The Origins of the Democrats DefeatFirst published in 1942 in Italy, Luigi Albertini’s The Origins of the War of 1914 traced the political, diplomatic, and military causes of the war, going back to the consequences of the compromise between Austria and Hungary in 1867. He took the reader step by step along a path that ended in that war. The way he laid out the events in Europe, one can see with the advantage of hindsight how so many European decisions naturally led to war. When one finishes the book, one is forced to look at one’s own life while analyzing one’s successes and failings.
Today in the United States, there is much discussion over the causes of the victory by Trump and the defeat not only of Harris, but the major shift within the Democratic bloc. In looking for the causes of Harris’ defeat, numerous reasons are offered but seldom condensed into a simple, logical path to defeat. Using the system laid out by Albertini, let us consider if you will, the following steps which if viewed objectively, should have told the Democrats that they were setting up their own defeat even as they made their decisions.
1) The election victory of the Democrats of 2020: In that election, the victor was a weak, seventy-eight-year-old Joe Biden, a man who was already suffering from mental and physical weakness. He promised, recognizing his weakness, that he would be a one term President. Like Hillary Clinton before him, he was not so much nominated as chosen by the Democratic powers that be as it was “his time.” He was, according to the party, the best they had to offer.
2) Pick of a Vice President: Being a good Democrat, the President Elect chose as his Vice President, a Black female who represented the far left of the party. This painted the Democratic party into a cornet, for if Biden were to honor his pledge, his Vice President would have to be the acknowledge front runner in four years. If she were not, for any reason, the Black wing of the party would be outraged and endanger the 2024 election. Worse still, if she did not perform, she could not be jettisoned without alienating the party’s Black people. It was contingent on her to perform and do her job in a way that would allow the party to go into the 2024 election with confidence.
3) Lying to the public: As President Biden’s mental wellbeing went downhill, the truth could not be allowed to be known. Fortunately, the legacy media and much of the cable media was willingly co-opted to go along with keeping the secret. The President’s weekly visits to Delaware were represented as “working” weekends and the public was told that the President was strong, sure and at his peak. In reality, the Democratic party hoisted upon the citizens a weak man whose record as Robert Gates once said, “He has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” This put the American people in danger as Iran, China, Russia and others saw a leader who was weak and who believed that appeasement was a positive strategy.
4) A broken promise: Despite his weakness, President Biden decided to seek a second term. The party was in a dilemma: how long could Biden’s mental and physical weakness be concealed from the public? He could not repeat his campaign of 2020 which was often referred to as the “basement” strategy. Somehow Biden had to be protected.
5) The debate: The house of cards collapsed with the Presidential debate with Trump. In a few minutes, the truth of Biden’s weakness could not be concealed any longer and overnight the polls pointed to a disastrous 2024 election.
6) The Putsch: The powers that be in the Democratic party decided that they had to find a way to save the 2024 election. Their answer was the first Putsch in American history: get Biden to reverse his decision and place his Vice President, Kamala Harris in his stead. Yet only a few short weeks before there were discussions of how to replace Harris with someone who could be shown as a staunch support of a weak Biden. It had been recognized that nationally, Harris was viewed even more negatively than Biden and she brought little of positive worth to the ticket. Yet to try to replace her as the Democratic candidate would all but destroy the Black vote in the party’s coalition. The cost of DEI was coming home to roost and the party had extraordinarily little time to market Harris.
7) The Election: Despite over a billion dollars of campaign spending, Harris was not able to “close the deal.” Her total misreading of the public mood and experience of the Biden administration was shown when she said that she could not think of a single thing she would do differently. Yet at the same time she was marketing herself as the agent of change, the one who wanted to start a new page. A new page of what? If she would not do anything different than Biden, what was she changing? The campaign was a dead-end of contradictions and hype. At that point, the Democrats could have saved a lot of money if they had just admitted defeat.
My intention is not to go over all of the policy decisions made during the Biden administration that led to the highest inflation in forty years, the weakening of the U.S. militarily and diplomatically, the relentless push for an energy policy that is inefficient and too expensive, the perceived use of lawfare against an opponent, the inability to track 300,000 immigrant children who were entrusted to “authorized personnel”, etc. Rather, we are, like Albertini to view, in hindsight what political decisions turned a victory into a defeat in an amazingly brief period of time.
It is now up to the Democratic party to realize that it was their decision in 2019-2020 that all but assured their defeat in 2024. When an administration starts with a lie, such as the excellent health of the candidate, it is acting like a child or teenager who lies, hoping that tomorrow and the truth will never come. The central lie that was sold, held within itself the very seeds of its own destruction, and should be a lesson for all of us to learn.
The day after this election, I made it a point to listen to the BBC news service to hear the reaction from the U.K. I was amazed and disappointed by the comments from the British pundits and reporters to the election results. They echo the comments from American reporters and pundits such as Charles Blow, Ruth Marcus, Joe Scarborough, Nikole-Hannah Jones, and others. As Americans they openly admit that somehow, they have misunderstood the average American. I do not believe that was ever in doubt. Those reactions brought home to me what I have believed for so long, that there is a deep misunderstanding of the U.S. by those living outside of the U.S. I have also seen this in Canada. Those who are closest to understanding the U.S. reside in the former Soviet bloc countries, such as Poland, Hungary, etc. Why is that? Perhaps it is because those countries lost decades of freedom and progress, and they see the U.S. and not western Europe as the model for what they want to achieve.
In order to help the good people of western Europe to better understand we Americans, the link below might be of service. Konstantin Kisin is a conservative satirist based in the U.K., but he shows that he has an understanding of most Americans.
One of the primary results of the election, will be, as most Americans hope, the death of the racist and unproductive DEI experiment. Kisin points out the ideal of American virtues, not always attained but rooted deep in the American psyche. I know that millions across the world love these virtues as they attempt to come in their millions to our beautiful land.
“The worse the society, the more law there will be. In Hell there will be nothing but law”
Grant Gilmore
Recently the governor of California signed nine hundred new laws into being. Each law will carry various civil and/or criminal penalties and will be further clarified by various rules as determined by the various agencies which will enforce the new laws and rules. Do you know how these new laws will impact you, your life, your family, or business? How many of them will make your life better or easier? Yet, you will be expected to abide by these laws; ignorance of the law is no longer a defense.
In this excellent book, Justice Gorsuch gives numerous examples of how federal laws and rules can be abused by the authorities and how naked we stand before the power of the State. An example is the fisherman who was charged with violating the Sarbanes-Osley Act (instituted after the housing crash of 2007 and aimed at financial institutions) when two federal officials miscounted how many fish he had caught with the result that he lost his business, home, and retirement savings. In the end, the Supreme Court found that he was innocent, but he lived a twenty-year nightmare and received no restitution.
That ex-fisherman was fortunate for he had the nerve and outside help to fight the system, while others often charged with multiple “crimes” from multiple agencies simply plead down their “crimes” in order to try to get on with their lives. And what chance does the average person have when you take the example of new laws in California, multiply it by fifty states and then add on and average of fifty-six new federal crimes every year. In reality, no one knows exactly how many federal laws and regulations carry a criminal punishment, but it is at least three-hundred thousand and growing.
How did this type of system develop? The Founding Fathers were very fearful of a powerful centralized state for they knew from their life experiences the helplessness of the individual. Thus, they created a system of checks and balances in order to limit the power of the central government. They believed that if laws were made, it would be better to have them created at the state level where there was a better opportunity for the average citizen to see, understand and give voice to their concerns.
The system began to change under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson who believed that what was needed was a “science of administration” where “experts” could “straighten the paths of government.” What this meant was that far too much time was spent thinking about the relationship between government and the constitution, and not enough time spent looking for government “efficiency.” And what better model than the Prussian bureaucracy? The Constitution stood in the way of “efficient” government with all of those annoying checks and balances. Better to let expert bureaucrats take the reins of government so that a living, breathing constitution could be created. Despite the failure of “expert” government from the times of Plato and Aristotle, Wilson believed that this time it would be different.
The result is a system where Americans spend 9.78 billion hours to complete federal (not counting state and local) paperwork. To put it another way, “Suppose that we assembled every resident of Chicago and insisted that for the entirety of 2019, each one must work forty house a week engaged in just one task; fill out federal forms. By the end of 2019, the 2.7 million citizens of Chicago will not have come within four billion houses of the annual paperwork burden placed on Americans.”
How do we change a system where the average citizen is lost in a maze of laws and rules drawn up by bureaucrats who are not judged on their service, but rather who have a vested interest in creating new rules in order to expand the bureaucracy? The answer is not simple and must come in large measure from the average American. Justice Gorsuch points out the woefully inadequate amount of time and money spent in educating children on civics. In fact, while the federal government spends about $.54/student on education for STEM, it only spends about $0.05 on civics. The result is that only about thirty-two percent of millennials believe that it is “absolutely essential” that “civil rights protect people’s liberty.”
A more encouraging step is Proposition 315 in Arizona. Under that law, any new rule from the bureaucracy which would cost $500,000 over a five-year period would have to be examined and agreed to by the state assembly. In other words, the law makers would have to realize the impact of their laws (which unfortunately Congress gave up years ago). This proposition is strongly opposed by the League of Women Voters as it would give lawmakers a tool to block rules with which they do not agree!
In the end, we face a lopsided battle; the bureaucracy which cannot be fired nor held to account vs. the average citizen who has no idea what laws and rules they face every day. We can only thank those few strong individuals and those who support them for showing us with their struggles the leviathan we face every day.
The front page of today’s Wall Street Journal contains an article named, “Western Spy Agencies Sound Alarms on Chinese Espionage,” as if the lights suddenly went on in spy agencies around the world. The spying has been at all levels of our business and governments; remember the Chinese spy who was Senator Diane Feinstein’s driver (and office manager) for twenty years? Or how about Mayor Adams of New York City whose “Asian Affairs Advisor” is being investigated for close ties to the CCP? Or how about that illegal biolab in California or the illegal CCP “police offices” in NYC and in at least fifty countries around the world.
But there is more than spying that is a danger to the rest of the world. The deeper danger is when our politicians and business leaders fall into a corrupt and traitorous relationship with the CCP. Peter Schweizer’s excellent book Blood Money tells of several U.S. “leaders” who have worked hand in hand with the CCP at the expense of the United States. The final threat to our freedom and political system is the dark money from the CCP which has been flowing into our political system for decades. Just as the Soviets poured money into the student movement during the seventies and later, the CCP has been working on numerous fronts such as the Rainbow Coalition.
The link below will take you to a long interview with Trevor Loudon, a New Zealand author, speaker, blogger, and researcher. Although it starts out focusing on the Communist ties to Kamala Harris’ parents, at about the sixteen minute mark we begin to find those on the monied Left who have aided, funded and supported various groups whose goal is to corrupt the U.S. political system and turn us away from a free Republic toward a weaken Socialist state where our rights are limited and destroyed.
Paranoia? It is all a coincidence? It is up to you to decide, but we live in a time when a former First Lady says that the Federal government should jail those who spread “propaganda” without defining just what qualifies as “propaganda.” We have a Vice-Presidential candidate who says there is no guarantee of First Amendment rights for those who say hate speech, again without defining who determines what is and what is not “hate speech” and who makes that determination. Remember the short lived “Disinformation Governance Board” set up in 2022?
Isn’t you and your children’s freedom worth an hour or so of information?
Does it ever appear to you that most governments and especially the Federal government live in some sort of alternative universe? Recently a local government decided to shut down local oil rigs in the name of saving the planet. The problem was that those oil rigs contributed about eighty-three million dollars to the government in the form of taxes. As the day of the shut down approached, (the decision had been made two years ago), someone in government asked how were those funds going to be replaced? Perhaps a reduction in the number of city workers? No, not that. Eliminating non-essential government programs? No, not that. Then someone had a brilliant idea: increase the sales tax even though the current city sales tax is among the highest in the nation. Yes! Great idea!
On the national level, the lack of being in touch with reality is even greater. For example, the EPA last Good Friday decided to roll out it is Biden inspired electric truck mandate. From 2027-2032, heavy-duty trucks will be responsible for an ever-increasing percentage of trucks on the road. By 2032 the percentage is targeted to be 25%.
There are a number of questions and concerns that came to light immediately, but which somehow were not anticipated or answered by either the EPA of the White House, for example:
- The batteries of semis are larger and heavier than those in fossil fuel vehicles, so their pay loads will be smaller.
- This means that there will be more semis on the road which will lead to more traffic congestion which will lead to:
- More pollution as their tires creates more soot than conventional tires.
- Higher delivery costs
- Greater damage to the highways as these semis are heavier which may be beyond the original engineering specifications.
- This means that there will be more semis on the road which will lead to more traffic congestion which will lead to:
- The cost.
- While there will be more semis on the road, where will the capital come from in order to pay for the new semis:
- Electric semis cost on average, about twice as much as traditional semis.
- This will lead to higher costs of transportation which will lead to higher costs for the consumer and greater inflation.
- At the current time, there are no U.S. electric semis in production so will the new semis be manufactured by our national competitors such as China?
- Is this mandate in reality a job core program for China?
- What will be done with the hundreds of thousands of suddenly outlawed semis?
- Electric semis cost on average, about twice as much as traditional semis.
- While there will be more semis on the road, where will the capital come from in order to pay for the new semis:
- Where will the energy come from?
- By 2030, electric trucks are anticipated to use about 11% of California’s electricity. As the trucks have to run mostly during daylight hours in order to cover more ground, they will have to recharge at night when rates are higher, which will lead to greater shipping costs.
- Between now and 2032, about 15,000 chargers will have to be built and installed each and every month. The government has installed less than a dozen chargers in the past two years.
- Infrastructure will have to be upgraded, including transformers, wiring, etc. The estimated cost is $370 billion with another $620 billion being spent by the truckers themselves at their facilities. Another increase in pricing.
The list could easily go on and on and I sincerely doubt that anyone at the EPA, the White House or Congress is looking at how to solve those issues above in a time of major economic and international pressures. Perhaps the powers that have a few ounces of magic dust they intend to use to help implement their silly, unrealistic, childish mandate. And this is just one of many brilliant ideas we will continue to see coming out of D.C. in the future, no matter which party is in power. After all, the government must appear to be doing something or else we would just end up asking why we need so many bureaucrats in our lives.
It is no secret that governments around the world are facing serious problems with their health care costs; the cost of modern technology, payroll pressures, an aging population and decreasing birth rates all point to further problems down the road. Canada, however, has found a solution to the problem; kill the patients, eliminate further costs.
As the article linked below points out, Canada has made government assisted suicide easier than ever; not mentally competent? Not a problem! Under the age of eighteen? Are you diabetic? Not a problem! Feeling down in the dumps? Nor a problem! In fact, medical staff will actively suggest the idea of euthanasia. Ah, the government is here to help.
The number of medically assisted suicides in Canada is so successful that Canada can proudly boast that it has the “fastest-growing assisted-dying program” in the world. Well, every country should be number one in something.
President Reagan was so correct when he said that the nice terrifying words you can hear are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
We live in what we should view as dangerous times. Why? Because it is easy to name several national leaders who are able and willing to go to war regardless of the cost to them or those they attack. Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea are all ruled by individuals that most people would not want to have over for dinner, or who you would not trust with your children. They are, to put it in the common tongue, nuts, crazy, scary, not in touch with reality, etc.
What really makes the above even scarier is the current leadership of the United States, or should I say the lack of leadership of our nation. We have a President who is mentally challenged, who suffered a putsch from his own party and has no real control over the powerful office he occupies (when he is not at the beach).
The attached article points out that no one outside of the Office of the President, really seems to know who the acting captain of the ship of state is. We face the next few months in a rudderless state; one which is of great danger to us and the world. It is hard to believe, but it would have been better had the Democratic leaders who manufactured and conducted the putsch used the 25th Amendment to remove President Biden and at least installed a figure head president of Kamala Harris. At least world leaders would have seen a warm body in the Oval Office instead of watching the existing President spend so much time at the beach.
Who exactly do world leaders call to discuss strategies, challenges, etc.? Unelected bureaucrats, a Secretary of State whose role is to conduct the policies of the President, the heads of the various Cabinets? If they do reach the current President, who is whispering in his ear? His wife? Former Presidents?
Kamala Harris recently said the democracy can be fragile. Our democracy should not be fragile as we are the world’s oldest republic; we have survived for two-hundred and fifty years, and we have a constitution that has been amended to answer the challenges we face. But democracy can be fragile if we allow a void in the highest office in the land to be filled by faceless entities who inhabit the deep state. The Democrats created a putsch to maintain the chance of power going forward, but they have exposed us and much of the world to the twisted logic of foreign leaders who know no boundaries.
The link below helps to explain the dangers and challenges we as a nation face.
Biden’s Disappearing Act Reveals the Real Power in Washington (dailysignal.com)
We live in a time where so many people have so many solutions to problems which they have managed to create in their own minds. It is a real wonder of our time; “Because I cannot get what I want, we have a major problem. Here is my brilliant idea on how to fix it.”
Most of the time, the individuals who think that way are harmless, but lately we have been seeing major political figures who should know better producing their crazy solutions. “My candidate did not win, let’s do away with the elector college,” or “the Supreme Court (which does overturn previous rulings), ruled in a way I do not agree with, let’s have term limits on the Justices.” And, who wants to do away with the elector college? Politicians who go to court to overturn the will of the voters. Who wants to institute term limits on Supreme Court Justices? Politicians who have lived at the public trough for forty, fifty or more years and who have virtually nothing to show for their years of “public service.” Indeed, the only thing they have created is a huge public debt.
The attached article discusses the rational for our Constitution protections, how they have served and protected us and how we are in danger if we decide to chip away at those protections. Before we go on a great crusade to redo or “improve” our Federal Constitution, remember the great lives in the film, A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt:
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
So, do we really want to trust our futures to men or women who have given us only failure and division? I hope you enjoy the article.
The Very Real Perils of Weakening Checks on Federal Power (dailysignal.com)
There have been many promises of opportunities which high tech and the gig economy were going to provide, such as millions of high paying jobs. Not only promises of high pay, but the ability to be free from having to work from centralized offices, which would increase productivity as workers could work from home or remote offices. How have those promises worked out? Have we seen a real increase in wages and opportunities for millions of recent college graduates? Have older workers felt more secure when they realized that the face-to-face semi-personal contact, they had with management is gone? And where are all those fantastic new jobs?
The attached video provides some answers as we see individuals working for $.30 per hour or less. But hey, it is the new world of the gig economy. What futures do these workers, or the millions of others like them see? Are these jobs preparing them so that they can move forward during the next ten, twenty or even forty years of their lives? It is becoming a brave new world in which the times of Upton Sinclair’s’ muckraking novels may actually be viewed as a better time. Indeed, the reality shown in this video points to the worse fears and ideas of science fiction writers who foresaw a dark and cold future for humanity.
Bjorn Lomborg does not have to take a back seat to any environmentalist. He has a long and reputable CV of environmental achievements and believes that for a much smaller price tag, we could do more to enhance the lives of millions of people around the world, instead of going after grandiose projects that somehow never seem to quite work out.
In his article, he points out some of the great fallacies which the left environmentalist movement has used to pry money from those who produce and give to those who claim to be following “science.” Fallacies? Such as?
- Remember the great disappearing polar bear hoax? Somehow despite the wailing from the left, the polar bear has not disappeared, but rather the population has doubled.
- How about the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef? Oops, in 2024, the reef is setting yet another record for growth.
- The sinking islands: This was a special joy for the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who in 2019 went in his business suit to stand thigh deep in the Pacific behind a headline “Our Sinking Planet”. The only problem is that “Almost all the atoll islands are stable or increasing in size.”
If you read the entire article, you will wonder if the environmentalists are ever correct. “Well, anyone can make a mistake and what is the real harm?” The harm is that each of these claims and others cost all of us trillions of dollars which could be better spent addressing problems that confront all of us, such as diseases, hunger, etc. Here are two examples of how your money is being wasted in the pursuit of ill-designed and often useless projects:
- Electric School Buses: Three years ago, Vice President Harris was so happy to be able to announce a $5 Billion electric school bus program. How successful has it been? To date a total of sixty buses have been built. But they have created sixty new “green jobs.” How? The same bus drivers who drove the old fossil fuel buses are now driving the green buses. Same drivers, new buses, counted as new green jobs. (www.climatedepot.com/20224/07/30 and Freebeacon.com)
- EV Charging Stations: Three years ago, the Biden administration signed a bill authorizing $7.5 Billion for the installation of 500,000 EV charging stations. What has been accomplished? A total of seven charging stations have been installed. (NYPost.com, 2024/06/05)
- You may ask, “Where has the money gone?” Straight into the pockets of bureaucrats (we always need more of them to “manage” new programs, consultants, community organizers, etc.
Someone, somewhere, should be brave enough to ask simple, logical questions and is willing to follow up on the promises made with your money. Or is that as silly as the claims of the environmental industry?
Barry J. Klazura
With a Masters Degree in Guerrilla Warfare and Totalitarianism, Mr. Klazura was well prepped for a career in Sales and General Management, consulting on corporate startups and turnarounds as well as lecturing on history and politics. For the past twenty years he has focused on being a financial advisor and consulting.
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