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"
Alex Pretti did something foolish and illegal at the protest in Minneapolis. He interfered with law enforcement agents. There will be debates for days if not years about whether his illegal interference with the cops, the discovery of his gun, and his violent resistance justified them shooting him.
In considering that issue, I urge readers to consider it not from the warm comfort of their recliner while watching slow-motion videotapes interspersed with football highlights, but from the perspective of cops who are being taunted, spat upon, name-called, and threatened with being run over by organized protesters in the bitter cold, who suddenly discover in a scuffle that one of those protesters has a gun hidden in his pants.
(I’m glad to report that speculation that the gun was planted on Pretti by the cops appears to be disproven.)
But let’s put to one side the issue of whether the shooting was justified. Even now, we still don’t have enough facts to make that determination.
Let’s instead consider a threshold issue: Why did Pretti bring a gun?
Note that it’s not illegal in America for ordinary citizens to own a gun. And it’s not illegal to protest non-violently.
It’s not even illegal to bring a gun to a protest (despite claims to the contrary by a Trump Administration official).
In short, whatever illegalities Alex Pretti committed at the protest, he did nothing illegal in putting a gun in his pants and going there.
But why did he? Why did he hide a loaded gun in his pants?
Ordinary people carry guns routinely for lots of reasons. Most of those reasons are poor ones, in my judgment, but not illegal ones. Some ordinary people carry guns simply because it makes them feel secure or even masculine. Some ordinary people carry guns because it plays into boyish fantasies.
And a few ordinary people carry guns because they have legitimate reasons to think they may need them for lawful self-defense and they have the expert skill and excellent judgment to use them properly in that mode.
Pretti seems not to be in the latter category. Rather, he brought a gun to the protest because it made him feel secure or masculine or fulfilled boyish fantasies. Sadly, those feelings and fantasies cost him his life.
Before leaving this incident, there’s a tribal juxtaposition here that is worth noting. Conservatives typically defend and even celebrate owning and carrying a gun, while liberals typically decry the same. Conversely, liberals typically defend and even celebrate protests of law enforcement, while conservatives typically decry the same.
So, conservative and liberal tribalists are left in a quandary when somebody brings a gun to a protest of the immigration laws. Conservatives wonder, do we defend the gun-toter even if he’s protesting? Liberals wonder, do we defend the protester even if he totes a gun?
I like the fact that this quandary forces the tribes to think past tribal identities. Conservatives are forced to acknowledge that owning and carrying a gun may be lawful but there are circumstances where it isn’t smart or right. Liberals are forced to acknowledge that protesting may be lawful but there are circumstances where that, too, isn’t smart or right.
In short, judging an act often requires thought beyond merely identifying the tribe of the person performing that act. A bit more thought and a bit less tribalism would be helpful these days.
President Trump did some good things toward peace last year, for which I’ve congratulated him.
Among other things, he derailed the Iranian quest for nuclear weapons with which to make good their never-ending promise to destroy what they call the “Little Satan” of Israel and then the “Big Satan” of America.
He also supported Israel in its effort to contain Hamas and other Islamic terror groups. Israel’s efforts entailed some pain and suffering, but it was the only option to prevent another massacre like October 7, a massacre that Hamas explicitly vowed to repeat.
More recently, he decapitated a narco-klepto-regime in our own hemisphere, Venezuela, that had gotten very cozy with the outlaw states of the world and inflicted horrible misery on its own people.
But the Nobel Peace Prize Committee chose to give their prize to someone else. They have their reasons. One possible reason, which they will never admit to, is that they hate Jews, hate Israel, and hate anyone who helps the Jews of Israel secure their ongoing existence. So, Trump’s efforts to help achieve peace in the Middle East may have actually hurt his chances for the Peace Prize.
In any event, the Prize Committee has explained that the cutoff for “good deeds” considered in Committee determinations was long before Trump’s Middle East triumph. That seems fair enough. Deadlines are deadlines.
As for Venezuela, the actions by Trump to remove the dictator came not just after the cutoff, but after the Prize had already been awarded.
The person who won the Prize was the opposition leader of Venezuela who has literally risked her life for her people for years.
Before the Prize was awarded, she thanked Trump for his support. After the Prize was awarded, and after the dictator had been removed, she was effusive in her thanks to Trump.
In fact, in a visit to the White House last week, she offered the prize to Trump. He accepted it. The physical Prize in now in his possession.
However, the Nobel Committee has declared that transferring physical possession of the Prize does not accomplish a transfer of the Prize itself. The winner is and will always be the Venezuelan opposition leader to whom it was awarded.
It’s a little like an Olympic gold medal. If physical possession of a medal is transferred from the medal winner to someone else, by gift, sale, theft, accident or otherwise, the medalist is still the person who won it, not the transferee.
All this did not sit well with the President. He openly campaigned for the Prize. After it was awarded to someone else, he said again that it was he who deserved it. When he was offered a gift of it by the winner, he accepted the gift and now proudly displays it as if he actually won it.
That was all awkward enough. Over the weekend came the Peace Prize coup de grace.
Trump has been agitating to take possession of Greenland. That’s not as crazy as it sounds but, as always, Trump has pursued this latest prize ham-handedly. He’s even made noises about a military invasion.
The current owner of Greenland is Denmark. They’ve held the place for roughly a thousand years – since long before Columbus sailed. The Danes are not happy with Trump’s invasion threat. Nor is the rest of Europe.
As a general matter, I have little geopolitical sympathy for the Danes or for the rest of Europe. They’ve been freeloading off America’s defense for three generations. And all the while, they impugn us with a moral and cultural smugness that is hard to bear.
The Greenland matter will get worked out. As usual in Trump spats with foreign powers, it will involve some gain for America (probably not outright possession of Greenland, however). Whether that long-term gain will be worth the short-term (hopefully) alienation of allies is something history will judge.
Meanwhile, we have negotiations by public tweets and non-confidential texts. In a text over the weekend, Trump told the Norwegian Prime Minister:
“Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
This is weird on several levels. First, there is the petulance of a sore loser. That needs no elaboration.
Second, the President seems to be suggesting a substantive change in America’s priorities and policy simply because he personally did not win the Peace Prize derby. He suggests that before losing, he had been thinking “purely of peace” but he “can now think about what is good and proper for the United States.”
Wait a minute! He’s been preaching “America First” for years. Now, we find out it’s America First only since last fall when he lost out on the Peace Prize. If he’s awarded the next Peace Prize (fat chance!), will we be back to something other than America First?
Finally, there’s the irony of it all. The President seems to be willing – nay, he seems to be begging – to be manipulated: “Give me the Peace Prize, or I’ll wage war on Greenland!” Is that an effective pitch for a Peace Prize?
Maybe I’m missing something. But if this is “the art of the deal,” then someone is not playing with a full deck.
We don’t need to invade Greenland. We can instead buy the Greenlanders. Here’s my scheme.
First, let’s review what’s at stake. Greenland is the size of Texas. It’s strategically positioned in the North Atlantic. It extends almost to the North Pole (a spot that is on ocean ice north of Greenland).
We already have an air base in Greenland above the Arctic Circle which serves to provide early warning of incoming Russian missiles and bombers. And we also have our own bombers and missiles stationed there.
Greenland is rich in natural resources, including petroleum, fish, fresh water, gold, lithium and rare earth metals.
The population of Greenland is only about 57,000 people, 3,000 polar bears and 50,000 seals. The largest town holds only 18,000 people – smaller than the enrollment of a typical liberal arts college.
Denmark claims to “own” Greenland because it was settled by a few hundred Vikings – you know, pirates – thousands of years after it was settled by Native Americans. Greenland is technically a Danish colony today. In today’s world, however, that doesn’t give the Danes a claim to it. If anything, it makes the Danes “colonizers” and gives Greenlanders a claim against Denmark for reparations.
At some point, Greenland will be absorbed by one of today’s superpowers. It’s just too good and too vulnerable to pass up. Denmark is not in a position geographically, militarily or economically to resist a takeover. As for Greenland’s own military, well, there isn’t one.
The official language of Greenland is Eskimo. It’s not officially called that, however. (In fact, Eskimos aren’t officially called Eskimos anymore, either. They’re now called Inuit. Don’t ask why. That would be racist. But it has to do with raw meat.) The official language is officially called Kalaallisut. But most inhabitants and nearly all educated ones also speak English.
Given that 88% of the island claims to be Inuit, their loyalty to Denmark – the colonizers – is doubtful.
Of course, the U.S. could conquer Greenland with the Nantucket Police Force in a weekend. But there’s a better way.
Offer the Greenlanders money. Say, about a million dollars per man, woman and child. Since there are only 57,000 inhabitants, the total bill would come to only $57 billion.
That’s chump change. It’s less than 1% of the U.S. annual federal budget. It’s less than 4% of the outstanding student loan debt in America. It’s about what Somali immigrants defraud us out of in a couple of years.
I can see it now. We’ll annex Greenland. The Greenlanders will be thrilled and wealthy. We’ll build Trump Towers all along the coast, legalize gambling, and recoup from the inhabitants our $57 billion in a matter of months.
I always disliked Rob Reiner as a liberal activist, though I’ve admired his work including When Harry Met Sally and A few Good Men.
His work and his politics, however, don’t matter today. What matters is that he and his wife were murdered in their home. Their troubled son has been arrested.
It’s a horrible, violent tragedy, any way you look at it.
Unless you look at it the way the President did. Here’s his social media post in full:
Yep, the President marked the murder of this man and his wife — a murder for which their son has been arrested — by (1) ridiculing him the very next day for his politics, and (2) glorifying himself at their expense.
It should be noted that after Charlie Kirk was murdered, Reiner’s reaction was precisely the opposite of what we just saw from the President after Reiner himself was murdered. Reiner said the murder of Kirk was “horrible” and “unacceptable.” He went on to express admiration for the words of Kirk’s widow at his funeral.
I voted for Trump three times. To this day, I think the nation and the world are better off than we would have been with any of the three candidates he ran against. Witness the Joe Biden so-called Presidency.
Trump has improved America and the world, from the Mexican border to the Middle East, from his first term Supreme Court appointments to his second term war on wokeness. I applaud President Trump, and I’m proud of my votes for him.
But today, it appears the 79 years of Donald Trump may be catching up with him. Note that even the gold standard of senility – Joe Biden – was only 78 when he was elected.
Trump publicly ridiculed a man the day after he and his wife were murdered because he dislikes the man’s politics. He name-calls female reporters “Piggy” because he dislikes their questions.
His vainglory is clinical when it’s not comical. Think John Belushi with a samurai sword. He seems to be drifting into Nero and Caligula territory.
Some of his defenders contend he’s not ill, but just the biggest asshole to ever come near the White House (and that’s from his defenders).
OK, maybe the worst that can be said about Trump is that he’s just the world’s biggest asshole. But most Americans aren’t finding much comfort in that diagnosis, either.
You may say that he’s entitled to some anger after the way he’s been persecuted, and that I would be angry too. OK, I’ll buy that. But, unlike me, Trump has a country to run, a Presidency to fill, and an example to set.
Any way you slice it, in three years Trump will be gone. And in just one year, he’ll be a lame duck dealing with a hostile Democrat Congress.
It’s essential that the conservative cause – or MAGA if you prefer – survive. It’s a cause and a movement, not a person and a cult.
My loyalty is to that cause and that movement – to America – not to that man and his followers.
There’s a provision in the Constitution to deal with the incapacity of a President. It’s the 25th Amendment. At the request of the Vice President, a majority of the Cabinet certifies that the President is unable to perform his duties; Congress confirms it; and the Vice President assumes the Presidency.
That Vice President is JD Vance, not Kamala Harris. Thank God for that – and thank Trump.
Postscript: Condemn me if you wish. Name-call me if it makes you feel good. But consider this: If Trump is continuing to sink in the polls, and he is, and is losing three-time Trump voters like me, could it perhaps be time for a course correction before the GOP gets slaughtered in next year’s midterm elections? After all, your condemnation and name-calling won’t garner any more votes for our side – quite the opposite.
It’s a story right out of pre-woke Hollywood. Her country has been taken over by a series of corrupt socialist dictators (ah, but I repeat myself) who’ve seized the natural resources for their own personal enrichment. They’ve suspended or disregarded elections.
Not satisfied with stealing the country’s riches, the looters have also entered the drug business to support their palatial lives.
The regime operates in league with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – not exactly upstanding citizens of the international community – whose main interests are in simply disrupting South America, along with sharing in the natural resource spoils.
All this is at the expense of the people. The country has gone from the richest in South America to one of the poorest in two generations. People are fleeing the country by the millions.
A brave, charismatic woman – a truly wise Latina – has stood up to the looting fascists. Risking her life, she demanded the ouster of the criminal dictator. She demanded fair elections. She’s been living in hiding, because the regime would surely imprison her, or worse, if they could find her.
Her name is Maria Machado. Her country is Venezuela. The Norwegian Nobel Committee this fall recognized her heroic work to free her country, and awarded her the Nobel Peace Prize.
President Trump has supported Machado and her efforts from the outset. He congratulated her for the prize, for her courage, and for her goals. She in turn said:
“This Nobel Prize is symbolic of that fight for freedom and is dedicated to the Venezuelan people and to President Trump for showing what strong leadership looks like in the moments that matter most.”
Speaking of strong leadership, the Administration assisted private American forces in extricating Machado from Venezuela for a harrowing journey to Oslo for the Nobel Prize. She arrived just hours too late to accept the prize in person, but her daughter accepted for her and read her stirring speech.
It’s an amazing story, still being spun. The Venezuelan dictator will fall – it’s just a matter of time (probably just weeks or months). Maria Machado will return to Venezuela. Socialist despotism in the Americas will be dealt a blow.
Stories in the American media (there isn’t really one in Venezuela anymore) including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have lauded Machado’s incredible efforts and harrowing journey. Give credit to the reporters and editors of both the Journal and the Times.
But the comments sections to those stories are chock full of hostility – not hostile to the Venezuelan regime, but hostile to Machado and Trump.
They’re hostile to Trump for the usual reason: Orange Man Bad! And they’re hostile to Machado for failing to scream “Orange Man Bad!”
The American left’s anger at Machado is heightened by the socialist dictator overlay to the story. They wonder, gee, what’s next? Will Trump go after our socialist friends in Cuba?
The American left reluctantly admit that murderous terrorism is an “unfortunate accident” and narco-state kleptocracies are unseemly, but what’s really horrible are Western civilization, American capitalism and, most of all, Donald J. Trump.
How dare this woman thank and applaud Trump – in public, no less! – they grouse. In their eyes, she’s a freakin’ woman with freakin’ dark-ish skin. Doesn’t she know her place? When it comes to relations between white Yanquis and darkish Latinas, her place is to defer to us American liberals. What we say, goes. And what we say is:
“Orange Man Bad. We don’t care if you think he helps your so-called cause of fighting-for-freedom. Nothing done by Orange Man is good. Nothing. Especially when he undermines socialism.”
Ah, socialism. It invariably deteriorates quickly into corruption, graft, waste and cronyism, and then fascism, totalitarianism, torture and terrorism.
But the American left never stops trying it. They now argue that the proof it works is in the fact that Bad Orange Man thinks it doesn’t, and he’s always wrong.
But, in fact, socialism doesn’t work – even if Trump thinks it doesn’t. It never has, and it never will. In the matter of Venezuela, the left will wind up on the wrong side of history, once again.
In a Supreme Court term with several important cases on executive power, two stand out. Both will be decided this Spring.
One is the tariffs case, argued a few weeks ago. The three liberal Justices will go against Trump, of course, because Orange Man Bad. But even the conservative Justices – especially the three appointed by Trump – appeared skeptical that the President could unilaterally impose broad tariffs.
Tariffs are much like a tax. The taxing power is generally held by Congress, not the President.
Yes, there is a loophole allowing for emergency actions by the President, but the Justices were not buying the argument that there was an emergency requiring tariffs on coffee from South America, wine from France, machines from Germany, pharmaceuticals from Switzerland, cars from Japan, etc. etc. etc.
(Apart from the legal issue, I’ve written that the tariffs are somewhat defensible from an economic perspective.)
You may argue that the “emergency” is the overall trade deficit. That trade deficit emergency, goes the argument, requires sweeping action.
I won’t argue the point. I’m just telling you that the Supreme Court is not buying it. Expect a 7-2 decision against Trump, or maybe even a 9-0 decision.
Already, companies that have paid the tariffs (including some that we assume are on the righthand side of the political spectrum, such as Costco) have filed lawsuits against the government for a refund of the tariffs they’ve paid.
Confusion will ensue. The decision is likely to be fractured with multiple opinions expressing different reasoning, and will also be complicated since the tariff scheme itself is complicated.
The other case at the Supreme Court concerns whether the President has the power to fire the leaders of so-called “independent agencies.” Trump will win this one.
Independent agencies are curious creatures. Scour the Constitution, and you’ll never find a mention of them. They are largely the creation of New Deal legislation from the 1930s. Over the ensuing century, they took on a life of their own in the fertile and fecund federal bureaucracy, like slimy salamanders spontaneously generated from warm mudpuddles.
There’s no doubt the President can fire ordinary agency leaders, but these independent agency leaders seem to have a special status in the minds of Washington politicians.
They clearly are part of the executive branch, since they’re not part of the judicial or legislative branch, but purportedly cannot be fired by the chief executive – the President – because they’re “independent.” They effectively make policy and enact legislation without oversight from Congress or the President.
This raises two questions. First, how can Congress delegate away its legislative power under the Constitution to entities never mentioned in the Constitution?
Could Congress also delegate away their legislative power to private foundations like the Gates Foundation and foreign entities like the United Nations? (Congress thinks the answer is yes, and to some extent they already have.)
In any event, it’s quite ironic that the defenders of these independent agencies accuse Trump of violating the law by firing the agency leaders, when the very existence of the agencies is in violation of the Constitution.
The second question is, if the President cannot fire the leader of an independent agency, then who can?
Not Congress, since Congress wields no hiring and firing power beyond its own internal staffing. Outside that, its power to hire people is non-existent and its power to fire people is limited to the draconian and rarely-used power to impeach.
And not the judiciary, either. Judges have no power to hire or fire members of the executive branch. They can barely hire and fire their clerks and secretaries.
So, if the President has no power to fire these independent agency leaders, then they are virtually untouchable.
Presidents and Congressmen come and go, but bureaucracies go on and on – especially if their leaders cannot be replaced. The deep state lives forever.
But it’s also the outcome desired by a certain cohort of never-Trump Republicans. It’s amusing to see their pseudo-scholarly rhetoric decrying the administrative state – until it’s Trump (gasp!) who proposes modest control over it. Then, and only then, reining in the unaccountable, unconstitutional administrative state run by unelected bureaucrats is . . . you know what’s coming . . . a threat to democracy.
The Supreme Court decision on this will likely be less hypocritical than those pseudo-scholar never-Trumpers. All nine Justices know that the administrative state of Democrats spawned by independent agencies is an unconstitutional cancer on democracy, and that the only means to rein it in is through the President.
Based on that common understanding, the six conservative Justices will side with the President and the three liberals will side against him.
The facts are still emerging through the fog of war (or is it the fog of law enforcement, or the fog of antiterrorism?). Sometimes people (including myself) draw conclusions on the basis of incomplete information, so let’s start with what’s really known.
Our military launched another missile attack on a drug-smuggling fast boat. The boat burst into flames and was dead in the water but did not immediately sink. On-scene surveillance showed that not all of the 11 crew members were killed. One or two men were seen moving in the water.
Unlike the footage of other fast boats being attacked by missiles, this footage has not been publicly released, but the facts in the preceding paragraph are undisputed.
A second missile strike was then ordered. It obliterated the wreckage of the boat and killed the two remaining survivors. That, too, is undisputed.
The mission was observed in real time by the Admiral in charge as well as his boss, the Secretary of War, in a room at the Pentagon. Both men saw the first missile strike.
The Secretary of War reports that he then left the room to attend another meeting. The second strike was then ordered by the Admiral who evidently believed he had authority from the Secretary of War.
Here’s where it gets foggy. One report says that the Secretary of War instructed the military in advance to “kill them all.” He denies saying that.
He did say afterward that he supports the Admiral’s ordering of the second strike, and went on to proclaim “the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”
What’s the President say? When asked about the appropriateness of the second strike, he said:
“[The Secretary of War] said he didn’t do it, so I don’t have to make that decision.”
In the hurley-burley of the impromptu press conference aboard Air Force One, it’s not clear what, exactly, the Secretary told the President he “didn’t do.” It can’t be that he told the President they “didn’t do” a second strike, because they clearly did. Maybe what the Secretary said he “didn’t do” was to be the one who ordered it, since he was no longer in the room, or maybe what he told the President he “didn’t do” was to order the military to “kill them all.”
Apart from that ambiguity – something to be hashed out between the Secretary and the President – the most important words from the President about the second strike were the following:
“I wouldn’t have wanted that – a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine.”
Personally, I’ve defended the policy of bombing the drug smuggling fast boats. It’s a close call, legally, but the drug problem in America is very serious.
In the legal profession, there’s an expression: Hard facts make for hard law. America’s drug problem is a hard fact, and dealing with it requires some hard laws.
For that reason, I reluctantly support bombing fast boats loaded with lethal drugs in order to stop the drugs from entering America. I admit, it seems they could instead be simply followed and apprehended when they reach our shores, but Presidents get a lot of latitude in these matters of foreign affairs. I’ll give him that latitude in view of the seriousness of our drug problems.
But launching a second missile after the first missile wrecked and incinerated the boat, just for the purpose of killing the helpless survivors of the first missile, is a quite different thing.
Suppose the military had boarded the boat and found the two wounded survivors, rather than firing a second missile. Does anyone seriously contend they would be justified in executing them on the spot with a gun to their heads? If not, then why are they justified in executing them with a second missile launched from a different spot?
I think the President was right. The first strike was enough to stop the boat. There was no need to launch a second missile to kill the two wounded survivors in the water. Those killings were not necessary to the mission.
There’s a word for unnecessary killings. It’s on the tip of my tongue . . .
Like the President, I have little sympathy for drug runners, and if they die in the course of their criminality we shed no tears. But the President also knows that to murder them as they flail wounded in the water, well, that would make him worse than them. No thanks.
Credible reports are emerging on the latest shoot-fish-in-a-barrel episode in the Caribbean, where the force of the U.S. military is brought to bear on “fast boat” drug runners. For the record, I’ve supported these operations in the past.
A whistle-blower connected to the mission revealed that in this particular episode the boat and crew weren’t immediately vaporized. The initial missile strike destroyed the boat and killed nine on board, but the boat didn’t immediately sink. Two people were still alive in the water, wounded. The American military evidently saw from the air that the two men were alive.
The threat posed by this boat to American shores and American people was never imminent but was certainly real. Drugs kill, and they’ve recently killed more people than we’ve lost in highway deaths and gun shootings combined.
But the threat posed by this particular fast boat had ended. The boat was going nowhere.
The military had several options at that point. They could have simply went away. The effect would be to let the wounded go down with the boat or die of their wounds.
They could have rescued the wounded men and put them on trial for drug smuggling. Sure, the men were probably armed, and might have fought their rescuers – an apparent surrender can be an ambush. But that’s always a risk when taking a person prisoner. It’s one of the many risks that servicemen and women sign up for.
The mission leaders chose a third option. They conducted a “second strike” missile attack where they obliterated the already-disabled boat and killed the two wounded men who had survived the first strike.
That second strike was in direct violation of written Pentagon policy prohibiting attacks on shipwrecks where combatants on board are unable to fight.
I’ve defended these shooting-fish-in-a-barrel missions on the grounds that the law affords the President wide latitude in matters of foreign affairs. President Obama ordered lethal drone attacks on terrorists on foreign soil – including some who were American citizens, and I supported that as well.
A President does not need a Declaration of War from Congress to take action to defend American interests. The last time Congress issued a Declaration of War was 1942. (Both wars against Iraq were approved by Congressional “resolutions” that fell short of a Declaration of War.)
So, the absence of express Congressional approval for these actions does not especially bother me. What bothers me is the circumstances of this particular episode.
Put aside the fact that there’s been no judicial adjudication that these drug runners are, in fact, drug runners. Threats to American shores do not always lend themselves to due process determinations by old judges in walnut paneled courtrooms a thousand miles away.
And put aside the fact that these drug runners who are being bombed seldom get to America – they go to intermediate points such as Mexico or Caribbean islands where their drug cargo is transferred to some other drug runner.
And put side the fact that while these drug runners are certainly wrongdoers who deserve punishment, they are hardly drug kingpins like El Chapo with nine-figure bank accounts. They’re typically impoverished fishermen or peasants looking for a five-figure payday.
And put aside the fact that none of these fast boats has put up a fight. The crew are undoubtedly armed, but their arms are in the form of handguns, not surface-to-air missiles to deal with an F-16.
Put all that aside. It’s a close call, but I’m still willing to support the President in blowing up the drug runner boats. That’s not because I dismiss the gravity of doing so; in fact, it’s a matter of great gravity. Rather, it’s because I weigh that against the gravity of America’s drug problem.
Constitutional scholars are mixed on the legality of these fast-boat bombings.
But whatever the legality of a fast-boat bombing, making a second strike to kill the helpless wounded survivors – flailing in the water as they cling to their sinking boat – crosses a line. It’s in violation of Pentagon written policy, it’s a violation of the rules of war, it’s barbaric, it’s murder.
The President was understandably not aware of the situation in real time – he has other things on his agenda – but he said afterward that he would not have ordered the second strike.
The second strike was evidently on the direct orders of either the Secretary of War or an admiral in charge of the mission. Both were reportedly watching the mission live. The Secretary of War says the second strike was with his authority but he was out of the room when the order was given.
Either the admiral or the Secretary of War, or both, should resign or, in the case of the admiral, be court martialed. This cannot stand. It’s wrong.
As a three-time Trump voter with no regrets, I don’t like this message any more than most of you. So don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger.
The message is the Republicans in next fall’s midterm elections will lose the House, bigly, and probably the Senate.
If politics is indeed “war by other means,” expect the political war next fall to be bloody. Think Battle of the Little Bighorn. Think Stalingrad. Think Pickett’s Charge. Think the Battle of Midway. Think Waterloo. It will be one-sided.
Oh, I know the President has done some terrific things – at great personal risk to himself, by the way – even if they were sometimes done unartfully.
Stopping illegal immigration is near the top of the list. His crude methods were probably by design but might have been by fortuitous accident. Either way, he sent a message that transcended language barriers: The United States of America doesn’t welcome illegal immigrants anymore, and illegals who come anyway may find themselves on a one-way flight to West Africa. Due process? Mayyyybe . . . .
As a result, illegal immigration is at the lowest point in decades. The southern border in particular is more like, well, a nation’s border. All this has produced some human pain. Fixing big problems that politicians tolerated and sometimes encouraged often has that effect.
In the Middle East, the President let the Israelis beat and batter the barbarians of Hamas and then brokered a quasi-peace between the two. Even better, he prevented a nuclear Iran/Israel war by handing the Persians their biggest defeat since the Battle of Marathon two and a half millennia ago.
On tariffs, however, the President got out of his depth. His tariffs were defensible as an economic matter, maybe, but not as a legal matter. He will lose when the Supreme Court issues its decision next Spring – perhaps in a 9-0 decision – and the Court signaled as much in oral arguments a couple of weeks ago. At best, the decision will be 7-2 against the President.
The unravelling of those tariffs, which will have been in effect illegally for as much as a year, will be messy and embarrassing for the administration.
Intangibles are the most notable things on the score card for this administration. On the plus side, the President has made “woke” a four-letter word. That’s more than a stylistic change. Wokeness and all that it entails – abolition of merit, obsession with skin color and sexual preferences, the euphemizing of language, ubiquitous victimization – was highly destructive to America and the world.
On the minus side, the President has shown a tendency to say or tweet what he thinks in a way that often and needlessly offends. The most recent example was when a reporter persisted in asking yet another follow-up question during a press conference. Most reporters are loathsome creatures, but they paid to ask – nay, shout – questions in that manner.
The President could have ignored the reporter, or rebuked her with something like “let’s move on.”
Instead, he barked “Quiet, piggy!”
That may not bother you but it does bother millions of Americans, particularly women. Such people vote.
Right now, approval surveys suggest that many of them are sufficiently turned off by these sorts of crude insults that their vote will be against the GOP next fall. The outcome of the special elections around the country a few weeks ago supports that conclusion.
Forget about peace in the Middle East, the solving of the immigration debacle, and the mixed outcome on tariffs. Because the people will forget about those things.
What many of them will remember is that they dislike the President on a personal level. People vote against people they dislike. Right now, a large and growing number of people dislike the President.
That’s a fundamental flaw in representative democracy, but it’s an unavoidable aspect of human nature. We’ll see the results next fall.
Now, before you bark “Quiet, piggy!” at me, remember: I’m just the messenger and just doing my job. (And in case you think it’s relevant, I’m 6’ tall and weigh 160 pounds.)
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule” -Thomas Jefferson
The other Founders were similarly scornful of pure democracies. John Adams proclaimed:
“Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy.
James Madison said:
“Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention.”
Alexander Hamilton warned:
“Pure democracy is as much a fallacy as the idea of eternal vows and permanent alliances.”
Ah, you might say, but what about the democracy of ancient Athens?
I’m glad you brought that up. Athens was indeed a pure democracy in the sense that the people voted directly on matters of governance. But not all the people.
There was no vote for slaves, women, foreigners (meaning foreign to Athens), or people who had even one parent who was a foreigner. After all the winnowing down, only about 10-20% of adult Athenians had the right to vote.
Even that limited democracy of Athens was problematic. No less than Plato complained that “Democracy . . . is continually subject to the influence of demagogues and the passions of the multitude.”
Rome was more pragmatic in governance, as in everything else, and more successful. While Athens was never more than a city-state that faded in a couple hundred years, Rome expanded its empire to embrace about 60 million people – about a third of the population of the entire ancient world – and lasted nearly a thousand years.
It’s no coincidence that Rome was never a pure democracy, but was initially a quasi-republic. The people did not vote directly on matters of governance, but instead voted (sometimes) for representatives who made those decisions.
Rome eventually morphed from a republic into an empire ruled by an emperor, a transition precipitated by Julius Caesar. After conquering Gaul, he led his army east and then south, crossing the Rubicon River to invade Italy from the north – in defiance of the Senate – and journeying on to Rome to declare himself dictator. In Rome, there was enough popular adulation for the conquering hero that he got away with his coup for a while. His great nephew Augustus cemented the role of emperor, and Rome became greater than ever.
Eventually, nearly all of Europe became Roman, and also a good part of northern Africa and England. We still see the remnants of their incredible buildings and culture. Latin is the world’s biggest unspoken language and is the root of French, Spanish, Italian and a good part of English.
Fast forward a few empires, to the American one. Benjamin Franklin was asked in the course of the Constitutional Convention what kind of government they were establishing. He famously answered, “A democracy, of course!”
Just kidding. His real answer was, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
They would be appalled by Americans today who pride themselves on tossing that republic into the ash bin of history. The people brag of being exactly what the founders feared – a “democracy.”
The Founders consciously sought to avoid that outcome by incorporating several basic buffers from the mob.
For one, the American mob doesn’t generally decide matters of governance. Rather, as in a republic, they vote for representatives who make those decisions. The thinking of the Founders was that informed gentlemen are more apt to make good decisions than passionate, uniformed mobs.
The Electoral College is another example of a buffer from the mob. Today, the Electoral College is a mere formality. In each state, they all vote for the presidential candidate that won the most votes in that state. But originally, the Electoral College was free to vote contrary to the majority of the state they represented, and they sometimes did. Again, the intent was to put a layer of sanity between the hoi polloi and the decisions of government.
Another buffer between informed decision-making and uninformed mob rule took the form of voting restrictions. As in Athens, women and slaves were not permitted to vote in early America. In the pre-Civil War south, that literally excluded a majority of the adults.
The Civil War of course abolished slavery and finally enfranchised former slaves and their descendants. But in the Jim Crow South, literacy tests were used to bar many Blacks from voting on the rationale that illiterate people lacked the necessary sophistication to vote.
In many states in early America, voting was prohibited unless the voter owned real property, the thinking being, again, that persons without property lacked the sophistication necessary to choose good representatives. Those prohibitions continued for about half a century.
Women were not enfranchised until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.
I personally am glad that we now allow voting by women, minorities and renters, though I’m not fond of renters.
But we’ve gone well beyond that. The Founders would be mortified to see the current trend toward what we champion as “democracy” and what those Founders would decry as mob rule.
For example, people are allowed to vote without presenting simple proof that they’re who they say they are.
They’re allowed to vote in many states even though they’re not citizens.
They’re often allowed to vote even though they’re dead.
They can vote multiple times – one time from their main residence, another time from their vacation home in a different state, and another time by mail.
They’re allowed to fill out ballots for their elderly grandmother, sign her name to it, and drop it off or mail it in. They can do that for as many grandmothers as ballots they can get their hands on.
This loosening of voting requirements coincides with a dumbing down of the voters. People are allowed to vote even though they graduated from public high schools in Democrat-controlled cities where they didn’t learn anything. In fact, they’re allowed to vote even though they graduated from no high school at all.
And even the ones who graduated from high school lack a basic education. A recent survey at the University of California at San Diego (ranked one of the leading universities in America) found that 25% of incoming freshmen cannot solve for X in the equation:
7 + 2 = X + 6
I wonder if they could solve for X in the equation:
7 + 2 = X + 2
Or the equation:
7 + 2 = X
Or the equation:
7 = X
These freshmen have no idea how many students make up 25% of the incoming class of 4,000. But I suspect they do know to label me a misogynist for using the term “freshmen.”
We can and should re-establish literacy tests for voting. They were outlawed generations ago on the grounds that they discriminated against illiterate Blacks, but today that objection is gone – we’re all illiterates now!
Is it any wonder that the state of the union is bad? We have a polarized government of mean girls (most of whom have penises) who don’t even try to solve problems. They just play to the mob that elects and reelects them.
And so, the minority party shuts down the government unless they get to act like they’re the majority party. They don’t really expect that to happen, but it’s great theater for a while for the mob in the nickel seats.
And there’s Epstein 24/7, as if anyone really needs to see the emails to know that Donald Trump’s relationship with a creep who exploited teenage girls might have been worth a whole chapter in The Art of the Deal.
And there’s a kooky Jew-hater who’s never had a job getting elected in a place that a kooky Black man once dubbed “Hymie-town” on a platform of arresting the Prime Minister of Israel and giving everyone free stuff paid for by the Jewish billionaires he’ll fleece on their way out of town.
And there’s a governor in California running for President on the platform “OMG, get a look at my hair!”
And 70% of the younger generation approve of socialism, while 45% disapprove and 17% aren’t listening to the survey question and 81% pick the New England Patriots by 7.
What’s the fate of our once-great republic now that it’s descended into mob rule?
History offers some lessons. Witness the mob of the French Revolution and the mob of the Weimar Republic. The path out of mob rule typically goes through despotism, and a lot of people get hurt.
the Aspen beat 