Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
We went to bed on Sunday and there was vague talk of a shutdown workaround. We wake up on Monday, and the Democrats have caved.
Analogies, anyone? If this were a boxing match, the Democrats didn’t come out of their corner for the 8th round. If it were a softball game, the ten-run rule got applied. If it were a war, they flew the white flag and laid down their arms. If it were wrestling, they tapped out.
If it were poker, they folded, though the time to fold ‘em was a month ago. They didn’t know when to walk away, and so now they have to run.
Feel free to add your own analogies. That’s what the comment section is for!
This all transpired because Democrats are the minority party in Congress at the moment. They consequently got outvoted on the tax bill last winter. Getting outvoted often happens to the minority party.
The Democrats’ solution to being outvoted as the minority party was to demand to be treated like the majority party, else they would shut down the government. They demanded a re-do of the tax bill, specifically the part that let expire the Obamacare insurance subsidies enacted as a temporary measure during COVID.
The Republicans’ reaction was, “Huh? Do you think that Democrats get to act like the majority party when they are, and also get to act like the majority party when they aren’t?”
It wasn’t hard for the Republicans to call that bluff.
After the biblical 40 days and 40 nights, give or take, and over a dozen votes blocked by the Democrats, eight of the 43 Democrat Senators finally broke ranks Sunday evening and voted to re-open the government.
The stock market cheered. Food stamp recipients rejoiced. Federal workers felt relieved. Holiday travelers were glad.
Democrats fumed.
Now there’s a civil war in the Democratic party. By the media reports, it sounds like the biggest one since Democrats quit America a century and a half ago to continue holding in chains some of the men God created equal.
In the resolution to both civil wars, the Democrats got hardly anything in the bargain.
At least this time, Atlanta didn’t get torched.
But Chuck Schumer did. Imagine Schumer stark naked with only a fig leaf, surrounded by ravenous dog-like Democrats looking for someone to blame. Now take away the fig leaf and let loose the dogs.
That’s the Democrat Party right now. It ain’t pretty.
Democrats have gone full Islam. On the surface, that’s a bit peculiar. When you dig deeper, it’s downright weird. But as always, there’s a cause for this particular effect.
Let’s start with the peculiar part. Islamists tend to be religious, much as Christians, Buddhists and Hindus (and, for that matter, atheists, who often disbelieve with a blind religious fervor).
In contrast, Democrats tend not to be religious. They’re simple vanilla agnostics. Go down to Starbucks. Ask one whether he believes in God. His response would be along the lines of, “Umm, I’m kinda in-between . . . it all depends . . . what I do know is I don’t believe in America . . .” And then he’d drift back to his double latte sprinkled with fresh pumpkin seeds.
Now, try to imagine that wishy-washy but unwashed and wish-less agnosticating procrastinating prognosticator with the man-bun sipping a double latte sprinkled with pumpkin seeds . . . embracing Islam.
Well, not exactly embracing Islam, with which there’s not necessarily anything wrong, but embracing Islamists, with whom there is.
You see, I distinguish between Islam and Islamists. About Islam, I know very little. I do know that, like most religions, it was invented by barbarians and so there’s undoubtedly some rough spots in its scriptures. I’m sure there’s eye-for-an-eye stuff, animal sacrifice rituals, and cruel tests of torment.
In most religions, the barbaric stuff got watered down over time. As people advanced, the believers shifted their focus toward the kinder, gentler aspects of their religion. They shifted toward loving thy neighbor, and away from goat sacrifices.
That could have been the path of Islam, if only we’d had different Islamists. The Islamists we do have seem stuck in the 9th century – which was not a particularly enlightened time.
That brings us to the weird part. The beliefs of these Islamists stuck in the 9th century are, by today’s mostly-civilized standards, downright weird.
They believe shoplifters should have their hands cut off. They believe adulterous women should be stoned to death. They believe gays should be thrown off rooftops. They believe infidels (meaning non-Muslims) should be beheaded, raped, tortured, burned alive, murdered and taken hostage to use as currency to free terrorists.
They believe it is right, joyful and heroic to fly airplanes into tall buildings.
I know Democrats have fallen far in the last generation but they still didn’t have those things in their party platform, even in 2024 when they ran a half-baked, half-assed, half-wit.
That’s why it’s downright weird that the Democrats have embraced not Islam, about which they know nothing, but Islamists, about which they know quite a lot – and none of it is good.
But it all makes sense. Despite the peculiarity and weirdness of this outcome, it all makes sense in a perverted sort of way.
Democrats perceive, correctly, that Islamists see America as their enemy. Indeed, Islamists see all of Western culture as their enemy.
And so do Democrats.
If America is the enemy of Islamists, and is also the enemy of Democrats, that makes Islamists the friends of Democrats – or at least the allies.
Of course, Islamists and Democrats hate America for entirely different reasons. Islamists hate America because it’s not an Islamist theocracy, while Democrats hate America because it’s not a communist dictatorship.
But that’s just a detail, say the Democrats. They’ll figure out how to share the spoils of this war against America once they win it.
That’s the part where Democrats might not have thought things through. Islamists will be in no mood for sharing.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY)
The Senate filibuster is an odd rule. It says 60 votes out of the 100 Senators are necessary to end debate on a piece of proposed legislation.
Absent those 60 votes, the legislation never gets put to a vote. The effect is that it takes not just a majority of the Senate – 51 votes out of 100 – to pass legislation. It takes a supra-majority of 60.
The filibuster rule is not in the Constitution. In fact, it’s not even in a statute. It’s simply a rule dreamed up by the Senate. In various forms, it goes back to the 19th century, and has been tweaked many times since then.
The original idea behind the filibuster was this: If Senators want to keep debating some proposed legislation, then – politicians being politicians – they should. Talk is not just cheap, but good, and so more talk is better.
But – politicians being politicians again – they soon abused their right to talk. Filibusters became not a way to keep talking about legislation, but a way to kill it. Legislation supported by 59 Senators, which typically meant Senators from both parties, could be killed by just 41 senators opposing it.
The result has been the occasional paralysis of the Senate. Controversial legislation cannot get passed unless it falls within one of the limited exceptions to the filibuster rule.
This outcome frustrated Democrats a few years ago, because it enabled the Republicans to stop the confirmation of a few of the controversial federal judges nominated by Barack Obama. Republicans didn’t stop all confirmations, mind you, but only the ones they especially disliked. Obama still got the great majority of his judges confirmed, and we still see them in action.
This filibustering of judicial nominations did not start with the Republicans, of course. Democrats were at least as adept at the practice and, arguably, were the ones to start the practice.
For example, a brilliant and highly qualified nominee by George W. Bush name Miguel Estrada was filibuster by the Democrats. And then again. And again, and again. And again, and again. and again.
Seven times, the Democrats filibustered Miguel Estrada.
When the Republicans repaid the filibustering favor, it didn’t sit well with the Democrats. The Democrat Senate leader was a sleazy old battle ax named Harry Reid who served in, or at least enjoyed, the Senate for 30 years and mysteriously amassed a fortune doing so. He threatened to, and did, abolish the filibuster for ordinary judicial nominations. From that time forward, it took only 51 Senators to break a filibuster on ordinary judicial nominations.
You might reasonably ask how he got the 60 votes to abolish the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
Here’s where it gets curious. It takes 60 Senators to overcome a filibuster on proposed legislation, but it takes only 51 to change the Senate rules allowing for filibusters. And so, with a simple majority, Senator Reid jammed through his change to the rule requiring a supra-majority to confirm a judicial nominee, to require only a simple majority.
The Republicans warned Senator Reid and his Democrat colleagues that they would regret abolishing the filibuster. They warned that someday the tables would be turned, and it would be the Republicans who would take advantage of the power to confirm judicial nominations with a bare majority of 51 Senators, rather than the traditional 60 Senators.
That’s what happened, in spades. Senator Reid abolished the filibuster for judicial nominations with the exception of Supreme Court nominations. In 2017, the Republicans saw his bid and raised him.
President Trump had the opportunity to nominate three Supreme Court Justices in his first term to replace conservative and liberal Justices who died in office, and a moderate Justice who retired.
Unsurprisingly, President Trump nominated three conservatives. Unsurprisingly, the Democrats went ballistic and promised to filibuster. Unsurprisingly, the Republicans took the natural step of abolishing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, just as the Democrats had for lower court nominations. Unsurprisingly, all three were confirmed by Republican Senate majorities (even though the Democrats shamelessly defamed Justice Kavanaugh).
Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court is now 6-3 conservative, and will remain conservative for the foreseeable future.
This 6-3 conservative Supreme Court has been a key component to President Trump’s power. On political cases, the outcome is generally (not always) five or six conservatives to four or three liberals.
Which brings us to the government “shutdown.” Of course, the government is not shut down, but the word “shutdown” generates clicks for click-baiting whores that comprise today’s media, and so that’s the term they use – together with the suggestion that it’s all the fault of the Republicans because they refuse to un-do the tax bill that was passed last spring.
But that’s just an excuse. The real reason for the “shutdown” is that the Democrat leader, Now York’s Charles Schumer, is panicking that a loony Democrat woman with initials for a name will challenge him in a primary and defeat his ambition to stay in the Senate well into his 80s. He’s in need of loony lib cred in a state that prizes such stuff. (See, e.g. Zohran Mamdani.)
And so, the Democrats have filibustered the legislation to keep the government open a dozen times.
In ordinary times, the rank-and-file Democrats would go along with Schumer’s selfish shutdown scheme, for about as long as they can say those four words fast.
But in today’s political climate, even rank-and-file Democrats oppose practically everything Trump proposes, just because it’s Trump who proposes it. When the leftist base of the Democrats demand brave “resistance” to Trump, the rest of the Democrats willing grovel in compliance to show their bravery.
The Republicans could thwart the Democrats and end the shutdown in hours by taking a simple majority vote, a la Harry Reid, to suspend the filibuster. They wouldn’t even have to abolish it. They could do a one-time suspension of it. With 53 of the 100 Senators being Republican, that one-time suspension should pass.
By the way, if the Republicans were to abolish the filibuster for everything, not just as a one-time exercise, then they could run roughshod over the Democrats for at least the next year until the 2026 mid-term elections.
I like the idea of running roughshod over Democrats who are “bravely” groveling to their crazy leftist base.
Ah, you say, but then the Democrats would turn the tables against the Republicans next time the Democrats have a majority of the Senate.
Yes, they will.
But they will do that whether the Republicans suspend the filibuster now or not. These are Democrats, by golly. Do you expect them to abide by the filibuster later just because the Republicans do now? Do you expect them to play fair?
The map shows the contorted Congressional District in Louisiana that is at issue in the Supreme Court case that was argued yesterday.
You won’t see this map in most of the news reports on the case – not because it’s not newsworthy, but because it is. This picture speaks a thousand words about the absurdity at issue.
All parties to the case – and the Supreme Court Justices, as well – agree that this strange amalgamation was created for the express purpose of establishing a district that is supposedly Black* so that Blacks could be assured of electing Black representatives.
(I say “supposedly Black” because most Blacks in Louisiana, as in other American states, are actually of mixed race.)
There are several problems with this notion of Black Congressional Districts. First, it assumes that people identifying as Blacks can be represented in Congress only by other people identifying as Blacks. Why is that the case? I’m white and I’ve voted for Black candidates, and I’m sure many Blacks have voted for white candidates. In fact, Donald Trump got a substantial share of the Black vote last year.
Second, the flip side of concentrating Blacks into Black districts is to concentrate whites into white districts. If we’re to have separate Congressional Districts, should we also have separate schools? Separate drinking fountains?
In a region of the country with a sordid Jim Crow history of “separate but equal,” having separate Congressional Districts strikes me as a vile throwback.
Third, what happens if one of the white districts in Louisiana elects a Black? That would result in Blacks having too many seats, right? Conversely, what happens if a Black district elects a white? Does that mean we need to go back to the racial gerrymandering board to re-draw the districts again?
Fourth, this notion that Blacks are entitled to Congressional representation in exact proportion to their population (or more in the event a Black gets elected in a white district) would seem to apply equally to other races.
In Washington State, for example, about 10% of the population is of Asian descent. Many of their ancestors were exploited and discriminated against. Should we gerrymander the Congressional Districts in Washington to ensure that 10% of the representatives are Asian?
What do we do if the Asian voters don’t go along? What do we do if they “wrongly” vote for a white or Black or Hispanic rather than for the Asian candidate that they’re supposed to vote for? What if they vote for politicians on the basis of policy, not race? Or on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin?
Gee, that’d be horrible, huh?
What about other minorities? In New York State, about 11% of the population is Jewish. Should we gerrymander some Jewish districts? Does it matter whether the Jews are observant or not?
What about transexuals? In California, about 97% of the population is transexual.
OK, I made that up, but you get the point.
The premise to this racial gerrymandering is that Blacks are unique among minorities, in (1) possessing “Black issues” that only they care about, and (2) lacking the ability to persuade non-Blacks to their side of those issues.
I disagree. I think Blacks are fully functional citizens who can vote their minds on all issues, side-by-side with the rest of us, and they have the ability to persuade the rest of us on those issues. They are not in need of child-like allowances any more than Asians or Jews or transexuals or Hispanics or Scots. It’s time to end the separate-but-equal Congressional Districts and end the soft bigotry of racial condescension.
*Although much of my tribe disagrees with me on this, I use “Black” rather than “black” when referring to American Blacks. That’s not because the AP Style Manual calls for it, but because I’m willing to call a race by the name that a majority of the race prefers. If a majority of whites start asking to be called “Whites,” or a majority of Scots start asking to be called “scots,” then I’ll go along with that, too.
There’s an odd little side show that caught my attention in the vaudeville act of “Dr.” Ian Roberts, the illegal immigrant from Guyana whom the Des Moines School District hired, heroized, and paid $300,000/year. (None of those particular things caught my attention in themselves, since they’re all par for the illegal immigrant course, these days.)
What caught my attention is that he’s registered to vote in Maryland, which was one of his waypoints on his grand and illegal tour through America. How, I wondered, did he manage to register to vote in Maryland?
It’s easy. In fact, it’s automatic.
Like about 18 other states, Maryland allows illegals to get driver’s licenses. Yes, it’s illegal for an illegal to be in America but, no, it’s not illegal in those states for them to get a driver’s license to drive around. Their presence is illegal, but their driving is not.
Okay, fair enough. On second thought, that’s not fair at all to the rest of us who wind up dodging illegals whose driving “skills” are the product of the roads and customs of such places as Guadalajara while we see our insurance premiums skyrocket.
But, anyway, there’s more.
In about 24 states, when the state issues a driver’s license, it automatically registers the person to vote – completely and willfully ignorant of whether the person is an American citizen.
Re-read that last paragraph. Yes, you got it right.
This scheme has a name. (The Democrats are great at branding things. See, e.g., “Affordable Housing,” “Reproductive Rights,” and “Me Too.”) They call this one “Automatic Voter Registration” or “AVR.” Democrats boast that AVR makes it easier to vote.
About that, they’re right.
Back to the erstwhile “Dr.” Ian Roberts. He got a driver’s license in Maryland while he happened to be on-the-lam there. Under their AVR system, Maryland automatically registered him to vote, as other states with AVR would have done.
Voila! He was in the country illegally, but had a valid driver’s license to drive around and was duly registered to vote.
Nothing odd or extraordinary took place. What happened undoubtedly happens thousands of times every day. It’s supposed to happen that way. There was no breakdown in the system. His voting registration was not a mistake.
The mistake was a bigger one. The mistake was a failure of American government. One political party has hijacked the levers, arms and dials of American government to produce deliberate and systematic voting fraud.
Democrats are willing to shut down the government if Republicans refuse to re-negotiate part of the tax bill passed in July. They say the main thing they want re-negotiated are government subsidies for Obamacare.
The Democrats have some leverage here because, while it took only a Senate majority to pass the tax bill, and the Republicans hold that majority, it takes a supra-majority to pass a bill to keep the government from shutting down. A supra-majority cannot be achieved without a handful of Democrats.
There are several principled objections to this strategy by the Democrats, which are worth mentioning before I get to the main point.
First, this isn’t the way legislation is supposed to get done. Once a bill is passed, the losing side is not supposed to get another bite at their losing apple by threatening to shut down the government many months later.
Second, shutting down the government is a little like hostage-taking. The threat is of a different kind and degree from the matter in dispute.
Third, this is stupidly hypocritical by the Democrats. The party of Big Government says that if they don’t get their way, they’ll . . . shut down Big Government.
It reminds me of Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles, when he pointed a gun at his head and warned his pursuers, “Hold it! Next man makes a move, the n***** gets it!” (Note that in what passes for today’s “culture” you can get all manner of porn and snuff films with a few clicks on the internet, but finding that clip takes some effort.)
Fourth, the Republicans are prepared to turn the tables. Trump says that if the government gets shut down, he’ll have no choice but to fire government workers. There’s some logic to that. It’s not fair to employ workers you can’t pay.
Democrats have shown a talent for political malpractice lately, but this one looks like a real boner. The Democrats can be stupid, but usually not this stupid. So why are they doing it?
The conventional wisdom is that they are captive to their “base,” the far-left kooks. That’s true, but it leaves the question, why are they captive to kooks?
The answer to that question is the same as the answer to the question “Why do you rob banks?” asked of serial bank robber Willie Sutton. He replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”
Kooks don’t normally have money, but these particular far-left ones do. Billions are funneled to them from unabashed radicals like George Soros and billions more from purportedly philanthropic foundations and leftist non-governmental organizations like Greenpeace, Common Cause and Black Lives Matter that are only slightly less radical. (Imagine entrepreneurs like John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and John D. MacArthur turning in their graves at the sight of how their money is spent today.) The kooks receiving those billions, in turn, are major campaign donors to Democrats.
These monied far-left interests are not really driven by details like Obamacare subsidies. That’s just an excuse. If the Republicans compromised on that, there will be another demand and another. What really drives them is a desire to sow chaos and confusion in American society, culture and government. Shutting down the government, they believe, serves that end. They seek a revolution, by whatever means necessary but preferably through a societal breakdown – by violence.
If the Democrats want to shut down the government in order sow a little chaos and confusion, fine. They’ll lose in the end, and it won’t take long. Let’s not take the bait for a violent confrontation.
President Trump’s efforts to bring down crime have been successful in Washington, D.C. The rate of murder and other violent crimes is down substantially, and the rate of car-jackings is down dramatically.
Even the Democrat mayor of the city admitted that the crime rate has dropped. Oddly, however, she mumbles in the next breath that the program is “not working,” apparently to mollify national stage Democrats to whom she answers.
Such as Democrat Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. He was asked at the outset whether the initial 30-day period for the effort could be extended. His response was “f*** no!” It will be interesting to see him now choose between enabling murders and climbing down from his vulgar perch. I’m guessing he’ll choose the side of murder, and stay on his vulgar perch.
So, if it worked in D.C., why stop now? We can curtail crime and simultaneously embarrass Democrats around the country. We should next send the troops to Chicago, right? And then Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis and Portland, right?
I don’t think so. My reasons are legal, philosophical and political.
Legally, D.C. is a special case. It’s under the direct jurisdiction of the federal government (notwithstanding the limited “home rule” that Congress legislated some years ago). One federal judge has already ruled that the deployment of troops to Los Angeles to quell the illegal immigration protests was illegal. I don’t have much regard for that particular judge – the bowtie-wearing, San Francisco-residing, 83-year-old little brother of retired liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer – but it is conceivable that his big brother’s former Court will uphold his ruling.
Now the more important reasons – the moral and philosophical ones.
D.C. is the workplace and often the home of over a hundred thousand federal employees who have little choice about their workplace venue.
It’s also the face of America to millions of foreign visitors who reasonably assume that it reflects American values, just as we would assume that Paris reflects French values, London reflects English values, and Berlin reflects German values. (Each of those cities has a lower crime rate than D.C., especially in the category of violent crime.) How America presents itself to the world through its capital city is rightly a national and federal concern. How Chicago presents itself to the world is less so.
Here’s the most important point. The crime in Chicago and other major cities is largely due to ongoing choices they make in law enforcement. Recall that only five years ago, many residents of American cities were calling for the “defunding” – i.e., abolition – of city police forces. Even now, police forces are short-handed because the Democrats ruling these cities are hostile to law enforcement. They hate the cops more than they hate the criminals.
When they’re not short-changing the cops, they’re hand-tying them. Many crimes are simply not investigated or prosecuted. For example, shop-lifting has effectively been de-criminalized. If you want to get fired from your job at a local store, call the cops on a shoplifter or, worse, chase after one.
Other crimes have also been effectively de-criminalized on the grounds that too many racial minorities were being arrested for committing them.
People who commit crimes are criminals, but they aren’t stupid. They know what they can get away with, and so that’s what they do.
In short, big-city crime is a big-city choice. Specifically, it’s a choice by big city Democrats. They could decide tomorrow not to tolerate crime. So far, with the exception of the D.C. mayor who has had an epiphany on the subject, they have not decided that. We cannot coerce everyone into epiphanies.
Finally, there’s a legitimate issue about using federal troops for routine law enforcement. From the German Gestapo of a century ago to the Mexican Federales of today, federal law enforcement in local matters has a sordid history.
To be sure, the crime in American large cities inflicts real harm on the residents who, by and large, are not criminals of any kind. They sometimes get attacked, shot or killed and they often get their property stolen or vandalized. Even in the absence of tangible harm, they live insecure, semi-terrified lives.
But they keep electing those soft-on-crime Democrats. They are entitled to, but I say let these residents see and suffer the consequences of their choices – for years and years, if that’s what it takes.
Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago is widely seen outside of Chicago as the worst mayor in America. Even within Chicago, which is an overwhelmingly Democrat city, his approval rating this summer is down to the mid-20s. Maybe that means the Democrat residents of Chicago will throw the bum out.
But don’t count on it. Especially if he can make political hay by distracting the Democrat residents from his incompetence with a show of “standing up to” the Orange Man that they hate more than the criminals and even more than the cops.
You may ask, “What about the residents of Chicago who do want to throw the bum out? Who do want effective law enforcement? Who do want to reclaim their city from filth and crime? Who do vote with their minds and not with their tribe?”
My answer is, they have an alternative. Unlike federal employees locked into workplaces in D.C., the residents of Chicago who vote with their minds but get outvoted every time can vote with their feet.
My advice to them is to get the hell out of the failing cities. Let the failing cities burn and rot. Maybe then, and probably only then, the residents will insist on effective governance. If they don’t even then, well, at least they’ve self-concentrated in places we can watch and, if necessary, avoid or isolate.
And who knows? Their proclivity toward killing one another might prove to be an unfitness in the Darwinian sense.
Yes, my advice to sane people in insane places is to move to another place. Move to Texas, move to Florida, move to Idaho. Move to Galt’s Gulch.
There’s a Democrat in Texas (yes, really!) who lost a race for senator, and then lost a race for governor. He’s a designated loser.
His name is Robert but he has a nickname. Since he’s proven himself not exactly an Alpha, you might assume his nickname is “Beta.”
Close. It’s “Beto.” Beto has a lot more in common with “Beta” than with “Rambo.”
Beto/Beta attended elite private boarding schools and then Columbia where he took a degree in English Literature. It was probably Shakespeare that taught him not to be.
But Beto/Beta has a strategy to show his toughness and finally rise to leader of the pack. He says the F word. A lot.
When he lost the senate race, he informed his supporters, “I’m so f***ing proud of you!” He and his supporters promptly regrouped and went on to lose the gubernatorial race.
Offering incisive commentary on Donald Trump, he exclaimed, “What the f***?” Significantly, the object of his invective is now President; Beto/Beta is not.
His brave response to a mass shooting was, “This is f***ed up.” Shooters everywhere scurried.
His recent legal argument in opposition to the Texas rules requiring state legislators to, well, legislate rather than flee the jurisdiction, was, “F*** the rules!” The Democrat lawbreaking lawmakers caved yesterday. Beto/Beta fought the rules, and the rules won.
Other Dems have joined the f-fest. New York Senator Charles Schumer, formerly the Senate Majority Leader and one of the most powerful people in D.C., at least on paper, was asked whether the National Guard would be permitted to keep the peace in D.C. beyond just 30 days.
“No f***ing way” was his response. (But Schumer is already checkmated. Crime will be down during this 30-day period. At the end of the 30 days, Dems will then be in the position of saying they want it to go back up.)
Dems always had potty mouths – LBJ cursed like a Texas roughneck – but the election of Trump really unhinged them. They’re angry and frustrated. Turns out that advocating crime, boys in the girls’ bathrooms, racial quotas and open borders didn’t go over as well as they anticipated.
So . . . drop the f-bombs!
A Dem in New York who says he’s a “former journalist” (of course, there’s no such thing as a current journalist – they’re all former ones) has started a campaign to unseat a Republican Congressman with the erudite slogan “Unf*** our country!” That’s typical of journalistic eruditeness these days.
Another “former journalist” Dem running for Congress – this one a woman – declared in a video clip she posted on X that it was time for the Dems to, “Grow a f***cking spine.” How endearing. They even put the F word into their teleprompter speeches
Back when these potty mouths were future former journalists, I’m sure they were very careful never to let their political leanings get in the way of objective reporting. Uh huh.
Another sitting Congresswoman ejaculated on live TV, “Somebody slap me, and wake me the fuck up!” As for her second request, she seems plenty woke already. But I’d be happy to fulfill her first request.
So, why are Democrats spouting the F word as eagerly as fourth graders who just learned it?
Several reasons. First, they’ve always been just a step from the gutter. While conservative intellectuals like William F. Buckley, Milton Freidman and Thomas Sowell were slicing and dicing the Democrats so eloquently they didn’t know they’d been filleted until they saw their guts on the floor, the mob and their molls were infiltrating the JFK White House and the rest of the Democrat machine, from Chicago to Philly to San Francisco.
It’s all about raw physical power. The Democrats’ idea of intellectual debate for two generations has been, “Nice argument you got there, be a shame if something happened to you.”
Second, the Democrats truly are angry. They’ve lost the White House, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, most state legislatures, most governorships, their lunch money, and their cookies. They’ve lost it all to people they hate, and, in their ignorance, despise and disrespect.
When people get angry, they often get profane. It feels good to express anger.
Third, much of the Dem f-bombing is to rally their filthy f***ed up base. They’re making a show of uncontrolled anger – in a controlled, manipulative sort of way.
This manipulative f-bombing does indeed rally the filthy Dem base, but that base is already rallied. They always are. They wouldn’t be filthy f***ed up Democrats if they weren’t on Adderall.
It’s the middle-of-the-roaders that the Dems need to rally. Those middle-of-the-roaders who decide elections are not paying much attention (that’s why they’re middle-of-the-roaders) but they don’t like hearing government would-be leaders shouting words that they would not let their children hear or speak.
So, bring it on, Democrats. See if you can f*** your way back into f***ing control of the f***ing government.
An alternative approach might be to change your language, change your tone and change your policies. Nah, f*** that!
Here’s a thought experiment. First, picture Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and other communist despots of the 20th century. (I could add to that list the head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, but I don’t want emails purporting to correct me.)
Now imagine if part of their pitch to the public had been the following:
Men pretending to be women should compete against women in women’s sports, and, after the women lose to the men, they should be forced to shower with them;
People should be judged not on their merit or even their economic class, but on their skin color, and, moreover, those with skin colors who commit murder at 7x the ordinary rate should be judged more favorably;
Gay people should get preferences in admissions and hiring;
We should abolish our national borders;
Boys having adolescence issues should be called “girls” and have their penises cut off; and
Criminal laws are illegitimate.
If Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot and the other communists had preached such nonsense, the result would have been fantastic. Because they never would have come to power. And so we would have avoided 100,000,000 deaths caused by communism.
Fast forward to today. In an incredibly lucky twist of fate, would-be socialists and communists calling themselves Democrats over the past two decades did pitch that nonsense.
Enough people paid attention and recognized it as the nonsense that it was, that the Democrats were finally voted out of power.
Yes, there was also the matter of their latest leader and his senility, corruption and incompetence. But in the absence of their culturally woke nonsense, the Democrats/socialists/communists probably would have overcome the drag of their bad leader. They probably would have won the last election, and we’d be well down the road to lethal, ruinous economics.
That’s because socialism polls surprisingly well. Although people understand that men in drag should not beat and shower with women, they understand basic economics less well.
Among young voters especially, there’s a convenient tendency to believe that the reason they aren’t as wealthy as they’d like is because rich people are stealing their money.
Many young people believe this because they’ve never heard of Marx, Lenin, Mao, or Pol Pot, or the destruction and misery they inflicted. That’s no surprise, for their “teachers” are mostly (not all, fortunately) socialists themselves.
Democrats are now at a crossroads. One road is the one they’re on – the road of socialism in combination with woke cultural issues. The other road lets go of the woke cultural issues while continuing the socialism.
It’s common wisdom, at least outside the fever swamps of academia, that the Democrats need to take the road away from woke cultural issues if they want to win elections. To win elections, they should focus on socialism, not rainbows and bathrooms.
I am praying they don’t take that advice. I’m praying they keep losing elections by staying on the road of woke cultural issues in combination with socialism. If they’ll just stay the course, the story of the 21st century might be the 100,000,000 lives that we didn’t lose to communism.
The first to say that was Julius Caesar. After his crushing win over a Persian/Greek king in what is now Turkey, Caesar reported to the Roman Senate with characteristic immodesty and uncharacteristic brevity: “Veni, vidi, vici.”
I came, I saw, I conquered. Caesar had a flair for drama.
He similarly came, saw and conquered most of Gaul – what is now France – in an era well before the invention of B2 stealth bombers. Travelling from Rome to Gaul was an arduous multi-month sea and land adventure. Conquering the barbarians there was a crazy idea for anyone but Caesar.
He laid the foundation for the greatest and longest-lasting empire the world has ever seen. It’s impossible to travel in Europe without marveling at ubiquitous, still-majestic two-thousand-year-old ruins of that empire.
Caesar came from a privileged but not powerful family. Ambitious from the outset, he clawed his way up the political ladder of the Roman republic, a place with a governing structure that we vaguely recognize.
Indeed, we should. Aspects of our own republic consciously imitate Rome, such as the naming of our Senate after the Roman Senatus and even the Greco-Roman architecture of our capital.
Caesar’s foreign exploits were not just to conquer foreign lands. They were to conquer his homeland, Rome. He wanted conquests because he wanted attention because he wanted power – in Rome.
But he also did want to conquer those foreign lands. The Romans were keenly aware of their legendary cousins across the Ionian Sea, and Caesar knew all about the astonishing conquests of Alexander the Great.
When Ceasar was still relatively young (but, he was painfully aware, already older than the age of Alexander when he’d conquered much of the world) he was chosen to be something akin to a prime minister.
Later, during a period of increasing social turmoil in an unwieldy republic deteriorating toward civil war, Caesar was named dictator for life and offered a crown.
He made a show of publicly refusing the crown, but he did not refuse the powers that went with it.
After five years as dictator, at age 56, Caesar was stabbed 23 times by senators. Brutus, too, was one of those senators.
Myth has it that this assassination was because Rome wanted to reclaim its republic from the dictator. The truth is more prosaic – particular senators opposed particular policies of Caesar.
Indeed, the dictatorship, itself, survived and thrived after Caesar’s death. Rome became an empire ruled by a succession of emperors.
That sounds terrible, right?
It wasn’t. It was the best thing that ever happened in the ancient world. For the next centuries, the Pax Romana ensured relative peace, prosperity and enlightenment. There’s a reason that what followed the ultimate crumbling of the Roman Empire is called the Dark Ages and the subsequent period is called the Renaissance or “rebirth” of the civilization that preceded that dark age.
Some Roman emperors were great and good, such as Augustus, Trajan and Hadrian. Rome was at its biggest and best as an empire ruled by emperors, notwithstanding the occasional lunatics like Caligula and Nero. Similarly, Britain achieved the most when it was ruled by kings and queens. Same for Spain and France. There’s a lot to be said for benevolent dictators, so long as they aren’t crazy.
But Americans are taught, or at least used to be taught, that democracy is the ultimate and natural evolution of political governance. Isn’t it wonderful and equitable, say the propagandists, that everyone gets one vote, regardless of what they contribute, what they know, and what they merit?
Isn’t it genius that we rely on ordinary Americans, 50% of whom are stupider than average, to select our leaders?
To ask those questions plainly stated is to answer them. So why have America and other western democracies been so successful?
Arguably, their success is not so much because democracy works well, but despite the fact that it doesn’t. What has worked well instead is something quite different.
It’s technology. The last two hundred years entailed the industrial revolution, the electronics age, and the ongoing computer revolution. Productivity is through the roof, even as people work far less than ever before.
Today’s average westerner is consequently much richer than the kings and queens of yesteryear. He has air conditioning, a house, one or two cars that take him anywhere he wants, only 1.7 children to feed, and a gadget in his pocket to get all the information in the world – and entertainment too – on a magical screen.
It wasn’t democracy that got him all that. It was technology.
If democracy is so great, then why aren’t companies managed by democracies? Shouldn’t we have employees elect their boss by popular vote, just as we elect our political representatives? Shouldn’t there be company-wide referendums by the employees to vote on how hard they have to work and what they get paid for that work?
Again, to ask those questions is to answer them. That system just wouldn’t work. So, what makes us think that such a system works in political governance?
I submit that democracy is not the ultimate evolution of political governance. “One man, one vote,” regardless of merit, does not work over the long run any better now than it did in Athens or Rome – and now we’ve corrupted it still further with universal suffrage and voting by mail.
In the end, this democratic feel-goodery conflicts with meritorious substance. Almost by definition, the meritorious will win that conflict one way or another. Veni, vidi, vici.
the Aspen beat 