Charlie Kirk, MLK, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act

 

The renowned conservative leader, Charlie Kirk (may he rest in peace), said a lot of things during his all too short life. Much of what he said and argued was brilliant, but sometimes he said things that were unnecessarily controversial. One of those was when he discussed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It was not that his thinking was completely wrong on this subject, but the way he brought it up clouded the issue and prevented the kind of mutual understanding the Mr. Kirk so often achieved. I would address it differently and probably get to a deeper understanding than he did.

When Charlie brought up the 1964 Civil Rights Act he started by saying it was a mistake, and then justified that stance by focusing on the essential wrongness of affirmative action. I would instead start by saying the Act was long overdue, and addressed some historical errors that had to be corrected, but that some other parts of the Act were wrongheaded.

First among those historical errors was the establishment of equal justice and rights before the law for Black Americans. Most folks don't realize or remember that prior to that Act, in many states, Black people were often denied not just the right to vote, but in addition, they could not serve on juries, could not testify in court against a White person, or bring suit against a White person. Those, and other, legal injustices had to be ended, and were rendered illegal by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Charlie Kirk was, however, partially correct about the second part of that act, what is called Affirmative Action, but then he didn't even mention what, in this writer's opinion, was the worst aspect of it, which was the accommodations mandates.

Going back to the 1960's, I was a young teenager when I first learned about affirmative action being proposed. I had never been involved in politics up until then, but I will always wish that I had gotten involved on that issue. From the first, I was uncomfortable with affirmative action, which was going to give preference in hiring to Black folks in an attempt to make up for discrimination in hiring in years gone by.

While I was uncomfortable with, as I termed it, wading into the waters of the judgment day, I could see that making an exception in this case made good moral sense. Black folks had been denied opportunities which, in a truly free market, they would have had. So while starting into the process of conducting some kind of judgment day was, as I saw it, fraught with all kinds of pitfalls (which have come to pass), doing something to make up for past injustices to Black folks was too important to ignore.

So I came to the conclusion, back in '65 or so, that what we should do is to make it to where affirmative action lasted only one generation or so, just long enough to allow some Black professionals and workers to get a toe hold and a presence in many fields formerly closed to them. I figured a definite sunset on the programs, after twenty, or even thirty years would be fair, and prevent us going down the path of the judgment day.

Like I said, I wish I would have spoken up about this back then, because now we are more that sixty years into this mess, and lots more groups are involved than just Black folks. It HAS become a kind of secular judgment day, and the only group left out, the only group assigned the permanent role of scapegoat is White, heterosexual, conservative, Christian males. This dynamic promises to continue until the unfairness is undeniable, and then we will probably be fooled into another round of the same wrong headed policies. It seems we must allow the pendulum of injustice to swing to one extreme or the other, and no one has the sense to stop it in the fair middle.

The other wrongheaded aspect of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, something that Charlie Kirk, to my knowledge, never addressed, was the accommodations mandates. These mandated that restaurants, motels and other public accommodations could no longer refuse to serve anyone, Black, White, or whatever. While, once again, this was dealing with a real problem, it did so by slyly taking an important aspect of a free society from us, which was the freedom of association. Over time, this squashing of the freedom of association has led to cake makers and florists being prosecuted for not wanting to create works honoring actions they find repugnant.

While the denial of public accommodations was a real problem, the way to deal with that was not by using government, but rather by employing the free market guided by moral vision. Denying the right of free association to the American people has served to divide us, to inflame old social wounds, and has not brought about the peaceful unity we all desire. As Martin Luther King once said, “”They can't make a law forcing you to love me, but they can make a law preventing you from lynching me.”. The accommodations aspect of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was an attempt to force folks to love each other, and it DID NOT WORK.

We should have used a different method to deal with the problem. Something that has been forgotten about the Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's is that the freedom riders, and other activist groups, did not operate only in the South. In the South they sat in at lunch counters and on buses as a way to change local and state Jim Crow laws. In the North there were no Jim Crow laws, but there were corporate and business policies enforcing segregation. In the North, activists sat in at lunch counters and the like, and worked successfully to change those corporate policies.

After Dr. Kings “I have a dream” speech, which started turning the hearts of White Americans toward racial justice, a national campaign to change corporate policy would have almost undoubtedly succeeded. I have long imagined some nice little motel, with picket fence and all, in 1965, with a “Whites Only” sign proudly displayed in the front of the parking lot. After some well run national campaigns calling all good hearted people to boycott one major motel chain after another, until they all, one by one, changed to accommodate Black folks, I can see in my mind that same little motel, in 1975, now run down, few customers and barely in business, going out and taking that “Whites Only” sign down.

In other words, that aspect of the Civil Rights act was deeply wrong headed, because it not only deprived we, the people, of our natural right of free association, but it prevented the cultural coming together that would, and should, have resulted from the change in heart that the Civil Rights Movement affected.

With freedom of association intact, White business owners would have been under soft but unrelenting social pressure to offer accommodations. Black folks would have been under similar pressure to be on their best behavior so as to confirm the sentiment that it was time to come together as a people. Instead, with freedom of association nullified, White business owners operated under resented legal demands, and Black folks often abused the situation, angrily threatening lawsuits anytime their eggs were not properly cooked, It might have felt like a moment of satisfying comeuppance, but it made things worse, not better.

In conclusion, I wish Charlie Kirk were still alive, so I could talk to him about this subject. Instead of starting off a conversation about the 1964 Civil Rights Act by saying it was a mistake (which he did), I would advise a different approach. Admit that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was long overdue, and that it restored some rights to Black people that had long been denied. However, parts of that Act were misconceived, and worked against the noble goals of the Act. Both the Affirmative Action, and the accommodations portions should have been rethought, and done in a better way. If we had done that, we would probably be much closer to MLK”s dream of the “beloved community” than we are today.

National Divorce Anyone ?

 

A national divorce, in some form or fashion, is once again burbling up in our national dialogue. Some talk of a blue state/ red state division, or more specifically, the coastal states and the interior states going their separate ways. Others present a breakdown by regions, with the plains, the mountains, Cascadia, Appalachia, the Great Lakes, and such divisions being proposed in some kind of national divorce.

This latest iteration of the idea, the regional divorce, caused me to remember something from years ago, which brought up this question. When considering how to divide the states, what makes people think that the individual states, once the division has taken place, will hold together as coherent political entities? They, or rather we, have not really done much governing of ourselves in our states for many decades. It is not like the world of 1787, when each state was well practiced in the art of self government.

These days, certainly since the 1960's, and more accurately going back to the 1930's (or earlier), most of the meaningful decisions about government have been made in Washington DC. Federal mandates and subsidies determine or greatly influence almost all policies. Without that guiding hand in DC, are we sure we will cohere as states?

Will the Valley in California want to be ruled by the coastal cities? The same or similar questions would come up in other states, such as Illinois, Colorado, or even such stalwarts as Kansas, Arizona, or Pennsylvania. Once we were each independent and sovereign nations, our trade, military, and foreign policies would be up for grabs, and who knows where they would end up, and who would be in charge.

We should be very careful here, because that spirit of succession, once it is loosed, can get completely out of hand, and what would there be to stop it? Even the old Confederacy was starting to break down before their defeat. Eastern Tennessee was moving to succeed from the Confederacy, as were parts of Louisiana.

No, before setting out on a course of national divorce, we should stop and think about where it might end, In fact, where it would probably end. It is unlikely to resemble the Velvet Revolution that marked the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, but rather it promises to be as bad, or worse, than the violent, war ravaged breakup of Yugoslavia.

Most importantly, some kind of national divorce is completely unnecessary. Those who call for one complain that we have become a nation that doesn't agree with itself on too many issues, especially the moral and cultural issues. We seem to exist in two (or more) different realities, red state and blue state.

The thing is, instead of divorce, the solution to these differences of opinions would be the simple and obvious move to return to our original plan of government. Return to having the level of state and local self government we previously enjoyed. In that way of doing things, going back at least to prior to the 1930's, or even all the way back to before corporations were declared to be persons in 1886, the states (and localities) had widely divergent moral and cultural styles.

That structure of government could handle all our cultural and moral differences without breaking a sweat. Accommodating and assimilating differences is exactly what it was designed to do. E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one; remember that?

Consider, as an analogy, the American flag. Those favoring a national divorce of some form or fashion imagine that they will be able to cut out a star or two from the flag, and hold on to it as their new nation. That, however, is not is what is likely to happen. If that flag starts unraveling, the unraveling will probably not stop with the stars still intact. Rather, the unraveling will likely continue until none of us has more that a single bare thread to hold onto, and that will be under constant threat from others. Or, what is also very likely, we would at some point suffer military invasion and conquest. Do you reckon that some international despot will suffer the continued healthy existence of a freedom loving people?

So before we blithely trip down the primrose path toward some kind of national divorce, we ought first to take a long hard look at where that path will lead us. That path will most likely lead us to destruction, despair, and much worse problems than we have now. What's more, if we would honestly look around, ridding ourselves of our blinding mutual hatred, we can see that a national breakup is not needed at all. The only thing we need is to revive our original way of doing things, return to the Constitution as written and amended, and we can then absorb all our cultural differences and remain a united, free and strong nation.

Are the Democrats Unfit to Govern?

 

Just prior to the '24 election, a friend asked my advice on who to vote for. I told her that the Republicans were the safer choice, because, as was shown in the Watergate scandal, they, or at least some of them, will break ranks when a vital principle is at stake. The Democrats never do that, and they wear it as a badge of honor. That is what makes them unfit to govern.

The latest kerfuffle around Jimmy Kimmel proves the point. Kimmel was suspended from his show for remarks that seemed to besmirch the memory of the recently murdered Charlie Kirk (RIP). What's more, it seemed like the Trump administration had exerted pressure to cause that suspension to happen.

Some Republican leaders, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz among them, loudly objected to that kind of censorious pressure being applied by government. That old saying from Voltaire, that, “I might not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it?” It seems some Republicans actually mean that. Mr. Kimmel was shortly reinstated to his show.

The contrast with the Democrats could not be starker. Even though it has now come to light that many of the COVID restrictions, such as social distancing, and mask wearing, were of little to no use, the Democrats can still not find the voice to say so. More importantly, during the crisis, when it really could have counted, nary a whimper of objection was heard from that quarter.

It is not just about COVID or the latest crisis either. The Democrats seem to be under the mistaken impression that moving in lock step with each other at all times is a sign of political strength. So much so that during the last state of the union speech, they could not bring themselves to applaud a young man courageously facing terminal cancer. Not going to clap for that, not if a Republican, especially not if a MAGA Trump guy, brings it up.

This lock step mentality disqualifies the Democrats from governing for two reasons. First of all, at times like these, when they are in the minority, it causes them to unthinkingly scuttle any and every thing the Republicans try to do, even if it is a good and compassionate thing that is proposed.

For instance, with the rapidly changing situation regarding tariffs, some farmers are getting caught in the squeeze. Specifically, many farmers planted soybeans, but because of the tariff battle with China, the Chinese market for soybeans has collapsed. This is going to really hurt some farmers this year. Next year, if they are still in business, they can plant some other crop, or the Chinese market for soybeans might recover. Nonetheless, this year they could use some relief.

Given all that, it is likely that the Republican run congress will propose some short term relief for the affected farmers. Any such legislation will, however, be dead on arrival because the lock step Democrats will filibuster it in the Senate in the same way they lock step filibuster everything the Republicans propose. They remain in lock step, opposed to any Republican initiative, no matter how important, timely and compassionate it may be. That is why the Republicans had to go with the one big beautiful bill, since the extraordinary path of reconciliation was the only way to get anything past the automatic lock step filibuster the Democrats are dedicated to.

Secondly, when, and if, the Democrats ever get back in control, the situation will be much worse. It has come to light, via testimony from Mark Zuckerburg, that some agents from the FBI, (deep state operatives, since Trump was nominally in charge at that moment) pressured him to have Facebook censor any information about Hunter Biden's laptop just prior to the election in 2020. This is horrendous, 1984 kind of stuff, and yet the Democrats are remarkably silent about it. As though the threat of a king or dictator is serious only if it comes from the political right.

This has to be seen as in addition to them ignoring, at the time, the possibility that COVID grew out of our own (or at least Dr. Fauci's) misbegotten research in to gain of function. Likewise, it seems to have escaped the notice of the Democrats that the so called COVID vaccine might have caused more medical problems than it solved.

In all of that, the lock step mindset of the Democrats looms, in the minds of thinking people, as a great threat. Some will respond that we were in a crisis, so some excess in the name of unity can be forgiven. But “crisis” is always the battle cry of emerging dictators. It is at the moment of crisis that clear thinking, truth guided leadership is most needed.

It is in moments of crisis that the cries to censor “disinformation” will be the loudest. It is in times of crisis that the demands grow that the populace, for their own good, must obey the dictates of government without thinking. It is in times of dire crisis that marching in lock step (which the Democrats pretend is such a strength) becomes the most likely path to tyranny and dictatorship.

That is why this current generation of Democrats, with their lock step mode of thinking, are unfit to govern. We should keep them from real power unless and until they change their thinking.

A Lesson From Charlie's Murder

 

With the vicious murder of Charlie Kirk, this child of the 60's is once again dealing with long forgotten bad feelings. Here we go again is how it seems.

Looking back at the 60's, I came to different conclusions than others did. While most, after living through the grief of the deaths of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, focused on who to blame, I went in a different direction. Observing the fact that anyone who seemed to be leading this nation in a good direction soon became a target of assassination, I realized that the deep lesson to be learned out of the 60's is that the people have to find a way to lead themselves.

The assassination of Mr. Kirk should teach us that same lesson. He boldly upheld Christian, conservative, American values, but he did so in a way that built bridges. He was starting to make great inroads with young people, rebuilding a culture of civil debate. That is probably what put a target on his back.

It is said that the death of a tyrant ends his reign, but that the death of a martyr begins his reign. Charlie Kirk is without a doubt an American martyr, and so it can be hoped that many will grow his reign by following his example. However, that will entail more than just looking for the next Charlie Kirk. Instead, those of us who value his life must strive to become like him, to seek truth, stand up for America and Christ, but do it in a constructive, positive way. Just like after the violence of the 60's, we have to find a way to lead ourselves, and Charlie has given us a good example. Let's take it.

Finally, my contribution to our becoming a self leading populace has been to analyze what has gone wrong with America, and developing ways to fix our problems. The most important dysfunction our system has endured is that our free press, the media, was long ago put under the control of an entrenched oligarchy. Breaking the back of that media control has to be our first item of business, if the people are to find a way of leading themselves. The plan I came up with to do that is to establish a true public forum. Here is a link to that plan.

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-open-media.html

MAGA Has a Paradox

 

I saw a couple factoids on the media today that made me realize MAGA is facing a tough but real paradox in the coming midterm elections. It all relates to what was discussed in my recent post about immigration.

The paradox grows out of these two new factoids. One, the numbers of those being deported is woefully short of what some folks have been expecting and hoping for. At this rate the numbers of illegal resident aliens will barely be affected, let alone reduced to zero, by the end of the Trump administration.

The other side of the paradox is that the historically high support among Hispanics for the Trump administration's deportation policy is declining steeply. This puts the entire MAGA agenda in jeopardy.

The gist of the paradox is this. The only way for the Republicans to actually carry out an effective reform of our immigration system is to increase their majority in Congress. That way President Trump can be empowered by actual laws, and not be limited to executive orders. The only way, however, for the Republicans to increase that majority, to actually enact those new laws, is to increase, not decrease, their support among Hispanics.

Our Hispanic friends and neighbors see that they have been dealt, by time and political circumstance, a strong hand, and they seem intent on playing it well. At the same time, we should see that they collectively want to live in a nation of laws, many having come from nations that don't have that advantage. But they also insist on our being a nation with respect for family, and clear headed compassion based on reasonable compromise.

So we face a difficult paradox. We can just sit and moan, woe is MAGA, life is unfair, and all that. Or we can wake up, grow up, and realize it is time to assert ourselves in our own governance. There is a way, an agenda we non Hispanic Americans can choose, which will settle the issue of illegal immigration, reinforce the rule of law, and enable us to complete the agenda of making America great again. That plan is detailed in the already mentioned previous blog linked

here  https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/07/maga-red-wave-in-26-and-immigration.html

But we had better get after it, because the midterms are a month and a half closer than they were when I first wrote that blog. Time is short and getting shorter, so it is high time for us to stand up, step up, and insist our elected officials follow our lead. That is, if we really love this nation, and want to pass a viable future on to coming generations.

Liberate Hemp to Revive Small Farms

 

I recently had an epiphany about all the anti marijuana hysteria we are being bombarded with lately. We have all heard the arguments. The smell permeating the air in legal states, the dangerous potency of modern strains, and all that. There might be some validity to those points, but it mostly smells like phony hysteria. Try living downwind from a feed lot, or a sewer works, or a freeway, or just on a typical downtown street. Lots of objectionable smells and fumes there, and yet no one wants to hear about it, or base policies on it..

I bought my first hemp t-shirt the other day and, unexpectedly, it launched an episode of eye opening revelations. I was surprised at what a superior cloth it is compared to the cotton or polyester shirts I am used to. It just feels better. More solid, less sweaty, and all the other things it was advertised to be. So much so that I have started to consider investing in small scale hemp cloth production.

As I consider investing in hemp cloth, some real social benefits of hemp come to mind. First of all, it could produce a lot of jobs, whether in cloth production, paper production, or a myriad of other products. That is in addition to the jobs on the farms that grow it. Most of the jobs, and money, would stay in the local region, and certainly stay in the national economy.

Another benefit would be that it could be grown in small batches by small farmers. That is if hemp were not so tightly regulated (which makes it both risky to grow, and prohibitively expensive). However, with those severe regulations, and the high cost of getting a federal license to grow it, that happy dynamic of small farm cultivation is not likely to get traction. With all the federal regulation it is rendered into just another crop that will be economically viable only when grown in large plots on mono culture agri business “farms.” So the dream of a small scale hemp facility operating in close cooperation with local small farmers will remain just that; a dream, until the reefer madness hysteria around cannabis is overcome.

The big ramification of the anti cannabis hysteria is the THC content allowed in hemp plants. It has to be no more than .3%, and that has to be measured by dry weight, with the tested sample coming from the flowering top of the plant.

To put this in context, top shelf cannabis, sold out of dispensaries in states where it is legal, tests out at between 25-30%. Low end flowers and what is known as popcorn tests out at 10-15%. There is almost no market for anything less than 5%. So .3% is a ridiculously minuscule standard, far less than just one tenth the potency of anything of marketable quality.

What's more, farmers who have tried to raise a compliant hemp crop find that the THC level peaks just at the end of the season. If, just before harvest, (when it must be tested) it goes over that standard, the crop must be destroyed in an expensive process. The upshot is that few farmers will take the risk. So those who would set up hemp processing plants are likewise put under an artificially risky government regimen, with undependable supply lines, and thus are also not likely to enter into the business.

Over the years, “deep thinking” pot heads have conjectured that it was the tobacco and alcohol industries that worked so hard to keep pot illegal, to eliminate that form of competition. Other, even “deeper” thinkers speculated that it was the cotton and lumber interests who were using anti cannabis hysteria to keep hemp from competing with their products.

All of that thinking seems conspiratorial and suspect, because those concerns are run by hard headed business people. Business will, if there is profit to be made in some alternative to their product, usually put some of their eggs in that competitive basket. Tobacco and alcohol producers could, and probably do, buy marijuana farms. Lumber and cotton growers could also invest in hemp production, and would be hyper-aware of any emerging stream of profit.

Leaving those pot induced brain storms behind, there still must be some reason behind the reefer madness hysteria, and that reason does seem to be directly tied to preventing a free market for hemp. It is asserted here the reason is that the quasi prohibition of hemp is a wicked, long term attack on the small, self sufficient family farm.

For someone with a small, self sufficient, farm the traditional practice was to grow most, if not all, of the food for your own consumption, and then sell any excess. It is a feasible plan in most places, but what is needed to make the plan work is a dependable cash crop so that cash needs of the otherwise self sufficient farm can be met.

Hemp was always that dependable cash crop. It is extremely drought resistant, and when it was legal, there was always a ready market for the crop, because paper gets used up, and clothes wear out. In many ways, legal hemp was an economic pillar of the small family farm. It truly appears that ginning up this anti marijuana hysteria has always had the nefarious purpose of making small, self sufficient, sustainable family farms not economically viable.

Which contributes to making healthy rural communities not viable. Combine that with federal farm price subsidies, which drive up the cost of land by making farming less risky for corporations, and the decline of the family farm and rural communities seems inevitable, if not intentional.

All of this seems to have had the goal, long since accomplished, of literally changing the American landscape. The mass of the people have been driven into the cities, making almost everyone dependent on corporate controlled food supplies. Much of that food is artificially unhealthy, which also drives the people into dependence on the dubious blessings of the petroleum based medicines produced by the big pharmaceutical companies. All of this is very bad for the health, of both the people and the natural environment.

We need to rethink this whole system, and we should start by rethinking hemp. Stop allowing the truly hysterical voices opposing marijuana to bamboozle us into effectively prohibiting the cultivation of hemp. Liberating hemp can be a vital first step in re-invigorating the small family farms and rural communities of America.

MAGA Red Wave in '26 Conclusion

 

“To sum up, solving the housing crisis with freedom, like solving the immigration mess with compassion, could both be factors in a MAGA red wave in 26.”

I finished off the previous two posts about a possible red wave for MAGA in '26 with that sentence, but the operative word there is “could,” because there is only a slight chance that we will do the right thing on either issue.

I say “we,” but in all honesty I am only semi MAGA. I didn't even vote for Trump in '24, although I did vote (with trepidation) for him in '16, and (with some enthusiasm) in 2020. My mixed feelings toward the MAGA movement is because it resembles a cult of personality. That is, most of the folks involved are continuing their life long lazy habits of not engaging as citizens, and not really formulating plans about what we should do as a country. They are content to let Donald Trump do their thinking for them, just as they let the George Bushes and Ronald Reagan do in years past. In other words, most of my fellow conservatives act like dependent children, not realizing they have a duty to shoulder some of the ideological weight of citizenship.

The two issues brought forth in the previous two blogs are good examples of how we could, if we had the sense and determination, really bring our nation back to greatness. It is, however, highly unlikely that either approach will be tried mainly due to the fact that no one of real influence, meaning no one in the country club wing of the Republican party, is going to take the MAGA folks by the hand and walk them through it.

That is the real tragedy of this moment. Donald Trump has done us a great service in demonstrating that with strong leadership, the common folks, the backbone of this nation, can defeat the country club, establishment Republicans. Then, once we win the party, we can win the nation. However, while he won, and is President, long term he has only opened the door. It is up to us to walk through it, and this time we are not going to have the country club set helping us, because it is them we have to defeat.

Take the issue of illegal immigration. I know, the approach I talk about, of tempering a drive for justice with some hard headed mercy and compassion offends many. Even though it is actually straight from the heart of a Christian mind, it sounds to a lot of MAGA folks kind of vaguely un-American.

So what will probably happen is we will get a year or so of intense mass deportation. We will try to deport everyone in sight. In a typically misguided American manner, we will look like someone furiously trying to bale water with a sieve. When that effort exhausts itself, after a lot of unnecessary brutality and following the script, the next stage of the plan will unfold.

There will then be a slow curtailment of such actions, as both the Democrats take back the House, and big business takes back control of a demoralized Republican party. Already, we hear the case being made to not enforce immigration law in agriculture. Those voices will eventually carry the day. Then, there will have been two or three million deportees, and some few Americans who will have gained some jobs, but mostly things will go back to the way they were. Most of the workers will still be illegal, and working in the legal margins. Just the way the country club Republicans planned it. They don't want to get rid of those low paid workers, and they definitely don't want them to have the full rights of Americans.

Likewise, the housing crisis will most likely play out in a way that pleases the country club establishment. The ideas I proposed could work, but they are not the only free market ways to deal with the housing crisis. However, none of these ideas will get any real support because they would step on the wrong toes.

There will be a lot of crocodile tears and hand wringing, but at most we will see some ill fated rent control schemes, or another wave of government housing projects. Those will be overpriced, restricted to renting to the poor,(not allowing the positive dynamic of personal ownership to get traction) and quickly become crime infested hellholes.

Housing will remain wildly overpriced, with rent even worse. Crime and immorality will get worse. Just the way the country club establishment (the bankers, developers and mortgage brokers) want things to be. Their toes must not be stepped on since they are sacrosanct, much more precious than the hearts, minds, and lives of lesser Americans.

When the '26 midterms come and go, we will probably find ourselves once again in a 50-50 divided nation, with the polity balanced against itself on a razors edge. So there will once again, unlike this rare moment which we are allowing to slip through our fingers, be no time or intellectual space for new ideas to come forward. Like it has seemingly always been, we will be told to shut up and keep in step if we are to defeat those terrible folks on the other side. Just the way the country club Republicans like it.

We can expect the Deep State, and every other foul manifestation of the uniparty to once again raise their ugly heads. Just as the establishment wants it.

Then the globalism, and the slow decline of either secular or Islamic corrosion of our national culture will continue unabated, just as the establishment wants it to.

In other words, we had better wake up and recognize that the next 18 or so months could be, that is COULD BE, the era during which we take our country back. The bad stuff that has been happening will just keep happening, unless we have the sense to stand up and change the national course.

It really isn't about our sense though, is it? We are plenty smart, as a people. We have the intellect to figure out the truth, what we lack it the intellectual integrity. Along with the moral integrity. We just can't figure out how to hold on to the truth, and at the same time hold on to the material ease and privilege we have seduced ourselves with. So we abandon the truth, and pretend to not understand.

To stand up for the truth might lose us the esteem of the big boys, the movers and shakers (the country club types) in our local circles, in the state house, in the business agreements, and on the national scene. So if we dare to speak the truth, (or really even allow ourselves to think it) it is in hushed tones at coffee or family gatherings, with the inevitable caveat of, “I don't know,” at the end of every discussion.

Let's face it, we, the people, have lost our courage, or at any rate, the most vital component of courage, our intellectual courage. We, the people, have become intellectual cowards. We probably still have enough physical courage to stand up and defend our families, but without the fearless ability to look at the truth, what does that really get us? Without intellectual courage, as a people, and as individuals, we will continue to be reduced to what DeToqueville warned we would become, timid and hard working beasts, with a tyrannical corporate/ socialist government as shepherd.

In conclusion, and this is the last I want to say on this because it is starting to get me (and hopefully you) angry, you, the individual MAGA backer, had better get over your shallow triumphalism about Trump being in power. Instead, it is high time for you to take up your duty of doing the hard work, the courageous work, of actually rebuilding this nation of freedom. If you don't have the integrity, the intellectual courage, to stand up and do that, as an individual, (even if you stand alone at first) then you should get ready to wave guh'bye-bye to your quaint little pipe dream of ever making America great again.