Community

The Real Crisis of the 2016 Election by Oliver DeMille

September 10th, 2015 // 6:30 am @ Oliver DeMille

“U.S. median income is $42,000 per year, while the European median income is $27,000. That’s close to the average difference in annual income between U.S. high school grads ($28,000) and college graduates ($45,000). And the current elite class wants America to become more like Europe. This explains much of what Washington is doing these days.”

 What Is Coming

There is a serious crisis coming. Most people just hope it won’t come. Their subconscious minds tell them: “If we hope hard enough, and avoid thinking about it, maybe it won’t happen.”

Sadly, it isn’t quite that simple. The crisis is coming.

What’s the Crisis? Imagine this: It’s the summer of 2017, and we have another career politician in the White House. On the day of the 2016 election, or even earlier, we learned that none of the anti-Establishment candidates were going to win. Instead, the media informed us that the American electorate was putting another regular politician into office.

And since inauguration day, that president has followed a path similar to earlier presidents, from Bush I and Clinton, to Bush II and Obama: the national debt is still skyrocketing, our foreign policy is a disaster, the government is growing, increased regulations attack our prosperity every month, and the Supreme Court is legislating additional policies that hurt the nation.

On top of all this, the mandates of Obamacare are really kicking in now, increasing many small business costs by 30% or more annually—and as a result, those businesses that survive are laying off large numbers of employees. Your family health insurance premiums are up many thousands of dollars a year. The economy is still struggling, with less than a 2% growth rate, and good-paying jobs are increasingly scarce. At least one or two of your close friends or family members have lost their jobs.

In other words, it’s clear that the 2016 election has changed almost nothing. Terrorist attacks are increasing in both Europe and a few targeted attacks in the United States—as Iran uses its new $100 billion dollars to fund such violence. ISIS is still spreading, and China continues to increase its naval presence around the Pacific Rim. Moreover, Putin is becoming increasingly aggressive, not just in Eastern Europe but also in Syria, the North Pole, and the Pacific.

If the new president is a Democrat, there is a strong push to increase taxes and federalize even more state-level programs. If, contrast, if the president is a Republican… well, exactly the same thing is happening.

If we vote for the same kind of candidate we’ve voted for since 1988 (a career politician), we’re going to get the same thing we’ve experienced since…you know…1988. Meaning that career politicians are going to give us the same thing that career politicians have always given us:

Increased government. Very little positive change. A continual slide toward bigger government, higher debts, and decreased individual prosperity and freedoms.

Coming Paths

This is the crisis ahead: More of the same. Except that it’s continually a bit worse, year after year, election cycle after election cycle.

“The definition of insanity,” you remind yourself, “is to keep doing the same thing while expecting different results.” In business, the prime directive is that to actually change an organization, you have to significantly change the leadership. If career politicians keep running the White House, little is going to change. This is true.

It’s frustrating. We don’t want to believe it, because we hope things will be different this time. But each election proves that it’s the reality. Career politicians do what career politicians do. Over and over.

Specifically: whatever career politicians say as candidates, once they’re elected they do what they’ve done before. Count on it. The following presidential candidates are not going to bring much change to Washington:

• Joe Biden
• Hillary Clinton
• Jeb Bush
• Chris Christie (to his credit, Christie is openly promising to do what career politicians do: just more of the status quo)
• Marco Rubio
• Scott Walker
• John Kasich (actually, at least Kasich has balanced two major budgets—the federal budget during the 1990s, and Ohio’s budget while serving as governor; thus, he’ll likely do this again—even if he doesn’t do much else, this is a pretty good thing)

But does anyone actually believe that if Jeb Bush is elected president we’ll reverse the national debt, repeal Obamacare, or seriously send education decisions and funding back to the states, where it belongs? No way.

The above candidates are part of the system; and reaching the pinnacle of the system they’ve spent their lives supporting won’t incentivize them to drastically change things. Whatever your political views, it’s clear that those who’ve made their lives in the system aren’t likely to alter it in any significant way. Period.

The following are a lot more likely to really change things:

• Bernie Sanders
• Carly Fiorina
• Rand Paul
• Donald Trump
• Ted Cruz
• Ben Carson

Say what you want about them, but they aren’t part of the typical Washington Establishment.

If elected, would one of them actually change things?

Maybe. Maybe not. But there is at least a chance.

In contrast, with the first list above, there’s no reasonable, rational expectation of real change.

Part II: What Will the Crisis Look and Feel Like for Americans?

Beyond the question of whether or not real change will come after the 2016 election, a deeper question is this: “If it doesn’t come, what will happen?”

In other words, “Where is our current national trajectory taking us?” First of all, if real change does come, it could take a number of different directions. That’s what change does. Genuine change is almost impossible to predict, because a significant change causes so many additional, cascading, changes.

If anyone on the first list above becomes our next president, I believe we have less than a 1% chance of changing course in a serious way that really shifts our national direction. Even if someone on the second list is elected, I’m convinced we’ll have less than a 40% chance of such a course correction (and 0% if it’s Bernie Sanders).

And let’s be clear: a course correction is desperately needed. If it doesn’t come, where are we headed?

Answer: In the early 1960s, many in the Euro-American elite class adopted the idea that the U.S. was beginning to outpace the nations of Western Europe—economically, technologically, and militarily. Moreover, they calculated that such a divide would be bad for business (specifically the business of the elites, which includes both the economic endeavors of the 1% and also their political influence).

To combat this growing divide, the elites began using their institutional, fiscal, and monetary influence to make the United States more like Europe. They began in earnest by dropping the gold standard in 1971, and providing an influx of elite money into higher education donations and endowments, and simultaneously with increased investment in and ownership of major media outlets.

Influenced by these funds and those who provided them, education began spreading the idea that America should be more like Europe, and the graduates of these programs increasingly dominated the campus scene through the seventies and eighties. By 1987, Allan Bloom decried what amounted to the Europeanized politicization of higher education in his bestselling book The Closing of the American Mind.

Choosing a Dream

Media increasingly reinforced this same message—“America should be more like Europe”—in stories and reports, from the major national newspapers to the Big 3 television networks. Nearly all cable channels and Establishment-supported Internet news outlets followed suit.

Among Establishment policy makers, Samuel Huntington’s writings on “Civilizations” and Francis Fukayama’s “End of History” essays pointed U.S. financial-, domestic-, and foreign-policy institutions (and bureaucracies) in the same direction.

Where does this leave us today? The “American Dream” includes the ideal that each household should achieve home ownership, financial independence (at least by the time of retirement), cars, savings, education for the kids, and a better lifestyle for each additional generation. In contrast, a middle class family in Europe typically lives in an apartment, has fewer children than American families, owns (on average) less than one car, and expects decreasing financial opportunities for coming generations.

To put this in financial terms, the U.S. median income is $42,000 per year, while the Western European median annual income is $27,000.

While it may not appear so at first, these numbers are drastically different—especially if you are applying for a home or vehicle loan, trying to start a business, deciding how many children to have, or funding a child’s college education. Indeed, an American family of three making the European median income of $27,000 a year typically lives in an apartment and has approximately $4,050 a year or less in disposable income. The U.S. median income of $42,000 upgrades the family to a home and $12,180 in annual disposable income.

That’s roughly the same as the average difference in annual median income between U.S. high school grads ($28,000) and college graduates ($45,000). That’s right: the direction of U.S. median income is headed toward less than the average wages of high school grads.

This comparison is not overstated. This is where we’re headed. Of course, the affluent classes won’t suffer this same fate, but a lot more Americans will become part of the struggling class. Just like in Europe.

Who we vote for matters.

If we want real change, we need to vote for something different.

Category : Aristocracy &Blog &Business &Citizenship &Community &Constitution &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Education &Foreign Affairs &Generations &Government &History &Independents &Leadership &Liberty &Politics

A New Great Book in the Battle for Freedom! Review by Oliver DeMille

August 19th, 2015 // 2:36 pm @ Oliver DeMille

 Steps to Freedom

I read another great book today, and it rekindled my sense of hope for the future. If you care about freedom, you’ve got to read it! This new classic is Liberty’s Secrets by Joshua Charles, and it is…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s a story here, an important one. And I need to tell it in order to do justice to this book. In a world of brief sound bites and too frequently shallow media and educational conversations, a great book is easily overlooked. Such greats all too often go unnoticed because we live in an era of constant—aggressive—distraction. So to introduce a genuinely great book, we need to get this right. Here goes…

I. The Great Books

I was a young boy when first it happened, old enough to ride my bicycle to the library on hot summer afternoons and find interesting books to read, but young enough that high school sports and summer trainings weren’t yet part of my daily routine. One day under the memorable breeze of the town library’s large swamp cooler I came across a long shelf of books that boldly called themselves “The Great Books”. I stopped and stared. I re-read the title, then pondered.

“These can’t be the only great books,” I reasoned to myself. “There must be others.” Intrigued, I pulled out a volume and perused the title page, then skimmed through several chapters at the beginning of the book. I was impressed by the small print, the columns and footnotes, and the sheer quantity of big, unfamiliar words. They were downright intimidating.

I marveled a bit, rubbing my fingers along the cloth-covered bindings. I knew I would read these books some day. I just knew it.

I remember nothing specific about which volumes I investigated that day, but I skimmed many of them, reading a sentence here and another there. The afternoon passed, and I eventually returned the last volume I’d removed to its place on the shelf and went to the front counter to check out the L’Amour novel I’d selected for the week’s reading.

We lived in the desert, and it was a very hot summer, so during the exertions of my bike ride home I forget about the “Great Books”. But each time I returned to the library, I noticed them again. It seemed like none of them were ever checked out, and I could well believe it. They were truly daunting, with their gold foil lettering, fancy author names, and massive domination of shelf space.

II. Fast Forward

Today I just finished reading a truly great book on freedom, and I smiled widely as I completed the last few lines and closed the book. I removed the dust jacket and ran my fingers over the sleek black hardcover with the red foil print. “I was right, that day,” I thought to myself.

Then I realized I had been right on both counts. I would, in fact, come to read the whole set someday. I couldn’t have known at the time that I would re-read The Great Books many times, teach them extensively in multiple university, high school, and graduate level courses, and spend many hours discussing their content with colleagues, business executives, students, professionals, family members, and friends. The Great Books volumes have become dear friends over the years, and I have returned to them often for heated debates with their authors or to rehash unfinished questions in the “Great Conversation”.

But I was right about the other thing as well: there are great books beyond those in Britannica’s 54 volume set. And when I encounter an additional great book, I always feel a sense of excitement. Great books are great because they are important. That’s the major criterion. They have to be truly significant, to add meaning to our world—to innovate something that wasn’t there before the book brought it to life.

III. What Makes “Great”?

Over the decades I’ve experienced several great books beyond those from the “official list,” and they always leave an impression. Like The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler, or The Five Thousand Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen. Such books, like those by Bastiat or Austen, simply must be added to list. Along with Solzhenitsyn’s works.

In recent years I’ve come across several additional great books, like Andy Andrew’s The Final Summit, Chris Brady’s Rascal, Stephen Palmer’s Uncommon Sense, Orrin Woodward’s Resolved, Judith Glaser’s Conversational Intelligence, or Henry Kissinger’s On China. I also studied an old great book I hadn’t ever read before, The Early History of Rome, by Livy, and found greatness in its pages as well. When you read a book that is truly great, it’s a moving experience.

Such books come along rarely, so when they do it is important to pay attention. But what makes a book genuinely great? After all, greatness is a very high standard. It can’t just be good. As Jim Collins reminded us, good is too often the enemy of great.

Nor can it simply be well written. It can’t merely be accurate, detailed, beautiful, or interesting. More is necessary. It can be one, a few, or all of these things, but to be truly great, it must be also be transformational. It must change you, as you read.

IV. A New Great Book!

When I started reading Joshua Charles’ book a few days ago, I didn’t know I was in for such a treat. I had already enjoyed his earlier bestselling work, so I was ready to learn. I got my pen and highlighter out, and opened the cover. But as I read I realized that this book is truly very important. Needed. And profound.

Then, as I kept reading, I noticed that I was feeling something. A change. A different perspective. A re-direction. I was experiencing…the feelings that always accompany greatness.

Charles notes in several places that as a member of the Millennial generation he felt compelled to share this book with the world. Why? Because, in his words: “I wrote this book for one reason, and one reason only: to reintroduce my fellow countrymen to the Founders of our country and the vision of free society they articulated, defended, and constructed, in their own words.”

As a member of Generation X, I was thrilled to see a Millennial take this so seriously—and accomplish it so effectively. Even more importantly, as I read I noticed something very important, subtle but profound. Charles doesn’t make the mistake of so many modern authors who write to the experts and professionals in a field. His scholarship is excellent, and he goes a step further. He has a more important audience than mere political or media professionals. He writes to the people, the citizens, the voters, the butchers and bakers and candlestick makers—the hard-working people who make this nation go, including the artists, scientists, teachers, executives and leaders.

In so doing, he is a natural Jeffersonian, speaking the important principles of freedom, culture, economics, and leadership to a nation of people—not merely to politicos or aristos, but to everyman. To underscore this (and I doubt it was a conscious decision on his part, but rather his core viewpoint), his word choice refers not to “the American voter” but rather to “we the people.” He considers himself not merely the expert, but one of us, one of the people.

I could have hugged him for this, had he been here in person. We have far too few freedom writers today who see themselves truly as part of the citizenry. When they do come along, albeit rarely, I feel a sense of kinship and I know that their hearts are in the right place. Jefferson would be proud. For example, Charles wrote:

“We no longer know where we came from, the grand story we fit into, and the great men and women who inspired the noble vision which birthed the United States of America, the first nation in history to be founded upon the reasoned consent of a people intent on governing themselves….

“Additionally, few of us are well-read enough (a problem our educational system seems blithely unconcerned with) to discuss the lessons of the human experience (often simply called ‘history’)…”

Freedom, the classics, voracious reading, leadership, and the future—all rolled into one. “This is my kind of author,” I realized, once again. “These are the themes I emphasize when I write.” So did Jefferson. And Skousen, and Woodward. No wonder I love this book.

The Current Path

More than profound, Charles’ book is also wise. Belying his Millennial generation youth, he speaks like an orator or sage from Plutarch when he warns:

“Liberty is difficult work. It is fraught with risks, with dangers, with tempests and storms. It is a boisterous endeavor, an effort for the brave and the enterprising…”

These latter words have stayed with me since I read them several days ago. I keep remembering them. Boisterous. Brave. Enterprising.

These are the traits of a free people. In classical Greece, among the ancient Israelites, in the Swiss vales, the Saracen camps, the Anglo-Saxon villages, and the candlelight reading benches of the American founders—wherever freedom flourished. Yet today we train up a nation of youth to be the opposite. To fit in (not boisterous). To avoid risk (not brave). To focus on job security above all else (not enterprising).

If this trajectory continues, our freedoms will continue to decline.

Where and When

Speaking of freedom, Charles calls us to immediate action with his characteristic humility, depth, and conviction: “We either pass it [liberty] on to our posterity as it was passed down to us, or it dies here and now.”

Here and now? Really?

Is it that immediate? Is it truly this urgent? Is it really up to us?

The answer is clear: Yes.

Yet, it is.

“He gets it.” I smile and take a deep breath. Then I whisper to myself: “Another great book!”

I hold the book sideways and look at the many pages where I have turned down the corners. Dozens of them. Just for fun, I open one of them and read:

“…we have every reason to be doubtful of, skeptical about, and disdainful toward the notion that Caesar [government] can solve all our problems.”

I nod. When freedom is under attack, leaders rise up from among the people. This book is part of that battle.

“The Great Books indeed.” I grin as I say the words.

I turn to another page with a dog-eared corner and read Charles’ words:

“‘Society is endangered not by the great corruption of the few, but by the laxity of all,’ Tocqueville had noted, and on this he was in complete agreement with the Founders.”

And now, I note, with at least one Millennial.

I feel a sense of building hope for the future. “The Millennials are beginning to lead,” I say with reverence.

“This is big. And if this book is any indication of what’s to come…

“It’s about time,” I say aloud.

Then, slowly, “Everyone needs to read this book.”

*Liberty’s Secret by Joshua Charles is available on Amazon

Category : Aristocracy &Blog &Book Reviews &Citizenship &Community &Constitution &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Education &Featured &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Mission &Politics &Statesmanship

A Parable On Education and Freedom

July 30th, 2015 // 1:04 pm @ Oliver DeMille

Lines and Questions

I was in a long line at WalMart, and I started talking with the man standing next to me. We spoke about a number of topics, including politics, and in passing I mentioned that except for military and law enforcement, private enterprises are always better than government programs. He took issue with this, arguing that the government does most things better than private entities.

When I pressed him on this, he said that of course Washington does things better than people or businesses, because the government can keep spending as much as it wants until it gets things right.

I just stared at him.

“Seriously? It can just keep spending as much as it wants until it gets things right? That’s your big argument for the effectiveness of government?”

“Of course,” he replied. Then seeing the look of amazement and incredulity on my face, he asked, “Why? What’s wrong with that?”

“You realize that your model wastes a lot of our money, right?”

“Sure, but so what? I don’t make much, so I don’t pay much in taxes. Other people pay for government programs, so why should I care?”

I shook my head. Then I asked, “Okay, but tell me: what programs has the government got right?”

Over and Under

He cocked his head and tried to think of some.

After a bit he laughed. “Well, that’s why we’ll just have to keep trying.”

My amazement grew.

I told him the following statistics I had just seen on a news broadcast of Special Report:

Between 2008 and 2013 the Social Security Administration overpaid people in the amount of $128.3 million. That’s quite a chunk of taxpayer money. To right this wrong, the government went after these overpayments and managed to recover $109.4 million.

That’s pretty good, right? Not totally efficient, but not bad.

Then the rest of the information came out. The cost of recovering this money [just over $100 million] was $323 million, making the total loss for the taxpayers a huge amount: $213.6 million plus $18.9 million in overpayments.

That’s incredible.

Go back and look over these numbers again. It’s just plain amazing!

I could see that even the man in line thought this was ridiculous. He shook his head and sighed. “Well, we’ve got a long way to go…”

It was his turn to check out, so we left it at that.

I wonder if he votes? Or serves on juries?

Education of our citizens matters.

Category : Blog &Citizenship &Community &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Education &Featured &Generations &Government &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Politics &Statesmanship

A Proposal on Reforming the Supreme Court

July 28th, 2015 // 8:12 am @ Oliver DeMille

by Oliver DeMille

I don’t mean it. I’m going to propose it, but I don’t really want it. Or think it’s a good idea. This proposal is meant to be ironic. But it still needs to be said, because there is far too much truth to it.

Supreme Parliament of the United States

In the wake of recent Supreme Court decisions, it’s clear that the Court doesn’t just try cases. It now writes law. It isn’t only a Supreme Court, it’s the de facto Supreme Parliament of the United States as well.

The Court uses some decisions to simply rewrite the laws of the nation, including the laws of the states. It’s been doing that for some time,[i] of course, but now it’s taking this approach to a whole new level. It has decided that the 9^th and 10^th Amendments are outdated, and it just ignores them.

For example, the Court labels Obamacare a “tax”, even though the Congress and President who proposed and passed it never called it that, and even though it skirts many state laws. The Court just makes up its own way.

Forget the actual case at hand; the Court is convinced that it has the power to create whatever it chooses out of thin air. Whatever the Court says, goes. Call it a “tax”. And call marriage a Constitutional right, even though the word “marriage” and the concept of marriage are never even mentioned in the Constitution or any of the Founder’s commentaries on the federal Constitution.

The Framers specifically left any and all decisions about marriage to the states. The Court has amended the Constitution without even using an official amendment.[ii] Many times. Just because it wants to.[iii] I’m not saying the Court got any of these recent decisions wrong, or right. That’s not my point. In fact, my point is much more important than any of these cases. I’m saying the Court has no authority in the Constitution to make many of its decisions.[iv]

It gave itself the power to do these things.[v] It just took the power. Such power didn’t come from the people or the Constitution.[vi] Such power isn’t legitimate authority. It is, to use the precise, technical word that the Founding generation used for this exact behavior: “tyranny”.

Whether you love the current Court’s decisions, hate them, or fall somewhere in the middle, the bigger picture is beyond the cases. The Court is now boldly and fully engaged in Judicial Tyranny.[vii]

The new rules of the Court: Just do whatever you want. You’re the Court, after all. Oh, and that pesky reality that the Constitution doesn’t give the Court the authority do more than half of what it now does? No problem. Since you’re the Court, just announce that the Constitution does, in fact, give you such authority. In fact, decree that the Court has the Constitutional authority to do whatever you decide to do.

Jefferson warned that this very thing was the biggest danger to the Constitution and to American freedoms. And his prediction has come true. The Legislative Court has become one of the greatest dangers to our freedoms. Five lawyers literally have the power to do whatever they want.

The Proposed Change!

So here’s the proposal. I heard it on a radio show, and it made me laugh. Then it made think. Then it made me mad. Check this out:

Since the Supreme Court now makes up any law it wants just by writing it up in a majority opinion, without bothering about what the House or Senate does, let’s balance the budget by just disbanding Congress. Why pay Representatives and Senators and their staff when the Court is just going to write up laws on its own anyway?

That’s the proposal. Let’s just get rid of Congress and let the Court keep doing its thing.

Again, I don’t really mean it. But at this rate, the Court is on pace to do this anyway. And in the meantime, it’s already behaving as the Supreme Court and the Supreme Parliament all in one.

One More Thing

By the way, the real solution is for Congress to pass legislation ending the use of precedent in the courts and limiting every Supreme Court decision to the scope of that one case. This will send many in the current generation of lawyers into a tizzy, but it’s the right thing to do. Assuming that we want to remain free. Such a change will immediately return the Court to its Article III powers.

Or, barring this solution, if we’re going to keep with the bad tradition of common law precedent,[viii] amend the Constitution so that 2/3 of the state Supreme Courts can overturn any decision of the Supreme Court. (More on Common Law in footnote “viii”.)

If we don’t do one of these, we literally might as well adopt the proposal above—because the Court is now operating as both the Judicial Branch and a Higher Legislative Branch.

NOTES

[i] See, for example: Martin v. Hunter Lessee; Cohen v. Commonwealth of Virginia; McCullough v. Maryland; Gibbons v. Ogden; Missouri v. Holland; New York ex rel. Cohn v. Graves; U.S. v. Butler; U.S. v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp.; Wood v. Cloyd W. Miller; among others. See also: Bruno Leoni, Freedom and the Law, 3-25, 133-171.

[ii] Compare Article VI of the United States Constitution to Article III.

[iii] Some scholars and jurists will balk at this, arguing instead that the court “finds” or “discovers” the Constitutional meaning in the law. But while the Court may employ technical and/or logical language to support its decisions, it still utilizes its will. It may claim that its decisions are “findings,” and at times they are, but they are still always decisions. (If they were truly “findings,” matters of law without personal choice, all cases would be decided by 9-0 votes. Will is part of each decision.) Moreover, despite what is taught in some law school courses, the Framers clearly understood votes of the Justices to be acts of will, not mechanized requirements demanded by the laws.

[iv] Read Article III word for word. No such powers are granted.

[v] Review the cases listed in footnote “i” above. See also: John E. Nowak, Ronald D. Rotunda (Thompson-West), Constitutional Law, Seventh Edition, pp. 1-16, 138-156, 397-398.

[vi] Article III.

[vii] See how Raoul Berger warned of this a generation ago: Raoul Berger, Government by Judiciary.

[viii] Many in the legal profession argue that the Framers preferred Common Law to the other alternatives. Certainly there are a number of quotes from prominent founding leaders that on face value seem to support this view. In reality, most of the Framers preferred Common Law to Romano-Germanic Codifications. This was the major legal debate of the era, in Europe at least. Thus the Justinian model was soon to be followed by the Napoleonic Code. So when the Framers sided with Common Law over the Romano-Germanic model it was taken as a blanket endorsement of the Common Law. However, some of the top Founding Fathers, including both Jefferson and Madison, preferred a third model, the Anglo-Saxon code and system, over Common Law. For excellent background on these competing systems, see: Rene David and John E. C. Brierley, Major Legal Systems in the World Today; John William Burgess, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty; Theodore F.T. Plucknett, A Concise History of the Common Law. In short, common law builds on precedent; the Constitution the Framers wrote didn’t require the use of precedent by the Judiciary. In the Framer’s model, the Court was “supreme” in deciding any one case. Period. This keeps the Court separated in the judicial realm. It is an independent judiciary, unlike in Britain, because it has sole authority to provide the final determination in any one case. But separation of powers gives it no authority to use dicta or precedent to influence later cases. Any allowance of precedent creates the need to explain a decision, and moves into the realm of legislation. Common Law was not the intent of the Framers. Once the Constitution was ratified, however, the attorneys of the era, trained in the Common Law, simply kept practicing their system without change. The Anglo Saxon code and model was quickly lost, to the detriment of American freedom. Most attorneys are unaware of this. Even a lower percentage of non-attorney citizens understand this. We lose our freedoms in many cases simply because we don’t know better.

Category : Aristocracy &Blog &Citizenship &Community &Constitution &Current Events &Education &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Politics &Statesmanship

Two Possible Surprises: A Potential Twist in the 2016 Election

June 18th, 2015 // 11:48 am @ Oliver DeMille

News after News

Image Credit*

If Elizabeth Warren runs for president in 2016, it will change the whole dynamic of the election. So far she has said she’s not running, but we’ve heard that before from politicians who later changed their minds.

Since she first told everyone she isn’t going to run, a lot has happened. For example, the Right has visited an onslaught of negative press on Hillary Clinton. It’s been one criticism after another. Whether the stories are justified or not, this approach by the Right is news. As soon as one story dies down in the press, the Right pushes another one.

It’s a kind of shock and awe approach to negative politics. Break one story, let it run its course, fuel it as much as possible, and be ready to put out the next story when the current one starts to lose steam. If it’s not Benghazi, it’s Server-Gate. Then foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation. Followed by ducking reporters. Or FIFA.

The list is long and growing. No doubt Mrs. Clinton’s critics have an even longer list of additional news stories planned and ready to come out (especially now that her old emails will be released a few at a time for many months ahead).

As this continues, Clinton’s support may eventually take a more significant hit than it has so far. And she’s already down a bit in the polls.

But Democrats aren’t very worried. Mrs. Clinton is still very popular, and if something big comes up that derails her candidacy, there’s always Elizabeth Warren.

The Deal

In many ways Senator Warren is a stronger candidate than former-First Lady/Senator/Secretary Clinton. She has fewer enemies, and her name doesn’t open the bank accounts of Right-Wing donors like Hillary’s does. Warren isn’t weighed down by a huge, national negative legacy from the past like Hillary—no Bill, no Benghazi, no Clinton Foundation, no sense of “the Clintons have their own set of rules”.

And Warren isn’t closely associated with President Obama like Hillary. In fact, Warren is known by many Americans mainly for standing against Obama and getting him to argue with her publicly. This makes many independents sit up and take notice. In fact, in recent polling over 60% of independents say they don’t trust Mrs. Clinton.

Beyond these things, Warren commands nearly all the positives for a candidate that Hillary enjoys: strong support among women, minorities, youth, and the Democratic base. She is well liked in swing states, she is known as more politically liberal than Hillary, and she is portrayed in the media as tough, independent, and dedicated.

Warren is an excellent public speaker, a mix of fiery and thoughtful, and, if anything, she’s more believable than Clinton.

In a sense, Warren is the anti-Obama of the Democratic Party. She could easily become the anti-Hillary in the presidential primaries, or the post-Hillary rescuer of the Party if Hillary hits a major scandal or roadblock.

In short, Warren is the real deal. She’s “legit,” as today’s youth like to say. I personally disagree with her on many political issues, but I’m impressed with how she’s running her campaign for president in 2016.

Playing ‘What If’

True: officially there is no such campaign. But if there were, she’s doing exactly the savvy thing right now:

• keep getting President Obama to mention you and sometimes argue with you

• say you’re not going to run and let the Right spend its money, time and energy tearing down Hillary

• keep using your position in the Senate to weigh in on important American issues and look increasingly like a leader

• stay out of the political fray and stick to governing for as long as possible—letting the host of Democratic and Republican candidates wear each other down

If she runs, she’ll almost certainly cause the Republican candidates more problems in the 2016 election than Hillary Clinton would.

With all that said, John Kasich may be the Elizabeth Warren of the Republican field. His role as Governor of Ohio gives him support in a vital swing state, and his rough-and-tumble record and disarming approach could be popular among many other swing voters as well.

Both Warren and Kasich have the “Credible” factor and the “Cool” thing going for them—they don’t come across so much like politicians as the other current presidential candidates. Many voters’ experience with Warren and Kasich is that they’re the “grown-ups” in current politics.

Whether you agree or disagree, and however you feel about their politics, Elizabeth Warren and John Kasich are worth watching in the next twelve months. Either one, or both, could be a surprise major player in 2016.

*Image Credit, Tim Pierce. Original>>

Category : Blog &Citizenship &Community &Culture &Current Events &Featured &Government &Independents &Leadership &Politics