Freedom First Society

Repeat a Lie Often Enough …

“Former Secretary of State John Kerry swiped at President Trump while voicing concerns about the effects of global climate change on U.S. national security during an appearance Wednesday on Capitol Hill…. [Kerry told lawmakers:] ‘Each day that we fail to act on climate change, we are risking the health and security of future generations.’

“The former Obama Cabinet members [Kerry and former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel] also took aim at Trump’s plan to form a committee to re-evaluate the scientific consensus surrounding climate change, with Kerry referring to the plan as ‘a scheme to pretend there are two sides to an issue long since settled.’” — The Hill, 4-9-19

Climate “scientist” John Kerry was following in the footsteps of “Internet inventor” Al Gore, whose claims about man-made global warming were portrayed in the film “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Scam on Display at 1992 Earth Summit
While we don’t claim to be experts on weather and climate factors, we do understand the power grab the alarmists are seeking to justify. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janerio (officially the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development – UNCED) provided a great window into that deception.

Former Washington Governor and former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Dr. Dixy Lee Ray attended the conference, as did Al Gore. In her subsequent book, Environmental Overkill (1993), Dr. Ray argued:

“First, we must recognize that the environmental movement is not about facts or logic. More and more it is becoming clear that those who support the so-called ‘New World Order’ or World Government under the United Nations have adopted global environmentalism as a basis for the dissolution of independent nations and the international realignment of power.”

A Common Revolutionary Tactic
The incessant climate change warnings also follow the tactic famously used by totalitarians — repeat a lie often enough so that the people accept it as the truth.

One of the environmentalist lies is that there is a consensus among knowledgeable scientists that man-made climate change is a serious threat to mankind. Dr. Richard Lindzen, now retired from MIT, is one renowned environmental scientist who doesn’t agree. Last year, he debunked the hysteria in a lecture: “Global Warming and the Two Cultures.” (A link to his lecture, can be found in our website post “UN Climate Change Hysteria.”)

You don’t have to look far to find repetitions of the alarm. For example, during the April 8th House “debate” over the “Local Water Protection Act,” Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee stated:

“As an Energy and Environment Task Force Co-Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, I understand the necessity of this bill and its funding to managing sources of water pollution…. The strain on the marine life is not the only adverse effect to nature, global warming is also worsened when we turn a cheek to decreasing the pollution of our waterways…. Mr. Speaker, we must not wait to take action when the health of our marine life, the state of Global Warming, and the health of our people are being affected.” [Emphasis added.]

Democracy, Tyranny, and the NPV Compact

“The Constitution is nicely balanced, with the federative and popular principles; the Senate are the guardians of the former, and the House of Representatives of the latter; and any attempts to destroy this balance, under whatever specious names or pretenses they may be presented, should be watched with a jealous eye.” — Senator Uriah Tracy, in the U.S. Senate debates over the proposed 12th Amendment (adopted 1804)

“The mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the president is pretty well guarded. I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68

“No matter what happens in America these days — whether by fate or by plan — there is almost always another agenda or some underlying hitch ancillary to the main theme. The Bush-Gore election crisis of 2000 was nothing but a comic opera compared to the events subsequently stemming from it. Among the far more serious evils attributable to the contested election result in Florida is a loud and clear trumpet call for America to DUMP THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE and replace it with direct national elections.” — Don Fotheringham, January, 2001

Overview: The National Popular Vote (NPV) interstate compact seeks to overturn an important part of the plan America’s founders gave us for selecting a president. The drive for the compact is well on its way to becoming reality. Working below the public radar, the drive has already convinced many state legislatures to join the compact. This scheme has flourished because it promises to further enthrone the false idol “democracy,” which our founders recognized as a tool of tyrants (we are a Republic, a rule of law, not a democracy). In this article, we will examine the beguiling NPV pretenses, the original plan of those who wrote our Constitution, how their plan has already been perverted, and why the NPV Compact is a dangerous step in the wrong direction. And most importantly we will provide readers with the information and perspective they will need to influence legislators in their state to resist the drive.

Anyone researching the drive for an NPV (National Popular Vote) compact between states confronts a bewildering paradox:

As the NPV website says openly: “The shortcomings of the current system of electing the President stem [not from the Electoral College, but rather] from ‘winner-take-all’ laws that have been enacted by state legislatures in 48 states.”
Yet, what the NPV compact does, in essence, is not to repeal or neutralize these state laws, but instead to translate this “winner-take-all” electoral system from the state-vote level to the national-vote level!

Clearly, there’s more going on here than meets the eye: A national drive which would nullify the Electoral College — without actually abolishing it — justifies its agenda by a critique that points rather to a very different, almost diametrically opposite solution. If we’re to understand the NPV-compact drive, this paradox needs an explanation.

What are the drive’s complaints, then? Why is the Electoral College immune to the critique? Why, and when, did the states’ “winner-take-all” laws arise? And, why does the NPV seek to rectify them with such a strange, unseemly antidote? In answering these questions, we shall draw heavily on the NPV’s own website — mainly to deflect suspicion that we are misrepresenting their position.

The NPV Website’s Complaints
To its credit, the NPV website’s helpful “explanation” page attributes only to state “winner-take-all” laws — rather than to the Electoral College — the situations which it decries. It is quite correct in blaming these situations on these state laws — which have strongly interfered with the functioning and fundamental intent of the (so-called) Electoral College which the Constitution outlines — and, in saying that these state laws have no basis in the Constitution.

The complaints which one finds on this webpage are curious, though, in that clearly they are based on policy-values having little to do with the foundational American system and philosophy of government. Consequently, for those of us not starting from alien, non-American values, the three “issues” the group raises are without force — even if their connections of cause and effect are valid.

The two complaints which the webpage lists first will unlikely tug on the heartstrings of many: One is that “Because of these state winner-take-all statutes, presidential candidates have no reason to pay attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion.”

This complaint assumes — quite contrary to America’s founding fathers — that campaigning and getting voter-input are both vital parts of a presidential election. Moreover, it makes the outlandish assumption that an electoral candidate who does campaign should be careful to do so just as much in districts where support is overwhelmingly for or against that candidate. (What political campaign-advisor ever urged such a thing?)

The second complaint is scarcely more captivating: “State winner-take-all statutes adversely affect governance. ‘Battleground’ states receive 7% more federal grants than ‘spectator’ states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.” But given that all these examples of skewed “governance” are unconstitutional, gratuitous, and illegitimate to begin with, blaming them on the electoral laws seems off-target.

The complaint which people will most likely have heard, the website expresses thus:

“[B]ecause of state winner-take-all statutes, five of our 45 Presidents have come into office without having won the most popular votes nationwide. The 2000 and 2016 elections are the most recent examples of elections in which a second-place candidate won the White House. Near-misses are also common under the current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes. A shift of 59,393 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have elected John Kerry despite President Bush’s nationwide lead of over 3,000,000 votes.”

Interestingly, this complaint is non-partisan: The data the webpage cites show clearly that Republican candidates may be affected by this phenomenon as well as may Democrats.

However, the complaint is also non-American, in the sense that it is based wholly on a non-American political-philosophical assumption — the bare, unargued assumption that presidents should not “come into office without having won the most popular votes nationwide.” The website neglects to elucidate why such an occurrence would be reprehensible.

More fundamentally, it fails to explain why there should be, in any U.S. presidential election, such a number as the “popular votes nationwide.” Nowhere does the Constitution suggest this — not even in the 12th Amendment (which modified the workings of the Electoral College). However, understanding this requires at least a basic overview of the Electoral College, as the Constitution establishes it — a detour which we shall now briefly take.

The “Electoral College”
Regrettably, that NPV webpage seems to buy into the primary misconception Americans hold about the Electoral College: for it states [emphasis ours]:

“The U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1) gives the states exclusive control over awarding their electoral votes: ‘Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….’ The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is state law. It is not in the U.S. Constitution.”

On the contrary — not only is the “winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes … not in the U.S. Constitution,” neither is this whole, bizarre notion of state legislatures’ “awarding their electoral votes.”

The “electors” which the Constitution directs each state to appoint were not “messenger-boys” obligated to cast votes as directed; rather, they were the persons appointed in each state (in whatever way the state legislature chose), to cast their free, uncoerced votes to nominate other persons they deemed suitable for the offices of president and vice-president.[1]Except when a majority of the electors voted for the same person, the election of the president — from among the candidates with the most electoral votes — was then to be made by the House of Representatives — with each state’s delegation casting one vote.[2]

It is crucial to understand that neither in the original Constitution, nor under the 12th Amendment, were electors to be obligated, or even influenced, by either their state legislatures, or other Electors (from their own or other states):

“It is significant to note that there was to be no connection with the Electors of other states, no campaigning, no trading of votes for future influence, or “supporting your program if you support mine.” They were to give it their best shot first — because that was the only shot they had.

“In fact, the Electors met in their separate states on the same day to avoid the chance of collaborating with the Electors from other states during this process. The Electors in each state were able to freely discuss among themselves which individuals were most qualified to be president. They were not, however, forced to conform to the nominations of other Electors from their state. Each Elector’s independent decision of which two individuals to nominate was preserved and respected.” — Gary and Carolyn Alder, The Evolution and Destruction of the Original Electoral College, pp. 23, 24

In order to help ensure this independence, no elector could be a “Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States.”

Each state was allotted as many electoral votes as it has legislators in Congress — i.e., one vote for each of its representatives in the House, plus two votes for the state’s senators. Perhaps the most natural selection method(s), then, would construe two of the state’s electors as being delegates of the state (or the legislature) as a whole, and each remaining elector as a delegate from one of the state’s electoral districts for U.S. House of Representatives.

The latter is still the basic idea in those states which are currently eschewing “winner-take-all” laws: Maine and Nebraska. But each state legislature could adopt any method it wished for selection of its electors; and different states adopted widely varying methods. The NPV “explanation” webpage reports:

“In 1789, electors were chosen from congressional districts in Massachusetts, from special presidential-elector districts in Virginia, and by counties in Delaware. The Governor and his Council appointed the state’s presidential electors in New Jersey. State legislatures appointed presidential electors in the other states.”

The States’ “Winner-Take-All” Laws
We’ve noted that the NPV website’s arguments against states’ “winner-take-all” laws are, rather curiously, without force for those of us not buying into their policy-value assumptions — so alien to the American system. However, this does not mean that we have no complaint(s) of our own, against such laws.

In light of what we’ve just seen about the Constitution’s presidential-electoral system (commonly called the “Electoral College”), the most important thing to understand about “winner-take-all” laws is that any law (state or federal) which compels a presidential elector to vote any particular way is blatantly unconstitutional! That includes, of course, the NPV Compact.

Secondly, it’s helpful to note that such laws, at the state level, are the basis of the unconstitutional party-based-presidential-nomination systems in the 48 states with current “winner-take-all” laws. In these states, the electoral procedure these days is basically this: Each of the major parties selects a whole roster of provisional “electors” who are ready and sworn to serve as electors — and to vote for that party’s candidate — should that candidate happen to win the state’s popular vote. In the latter eventuality, the state legislature then anoints (so to speak) that party’s roster, as the state’s official electors for the election.

The nomination-function was originally the role of the electors. It was usurped first at the national level — by what were called “congressional caucuses.” By 1828, though, the usurpation had moved to the state level: The first election year in which the political parties and their “caucus” meetings at the state level assumed control of the nominating process, was 1832.[3]

Surprisingly, it took less time than that for most states to try out a “winner-take-all” type of statute. The first heavily competitive election, that of 1796, raised strongly the question of whether states’ electors should be chosen “by a general ticket [winner-take-all], or by districts”: This was how Democratic-Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson framed the issue in a subsequent letter (Jan. 12, 1800) to James Monroe, then governor of Virginia — and likewise a Democratic-Republican.

Jefferson was still smarting from having lost the presidency by only three electoral votes “because presidential electors were chosen by district in the heavily Jeffersonian states of Virginia and North Carolina, and Jefferson lost one district in each state.”[4] In addition, both major parties (Democratic-Republican and Federalist) were disgruntled by the fact that the Electoral College system had engendered a bipartisan team of President (Federalist John Adams) and Vice-President (Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson).[5]

In his letter, Jefferson mentioned to Governor Monroe:

“On the subject of an election by a general ticket [winner-take-all], or by districts, … all agree that an election by districts would be best, if it could be general [to all states]; but while 10 states choose either by their legislatures or by a general ticket [winner-take-all], it is folly and worse than folly for the other 6 not to do it.”

Gov. Monroe took the hint, and the Virginia legislature swung into action:

“As a result, Virginia quickly passed a winner-take-all law in time for the 1800 election — thereby assuring Jefferson of all the state’s electoral votes.

“Meanwhile, the Federalist majority in the legislature of John Adam’s home state of Massachusetts — alarmed by rising support for Jefferson in the state — repealed the state’s district system — thereby assuring John Adams of all the state’s electoral votes in 1800.

“This triggered a domino effect in which each state’s dominant political party adopted winner-take-all so that it could deliver the maximum number of electoral votes to its party’s nominee. Ten states enacted winner-take-all by 1824….

“By 1836, all but one state had enacted laws specifying that their state’s voters would vote for presidential electors on a winner-take-all basis. By 1880, all states were using this system.”[6] — NPV “explanation” webpage

And, as they say, “the rest is history.”

The Strange “NPV” Antidote
Summing up: We’ve found that we who are Constitutionalists are in strong agreement with the NPV group, that the state “winner-take-all” laws are egregious — but we are in fundamental disagreement with them, as to why those laws are (in our respective views) egregious. What is less simple to elucidate, though, is why the NPV group’s action-proposal — the interstate-compact which they are pushing — displays no intent to do away with those state laws, even though it lodged all its complaints directly against them — and why it is even, in an important sense, a higher-level establishment of the same corrupt, “winner-take-all” system which those laws undergird.

What do we mean, by its “displaying no intent” to do away with the laws it is critiquing? Let’s look at exactly what the NPV group is proposing.

They are seeking for states to enter into a compact to force their electors to vote for whomever is the winner of the “National Popular Vote.” The compact would not be binding on any state signing it, until the total number of electoral votes of the states signing it is a majority of all the electoral votes.

Since Congress has 535 members, but the District of Columbia has also been given three electors, the total number of electors is 538; so, the required majority of electors is 270. When the compact enrolls states controlling at least that number of electors and those states’ electors are therefore required to vote for the national popular-vote winner, that candidate is (ostensibly) guaranteed election.

As we’ve mentioned already, this proposal is establishing something that’s clearly unconstitutional — the violation of electors’ constitutional right and duty to nominate the qualified persons whom their conscience tells them are the best nominees. That this is so clearly and incontrovertibly the case, while the NPV site argues nevertheless to the contrary, raises serious questions about the veracity and reliability of the NPV-site’s authors (and editors).

Even the NPV website admits (see its alleged “rebuttals” 9.16.2 and 9.16.7):

“[T]he Compacts Clause does not expand state powers. All compacts must be consistent with the U.S. Constitution. In particular, a compact’s subject matter must be among the powers that the states are permitted to exercise….”

As we’ve seen as well, though, they make a grave, even bizarre error, in conflating states’ (constitutional) power to “appoint electors” in any manner they wish, with their (unconstitutional, illegal) power to “award electoral votes” in (allegedly) any way they wish (e.g., “winner-take-all”). And this bizarre confusion appears, not just once, but repeatedly on the website’s pages — particularly on the pages where it is ostensibly “answering myths.”

On the basis of that (false) conflation of two very different notions, it argues that this compact does not violate the Constitution, nor change the electoral procedure stipulated in the Constitution. Much of the verbiage on its “Myths about Interstate Compacts and Congressional Consent” page boils down to this simple, but obviously unsound argument:

“[T]he National Popular Vote compact does not change anything in the U.S. Constitution, and therefore no federal constitutional amendment is necessary …. Instead, the National Popular Vote compact changes state winner-take-all statutes that came into widespread use more than four decades after the Constitution was ratified. None of these state winner-take-all statutes was originally adopted by means of a federal constitutional amendment.” (Under “Myth 9.16.7”)
1. The state laws say (in effect): “Following the election, the state will appoint electors who are to cast all their votes for the STATE popular vote winner.”
2. The compact changes these state laws, to say (in effect): “Following the election, electors will be appointed in each Member State who are to cast all their votes for the NATIONAL popular vote winner.
(And this is the faulty premise:) Nothing about state “winner-take-all” laws violates the actual procedural requirements laid down in the Constitution; for each state has the Constitutional authority to “award electoral votes” in any way it wishes (e.g., “winner-take-all”).
So, no Constitutional amendment is necessary to effect this change: for not only does this compact leave unchanged the wording of the Constitution; also,it leaves unchanged — i.e., unviolated — the actual procedure required by the Constitution.

Thus, not only are the NPV group’s arguments for the desirability of its changes based on highly disputable premises; but also, its argument for the legality of its changes, is based on an indisputably false one. So, the question is: Why would a group of presumably intelligent people be presenting — so zealously — such unsound arguments?

There are not very many plausible answers to this. Indeed, we have seen that both the current system’s and the NPV-engineered system’s proponents are quite comfortable with running roughshod over the Constitutional prerogatives of the electors, for the sake of a direct, popular-vote-based presidential election. The difference between the two is thus a surface difference, of implementation and tactics, only.

Let’s take an analogy: It is much like the difference between banks independently allowed to issue their own fiat paper money as “legal tender,” and a centralized banking system, in which only the head office is allowed that piratic privilege. Whether centralized and thus more-coordinated or not, the system is based on a breach of rights. And in either of the more-centralized systems we have in view, though the bumpiness of the road might be rather smoothed out, the danger that the road is heading to disaster — and the potential size of that disaster — are,if anything, actually greater.

The only plausible motive for the compact, it seems, is the same one that belonged, reportedly, to the men who set up the perverted system we have now — the lure of power:

“Ten states enacted winner-take-all by 1824 when Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton said: ‘The general ticket system [winner-take-all], now existing in 10 States was … not [the offspring] of any disposition to give fair play to the will of the people. It was adopted by the leading men of those states, to enable them to consolidate the vote of the State.’”— NPV “explanation” webpage

This lure exists because granting the populace the conceit that it is in their own values and desires, and the vicissitudes of party temper, that the compass of sound government lies, promises demagogues a road to the heights of tyrannical power. Even before our Constitution was submitted for ratification, one founding father spoke of this conceit as the “excess of democracy”, and described its typical abuse by power-seekers:

“The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want [lack] virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Mass[achusetts] it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute.” — Elbridge Gerry, delegate from Massachusetts, speaking at the Constitutional Convention, 1787

And James Madison warned us of this same conceit, in a classic statement of the dangers of this “excess”:

“[Pure] democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”— James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10

The Way Forward
What should be done, instead, about our current electoral system? Given a desideratum of nullifying state’s “winner-take-all” laws — and any laws that coerce or obligate presidential electors — and given that it was fear of other states’ such laws that drove the domino effect of passing them — the idea of a state compact seems apt: Why not an NEV (National Electoral Vote) compact? When enough states have joined (having 270 electoral votes?), they would each be obliged to rescind immediately their laws that coerce or obligate their presidential electors in any way.

That’s something to be thought about, and worked through. In the meantime, though, we should certainly reject the NPV-group’s agenda. That whole program is an attempt to “remedy” — for the wrong reasons, and with the wrong motive — one grotesque perversion of the Constitution, simply by translating its basic state-vote infringement, to a national-vote scope. This is not the way to get our republic back.

Rather, we need to educate our fellow citizens, and especially our state legislators, about both the fraudulence and the ill-intention of the NPV. (To see whether or not your state has adopted the compact, please check the NPV website’s home-page.) If you have found this article a useful tool for education about those things, please share it with all who need to learn of them.

Notes

1. Their votes were, of course, restricted by the Constitution’s rules about who is eligible to be President or Vice-President; and, in both Article II and Amendment 12, at least one of each elector’s two votes had to be for someone not “an inhabitant of the same State with themselves.”

2. The main change the 12th Amendment introduced is that the two nominations each elector made were now specific to a particular office: one nomination was for the office of president, and the other for the office of vice-president. Also, the Amendment made some minor adjustments to the process of final selection by the House, for each of these offices.

3. Alder & Alder, Ibid., pp. 54, 55. This is a useful book for studying the history of the Electoral College.

4. NPV “explanation” webpage, under “History of State Winner-Take-All Laws.”

5. Alder & Alder, Ibid., pp. 60, 61.

6. Maine adopted district elections for its electors in 1969, and Nebraska did so in 1992.

The Wacky World of “Delegate Bills”

Opponents of state legislatures’ applications to Congress to call an “Article V Convention” are often also battling “delegate bills” — also known as “unfaithful delegate laws.” Such state-legislative bills are ostensibly intended to prevent delegates to an Art. V convention from going beyond the purpose of the state’s request to Congress — which is usually a convention that will propose only one amendment, and only on some specific topic (e.g., term limits).

On first blush, it might seem that by opposing delegate bills, opponents of an Art. V Convention (“Con-con”) are fighting contrary to their own interest: After all, such activists warn against a possible “runaway convention” and preventing that outcome is (supposedly) what delegate bills are for!

In fact, though, a delegate bill is only somewhat less dangerous than an actual Con-con-application by a state. This post will unravel the real nature, and danger, of these bills.

Delegate Bills’ Implicit Assumption Is What Con-con Opponents Reject

Usually, when someone opposes a measure, it’s because they want to avoid the effects mentioned in the measure itself. But in the case of “delegate bills,” we oppose the measure because we want to avoid anyone accepting the false suggestion implicit within the measure.[1]

In delegate bills, the false, dangerous unstated presupposition is the idea that state legislatures can control the proceedings of an Article V convention, once Congress has called it! For a state-legislative committee or chamber even to vote on such a bill is for it to accept implicitly this wildly specious assumption — which assumption, if the bill passes, can only give the state’s legislators false confidence that they can apply for an Article V Con-con with perfect safety.

Therefore, we must oppose any move to bring a delegate bill to a vote. But if it does come to a vote, we must push strongly for the rejection of the bill — which rejection will obstruct the inducement of this false confidence, and thereby make less likely the passage of an Art. V application (and make more likely the rescission of any application already passed).

Are delegate bills really as disconnected from reality, though, as Con-con opponents believe? Oh, yes! The rest of this post will review why the delegate bills’ unstated assumption is truly outlandish.

The Basic American Principle Which That Assumption Ignores

In the first place, the delegate bills’ unstated assumption is strikingly out of touch with a fundamental principle of government our Founding Fathers believed, and which is implicit in the first three words of our Constitution: “We the People….” Our Declaration of Independence stated the principle explicitly (see our emphasis, below, in bold):

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. — The United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776; Paragraph 2

OK, you say; but did the Founding Fathers, and the People, really believe this principle (which was later called “Popular Sovereignty”) from 1776 to 1787 (the year a convention produced our current Constitution, including Article V)? Yes, definitely — the principle had become very dear to their hearts: In fact, they used it in the creation of, and then re-stated the principle in, the constitutions for most of their newly-freed states.

Therefore, the burden of proof is certainly on those, such as Prof. Rob Natelson, who claim that the drafters of our current Constitution had a quite different notion of constitutions, conventions, and sovereignty in mind while drafting Article V! But there is little need to quibble about who has the burden of proof, for even the founders they most like to quote disagree: we can cite telling statements from both Roger Sherman and George Mason regarding Article V — both of whom were in the group that did the major work on its drafting.

Moreover, we have the full, clear statement of another major participant in its drafting, James Madison, who later, in Federalist Paper 40 (the last 4 paragraphs), cited the Declaration of Independence on this very principle to justify the “runaway convention” of 1787. For Madison, that convention exemplified:

the transcendent and precious right of the people to “abolish or alter their governments as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness,”….

At that 1787 convention, in arguing for giving the People, rather than state legislatures, power to ratify the new Constitution, George Mason expressed the principle well:

[State legislatures] are the mere creatures of the State Constitutions, and cannot be greater than their creators.… Whither then must we resort? To the people with whom all power remains that has not been given up in the Constitution derived from them. It was of great moment [Mason] observed that this doctrine should be cherished as the basis of free Government. — Max Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. II, p. 88

Therefore, since clearly the kind of drafting-convention Article V has in view is a convention of The People’s (not the legislatures’) delegates, we can affirm that within the American philosophy of government, state legislatures have no authority at all to command Article V convention delegates as to what they may or may not propose. So much, then, for the viewpoint of American jurisprudence.

But, someone might say — granted, Article V conventions are true constitutional conventions, exercising the People’s sovereign, “self-evident” right to “alter or abolish” forms of government. Even so, couldn’t state legislatures still figure out some way, possibly, to control the delegates to an Article V convention? Aren’t some of these delegate bills quite inventive, after all, in the mechanisms they contrive for making the convention-delegates toe the line? Isn’t it remotely possible, that some of those mechanisms might work?

The Insurmountable Legal Hurdles over Which the Assumption Stumbles

As we shall see, blogger and former litigation-attorney Publius Huldah is right on target in the way she has answered that question: “[A]ttempts to control Delegates with ‘unfaithful delegate’ laws are laughably ineffective.” Let’s consider a few simple reasons why that’s true — even leaving aside, for the moment, the above basic principle of American jurisprudence.

Many or most delegate bills speak as if it were completely up to state legislatures to sort out who the delegates will be (representing the legislature, after all — as these bills wrongly presuppose!), as well as, all the rules and procedures of the convention itself. In short, the people drafting delegate bills tend to do it as if Article V adds, “After Congress calls the (drafting) convention, the State Legislatures shall all go off and figure out everything about how the convention will run: who will be sent to it, what motions shall be in order when, etc., etc.”

Does it say that, though? No, Article V does not say that. It says simply, “The Congress … on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments.…” After applying to Congress to call such a convention, the state legislatures have no further role in the process.

Admittedly, neither does Article V delegate to Congress (explicitly) such tasks as providing a selection-method for delegates. However, Article I, Sec. 8 concludes with the “Necessary and Proper Clause,” which delegates to Congress the right to make any laws “necessary and proper for carrying into execution” all powers given to Congress explicitly in the Constitution — e.g., the Art. V power to “call a convention for proposing amendments” when two-thirds of the states apply for it.

The Congressional Research Service, an agency within the Library of Congress, suggests that Congress alone has the power to organize the convention. In its 2014 report entitled “The Article V Convention to Propose Constitutional Amendments: Contemporary Issues for Congress,” the Research Service states on page 4:

[W]hile the Constitution is silent on the mechanics of an Article V convention, Congress has traditionally laid claim to broad responsibilities in connection with a convention, including (1) receiving, judging, and recording state applications; (2) establishing procedures to summon a convention; (3) setting the amount of time allotted to its deliberations; (4) determining the number and selection process for its delegates; (5) setting internal convention procedures, including formulae for allocation of votes among the states; and (6) arranging for the formal transmission of any proposed amendments to the states.

Another mechanism one finds in some delegate laws is reminiscent of children playing in a schoolyard, where one of the children, not liking the way the game is going, announces huffily he is through, picks up his toys, and heads for home. Apparently, some state legislators believe that a similar behavior on the part of their delegates, in case the Art. V convention doesn’t go the way they like, will not merely show their displeasure, but also somehow pull the plug on the convention, ending its work.

One way to look at this remarkable assumption is to ask whether Article V says (or implies somehow) that the convention’s work will not be considered to have completed legitimately unless no state legislature withdraws its application, before the work’s completion. But of course, it does not say (or imply) that; nor is there the slightest reason, in the Article itself or in American jurisprudence or legal history, to imagine that a state’s application has any further effect once Congress has accepted and tallied it.

One final delegate-control mechanism we shall consider is the legislature’s threat of punishment — or at least, withdrawal from the convention — of any delegate who votes contrary to the intent of the state’s application for a convention. Indeed, some delegate bills have classified all such “unfaithful” voting punishable as a felony!

Such a mechanism assumes, however, that the state legislature will be kept strictly apprised of what’s going on within the convention — including, who voted how on what. But this is a spurious assumption. Since state legislatures do not control its procedures, the convention could have voice votes — in which case no one knows who voted how — or, even if the votes be by rollcall, they could be by secret ballot. Or, the secrecy could be made complete: As happened early in our own, 1787 constitutional convention, the assembly could simply vote to keep the entire proceedings secret!

Thus — as we said above — state legislators are quite divorced from reality when they suggest that they can control an Article V convention’s deliberations. Often, it is difficult not to laugh at the ingenious but impotent devices whereby they expect to control such a convention.

However, it is not mere courtesy that prevents us from laughing at these failed attempts. For the danger that these incapable delegate bills present is not a laughing matter: Our brilliant Constitution, a true wonder of the ages, is in danger! We must make clear to all state legislators enticed by these siren songs, that “delegate bills” cannot control an Article V convention!

* * *

[1] That is to say, whether the measure should be passed or rejected is, in the case of delegate bills, not a simple, but a “complex” (a.k.a. “loaded”) question! And as logicians and rhetoricians warn,

A “loaded question”, like a loaded gun, is a dangerous thing. A loaded question is a question with a false or questionable presupposition, and it is “loaded” with that presumption. The question “Have you stopped beating your wife?” presupposes that you have beaten your wife prior to its asking, as well as that you have a wife. If you are unmarried, or have never beaten your wife, then the question is loaded.…

So, a loaded question is one which you cannot answer directly without implying a falsehood or a statement that you deny. For this reason, the proper response to such a question is not to answer it directly, but to either refuse to answer or to reject the question. — http://www.fallacyfiles.org/loadques.html

The “New NAFTA” Power Grab

Following an agreement with Canada, President Trump claimed victory in the negotiations to replace NAFTA:

The president said it fulfills his campaign pledge to replace NAFTA, which he called “perhaps the worst trade deal ever made,” and claimed it will transform the U.S. back into a “manufacturing powerhouse.”

“Throughout the campaign I promised to renegotiate NAFTA and today we have kept that promise,” he said during a news conference, calling it “truly historic news for our nation and indeed the world.” — The Hill, 10-1-18

The reality, however, is greatly different. NAFTA was much more than a “trade deal.” And so is its proposed replacement — “The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement” (USMCA).

Progressive Regionalization
Both are merely disguised as “trade pacts.” Their real purpose is to evolve into an Internationalist-controlled regional government, à la the European Union. And eventually into an Internationalist-controlled world government, while hiding that objective from the American people.

In their excellent 2003 book, The Great Deception: A Secret History of the European Union, British journalist Christopher Booker and Dr. Richard North (a former research director for an agency of the European Parliament) described how the British people were deceived into joining the European Union:

[Prime Minister Edward] Heath’s own bid to join the Common Market began what for the British people was to be the greatest deception of all…. Heath persistently misrepresented Britain’s membership of the Common Market as no more than a trading issue….

Only 30 years later would it come to light from the Foreign Office’s confidential papers just how conscious were its officials of the extent to which Britain was about to surrender its powers of self-government. None of this was publicly admitted at the time, although the author of the FCO’s internal memorandum on “Sovereignty” justified the concealment by suggesting that the British people would not notice what was happening until the end of the century, by which time it would be too late to protest because the process would have become irreversible.

Edward Heath was not alone, even among British politicians, in perpetrating the deception. “For 40 years,” says Booker, “British politicians have consistently tried to portray it [the Common Market and EU] to their fellow-citizens as little more than an economic arrangement: a kind of free-trading area primarily concerned with creating jobs and prosperity, which incidentally can help preserve the peace.”

Both the late David Rockefeller (former chairman of the Internationalists’ Council on Foreign Relations [CFR]) and CFR heavyweight Henry Kissinger (whom President Trump now calls his “friend”) lobbied in the nation’s press for NAFTA. Both candidly supported NAFTA as a steppingstone to something larger. In a 1993 column that appeared in the July 18 Los Angeles Times, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared:

It [NAFTA] will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere…. [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system.

A few months later, David Rockefeller championed the agreement in the Wall Street Journal: “Everything is in place — after 500 years — to build a true ‘new world’ in the Western Hemisphere,” Rockefeller enthused, adding “I don’t think that ‘criminal’ would be too strong a word to describe … rejecting NAFTA.” (See our earlier post: “Renegotiate NAFTA? — No Way! Get US out!”)

“Free Trade” Deception
As with NAFTA, the new agreement establishes a regional bureaucracy to “manage” trade in minute detail. The total number of pages for the treaty, its annexes, and side letters amounts to more than 1,800 pages.

At first, the proposal might seem more honest without “free trade” in the name — less doublespeak. Not so. Article 1.1 of the agreement, titled “Establishment of a Free Trade Area” states:

The Parties, consistent with Article XXIV of the GATT 1994 and Article V of the GATS, hereby establish a free trade area.

And the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative website (ustr.gov) lists the USMCA as a Free Trade Agreement.

And so, the agreement still postures as something that “free trade conservatives” would support. But there is little “free” in a regional bureaucracy that would manage trade. And, as with the old NAFTA, the USMCA is an unconstitutional alienation of U.S. sovereignty. Its Free Trade Commission, for example, can modify the agreement without the approval of Congress.

Internationalist Support for USMCA
Just as Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller both championed NAFTA, so Richard N. Haass, the current President of the Council on Foreign Relations, endorses the proposed USMCA. In an October 2 tweet, Haass stated:

USMCA is NAFTA plus TPP plus a few tweaks. Whatever…if @real Donald Trump and the Congress are now prepared to embrace a pro-trade agenda, it is all to the good. Ideally, US participation in TPP by another name would be next; failing that, a US-Japan FTA would be second best.

And what else would we expect from an agreement negotiated by Robert Lighthizer? The U.S. Trade Representative (left) is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which has long championed Internationalist-run world government. When tapped by Trump, Lighthizer was a partner at a CFR corporate-member law firm.

The USMCA agreement clearly supports the Internationalist agenda. The text demands compliance with rules of the World Trade Organization, the International Labor Organization (ILO) (now a specialized agency of the UN system), and other international agreements, some never ratified by the U.S., such as the UN’s Law of the Sea Treaty.

As just one example of the Internationalist ties, Article 23.2 states: “The Parties affirm their obligations as members of the ILO, including those stated in the ILO Declaration on Rights at Work and the ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization (2008).” (See here for full text of the agreement.)

Trump supporters should ask themselves why Trump is supporting this subversion. Is he really being taken in by his advisors or has he been on board with the Insider agenda all along?

Before the USMCA can take effect, Congress must pass an implementing bill, which could be addressed in the Lame Duck session after the November midterm elections. If Congress approves the USMCA, not only will the U.S. move another step toward totalitarian world government, but the approval will also neutralize much of the needed future opposition from conservatives and conservative lawmakers, as it will be regarded as the product of an “outsider,” conservative president.

Recommended action: 1) Urge your representative and senators to oppose implementation of the USMCA; 2) Alert others to this deceptive attack on our independence as a nation by sharing this post widely.

UN Climate-Change Hysteria

The world stands on the brink of failure when it comes to holding global warming to moderate levels, and nations will need to take “unprecedented” actions to cut their carbon emissions over the next decade, according to a landmark report by the top scientific body studying climate change….

“There is no documented historic precedent” for the sweeping change to energy, transportation and other systems required to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote in a report requested as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. — “The world has just over a decade to get climate change under control, U.N. scientists say,” — Washington Post, 10-8-18

The UN’s IPCC is constantly challenged to ramp up its climate-change hysteria, while the Establishment’s Washington Post is all too ready to report the Internationalist propaganda at face value.

Let’s look first at what some experts have to say regarding the reliability of the claims. And then we’ll examine the subversive agenda that is driving the hysteria.

Don’t Trust the UN’s IPCC
The UN, in cooperation with the Establishment media, regularly promotes the fiction that there is a “scientific consensus” re man-made global warming due to the release of greenhouse gases. And of course, the media refuses to report the mountains of scientific evidence disputing those claims. Instead, when forced to mention “the deniers” at all, it characterizes such objective contradictory science as industry-financed or even as a criminal threat to life on the planet.

One authority, who has tried to shine the light of day on the topic, is Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Professor Emeritus, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now retired. In 2015, he wrote in Climate Change: The Facts:

Global warming is about politics and power rather than science. In science, there is an attempt to clarify, in global warming, language is misused in order to confuse and mislead the public….

Advocates of policies allegedly addressing global warming use models not to predict but rather to justify the claim that catastrophe is possible.

On the same day as the above Washington Post story, Professor Lindzen delivered a lecture for the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London. His lecture, entitled “Global Warming for the Two Cultures,” attempted to explain what really drives climate change and how non-scientists and non-specialists were being bamboozled by the “carbon dioxide” is the enemy propaganda. In conclusion, he says:

So there you have it. An implausible conjecture backed by false evidence and repeated incessantly has become politically correct ‘knowledge,’ and is used to promote the overturn of industrial civilization. What we will be leaving our grandchildren is not a planet damaged by industrial progress, but a record of unfathomable silliness as well as a landscape degraded by rusting wind farms and decaying solar panel arrays.

A number of such experts are incensed by the Establishment’s media line supporting the global warming scare, but they don’t get coverage in most media outlets. However, the Investor’s Business Daily, a business alternative to the Establishment’s Wall Street Journal, has reported the opposition to the UN climate-change propaganda. On June 2, 2015, the Investor’s Business Daily provided a commentary: “Isn’t It About Time Climate Scientists Confessed?”:

We’ve mentioned before that the climate models the United Nations and others use to claim that the planet is becoming dangerously hot are flawed. In fact, they’re just plain wrong. We base our belief in part on the work of Roy Spencer, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who has said that 95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979….

Given that there’s so much evidence contrary to the global warming narrative, climate scientist Patrick J. Michaels justifiably wants to know when other climate scientists will finally admit they’ve been wrong.

“Day after day, year after year, the hole that climate scientists have buried themselves in gets deeper and deeper,” Michaels writes on the Cato Institute blog. “The longer that they wait to admit their overheated forecasts were wrong, the more they are going to harm all of science.”

What’s Driving the Misleading Forecasts?
Unfortunately, the misleading forecasts are not just mistakes or even self-serving science. The climate change hysteria is designed, with major financial backing, to support the Internationalist power grab and its attack on the independence of nations. Here we draw from one of many authoritative exposés.

In 2009, Regnery published Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, by Steve Milloy, which exposed a great deal of the agenda (see our 2009 review, “A Masterful Wake-up Call”). Milloy provided extensive documentation of how the environmental movement was created, its high-level funding, and what its agenda is. As Milloy expresses it:

Make no mistake: living green is really about someone else microregulating you — downsizing your dreams and plugging each one of us into a brand new social order for which we never bargained. It’s about … having the boundaries of your life drawn by others.

The central concept of this book is that there is hardly any area of your life that the greens consider off limits to intrusion. There is almost no personal behavior of yours that they consider too trivial or sacrosanct to regulate.

Milloy documents that a primary green objective is to create scarcity, which then provides the pretext for government regulation and rationing. And what better way to bring a modern industrial economy to its knees than to starve it of energy? The current tactic to achieve energy scarcity is to emphasize the development of “renewable” energy, while attaching burdensome strings to the development of resources that can supply our immediate energy needs. Colorado, as Milloy points out, is the Saudi Arabia of shale oil. Yet this resource has been off limits to development.

Milloy concludes: “But if the government were to use an energy crisis as a pretext to tighten its grip on the energy supply, it would vastly expand the state’s ability to dictate the everyday parameters of how we live our lives….. [E]nergy — the very thing that has enabled the American way of life — can also be used to quash it.”

Milloy’s book also touches on the broader internationalist agenda that threatens the sovereignty of nations. He titles one section: “National Sovereignty: It Was Nice While It Lasted” and notes: “[T]he greens aim to use the specter of a global warming catastrophe to subjugate America to global governance.” And he explains the dangers of global governance to our system of government and the constitutional protections for our rights.

Remember that Milloy wrote this in 2009. With that background the current UN alarm can be seen for the truly dangerous threat it is:

“It’s like a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen. We have to put out the fire,” said Erik Solheim, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. — Washington Post, 10-8-18

The hidden, subversive agenda must be exposed!

GOP Fails to Protect the Unborn — Mike Lee

Under this bill, neither the unborn nor taxpayers are any more protected from the abortion industry than they were under President Obama and a unified Democratic Congress….

This bill represents a significant opportunity missed — and missed at a time when we can’t be sure how many more we will be given going forward, how many more opportunities like this one we might have. — Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), 9-18-18

On September 18th, the Senate “debated” the House-Senate “compromise” on the FY2019 Defense Appropriations bill (Senate Vote 212). Earlier the Senate leadership had attached the unrelated Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill to the Defense bill in order to bring the big-government Democrats on board. Only 7 senators voted against the “compromise,” which was very much like their earlier minibus.

During the ostensible debate, Senator Mike Lee took the podium to put on record why he was voting against the bipartisan measure:

For the second straight year of unified Republican governance — unified pro-life governance — Congress’s annual spending bills will include no new reforms protecting unborn children or getting Federal taxpayers out of the abortion business.

The House version of this Health and Human Services spending bill included multiple reforms. It denied taxpayer funds to the largest abortion provider in the country, Planned Parenthood. It eliminated title X family planning grants, which cross-subsidize abortion providers. It prohibited Federal funding of research on aborted fetal tissue. It included the Conscience Protection Act protecting pro-life people and groups from funding discrimination.

None of these modest, commonsense spending reforms survived the House-Senate negotiations — none of them. None was made a priority by the people empowered to set the priorities….

But before this bill passes with an overwhelming bipartisan supermajority as its base of support — despite it being mostly unread by its supporters — someone ought to speak up for the Americans whom this legislation conspicuously leaves behind….

Some causes are worth fighting for, even in defeat — the God-given equal rights and the dignity of all human beings paramount among them. — [Emphasis added.]

Instead of following Senator Lee’s example, Senate appropriators touted bipartisan compromise and insisted, hypocritically, that in the interest of such compromise and getting things done on time, they had eliminated so-called controversial “poison pills” from the legislation. But attaching the largely unconstitutional and unrelated Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill to the Defense bill was itself such an act. In fact, in the House, 56 Republicans rejected this compromise to the Left, but only 5 Democrats (see House Roll Call 405).

Here are some examples (excerpts from the debates) [Emphasis added]:

Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), member Appropriations Committee: “This is a bipartisan agreement…. Today’s bill, I think, reflects the priorities of both sides of the Capitol and both sides of the aisle. We fulfilled the commitments the leaders made in the February budget agreement to keep the extraneous issues off these bills that fund the government.”

Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee: “Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues, particularly Leaders McConnell and Schumer and Vice Chairman Leahy for their help in moving this package. The conference report before the Senate accelerates the rebuilding of America’s military and provides our men and women in uniform with the largest pay increase in nearly a decade.

“It also increases NIH’s budget by $2 billion and provides critical resources to combat the opioid epidemic. And, it contains no poison pill riders. On the whole, the conference report tracks very closely with the Senate version of this package, which passed by a vote of 85 to 7. I hope it will receive the same level of support today and urge my colleagues to vote yes.”

Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), member Appropriations Committee: “In conclusion, the outcome of much of this bill shows what we can accomplish when Democrats and Republicans work together.”

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), ranking Democrat on Appropriations Committee: “The two bills in the package before us — the Defense bill and the Labor-HHS-Education bill — are a product of hard work and bipartisan cooperation….

“We are still in conference on a four-bill minibus…. Most of the funding issues have been resolved. We do have some controversial poison pill riders. We shouldn’t delay this package over unrelated policy matters that have no place on must-pass spending bills. Get the poison pills out and pass the bills.”

Such audacity! With the Health and Human Services bill attached to the Defense bill it is very much germane to decide whether or not to fund abortion providers with taxpayer money. It’s just a matter of which group GOP senator leaders wanted to cater to — members of their own party or openly radical socialists. Senator Lee comments:

The best measure of any government or any policy or proposal can be measured according to its impact on the least among us. Too often today, Washington acts as though “the least among us” refers to our most vulnerable incumbents rather than our most vulnerable constituents. This $1.3 trillion spending bill exemplifies that very confusion and fails that very test….

I understand that fighting on contentious issues comes with a cost. I understand that it is not easy. But other things come with a cost too. It is not just this that comes with a cost — so, too, does not fighting on them, especially in the rare moments when we could win. This bill represents a significant opportunity missed — and missed at a time when we can’t be sure how many more we will be given going forward, how many more opportunities like this one we might have. Some causes are worth fighting for, even in defeat — the God-given equal rights and the dignity of all human beings paramount among them. [Emphasis added.]

Senator Lee’s complete remarks
For your interest, we include here the complete text of Senator Lee’s remarks as reported in the Congressional Record (9-18-18) [Emphasis added]:

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah): “Mr. President, I am a Republican because I am a conservative. I am a conservative because I believe the Constitution and the ideals that it asserts on behalf of the American people are worth protecting, worth defending, even when they are untimely, even when they are unpopular, and especially for the vulnerable, for the marginalized, and for the forgotten among us.

“Equal rights, equal opportunity, equal justice under the law, equal dignity under God — we fail as Americans when we violate these ideals, when we neglect them to whatever degree, when we exclude some number of our neighbors from their God-given share of our common inheritance, when we declare in the interest of expedience and in defiance of our own national creed that some people somehow are less equal than others.

“Such was the cruelty of our Nation through our laws, long-visited on African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and ethnic minorities, on women, on the disabled, and on religious minorities, including religious minorities like my own forebears as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Happily, this is no longer the case. Happily, all of these groups — who, taken together, comprise the vast majority of all Americans — were at different times in our history affirmatively brought under the protection of our laws. This work of inclusion, of expanding the circle of legal and constitutional protection, was not a natural, organic, spontaneous, evolutionary process; it was the product of hard work — the work of vigilant citizens, activists, and lawmakers who affirmatively, aggressively, painstakingly advanced the cause of justice at every opportunity, even against the entrenched forces of the political status quo. Republicans in this Congress have undertaken such efforts on behalf of certain priorities — in particular, the tax relief and spending increases that are poised to yield a budget deficit of nearly $1 trillion this year.

“But no such legislative progress has been achieved advancing the right to life nor the plight of those denied it. For the second straight year of unified Republican governance — unified pro-life governance — Congress’s annual spending bills will include no new reforms protecting unborn children or getting Federal taxpayers out of the abortion business. The House version of this Health and Human Services spending bill included multiple reforms. It denied taxpayer funds to the largest abortion provider in the country, Planned Parenthood. It eliminated title X family planning grants, which cross-subsidize abortion providers. It prohibited Federal funding of research on aborted fetal tissue. It included the Conscience Protection Act protecting pro-life people and groups from funding discrimination.

“None of these modest, commonsense spending reforms survived the House-Senate negotiations — none of them. None was made a priority by the people empowered to set the priorities. The authors of this bill defend their $1.3 trillion compromise. And of course, this being Washington, I know, as is always the case, that in this case, it could always be worse. But before this bill passes with an overwhelming bipartisan supermajority as its base of support — despite it being mostly unread by its supporters — someone ought to speak up for the Americans whom this legislation conspicuously leaves behind.

“The best measure of any government or any policy or proposal can be measured according to its impact on the least among us. Too often today, Washington acts as though “the least among us” refers to our most vulnerable incumbents rather than our most vulnerable constituents. This $1.3 trillion spending bill exemplifies that very confusion and fails that very test. Under this bill, neither the unborn nor taxpayers are any more protected from the abortion industry than they were under President Obama and a unified Democratic Congress.

“I understand that fighting on contentious issues comes with a cost. I understand that it is not easy. But other things come with a cost too. It is not just this that comes with a cost — so, too, does not fighting on them, especially in the rare moments when we could win. This bill represents a significant opportunity missed — and missed at a time when we can’t be sure how many more we will be given going forward, how many more opportunities like this one we might have. Some causes are worth fighting for, even in defeat — the God-given equal rights and the dignity of all human beings paramount among them. The arc of history may, as I hope, bend toward life, but only if we bend it. I oppose this legislation, but I do so neither in anger nor in sadness; rather, I do so in hope, looking forward to another bill, another time in the not-too-distant future, one that stands up for those Americans who asked nothing more than the chance to one day stand up for themselves. I yield the floor.”

The “Deep State” Deception

The Insiders of the Conspiracy for world domination have long sought to neutralize expected resistance, in part by disparaging Conspiracy “theory” as a refuge of the ignorant. A principle tactic has been to highlight irresponsible and unsubstantiated conjecture, à la the emanations of Alex Jones, as representative of all claims of conspiracy. Many thinking Americans, regularly bombarded by such media, are thus understandably reluctant to consider even the solid evidence of conspiracy.

Recently, however, the Insiders have allowed, and even encouraged, the notion of a “Deep State” conspiracy to become popular. The central “Deep State” idea is that government employees are opposing a duly elected president. But this popular view serves to obscure the very real Conspiracy for totalitarian power, while confusing and neutralizing resistance. It also reinforces the great media swindle that the direction of our nation is decided by choosing a president, one of either Party acceptable to the Conspiracy.

Counterfeit Leadership
At one time, The John Birch Society (JBS) was the most reliable source for responsible leadership in exposing the Conspiracy. That mission has obviously changed.

Now the JBS seeks to identify its Conspiracy message with the “Deep State” publicity of Fox News and the mainstream media, and to promote the Establishment-supported image of President Trump as an outsider threatening the Establishment. (Note: Fox News was created by media-mogul Rupert Murdoch, at the time a member of the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations [CFR].)

In doing so, the JBS forfeits the leadership upon which so many have depended to expose a very serious threat. JBS Founder Robert Welch described the Conspiracy as the “most ruthless conspiracy in human history” — a far cry from a group of swamp creatures protecting their turf.

Even worse, the JBS and its publication, The New American, are now reinforcing the Establishment campaign to neutralize conservatives. It’s certainly worth asking why? Let’s look at some examples.

Twice so far this year, The New American has devoted an entire issue to reporting on the “Deep State.” We look here at the first, the January 8 issue. In the opening article, “Deep State: Pulling Strings from Behind the Scenes,” we read:

Whatever one may think about Trump and his policies, there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that the 45th president is under attack by the Deep State as well. Longtime establishment loyalist Newt Gingrich hinted at it on Fox News before the election. Commenting on why Trump had the establishment in a panic, Gingrich said he is “an outsider; he’s not part of the club; he’s uncontrollable; he hasn’t been through the initiation rites; he didn’t belong to the secret society.” [Emphasis added.]

The New American avoids drawing the obvious conclusion. If Trump were “uncontrollable” and “not part of the club” and “under attack by the Deep State,” then why would “longtime establishment loyalist Newt Gingrich” stump for Trump and Trump’s agenda? (See Gingrich’s 2017 book “Understanding Trump” endorsed by Trump apologist Sean Hannity.)

And why would President Trump appoint members of the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) to high positions, such as his appointment of CFR veteran John Bolton as his National Security Advisor? (See our post, “The John Bolton Charade.”) Something is very fishy! The Establishment wants us to think that President Trump is not its friend, and The New American reinforces that objective.

We are reminded that Jimmy Carter also campaigned as an outsider to gain the presidency. Later, it was revealed that Carter was very much a part of the Establishment. After Carter had become a founding member of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, Insider Zbigniew Brzezinski groomed Carter to become president. In return, Carter would choose Brzezinski as his National Security Advisor.

The next article, “Bureaucracy vs. Trump, America, Constitution,” reinforces the false leadership. We are given a very watered-down concept of conspiracy as a bunch of unelected bureaucrats worried about protecting their turf from a president who had briefly promised to drain the swamp. In fact, after the election, President Trump disavowed the concept, according to his Establishment-supporter Newt Gingrich.

Indeed, the article excuses Trump’s failure to drain the swamp as “getting bad advice,” while trivializing the real Insiders in the President’s circle:

He may very well be getting bad advice from ‘Deep State’ operatives….

In fact, some of the Deep State’s leading luminaries — such as fanatical “New World Order” advocate and population-control zealot Henry Kissinger … have even been embraced by Trump in recent months. On October 10, Kissinger visited the Oval Office and was showered with praise by the president. “Henry Kissinger has been a friend of mine. I’ve liked him, I’ve respected him,” Trump said of the man who practically embodies the Deep State swamp. “He’s a man I have great, great respect for.”

Consider: Donald Trump has criticized NAFTA as a bad deal for America and is seeking to renegotiate its terms. But NAFTA is designed as a steppingstone to regional government, à la the European Union. As such, it constitutes a very serious threat, ignored by the President. The U.S. needs to get out of NAFTA, not renegotiate it. Yet President Trump’s “friend” Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller were the primary champions of NAFTA.

In a 1993 column that appeared in the July 18 Los Angeles Times, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared:

It [NAFTA] will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere…. [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system…. A Western Hemisphere-wide free-trade system — with NAFTA as the first step — would give the Americas a commanding role no matter what happens.

Indeed, what needs to be exposed is the architecture of NAFTA and the role the globalists envision for it: a steppingstone to regional government following the path of the European Union, and then a merging of regional governments into an unelected world-government tyranny.

In short, the American people are being scammed by the idea of a Deep State. Donald Trump is no serious threat to the globalist agenda, and The New American’s focus on the popularized “Deep State” bureaucracy of self-serving bureaucrats obscures the real looming danger.

Elsewhere, the magazine speaks of a “Deep State behind the Deep State” and ties the concept to “the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg network, as well as the secret societies.” But that only compounds the damaging confusion.

In the issue’s closing article, “Exposing the Deep State,” Arthur R. Thompson, the current CEO of The John Birch Society, claims:

But it is also true that the Deep State views President Trump as an outsider [thereby echoing Insider Newt Gingrich]. The swamp creatures detest him and his message of “America First….”

If that is true, then why does Trump appoint CFR swamp creatures to high positions? Moreover, let’s see how the Internationalist Establishment — the very real force that directs most of our government — actually views the President’s “America First” message.

Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is the magazine of the International Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations. The November/December 2016 issue of Foreign Affairs, published shortly before the election, addressed “The Power of Populism” and presidential candidate Donald Trump’s appeal to America First. Although the articles register some concern, the authors are definitely not alarmed.

Indeed, “Populism” and “America First” are portrayed as natural reactions that serve to restrain elites. In “Trump and American Populism — Old Whine, New Bottles,” Michael Kazin writes:

For his part, the Republican nominee vowed, in a major address last April: “American First” will be the major and overriding theme of my administration….

Trump is hardly the first politician to bash elites and champion the interests of ordinary people…. Adherents to the second American populist tradition — the one to which Trump belongs — also blame elites in big business and government for undermining the common folk’s economic interests and political liberties…. At its best, populism provides a language that can strengthen democracy, not imperil it…. Populism has had an unruly past…. But Americans have found no more powerful way to demand that their political elites live up to the ideals of equal opportunity and democratic rule to which they pay lip service during campaign seasons. Populism can be dangerous, but it may also be necessary.

The “Deep State” in Action
The New American also devoted its entire August 20, 2018 issue to a “special report” on the Deep State — “Deep State in Action.” In actuality, there is little in the issue about the popular concept of the “Deep State.” Instead, the issue describes the work of Internationalists in several areas and then invents a tie to the Deep State, referring to these Internationalists as “Deep State globalists.”

In the lead essay to the issue, “The Deep State and Its Subversive Designs,” editor Gary Benoit accepts media complaints about President Trump and stories about a Deep State conspiracy as unquestionably sincere:

Anyone who doubts the reality of the Deep State needs only to survey today’s major news stories to recognize both that the Deep State exists and that this unelected shadow government within the executive branch of the U.S. government hates President Trump and is working to undermine and even overthrow his presidency.

The misdirection here is mindboggling (see The Bottom Line, below). Certainly, the JBS leadership recognizes the advantage to the Insiders of hyping conflict, real or otherwise, as with the promotion of professional wrestling. Attacks from the Left serve to convince busy conservatives that they can sit back and depend on “their” president to do what can be done.

Indeed, the JBS “leadership,” is encouraging the Trump euphoria, supporting the Establishment swindle that the American system is all about choosing a king every four years, and even insisting that everyone knows about the Conspiracy now — more “counterfeit leadership.”

Indeed it’s hard to see the difference in what’s coming out of JBS and what we expect from the Establishment’s Rush Limbaugh (who also targets the “Deep State”) or its National Review (see, for example, “Trump the Outsider,” May 21, 2018).

And the JBS now claims to have been exposing the Deep State for 60 years — an outrageous fabrication!

Conservative Fundraising Pumps a “Deep State” Threat
Most beltway “conservative” organizations fail to organize or inspire any grassroots efforts. Their message is merely “just send us money and you can sit back and relax. We’ll do good things on your behalf and report back to you.” The popularized “Deep State” seems to be their latest fundraising hot button.

A recent fundraising letter from the Campaign for Liberty was titled: “Stop the Deep State Coup.” Although the letter was written over former Congressman Ron Paul’s signature as Chairman, we doubt that Ron wrote it or even plays much of a role in the organization to which he lends his name.

While in Congress, Ron Paul would never admit there was a Conspiracy (he preferred to treat the battle as purely ideological among mistaken, sincere people). So it’s interesting to see what kind of Conspiracy he (or his fundraisers) have suddenly discovered:

There’s a cabal of Washington, D.C. insiders plotting a Deep State Coup to send a message that’s as clear as it is chilling . . .

They think the American people’s ability to determine the direction of our own government is just too “dangerous” to be allowed to stand….

The truth is, this Deep State Coup isn’t a coup against any one president. It’s a coup against us. The American people. It’s about our ability to determine our own destiny.

After watching the establishment of BOTH parties fail so spectacularly over the past two decades, the American people chose a president without establishment pedigree to stick it to ‘The Swamp’ in 2016 in no uncertain terms.

But Deep State swamp dwellers were never going to go down without a fight….

The truth is, the unchecked growth of government over the past few decades has resulted in thousands upon thousands of ‘Deep State’ Washington, D.C. bureaucrats who believe they should be the ones in charge.

That’s about as watered-down a description of what is driving America’s decline as you can imagine. It does nothing to inform readers regarding the very real Conspiracy for power that threatens America. But it does exploit those who support President Trump in order to raise money.

Similarly, a fundraiser from the conservative Judicial Watch group states:

Right now, Judicial Watch is in federal court with over 30 separate lawsuits to get to the truth behind a serious threat to our constitutional republic.

These lawsuits can help expose the illicit Deep State conspiracy to abuse government powers to target the Trump presidency….

Please, I urge you to help us today with a special contribution to help us fight in federal court.

It is time to confront illegal secrecy in government.

The charge that a conspiracy of turf-protectors originated within government actually reverses the record, while hiding the very real Conspiracy for totalitarian power. That Conspiracy originated outside of government and has successfully enabled its adherents to be appointed to positions of trust in government. For example, Freedom First Society’s Masters of Deception — The Rise of the Council on Foreign Relations pointed to the real origin and nature of current State Department control:

Within two weeks of the outbreak of war in Europe, the Council on Foreign Relations seized the opportunity to gain a foothold within the U.S. State Department. Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs, and Walter Mallory, the CFR’s executive director, met in Washington with Assistant Secretary of State George Messersmith (CFR). Armstrong and Mallory offered the CFR’s help in developing wartime policy and postwar planning for the State Department. Out of their offer grew the War and Peace Studies project, with financing by the Rockefeller Foundation.

The group worked in secret. Keep in mind that this “study group” was formed a full two years before the United States was brought officially into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The CFR’s “temporary” project and personnel were gradually absorbed into the State Department, and their influence expanded into permanent domination.

The Bottom Line
The attacks on President Trump from the Left have the effect of driving many conservatives more firmly into the pro-Trump camp. Reports of a Deep State conspiracy opposed to President Trump have the same effect.

Although the motivations of the several sources may be different, they all distract responsible Americans from the solid evidence of a Conspiracy to build a totalitarian world order. And they help many Americans decide to sit back and watch the President fight their battles.

Even those who believe that President Trump has good intentions should recognize that a President doesn’t have the power to reverse course alone. Our Founding Fathers and the Constitution created the House of Representatives as the means to control and rein in our government. Yet Trump’s message seems to be “leave it up to me – I’ll do it for you.” Yet this should alarm his followers, as Trump won’t be president forever.

We also observe that Trump doesn’t promote the principles of freedom, such as the Constitution, so he is supporting no real agenda to undo the inroads of the Conspiracy and he is providing no useful legacy to the next administration.

This is no time to sit back and expect any president to solve our problems. The Conspiracy’s agenda is moving rapidly forward and can only be stopped when more and more Americans inform themselves (but not with Fox News) and become involved.

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned. For example, there is the collusion in Congress to ignore the Constitution and our national debt, resulting in the decline in middle class opportunity. There is the widespread extolling of “diversity” as a replacement for a culture that supports freedom. There is the attack on the traditional family. There is the drive to legitimize the pot culture, as though the human race was created to fill an opium den. And we could point to many more.

How to Perpetuate Roe vs. Wade

Writing for Conservative Review about the “worthless” confirmation hearings for SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Daniel E. Horowitz starts with a question we consider fundamental:

How much longer are conservatives going to continue playing this cat-and-mouse game with the courts? Democrats have demonstrated that through their ideological extremism and shamelessness, they will savage any nominee, whether he is in the mold of Anthony Kennedy or Clarence Thomas. They will accuse us of litmus tests and having guarantees, as they absolutely have from every one of their lower court and Supreme Court nominees. So why not actually nominate a guaranteed Clarence Thomas who is unashamed to articulate the authentic view of the important constitutional clauses without playing the game of agreeing with premises of people who will never vote for you anyway?
— Daniel E. Horowitz, Top 9 observations on the worthless Kavanaugh hearings, September 6, 2018

Exactly. Given Trump’s opportunity to nominate a real constitutionalist to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy — who upheld Roe vs. Wade every time he had the chance — why waste it by nominating a clone of Kennedy?

Kavanaugh No Threat to Roe
Make no mistake: Despite Leftist propaganda, the Kavanaugh nomination poses no threat to Roe — a ruling which even a majority of liberal judicial scholars considers embarrassingly unconstitutional. Rather, this nomination’s perpetuation of Roe is much more likely:

When prompted by [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein on Roe and Casey, Kavanaugh emphatically referred to these cases as “precedent upon precedent.” It seems that with every new GOP nominee, with the exception of Alito, the nominees get more categorical with their agreement thatRoe is settled, and it seems that Kavanaugh used the most unqualified language…. Anyone who tells you [Kavanaugh] is likely to overturn Roe is lying. We just don’t know, and he certainly indicated the opposite. This was the 45-year promise, and it’s gone.
— Daniel E. Horowitz, ibid.

With regard to Trump, however, one must admit that the man never campaigned very seriously as anti-abortion or pro-family — or even constitutionalist. It is not really surprising, therefore, that he followed such bad “advice” as to nominate Kavanaugh.

Pro-Family Groups AWOL
What is shocking, even if it shouldn’t come as a real surprise, is that so many “Christian” and other allegedly “pro-family” groups — on the whole sadly AWOL, on family issues, since Trump’s inauguration — have supported or been at best wishy-washy about Kavanaugh’s confirmation. They are thus betraying their own constituency — including the tens of millions of unborn babies aborted because of the 1973 Roe ruling.

One notable exception to the “fecklessness” (Horowitz’s description) of conservative groups, re Kavanaugh, is the Judicial Action Group. Their Phillip L. Jauregui came out strongly against not only Kavanaugh’s nomination, but also his confirmation. (Unfortunately, Jauregui’s prediction of that confirmation’s failure was overly optimistic.) Also a very few conservative authors or journalists, including Cliff Kincaid and Gregg Jackson, have excoriated the Kavanaugh nomination and called for its rejection.

But again, these are the exception to the rule. Namby-pamby “pro-family” groups who expressed some doubts re Kavanaugh but remained non-committal pending his confirmation hearings, have swallowed the poisonous advice of well-known “Pied Piper” Tony Perkins, of the “Family Research Council”:

“Anyone who doubts Kavanaugh’s bona fides should keep in mind: this president has an exceptional track record on the judiciary,” says FRC’s Tony Perkins. “For the time being, we have to trust President Trump’s judgment — a benefit of the doubt that, based on his previous nominees, he’s earned.”
— OneNewsNow, Questions about Kavanaugh temper enthusiasm for Trump pick, July 11, 2018

Say what? Perkins is effectively advising us to put personality above principle. But conservatives, particularly Republicans, have had 60 years to notice how suicidal that strategy is. Nor has any media source — including any “right-wing” media — ever explained how that strategy makes any sense.

So, what does explain the recent AWOL and feckless nature of the “pro-family” lobby? There seems no shortage of money sloshing around in those groups; but, apparently, the agenda that these dollars are pushing is not really the “Christian,” pro-family, or Americanist one. Rather, their absence of principled opposition to Kavanaugh suggests a strange willingness to reinforce Roe vs. Wade as (horribly unconstitutional) judicial precedent.

True pro-family conservatives need to get much more selective, regarding to whom they send their hard-earned dollars — as well as, whom they support for their Congressional seats, and for other federal offices. One telltale sign of a group or campaign that is set up simply to siphon off conservative money and make it ineffective is that the group or campaign never mentions Congress’s constitutional power, in Art. III, Sec. 2, to restrict the jurisdiction of federal courts.

Lou Dobbs Pumps Trump

“Does it ever seem to you that President Trump has done more than any president in modern history in just 16 months? Yep, me too. He’s not only done more in that short time than any president since FDR, but he’s also rolled back almost all of his predecessor’s two-term, so-called legacy legislation, executive orders, and regulations. 16 months [of Trump] … and 8 years of Obama is just about gone.” — Lou Dobbs, Fox Business Network video clip, June 1, 2018

What a stretch of the facts! But the problem here is not Dobb’s blatantly unjustified assessment. The problem is that Lou Dobbs betrays his conservative audience with his assurance that everything is moving nicely under the current president — so just sit back and watch the president perform.

Before we examine the betrayal issue, however, let’s take a look at Dobb’s claim. Among his examples of Obama administration rollbacks, Dobbs lists “executive orders and regulations.” He seems to be referring to the disapproval by Congress of several administrative rules issued by the outgoing Obama administration in its waning days — hardly a major roll back of eight years of Obama.

But how about other key areas? Let’s take a brief look at the lack of progress in three — the Culture War, energy independence, and “trade” — that contradicts Dobb’s claim.

The “Culture War”

Revolutionary forces have waged a Culture War in America for decades — a ubiquitous assault upon America’s moral, spiritual, and cultural underpinnings. They have drawn support from the writings of Italian Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, who argued that the road to power in the developed countries was “to capture the culture.” Gramsci focused particularly on undermining what George Washington regarded as necessary for the support of a free society — religion and morality. And President Obama certainly picked up the Gramscian torch:

“Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced an end to the military’s longstanding ban on openly transgender service members on Thursday, fulfilling a key piece of the Obama administration’s historic legacy on LGBT rights.” — NBC News. June 30, 2016

The Obama administration’s decision to force our military to cope with multiple aspired non-biological genders was a clear subversion of military effectiveness and morale. And so, President Trump’s March 2018 order was popular in conservative quarters:

“President Trump released an order Friday night banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under ‘limited circumstances,’ following up on his calls last year to ban transgender individuals from serving.” — CBS News, March 24, 2018

However, the President’s order was quickly blocked by several court challenges, and four federal courts quickly ruled against the ban. The matter is now working its way through the courts.

Indeed, much of the public perception regarding President Trump’s accomplishments is due to the Left’s reaction to his threats or orders (such as his order temporarily banning Syrian refugees). But Trump generally allowed his orders to be blocked by radical courts or neutered. We are reminded of Andrew Jackson’s famous alleged response to a 1832 decision of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

That’s the story, in a nutshell, of the ongoing Culture War. Although it was the Supreme Court, not the Obama administration, that legitimized same-sex marriage, President Obama and a sympathetic Establishment media supported an agenda that undermined public resistance to the decision. And President Trump has accepted the decision as okay.

The inroads of the Culture War are still in place, and the war is still raging unchallenged, with the public being hammered into submission. Indeed, that war will continue until the public is informed as to its real aim — to make freedom unsustainable — and the sponsors of the groups promoting the clever, but phony pretext of tolerance are exposed for their real agenda.

Energy Independence

As another example of lack of progress, where is the substance from Trump’s announced “intention” to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords, which were signed by President Obama? The earliest the U.S. withdrawal might take place would be November 2020, (unless, as Trump demands, the U.S. could get more favorable terms)?

In the meantime, we have not seen any progress toward putting the U.S. on the road to energy independence. For example, where are the new nuclear power plants being built to increase U.S. reliance on nuclear power (as of 2015, France generated 40 percent of its electricity with this American technology, now blocked from use in the U.S.)? Or when will American companies be allowed to tap our vast reserves of shale oil?

A more fundamental weakness is the failure of the Trump administration to enlighten the public, even with tweets, as to the agenda and fundamental deception of the environmental movement. In particular, the administration is not telling the public that high-level Insiders have promoted the fiction of catastrophic man-made climate change as a pretext for a power grab. And the battle for sufficient energy at an affordable cost cannot be won without the support of an informed public.

Trade

Or how about the misplaced focus in the president’s plan to renegotiate NAFTA to get a better deal? NAFTA is a deceptive Internationalist attack on the freedom and independence of the United States. It is designed to imitate the similar deception of the European Common Market, which led to the European Union. NAFTA is much more than a trade agreement. And the U.S. needs leadership to get us out of the trap. “Fair trade” is not the issue. (See our web post, “Renegotiate NAFTA? No Way! — Get US out!”)

“This President Is a Marvel”

Much of President Trump’s real accomplishment has been to energize the Left while putting many conservatives to sleep. Both Lou Dobbs and Fox News are major forces helping to achieve the latter. They are promoting the great American swindle that a president is supposed to run our nation and that the job of a responsible public is merely to choose every four years between the GOP and Democratic contenders, as vetted by the Establishment.

In a portion of his three-minute video commentary, Dobbs “marvel[s] at President Trump’s abundant, even endless energy,” and lists the following examples:

Trump made two flights to give speeches;
he signed the “Right to Try Act”;
he pardoned the late Jack Johnson and Dinesh D’Souza;
he might soon pardon Martha Stewart.

“And now he’s slapping tariffs on Mexico and Canada because they won’t negotiate on NAFTA and the European Union because, well, just because they deserve it.

“Negotiating to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and undeterred by the massive odds against success, an unlikely success, admittedly, but one that would cause the world to catch its breath — just the kind of odds that President Trump has overcome in his extraordinary life.”

If we were seeking to pump Trump, we could easily list more credible actions. For example, we were surprised that Dobbs didn’t mention the tax cut or President Trump’s court appointees.

Instead, Dobbs mentions that Trump signed the “The Right to Try Act.” The Senate passed the Act last year by “unanimous consent” without a recorded vote. The Act changes the FDA procedures to allow critically ill patients to “try” experimental, potentially live-saving drugs. While this may deliver on one of Trump’s promises, the Dobbs and Fox focus camouflages the very real danger threating our nation (see below).

Dobbs concludes his endorsement with these words:

“And all the president is doing is leading, and as, he promised, winning. And, yes, he keeps tweeting as well.

“And if you’re confused about what he’s doing about the massive trade deficit with China, bringing 323 actions and 301s as well, tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and the European Union tomorrow, well, just read the most succinct policy statement that a president has ever written. It reads, here’s his tweet: ‘Fair trade, explanation point.’

“Like I said, this president is a marvel.”

Covering Up the Real Threat

Lou Dobb’s endorsement will certainly gain him approval from Trump fans, and help keep them hooked on Fox. But Lou Dobbs is not a “watchman on the tower” blowing a trumpet to warn of impending danger.

Instead, Lou Dobbs and Fox are playing a flute to put their viewers to sleep.

Both the conservative and Leftist wings of the CFR-controlled media serve the Internationalist Conspiracy by covering up its existence, influence, and agenda, while entertaining their audiences with relatively minor conflicts (see, for example, our web post, “The John Bolton Charade”).

Indeed, our web post, “The John Bolton Charade,”also demonstrates how the Establishment media hype phony leaders to conservatives. John Bolton, President Trump’s choice for National Security Advisor and most recently a Fox News analyst, is no real foe of the UN. While both complain about the UN, they also accept the legitimacy of the UN. But the Internationalists created the UN through deception as a step to an unaccountable world order run by them (see our web post, “The UN — Freedom’s Enemy”).

And the most prominent front group for this cabal in the U.S. is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), of which John Bolton has been a veteran member since 2000. For many years, Rupert Murdoch, the founder and current CEO of Fox News, was also a member. So perhaps it is not surprising that Fox News and its voices do not expose this group and its subversive agenda.

Most viewers of Lou Dobbs would regard him as a “conservative,” although he describes himself as an “independent populist.” Independent? The notion that the major media conglomerates have no agenda other than making money is a myth. They do not just hire anyone whom they believe can deliver exceptional ratings, and then give them a free rein. And let’s be careful of the not so well understood term “populist.” Jimmy Carter also described himself as a “populist.”

Like so many of his popular “conservative” colleagues, Dobbs provides doses of commonsense based on a seriously deficient view of what is driving America’s problems.

Indeed, the accolades Lou Dobbs paid to President Trump say a lot more about Dobbs and Fox than they do about the president.

The John Bolton Charade

“‘Maybe one of the worst mistakes that President Trump has made since he’s been in office is his employment of John Bolton, who has been advocating a war with North Korea for a long time and even an attack on Iran, and who has been one of the leading figures on orchestrating the decision to invade Iraq,” [former President Jimmy Carter, CFR, Trilateralist] said. He called the appointment, announced last week, ‘a disaster for our country.’” —, USA Today, 3-26-18

“To [J.P.] Morgan all political parties were simply organizations to be used, and the firm always was careful to keep a foot in all camps.” — Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time(New York: Macmillan, 1966), p, 950

Promotion 101 — Hype Conflict

Establishment strategists have long hyped conflict in which they pick, control, or influence both sides. In this, they follow the practice of the promoters of professional wrestling matches. Several purposes are served. Foremost is to direct conservative public attention into “safe” channels, thereby hampering the development of any serious opposition to the goal of an Insider Conspiracy — unaccountable world power.

Establishment strategists also use conflict and their dominance of the media of communications to promote “safe” leaders who will appeal to different public factions. For the conservative faction, they provide phony “conservative” leaders.

Opposition to Bolton

A clever way to convince conservatives to adopt an Establishment figure as one of theirs is to have that figure attacked by the Left. Leftist voices also need causes to maintain their loyal support. Opposing political figures who have a conservative image, even if it’s a phony image, helps fill that need.

This played out recently with the extensive criticism from the Left of President Trump’s selection of former UN ambassador John Bolton as his National Security Advisor, effective April 9, 2018.

Liberal attacks on Bolton started as far back as 2005. When President George W. Bush nominated Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Senate liberals attacked Bolton for being too conservative and anti-UN. In one Senate exchange, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told Bolton: “You have nothing but disdain for the U.N.”

The attacks helped both Bush and Bolton shore up their images as conservatives. Following repeated Senate stalling in processing the nomination, President Bush made a recess appointment of Bolton, who served as UN ambassador for a little more than a year (August 2, 2005 – December 31, 2006).

Following the announcement of President Trump’s appointment of Bolton, much of the previous criticism from the Left was recycled.

Newsweek, now managed by a former editor of the liberal Huffington Post, published an opinion piece, “John Bolton is a Threat at Home and Abroad,” by Patrick Eddington:

“In Bolton, Trump will have a kindred spirit who sees enemies everywhere and who does not hesitate to attack them, at home or abroad.” — Newsweek, 4-8-18

Much of the Establishment media also highlighted criticism of Bolton:

“Bolton, probably the most divisive foreign policy expert ever to serve as U.N. ambassador, has served as a hawkish voice in Republican foreign policy circles for decades.” — AP (3-22-18)

Bolton Endorsements

But the media reaction was not all negative. The Trump White House was able to trumpet a bunch of favorable headlines and reactions from the national press. Here are several:

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL BOARD: John Bolton for National Security

“President Trump has said he is at last assembling a Cabinet team to his liking, and late Thursday he announced that John Bolton will replace General H.R. McMaster as his National Security Adviser. It is a solid and experienced choice….”

[FFS: but note that the Wall Street Journal is now owned by Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.]

FORMER SENATOR TOM COBURN (R-OK) IN USA TODAY: Bolton Right Choice on National Security

“The president’s decision to appoint John Bolton as his national security adviser reflects an understanding of the critical lessons of history, and the Bolton designation will greatly reduce the grave risks now faced by America during today’s increasingly troubled times.”

[FFS: We don’t trust Tom Coburn. He has dedicated himself to the well financed effort to mislead state legislatures into calling for an uncontrollable constitutional convention. In March of 2015, he appeared on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News promoting a Convention of the States to eliminate “waste, fraud, or duplication.” Coburn repeated a clever deception of proponents: “It’s an Article V convention of states. It’s not a constitutional convention.” He also falsely claimed that the Founders wrote Article V so we could put limits on government. No, they gave us the Constitution to do that.]

NATIONAL REVIEW’S DAVID FRENCH: John Bolton isn’t Dangerous. The World is.

“He’s a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He’s on the board of trustees of the National Review Institute. He’s a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He’s a conservative hawk, yes, but he’s squarely in the mainstream of conservative foreign-policy thought.”

[FFS: What National Review would have us believe is “mainstream” is an outrageous audacity. National Review has served as an Establishment tool to mislead and neutralize conservatives since the days of William F. Buckley, Jr.]

THE NEW YORK TIMES’ BRET STEPHENS: John Bolton is Right About the U.N.

“I agree with Bolton about some things and disagree about others. But on the U.N. he’s been right all along. If his presence in the White House helps to scare the organization into real reform, so much the better.”

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE’S MICHAEL RUBIN IN THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Enough with the John Bolton Smears — He’ll be the Best National Security Adviser in a Generation

“But Bolton is a formidable intellect, a clear thinker, organized, and a team player. The purpose of the National Security Council is to coordinate the interagency process.”

HUGH HEWITT IN THE WASHINGTON POST: John Bolton is a Great Addition to the White House

“As the president’s top security aide, Bolton will be an honest broker and someone who can drive decisions through molasses-thick resistance. These qualities, plus his top-shelf intellect, make Bolton the best national security player to join Trump’s West Wing team so far.”

The Real John Bolton

John Bolton has solid Establishment credentials ignored by the media. Instead, media stories highlighted the fact that Trump was recruiting again from the “conservative” Fox News, where Bolton had most recently been serving as an analyst:

“President Donald Trump’s favorite TV network is increasingly serving as a West Wing casting call, as the president reshapes his administration with camera-ready personalities.

“Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, is a former U.N. ambassador, a White House veteran — and perhaps most importantly a Fox News channel talking head…. ‘He’s looking for people who are ready to be part of that television White House,’ said Kendall Phillips, a communication and rhetorical studies professor at Syracuse University. ‘This is the Fox television presidency all the way up and down.’” [Emphasis added.], AP, 3-25-18

The misleading superficial news reports did not mention Bolton’s Establishment credentials as a veteran member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) or those of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch (CFR).

Indeed, Bolton was invited to join the CFR has far back as 2000. Bolton could even boast earlier articles in the Council’s magazine, Foreign Affairs. For the January/February 1999 issue he wrote: “The Global Prosecutors: Hunting War Criminals in the Name of Utopia.” The article spelled out Bolton’s criticism of the UN’s International Criminal Court (ICC) and why he objected to U.S. membership.

In its 2000 Annual Report, the Council on Foreign Relations revealed an even closer relationship:

“Through the National Program, the Council sponsored debates in key cities nationwide on the Council Policy Initiative ‘Toward an International Criminal Court?’ CPI authors Ruth Wedgwood, John R. Bolton, Anne-Marie Slaughter [a Clinton appointee and former CFR Director], and Kenneth Roth [Executive Director of the left-wing Human Rights Watch] examined whether the United States should endorse, reject, or revise the proposal to create an international criminal court.”

Bolton’s opposition to the ICC, while serving in the Bush State Department, helped establish his “conservative” credentials. However, in a November 14, 2002 speech to the Federalist Society, he explained that the Bush administration only objected to the ICC in is present form, but would like to see “ad hoc tribunals … overseen by the UN Security Council [and] under a UN Charter to which virtually all nations have agreed.”

John Bolton has associated with many organizations, particularly those that have a conservative image and are dominated by the Establishment. A noteworthy example is the CFR-dominated “Project for the New American Century” [PNAC]. PNAC was formed in 1997 by a team that included former CFR Director Dick Cheney and William Kristol, who became its chairman. Kristol had vehemently opposed the nomination of Donald Trump, now enthusiastically embraced by Fox News. Yet in 1995, Kristol had helped found and edit the neo-con Weekly Standard magazine financed by Rupert Murdoch (CFR), who would later found Fox News. Establishment strategists undoubtedly regard apparent conflict as necessary to gain a following and therefore useful, if kept within bounds.

John Bolton has attended the exclusive, invitation-only Bilderberg Conferences of high-level Insiders, such as Henry Kissinger and Richard Haass (the current President of the CFR).

On January 21, 2003, Bolton was invited to address the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, the British counterpart to the CFR.

The Real Bolton and the UN

At a presidential press conference held on April 28, 2005, a journalist asked President George W. Bush about the controversy surrounding his nomination of John Bolton as UN Ambassador. The president’s reply included this story:

“See, the U.N. needs reform. If you’re interested in reforming the U.N., like I’m interested in reforming the U.N., it makes sense to put somebody who’s skilled and who is not afraid to speak his mind at the United Nations.

“Now, I asked John during the interview process in the Oval Office, I said, before I send you up there to the Senate, let me ask you something: do you think the United Nations is important? See, I didn’t want to send somebody up there who said, it’s not — it’s not worth a darn; I don’t think I need to go. He said, no, it’s important. But it needs to be reformed.”

What a charade! For many decades, calls to reform the UN have been used to shield the increasingly unpopular UN from demands to get the U.S. out! and thereby abolish it altogether. Indeed, U.S. withdrawal would be totally unacceptable to the Insiders at the CFR.

Recall that CFR Insiders saw World War II as an opportunity to overcome the U.S. Senate refusal to join the Internationalists’ League of Nations following World War I. Within two weeks of the outbreak of new war in Europe, and a full two-years before Pearl Harbor, trusted CFR members were allowed to take over postwar planning for the U.S. State Department. Absorbed into the State Department, they designed the UN and orchestrated the cry for U.S. membership in the UN as “mankind’s last best hope for peace.”

We don’t know what John Bolton might recommend re North Korea, but one thing we know for sure — he won’t push for the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations. “Reform” sure. Criticize yes. But withdraw no.

Indeed, in hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations committee in April 2005, John Bolton stated:

“Walking away from the United Nations is not an option…. The United States is committed to the success of the United Nations, and we view the UN as an important component of our diplomacy…. Now more than ever the UN must play a critical role, as it strives to fulfill the aspirations of its original promise….”

The Insiders of the Internationalist Conspiracy have done a good job in misleading busy conservatives by creating phony “conservative” media that promote media personalities and political leaders who posture as conservative but cooperate with the subversive agenda of the Internationalists.

In an April 2005 interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Condoleezza Rice (CFR), President Bush’s Secretary of State, echoed John Bolton’s commitment to strengthening the United Nations:

“There’s no doubt that this is an organization that needs updating and reforming in order to be effective…. And, we’re a founding member of the United Nations. We shouldn’t abandon it. We should make it a stronger instrument.”

Deception abounds! John Bolton has long played a part in advancing the CFR agenda.

Notes

Delegate Bills’ Implicit Assumption Is What Con-con Opponents Reject

The Basic American Principle Which That Assumption Ignores

The Insurmountable Legal Hurdles over Which the Assumption Stumbles

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