A Message to the Young Men on the Right

Choose a higher aim than service to a regime that hates you. Instead, seek to undermine that regime and replace it with one that is better and more noble.

by Josiah Lippincott for American Greatness

I am a strident critic of the modern American military. I have gone on record repeatedly to encourage young, spirited men to stay out of the armed services.

I have good reasons for taking this position—the American military does not do what it is supposed to do. It does not protect the rights of Americans, and it has embraced the worst aspects of anti-white DEI liberalism. As a veteran, I cannot, in good conscience, advise young men to join the military under these conditions.

Nevertheless, I still receive pushback from young right-wing men who still want to join the military. Put broadly, these young men see my vision as fundamentally negative and critical. They critique me along these lines:

“You’ve said what not to do, but you don’t have an alternative. I understand that every institution in our time is ‘fake and gay,’ including the military. Still, donning the uniform and joining a combat unit is a lot better than sitting behind a desk selling insurance. The military still teaches valuable skills about tactics and outdoorsmanship, and I will get valuable leadership experience from my service.”

I will add that for many of these young men, there is an important subtext: they want to prove to themselves and to others that they are real men. They want to prove that they “have what it takes” to face real challenges and danger and come out victorious.

I acknowledge that a merely negative argument is not enough. It is insufficient to simply offer a ‘no;’ one must also offer a ‘yes.’ I hold that there are, in fact, meaningful alternatives to military service that are better for the country and for the nation’s patriotic young men.

First, acquiring useful martial skills does not require joining the military. In addition, my critics generally overestimate how much actual training military units get.

Maintenance, inspections, and noncombat-related training make up the bulk of the ordinary military experience. As an artillery officer in a fleet unit in the Marine Corps, my unit only went to the range for our crew and personal weapons about once a year. At the time, my unit possessed M2 Browning and M240 machine guns as well as Mk 19 40mm automatic grenade launchers.

We had so little ammunition allocated for training on these weapons that it was not uncommon for our first tour Marines (Corporal and below) to only have experience firing one or two of these systems (and then only briefly), even though all of our junior Marines would be expected, in combat, to man any of those three systems when needed.

This lack of resources and range space, to say nothing of the demand for non-combat lectures and training (cyber awareness, driver’s awareness, sexual assault, cleaning, safety briefs, etc.), meant that my unit simply didn’t shoot our small and medium weapons very often. We were not unique in that regard.

In my two and a half years in the fleet, the only times I fired my service rifle and pistol were during the annual qualification ranges. This will, of course, differ by branch and job. Infantry units did shoot more. A typical infantry company at the time would shoot about 250,000 rounds a year. That works out to around 1,000 to 1,500 rounds per Marine.

If you are a young man joining the military so you can gain skills for when “shit hits the fan,” you can acquire those traits just as well outside the military as within it. Right now, 5.56mm rifle ammo is 50 cents a round on BulkAmmo.com. For $500, you can shoot as much in a year as an ordinary Marine rifleman, and you don’t need to put yourself under military discipline in a liberal DEI military to do it. 

The other skills a young man might want to learn in the military, like land navigation and outdoorsmanship, are also available to civilians. The highly technical military specialties—like maintenance for armored vehicles or doing fire direction for artillery—are not necessarily important outside of the American conventional military. It is worth remembering that the Taliban successfully waged an insurgency in Afghanistan without such knowledge.

As for leadership and proving oneself, you don’t need to wear a uniform or get a federal government paycheck to have such virtues. Even within the military, there is far less latitude for manliness than one might think.

Junior officers in the military have very little power over anything. For one, there are lots of officers, and they all want to be in charge. A typical career progression for a Marine Corps officer in the artillery during my time—2016 to 2020—looked like the following:

As a lieutenant, officers could expect about nine months to a year of platoon command time before moving on to roles in administrative positions (executive officer of a battery) or to join the battalion staff. Captains, after time in a non-fleet billet and going to various schools, could expect a year of leadership as a battery commander. An officer was unlikely to see command time again at the battalion level until he was a Lieutenant Colonel at about the 15–16 year mark of his career. In truth, a lot of officers don’t even get that. In the best-case scenario, that works out to four years of command time in a combat unit in a 20-year career.

For Marines, genuine leadership positions in the fleet are hard to come by and short-lived. Moreover, even being “in command” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Modern communications equipment and the overwhelming need by higher headquarters to micromanage every aspect of the battlefield turn most officers into administrators carrying out other people’s decisions.

There is very little latitude for any meaningful decisions about anything.

I’ll give an example: during my time in the fleet, my unit dispatched small numbers of rocket launchers and Marines to support special operations in Afghanistan. This unit was made up of about a dozen and a half Marines managing two truck-based HIMARS rocket launchers. This squad-sized element was led by a captain and two lieutenants. This structure is absurd. Typically, a captain leads a battery, made up of three or four platoons led by one lieutenant apiece, each of which is made of two or three squads or sections. 

But for actual combat missions, we were dispatching a squad-sized unit, typically run by an enlisted NCO reporting to a lieutenant, with three officers, including one captain!

It gets worse. Once in country, this two-launcher section received fire control orders from a one-star general. Technically, a general should be able to command a division with ten to fifteen thousand men. Instead, in our case, we had a general controlling two dozen Marines and two rocket launchers.

Talk about micromanagement.

In our current political and spiritual environment, there is simply very little will to allow young men in any major institution, and certainly the military, to develop the kind of freedom they need to grow as leaders. In the Civil War, men in their early 20s led entire divisions worth of men. Today, our military branches, by and large, do not trust such men to even lead the platoons they are nominally in charge of.

If young men today want freedom, they will need to carve out spaces for it far away from the surveilling eye of human resources departments and military headquarters, which are more concerned about meeting notional paperwork targets and ensuring diversity than preparing to win wars.

So what can young men do?

First, no right-wing man should expect their job to be their primary source of fulfillment. Virtually all jobs today are part of the system of totalizing rule in which we find ourselves. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do a good job in your work. You should. One of our current regime’s worst and most insidious weapons is the constant promotion of mediocrity.

There is no toughness, no drive, and no willingness to do well. The whole economy often feels like layers of grifters stacked on top of each other. My advice to young men in their work is to be competent but to also moderate their expectations. Work is a means to an end. In very rare cases, it is spiritually fulfilling, especially now and especially for the kinds of sensitive and intelligent young men who have grown to hate the liberal world order and its smell of decay and spiritual death.

I cannot tell you what job to get, assuming you need one. You must figure that out for yourself. The most important thing is that you acquire the resources and time to do the kind of truly meaningful spiritual work that the West needs today.

First, you should become physically fit. If you are fat, then lose weight. If you are scrawny, then put on muscle. Working out does not require superhuman efforts to accomplish. Simple weightlifting movements done well and on a regular schedule will give serious results. If you are having trouble losing weight, cut out soft drinks, alcohol, and desserts. Start there and see what happens.

I also advise young men to become proficient with firearms. There are lots of ways to do so. Find a local amateur shooting club. See if there are shooting instructors who are able and willing to help you. There is no need to go wild on gear and attachments. A simple AR-15 with iron sights is more than enough for a man to become very proficient and comfortable with arms should the need for them ever arise.

A young man today should develop the warrior spirit. There are many ways to do so. He could train jiu-jitsu, learn how to box, or practice wrestling. There is no one way to become proficient as a fighter and to cultivate the mentality of a man ready and willing to take on enemies. There are likely troubling times ahead. Cultivating a readiness for action is good.

I also advise young men to train their minds. First, learn what sort of mind you have, and then tailor your reading and study to what sort of skills you know you possess.

You should become an intelligence agency unto yourself. Pick a foreign country and learn everything about its culture, economy, and religion. Practice the language until you are fluent. Then, go and visit. A knowledge of the world is useful for a young man with a serious bent.

Travel is not good in and of itself, though. It can easily become a kind of international “milling around.” To prevent that, make your journeys abroad focused and intentional. Set an aim for yourself before going. Take notes on what you see and do.

The American leadership class today is vulgar and ignorant. They know little of the real world. A young man on the Right can learn a great deal that is otherwise hidden if he keeps his eyes open.

Above all else, I advise young men today to find a project. Set for yourself the goal of self-overcoming. Be ready to wage spiritual war against this degenerate regime. There are many avenues to do so. Mocking the pieties of the liberal priestly caste wherever and whenever you can is important and well worth doing.

Once you have an aim and a direction, you will find others who share that aim. They will be drawn to you, and you to them. Here, you will find friends and companions. More than anything else, those friendships will serve as the foundation for greater and higher things. From this fertile soil will spring real warriors, real leaders, and real men.

To the young men of the Right, to the young men of the future, do not give up hope. A better world is possible, and you can help bring it into being. You do not need to justify yourselves before what is in decline. Rather, seek to sharpen yourselves. Choose a higher aim than service to a regime that hates you. Instead, seek to undermine that regime and replace it with one that is better and more noble.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- January 18

 

The Intellectual Foundations of MAGA

The MAGA position is founded on a solid intellectual and moral foundation, aspiring to the optimal well-being of all Americans and ultimately to the benefit of everyone else in the world as well.

by Edward Ring for American Greatness

Republicans are dumb. They are easily led suckers, voting against their own best interests, manipulated by dangerous demagogues. This accusation is accepted as fact by most Democrat voters and is relentlessly reinforced by the media Democrats rely on. From MSNBC, Democratic strategist James Carville says Republicans “have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries.”  From New York Magazine, “Is DeSantis Just Not Dumb Enough for Republicans?” From Vanity Fair, “Is the Sheer Stupidity of Republican Politics Breaking Through?”

Even some conservative columnists can’t criticize the Democrats without taking a shot at those stupid Republicans. Daniel Henninger, writing for the Wall Street Journal, characterized national politics this year as “The Stupid Party vs. the Evil Party.” As for the leader of the Republican Party, we have this from The New Republic, “Trump Is an Extremely Dumb Fascist.” And as James Carville said, “When stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people.”

Rather than challenge the “stupid” stereotype, David Brooks, the New York Times’ thoroughly housebroken token conservative, has tried to contextualize it, recently stating on PBS Newshour that “this is a working class party,” referring to the Republican base in the Trump era.

The narrative is widespread and clear. Republican voters, MAGA voters in particular, are universally stigmatized by America’s mainstream thought leaders as uneducated rubes. As Obama once famously sneered, they are “clinging to their guns and religion.”

The perception being marketed as a truism in America is that MAGA Republicans are at best incapable of supporting a coherent national political agenda and, at worst, are willfully supporting dangerous policies that will put an end to democracy in America.

All of this is utterly false. There is a coherent intellectual and moral basis for the MAGA agenda, and there is basic agreement among MAGA Republicans over not only the broad themes but also many of the policy details that define that agenda.

Immigration policy is an obvious example where the MAGA position—restoring control of who enters the nation and basing legal immigration on merit—has a clarity that is completely lacking in the current de facto policy. Since Biden took office, nearly 8 million people have illegally crossed into America from Mexico, entering the country with minimal screening across a border that has been thrown wide open. Cities are going bankrupt trying to support them with food, shelter, healthcare, and education. At the same time, drugs pour across the open border, a primary cause of over 110,000 drug overdose deaths in 2023.

The MAGA position is both humane and realistic. It is impossible to admit everyone into the United States who wants to live here. There are an estimated 700 million people in the world who live in extreme poverty. An estimated 2 billion people live in conflict zones. Just allowing 10 percent of these people into the United States would nearly double our population. That’s the reality.

What is humane is to control the border and strictly regulate admittance to the U.S. so that people around the world will stop trying to get here. Then they would no longer be victims of human trafficking or risk dying during their trek. At the same time, fewer Americans would die of drug overdoses. While vigorous debate might take place over how many immigrants the U.S. should admit legally, under MAGA policies, whoever did immigrate would have skills that America needs. The MAGA strategy would be to use immigration to enhance America’s economy, bringing in people who will adopt our traditions and create wealth and opportunity for all Americans. A strong America will retain the capacity to be a force for stability around the world, offering an inspiring example of success for other nations to emulate.

Trade policy is another fundamental plank of the MAGA agenda. And here, the “free trade” mantra has been taken too far by both parties. America’s manufacturing capacity has been hollowed out, leaving the nation dependent on imports for vital medicines, finished goods, strategic minerals, even computer chips. For decades, as American companies have moved operations offshore to escape overzealous regulations and find cheap labor, millions of Americans have lost good jobs.

In fear of MAGA trade policies, there is a howling chorus of neoliberals claiming “protectionist” mandates will crash the global economy. The problem with this claim is that the global economy is already in danger of crashing. Nations have built their economies on the basis of exports to the U.S., and they need to rebalance their economies to develop domestic markets. And to stimulate an economy stripped of good jobs, America is about to hit $35 trillion just in federal government debt, well in excess of the nation’s entire GDP. Adding state and local government debt and unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, and public sector pensions will easily vault the estimated total government debt in America to over $160 trillion. It can’t go on.

Restoring American manufacturing and reducing America’s trade deficit do not have to spell the end of free trade. But judicious use of tariffs, particularly on imported goods that are subsidized by their governments, and modifying the tax code to discourage American companies from divesting their American operations are elements of what MAGA adherents call fair trade. It can be free, but it also has to be fair. And again, if America doesn’t successfully navigate this rebalancing, the trade deficit and federal debt will crash the economy, dragging the world economy down with it.

One might at least consider the moral and intellectual worth of these economic arguments concerning trade and federal deficits, but not according to the Los Angeles Times. When MAGA Republicans dug in their heels over federal spending earlier this year, Jonah Goldberg, writing for the LA Times, said “the GOP’s stupidity and hypocrisy are showing.” But stupidity, Mr. Goldberg, is thinking that America’s debt binge can go on forever.

Examining what defines MAGA politics must include foreign wars. An illustrative example of how Americans are being trained to think was evident on CBS News last week, where in coverage of the war in Ukraine, the reporter displayed a map of Eastern Europe and said a Russian victory would “bring the Russians to NATO’s doorstep.”

For anyone slightly familiar with the last fifty years of European history, this remark is blatantly deceptive propaganda. In 1989, on the brink of its peaceful dissolution, the Soviet Union still controlled what was referred to as the Warsaw Pact, and the Central European borders of NATO stopped on the eastern frontier of West Germany and Austria. Yugoslavia and Finland were neutral. Since that time, NATO has expanded eastward to include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (formerly Czechoslovakia), Romania, Bulgaria, parts of the former Yugoslavia, and East Germany (reunited with Germany). Ukraine, which might have remained neutral, was never on “NATO’s doorstep.” The doorstep was moved east. Acknowledging this does not equate to Russophilia. But it’s a pertinent fact that belongs in any honest discussion of the war over there today.

It would be foolish to suggest that America should abandon foreign entanglements altogether. But just as with free trade vs. fair trade, there is a long way to travel between frequent, expensive interventions with a devastating cost in human lives and “isolationist” foreign policy. If it is realistic and prudent for the U.S. to maintain a strategic and technological military supremacy over other major nations, then wouldn’t that goal be better served by not squandering resources on countless, endless, unresolvable conflicts everywhere on earth?

Why was it necessary to invade Iraq? We had the regime all bottled up, with no-fly zones north and south. About all Iraq still had left back in 2003 was the military wherewithal to serve as an effective regional counterweight to Iran. That would come in handy just now. Does anyone think people in the Middle East are better off since the U.S. and its allies went in and removed Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or, for that matter, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya? The dead can’t answer. The living endure chaos and violence without end. Where is the moral worth in this outcome, or the brilliant strategy? The MAGA foreign policy would be to minimize foreign interventions, putting those resources instead into research and development to maintain a decisive technological edge. We cannot, and should not, try to do it all.

A final, fundamental pillar of MAGA concerns environmentalist extremism, which, even more than mass immigration, has crippled the ability of most Americans to afford a decent standard of living. Energy independence and cheap energy have been abandoned to be replaced with “renewable” wind and solar energy projects that degrade thousands of square miles from upstate New York to the California coast. Equally impractical and oppressive are environmentalist-inspired restrictions on not just drilling but mining, logging, farming, ranching, new roads, freeways, and housing. Every essential in America is artificially in scarce supply, and this is the real reason for inflation. There’s no end in sight. The MAGA policy would be to deregulate all of these essential industries, forcing corporations to compete again on price, and to redirect public investment into practical infrastructure and away from costly “green” solutions that are neither green nor solutions.

There is a common thread in all of these mainstream, uniparty, establishment policies that MAGA threatens. Money. American corporations and American billionaires make more money when there is unrestricted immigration. It drives down wages. More people in America also means more shortages—particularly as long as the U.S. remains in the grip of extreme environmentalists. More people and less home building means higher prices, making home ownership out of reach for more Americans. But it creates a tremendous opportunity for corporate investors to buy up the nation’s housing stock and turn America into a nation of renters. And the scarcer that housing gets, the better their real estate investments perform.

So-called “free trade” is also an obvious moneymaker for America’s multinational corporations and globalist billionaires. Moving America’s industrial base into nations with cheap labor and minimal regulations is extremely profitable for the movers. But it destroys the workers it leaves behind. As for foreign wars, one of America’s most respected presidents, Dwight David Eisenhower, warned the nation in his farewell address as president of the “military industrial complex.” His warnings are more relevant than ever.

MAGA voters have been tagged as stupid, dangerous simpletons, ready to vote for politicians that will plunge America into a new dark age. To reinforce this smear, MAGA voters are depicted as intolerant bigots, and news reports focus on the polarizing issues of abortion, transgenderism, sexism, racism, and gun violence, to name just some of the big ones. On these issues as well, the MAGA perspective is rooted not only in intellectual coherence, but also in common sense. But these issues, while also of critical importance to our future, are also a distraction, chosen to trigger an emotional response that dominates the psyche. The real threat that MAGA poses to the establishment is financial, involving immigration, trade, war, and “environmentalism.”

In all four cases, the MAGA position is founded on a solid intellectual and moral foundation, aspiring to the optimal well-being of all Americans and ultimately to the benefit of everyone else in the world as well. MAGA Republicans are not dumb.

Why Gen Z Conservatives Are Drawn To Unorthodox Political Outsiders

The emerging right-wing political ethos among Gen Z largely manifests as a response to the dominance of liberal ideals across nearly every facet of life. 

posted by Brandon Goldman at The Federalist

A recent poll from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics found that voters born after 1996, also known as Generation Z, are extremely unenthusiastic about the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch in this year’s presidential contest. Shockingly, and in a massive rebuke to President Biden and the Democrats, less than 50 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds now say they’ll “definitely” cast a vote in the 2024 election. With younger generations looking to third-party candidates or sitting out entirely, it’s important to understand the mindset of Gen Z and their political vision.

The emerging right-wing political ethos among Gen Z largely manifests as a response to the dominance of liberal ideals across nearly every facet of life.

Having been born in 1997, I just made the cut as a Gen Z’er. And as a former leftist, I grew up idolizing Barack Obama. He was cool. He made pithy jokes about Republicans and went on late-night TV. I was raised on “The Daily Show” and “Parks and Rec,” which taught me that the party of conservative fundamentalists and fat cats solidifies itself in resentment against the party of the young progressive visionary. 

It wasn’t until I was in college that I decided to actually listen to conservative commentary straight from the source to discover exactly why they were wrong, and I was right.

My entire worldview collapsed over that semester, to the point that I questioned not only my deep attachment to leftist politics but my atheism as well. I had been so sure that the inevitable tide of modernity was rolling in, and the backward-facing rubes had to ready themselves for the progressive revolution. Now, for the first time, I was questioning that assumption.

2016 Outsiders on the Right and Left

The political revolution I had been a part of came to its apex with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run. In the primaries, he commanded a staggering 47 percent support from Gen Z and younger Millennials. Voters in the 18- to 24-year-old range gravitated toward the Vermont senator because of his coherent view for the future; his bold, leftist policies satisfied their concerns for social justice and climate change. Sanders was a leading advocate for provocative new programs like “Medicare for All” and “free” college.

He also addressed the problem of income inequality, which deeply connects with young people who feel the weight of the growing class divide on their future. And perhaps most importantly, he overwhelmingly won over Gen Z with his striking candidness and authenticity. 

Politically interested Zoomers are extremely irritated by the authenticity deficit in American politics. Now that the spurious political platitudes of the 1990s and 2000s have become a meme, they can no longer be taken seriously.

I saw Bernie speak twice during his campaign, once in Boston and once in Amherst, Massachusetts. I don’t believe his popularity among Gen Z was because they craved a “socialist” revolution per se, but because Sanders offered something different. He went further than his Democrat compatriots. Not just Obamacare but Medicare for All. Not just a public borrowing option for college loans but an elimination of all student debt. 

The popularity of Donald Trump among young Republicans revealed a similar sentiment. Trump was as different as could be from the recent history of Republican politicians and even carried the same percentage of the youth vote as Sanders, his left-wing doppelgänger. Trump’s outsider status and promise to “drain the swamp” resonated with many young conservatives who were disillusioned with the establishment politics of previous presidential losers like John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Trump was straightforward and highly entertaining during his debate performances, something Gen Z had no prior experience with in conservative politics. Like Sanders, the New York real-estate mogul vowed to challenge the status quo and represented a disruption to traditional politics. 

And unlike the perceived stances of the rest of the 2016 Republican field, Trump did not take a hard line on social issues other than his relatively vague allusions to “political correctness.” He was not against gay marriage. In fact, he held up the gay pride flag at a campaign rally. 

With roughly one-third of Generation Z not identifying with any religion, their standards on social issues have moved drastically to the left from previous generations, giving them one more reason to identify with this unorthodox Republican. 

Adoration of the Animated and the Radical

The rise of more boisterous figures in American politics is the result of two particular ubiquities in our current generation. For starters, less than one in three Gen Z’ers believe that civic engagement encompasses both involvement in community initiatives and active participation in the political process. Among Generation X and Baby Boomers, these numbers are 58 percent and 70 percent, respectively. In short, many of us live online at the expense of real engagement in our local community. This makes us more susceptible to being influenced by radical content — and radical figures — pushed by social media algorithms. 

This shift of political consumption from television to social media provided a greater opening for lively politicians. A prime example is Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who started as a Brooklyn bartender and is now the darling of young leftists, in part because of her masterful use of Instagram and TikTok.

Other young conservatives were drawn to Vivek Ramaswamy who, before suspending his campaign, delivered raucous performances during national debates, calling out the hypocrisy not only of the left-wing media class but of fellow conservatives of a bygone era.

Animated and radical political figures fill a desire in young Americans for entertaining politics but also for something deeper. It’s the inherent knowledge that we have lost something profound, even sacred, in our modern world — a void that my generation hopes can be remedied by iconoclasm and sweeping change.

Furthermore, for our whole lives, Gen Z has been living in a culture of vulgarity and pornography, permeating everything from the music we listen to, to the TV shows we watch and the advertisements we consume. In contrast to the Gen Z’ers who have moved left on social issues, politically engaged young conservatives want to be grounded in principles that recognize and take seriously the societal decay before our eyes. When a politician comes along who is perceived as a wrecking ball to the established social order, he becomes the new standard-bearer. 

The absurdity experienced by young conservatives, especially in the academy, requires assertive voices to cut like acid through the mud. The backlash can sometimes veer into extremes, which must be fought against. The left-wing “woke” types can find their counterparts on the right in incels and genuine racists and misogynists. The answer to wokeness is not the right-wing version of wokeness — it’s normality based in tradition. 

The modern conservative vision begins with the highest good, religion, and cascades down to ontology, epistemology, philosophy, and politics, ultimately forming a good people. 

We’re in a time when the 1960’s Age of Aquarius has become the establishment. Rebellion has become normal. Transgressive is boring.

Gen Z conservatives have gradually come to see that embracing tradition is the new punk rock: Within our nihilistic culture, we can esteem the highest goods and have a joie-de-vivre. And for good or for ill, the bell tolls for yesterday’s political consensus. 

Why Trump keeps coming back

posted by Richard Berkowitz at American Thinker 

With Iowa in the rearview mirror, the “Trump Boomerang” hit the MAGA haters in the Democrat party and their pathetic mass media friends, who belch bile on MSNBC, on the backs of their heads. 

How could this happen?  From my perspective, it was totally predictable.  Why?  Because the more Trump was pilloried, the more he benefited, because most Americans resent bullying and “piling on” and recoil when they are exposed to this type of behavior.

From the time Donald and Melania came down the escalator, the likes of Hillary and her slick lawyers did everything in their power to spy on his administration and to accuse Trump personnel of a variety of outlandish abuses.  Hillary even went to extreme lengths to concoct a false dossier alleging that Trump was in bed with Putin and would destroy our nation.  There have never been comparable efforts to destroy a presidential opponent.

Were it not for our two-tier system of justice, Hillary would be in jail for her defiance of a judge’s orders not to destroy evidence, for the smashing of her cell phone, etc.  The woman has a history of underhanded activities.  “Win at any cost” has always been her goal and motivation.

As for the Democrat MAGA haters, they have applauded a series of unconstitutional efforts on the part of rabid state and local district attorneys in pursuit of the former president.  They have sought to deprive a candidate for federal office of his various freedoms, by harassment and lawsuits in conflict with campaign scheduling.  The attacks on Trump are contrived vendettas because he bested their Queen Bee, gave the deplorables a voice, and threatened the efforts of neo-Marxists who wish to destroy American culture because of their outlandish contempt of our republic.

To make matters more dangerous, we have a president who accuses his opponent of everything he is actually guilty of as if he were a disciple of Goebbels.  Age is not Biden’s problem; rather, the problem is his mean-spirited incompetence...and I have yet to mention his chronic, pathological lying and alleged corruption.  There has never been a president, in my memory, who has apparently marketed his office for so much “gelt.”  Neither have I ever experienced a president who has spent 40% of his time on vacation, hidden from the people and, more recently, did not even know where his secretary of defense was for three days.

Biden also violated his oath of office, early on, because he has failed to protect our nation from adversaries foreign and domestic.  For his open border failures, he should have already been impeached.  Nor have I mentioned his  Chamberlain-like foreign and domestic conduct, his pusillanimous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and his lack of a meaningful response to attacks on our military. 

We have allowed far too many Trojan horses to inflict serious damage to our nation.  We have no one to blame but ourselves.  I fear that the foundation of WW3 has been laid.

Jamie Dimon Positions Himself for President Trump Win in 2024

Sundance reportng for Conservative Treehouse 

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said he remains cautious on the U.S. economy over the next two years, and then starts to position himself for a President Trump election victory.  The remarks prompted below are strategic, data driven, predictive and filled situational awareness – nothing more.

Telling your tribe to stop the negative attacks against the other side, is how a strategic financial CEO positions himself and his organization for the most likely outcome.  WATCH:

I like our odds…. 

How Disgruntled Fishermen Could Prompt SCOTUS To Capsize The Administrative State

While you may not care about fisheries, you should care about Chevron deference, which gives too much power to unelected bureaucrats.

Margot Cleveland reporting for The Federalist

The United States Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in two companion cases that could put an end to our totalitarian administrative state: Relentless Inc. v. U.S. Dept. of Commerce and Loper Bright v. Raimondo.

Here’s your lawsplainer to understand the cases, the legal doctrine at issue — Chevron deference — the oral argument, the punditry surrounding the cases, and the significance of what, on its surface, may appear to be narrow and nerdy issues of administrative law.

Relentless and Loper Bright: the Facts

In both Relentless and Loper Bright, commercial fishing companies sued the U.S. Department of Commerce, challenging a federal administrative rule that requires businesses to pay the cost of government-mandated monitors who travel aboard their vessels during fishing expeditions.

To understand how this administrative rule came about, one must move through the bowels of the federal bureaucracy, beginning first with Congress’s enactment of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). 

That act, first passed by Congress in 1976 “to respond to the threat of overfishing and to promote conservation” but amended multiple times since, regulates marine fisheries, which are defined as “one or more stocks of fish.” To protect against overfishing, the MSA established eight regional councils to manage the various fisheries. In turn, those councils establish “fishery management plans,” which specify conservation measures to prevent overfishing.

The MSA tasked the secretary of commerce with reviewing each fishery management plan and related regulations, but the secretary delegated those responsibilities to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NMFS uses regional councils to draft the fishery management plans, which the NMFS must then approve, disapprove, or partially approve. The NMFS and regional councils then issue regulations to implement the approved plans.

(I did warn that you were about to enter the entrails of the alphabet soup of the administrative state.)

The Challenged Rule

This backdrop brings us to the rule being challenged: a 2020 final rule that requires “industry-funded monitoring for the herring fishery.” Under this rule, a targeted 50 percent of commercial herring fishing trips are to be monitored. And while originally NMFS fully funded the placement of observers on herring fishery vessels, in 2018, in response to growing budgetary uncertainties, an amendment to the fishery management plan authorized forcing the fishing industry to pay for the monitoring.

Congress Didn’t Authorize the Final Rule

The plaintiffs in Relentless and Loper Bright filed separate lawsuits against the secretary of commerce, arguing the MSA did not authorize the Department of Commerce to charge the fishing companies for the cost of observers. It’s important to understand that “[a]dministrative agencies are creatures of statute” and “accordingly possess only the authority that Congress has provided.” Thus, “an agency literally has no power to act … unless and until Congress confers power upon it.”

In passing the MSA, Congress expressly provided that a fishery management plan may “require that one or more observers be carried on board a vessel of the United States engaged in fishing for species that are subject to the plan, for the purpose of collecting data necessary for the conservation and management of the fishery.” But the MSA was silent on whether the management plan could mandate commercial fishing companies to pay for the cost of the observers. Elsewhere in the MSA, however, Congress expressly authorized the secretary of commerce to collect fees to fund observer programs.

The Commerce Department countered that since Congress authorized it to “prescribe such other measures [or] requirements” as are necessary to conserve the fishery, it had the authority to require commercial fishing companies to pay the cost of observers. 

Chevron to the Administrative State’s Rescue

The lower courts concluded the MSA was ambiguous concerning whether the Commerce Department could require the fishing companies to pay the cost of the observers. The courts, nonetheless, upheld the final rule by applying the legal doctrine of Chevron deference.

Chevron deference, which was born from the Supreme Court decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, requires courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute, so long as the agency’s interpretation is “reasonable.” Courts owe such deference to the agency’s interpretation even if there is a more reasonable interpretation of the statute, a court had previously interpreted the statute in a contrary way, or the agency had previously interpreted the statute differently.

Chevron Deference Is a Big Deal

The effects of Chevron deference cannot be overstated because deference often dictates outcome. And that outcome is whatever the unelected bureaucrats of the more than 430 federal agencies and other regulatory agencies say it is — so long as they sound reasonable.

So while you may not care about fisheries, you should care about Relentless and Loper Bright because the justices granted certiorari (review) in those cases to decide whether to overrule or narrow Chevron deference. 

It is difficult to imagine anything that could be more consequential to the deconstructing of the administrative state than overturning Chevron. First, it would end the practice of agencies making important policy decisions that Congress failed to, or refused to, address. Relatedly, it would remove from the executive branch the power to use administrative agencies to force through extreme policy decisions. Further, reversal of Chevron would likely lead to the end of the related doctrine of Auer/Seminole Rock deference, which requires courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of its own ambiguous regulations — another legal doctrine girding the administrative state against legal challenges.

Should any doubt remain over the importance of reversing Chevron deference, one need only watch coverage of Wednesday’s oral argument and hear the screeching from the left. 

The Main Arguments

Oral arguments will likely focus on several issues, with the concept of stare decisis featuring predominantly. That Latin phrase, translated loosely to stand by that which was decided, is a prudential principle that cautions the court against overturning precedent — even when it is wrong. The court will thus face the question of whether to follow the nearly 40-year-old precedent of Chevron or overrule it.

Second, the justices will consider the fishing businesses’ argument that Chevron deference violates Article III of the Constitution, which vests all judicial power in the courts, including the power “to say what the law is.” The court will likely push the parties to explain whether allowing an agency to interpret a statute, which is the essence of Chevron deference, represents an unconstitutional usurpation of the judiciary’s power.

Next, the oral argument will likely consider the petitioners’ due process argument. Here, the fishing companies argue that Chevron deference requires the courts to favor the government’s position, which violates fundamental concepts of fairness.

The major questions doctrine will likely also find the floor on Wednesday. That doctrine provides that when an administrative agency claims the “power to make decisions of vast economic and political significance,” the agency must be able to point to “clear congressional authorization” for the regulation at issue. 

While Chevron deference is the focus of Relentless and Loper Bright, in recent years, the Supreme Court has bypassed that doctrine and instead struck regulations based on the major questions doctrine. The court’s recent decision in West Virginia v. EPA illustrates that approach.

In that case, several states and private parties challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. The majority held that because the regulation had vast economic and political significance, the EPA was required to cite “clear congressional authority” for its regulation of carbon dioxide. Because there was no such clear statutory provision to regulate carbon dioxide, the Supreme Court in West Virginia held the EPA lacked the authority to promulgate the challenged regulations.

The majority in West Virginia v. EPA addressed the question of administrative authority through the lens of the major questions doctrine, sidestepping Chevron deference. Wednesday, however, at least some of the justices are likely to push the attorneys on how to reconcile those two lines of cases. 

What Will the Court Do?

While predicting how the high court will rule is fraught with risk — especially before oral argument — various justices have been foreshadowing their predilections for some time. Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, and Kavanaugh have all criticized Chevron, and Justices Alito, Barrett, and Roberts have all denied agencies deference under the major questions doctrine. 

These facts suggest a majority of the justices may be willing to overturn Chevron. And if they do, it will be a mortal blow to the administrative state.