense. Declaring someone unfit has always stopped the death penalty. What the Left did was declare every criminal legally insane, but still eligible to vote and then be released back into society. They made a mockery of Justice and they did it deliberately. We need to roll the rules back to what worked. Only citizens who are sane and competent should be allowed to vote or keep and bear arms. Determining that someone is unfit to vote or exercise another right such as the right to bear arms should only happen after due process.

If someone has been declared incompetent then if they are allowed into society someone else must take responsibility for them as their guardian, as is always true for a minor who is by definition irresponsible. If the unfit person then commits a crime the guardian may face some liability and the person would be removed from society until determined to be safe. If a person is convicted of a crime but not declared legally insane then they would face a period of incarceration and then be released.

Ideally the mentally unfit who are dangerous should be cared for in hospitals and the death penalty should apply to those who are legally sane but who commit capital crimes. The closure of the mental hospitals and the dumping of the deranged onto the streets following the exposure of the horrific conditions at Willowbrook by Geraldo Rivera was a failure of liberal policy.

President Trump's call for the death penalty for mass murderers should be seen in this context.

Re: Tulsi Gabbard

Re: Tulsi Gabbard.
NBCnews: "Russia's propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard"

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D.-HI, speaks at a press conference on Capitol Hill on July 18, 2018.Win McNamee / Getty Images file

1. She is a veteran, currently a Major in the Hawaiian National Guard. Previously she was enlisted in a medical administration unit. She is now a Military Police officer, which is combat arms but while in a combat zone she did not participate in direct combat. She does not have a Combat Action Ribbon. There is no reason to doubt that she was competent at her duties and served honorably.

2. While she has projected an air of moderation or at least tempered certain erroneous statements by others regarding technical facts that she can claim some credibility on she has reliably supported her party leadership in generally moving the Democratic Party to the left. She has endorsed what could be extreme positions in endorsing the Obama record in both domestic and foreign policies, tempered by dovish criticisms, including accommodating anti-American and anti-Semitic groups in the Middle East, as well as participating in mob-like #metoo attacks and demands for Impeachment. She has effectively endorsed the Putin position on Syria. Her position on Israel parroted the most left wing criticisms of the Netanyahu government, while she joined her party leadership again in supporting an anodyne toothless measure designed to signal disapproval of the embarrassing Gang of Four who push open BDS.

3. She has never held a meaningful private sector job or accomplished anything significant other than get elected.

4. Tulsi Gabbard is unqualified from what we know to be POTUS and it is reasonable to believe that she would be a disaster if elected.

5. In the 2nd Debate she confronted Kamala Harris, and rhetorically speaking drew blood. In response there appears to be a campaign by left wing media, such as NBC, to discredit her using tactics that are reminiscent of the hysterical and irrational means that have been directed at President Trump and his supporters. There is a level of personal animus on display that gives pause and merits consideration.

6. Partly what we see can be considered the expression of a Stalinist model that is in fact part of the cultural DNA of the Left. While this may seem bizarre to most Americans those who have been on college campuses know that the legacy of left wing alphabet party politics that belonged in a coffee shop or cafe near City College of NY or the University of Chicago in the 1930s or in the Monty Python skit from "The Life of Brian" is as much a part of what shapes academia as the GI Bill and the Guaranteed Student Loan programs. The greater venom is directed at a member of the party who threatens the discipline of the group. Gabbard is being treated like Dmitri Shostakovich when the Party declared him to be a Formalist.

7. There may be another reason that some Democratic activists resent Gabbard. She is an attractive woman. The base of activists largely consists of the sexually frustrated and resentful. Picture a Democratic Activist and what comes to mind is an enraged middle aged woman whose ostentatious disregard for an attractive physical appearance makes a statement. This is leavened by sexual politics that have exploited attractive women to benefit men in power and a coterie of unattractive lesbians. The latter may tolerate an attractive woman as useful for publicity, as with actresses who are celebrated but rarely taken seriously, until they age into the apparatchik role or publicly reject the attractive image and, with a few exceptions for major talents, the audience that brought them stardom.