Leading the Charge on Civics Education

Knowledge of Our Nation’s Story 

and Founding Ideals is Essential

by Thomas Kelly for American Greatness

The need for stronger civics instruction has never been clearer. As recently released test scores revealed, American students simply do not possess the civics knowledge they need to become thoughtful and engaged citizens. Knowledge of basic facts is important; knowledge of our nation’s story and founding ideals—which gives meaning to these facts—is more so.

Unfortunately, many K-12 civics teachers do not have the necessary training to succeed in the classroom. Schools of education do not typically afford aspiring teachers an opportunity for in-depth study of key texts in the American tradition. High levels of polarization and a lack of trust in public schools mean many teachers are unsure how to teach about key figures and moments in our history or how to discuss controversial political issues in a nonpartisan way.

That’s where my organization, the Jack Miller Center (JMC), comes in. We are a non-partisan, nationwide network of scholars and teachers dedicated to teaching the American political tradition. Our scholars have the expertise teachers need to navigate our current divisions and build trust. They can help teachers understand the contours of our most fundamental debates and squarely address the failures in our nation’s history while fully appreciating our achievements.

To that end, JMC introduced a Founding Civics Initiative in 2016. “Founding Civics” has clearly resonated with teachers. In just eight years nearly 2,000 teachers have participated in this initiative. In fact, this year we’ve reached an all-time high for summer programs: JMC has completed 24 teacher education programs across nine states this summer alone, training nearly 500 teachers for the upcoming school year and beyond.

These programs offer in-depth explorations of some of the most challenging topics in civics today by avoiding simple left-right narratives and focusing on primary sources.

This year, multi-day programs were held in partnership with nine campuses. Programs like the “Civic Literacy and Citizenship Symposium” with the University of Wisconsin-Madison offered teachers the opportunity to discuss the importance of virtue for liberty, the evolution of the First Amendment, and the development of judicial review. The “Summer Civics Institute on American Principles and Debates” at American University saw teachers digging into the roots of contemporary ideologies and examining them in relation to the American founding.

Programs at Baylor University and the University of North Texas allowed teachers to confront race and American politics head-on through sessions on slavery and the American founding, Lincoln and the Civil War, and African American political thought. “Investigating Foundational Questions in American Civics,” in partnership with North Greenville University, encouraged teachers to think more carefully about concepts such as American exceptionalism and whether the Declaration was really for all Americans.

Florida is a state on the frontlines of education reform, so JMC made our work there a strategic priority. We offered six programs across the state and continue to play a leading role in statewide civics reform with nearly 800 Florida teachers having participated in JMC programs since 2020.

At the University of West Florida program, special attention was paid to dissent in American politics—from the Anti-Federalists in the ratification debates, to the dissents in the Dred Scott case, to anti-slavery advocates such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. At Florida Atlantic University teachers considered the American founding in 21st century contexts by examining Hamilton the musical in light of Alexander Hamilton’s actual writings and considering issues of free speech and civil discourse on social media.

In St. Petersburg, we also commenced our second year of the competitive-admission year-long American Political Tradition Institute, which consisted of a five-day residential program and will continue with virtual curriculum-development sessions during the academic year. Teachers loved the summer sessions, with one tweeting that she “walked away exhilarated” while another described it as “truly empowering.”

Summer institutes and workshops such as these are tremendously important, but credit-bearing graduate courses in American political thought and history are also essential. Graduate courses can help public school teachers rise in district pay scales while offering the rigor of a formal class structure and graded assignments.

We sponsored four graduate courses for teachers this summer, including “Teaching Civics in an Age of Controversy” and “Political Thought of the American Revolution” through the University of Chicago, “Alexis de Tocqueville’s ‘Democracy in America’” at Tufts University, and “The American Constitutional Experience” at Lake Forest College. All courses offered deep dives into crucial primary sources while also considering prominent secondary sources that shape the way we understand the American story.

The mission of the Jack Miller Center is to help teachers and students connect with and safeguard our nation’s ideals. Improving K-12 teachers’ knowledge of America’s history and its founding will help preserve that vital knowledge for future generations. This is an urgent mission all educators should share. As JMC’s founder and chairman, Jack Miller, says, “The battle for the soul of our nation will be won or lost in our classrooms.”

X22, And we Know, and more- Sept 11

 

Dissecting the Ramaswamy/Haley Debate on the Ukraine War

At least we got to see an honest debate

 of this crucial national security issue

by Fred Fleitz for American Greatness

The other week’s heated exchange at the first GOP presidential primary debate on the Ukraine War between businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley reflected growing concerns by the American people and Congress about the Biden Administration’s Ukraine policy and whether the U.S. should continue providing military aid to Ukraine.

At the heart of the Ramaswamy/Haley argument over the Ukraine War is the ultimate goal of American policy on the war. Ramaswamy’s position, though far from perfect, generally adheres to the America First principles of prioritizing the security of the American people, keeping America out of unnecessary wars, and focusing on actual threats to U.S. security like the southern border and China. Meanwhile, Haley’s interventionist position, with no exit strategy and no limiting principle on foreign aid, is closer to President Biden’s.

During the debate, Ramaswamy was the only candidate to firmly oppose more U.S. military support for Ukraine. (Governor Ron DeSantis said he opposed more U.S. funding for Ukraine unless European states stepped up to “pull their weight).”

Ramaswamy said he wants U.S. military resources to be used to defend the U.S. southern border instead of defending Ukraine’s borders. He also stated that the Ukraine conflict is not a U.S. vital interest and is worried that the U.S. is “driving Russia further into China’s arms” by giving billions of dollars to Ukraine and that “the Russia-China military alliance is the biggest threat we face and nobody in either political party is talking about it.”

Haley took umbrage at Ramaswamy’s comments, claiming that Ukraine is “a front line of defense” in Europe and called it a “pro-American country that was invaded by a thug.” Haley also claimed that Russian President Putin has said, “once Russia takes Ukraine, Poland,  the Baltics are next.” (There is no evidence Putin has said this).

Haley personally attacked Ramaswamy for his position on the Ukraine war, accusing him of “choosing a murderer over a pro-American country” and added, “You will make America less safe. You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

Former Vice President Pence and former Governor Chris Christie echoed Haley’s comments. Pence accused Ramaswamy of making Ukraine a “giveaway” to Putin that would lead Russia to invade NATO. He also called for peace through strength and America standing for freedom.

Although Ramaswamy’s position was far from perfect, it was largely in line with the America First approach to U.S. national security. I strongly agree with him that countering the growing Russia/China axis should be a higher U.S. national security priority than the Ukraine War.

That said, some of Ramaswamy’s proposals on the war in Ukraine are naïve and troubling. He has proposed conceding to Russia the Ukrainian territory it has seized and barring NATO membership to Ukraine in exchange for a peace agreement and Russia ending its military alliance with China. Ramaswamy also said he would end sanctions on Russia and bring it back into the world market.

These proposals are far too generous to Putin and would set bad precedents because they do not require any accountability for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Hass has proposed a better way to broker a peace agreement: make this dispute a frozen conflict with a DMZ patrolled by peacekeepers. Ukraine would not drop its demand to return to its 1991 borders, and the world would not recognize Russia’s annexation of any Ukrainian territory. Instead, a diplomatic process would begin that would not fully lift sanctions against Russia or normalize relations until it agrees to a peace agreement acceptable to Ukraine.

In addition, taking NATO membership off the table for a period of time as part of a peace settlement – possibly 25 years – would be a far better approach than permanently barring it from joining the alliance. A peace agreement also must require Russia to pay reparations to Ukraine, possibly by placing a levy on its energy sales.

It is understandable that Ambassador Haley and other Republicans at the debate rejected Ramaswamy’s approach because they did not want to reward Russia for its aggression against Ukraine. However, their rebuttals mainly consisted of platitudes, false assumptions, and wishful thinking.

Haley and other Republican debaters contended that America must continue to arm Ukraine because Russia’s invasion is immoral, violates American principles of democracy and freedom, and could lead to a future Russian war with NATO countries involving U.S. armed forces. President Biden frequently makes similar arguments and has vowed to provide a high level of U.S. military support to Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

Ambassador Haley and Vice President Pence used these arguments to seize the moral high ground on the Ukraine War and to discredit Ramaswamy. But despite problems with some of Ramaswamy’s proposals, their efforts to moralize the war were not credible because they don’t have a plan for Ukraine to win or to end the war.

Moreover, the argument that Haley, Pence, and Biden have made that a Russian victory in Ukraine will be followed by a Russian invasion of Poland, the Baltic States, and other NATO countries is groundless and unbelievable. There is no evidence Putin that has ever planned to risk a nuclear war by invading a NATO country. In fact, Putin said in 2015, “[O]nly an insane person and only in a dream can imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO.” And even if Putin had a secret plan to invade NATO members after Russia successfully occupied Ukraine, this is no longer feasible because his army has been devastated.

As I explained in a recent American Greatness article, many moderate Members of Congress have concluded the war is unwinnable and will likely become a prolonged war of attrition. Given Russia’s superior resources, especially manpower, Ukraine likely would lose such a war of attrition.

This is why President Trump said in May during a CNN town hall on whether he wants Ukraine to win the conflict, “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing, I think in terms of getting it settled so we can stop killing all those people.”

Vivek Ramaswamy has made some mistakes in his proposals to end the Ukraine War, but he realizes that the Biden Administration’s approach to the war is feckless and unsustainable. I hope Mr. Ramaswamy quickly fine tunes his proposals on the war so they are not so generous to Russia and holds Russia accountable.

Ambassador Haley is in no position to lecture Ramaswamy on the Ukraine War because her position is little different from President Biden’s, who wants to shovel U.S. tax dollars and U.S. arms at Ukraine because he is angry at Putin’s invasion but not in support of a plan to reverse it. Biden, Haley, Pence, and the other Republican debaters are oblivious to the reality that their approach likely will not only fail to improve the lot of the Ukrainian people; it probably will make it worse. They don’t seem to grasp that idealism, good intentions, and hope alone cannot be the basis of a responsible U.S. foreign policy.

All in all, the heated exchange over the Ukraine War at the GOP primary debate was valuable because it allowed the American people to see an honest debate of this crucial national security issue that the news media and the Biden Administration would prefer to sweep under the rug. Let’s hope all of the GOP debaters learned from this exchange to forge a better U.S. policy that puts the interests of America first and includes a responsible U.S. policy to end the Ukraine War as soon as possible.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams Is Right: Mass Illegal Immigration Is Destructive

As illegal immigrants overwhelm his city, Adams is figuring out what Americans in border states have known for a long time.

John Daniel Davidson reporting for The Federalist

You might have seen the video clip of New York Mayor Eric Adams speaking at a Town Hall meeting on the Upper West Side on Wednesday evening, warning that the steady influx of illegal immigrants would “destroy New York City,” and that every part of the city will be affected. 

He’s right. Unregulated mass illegal immigration is inherently destructive. It destroys not just cities but entire nations. The Biden administration’s willful, ongoing abdication of its duty to secure the southern border has allowed record-breaking numbers of illegal immigrants into the country, month after month, year over year.

The kind of mass illegal immigration Biden’s policies have unleashed will destroy not just New York City, but every major city in America. They will eventually destroy America itself for the simple reason that a country that cannot maintain its borders ceases to be a sovereign country. In our case, it’s not a foreign army invading us but a betrayal of the American people by our ruling elites, who actively want more illegal immigration for reasons of their own. 

In any case, it’s nice that Adams is starting to understand this, or at least grasp that when you throw open the U.S.-Mexico border, what soon follows is chaos, violence, human trafficking, and a global stampede to the Rio Grande. 

But it shouldn’t have taken a crisis of this magnitude in his own city for Adams to wake up to the reality of lax border enforcement and the kind of destruction and misery it always unleashes.

The evidence has been right in front of his face (and everyone else’s) for quite some time now. For example, Adams is upset that more than 110,000 migrants have arrived in New York since last spring, with the city now absorbing “10,000 migrants a month” from every corner of the globe.

That sounds pretty bad — and it is. But consider that from last March to July of this year (the last month for which data has been published) more than 3.5 million illegal immigrants were arrested at the southern border. Most months, the arrest total has been well over 200,000 — between 6,000 and 7,000 thousand arrests every single day. Most of these arrests occur in small cities and towns that have nowhere near the ability of New York to house and monitor these new arrivals.

But often they’re stuck with the impossible task because there’s no way federal border authorities can detain or even process that many illegal immigrants. That’s why so many of them are simply being released — not with a court date but merely with an order to report to the nearest ICE office wherever they happen to be headed in America. Those who do get court dates (to contest their deportation and pursue asylum) often will be waiting years for their first hearing.

And it’s no use blaming the situation in New York on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who last year began sending illegal immigrants released from federal custody to New York and other sanctuary cities. That was a political stunt to raise awareness of the burden that Biden’s border policies were placing on Texas and other border states. But the migrants Abbott sent count for a mere fraction of the total number that have since arrived — and continue to arrive — in places like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

What’s really driving the crisis is an acute awareness on the part of would-be migrants in their countries of origin that if they can just get across the Rio Grande, they’ll be allowed to stay. At the very least, they’ll be detained for a few days and then released, allowed to remain for years with no consequences, wherever in the vastness of America they choose to go.

Not surprisingly, a significant number of them are choosing to go to New York City, one of dozens of so-called “sanctuary cities” that once boasted of their openness to migrants and asylum-seekers, and passed policies making it more difficult for federal immigration officials to arrest and deport illegal immigrants there. Often, border-crossers are asking specifically to be sent to New York, which is why the deep-blue border city of El Paso, Texas, began bussing migrants there last fall (and eventually sent more people to New York than Abbott did). 

Now the city faces a real crisis. You’ll no longer hear Adams bragging about New York’s status as a sanctuary city for migrants, because his city is overwhelmed with asylum-seekers and illegal border-crossers. Instead, he’s sounding an alarm: “The city we knew, we’re about to lose.”

Again, he’s right. Ordinary people instinctively understand this. Witness the footage of a recent meeting of predominantly black Chicago residents, outraged that they’re being sent to the back of the line for public assistance in favor of newly arrived migrants. 

As scenes like this proliferate in major Democrat-run cities across the country, it’s going to become a political problem for the Biden administration. Maybe that’s why administration officials are floating the idea of forcing illegal immigrants to remain in Texas after they’re released from federal custody, limiting their ability to travel while they pursue asylum claims. It won’t solve the underlying problem, but it might prevent urban voters from turning on the Democrat Party ahead of 2024.

Of course, if the Biden administration really wanted to solve the crisis, they’d extend their logic a step further. Instead of limiting the ability of illegal immigrants to travel once they’ve crossed the border, do what every other developed country in the world does: limit their ability to cross the border in the first place.

Give it a week or two and even Mayor Adams might get behind the idea.

WATCH: Kamala Harris' Dance Moves Get Everyone Talking, and Not in a Good Way

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

When the cat's away, the mice will play. While Joe Biden continued his confused attendance at the G20 in India, the White House held a party on Saturday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. Kamala Harris was on site to play host, and things got out of hand. 

In her evergreen attempt to seem relatable and authentic, the vice president decided to break out her best dance moves. Things did not go well.

Remember that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine took George to a company party and decided to start dancing, only to produce something that reminded onlookers of dry-heaving? Harris' moves aren't quite that bad, but they aren't that much better either. Whether the guys who started laughing in the background were laughing at her or with her is still being investigated. 

Here's the deal. Being a politician isn't fair, or at least it shouldn't be. Harris being cringe at some hip-hop party isn't in and of itself a big deal, though it provides plenty of fodder for mockery. But ask yourself, should the White House be hosting "let them eat cake" parties where the vice president does her best "she's just like us" routine when we still don't even know how many people died in the Maui fires? 

Or while groceries are 20 percent higher than when she took office? Or while interest rates are so high that home ownership has become impossible for the vast majority of Americans? Or while government spending continues to reach historic levels, setting up the country for financial ruin? Or while the illegal immigration crisis rages out of control? 

A politician who is directly responsible for all of those failures should probably put a hold on the partially taxpayer-funded blowouts and at least pretend to care about the plight of normal Americans. Far from appearing relatable, it makes Harris look completely tone-deaf, with a distinct "fiddling while Rome is burning" vibe. No matter what spin is provided by left-wing talking heads, things are bad out there. Inflation has outpaced wage growth, and the astronomical price increases are here to stay. Gas is spiking again, and more and more people are living paycheck to paycheck. 

So perhaps Harris should put more focus on doing her job than honing her granny moves, at least in public. Because what she's doing now makes her look about as authentic as a Biden campaign rally.

Renewed Hysteria Shows Why We Need A Commission For Covid Accountability

Only through a national commission that would assign accountability for Covid failures can we ensure we won’t repeat the same mistakes.

Helen Raleigh reporting for The Federalist

One of the most disturbing images of the Covid-19 pandemic was when a teacher tried repeatedly to force a mask on a crying toddler, despite his visible distress.

In some ways, the U.S. government at all levels, especially among public health officials, treated all of us like toddlers, compelling us to endure draconian Covid measures from mask mandates to vaccine mandates despite many scientific studies showing none of them have stopped Covid from spreading in our society and infecting people. There has been no national reckoning on what went wrong in our pandemic response and who should be held accountable, and there are new signs those same ineffective and sometimes cruel Covid measures are coming back to dictate Americans’ lives this fall.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre announced this week that President Joe Biden would start wearing a mask again after his wife tested positive for Covid. The president and the first lady had received Covid vaccines and boosters before and were infected anyway. But the facts haven’t stopped President Biden from encouraging all Americans to get Covid booster shots this fall. Meanwhile, Rosemary Hills Elementary School in Maryland handed out KN95 masks to third graders because more than three students were infected with Covid. At the University of Michigan, students who test Covid-positive still have to leave their dorm (even if in a single room) and isolate themselves in a hotel for five days.

This renewed Covid hysteria is unwarranted because, three years after the coronavirus outbreak spread from China to the rest of the world, we have learned that many government measures have failed to prevent Covid’s spread while causing undue harm. For example, research from as early as fall 2021 showed that vaccines didn’t prevent the virus from transmitting, and natural immunity is at least as protective as vaccines. Yet the federal government, many state and local governments, and businesses imposed vaccine mandates on employees, and many people lost their jobs due to being unable or unwilling to meet the mandates. The media and tech companies shut down debates and vilified anyone who raised questions.

Similarly, research on the effectiveness of masks, including a study published by the Cochrane Library, which “analyzed 18 randomized controlled trials that aimed to measure the impact of surgical masks or N95 respirators on the transmission of respiratory viruses,” found that wearing a mask “probably makes little or no difference” in preventing transmission. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told Americans that masks provided more protection against Covid than vaccines. Based on the CDC’s misleading recommendations, about 39 states imposed mask mandates, and some included children as young as 2 years old. However, research showed masking “impacts children’s ability to recognize faces and emotions.”

Other Covid measures, such as lockdowns, caused a spike in mental health problems among Americans, especially youth. Prolonged school closures and remote learning caused widespread learning loss. “If the recent learning loss can’t be reversed, it would equate to a 1.6% drop in lifetime earnings for the average K–12 student, or a nationwide total of some $900 billion,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Need for a Review of Mistakes

Historically, after a significant event that profoundly affected America, whether it was the Kennedy assassination or the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. Congress established commissions to investigate what happened, what went wrong, who was responsible, and how we could prevent mistakes from happening again or be better prepared. Yet so far, there is no Covid-19 commission in the U.S., which makes us an outlier among our peers. Countries from Norway to Sweden to the United Kingdom have either started or even finished their public inquiries into their governments’ Covid responses.

Harvard professor and epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and professor at Stanford Medical School, believe the U.S. should establish a bipartisan Covid Response Commission so we can learn what went wrong and be better prepared next time. These two professors established their credibility in the public health policy debate during the pandemic by co-authoring, along with Oxford University professor Dr. Sunetra Gupta, the Great Barrington Declaration, a public petition calling for an end to the lockdowns and returning life to its pre-pandemic norm as early as fall 2020. Had both the Trump and Biden administrations listened to their advice, the U.S. could have reduced or even avoided many adverse outcomes we see today, from the mental health crisis to learning loss among our children. 

For a Covid Response Commission to be credible, Kulldorff and Bhattacharya recommend it tackle four areas: public health measures, including the closing of schools, businesses, sports, religious services, and cultural events; the treatment of Covid patients; vaccines, including their development and approval; and the discourse and censorship of scientific debate, including tech censorship. Kulldorff and Bhattacharya also worked with several other scientists to produce a document with essential questions the commission should ask, including on vaccine mandates: “Why were mandates pursued without carveouts for those with immunity due to prior infection? Why were so many people fired, destroying careers and reducing health care capacity?”

There were some congressional efforts to establish a Covid commission. In February 2021, U.S. Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, introduced bipartisan legislation to establish such a commission. But then Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York never brought the bill to a floor vote because the Biden administration reportedly resisted the idea. After the Republicans took the majority in the U.S. House, they established a subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, which included six House Democrats. Still, some accused the committee of being overly partisan.

To ensure an inquiry into the Covid response is objective and neutral, Kulldorff and Bhattacharya recommend broadening the Covid Response Commission’s membership to include not only experts on public health but also patients and members of the public who were harmed by the government’s policies. A Covid commission is a national reckoning Americans deserve. 

Among all the sound recommendations Kulldorff and Bhattacharya make, the only one I have to disagree with is their insistence that the commission avoid “to blame or to prosecute.” Without holding accountable the high-level government officials who advocated for the most harmful Covid measures, Americans will suffer under the same destructive policies next time. In fact, the news about Rosemary Hills Elementary School’s mask mandate for third-graders this week is a warning that “next time” could be now for some.

Apparatchiks Are Back

Speaking of accountability, no one has done more to erode Americans’ trust in public health and science than Anthony Fauci. Yet in a recent CNN interview, Fauci continued to argue for masks’ effectiveness despite scientific studies consistently contradicting his assertion. Next week, Chicago’s former mayor, Lori Lightfoot, will present her Covid policy to students at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, even though her double-standard Covid responses have drawn much criticism and students in Chicago’s K–12 public schools suffered one of the nation’s longest lockdowns.

Since the left dominates much of the corporate media and public institutions, only a broad-based commission can hold former government officials such as Fauci and Lightfoot accountable and prevent them from continuing to mislead the public and exert undue influence on public policies in the present and future. 

Kulldorff and Bhattacharya stated, “Our collective response to the Covid-19 pandemic constituted history’s biggest public health mistake.” Only through a national commission that would assign accountability can we ensure America will not repeat the same mistake.

Glenn Beck Interviews Former ATF Strike Force Member, John Dodson – “You Cannot Trust Your Government”

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

What John Dodson outlines in this interview with Glenn Beck is strikingly similar to a long two-day conversation I had in Washington DC in the summer of 2020, as I outlined in “The Fourth Branch of Government.”

The statement by Dodson: “it is one thing to know what your government is capable of doing… It is another thing entirely to know what your government is willing to do to keep their capability”… is almost identical to the jaw-dropping shift in perspective that I also encountered in DC.

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Podcast,” Glenn talks with John Dodson, the whistleblower who revealed the ATF “gunwalking” scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious that led to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. John’s decision to speak up was extremely risky, and he tells Glenn why he was afraid to start his car every morning after his family left. John also talks about the chilling reality of what’s happening at the southern border. Why hasn’t the illegal immigration problem been solved? John jokes that “the Mexican drug cartels must be huge donors to the Democratic Party.” They also talk about the war in Ukraine and the dubious Nord Stream bombing. John’s expertise in Soviet war tactics leads him to believe that something just isn’t right. Yet nobody seems to be concerned about the obvious corruption. But it’s not just overseas. The CIA playbook is alive and at work — on American soil. Having done extensive undercover work in crowds, John saw all the signs in place on January 6: “If there’s a crowd, there are agents in it,” he reveals. And will the government ever solve the mystery of the pipe bomber? After having served in law enforcement for more than three decades, John reveals the truth about the powerful new role of the state: “Your government is not here to serve you any more.”

The Post 9/11 Weaponization of The U.S. Govt

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act.  What Obama and Holder did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum.

This point is where many people understandably get confused.

Elevator Speech:

(1) The Patriot Act turned the intel surveillance radar from foreign searches for terrorists to domestic searches for terrorists.

(2) Obama/Biden then redefined what is a “terrorist” to include their political opposition.

In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus, instructed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.

After 9/11/01, the electronic surveillance system, that was originally created to monitor threats from abroad, was retooled to monitor threats inside our country.  That is when all of our electronic ‘metadata’ came under federal surveillance.

That inflection point, and the process that followed, was exactly what Edward Snowden tried to point out.

What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms, so that only their political opposition became the target of this new national security system.

The problems we face now as a country are directly an outcome of two very distinct points that were merged by Barack Obama. (1) The post 9/11 monitoring of electronic communication of American citizens; and (2) Obama’s team creating a fine-tuning knob that it focused on the politics of the targets.  This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.

Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  The Department of Homeland Security came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was formed.

When President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.

The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus – a domestic surveillance state. However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology.

The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution. Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.

We were not sleeping when this happened, we were wide awake. However, we were stunningly distracted by the economic collapse that was taking place in 2006 and 2007 when the engineers behind Obama started to assemble the design. By the time Obama took office in 2009, we sensed something profound was shifting, but we can only see exactly what shifted in the aftermath. The four pillars were put into place, and a new Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created.

As time passed, and the system operators became familiar with their new tools, technology allowed the tentacles of the system to reach out and touch us. That is when we first started to notice that something very disconcerting was happening. Those four pillars are the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this current state of perpetual angst will start to make sense.

If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.

After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions. My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no one elected and few people pay attention to.

It was during this process when I discovered how information is purposefully put into containment silos – essentially a formal process to block the flow of information between agencies and between the original branches. While frustrating to discover, the silo effect was important because understanding the communication between networks leads to our ability to reconcile conflict between what we perceive and what’s actually taking place.

After days of research and meetings in DC during 2020, amid a town that was serendipitously shut down due to COVID-19, I found a letter slid under the door of my room in a nearly empty hotel with an introduction of sorts. The subsequent discussions were perhaps the most important. After many hours of specific questions and answers on specific examples, I realized why our nation is in this mess. That is when I discovered the fourth and superseding branch of government, the Intelligence Branch.

The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government; it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government, and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.

The Intelligence Branch functions much like the State Dept, through a unique set of public-private partnerships that support it. Big Tech industry collaboration with intelligence operatives [Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Meta, Instagram, Twitter, etc] is part of that functioning – almost like NGOs. However, the process is much more important than most think. In this problematic perspective of a corrupt system of government, the process is the flaw – not the outcome.

There are people making decisions inside this little known, unregulated and out-of-control branch of government that impact every facet of our lives.

None of the people operating deep inside the Intelligence Branch were elected; and our elected representative House members genuinely do not know how the system works. I assert this position affirmatively, because I have talked to House and Senate staffers, including the chiefs of staff for multiple House & Senate committee seats. They are not malicious people; however, they are genuinely clueless of things that happen outside their silo. That is part of the purpose of me explaining it, with examples, in full detail with sunlight.