Sept. 22, 2022
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Political violence worsens after Biden speech as paranoid man runs down ‘Republican extremist’ with his car in North Dakota
By Robert Romano
On Sept. 20, a paranoid, drunk 41-year-old Biden supporter tragically ran a 19-year-old Trump supporter down with his car in North Dakota "because he had a political argument with the pedestrian and believed the pedestrian was calling people to come get him" apparently after the boy called his mother to come and pick him up. The man, Shannon Brandt, reportedly told the 911 dispatcher that the boy, who shortly before his demise called his mother again to say "'he' or 'they' were chasing him," belonged to a “Republican extremist” group.
This came just a few weeks after President Joe Biden in a Sept. 1 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pa. declared former President Donald Trump, Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans and states that restrict abortions and mail-in ballots an extremist threat to the nation.
Specifically, Biden said, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” He spoke again of their “extreme ideology,” distinguishing them from supposed “mainstream Republicans,” even though Trump’s favorability among Republicans almost universal, as it should be for a former Republican president, who led his party in office.
Biden tied Trump to the political violence of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol thanks to Trump’s own ill-fated speech made at the National Mall that day preceding the 2021 Capitol Riot that led to Trump’s impeachment for incitement of insurrection—and acquittal on the grounds that he had a First Amendment right to make the speech.
To feel threatened, all one ever needed to have done was purchase a Make America Great Again red ball cap that Trump wore throughout the 2016 campaign. Many of them think they’re MAGA, and they probably loved Ronald Reagan, wave American flags, believe the Second Amendment protects them from tyranny and read their Bibles, too.
Supporting the President of one’s party in a reelection bid, as in 2020, is also a pretty low barrier.
Thinking the election might have been compromised when Biden only won by 43,000 votes in three swing states of Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona while Trump was visibly mounting legal challenges similar to Al Gore’s 2000 challenge of the results in Florida is a similarly low barrier.
Another election challenge that must not be forgotten is the insane 2016 challenge by Democrats on the grounds Trump was a Russian agent who was controlled by Vladimir Putin that led not merely to political violence—Steve Scalise almost died because of it at the Congressional baseball practice shooting by a Rachel Maddow superfan who thought Republicans were Russian traitors—but a supposedly serious national security investigation by the FBI, Justice Department and intelligence agencies that only led to Trump’s exoneration in the Mueller report, who could not find evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to hack the Democratic National Committee and put their emails onto Wikileaks. Thinking that was all BS is yet another similarly low barrier.
Here, the Justice Department was using political force under law, but it’s still force, against Trump to take him down. He was a sitting president, it was made up by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats, and when they found out it was made up, they kept going.
Trump, when leaving office, attempted to declassify the documents specifically related to that investigation, and once again, the Justice Department is using political force against Trump, and is still refusing to release the documents in their redacted form that Trump did declassify on Jan. 19, 2021 before left office, according to a public record of the Trump White House website retained by the National Archives.
These “elections were stolen” boys and girls who cry wolf allegations are pretty dangerous, aren’t they? Look at what’s happening.
In just the past 20 years, we have had six presidential elections, 50 percent of which, 2000, 2016 and 2020 all led to massive election challenges that further divided the nation—and according to Biden, not accepting the outcome of any election is tantamount to threatening the very foundation of the Constitution. There is harm to the nation, he says, when that is done.
So perhaps he needs to necessarily include, for all the same reasons, Hillary Clinton supporters from 2016 who thought Trump was a foreign agent and the mad men in the nation’s national security apparatus who foisted Russiagate on the nation as all political extremists who are dangerous. Look yourself in the mirror, Mr. President. America has lost its mind on a bipartisan basis in many ways.
Unfortunately, Biden’s speech, despite decrying political violence — but notably only right-wing political violence when it came down to specifics, ignoring lots of political violence in both directions whether it was the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots or ongoing street wars by rival political gangs in Seattle, Wash. and Portland, Oreg. — painted targets on his political opponents. He made them akin to extremist ideologies of the last century, calling them “semi-fascist” days earlier.
Biden is dangerously casting violence into a partisan context. We need a president who can calm those waters, not wield them. We need the Golden Rule, that each political party will treat each other the way it wishes to be treated, not the way it expects to be treated.
Here Biden lowered the barrier to finding potential extremists down to mere Trump supporters. That is why in a less publicized press event later that week, he attempted to walk it back a bit, saying he didn’t mean “any Trump supporter”. But by then the damage to our nation was already done.
Why did Biden walk that speech back? What had he done specifically to Trump supporters that he was now conscious of but didn’t realize while he was mad with power when he made his dark, poorly lit and terribly written speech in Philadelphia? Sounds like he had a guilty conscious, or perhaps he was just offended that any reasonable person would suggest his declaration of Trump and MAGA Republicans who support him are extremists meant that he was saying Trump supporters are terrorists.
Did Biden’s speech and mass media reporting about extremist Republicans play a role in Brandt’s psychology? How could they not? Isn’t that the point? What did Biden think would happen?
Biden incited the very “violence of faction” that James Madison warned of in Federalist No. 10 that Biden also appeared to decry. And now Biden knows it. A kid is dead. And to every parent out there, it could’ve been your kid. And it still might be if some miraculous force does not intervene. These are all giant red flags waving in our midst every day.
What is unclear is whether Biden knows that imprisoning the principal leader of the opposition party — as the Justice Department now threatens to do to Trump apparently over the documents it refused to release to the public after Trump declassified them — will only make it worse. That is the use of force, too, Mr. President. And if your advisors are not warning you of that, you need new advisors. These are dangerous combinations of circumstance that has our political life circling an abyss that will take not years, but decades to crawl out of should we fall in. It’s not too late.
Robert Romano is Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
America’s Labor Shortage – The Baby Boomer Solution
By Rick Manning
Social Security has long been called the third rail of politics, so any mention of reforming the program in the halls of Congress often sends elected members scurrying for cover.
However, right now our nation has a labor crisis. A crisis that is at least partially caused by the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation combined with a birth rate over the past twenty years that has fallen below the population replacement level.
The Social Security system has been set up over the past forty years to encourage people to retire and get out of the workforce. That made sense when we had significantly more people wanting work than jobs available for them to fill. Today, we have the opposite situation, so our retirement system encourages the exact wrong response to meet our workforce needs in the 2020s.
To start, Congress should eliminate all taxes on Social Security benefits. Taxing these benefits has the effect of discouraging people from full-time work as the more you make, the more taxes you pay on your benefit due to the progressive income tax system. Social Security benefits are the result of decades of compulsory payments directly removed from each of our paychecks, and until 1983 was not taxed.
Now, it is time to end the Social Security benefits tax. The net result would be to encourage those who wish to continue with their careers. And in 2022, we need willing workers of all ages to meet the needs facing our economy. Congress should want to encourage Baby Boomers and Generation X to continue working if they wish, and ending taxes on Social Security benefits will end one of the current disincentives to do so.
The next obvious change is to allow people to collect Social Security at the age of 62 without restrictions on the amount of money that can be made outside of the benefit. Currently, if you opt to collect Social Security prior to the age of 66 and three months, you are capped on how much you can make before the benefit needs to be repaid. With the current labor shortage, denying people access to a diminished benefit due to this income cap is just plain short-sighted.
Blue collar workers who often-times find their minds willing to keep working even as their bodies struggle to keep up as they get older, should be able to collect the benefit they are owed while shifting gears to another position which may pay less, but raises their standard of living out of the poverty level.
For these seniors, the current system effectively consigns them to poverty rather than allowing them to use the Social Security benefit payment as a supplement to their income from a different career.
A third workforce challenge created by the structure of the Social Security/Disability Insurance Fund is the income cap placed upon those who collect Disability Insurance including the health care benefit. Currently, a person on disability can only make a monthly income limit of $1,350 for non-blind and $2,260 for blind people. If you can earn more than these amounts, then the SSA deems you capable of engaging in “substantial gainful activity,” which prevents you from qualifying for benefits.
The denial of the health benefit is effectively a death sentence for many people with disabilities who cannot replace it due to the high cost of their treatments.
Currently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that only 37.6 percent of persons with disabilities aged 16 - 64 are in the workforce as opposed to 77.5 percent of those without disabilities. While not every person with a disability wants a job, the current SSDI system consigns people dependent upon the health insurance it provides to institutional poverty. This is morally wrong, easily corrected and counter to our national need to empower every American to seek employment. And the answer is simple. Disconnect the health benefit from the economic benefit, while allowing the economic benefit to be reduced based upon income replacement akin to the current Earned Income Tax Credit system which ensures that making a higher wage does not cost a person money through the loss of benefits. This Milton Friedman recommended system to wean people off of government dependency would also allow people with disabilities to make more and more money while not risking the only benefit that matters for their survival.
What’s more with technological gains for people with mobility, sight and hearing disabilities, the current system is irrationally punitive and regardless of national employment needs should be reformed.
Incentivizing work by simply reforming the Social Security benefits system to end the deliberate obstacles to continuing in the workforce makes sense for America in 2023. Republicans and Democrats alike should be able to find common ground on this common sense issue as our nation’s economy flounders at least partially due to the demographics of an aging population.
While this is a temporary solution, it will buy some time while our country grapples with how to create a rational immigration policy and what, if anything, can be done to encourage a birth rate that exceeds population replacement levels.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2022/09/americas-labor-shortage-the-baby-boomer-solution/
James Madison: Federalist Paper No. 10
To the People of the State of New York:
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a wellconstructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.
The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.
By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful.
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people. The question resulting is, whether small or extensive republics are more favorable to the election of proper guardians of the public weal; and it is clearly decided in favor of the latter by two obvious considerations:
In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however small the republic may be, the representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. Hence, the number of representatives in the two cases not being in proportion to that of the two constituents, and being proportionally greater in the small republic, it follows that, if the proportion of fit characters be not less in the large than in the small republic, the former will present a greater option, and consequently a greater probability of a fit choice.
In the next place, as each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters.
It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representatives too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects. The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.
The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.
Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic,–is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. Does the advantage consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will not be denied that the representation of the Union will be most likely to possess these requisite endowments. Does it consist in the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any one party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest? In an equal degree does the increased variety of parties comprised within the Union, increase this security. Does it, in fine, consist in the greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority? Here, again, the extent of the Union gives it the most palpable advantage.
The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.
In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.
PUBLIUS.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2022/09/james-madison-federalist-paper-no-10/