(The following is the speech that I delivered this Sunday at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention in Myrtle Beach. My appreciation to Joe Dugan and everyone involved in organizing it and making it a reality once again. And to Don Neuen and Donna Fiducia of Cowboy Logic Radio for the introduction. And to anyone and everyone still fighting the good fight.)
This is a civil war.
There arent any soldiers marching on Charleston or Myrtle Beach. Nobodys getting shot in the streets. Except in Chicago and Baltimore, Detroit and Washington D.C.
But thats not a civil war. Its just what happens when Democrats run a city into the ground. And then they dig a hole in the ground so they can bury it even deeper.
If you look deep enough into that great big Democrat hole, you might even see where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.
But its not guns that make a civil war. Its politics.
Guns are how a civil war ends. Politics is how it begins.
How do civil wars happen?
Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they cant settle the question through elections because they dont even agree that elections are how you decide whos in charge.
Thats the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.
I know youre all thinking about President Trump.
He won and the establishment, the media, the democrats, rejected the results. They came up with a whole bunch of conspiracy theories to explain why he didnt really win. It was the Russians. And the FBI. And sexism, Obama, Bernie Sanders and white people.
Its easier to make a list of the things that Hillary Clinton doesnt blame for losing the election. Its going to be a short list.
A really short list. Herself.
The Mueller investigation is about removing President Trump from office and overturning the results of an election. We all know that. But its not the first time theyve done this.
The first time a Republican president was elected this century, they said he didnt really win. The Supreme Court gave him the election. Theres a pattern here.
Trump didnt really win the election. Bush didnt really win the election. Every time a Republican president won an election this century, the Democrats insist he didnt really win.
Now say a third Republican president wins an election in say, 2024.
What are the odds that theyll say that he didnt really win? Right now, it looks like 100 percent.
What do sure odds of the Dems rejecting the next Republican president really mean? It means they dont accept the results of any election that they dont win.
It means they dont believe that transfers of power in this country are determined by elections.
Thats a civil war.
Theres no shooting. At least not unless you count the attempt to kill a bunch of Republicans at a charity baseball game practice. But the Democrats have rejected our system of government.
This isnt dissent. Its not disagreement.
You can hate the other party. You can think theyre the worst thing that ever happened to the country. But then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections that you dont win, what you want is a dictatorship.
Your very own dictatorship.
The only legitimate exercise of power in this country, according to the left, is its own. Whenever Republicans exercise power, its inherently illegitimate.
The attacks on Trump show that elections dont matter to the left.
Republicans can win an election, but they have a major flaw. Theyre not leftists.
Thats what the leftist dictatorship looks like.
The left lost Congress. They lost the White House. So what did they do? They began trying to run the country through Federal judges and bureaucrats.
Every time that a Federal judge issues an order saying that the President of the United States cant scratch his own back without his say so, thats the civil war.
Our system of government is based on the constitution, but thats not the system that runs this country.
The lefts system is that any part of government that it runs gets total and unlimited power over the country.
If its in the White House, then the president can do anything. And I mean anything. He can have his own amnesty for illegal aliens. He can fine you for not having health insurance. His power is unlimited.
Hes a dictator.
But when Republicans get into the White House, suddenly the President cant do anything. He isnt even allowed to undo the illegal alien amnesty that his predecessor illegally invented.
A Democrat in the White House has discretion to completely decide every aspect of immigration policy. A Republican doesnt even have the discretion to reverse him.
Thats how the game is played. Thats how our country is run.
When Democrats control the Senate, then Harry Reid and his boys and girls are the sane, wise heads that keep the crazy guys in the House in check.
But when Republicans control the Senate, then its an outmoded body inspired by racism.
When Democrats run the Supreme Court, then it has the power to decide everything in the country. But when Republicans control the Supreme Court, its a dangerous body that no one should pay attention to.
When a Democrat is in the White House, states arent even allowed to enforce immigration law. But when a Republican is in the White House, states can create their own immigration laws.
Under Obama, a state wasnt allowed to go to the bathroom without asking permission. But under Trump, Jerry Brown can go around saying that California is an independent republic and sign treaties with other countries.
The Constitution has something to say about that.
Whether its Federal or State, Executive, Legislative or Judiciary, the left moves power around to run the country. If it controls an institution, then that institution is suddenly the supreme power in the land.
This is what I call a moving dictatorship.
There isnt one guy in a room somewhere issuing the orders. Instead theres a network of them. And the network moves around.
If the guys and girls in the network win elections, they can do it from the White House. If they lose the White House, theyll do it from Congress. If they dont have either one, theyll use the Supreme Court.
If they dont have either the White House, Congress or the Supreme Court, theyre screwed. Right?
Nope.
They just go on issuing them through circuit courts and the bureaucracy. State governments announce that theyre independent republics. Corporations begin threatening and suing the government.
Theres no consistent legal standard. Only a political one.
Under Obama, states werent allowed to enforce immigration laws. That was the job of the Federal government. And the states werent allowed to interfere with the job that the Feds werent doing.
Okay.
Now Trump comes into office and starts enforcing immigration laws again. And California announces its a sanctuary state and passes a law punishing businesses that cooperate with Federal immigration enforcement.
So what do we have here?
Its illegal for states to enforce immigration law because thats the province of the Federal government. But its legal for states to ban the Federal government from enforcing immigration law.
The only consistent pattern here is that the left decided to make it illegal to enforce immigration law.
It may do that sometimes under the guise of Federal power or states rights. But those are just fronts. The only consistent thing is that leftist policies are mandatory and opposing them is illegal.
Everything else is just a song and dance routine.
Thats how it works. Its the moving dictatorship. Its the tyranny of the network.
You cant pin it down. Theres no one office or one guy. Its a network of them. Its an ideological dictatorship. Some people call it the deep state. But that doesnt even begin to capture what it is.
To understand it, you have to think about things like the Cold War and Communist infiltration.
A better term than Deep State is Shadow Government.
Parts of the Shadow Government arent even in the government. They are wherever the left holds power. It can be in the non-profit sector and among major corporations. Power gets moved around like a New York City shell game. Wheres the quarter? Nope, its not there anymore.
The shadow government is an ideological network. These days it calls itself by a hashtag #Resistance. Under any name, it runs the country. Most of the time we dont realize that. When things are normal, when theres a Democrat in the White House or a bunch of Democrats in Congress, its business as usual.
Even with most Republican presidents, you didnt notice anything too out of the ordinary. Sure, the Democrats got their way most of the time. But thats how the game is usually played.
Its only when someone came on the scene who didnt play the game by the same rules, that the network exposed itself. The shadow government emerged out of hiding and came for Trump.
And thats the civil war.
This is a war over who runs the country. Do the people who vote run the country or does this network that can lose an election, but still get its agenda through, run the country?
Weve been having this fight for a while. But this century things have escalated.
They escalated a whole lot after Trumps win because the network isnt pretending anymore. It sees the opportunity to delegitimize the whole idea of elections.
Now the network isnt running the country from cover. Its actually out here trying to overturn the results of an election and remove the president from office.
Its rejected the victories of two Republican presidents this century.
And if we dont stand up and confront it, and expose it for what it is, its going to go on doing it in every election. And eventually Federal judges are going to gain enough power that they really will overturn elections.
It happens in other countries. If you think it cant happen here, you havent been paying attention to the left.
Right now, Federal judges are declaring that President Trump isnt allowed to govern because his Tweets show hes a racist. How long until they say that a president isnt even allowed to take office because they dont like his views?
Thats where were headed.
Civil wars swing around a very basic question. The most basic question of them all. Who runs the country?
Is it me? Is it you? Is it Grandma? Or is it bunch of people who made running the government into their career?
America was founded on getting away from professional government. The British monarchy was a professional government. Like all professional governments, it was hereditary. Professional classes eventually decide to pass down their privileges to their kids.
America was different. We had a volunteer government. Thats what the Founding Fathers built.
This is a civil war between volunteer governments elected by the people and professional governments elected by well uh themselves.
Of the establishment, by the establishment and for the establishment.
You know, the people who always say they know better, no matter how many times they screw up, because theyre the professionals. Theyve been in Washington D.C. politics since they were in diapers.
Freedom can only exist under a volunteer government. Because everyone is in charge. Power belongs to the people.
A professional government is going to have to stamp out freedom sooner or later. Freedom under a professional government can only be a fiction. Whenever the people disagree with the professionals, theyre going to have to get put down. Thats just how it is. No matter how its disguised, a professional government is tyranny.
Ours is really well disguised, but if it walks like a duck and locks you up like a duck, its a tyranny.
Now whats the left.
Forget all the deep answers. The left is a professional government.
Its whole idea is that everything needs to be controlled by a big central government to make society just. That means everything from your soda sizes to whether you can mow your lawn needs to be decided in Washington D.C.
Volunteer governments are unjust. Professional governments are fair. Thats the credo of the left.
Its network, the one we were just discussing, it takes over professional governments because it shares their basic ideas. Professional governments, no matter who runs them, are convinced that everything should run through the professionals. And the professionals are usually lefties. If they arent, they will be.
Just ask Mueller and establishment guys like him.
What infuriates professional government more than anything else? An amateur, someone like President Trump who didnt spend his entire adult life practicing to be president, taking over the job.
President Trump is what volunteer government is all about.
When youre a government professional, youre invested in keeping the system going. But when youre a volunteer, you can do all the things that the experts tell you cant be done. You can look at the mess were in with fresh eyes and do the common sense things that President Trump is doing.
And common sense is the enemy of government professionals. Its why Trump is such a threat.
A Republican government professional would be bad enough. But a Republican government volunteer does that thing youre not supposed to do in government think differently.
Professional government is a guild. Like medieval guilds. You cant serve in if youre not a member. If you havent been indoctrinated into its arcane rituals. If you arent in the club.
And Trump isnt in the club. He brought in a bunch of people who arent in the club with him.
Now were seeing what the pros do when amateurs try to walk in on them. They spy on them, they investigate them and they send them to jail. They use the tools of power to bring them down.
Thats not a free country.
Its not a free country when FBI agents who support Hillary take out an insurance policy against Trump winning the election. Its not a free country when Obama officials engage in massive unmasking of the opposition. Its not a free country when the media responds to the other guy winning by trying to ban the conservative media that supported him from social media. Its not a free country when all of the above collude together to overturn an election because the guy who wasnt supposed to win, won.
Were in a civil war between conservative volunteer government and leftist professional government.
The pros have made it clear that theyre not going to accept election results anymore. Theyre just going to make us do whatever they want. Theyre in charge and we better do what they say.
Thats the war were in. And its important that we understand that.
Because this isnt a shooting war yet. And I dont want to see it become one.
And before the shooting starts, civil wars are fought with arguments. To win, you have to understand what the big picture argument is. Its easy to get bogged down in arguments that dont matter or wont really change anything.
This is the argument that changes everything.
Do we have a government of the people and by the people? Or do we have a tyranny of the professionals?
The Democrats try to dress up this argument in leftist social justice babble. Those fights are worth having. But sometimes we need to pull back the curtain on what this is really about.
Theyve tried to rig the system. Theyve done it by gerrymandering, by changing the demographics of entire states through immigration, by abusing the judiciary and by a thousand different tricks.
But civil wars come down to an easy question. Who runs the country?
Theyve given us their answer and we need to give them our answer.
Both sides talk about taking back the country. But who are they taking it back for?
The left uses identity politics. It puts supposed representatives of entire identity groups up front. Were taking the country back for women and for black people, and so on and so forth
But nobody elected their representatives.
Identity groups dont vote for leaders. All the black people in the country never voted to make Shaun King al Al Sharpton their representative. And women sure as hell didnt vote for Hillary Clinton.
What we have in America is a representative government. A representative government makes freedom possible because it actually represents people, instead of representing ideas.
The lefts identity politics only represents ideas. Nobody gets to vote on them.
Instead the left puts out representatives from different identity politics groups, theres your gay guy, theres three women, theres a black man, as fronts for their professional government system.
When theyre taking back the country, its always for professional government. Its never for the people.
When conservatives fight to take back the country, its for the people. Its for volunteer government the way that the Founding Fathers wanted it to be.
This is a civil war over whether the American people are going to govern themselves. Or are they going to be governed.
Are we going to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people or are we going to have a government.
The kind of government that most countries have where a few special people decide whats best for everyone.
We tried that kind of government under the British monarchy. And we had a revolution because we didnt like it.
But that revolution was met with a counterrevolution by the left. The left wants a monarchy. It wants King Obama or Queen Oprah.
It wants to end government of the people, by the people and for the people. Thats what theyre fighting for. Thats what were fighting against. The stakes are as big as theyre ever going to get. Do elections matter anymore?
I live in the state of Ronald Reagan. I can go visit the Ronald Reagan Library any time I want to. But today California has one party elections. There are lots of elections and propositions. Theres all the theater of democracy, but none of the substance. Its political system is as free and open as the Soviet Union.
And that can be America.
The Trump years are going to decide if America survives. When his time in office is done, were either going to be California or a free nation once again.
The civil war is out in the open now and we need to fight the good fight. And we must fight to win.
How'come the Jesuits can't build a functional sewer system in Tijuana, Comrade?
Because they send all the local donations they get back to Rome.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
Paris, apparently, according to the document you excerpted.
Ah Paris, it's the greatest city in the world to learn things and sit around and think, and drink. And then go have sex before sitting, thinking, and drinking some more.
Really. Who gives a damn what happened in Indochina a half-century ago? Who gives a damn about Indochina period? It's a shithole. The natives wanted it back. They got it. Good riddance.
True,why there is practically no "old money families" in France. Hell,they never even had an Empire!
France is owned and operated by about 100 families, and has been so since the Revolution. Before that it was the same, but the family names were different in some cases.
In the age of Empire, the French Empire was second only to the British, and both the British and French Empires were able to grow so extensively because after Napoleon they stopped fighting each other and went out and carved up the world pretty much by agreement, leaving only little scraps here and there for everybody else.
The World Wars bankrupted both Empires. The British gave up theirs without a fight. The French fought a bit too hard to keep theirs, in Indochina and especially in Algeria, but in the end they let those go.
The rest of the old empire is still closely linked to France in a neo-colonial empire, because those states are generally poor and like the aid and the stability of having French troops based on their soil, so France still has stronger ties with its old Empire (about half of Africa) than the other ex- colonials do.
French possessions are still here and there around the globe - Tahiti and the Marquesas, New Caledonia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Martin, French Guiana, La Reunion.
Uhuh. Things like how to be a genocidal Communist, apparently.
Sure, that, and how government is properly divided into three parts: Executive, Legislative and Judicial, with checks and balances between the three parts. Or how bacteria causes disease. Or how THIS feels really good if you do THAT while you're doing it. All sorts of things to be contemplated in Paris.
"First to face the Truth, and last to leave old truths behind: France" - Kipling, France 1913
If I were in France, given my name I cannot really hide my familial status, but my sensibilities are more provincial or, more accurately, Canadien, than Parisian. So not elite.
And in America? Al Franken, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their ilk are the American elite. I am nothing like them and never fit in comfortably anywhere.
Ideally, I would have my orchard and my sheep beside a lake somewhere in the cambrousse, American or French. And I would have my books. And my wife and my horses. And would take turns picking the fruit, swimming, reading and riding them, and would not leave the estate much. And people would come to my kitchens and workshops with their trucks and take away my pies and my cherry wine and my cheeses and woolens for sale and bring me back the proceeds to pay the staff and crew and leave me free to do those things that please me.
It would be a homely life. Not elite, unless one can be the King of Cherry Pie.
"She's my cherry pie, cool drinking water, such a sweet surprise. Feels so good brings a tear to my eye, sweet cherry pie."
"Elle court, elle court, la maladie d'amour, dans le coeur des enfants de sept a soixante-dix-sept ans. Elle chante, elle chante, cette riviere insolente, qui unit dans son lit les cheveux blonds, les cheveux gris."
You see "humor" in the Marxist Genocide Pol Pot, and others, learned in Paris.
I see humor in a crazy old American man, on an obscure website, getting the vapors at another anonymous man, about France today, because of something obscure that some obscure East Asian did decades ago, that led to a crime in a faraway land that, while unfortunate, is also so far out of the range of anything any of us had to do with that it's essentially an asterisk on history.
Of all the things to become obsessed about, the Killing Fields and Pol Pot's education a century ago strikes me as bizarre, and darkly humorous.
It reminds me of a Monty Python sketch in which a fanatical evangelical type is convinced that fruit is the seed of Satan, and as an embarrassed reporter tries to get the cameraman to stop rolling, the crazed minister is evangelizizing "WOE unto the melons!" with spastic fury.
From each according to his ability...to each according to his need. - Marx
He had a point.
To quote St. Luke (Acts 4:32-35)
"And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need."