Posts Tagged → US
Two Steps to Political Heaven
Much talk going on now about how President Trump is supposed to get a stranglehold on the lawless and insubordinate federal bureaucracy if he is elected to a third term this November. As a former seven-year federal policy bureaucrat who fled the belly-of-the-beast US EPA in Washington, DC, in 1998, here are my suggestions. These are based especially on my witnessing the changing of the Senior Executive Service (SES) guard from the Bush I administration to the Clinton administration, and all of the cascading management changes that followed.
Step One: Enter the White House with a clear and specific staffing plan and the prospective personnel to implement it. Ground Zero is the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which processes all federal personnel hiring and firing. From 2017 through 2020, OPM infamously held up a high percentage of Trump’s selected future staff to be seeded across the bureaucratic horizon, where they were supposed to implement Trump’s agenda. But many of Trump’s prospective picks had their paperwork deep-sixed and “lost” in obscure file drawers throughout OPM, their hiring process dragging on so long that they had to find other jobs after having put their current employers on notice of their imminent departure for the Trump Administration. When you control OPM, you can get all of your staff quickly seated and working throughout the bureaucracy. If you don’t control OPM, well, your hard-won third term won’t add up to much.
Step Two: Take no prisoners. Treat every at-will federal position as the at-will position it really is, and work hard from there to drill as deeply as possible. Treat all management positions as targets for immediate change. On Day One be prepared to immediately terminate every single SES and political position and have in hand their loyal replacements, with OPM processing them at record speed. The marching orders for all new loyal SES employees is to replace as many senior staff as they each can, as quickly as they can, with extreme prejudice. Which goes something like this:
New SES manager: “Hi Mary. Good morning. You have been a division chief in this agency for, gosh, twelve years. And yet here I find you late to our meeting this morning and dressed unprofessionally. I am issuing you two written warnings right now, one for each infraction…”
Division Chief Mary: “What are you talking about? I was only one minute late! And I have had a casual dress policy here since…”
New SES manager: “Mary, being unprofessional and insubordinate to your boss is a third violation of the OPM standards of conduct. I am writing you up right now with a third warning, which means that I am now beginning your termination and separation process from the agency as soon as we are finished here. You have three minutes to pack up your personal items and then Officer Jones here will see you out of the building.”
This “direct action” between new senior executive and entrenched senior managers must happen at every level throughout every federal agency, every day, until every senior manager has been replaced with a loyalist (loyal to the new administration and thus loyal to the Constitution). And each new, loyal senior manager will have the same directive for dealing with DC Swamp subordinates down to the bottom of the civil service staff barrel.
Anything less than this admittedly tough hands-on style means that the enormous communist rat warren continues to host a zillion rats, each one quietly gnawing away and illegally stopping the implementation of your presidential agenda and the will of the American People.
How well do I recall an EPA biologist sitting on a huge stack of biological tests done to study the effects of Chlorothalonil, a highly useful insecticide. He personally disliked and opposed the company that owned Chlorothalonil, and so he just sat on their studies. He was unwilling to meet the statutory deadline for agency review and approval or rejection. And his superiors did nothing to compel him to act. And so the company’s expensive research went nowhere, floated in purgatory, and their expensive chemical unnecessarily languished outside of the market. This story times a million is the lawless ball and chain wrapped around America’s throat right now. This must end, and if it doesn’t end by 2028 or sooner, then American government is no longer of, by, and for the American People; it will have become something utterly of by and for itself.
An autonomous, unaccountable federal bureaucracy is the end of representative government. The bureaucracy itself is not democracy, as so many DC Swamp Rats proclaim. Rather, the bureaucracy is now a stale and outdated exercise in representative government that must be dramatically changed. Democracy is the process in which We, The People hold our representative government accountable. And as the American Declaration of Independence states, The People not only get their rights from God, and not government, but The People have the right to abolish government and create a new one whenever they so choose.
Where America is at right now, with its out of control, lawless, unelected and unaccountable federal bureaucracy (i.e. heavily armed IRS SWAT teams like feudal tax collectors of olde), is the myriad federal bureaucrats have come to really enjoy their centralized power and artificially high pay. And they also don’t want to be told what to do by anyone who is not one of them. For America to adhere to democratic norms, this federal bureaucracy must be greatly reduced in size and scope, at least.
For those who might shed tears about all the sad Marxist bureaucrats being cut loose to find jobs in the private sector they mocked, hamstrung, and crapped on from their artificially protected positions, cry me a river. No bureaucrat is owed a job. They have these public service jobs solely at the will of The People and their chosen chief executive, the President of The United States. With OPM under new management and this tough love approach to running the federal government, that is the Constitutional democracy the DC bureaucrats say they are so worried about protecting.
A version of this essay was published here at the American Thinker.
Why Court Candidate Josh Prince Must Win
Josh Prince is a candidate for Commonwealth Court here in Pennsylvania, and his day of reckoning is coming up fast: May 16th is Primary Day, where registered Republicans vote for Republican Party candidates and registered Democrats vote for Democrat Party candidates. This form of selecting partisan candidates to then square off against each other in the Fall general election may be imperfect, but it is far superior to ranked voting. And Spring time primary elections are actually as important as Fall general elections.
Josh Prince has to win this election because, like much of America, Pennsylvania is turning into a lawless single-party uniparty state where political party does not matter, nor does the rule of law. We citizens need strong people of high character to resist this evil tide. Josh Prince’s legal mind and his ironclad principles are needed now more than they have been since the 1850s, and I hope you will vote for him. I have known Josh Prince for many years, and I respect him very highly. I am excited to be able to vote for him.
Both the Republican Party establishment and the Democrat Party establishment have much more in common with each other than they do with their respective voting bases, although it is crucial to point out that the Democrat Party is also completely responsive to and loyal to its voters, while the PAGOP doesn’t care much about its voters. The Pennsylvania Republican Party only cares about its voters a little bit, and briefly, when it needs them in the Fall election. And even then it is a dismissive kind of caring; they take Republican voters for granted…
…because the PAGOP business model and culture is to be perfectly happy with minority status, so long as the pre-selected and party boss-anointed Republican Party insiders are in the existing official slots and holding power, protecting their small inner circle’s narrow interests. As soon as someone from “the outside” (like Josh Prince) tries to take up one of those slots, the entire PAGOP goes into action, defending their castle from the marauding barbarian.
Prince is running against Megan Martin, who was endorsed by the PAGOP (this is hardly a vote of confidence for the average citizen!), and who has never stepped foot in a courtroom – not a trial court nor an appellate court. Rather, lawyer Megan Martin has spent around 30 years in the government as a functionary, a bureaucrat, a politician’s lawyer. Nothing necessarily wrong with this history, but is this what you want sitting in judgment of you?
Megan Martin has a legally unimpressive resume that she now wants to bring to the Commonwealth Court, where we citizens can rest assured she will look to what Republican Party bosses want most. As opposed to attorney Josh Prince, who has quintessential, unbending, uncorruptible, traditional American principles, as well as an incredible and fearless track record in court, including representing me and Firearms Owners Against Crime against brazenly illegal and unconstitutional anti-gun ordinances here in Harrisburg.
Josh Prince is not the political establishment’s pick because he will only uphold the law as it is written, and he will only uphold the US and PA constitutions as they were originally intended. Josh is not and will not be a judicial activist who uses the court as a private legislature. And of course, that’s not what the PAGOP wants…they want people like Megan Martin, who will be all bendy and malleable like Gumby and do the bidding of the party bosses, as they quietly horse trade for private financial benefit with America’s sworn enemies.
You and I need a judge like Josh Prince on the Commonwealth Court. You and I cannot afford another spineless jellyfish PAGOP RINO insider political hack who has been hand-picked and endorsed by political bosses.
Please vote for Josh Prince for Commonwealth Court on May 16th, and please pass this around, so that other loyal, patriotic, America-loving Pennsylvania voters know that they have a great candidate they can be happy voting for.
on Qanon
Probably inevitable that Qanon and I would meet. Not in person, generally speaking here. Don’t get excited.
This ‘Qanon’ “thing” is a thing that has taken the patriot/constitutionalist/ conservative movement by storm, and as I am definitely in that movement mix, I would naturally mix it up with Qanon at some point.
A friend who is a forester implored me to look into Qanon last week, and so I did. Foresters tend to be steady hands, droll, unexcitable, not terribly political. But this guy suddenly became political, and as he is a steady hand, I listened to what he had to say:
- Qanon is a person or small group of people working for US military intelligence
- Qanon is/are the Good Guys, duking it out behind the scenes with China, Russia, and our own anti-America CIA
- Qanon wants Patriots to leave the actual fighting for America to them, which is supposedly the military, and to leave our AR15s at home when we take to the streets
This last item is what caught my attention the most. I mean, what kind of pro-America group would encourage America’s last hope, its native patriot militia, to stay at home or at least leave our Second Amendment at home? Does not sound like a pro-America group to me.
Can you imagine if some Qanon group had encouraged patriots to leave their muskets and long rifles at home in 1775, and to just “peacefully protest” against the tyrannical British? There would be no America, as the ridiculous ‘peaceful protests’ would have been crushed mercilessly, and tyranny firmly entrenched thereafter.
My sense of Qanon is that it naturally attracts hopeful believers, who want to feel like the US military has not been overthrown from within (it has), and that the US military will not sit idly by while the illegal Biden fraud is installed as an actual sitting president (they will), and that everything behind the scenes is just fine n’ dandy (it’s not). It is understandable that good people do not want to go to war within their own country, and that they want the actual paid warriors to do it for us all. It is understandable for normal Americans to believe that not ALL of our institutions have been overthrown, but if all indications are accurate, even the American military is deeply corrupted, and run by people who do not love a constitutional America.
But ask yourself, what kind of an operation tricks its followers into lowering their guard and waiting until it is too late to fight back?
Yes, it is true that the anti-America mainstream media hates Qanon, tries to denigrate anyone associated with Qanon, has no interest in Qanon. But that just tells us that Qanon as a positive rallying point for patriots bothers the Chinese media (America’s mainstream media), for the simple reason that patriots are involved.
I was asked for my opinion, and I think Qanon is probably a Chinese operation to undermine America from within. Because it is so well done, and so complex, this is the only explanation that makes sense from all of the confusion that has come from it. Maybe this view is confusing to people, but that would be well in keeping with the whole Qanon thing.
Who knows? Who cares? Keep your AR15 handy, a well-kitted day pack, your boots and warm clothes. Whatever Qanon says, you know what YOU say, and that is all that matters.
Good cop, bad cop
Most of America’s large urban areas are and have been firmly dominated by one political party for at least fifty years, and yet these same urban areas remain a seething mass of angry people who feel preyed upon by their own police forces.
Isn’t it fascinating that fifty whole years of liberal domination of urban politics has not brought the “change” that urbanites are now saying they want by burning new landscapes into their skylines? In fact, after fifty years urban conditions are worse now in so many ways than they were back then.
And yet, urbanites continue to vote for just one political party that is dominated by white liberals, whose policies have obviously failed by every measure.
One area that is now being purposefully failed is urban policing.
In some cities the police are being neutered by their political bosses, told not to enforce the law, not to make arrests. The police are actually prevented from upholding the law, applying the law, and at the worst times. Like when violent thugs attack peaceful protesters, or when those violent thugs become violent arsonists and go on vandalism rampages. No police response. No protection of innocent bystanders, peaceful protesters, or private property.
But those same police were heavily mobilized by their mayors to confront and often arrest normal everyday people who simply went outside their homes during the fake Wuhan Flu sham-demic. They were also heavily mobilized to confront peaceful protestors whom the various mayors disagreed with politically in Seattle, Portand, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, and many other cities.
This selective use or non-use of the local policing power is patently illegal. It was used during the 1950s and 1960s by southern Democrats to attack and suppress peaceful protesters who wanted voting rights and de-segregated bathrooms, restaurants, buses, and schools. And when this selective use of the police was used to protect murderers of young black men and black church arsonists, the Federal Bureau of Investigation moved in.
Back then, the FBI aggressively arrested police and elected officials who had deprived American citizens of their civil rights. Those bad police and elected officials deprived people of the equal protection of the law for simply belonging to the “wrong” political party, or having the “wrong” skin color or religion. That deprivation often included severe violence, either by the police or by their aligned street thugs, and included murder and torture.
So, in addition to the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice aggressively brought lawsuits against municipalities, corrupt police, and their elected bosses. As a result, the South changed, because segregation laws were struck down, schools were de-segregated, black people’s voting rights were protected, and the bad people went to jail.
So how does today’s liberal version of good cop, bad cop stack up to what happened in the 1950s and 1960s?
Well, today’s Black Lives Matter violence and racial attacks sure look at least as bad or a lot worse than the Southern anti-black racist riots and arson attacks back then. The roles are completely reversed today, and the DOJ is MIA.
So why isn’t the U.S. Department of Justice acting swiftly to bring equal justice and equal protection of the law to the current spate of BLM insanity? You and I are not alone in asking this question. It is a huge, important question.
I will take a shot at it and simply re-state the oft mentioned point that Republicans and conservatives believe they are debating ideas with their opponents, while their opponents are arming up for seditious revolution and organizing voter fraud and street violence. So a guy like U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr is uncertain how to act now. He keeps expecting the Democrat Party folks to weigh in like pro-America adults and urge people to stop rioting and looting, and they won’t. Barr expects his political opponents to engage him in a gentlemanly duel, may the loser buy drinks afterwards. But as a career-long Washington, DC, guy, Bill Barr is not wired to resolve these kinds of conflicts the way they need to be resolved…the way the Democrat Party resolves them ….. with overwhelming policing and legal force. Instead, Barr is firmly resolved to having stern interviews with the mainstream media political activists.
It is way too early to say that America is lost or headed into severe civil war, but we are facing a major leadership crisis that is being exploited by violent people. The Republican establishment is not used to fighting, ever, unless it is against a conservative running for a Republican seat somewhere. Last week in the Pennsylvania State House a bunch of aggressive, violent rioters took over the House floor, and the entire Pennsylvania House GOP caucus just stood there and watched. That good ol’ Republican culture encouraged all the elected Republicans to …just…do…nothing…just as they are almost all (not all) doing nothing for America right now.
Right now across America, only one person in an official capacity, and a few people around him, is providing any leadership and guiding light. That is President Donald Trump. Hopefully some of the high officials in his administration get on board with this fight for equality and justice. We all deserve to be treated equally by the police, regardless of where we live and regardless of our political views.
No more liberal good cop, bad cop, while bad people burn and loot our cities, attack peaceful citizens, and get good people fired from their jobs or frightened from their homes. This must end, now.
This photo of bad cops in a bad judge’s court room may be from 1967 Mississippi, but it could just as easily be from today in any major liberal city, with ANTIFA members and the local Democrat mayor snickering in the background
Trump not legally impeached, but wear it with pride anyhow
Trump was not legally impeached, but he should wear it with pride anyhow…
Because the US House has failed to deliver the phony “Articles of Impeachment” to the US Senate, as required by the US Constitution, there is no actual impeachment. President Trump has NOT been impeached by the US House. Not yet, anyhow. So all those wahoo-for-political-chaos partiers and “Merry Impeachmas” fake news reporters/ partisan political activists will just have to put off their foolish celebration until the process moves to the US Senate. If it ever goes there.
The reason the Founders of America structured the impeachment process this way was to give everyone a bite at the apple, both accuser and defendant. This simple structure is the heart of America’s due process found at every level of our legal system. If either half of the process is procedurally deficient or missing, then it does not exist. The impeachment process is a whole, not two separate halves existing by themselves.
This is because America’s Founders did not want an accused president guilty by accusation only, without the ability to defend himself. Just like you and I would not want that situation to exist. Would any of us want such a deficient process to exist in America, at any level? For example, would you yourself want to walk into a local magistrate’s court to defend yourself against a speeding ticket, and have the cop simply tell the judge that you are guilty because he says so, and have the process end there, with no opportunity for you to defend yourself?
That would not be a fair or balanced process, would it? Well, without the impeachment articles being delivered to the US Senate, it is not a fair or legal process.
But this deficient process does fit in with the entire previous false accusations against President Trump, starting with the Russia collusion hoax, and when that failed, jumping seamlessly over to yet another hoax, this time Ukraine. Ukraine is where the entire Democrat Party is running interference on behalf of corrupt criminal Joe Biden. Biden used his position as Vice President of the USA to illegally enrich himself and his son, Hunter Biden. President Trump tried to get to the bottom of it, and was falsely accused of exactly that which Biden had done.
And this un-American process also fits in with the Democrat Party’s novel and un-American approach to criminal charges: To them, you are guilty until proven innocent, contrary to the US Constitution’s guarantee that all defendants are innocent until proven guilty. That is, the burden of proof is on the accuser, not on the accused. If the accuser cannot make their case, then the accused goes free. No matter how empty the accusations against President Trump have been, the Democrat Party and their mainstream media propaganda arm have said “We don’t have the evidence yet, but we know it is there, and the evidence we have we can’t share with you, and you are guilty.”
Dear Democrat Party members: Are you truly proud of this un-American farce? Are you really OK with an entire American political party devoting itself to the destruction of the core rights and procedures that make America so much better than every other country? Would you ever tolerate this happening in your own life? If you are OK with this, then shame on you! Shame Shame Shame on you!
To be a true American, your love of America must be greater than your willingness to sacrifice America and all things American for your own personal goals or feelings. This feeling has always defined Americans, and yet the Democrat Party has one-two-three thrown it overboard.
What has actually (legally) happened in all of this is the US House has in effect censured President Trump, though once again without following correct procedures. In any event, the Democrat members of the US House are now on record as not liking the president. Are any of us surprised? The Democrat Party has not gotten over their 2016 loss to Donald John Trump, and they have allowed raw hatred, disdain for the US Constitution, and rejection of basic American civil rights to define them ever since. We know this already, but what the heck, make it official.
So, Mister president Trump, I encourage you to wear this fake “impeachment” with pride. Wear it as a badge of honor. The people who have put you and the rest of America through this destructive process are not true Americans, and if they say they don’t like you, that is to your credit. Keep doing what you are doing, Mister President.
PA Supreme Court Magically Turns Itself into Legislature
In an anticipated 4-3 partisan decision today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court majority rejected the original and heavily gerrymandered map submitted by the PA Senate Republicans, as well as three heavily gerrymandered maps subsequently submitted in the past week by the PA House Democrats, PA Senate Democrats, and even PA Governor Tom Wolf.
Instead of declaring none of the legislative district maps to be constitutional, because theoretically none of them have met the constitutional tests for compactness and adhering to existing political boundaries, and instead of declaring the governor’s map completely unwelcome because it is not his role to draw voting district maps, the PA Supreme Court has actually drawn its own redistricting map.
No court anywhere has the constitutionally derived role of drawing voting district maps, and no court anywhere can justify doing so. According to the US Constitution, drawing voting district maps is specifically a state legislature role.
I will say that the latest map, drawn by the PA Supreme Court majority, looks better in some ways than the other four maps recently submitted for review. This map is certainly tighter and breaks fewer county lines than the others. In that sense, it is a more reasonable map.
But that is not the question.
The first question is, should Pennsylvania just get on with voting, as we are now running out of time for the primaries, and just use the established map, deficient though it may be?
The second question is, should the US Supreme Court allow the PA Supreme Court to, in effect, turn itself into a legislature, by performing a key function that is specifically relegated only to the state legislature by the US Constitution?
Hopefully, the US Supreme Court will deny the lower court’s power grab, and direct Pennsylvania to go on with the previous voting district map, flawed though it was, the greater interest being in letting voters have a say at all, as opposed to political elites pulling strings to keep themselves in power.
As imperfect as the legislative process is, and as distasteful as the gerrymandering process is, it is what it is, meaning that this is what we’ve got. No court can magically turn itself into another branch of government. So let’s go with the existing map we had six weeks ago, and get on with elections.
Did GOP Senator Toomey Really Flush the First Amendment and Side with the Anti-Free Speech Movement?
We have all watched the Charlottesville debacle and its pathetic aftermath.
In sum, the city administration unilaterally decided to remove a neat old statue of some guy named Robert E. Lee, whom no one today can remember.
So a bunch of protestors decided to peaceably assemble and petition the government with their grievance, specifically that the statue no longer means today what it might have meant when it was erected a hundred years ago, and that it is a work of art, and that it is part of American history, and it should stay.
Then other protestors began to rally around this symbol, and these other protestors are a bunch of racist goofs holding up the most embarrassing signs (and hats, so let me ask you, what is worse, a stupid pointy white hood or a vagina hat…your opinion is as good as any, because they are all really embarrassingly stupid hats) America has seen since the Sore Losers March Against Democracy after Trump was sworn in as President.
In America, even racist goofs (including the racist goofs at Black Lives Matter) have a Constitutional right to free speech, and a right to peaceably assemble to protest, and so these racist goofs did that, along with the history buffs, the art buffs, the southern pride buffs, et al. to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue.
Naturally the media and its local affiliate, the mayor of Charlottesville, whipped up this small event into a frenzy, casting it as something it wasn’t, so they could make it into a national event and try to pin it on who else, but President Trump.
After the violent fracas, purposefully created by the mayor and implemented by racist goofs carrying African National Congress flags and using bats to attack Caucasians around them, Trump was repeatedly attacked for not having condemned just the white skinned racist goofs, but for having condemned ALL of the racist goofs at Charlottesville, including the violent leftists and their willing partners the violent white supremacists.
Nothing Trump said was good enough for the Democrat Party and their communications arm, the mainstream media. Everything Trump said was claimed to be insufficient, insincere, etc., though this was obviously just political grandstanding by his political opponents.
But guess who is a political opponent of President Trump, and who also jumped on the grandstanding bandwagon?
Why, Pennsylvania’s own US Senator Patrick Toomey.
In the recent past, Senator Toomey’s weak behavior begged for a primary opponent, and the only reason he did not get one was that he was facing someone even farther to the left than he, Katie McGinty in the 2016 election. And so we are stuck with this sniveling, whining, weak, spineless tepid little man Toomey for another six years.
Senator Toomey refused to condemn the violent leftists and racists who initiated the attacks on the goofball white supremacists, AS WELL AS ATTACKS ON OTHER PROTESTORS AND EVEN PASSERSBY.
Senator Toomey refused to condemn the Charlottesville mayor who manipulated the confrontation by changing the protest venue at the last minute, thereby ensuring physical contact between the opposing sides and also barring his city police officers from making arrests, except in the most egregious circumstances.
Senator Toomey refused to support the US president’s call for calm and a cessation of violence by everyone committing violence there.
Senator Toomey refused to support the US Constitution’s guarantee of peaceable assembly and petition of government, and in fact his own words spell out his hostility to free assembly and free speech.
Rather, Senator Toomey joined in on the leftist attack on Trump, equating equal condemnation of all racists, white and black, with supporting white racism.
Talk about moral equivalence, this sad excuse for an American Pat Toomey is full of moral equivalence himself, as well as full of political opportunism and spineless jellyfish wobbly-kneed “action.”
Earth to Spineless Weakling Pat Toomey: Bigotry is bigotry, and bigoted violence is bigoted violence, no matter who does it, and it all must be condemned. There are no sacred cows in America, so why are you helping create one?
America’s problems are not going to get resolved by weak, fake ‘leaders’ like Pat Toomey, who make common cause with violent rent-a-mob thugs bent on ending the free speech rights of people they disagree with. In fact, Toomey makes our problems worse.
Here is the email he sent out last week; you judge for yourself:
“This past week our nation was rocked by tragedy in Charlottesville, VA. The acts we saw were a horrifying reminder that there are still those who seek only to divide us.
The racism, hatred, and violence seen in Charlottesville were vile and unacceptable. I am disgusted by white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis and believe the racism and hate spewed by these groups have no place in our society.
Furthermore, there can be no moral equivalency between neo-Nazis, bigots, white supremacists, and those who oppose them. Our country has no room for corrupt ideology or violent acts.
I hope that what occurred in Charlottesville will be an isolated incident. Moving forward, I pray that members of Congress will put politics aside, unequivocally condemn hate and bigotry, and find ways to work together to protect our shared American values of equality and justice for all.”
Watching Evolution Happen: UN dying like League of Nations & dinosaurs
Before the United Nations there was a League of Nations, spawned by the savage destruction of World War One.
The League of Nations was initially built by the victorious Allies (Britain, France, America) and later began to accept other minor nations, many of whom had been opposed to the Allies. Collective security, and an international court for settling disputes before they turned into warfare, were supposed to prevent wars either through large alliances, or through legal mechanisms.
All that great intention came crashing down in the 1930s, when Japan, Germany, and Italy dispensed with the notion of playing nice, and each pursued their own national interests with the bayonet. The League of Nations was powerless to stop them, powerless to prevent World War Two, and to some degree is to blame for not allowing Western nations to directly threaten military force against rogue nations like Hitler’s Germany and Imperial Japan before they got up a head of steam.
It was a classic situation where the moral people were constrained by their own laws, while the lawless people ignored those laws and in fact used them to buy the time they needed for territorial acquisition. Kind of like gun control: The good guys were disarmed, the bad guys were not, and the bad guys did what they wanted.
During the incredible destruction of World War Two, the League of Nations ceased to function altogether, and fell into disrepute, but afterwards the new United Nations took its place. Using a lot of the same concepts and mechanisms, the UN was supposed to bring order to international relations and prevent wars.
Anyone watching international relations today realizes that the UN is an utter failure. It is a monstrous and corrupt bureaucracy, wherein rogue nations like Iran are actually able to gain cover and a foothold in diplomacy, instead of being held accountable for their military threats. Anti-Americanism is the dominant theme there.
On the personal level, consider the many continuous media reports of UN diplomats gone wild in America, leaving personal wakes of rapine and property destruction. These diplomats cannot be held accountable because of their “diplomatic immunity,” and so they enjoy wild lifestyles at the expense of American citizens’ safety and wellbeing that they could never get away with in their own countries, and nor could any American, here or there.
Spies, too, get lots of cover in the UN, damaging American interests and blocking the spread of democracy and universal human rights. Judging the UN by its own charter, it is a total failure. Judging its leaders by their ridiculous, empty, and sanctimonious statements, the UN is an object of derision among the most dangerous nations in the world. It is a joke. It does and stands for nothing, at least nothing good.
When evil people use the UN to advance their goals, it has failed in its basic mission.
It is time to do what is so painfully obviously needed, and end the UN, as its predecessor died. This is natural and healthy evolution. The idea that the dinosaurs get to dictate how the modern humans live is crazy.
Sorry to be cliché here, but it is time to get the US out of the UN, and get the UN out of the US. Whatever new relationships the US can and should pursue with like-minded democracies like Britain, France, and Israel, let’s build them. Without all the hokum and artificial blocks of the Useless Nations.
Major Conservation Milestones Remind us of Happy Things
Amidst all the present misery, happy reminders float to the top of our consciousness. That America and Pennsylvania have achieved great conservation successes amidst tremendous challenges.
The US National Parks turned 100 this year.
What would America be without our national parks and monuments? These special places define who we are; they are the cultural blood quietly flowing through our national body. Green, magnificent, beautiful, beyond human abilities, our national parks should be celebrated. Like our own blood, we only see them if we prick the skin to see what is underneath. Go ahead, take a drive and visit a national park; discover yourself.
This spring our family vacationed in Yosemite, and hiked day after day, lusting after photo-perfect landscape views and heavenly skies within our grasp, and without end. Last year it was Sequoia. I remain proud of my contributions to the creation of the Flight 93 Memorial, which has grown up and flown far beyond my 2003 expectations.
Here in Penn’s Woods, the Fish & Boat Commission turned 150 years old this spring. Yes, the PFBC is as old as the first US Civil War, a reminder that even in the often lawless throes of the industrial revolution’s filthy sewage, Americans, namely Pennsylvanians leading the way, valued their clean water and healthy fish stocks.
Mostly innocuous, the PFBC is like the angel in white whispering on our shoulder, reminding us of the good things we should do. Several years ago the agency survived an assassination attempt. Turned out, angel’s voices are too pure for industrial-strength greed and career politicians’ wishes for unlimited power and public wealth.
Also in Penn’s Woods, the Department of Conservation & Natural Resources recently named six new wild areas on existing public land. While wild areas are nice and welcome, waving a magic wand over existing public land and renaming it kind of begs the question: Why is this conservation agency not adding additional new acreage to the public holdings, and then striking a balance with the new designations?
Last week my son and I drove through the heart of Pennsylvania’s state forest complex, up in the northcentral region. Natural gas development arrived there and changed some of the publicly owned landscape in the past nine years. While gas drilling brought much needed cash and energy independence, laudable and valuable results, they came with a price – our public lands bore new scars from industrialization. DCNR would do the public interest best if it sought to balance impacts on its land with the addition of new acreage purchased from willing sellers. Then the new wild areas would really mean something.
Live on, PFBC, long may you prosper and guard our most basic nourishment, the water we drink.
Live long, national parks, long may you remind us of our best, purest selves.