In the Lap of the Gods (ie, federal judges) – Trump’s New Asylum Policy

(Photo credit: Fox 8)

by Diane Rufino, July 26, 2019

“The tyranny of a dysfunctional system that permits plaintiffs to forum shop in order to find a single district judge who will purport to dictate immigration policy to the entire Nation … must come to an end.” — Stephanie Grisham, White House press secretary

Last Tuesday, President Trump’s new asylum policy went into effect. As we all know, the Trump administration has been pursuing meaningful changes to our immigration policy to fight back against the crisis at our southern border – the gross lawlessness and disrespect for our laws, the human trafficking, the drug trafficking, and the influx of violent gangs to prey on our youth. Unfortunately, President Trump been working with a very hostile Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and a very hostile pop culture that views any policy that denies any person anywhere a right to residency in the United States, a right to taxpayer-funded programs, and a right to continue illegality and criminality in our cities and communities as racist and as violative of human rights. But aside from the wall, which is moving forward, the new asylum policy is a forceful attempt to meaningfully cut down on the number of people seeking asylum here in our country.

The new policy requires that any migrant who passes through another country on their way to the United States MUST seek asylum in that country and be denied in order to be considered for asylum in our country. If it is truly about escaping from an oppressive regime in their home country, then once they’ve entered another country, they’ve achieved their goal and they should be happy to take their chances with another country (especially one sharing the same language and very close to their own culture).

Most migrants arriving at our southern border applying for asylum (coming from Central America, Haiti, Cuba, and Africa) necessarily pass through Mexico. They likely also pass through other countries. Why not apply for asylum in Mexico? Isn’t it better than other countries like Haiti (a true shithole of a country), Cuba (poor and oppressive; communist), other poor Central American countries, and many countries in Africa? Mexico isn’t communist. It isn’t a repressive socialist country. And it happens to have the 15^th largest economy in the world.

Under the former asylum policy, asylum seekers had to pass a “test” to be considered for asylum status in the US. It used to be an easy test: applicants needed to assert a “credible fear” of remaining in their country – of persecution, violence, genocide, etc. Under this simple test (where the applicant asserts his or her “credible fear” through an interview process), most applicants have been able to pass this hurdle. But under Trump’s new policy, there is a subsequent hurdle. Applicants will now need to show that they have sought asylum in at least one country that they traveled through to get to the US and were denied. Most will fail this second hurdle. Why? Because the real goal of the trip to the US is not about escaping the “credible threat” but about coming here and taking advantage of all the benefits our country offers (especially to those who have no professional skills and are at the poverty level or below). Applicants who fail this second hurdle will be placed on fast-track deportation status. They will be afforded a quick proceeding concerning their application for asylum followed by a flight back home to their country of origin – all at taxpayer expense.

Cuban migrants claim special status because they say that once they leave, they will not be allowed back. They also claim that the first country they arrive at on their way to the US is Nicaragua, a communist country. They certainly don’t want to seek asylum in another communist country. But they don’t explain, and they can’t logically explain, why they can’t seek asylum in Mexico.

Trump’s new asylum policy was immediately challenged by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), the Southern Poverty Law Center (an anti-white hate group), and other civil liberties groups. These groups technically lack standing to sue – they themselves will not suffer great harm by the new policy. Yet, they filed motions seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO) , to block the implementation of the policy. But President Trump defends the policy by saying that immigrants, especially lately, are taking advantage of our nation’s asylum policy and taking advantage of services provided at US taxpayer expense. Trump also acknowledges that these latest groups of migrants (including migrant caravans), which just so happens to have formed since he took office, are being prompted and aided by asylum support groups here in the US (including legal assistance) and by the Democratic Party.

One commentator had this to say about Trump’s new policy: “Most migrants pass through both Guatemala and then Mexico to get to the United States. These migrants are claiming that they need to escape from their home country because of some ‘credible fear.’ Well, once they leave their oppressive home country, they’ve escaped from the oppression. So, is it really about escaping the fear and persecution of their home country or is it more about coming specifically to the US?”

On Wednesday, July 24, a federal judge in DC, District Court Judge Timothy Kelly denied the motion asking for the Temporary Restraining Order. He explained that the groups challenging the policy did not show that their work would suffer “irreparable harm” if the policy went into effect (which is the proper threshold question for such a request). Judge Kelly was appointed to the bench by President Trump.

However, as expected, a federal judge in San Francisco, Judge Jon Tigar, agreed with challengers and went ahead and issued a TRO, putting a hold on the new asylum policy. He issued his ruling also on Wednesday, just hours after Judge Kelly denied the motion in DC. The White House has condemned this ruling, referring to it as an example of “judge shopping.” As White House Press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham commented: “The tyranny of a dysfunctional system that permits plaintiffs to forum shop in order to find a single district judge who will purport to dictate immigration policy to the entire Nation … must come to an end.”

The case will eventually head to the Supreme Court.

The article below, posted on July 25 in the Epoch Times, addresses Judge Tigar’s ruling:

“White House Slams Judge’s Order Blocking Asylum Restriction,” by Petr Svab

On Wednesday, July 24, at the request of activist groups, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco blocked President Trump’s new asylum policy. The new policy is an administrative rule that denies asylum to people who pass through countries where they could apply for asylum on their way to the United States and who have chosen not to do so. According to the new policy, if a migrant passes through any other country before reaching the United States and has NOT applied for asylum in that country and been DENIED, he or she will not be eligible for asylum in the United States.

Just hours earlier, another federal judge in Washington denied a similar request from a different group of plaintiffs.

INJUNCTION POWER  —

The administration has complained for some time about what it calls “activist judges,” whom it accuses of blocking its policies on ideological grounds. “Too many judges believe it is their right, their duty, to act upon their sympathies and policy preferences,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in an Oct. 15 speech, calling judicial activism “a threat to our representative government and the liberty it secures.”

Among the specific issues Sessions pointed out were the nationwide injunctions, in which a judge presiding over a local case blocks the executive action in dispute across the nation while the case proceeds through the courts. He explained: “In the first 175 years of this republic, not a single judge issued one of these orders. But they have been growing in frequency and, since President Trump took office less than two years ago, 27 district courts have issued such an order.” Attorney General William Barr voiced a similar concern on May 21, saying “the legal community and the broader public should be more concerned, particularly about this trend of nationwide injunctions.”

In 2018, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in an opinion that nationwide injunctions “are beginning to take a toll on the federal court system….. I am skeptical that district courts have the authority to enter universal injunctions … If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality.”

Earlier in May, Vice President Mike Pence said the administration will “seek opportunities” to have the Supreme Court review whether district judges have the legal power to issue such injunctions in the first place.

“It’s imperative that we restore the historic tradition that district judges do not set policy for the whole nation,” Pence said.

IMMIGRATION BATTLE  —

Judge Tigar ruled in favor of advocacy groups represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The policy would have limited exceptions that would allow for asylum: if someone has been trafficked; if an asylum-seeker sought protection in a country but was denied; or if the country the migrant passed through didn’t sign one of the major international treaties that govern how refugees are managed, which most Western countries have signed.

The decision comes as tens of thousands of people wait in Mexico on official and unofficial lists formed after U.S. agents started turning away many asylum-seekers, citing a lack of space and delays in immigration courts. They also include people sent to wait in Mexico while their cases wind through the U.S. immigration process, another Trump policy that has so far survived a legal challenge.

Tigar’s ruling is the latest example of courts blocking Trump’s immigration policies. A court stopped the administration from detaining asylum-seekers without giving them a chance to be released on bond. A judge in Oakland, California, prevented the Trump administration from tapping $2.5 billion in Pentagon money to build border barriers. (The administration has appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and has asked for a ruling by July 26).

 

Reference: Petr Svab, “White House Slams Judge’s Order Blocking Asylum Restriction,” Epoch Times, July 25, 2019. Referenced at: https://www.theepochtimes.com/white-house-slams-judges-order-blocking-asylum-restriction_3016853.html?ref=brief_News&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=611b5ebe3e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_25_06_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-611b5ebe3e-239825589

Author Gene Kizer, Jr Defends the South to the Editor of a Charleston, SC Newspaper

  (Photo: Gene Kizer, Jr.)

by Gene Kizer Jr, July 12, 2019, with an Intro by Diane Rufino

This post is to give you some FOOD FOR THOUGHT…….

And perhaps even to inspire you to action, which I hope will be to defend our nation’s history and to assert our American First Amendment rights.

We live in trying times… maybe even reminiscent of the years when our country was involved in a quasi-war with France (during John Adams’ administration), when Abraham Lincoln was building his case for the invasion of the Confederate States and then pursing the Civil War, during the Cold War (the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings), and during the Obama administration (government harassment of Tea Party and other conservative groups, control and politicization of the mainstream media, and illegal spying on the Trump campaign to effect the outcome of the 2016 election). In each of these examples, the American people had their rights to free speech and free press and their rights to conscience and political association violated by the government. These trying times are even reminiscent of the early years of Adolf Hitler, as he schemed to consolidate his power and his plans for a mighty Third Reich in Germany. Government control was all about controlling the message and about controlling how people thought and how they acted. It was mind-control (ie, indoctrination) and dissidents were punished. Germans were kept in line by the armed unit of the Nazi Party (the SS guards… not unlike our modern-day Antifa). Recognizing threats to our liberty and to the foundation of that liberty (ie, the conservative values and principles on which our country was founded, including the limited grants of authority to the federal government through the Constitution and the prohibitions outlined in the Bill of Rights) is the first step in assuming the role our Founders expected of us, which is one of resistance to such threats. Resisting the threats is the surest way to preserve our great country and to re-assert our alienable and other liberty rights.

We live in a dangerous era when progressives are trying to define what is acceptable speech and expression, what is acceptable conduct, and what history should be taught and even recognized in our country. We live in an era where the federal government had previously spent 8 years commandeering the full forces and instrumentalities of government to suppress political opposition, to exonerate political elites/favorites while punishing others, to illegally spy on a presidential campaign in order to find or manufacture ways to sink that campaign in favor of its preferred candidate, and to allow the Swamp to grow in DC to work insidiously day and night to undermine the will and wishes of the American people. We live in an era where political correctness is far more important than free speech, where the right to one’s conscience is non-existent, where those on the left think it’s proper to economically and reputationally destroy a person simply for holding a viewpoint that differs from theirs, where decent people are harassed, bullied, and beaten in public places by mental midgets and intolerants on the left, including Antifa simply for daring to be a conservative or for supporting our current president. We live in an era where history is actively being re-drafted and re-prioritized to align with the indoctrinational views of the progressive left. Confederate statues are being torn down or vandalized. The Confederate battle flag has been demonized and almost decreed a hate symbol. Names of historical figures (mostly Southern antebellum) are being scrubbed from public buildings, universities, and street signs. Even our great Southern Founding Fathers (such as Thomas Jefferson) are being vilified for living their lives in line with the custom of the time (ie, owning slaves – an institution recognized by the federal government and even protected by it). It is unconscionable that historians and professors teach students and our mushy-minded young adults that a man as revered and as important to our founding history as Thomas Jefferson is to be associated with slavery rather than with all the prolific contributions he made to our country and to the world – the Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man & of the Citizen (a civil rights document from the French Revolution written as a collaboration between he and the Marquis de Lafayette), the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (addressing both the natural right to one’s conscience and religious affiliation and exercise), the Northwest Ordinance, his influence on the state constitution of Virginia and its Declaration of Rights, his strong influence on James Madison to add a US Bill of Rights, his powerful defense of the “Necessary & Proper” Clause of the Constitution (to strictly confine what powers the government was delegated – going head-to-head with the nationalist/monarchist Alexander Hamilton), his defense of State’s Rights and his brilliant articulation of the doctrine of Nullification, the hundreds of letters he wrote explaining the meaning and intent of the Constitution and providing warnings and advice for future generations, and his creation of the US Library of Congress. While slavery was an (evil) institution practiced in our country, and in fact, was an institution that was firmly entrenched and embraced by almost all countries and colonies of the world at the time, it was NOT a contribution of Jefferson.

As any serious intellectual will tell you, you can’t view our past through the lens of our 21st century standards. The social norms of today are as far away from the social norms of our founding era as possible. The social norms of today are even as far away as possible from the social norms of our country when the great war between the states was fought. As Gene Kizer Jr. makes clear, when you apply current norms or when you view the past through the lens of 21^st century standards, you are being intellectually dishonest. You aren’t trying to understand or analyze the past at all. You are simply trying to advance a political or progressive agenda.

With this introduction, please read the article that Gene Kizer, Jr. wrote, which is copied and pasted below:

Defending the South to an editor of the Charleston, SC Post and Courier – by Gene Kizer, Jr., Charleston Athenaeum Press, July 12, 2019

I had some correspondence with an editor of the Post and Courier this week when I sent them a letter for publication in response to their July 6, 2019 editorial “Don’t Let Extremists Define our National Symbols.” As a result, I saw an opening to send some valuable Southern history to this newspaper and I jumped on it.

Their editorial is good in that they are alarmed at Nike removing the Betsy Ross flag, the Charlottesville city council ending a celebration of Thomas Jefferson, and the idiots on the San Francisco school board voting to paint over an 80-year-old work of art portraying the life of George Washington.

The Post and Courier does not want us to validate bad people who attempt to redefine patriotic symbols, but wait! THEY in the media have done exactly that for years ad nauseam! The media is the primary reason we have this politically correct hate and destruction of history in the body politic.

Here is the 250 word letter-to-the-editor that got this started:

START

Your editorial of July 6, “Don’t let extremists define our national symbols” shows that your heart is in the right place but, boy, you need to look in the mirror.

You let the KKK and Dylan Roof define the Confederate battle flag though neither of them has an iota of claim to it.

You put the Southern Poverty Law Center’s disgraceful campaign to remove Confederate monuments on your front page, and you agitate all the time against ancient monuments including the Calhoun monument on Marion Square, and even against the word “Dixie.”

And now you are surprised when Colin Kaepernick and others follow your lead and turn the Betsy Ross flag, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington into vile racists?

The foundation of our great nation was indeed set in 1776 as you write, but it was certainly not “reset in 1865.” It died a violent death in 1865.

In the republic of the Founding Fathers, states were supreme, but after 1865, the Federal Government and Northern majority were supreme, which was the North’s goal all along.

You quote the Gettysburg Address but here’s what the great H. L. Mencken wrote in May, 1920: “The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – ‘that government of the people, by the people, for the people,’ should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves….”.

END

The editor wrote back and asked who the “YOU” was and that gave me my opening:

Actually, the “you” is the Post and Courier, but also the news media in general because so much of the media is of the same political philosophy, which has utterly politicized history in recent decades.

As serious historians know, one can’t apply 21st century standards to the past. When you do that, you aren’t understanding the past at all. You are using it as a current-day political tool.

Your own writer, Robert Behre explained to us on the front page on May 16th why we should hate the word “Dixie” after the College of Charleston in a disgusting fit of political correctness changed the 175-year-old name of Dixie Plantation (“C of C Dumps ‘Dixie’ Name for Plantation”). Behre then implied why we should also hate the song “Dixie” and word “plantation.”

Do you not find it odd that four weeks later on June 15th, the Antifa vandalizers of the Defenders Monument at the Battery also had a large sign that said “DIXIE IS DEAD.”

Maybe they were inspired by Behre and maybe it was just a coincidence, but the Post and Courier is really not fair or accurate with Southern history at all.

You let the KKK and Dylan Roof define the Confederate battle flag though neither of them has an iota of claim to it. The battle flag is, arguably, the greatest symbol of pure American valor our nation has ever produced because it was a soldier’s flag, not a national flag. It flew over the bloodiest battlefields of a war in which 800,000 died and over a million were wounded. It never flew over a slave ship like the US and British flags did for over two centuries. The largest Klan groups of the early 20th century carried the American flag.

Your editorial had mentioned the Declaration of Independence so I wanted to tell you that when Southerners debated seceding in the months before they actually did, the most widely quoted phrase of the secession debate came from the Declaration of Independence:

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. . .

And please don’t quote that garbage about States’ Rights being the right to own another person. The Confederate Constitution allowed free or slave states to join.

Five slave states fought for the North throughout the entire war, and the Emancipation Proclamation deliberately exempted them all as well as slaves in most Confederate territory already captured by the Union army.

The one thing that can be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the North did not go to war to end slavery. They went to war to preserve the Union, as Lincoln said over and over, because all their wealth and power were tied to the Union. They manufactured for the South and shipped Southern cotton and they made obscene amounts of money with tariffs, bounties, subsidies, monopolies and such, which caused three-fourths of the treasury to flow continually into the North, though most of the money in the treasury came from the South.

When the Cotton States seceded, the Northern economy began a dramatic collapse and by war time, there were hundreds of thousands of people unemployed and a dire situation in the North.

Southerners seceded because they were fed up with Northern hate and support for terrorism such as John Brown and Hinton Helper that Republicans had used to rally their votes in the election of 1860 in which over 60% of voters nationwide voted against Abraham Lincoln.

The War Between the States was one of the most unnecessary wars in all of history but then, from Lincoln’s standpoint, it was necessary for him and his new political party to establish their control over the rest of the country, though 800,000 had to die and over a million be wounded for them to do it.

To Southerners, 1861 was 1776 all over, and we in Charleston can be especially proud because we were never beaten by the Union army or navy. Charleston was unconquered militarily and never surrendered in the War Between the States. It was the only place besieged that did not give way to the besieger. When Confederate troops were ordered to evacuate in February, 1865 to continue the war elsewhere, the city, which had endured one of the longest sieges in history, was turned over to the Union army by a city alderman.

Slavery was dying out and would not have lasted another generation.

It is unconscionable that you maintain this politically correct hatefulness toward Southern history. Maybe you should go back and read your own archives which tell a different story.

Good and decent people are SO fed up with idiotic political correctness. They are fed up with decisions by snowflakes and indoctrinated and otherwise ignorant progressives to, for example, remove the Kate Smith’s monument (she helped win WWII with God Bless America), to have Thomas Jefferson’s birthday cancelled as a paid holiday in his hometown of Charlottesville, to allow a beautiful 80-year-old mural of the life of George Washington to be painted over in San Francisco, and most recently, the Kaepernick/Nike thing over the Betsy Ross flag.

It is disgusting and alarming, as your editorial pointed out. It is like a cancer. It ain’t gonna stop. It needs to be opposed and defeated, which will be hard because one political party is heavily invested in it.

I wish the Post and Courier would give me a chance to write long articles on history as you do with others. Everything I write is solidly argued and documented. It would definitely add to the debate.

Regardless, thank you for letting me send this to you.

Gene Kizer, Jr.

 

***   Gene Kizer, Jr. is the author of the book “Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States.” It’s an excellent, excellent book and I recommend it most highly. I also recommend going to his website – https://www.charlestonathenaeumpress.com/ – and signing up to read his articles. His most recent articles include: “Why the Cotton States Seceded and Formed the Confederate States of America” (July 2, 2019), “Obliterate the Sophism that Confederates Were Traitors” (June 30, 2019), “We Are in a Political Fight and Not a History Debate”(June 29, 2019), “The Absurdity of Slavery as the Cause of the War Between the States” (June 25, 2019), and “Satirical Letter-to-Editor Defending Confederate Monuments” (June 22, 2019).

 

Reference: Gene Kizer, Jr, “Defending the South to an editor of the Charleston, SC, Post and Courier,” Charleston Athenaeum Press, July 12, 2019. Referenced at: https://www.charlestonathenaeumpress.com/defending-the-south-to-an-editor-of-the-charleston-sc-post-and-courier/

Charlottesville, Virginia: Demonizing Thomas Jefferson and Continuing to Foreclose Education and Free Speech

by Diane Rufino, July 6, 2019

On July 2, the Charlottesville (Virginia) City Council voted to no longer recognize Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, April 13, as a celebrated a paid holiday. Charlottesville is the hometown of our country’s most renown Founding Father. It is the home his sprawling hilltop estate, Monticello. In fact, it’s hard to think of Charlottesville, Virginia, without thinking of Jefferson. He was born there in 1743 and he died there, and Monticello was always the place he called home and the place where he found his greatest inspiration and greatest comfort.

Monticello draws almost half a million visitors annually and the town benefits greatly from that tourism.

According to local news, “city officials voted to scrap the holiday in honor of the slave-owning third president of the United States and instead adopt Liberation and Freedom Day, to be celebrated each March 3.” The city council’s decision came just days after James Fields Jr., the 22-year-old driver convicted of killing a woman and injuring dozens of other people at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017, was sentenced to life behind bars.

Jason Hill, a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said: “I think this was a great man that helped found this country. If we start by retroactively looking at the sins of great figures who have made enormous contributions to western philosophy, we are going to be left with a decimated history.” Professor Hill is an African-American who is not one of those who is unable to review history except thru the lens of slavery. While he refers to slavery as a “birth defect” of the United States, he acknowledges that Jefferson’s legacy, the Declaration of Independence in particular, was ultimately used to freed people from its bonds.

Hill accuses Jefferson of being a flawed man, as evidenced by his ownership of slaves, but his legacy which includes enormous contributions to America far outweighs that single flaw.

It should be mentioned that since slavery was an established institution in the states, and since it was recognized and protected by the Constitution, that almost all of our Founding Fathers from the more southern states and tied to an agrarian economy can be accused of practicing something that was perfectly legal and acceptable at the time. We will be hard-pressed to find any of our Founding Fathers or leading historical figures from any of the southern states who either didn’t own slaves or who didn’t say even something that might be taken as insensitive by today’s civil rights standards. The fact is that today’s hyper-sensitivity to our pre-13^th Amendment past prejudices southern historical figures. We cannot judge our forefathers by the social norms of our current times.

What disturbs me, intellectually, aside from the very public snub of the man who gave us our “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” and who gave us the notion of inalienable rights, as opposed to government-granted rights, thereby establishing our American system that values the protection and security of those rights over the longevity of government, is that Charlottesville choice to observe a far more offensive event. The Charlottesville City Council voted to substitute March 3 – that day in 1865 when Union General Philip Sheridan’s troops entered the town and found a population that was majority African-American (most of them being slaves) – as the new “official holiday.”

Why do I say this event is offensive? First of all, the act of the Northern states, having control of the federal government, attacking, invading, and subjugating the Southern states back into the union was the ultimate act of government tyranny. It was unconstitutional on every single level, including an outright violation of paragraph two of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The Southern states had duly and lawfully left the union and established an independent and sovereign new nation. The invasion of the South had nothing to do with slavery, as an honest historian and researcher well knows. It was about the North deciding that the union needed the southern states and that an independent Confederate States of America posed great threats to the interests of the North. Virginia did not secede to protect slavery or to maintain slavery; when Virginia finally voted to secede, it was because Abraham Lincoln demanded the state send its share of 750,000 troops to fight its southern neighbors. Virginia, respecting the principles in the Declaration and respecting the understanding the states had when they adopted the Constitution and agreeing to be loosely-held in a union, knew that the Constitution would never sanction the government demanding that one state take up arms against another state. Jefferson, as it turned out, was the most vocal proponent of the proper remedies states are entitled to when they simply no longer get along or find enough common interests – with the most fundamental being secession. After all, the colonies seceded from Great Britain with the Declaration – a secessionist document. [The first paragraph opens up: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…” (ie, It becomes necessary to secede from the government it has been associated with and establish an independence). And the last final paragraph reads: “We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”]

Second, Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, by executive order, on January 1, 1863. It did nothing to free any slave in the southern states because the southern states had seceded from the union and therefore dissolved its association with the federal government. It was intended as a war measure to incite slave rebellions in the South, and particularly against the women and children who were left home on the farms/plantations (while the men were off fighting). It was an insidious war measure but Lincoln hoped the men fighting would leave the battlefield and go back to their homes and their farms/plantations. What the Emancipation did allow, however, was the freeing of slaves in any territory that the Union forces captured and took control of. This certainly would have been something, right? But the truth is that essentially not a single Union general exercised his discretion to free the slaves. And this was what happened in Charlottesville. While some of the slaves may have used the Union occupation to try to escape their condition, it was not Sheridan who granted them freedom. It was not the Emancipation Proclamation which freed them. Sheridan was a cold killer. After the Civil War, he was given the task of slaughtering the American Indians and moving them off land that the federal government wanted.

So what exactly did the Charlottesville City Council vote to endorse while impugning Thomas Jefferson? They chose to endorse slavery. They chose to endorse the view by the Union that slaves should not be freed, even when agents of that government (Union generals) had the discretion to do so. They chose to endorse the notion that the federal government has the absolute right to order one state to invade, wreak violence, and subjugate another state with whom it disagrees with. They chose to endorse the notion that the federal government is supreme and has the right to subjugate the states to its views and to its whims, including as dictated and coopted by an absolute tyrant.

Charlottesville not only voted to reject Thomas Jefferson but it voted to reject the Declaration of Independence as well.

Virginia sure has come a long way. An how utterly shameful it has become.

In March of this year, some students at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. called for the removal of a Jefferson statue from the campus, claiming he represented racism and slavery. I find it troubling that they would associate Thomas Jefferson with racism and slavery rather than as the author of the Declaration of Independence or the father to the liberties and rights that they obviously take for granted. I find it troubling that college students are that unintelligent and that uninformed as to our country’s history, although after listening to college students speak these days, I am not surprised.

I am sorry that our country has a checkered history. I am sorry that the British imposed slavery on our colonies and that the colonies embraced the ownership and forced labor of fellow human beings. I am, however, grateful that several of our founders tried very hard to abolish it early on – before we formed our union of states. Truth be told, the very man that modern liberals like to demonize, Thomas Jefferson, had several plans to abolish slavery or at least to minimize it and to transition to freedom. Even prior to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Thomas Jefferson proposed (in 1779) a policy of gradual emancipation, education and training, and possible re-location and colonization as a practical solution to end the legal enslavement of human beings (ie, chattel slavery). He believed education and training were absolutely necessary and must be part of the plan to abolish slavery because liberating people who were unprepared for total freedom would be a recipe for disaster. They would need to be able to support themselves and live in dignity. He wanted Africans to be successful and to build successful black communities. In 1784, Jefferson proposed federal legislation that would ban slavery in the New Territories of the North and South after 1800, which ended up failing to pass Congress by only one vote. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, which he published in 1785, Jefferson expressed the beliefs that slavery corrupted both masters and slaves alike and promoted the idea that African-Americans were inferior in intelligence. Again, Jefferson seemed to be looking out for Africans and not looking to keep them in bondage. In 1807, President Jefferson signed legislation to finally abolish the slave trade to the United States.

I am sorry that today’s liberals are so fragile-minded, so fragile psychologically and emotionally, so intellectually stunted, and so intolerant that the sight of Thomas Jefferson or even the mention of his name shatters their fragility and reduces them to absolute moron-ity. I’m sorry that today’s liberals have taken a position to move our notions of civility backwards in the United States. Modern Americans are the very examples of what our Founders hoped could be avoided by giving individuals a country devoted to freedom (and finally, to equality) and instilling in them the responsibility to defend it. Today’s liberals are mental midgets, more obsessed with a long-dead institution than with the health and stability of our country. I’m sorry that slavery continues to dominate our national discourse and taint our ability to come together to celebrate shared values, shared ideals, and shared dreams. I’m sorry that the history of one particular race continues to dictate what can be discussed, celebrated, acknowledged, taught, or included on plaques, memorialized in statue form, inscribed on buildings, in this country. I’m sorry that certain individuals are completely incapable of seeing things without looking at them through a lens of color.

I wish these individuals, these loud-mouths, these trouble-makers and rubble-rousers, would exercise the same tolerance that they demand of others.

Nowhere in the Bill of Rights does it guarantee that individuals have a right NOT to be offended or to feel offended, or the right NOT to be confronted by events in history that happen to offend them. In fact, these rights are not even included in the progressives’ version of the Bill of Rights (authored by FDR who referred to it as “The Second Bill of Rights). This “Second Bill of Rights,” pushed so strongly by FDR, then Truman, then LBJ, then Nixon, then Clinton, and then, to some extent George Bush was an attempt by liberal/progressive-minded presidents to mitigate the “evils” that naturally arise in a free market, capitalistic society – one based on competition and ambition and hard work. The results of our American system (the “evils”), as FDR believed, are primarily economic inequality and to a lesser degree, social inequality. This “Second Bill of Rights” includes the “right” to a job, food, a home clothing, healthcare, a good education, and recreation, and the freedom from the “fear” of unemployment, old age, sickness, and unfair competition.

The First Amendment guarantees the right of FREE speech – not sensitive speech, not politically-correct speech, not sanitized speech… but FREE speech. The First Amendment guarantees that every spoken word, every written word, every historical event, every statue, every plaque, every painting, every work of art is an opportunity for discussion and debate. It is an opportunity for more speech. It is always a learning or teaching opportunity – something to sharpen our minds and our understanding, and NOT to foreclose it to views that others, including government, want to dominate.

The sad thing is that there is a group of individuals – a group much larger than the current liberal snowflakes I am referring to above – that has no connection to slavery, has no part in any efforts to discriminate or any past action of discrimination, and has no discriminatory mindset or discriminatory heart, but who absolutely loves this country, recognizes its history (both good and bad), and values the lessons we had to learn as a fledgling nation predicated on the equal rights of man. Our entire history has made us the country we are today, for good or for bad – but always as a subject for discussion and political views. I am a second or third generation American, depending on whether you look from my mother’s side of the family or my father’s. My family came to the United States from Italy prior to WWI, with little money in their pockets and with no safety net or entitlements to help them. Italians in the day were not a popular ethnic group and as our immigration laws in the 1920’s showed (set limits on the number of immigrants from Italy to limit their population in the US) and as employment signed showed (“No Italians need apply”), they were generally not welcome. But Italians don’t languish over their mistreatment; rather, they quickly became one of the most patriotic and loyal of ethnic groups

The people that I know and that I associate with (mostly white since I am a white woman) do not possess the thought process that says that just because a person has a different skin color, he or she is of a different worth or has less dignity as a human being. We often don’t possess the thought process that directs us to review and scrutinize everything we write and say to make sure that absolutely nothing can be misconstrued, mistaken, or twisted into showing us to be discriminatory or to be otherwise insensitive to others. It’s because we come from a place where we don’t discriminate and we don’t set out in any way, shape, or form to be insensitive to others. Most of us are like this because of our deep foundation in religion. We respect one another because we are taught to love one another; strong communities are founded on mutual respect and a fondness for one another. The problem is that our current culture of racial divide, the constant flinging of the terms “racist” and “white supremist” are imputing on well-intentioned white people a tendency – always a tendency, as President Obama, Michele Obama, and Hillary Clinton publicly stated – to be these terrible things and to inherently look down on black people. It’s not fair to the vast majority of white persons and this problem needs to be addressed. Something needs to done to protect white people and their free exercise of the First Amendment, without the automatic presumption of discrimination.

Maybe we’ve dwelled on slavery and on past discrimination for too long. Maybe we’ve retreated to political correctness for too long to avoid honest conversations about the state of race relations and the effect of history on our current status. Perhaps we’ve allowed African-Americans, too fragile to think outside the “slavery and discrimination” box, to control the dialogue for too long. Thomas Sowell once said: “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.” Maybe for once we should really trying treating everyone as equals rather than as special.

It is a true denial of the free speech rights of others and an exercise of true intolerance when certain individuals refuse to see things without looking at them through a lens of color. How far can it go? I think the Charlottesville city council vote is one example. In their myopathy, they chose to discard Thomas Jefferson in favor of another form of acceptance of slavery and in favor of government tyranny. Of course, the war against Confederate monuments and leaders is another example.

In closing, I want to emphasize again that I wish today’s liberals and race mongers would exercise the same tolerance that they demand of others.

 

 

Reference: “Charlottesville Will No Longer Celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday in His Virginia Hometown,” FOX News. Referenced at: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/charlottesville-will-no-longer-celebrate-thomas-jeffersons-birthday-in-his-virginia-hometown-report

In Defense of the Electoral College

by Diane Rufino, July 4, 2019

The Electoral College seems to be a hot topic lately, right? Democrats are trying very hard to have it abolished, in favor of having the president chosen by a national popular vote rather than an electoral vote. You may have heard of this “National Popular Vote Initiative” and the efforts to push it state-by-state. The one essential reality that one must understand about this NPV Initiative is that a president can be elected simply by catering to the views and issues of just a few of our country’s largest, most densely-packed cities and ignoring the entire rest of the country. If you understand this, then you can clearly see why Democrats want to abolish the Electoral College. It is nothing more than an initiative to enrich their chances of winning presidential elections… Actually, it’s an initiative that will ensure that they win all future presidential elections.

Simply put, the NPV Initiative robs states of their sovereignty, the cornerstone of the federal Union established by the US Constitution.

Our top 25 most populous cities are (in order of greatest population): New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Austin, San Francisco, Jacksonville (FL), Indianapolis, Columbus (OH), Fort Worth, Charlotte, Detroit. Nashville, El Paso, Seattle, Memphis, Washington DC, Boston, and Denver. California has 4 cities in the top 12. Texas has 4 cities in the top 11, and 5 in the top 16. A candidate for president would only need to spend his or her time in California and Texas, and maybe include a few trips to NYC, Chicago, Philly, Phoenix, and maybe Jacksonville, Florida, to shore up the votes to tip the national popular vote in his or her favor. You will notice that most states have no cities on this list, which means that candidates can effectively ignore them and their concerns. My state of North Carolina might be ignored, but I’m quite positive that states like Alaska, Hawaii, all the southeast states, all the mid-west states (except the state of Texas and the city of Phoenix), and all the New England states will be completely ignored. And we all know that the issues of states like West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas will never be the issues of Los Angeles, San Francisco, NYC, and Philly. We know that the concerns and views of the good people of those states will never be the same as those crowded in the huge urban centers of the county.

For those who don’t know how the Electoral College works, it’s quite simple actually:

The Electoral College is made up of 538 electors who have the task of casting votes to decide the President and Vice-President of the United States. Where did this number 538 come from? The number equals the number of US House representatives (435 for the 50 states, plus 3 for the District of Columbia) and the number of US senators (100). And the break-down, or apportionment, of electors for each state follows exactly their representative in Congress. So, for example, North Carolina has 13 representatives in the US House and, just like every other state, it has 2 senators, which means that it has 15 electoral votes. California has 53 representatives in the US House with 2 senators, which means it has 55 electoral votes. Rhode Island has 2 representatives in the US House with 2 senators, and so it has 4 electoral votes. And Alaska has 1 representative in the US House with 2 senators, thus giving it a whopping 3 electoral votes.

Lesser populated states that have very small numbers of electoral votes include Delaware, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming (all have only 3 electoral votes) and New Hampshire, Hawaii, Idaho, and Maine (all having only 4 electoral votes).

You can see how the Electoral College gives a slight edge to the smaller states. In the case of Delaware, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, their electoral vote count is greatly boosted by their seats in the US Senate. In the case of New Hampshire, Hawaii, Idaho, and Maine, their electoral vote count is doubled by their seats in the US Senate. In the case of California, its seats in the Senate barely make a noticeable difference in their electoral vote count. Same for Texas, New York, and Florida.

The six states with the most electors are California (55), Texas (38), New York (29), Florida (29), Illinois (20), and Pennsylvania (20)

When voters go to the polls on Election Day, they are choosing which candidate receives their state’s electors. The candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes (270) wins the Presidency. The number 270 is comes from the total number of 538, divided in half (which is 269), plus 1 (to make it the majority). During election season, and especially Election Day evening, we are extremely focused on that number 270. Candidates strategize during campaign season on how to get to that number (and concentrate their campaigning efforts accordingly) and on Election night, we are focused on which candidate reaches the magic number as the election returns come rolling in.

All states except two (Nebraska and Maine) have what’s called a “winner-take-all” electoral system. In such a system, the candidate who wins the majority of votes in a state wins all of that state’s electoral votes. In Nebraska (5 electoral votes) and Maine (4 electoral votes), however, electoral votes are assigned by proportional representation, meaning that the top vote-getter in those states wins two electoral votes (for the two Senators) while the remaining electoral votes are allocated congressional district by congressional district. These rules make it possible for both candidates to receive electoral votes from Nebraska and Maine, unlike the winner-take-all system in the other 48 states.

Under the Electoral College system, a candidate who is able to pile up victories in sparsely-populated states can win the presidency without winning the popular vote by pulling out narrow victories in a few larger states (which is what Donald Trump did in 2016).

So we know how the Electoral College is comprised and we know where the magic number of 270 comes from. But how, exactly, does the Electoral College work?

The Electoral College is a very carefully considered structure that the Framers of the Constitution set up to balance the competing interests of large and small states. It prevents candidates from wining an election by focusing only on high-population urban centers (ie, the big cities) and ignoring smaller states and the more rural areas of the country (ie, what some refer to as “fly-over country”). Were it not for the Electoral College, presidential candidates could act as if many Americans don’t even exist. They know they only need a handful of states with big concentrated populations to win the election and so that is where they would not only spend most of their time in those states (and particular, in their big, populous cities) but the issues of those populations would become the issues that define the candidate’s campaign and would become the focus of his or her attention. Candidates would ignore the issues and concerns of those in “fly-over country”). As we all know, people in “flyover country” don’t get enough attention as it is, but without the Electoral College, they’d be completely at the mercy of the majority.

The United States is not a democracy (although it has some democratic elements); our system is a republic. Our Founders specifically and intentionally chose our system to be a republic rather than a democracy because a democracy is essentially “mob rule.” Benjamin Franklin described it as “two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner.” Our Founders extended that same mentality to the presidency (not allowing the office of the president to be subject to pure democracy). They didn’t want to subject the election of our Chief Executive to the inherent dangers of what James Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.” And so, just as they did in designing our government system to be a republic, they established the Electoral College as a system carefully balanced to safeguard the rights of both the majority and the minority. To explain it as Franklin may have described it: “What the wolves want matters, but so does what the sheep wants. The Electoral College ensures that no one winds up on the menu.”

Again, under the Electoral College system, the number of each state’s electors is tied exactly to the size of its congressional delegation; that is, the total number of its representatives in the US Congress (both the House + the Senate). Because each state — regardless of how many voters live there — gets two electors for each of its senators, the Electoral College gives an extra edge to less populous rural states which have long been Republican strongholds. The Democrats’ strength in the urban centers is concentrated in relatively few states, giving them a smaller Electoral College base. And this brings me to the initiative, as mentioned in the first paragraph, on the part of progressives (Democrats) to abolish the Electoral College altogether.

There is a well-financed effort by liberals/progressives/Democrats to do away with the Electoral College and to do exactly the opposite of what our Founding Fathers and the Framers of the US Constitution sought strenuously to avoid – which was to subject the office of the country’s highest executive office to the tyranny of the majority. Our Founders were keen to realize that the majority of voters, even back then, are uninformed, unintelligent, and unfit to cast a responsible vote for the individual to hold the extremely critical office of President of the United States. This is the National Popular Vote (MPV) Initiative.

Rather than amend the Constitution to change the way we elect our president, which is the lawful, constitutional way to change the Constitution, the MVP approach would involve an end-run around the Constitution, which is the method-of-choice of liberals, progressives, and Democrats. [We see this in the aggressive manner in which progressives seek to advance their (often unconstitutional) agenda by going to liberal federal courts]. The NVP movement asks states to sign a contract to award its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, rather than to the winner of the state’s popular vote. This is why I wrote earlier that the NVP Initiative robs states of their sovereignty.

As you can see, the NVP Initiative seeks to fundamentally change the system by which we elect our president – from a more state-centered approach to a pure national approach. Such a fundamental change to a system expressly laid out in the Constitution MUST be made by a constitutional amendment. The well-financed liberal individuals and groups behind NVP know that they will never be successful with a constitutional amendment and that’s why they’ve come up with this “end-run on the Constitution” approach.

The unique design feature of our American government system is the separation of government powers among equal sovereigns (federalism, dual sovereignty) established by the US Constitution. The union so created by the Constitution (which is a “compact” or agreement among the states) is characterized as a federation of states (a consortium of states, if you will). This system, which is a decentralized government system, was intentionally designed as such. As the 10^th Amendment restates, the federal government is delegated with certain limited and clearly-defined tasks to carry out on behalf of all the states while the overwhelming majority of government functions resides with and is reserved to the individual states. The election of the president of the United States, the chief executive that must equally represent and be concerned with each state, was also designed to be a decentralized process.

As I mentioned earlier, the NVP Initiative robs states of their sovereignty – their inherent sovereign right to carry out government functions reserved to them under the Constitution and again (restated) by the Tenth Amendment. A key benefit or key feature of the Electoral College is that it decentralizes control of our presidential elections. We are not a consolidated nation of people but rather a federation of 50 states which are allowed to govern those who reside within its borders. Currently, a presidential election is really 51 separate elections – one in each state and one in the District of Columbia (thanks to the 23^rd Amendment). These 51 separate processes exist side-by-side and in harmony with one another. So, a vote cast in Texas can never affect the award of electors in California.

The NVP Initiative would disrupt this delicate balance. It would throw all voters in the United States into one national election pool. We would be changing the nature of our system from one of a federation (a loosely-held consortium of states, held together by the Constitution and assent to the powers delegated to the federal government) to one of complete consolidation into a borderless, stateless country. Under the NVP Initiative, a vote cast in Texas would allows affect the allocation of electors in California. Remember, every state has its own election laws, election rules (such as rules for early voting, for registering to vote, to determine qualifications to vote, allowing or disallowing felons to vote, and for triggering a re-count), election codes, and election practices. Some states take election fraud and voter fraud seriously and take steps to prevent such while others completely look the other way. Some states allow for ballot harvesting and others do not. Some tolerate organized election tampering schemes (such as multiple voting, voting using the identification of a deceased person or someone who had moved away, or voting by illegals by giving them fake identification), while others do not. Because states play by different rules, the NVP Initiative allows the national popular vote to be diluted, distorted, manipulated, tainted, etc by these different rules.

To look at the parade of horribles that can result from the NVP Initiative, go to this Prager U video (“Popular Vote v. The Electoral College” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXnjGD7j2B0 ).

A week ago, I posted a piece about the Electoral College titled “Rejection of the Electoral College is the Surest Path to the Destruction of This Country” in Beaufort County Now (BCN). Essentially, the piece addressed an interview with an expert on the Electoral College who explained why it is important and the goals it furthers. Many comments showed that people understand the role of the Electoral College and respect it. Stan Deatherage, publisher of BCN, also engaged in the dialogue, showing his understanding of the process. One lady, however, apparently tried to cast doubt on the Electoral College by listing presidents and politicians who have supported abolishing it in favor of a national popular vote. I will simply call her “Susan.” I wanted to include her comment and include my response to her.

SUSAN: In 1969, The U.S. House of Representatives voted for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. It was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and various members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, and then-Senator Bob Dole.

Past presidential candidates with a public record of support, before November 2016, for the National Popular Vote bill that would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes: Bob Barr (Libertarian- GA), U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Senator Fred Thompson (R–TN).

Rich Bolen, a Constitutional scholar, attorney at law, and Republican Party Chairman for Lexington County, South Carolina, wrote: “A Conservative Case for National Popular Vote: Why I support a state-based plan to reform the Electoral College.”

 

MY RESPONSE: Stan, I’m glad you get it and understand WHY the Electoral College was the system our founders came up with to honor our particular government system. We are a federation, and NOT a consolidated union. This fact, this reality, is lost on most of the people we talk to. Ms. Anthony, I think this point is also lost on you as well. I don’t mean that with any disrespect at all. You aren’t really making a point, other than to point out what others have supported. The 1960’s was a time of great social upheaval and rebellion against everything that had been accepted for most of our history. When Andrew Jackson and then Abraham Lincoln wanted to change the character of this country and mold it into something that was politically more advantageous, they first worked very hard to unmoor our country from its foundations. They began to re-characterize the nature of the US Constitution and the nature of our federal union. Once government benefitted from their deception and once it grew into a more aggressive and dominating beast, it took over education and began teaching/indoctrinating our children in the lessons that would continue to dissociate our national values and the foundations required to secure a limited federal government and liberty from our collective understanding of our country’s identity. Then politicians came along, such as Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Clinton, Bush, and Obama who saw the federal government in a different light than our Founders did and the States who debated and eventually ratified the Constitution did. They ignored the original responsibility of the government, which was simply to abide by the limited responsibilities in the Constitution and to leave all the rest of governing responsibilities to the individual states. Rather, they saw the federal government as the solution to EVERY PROBLEM. They saw it as a government of greatly consolidated functions; they saw the federal government as the one supreme government that knows best and is able to govern best. FDR tried hard to enshrine a “Second Bill of Rights” which, he explained, would help overcome the inherent evil of our American system which produces inequality by providing new rights such the right to a job, to food, to clothing, to recreation, to a home, to healthcare, and to a good education, as well as the freedom from the “fear” of unemployment, aging, sickness, and unfair competition. Teddy Roosevelt articulated the precursor to this Second Bill of Rights. But all of the presidents mentioned above latched onto this “new set of rights” and used their administrations to further them in one way or another. All ignored their oaths to the Constitution. They also needed to unchain or unmoor founding principles and institutions from our collective understanding of what our country was founded on and what is needed to ensure her longevity and the longevity of the individual rights of ALL citizens of the US. That is what the abolition of the Electoral College is all about. It’s a political movement, not a righteous movement. It’s goal is to further a political goal – the election of Democrats for president. It is not the goal of our founders which was always the maintaining of the federal government as a “common government” for all states, to represent their interests equally. (In fact the movement to abolish the Electoral College would make absolutely sure that the government and the president does not represent each state equally. The point I am trying to make is that the presidents and president hopefuls you mention, whether they had a “D” or a “R” after their name, were ALL progressive presidents. Not a single one of them had any respect for the system of government that was given to us and that, at its core (because the Constitution is essentially unchanged) is STILL IN PLACE. The Electoral College is a key foundational element of that system. Our government system does NOT exist to benefit any political elite. It doesn’t exist to benefit any political party. It doesn’t even exist to benefit the federal government over the state governments. It doesn’t exist to destroy the federal nature of our union (because certainly that would favor and benefit the federal government). It exists to maintain the STATUS QUO – to maintain the vital and critical relationship between the federal government and the States (ie, federalism, sovereign v. sovereign, dual sovereignty). Why? It is this relationship that was intended to be the last and most important of all the Checks and Balances on the government in DC. Checks and balances exist and are essential in order to prevent any unconstitutional laws, policies, executive actions, and even court rulings from being enforced on We the People. To allow such is the very definition of tyranny and government abuse. Anyone who favors or supports any changes to our system which undermines the very goals of our system (to maintain a limited government, to prevent government tyranny, and to preserve and protect our inalienable and other liberty rights) needs to have his or her head examined. Our country was founded on the notion of liberty and our system was chosen because it was deemed best to secure liberty the longest and most effectively. Any person who favors such changes as to erode our founding goals, I would argue, does not deserve to live in this country and is unfit to help secure the blessings of liberty to subsequent generations – “to the generations to come and millions yet unborn.”

 

Do NOT fall for the deceptions of the National Popular Vote Initiative. Again, a group of wealthy progressive individuals and groups are behind this movement for one reason only – to ensure the election of Democratic presidents. If this wasn’t the likely goal, why else would this group invest their money and push this initiative so strongly? Our Founding Fathers were far more intuitive and intelligent than those who are trying to run or influence the country now. Our Founding Fathers’ motives were far more benign and non-politically motivated than those who are behind this initiative. Respect them. Support them and Reject the arguments of the NVP movement.

To learn more about the Electoral College, I suggest watching the three short Prager U instructional videos listed below in my references section.

 

References:

Edwin J. Feulner, “Preventing “The Tyranny of the Majority” Heritage Foundation, March 7, 2018. Referenced at: https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/preventing-the-tyranny-the-majority

Diane Rufino, “Rejection of the Electoral College is the Surest Path to the Destruction of This Country,” Beaufort County Now, July 1, 2019. Referenced at: https://beaufortcountynow.com/post/32758/rejection-of-the-electoral-college-is-the-surest-path-to-the-destruction-of-this-country.html

Bill Moyers, “The Electoral College Explained,” November 10, 2016. Referenced at:   https://billmoyers.com/story/electoral-college-explained/

Distribution of Electoral Votes – https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/allocation.html   [Note that the 23^rd Amendment gave the District of Columbia 3 electoral votes and thus is treated like a state for the purposes of the Electoral College].

Prager U, “Do You Understand the Electoral College,” YouTube video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6s7jB6-GoU

Prager U, “Three Reasons Why We Need the Electoral College,” YouTube video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K80msVnqaHE

Prager U, “Popular Vote v. The Electoral College (including the National Popular Vote Initiative, or NPV Initiative),” YouTube video – – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXnjGD7j2B0