The immigration bill is dead. Whose fault is that? We are told even by the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal that it was a good bill, worthy of support. If the bill was so good, surely it should have found widespread support, yet even the President did not use a full court press to force passage. How strange.

Yet, the real question should be, why the sudden urge to create and pass such a bill? For three years we have been told that the border was closed and that we had operational control of the border. Why the sudden need for a bill that did not address any of the major concerns regarding illegal immigration? Did the bill limit the number of immigrants? No. Did it give more power to the immigration service to battle the cartels who are making more money from transporting the illegals than they do from drugs? No. Does it disincentivize the illegals from crashing our borders by not allowing them to work? No, in fact it provides work permits to any illegal who makes it across the border.

Could it be that the bill was a bit of political theater given that this is an election year? Heaven forbids, how could anyone be so suspicious! But, since those Republicans decided to oppose the bill, the President does have a new set of talking points with which to throw at the Republicans.

The link below will take you to an article that provides, in one location, the numbers behind the true disaster which the past three years of open borders have inflicted on our nation. But the pain is just beginning for no one speaks of the 100,000 unaccompanied children that have crossed who have disappeared. How many of them will be victims of sex trafficking? What will be the cost to U.S. citizens in the decades to come as they see their tax dollars diverted from social services, schools, police protection, etc. and use to house, feed, education and provide free medical care to millions of illegals?

The wounds caused by the open border policies of this administration will fester for decades , but have no doubt, there will be political forces which will profit from the open border policy; they will profit, and the average U.S. citizen will pay on ongoing price.

The linked article is sobering.

An Immigration Crisis Beyond Imagining – Imprimis (hillsdale.edu)

Despite the best efforts of the far Left (and their allies, the regular Democratic party,) I still believe that I won the lottery in life when I was born in the United States. I went back to “the old country” and after that visit, I was even more thankful for the bravery and sacrifices of my grandparents for immigrating to the United States. Without their bravery, I could picture myself growing up in a Communist nation with little freedom and little opportunity.

Their migration to the U.S. was not easy and like most immigrants, they decided to live in an ethnic neighborhood (south side of Chicago), near steady work (steel mills). I remember one of my grandmothers talking about how she thought Chicago was so backward; the sidewalks were wood (unlike Warsaw which used concrete) and the bathroom was in the back yard (unlike Warsaw which had indoor plumbing). They worked hard, saved, invested their money and their children spoke perfect English and could and did go to college. The great American dream fulfilled.

A friend of mine came over to the U.S. much later and he still talks about how the immigration process was so strict. You could only come over if you had the promise (in writing) of a job and a sponsor. You had to register where you lived, and he had an immigration officer visit him to make sure he was working and at that address! He received no welfare of any type because if he did, back he would go to “the old country.”  He married, opened a business and his four children are all strong Americans.

How times have changed! You can easily read of cities and states where non-citizens, including illegal and legal immigrants, foreign students and diplomats can vote in local elections, get driver’s licenses, etc. (Washington D.C., Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont, etc.)  The state of California just announced that despite its deficit of nearly seventy-billion dollars ($70,000,000,000), it will provide free health care to all illegals in the state. Where will the state find the money? Take a guess; the citizen who pays the legal taxes due. Of course, illegals already receive a free education and yes, many receive welfare.

At the same time, citizens need to pay for their health care, pay their state and Federal taxes, are required to show identification when boarding an airplane (unlike illegals), can lose their car if they are guilty of drunk driving (unlike illegals in California), etc. Something is very wrong with this picture! The backbone of any successful society in the West is a strong middle-class and yet it seems our governments at various levels are doing all they can to denigrate and destroy that group.

It may be a good time to ask, why is American citizenship being so degraded by many of our political leaders? What exactly is the upside for our nation of allowing five, or eight or ten million illegals into our nation? Most do not speak English, most have no real job skills; yet we give them free food, shelter, clothing, work permits, cell phones, etc. Millions of people around the world would love to become U.S. citizens, so it is not out of fear that no one would show up if we enforced our own laws. What is the purpose of ignoring all the laws, rules and guidelines that are there for our nation’s benefit? Immigration is designed to benefit the receiving nation; that is the first priority. We can have the pick of the best and brightest, the ones who would be thrilled to be U.S. citizens, but instead we let in millions of unknowns and who picks up the bill? Have you watched the news in the last three years? Those who pick up the bill see their neighborhoods overrun, their children’s schools being turned into migrant camps and the crime rate spiraling out of control. Who pays? It is the millions of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who play by the rules, pay their taxes, and expect a minimum amount respect from our elected officials. Apparently, that is asking too much.

The recent court decision against former President Trump re: E. Jean Carroll points out some disturbing actions in terms of altering basic Constitutional protections, political manipulation of the justice system regarding elections and the politization of said system.

The attached article by Victor Davis Hanson should open the eyes of many readers. As you read it, you should picture yourself in former President Trumps position. It does not matter if you hate him or love him; would you want to be treated in such a manner?

Please copy the link below and post it on your header.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/83-million-just-beginning-donald-trump-soldier-on

I recently re-read an old article from the WSJ on the Magna Carta, the document which Lord Denning said was “the greatest document of all time, the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the state.”  I thought that the following was really inspiration and worthy of remembering:

“Liberty and property; how naturally those words tripped, as a unitary concept, from the tongues of America’s Founders. These were men who had been shaped in the English tradition and they saw parliamentary government not as an expression of majority rule, but as a guarantor of individual freedom. How different was the Continental tradition, born 13 years later with the French Revolution, which saw elected assemblies as the embodiment of what Rousseau called the “general will” of the people.

In that difference, we may discern explanation of why the Anglosphere resisted the chronic bouts of authoritarianism to which most other Western countries were prone. We who speak this language have always seen the defense of freedom as the duty of our representatives and so, by implication, of those who elect them. Liberty and democracy, in our tradition, are not balanced against each other; they are yoked together.

Most other countries have fallen for, or at least fallen to, dictators. Many during the 20th century, had popular communist parties or fascist parties or both. The Anglosphere, unusually, retained a consensus behind liberal capitalism.

This is not because of any special property in our geography or our genes, but because of our constitutional arrangements. They work because, starting with Magna Carta, they have made the defense of freedom everyone’s responsibility. Americans, like Britons, have inherited their freedoms from past generation and should not look to any external agent for their perpetuation. The defense of liberty is your job and mine. It is up to us to keep intact the freedoms we inherited from our parents and to pass them on securely to our children.”

There are those who believe that we need a “living Constitution,” more open to changes based on the moods, whims, and foibles of the lowest common denominator. Let us hope that we do not overthrow our proven vehicle for untried and fashionable experimentation.

I hope you enjoyed the points above. Thank you.

In September 2018 while giving a speech at the United Nations, President Trump pointed to the German delegation and noted their on their reliance on Russian energy; their response was to laugh and afterwards take the president to task for making such an outrageous statement. At the same time, President Trump openly questioned why the U.S. was providing at least seventy-five percent of the budget for NATO while only three countries were meeting their promised military contribution of two percent of GDP.

Fast forward to 2023 and with a commanding lead in the Republican race for the presidential nomination, reports from Europe focus on the danger of a Trump presidency. Will Trump pull the U.S. from NATO? Will he cut U.S. aid to Ukraine? Magazines in the U.S. and talk shows spend their entire time proclaiming the dangers of a second term for Trump.

The reality is that the Europeans and others should thank Trump for his hard-liner stance as it forced the Europeans to face the reality of their failures with their own militaries. From minimal maintenance of equipment, to discarding technologies needed to supply their own militaries to having to rent tanks from a neighboring nation as the borrowing nation does not have a single tank of their own, the Europeans have spent over seventy-five years living under the security umbrella provided at huge expense by the American public. Their slow response to his prodding at least gave them a small start when their world collapsed under the cut from Russian energy and the third invasion of Ukraine.

The linked article outlines the failure of the Western European states to face their primary responsibility to their citizens; to ensure national security. Central and Eastern European states who suffered under half a century of Soviet brutality applauded Trump as they had experienced the nightmare of Communism. At the same time Western European states built up a welfare system that discouraged work and cemented in place programs which are not sustainable. In fact, at the current pace, it will be Poland which will provide the protection for a weak Germany for the foreseeable future.

Will Trump still question the need for the U.S. to stay in NATO? No one knows for sure, but if the Europeans, especially the Western nations, do not break their word again and fulfill their promises, then perhaps Trump will see that the U.S. is not involved in another of our terrible foreign policy deals. The addition of responsible states such as Finland and Sweden will help to keep the Western European states in line during the struggles ahead not only with Russia, but with China and Iran.

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/alarm-nato-weak-military-empty-arsenals-europe-a72b23f4?page=1

Political movements are always evolving out of necessity. That is because each movement as it gains adherents gains strength and those new adherents have their own ideas of how that movement’s goals should be as they grow. This means that the basic tenants of the movement will gradually be altered, even ignored; the original purity will disappear to be replaced by the internal conflict caused by growth and success. Additionally, if that movement has any success and achieving its’ goals, it will produce new demands/ideas or wither and die.  Life is movement and as Napoleon realized that he needed new wars to stay in power, so to do movements need new goals. If they do not, the bureaucracy of that movement will be out of work. There is no movement that has ever decided to dissolve itself because it has achieved all its’ goals. Thus, new demands and as we can see with the “Progressive” Left, there is no end to causes and wrongs that must be addressed.

The article linked below points out that at a certain point, a movement may grasp onto any excuse to exist. This is amazingly easy for movements on the left as they have no moral guideposts. If one believes that all morality can be found withing oneself, then ten different people will have ten different moral guideposts and who can say which is “right” or “wrong”? In fact, if you are on the left you cannot question any moral guidepost or else you are reactionary, unenlightened, etc. Eventually the lunatic fringe, which exists on both the Left and Right, becomes the driving force and the rest of the movement is dragged along. This means that if you are a moderate on the left, you cannot condemn the most extreme elements of the left and thus you support by your silence, their most crazy, foolish, and ignorant demands.

Thus, the title of the post and article, Has Hitler Won on the Left? The article is by Carl Trueman a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/12/has-hitler-won-on-the-left

The recent outpouring of support for Hamas across the nation’s universities seems to have caught many people from all classes by surprise.  How is it possible that thousands of what were thought (by many foolish individuals) to be our best and brightest, the future leaders of our nation to openly support an organization that could commit acts unknown in the Western world since the Thirty Years War in the seventeenth century?  Were those students somehow cut off from the news services around the world who presented facts, images, and interviews of those who were attacked?  Were they unable to hear leaders from around the world who have seen the images of the rapes, burnings, and butchery from the cameras of the Hamas murderers themselves?  Or, had somehow, the accepted standards of conduct suddenly been rejected by those students as they marched and sounded like the Nazi storm troopers of the mid-1930s?

Suddenly millions of citizens were shocked by those young people, in many cases their very own children marching in support of terrorists, rapists, arsonists and murderers.  They were like the parents who suddenly realized what was being fed to their children during the pandemic as they were able to see on their computers the day-to-day propaganda being pushed by the radicalized teachers in their very schools.  But should they have been surprised?  Weren’t there warning signs for all to see going back for years?

One of the major warning signs was the change in course of the ACLU.  Since its founding over one-hundred years ago, the ACLU has had a zig-zag course of who it supported and who it favored.  The linked article below follows that course up to today’s organization which seems to have a problem with the Bill of Rights.  It is a disappointing charge of course that started well over a decade ago and one which reflects the product the major law schools are putting out today.  It reflects a mind set that is much closer to that of a totalitarian rather than our Founding Fathers and which aims to overturn the very basic concepts of our society.  There is a direct line between the new generation of attorneys and those students who celebrated the slaughter of innocents last month.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/12/what-happened-to-the-aclu

For several decades, the U.S has been the “big dog” in the world.  It’s military, financial expertise, technology and stability have given it tremendous power in keeping the peace, holding non-friendly players in place, and keeping its allies willing to support the goals of the U.S. 

There has arisen a potential power bloc which aims to upset the dominance of the U.S. on the world stage.  China, Iran, and Russia seek to reshape the world order to their liking at the expense of the U.S. and many of their immediate neighbors.  Unfortunately, the primary player to counter their plans continues to be the U.S.  I say “unfortunately” because simply put, there is no other pro-Western nation capable of either helping the U.S. Who else has any of the strengths that could make it a possible replacement for the U.S.?  France?  With hundreds of no go zones in their own cities, France cannot control it own territory.  The U.K.?  A great ally but it has seen its best days as they face their own migrant challenges.  The list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, many of the allies of the U.S. are willing to kowtow to one or more of the challengers in the hopes of financial gain through business opportunities.  And, just as unfortunately, the U.S. under two of the past three administrations seems to have and currently operate as if appeasement can turn those other powers from their plans and vision of a new world order.

The linked article outlines what needs to be done to successfully stop the new challengers from achieving their goals, but in each case, resolute and realistic actions and policies must be introduced.  That sort of action requires dynamic leadership which seems to be wanting.  Can the U.S. and the rest of the world afford to wait?  

https://www.wsj.com/articles/only-america-can-restore-world-order-ukraine-israel-taiwan-4bd37b92?page=1

I recently read an article that stated that it is nearly impossible to eliminate a government agency; in fact, it has never been done.  One of the prime reasons was that, for example, if one were to eliminate the Federal Department of Education, who since being formed has seen a decrease in the reading/math/language skills of children, the funding provided by that department would stop and that would be bad for local schools (who depend on it) and the politicians (who claim they bring home the bacon).

What an amazing rationale for not reducing an agency.  First, the money they send to the school districts are the taxes the citizens of those districts paid!  The money was not produced or generated by that department, it was collected and some of it was returned to the local schools after taking a sizable chunk of the funds for overhead of the department!  It would be more efficient if the money stayed in each district and was used according to local needs.  That would mean no “haircut” going to some far away bureaucracy which has no accountability.

The report below gives us a glimpse into the vast administrative state.  This state, accountable to no one, operating with guidelines favorable to its own existence and spewing studies which are clearly slanted, will cost literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year with no sunset clause, no oversight, and the prospect of future rules in the future.

Looking at the new rules generated by the current and past administrations, no one has yet to ask a simple question; for all the wealth spend creating and adhering to new reports, regulations, guidelines, etc., can anyone point to how the average citizens life has become better or easier?  When was the last time you, personally, said to yourself: “I am so glad that such and such administrative rule was written as it really makes a positive impact on my life.”  I doubt if anyone could say that because the burden of adhering to all these new rules is carried by the system which has created the greatest boon for mankind, the American capitalist system.  The farmers, business managers, employers, small business owners, etc. are the ones who need to spend more time doing paperwork and less time taking care of their businesses and their customers.  They are the ones who must hire a new person just to complete the reports, logs, etc., that are fed back to an administrative state that has no accountability and produces little if anything of value.

The next time a President signs an executive order, sit up, look at it and figure out how much it will cost you in future taxes.

Please copy the link below and paste it to your search engine

https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/CTUP_BurdenisBack_ComparingRegulatoryCosts.pdf

Let us be honest: we have a major problems in our public education system. Let us look at some basic data:

1. Nationally, 29% of students read at grade level.
2. Only 26% do math at grade level.
3. In Chicago, only 11% of Blacks and 17% of Hispanic students read at grade level.

Somehow, most of these students pass from year to year until they either drop out or graduate unable to read or do basic math. Amazing. What kind of life awaits them?

Yet there is more:

• In Washington State, while the student population has increased by 3%, the staff has increased by 20%.
• In Massachusetts, the number of students has fallen by 42,000 but the number of staff has increased by 18,000.

What exactly are all those new administrators and teachers doing aside from pushing transgender studies and asking the students if they would like to use ziv, zim or some other meaningless scramble of letters that are proclaimed pronouns. Pronouns that are made up from thin air by ideologues who are only seeking to further their own agendas, regardless of the negative impact on others.

Does anyone other than those who are getting paid by the system believe that we are getting our monies worth? That the children are being prepared for the real world? Do they honestly think at the end of each day that they have contributed to a better world?

The real crime, yes crime, of the system, is that millions of individuals who pass through the system are being cheated and denied an opportunity at living a full life. They graduate unprepared and ill-equipped to get a decent job, to be good parents, and to look forward to a life of increased beauty and ease. They are condemned by the system and their lives that will be harder and less rewarding than necessary. This is a moral failure on the part of those who profit from the system and who accept it.

The attached article should shock you and make you ask who is accountable for the failings of the public school system other than the children themselves.

Low Grade Schools | Frontpage Mag