A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF GREG KELLY’S “JUSTICE FOR ALL”: PREFATORY REMARKS

A MULTIPART ESSAY, PREPARED BY STEPHEN L. D’ANDRILLI, PRESIDENT AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE ARBALEST GROUP, LLC., CREATOR OF THE ARBALEST QUARREL WEBSITE

PART ONE (UPDATED)

PREFATORY REMARKS

Kelly’s enthralling “Justice For All” has given me food for thought—and that is why I felt the need to review it.

I completed the book review and published it on my website, the Arbalest Quarrel (“AQ”), on October 29, 2023. My review is found at this link. https://arbalestquarrel.com/blog/greg-kellys-justice-for-alla-book-review-by-stephen-l-dandrilli

I expected the review of the book to be conventional and brief. I would explain the salient purpose and timeliness of it, assiduously remarking on the comprehensiveness, clarity, and cogency of the material in it. And I did this.

I worked a long time on it, giving it much thought, and I am pleased with the result. But was it enough? Was there not more I could and should have done concerning my review of Kelly’s book?

Why do I think I am not done with Kelly’s important work? It is for this reason——

We live in perilous times. Our Nation—in form, a Free Constitutional Republic—is teetering, hanging on by a thread. “Justice For All” is directed at discussing the stakes involved for our Nation, our Constitution, and our people. That came across as loud and clear.

This year, 2024, is unlike any other before it, apart from the year America’s Patriots went to war against TYRANNY.

AND——

THROUGH THE BRAVERY, NOBLE SELFLESSNESS, AND SACRIFICES OF AMERICA’S FIRST PATRIOTS, THEY DID SOMETHING TRULY REMARKABLE: THEY DEFEATED A POTENT FOE—THE BRITISH EMPIRE—THE MOST POWERFUL NATION IN THE WORLD AT THAT TIME AND A MIGHTY EMPIRE.

BEFORE THIS NEW YEAR IS OUT, we Americans will face the possibility of the demise of our REPUBLIC, a remarkable achievement that AMERICA’S PATRIOTS GIFTED US AT NO SMALL COST AND RISK TO THEIR OWN LIFE AND WELL-BEING.

Given this inescapable and frightening fact, I delved into Kelly’s book for clues on how the forces that crush may bring down a TRULY Free Republic—unlike any other existing before or since.

THERE ARE FORCES INTENT ON OUR NATION’S DESTRUCTION.

Kelly knows this and I and my business partners at AQ know this.

This fact is known to most Americans if they bother to reflect on it. It is no secret except to those dense or naïve.  

These forces are powerful, defiant, undeterred, intractable, and emboldened. This is reflected in the extent and intensity of the unconstitutional actions they have carried out against average Americans and against the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, both during the Trump Presidency and in the years since.

The RADICAL LEFT and their PROPAGANDISTS say Trump “Lost” the 2020 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. BUT TRUMP DIDN’T LOSE THE ELECTION. IT WAS STOLEN.

Trump was well ahead of Biden AT AND JUST BEFORE 12:00 midnight DURING THE DAY OF THE ELECTION.

Yet, in the morning, news accounts say Biden squeaked ahead of Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and others.

What explains this—a delay in voting? If so, why?

The politically (and unabashedly) “LEFTIST” NPR admitted this is strange.

In an election day report, NPR said this BEFORE A FINAL RESULT [note: substantial annotations]:

Well, we still don't know who the president-elect is.

Is there a less-surprising outcome for 2020?

Here are six takeaways from one of the strangest election nights in recent history:

1. This is going to go on a while

This election is now coming down to the former Blue Wall states that President Trump toppled in 2016 — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. We won't know results perhaps for days, because Wisconsin and Pennsylvania couldn't start processing mail-in votes until Election Day, and Michigan could only start Monday. [See, articles in the Wisconsin Law Journal, La Prensa Bilingual Media, and the Boston Herald].

Philadelphia is expected to report more results at 9 a.m. Wednesday, but it isn't expected to be able to finish counting all of its votes for days. In Detroit, which is expected to hit a 20-year turnout high, officials say they believe they won't be able to finish counting the backlog of absentee ballots until Wednesday night.

Be Patient: Vote Counting Continues, Key States Remain Outstanding

But, wait, there's even more to count. While all eyes focus on the Upper Midwest and Pennsylvania, there are still many votes to count in North Carolina and Georgia, which looked like healthy Trump wins and then started to shift after midnight.

As of 4:05 a.m. ET, Trump was ahead of Democrat Joe Biden in North Carolina by just 1.4 percentage points or fewer than 77,000 votes out of 5 million with 6% of the vote left to count. As the result of a court ruling, North Carolina will be able to count mail-in votes that were postmarked on Election Day until Friday.

The candidates are separated by 2.5 percentage points in Georgia, or about 117,000 votes. There is still 7% of the vote to count.

This election has taken lots of twists and turns. What's one or two more? [emphasis my own]

[HOW ABOUT A MORASS OF DELIBERATE PROCEDURAL IRREGULARITIES?]

2. Trump will pull out all the stops

It couldn't have been more predictable for Trump to attempt to prematurely declare victory and falsely claim the election is being stolen — even as legally cast votes are still being counted. [emphasis my own']

[FALSELY? AND ECHOED, AD NAUSEUM, DOWN TO THE PRESENT DAY BY THE RADICAL LEFT’S STRANGLEHOLD ON THE MAINSTREAM NEWS ORGANIZATIONS]

There were numerous falsehoods the president told early Wednesday morning during a speech from the White House. He declared that millions had voted for him (a fact) and added "a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won't stand for it." [emphasis omy own]

But the fact is: some states allow ballots mailed in and postmarked by Election Day to be counted. No one is voting any longer.

[WELL, MILLIONS ARE VOTING ABSENTEE, AND WHY IS THAT, AND WHO ARE THOSE MILLIONS? [50 MILLION QUASI-LEGAL “AMERICANS,” ALONG WITH MILLIONS MORE OUTRIGHT ILLEGAL ALIENS—ALL COURTESY OF THE BIDEN PUPPET AND THE PUPPET-MASTERS’ CAREFULLY SELECTED ADMINSTRATION FLUNKIES LIKE ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS].

The only disenfranchisement is not counting legally cast ballots — and Trump vowed to go to the Supreme Court to get them to stop what he sees as illegal vote counting, even though that is not what's happening. [emphasis my own]

[DISENFRANCHISMENT CUTS TWO WAYS: I.E., COUNTING ILLEGALLY CAST BALLOTS, YET NPR SAYS THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. REALLY? AND HOW DOES NPR KNOW THAT? WHERE IS THE CITATION FOR NPR’S PROPOSITION? NPR PROVIDES NOTHING. VOTING INTEGRITY HERE IS COMPROMISED BY NONCITIZEN VOTING FRAUD. SEE, E.G., THE ARTICLE POSTED BY “FAIR.” ILLEGAL ALIENS CANNOT VOTE IN FEDERAL ELECTIONS; AND SEE THE POST IN BALLOTOPEDIA. BUT WHAT IS TO STOP ILLEGAL VOTING, INCLUDING VOTING BY ILLEGAL ALIENS; CONVICTED FELONS (WHO HAVE NOT RECEIVED A COURT-ORDERED RELIEF FROM DISABILITY); UNDERAGE INDIVIDUALS; AND DOUBLE VOTING, AND SO FORTH? GIVEN THE ABSENCE OF PROCEDURAL SAFEGUARDS SUCH AS IMPLEMENTATION OF THE FOLLOWING ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS OF ONE DAY VOTING (ELECTION DAY ONLY, EXCEPT IN SPECIFICALLY PRESCRIBED CIRCUMSTANCES, AS SEVERE HEALTH RELATED PROBLEMS; WORKERS WHO, DUE TO WORK ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE OUT-OF-TOWN ON THE DAY OF ELECTION; AND THE MANY MILITARY PERSONNEL OVERSEAS; THE SHOWING OF PROPER IDENTIFICATION PRIOR TO VOTING, USE OF PAPER BALLOTS (NO INTERNET ELECTRONIC VOTING PERMITTED); ONE-DAY ELECTION RESULTS, EXCEPT IN VERIFIED EMERGENCY SITUATIONS, ASSIDUOUSLY DOCUMENTED BY THE STATE OR STATES); AND USE OF HAND-COUNTING (PREFERRED) METICULOUSLY SUPERVISED BY OFFICIAL RESPRESENTATIVES OF THE TWO MAJOR POLITICAL PARTIES, REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATS (OR USE OF NON-PROPRIETARY GOVERNMENT TABULATING MACHINES (NO PRIVATE PARTIES INVOLVED); AND THERE ARE OTHERS—SEE E.G., HARVARD LAW REVIEW ARTICLE, BY RICHARD L. HASAN TITLED, “IDENTIFYING AND MINIMIZING THE RISK OF ELECTION SUBVERSION AND STOLEN ELECTIONS IN THE CONTEMPORARY UNITED STATES (PDF), 135 HARVARD LAW REVIEW 265 (APRIL 2022) (CITED BY THE UCLA NEWSROOM) ). A QUESTION CONCERNING PROBLEMS WITH DOMINION VOTING MACHINES IN THE 2020 ELECTION LED TO A LAWSUIT IN GEORGIA. SEE THE COMPREHENSIVE ARTICLE IN YORK DISPATCH, ABOUT THIS].

3. No matter what happens, this isn't the blowout Democrats were looking for

Trump is ahead, but Biden said he expects that when all the votes are counted, including those mail-in ballots, he will prevail. [emphasis my own]

[YES, THOSE MAIL-IN BALLOTS, OF COURSE! BIDEN WOULD NEED THOSE WOULDN’T HE. OH! AND PATIENCE TO COUNT THEM ALL. SEE AP ARTICLE, REFERENCING A “BLUE SHIFT.” WHAT IS THAT “BLUE SHIFT”? SEE COMPREHENSIVE REPORT, TITLED, “THE BLUE SHIFT IN THE 2020 ELECTION,” BY John Curiel, Charles Stewart III, and Jack Williams (PDF)]

"I believe we are on track to win this election," he said, adding, "It ain't over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted."

[SO SAYS BIDEN. DOES HE KNOW SOMETHING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE DOESN’T—THAT THE OUTCOME OF THE 2020 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IS IN THE BAG FOR HIM?]

As of 4:50 a.m. ET, Biden had a slight lead in Wisconsin with 95% of the vote estimated to be in, but was down almost 6 points in Michigan with 77% in and almost 13 points in Pennsylvania with 64% in.

Even if Biden were to win all three — and he doesn't need to given he won Arizona — and win the presidency, this wasn't the definitive rebuke of Trump that Democrats were looking for. [emphasis my own]

[BUT DID BIDEN REALLY WIN ARIZONA?]

A win is a win [AND “A HORSE IS A HORSE OF COURSE OF COURSE”] if Biden is able to pull it off. But the country remains hotly divided and polarized, and given Democrats are unlikely to take back the Senate and their unexpected losses in the House, he would hardly have the ability to get much through Congress.

[BUT THE RADICAL LEFTIST SCHUMER HAD BIG PLANS FOR 2022. SEE THE ARTICLE, IN THE FEDERALIST POINTING TO A LEAKED CALL: “Now we take Georgia, then we change America,” the New York Democrat said at what appeared to be a mass celebration in New York City. . . holding a black 2020 flag with a “no” symbol over a 45, denoting Donald Trump, the 45th president, and the words ‘Reclaiming my country.’”

[Schumer’s commitment to ‘change the world’ comes after a leaked call on Thursday in which Democratic leaders admitted that campaigns based on revolutionary, far-left social agendas hurt them badly in 2020, reversing their expectations of a ‘blue wave.’” [EMPHASIS MY OWN] [ISN’T WONDROUS STRANGE, NO, THAT TRUMP AND LAWYERS ON HIS LEGAL TEAM THAT SOUGHT COURT ACTION FOR A HOST OF ILLEGAL ELECTION IRREGULARITIES IN GEORGIA WOULD WIND UP AS PARTY DEFENDANTS IN A DECIDEDLY BIZARRE RICO ACTION PSEUDO-ELECTION TAMPERING CASE, AFTER THE FACT, AS NO NEWS ORGANIZATION, TO OUR (AQ’S) KNOWLEDGE, HAD SUGGESTED AT THE TIME THAT GEORGIA WAS OF MAJOR CONCERN TO DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS IN BOTH THE 2020 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND 2022 MIDTERMS. AND NONE MADE THE POINT OF THE EXTRAORDINARY IMPORTANCE OF GEORGIA TO THE RADICAL LEFT PLAN TO TRANSFORM THE NATION INTO A COLLECTIVIST TYRANNY THAN THE CONTEMPTIBLE HARLEQUIN, AND RADICAL LEFT PUPPET, “CHUCK” (“NOW WE TAKE GEORGIA, THEN WE CHANGE AMERICA”) SCHUMER].

4. The realignment is happening

The old coalitions are fraying, and it's not at all clear how that translates into presidential elections in the coming years.

One thing is clear — 2016 wasn't a fluke. With the swing of white voters without college degrees firmly to Trump's camp, the Blue Wall that Democrats have relied on for decades — and that Trump knocked down in 2016 — is far too fragile to rely on. [emphasis my own]

[IS THIS TO SUGGEST THAT COLLEGE GRADUATES AND POST-COLLEGE GRADUATES (MASTERS, PH.D. AND PROFESSIONAL DEGREE CANDIDATES) DIDN’T VOTE FOR TRUMP? THAT IS RIDICULOUS BUT AN ASPECT OF THE ODD THINKING PROCESSES OF THE RADICAL LEFT THAT, ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO HARMONIZE, LEGALLY OR LOGICALLY, WITH THE PRINCIPLES AND PRECEPTS OF INDIVIDUALISM UPON WHICH THIS NATION, A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, WAS CREATED AND UPON WHICH A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC DEPENDS IF IT IS TO PERSIST.

Meanwhile, the diversifying Sun Belt states are changing the map. Biden won Arizona after Clinton came up short in 2016, and Georgia and North Carolina continue to be competitive. (Texas appears to still be a stretch for Democrats).

[BUT, WAS THE ELECTION FAIRLY DECIDED? MOST NEWS ACCOUNTS OF COURSE SAY IT WAS. SEE THE ARTICLES IN MAINSTREAM NEWS OUTLETS, REUTERS AND AP. And, a local newspaper, the Austin says, “A GOP-led review of 2 million ballots in Maricopa County, Ariz., confirmed on Friday what official election results showed months ago: Joe Biden won the county in the 2020 election. . . . The review found that Biden won Maricopa by 45,469 votes — a slightly larger margin than the county’s official canvass.”]

[BUT, THIS NEWS REPORT ASSUMES THAT THE VOTES TABULATED WERE LAWFULLY CAST. BUT, WERE THEY? THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION SAYS, “There were 23,344 mail-in ballots that voted from a prior address; 10,342 potential voters that voted in multiple counties; there were 9,041 more ballots returned by voters than received; 3,432 official results that do not match who voted; and there were 2,592 more duplicates than original ballots; and the margin of victory was 10,457.” DOES THIS NOT SUGGEST OTHER ERRORS].

Politics is never static, and the reshaping can be disorienting.

[THAT MAY BE, BUT ELECTION INTEGRITY SHOULD BE A CONSTANT. MANY AMERICANS—PERHAPS HALF OF THE ELECTORATE, OR MORE—HAS ITS DOUBTS. AND RADICAL LEFT POLITICIANS HAVE DONE NOTHING TO ASSUAGE THAT DOUBT, BUT, RATHER REINFORCE AND INTENSIFY THAT DOUBT. RECALL THE RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS’ ATTEMPT TO ENACT THE LUDICROUS “FOR THE PEOPLE ACT OF 2021, H.R. 1”. FORTUNATELY, IT FAILED, WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF DEMOCRAT CENTRIST JOE MANCHIN, WHO TORPEDOED IT.

5. The popular vote and the Electoral College clash . . . again

For the seventh time in the past eight presidential elections, a Democrat will likely win the popular vote. [emphasis my own]

As of 4:15 a.m. ET, Biden was ahead of Trump 67.1 million to 65.2 million. Biden's total is the second most votes any presidential candidate has ever gotten, behind the 69.5 million Barack Obama got in 2008.

And yet, if Biden loses, it would be the third time in 20 years that a Democrat would have won the popular vote but lost the presidency.

It's unlikely that the process could be changed. Some have argued doing away with it, but it would require a constitutional amendment to change it, and since one side, the Republican Party, has benefitted from it, it's very unlikely to change.

[WHY WOULD THE RADICAL LEFT WISH TO DO AWAY WITH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE? SIMPLE. THAT ALLLOWS FOR MASS DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF TENS OF MILLIONS OF THE ELECTORATE RESIDING IN THOSE “BLUE” JURISDICTIONS THE RADICAL LEFT (AND THOSE THAT HAPPENED TO BE ALIGNED WITH IT) THAT THE RADICAL LEFT CONTROLS, INCLUDING NEW YORK CITY, CHICAGO, PHILADELPHIA, DETROIT, AND THE WEST COAST STATES, NOTABLY, CALIFORNIA]. THE RADICAL LEFT’S ATTEMPT TO ELIMINATE THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE MAY HELP TO ELUCIDATE THEIR NOTION OF ‘DEMOCRACY’ AND THEIR CONSTANT REFRAIN ABOUT A DESIRE TO SAVE IT. THE RADICAL LEFT EQUATES “DEMOCRACY” WITH POPULAR VOTE—MAJORITARIAN RULE OF THE PEOPLE—BUT THAT IS A MISNOMER BECAUSE IT FAILS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THAT TENS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS DO NOT THINK FOR THEMSELVES. SEE THE CLASSIC BOOK ON MANIPULATION OF THE PUBLIC PSYCHE: “MANUFACTURING CONSENT,” BY EDWARD S. HERMAN AND NOAM CHOMSKY. SEE ALSO, THE ESSAY BY EDWARD L. BERNAYS, “MANIPULATING PUBLIC OPINION, THE WHY AND THE HOW” AND HIS BOOK, APTLY AND SIMPLY TITLED, “PROPAGANDA.” EXTRAPOLATING FROM THESE WORKS TO THE PRESENT DAY, AQ ARGUES THAT THE RADICAL LEFT USES THE POWER OF PERSUASION, THROUGH ITS CONTROL OF MASS MEDIA AND ITS CONTROL OVER THE DISSEMINATION OF PROPAGANDA, TO CAPTURE THE THOUGHT PROCESSES OF THE MASSES, FILLING THEIR MINDS WITH A HOST OF FANCIFUL IDEAS AND NARRATIVES. IT ISN’T “DIRECT DEMOCRACY” THE RADICAL LEFT WANTS, IF THAT MEANS TENS OF MILLIONS OF INDEPENDENT-MINDED AMERICANS, ASTUTE AND INTELLIGENT, THINKING FOR THEMSELVES AS THEY ANALYZE RAW DATA AND WELL ARGUED AND WELL-ARTICULATED POLICY POSITIONS. NO! WHAT THE RADICAL LEFT WANTS, WHAT IT INTENDS TO DO, AND WHAT IT IS SUCCESSFULLY DOING, IS MANIPULATING THE MINDS OF BROAD SWATHS OF AMERICANS, MOST OF THEM RESIDING IN THE MAJOR URBAN AREAS. VIEWING ALL AMERICANS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF MEMBERSHIP IN GROUPS, AND TARGETING THOSE GROUPS, IT SEEKS TO CONTROL THE THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS, INCLUDING THEIR VOTING HABITS. THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE GETS IN THE WAY OF THIS. AS LONG AS THEY CAN CONTROL THE LARGE POPULAR VOTE AND THE ELECTORAL PROCESS, VOTING IS REDUCED TO A MERE FORMALITY. THE RADICAL LEFT SEES THE AMERICAN POLITY AS A MOB—A MINDLESS BLOB OF UNTHINKING ROBOTS WHOM THEY MANIPULATE TO THINK IN SPECIFIC WAYS AND TO VOTE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE IDEAS THEY PLANT IN THE POLITY’S MIND. TYRANNY OF THE MASSES OR MOBOCRACY MAY COME TO MIND. BUT WHAT THE RADICAL LEFT ENVISIONS IS AN OLIGARCHY OF THE VERY POWERFUL (WHICH IS COMING TO FRUITION), AND THIS OLIGARCHY PROVIDES THE PUBLIC WITH THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL OVER GOVERNMENT. BUT AS THIS MASS OF PEOPLE HAS NO CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN THOUGHT PROCESSES AND THEIR OWN CONDUCT, THEY CLEARLY HAVE NO CONTROL OVER GOVERNMENT].

6. The polls were wrong . . . again

After all is said and done with this election, there is going to be a reckoning over polls.

After 2016, when polls in key states underestimated Trump's support, pollsters said they had adjusted. But, it appears, while polls in some places were right, lots were off and misleading.

Biden appeared to have slim but consistent leads heading into Election Day, and many of those dissipated. [emphasis my own] Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Texas were all polling very close for months, and wound up not close at all. And, unlike 2016, this year even the national polls appear to have been far off.

[AND, THEN, THE DOMINION TABULATING MACHINES INEXPLICABLY STOPPED. AND A PLETHORA OF NEWS STORIES SAYS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE MACHINES. OKAY. THEN WHY DID THEY GRIND TO A HALT SEVERAL TIMES DURING TABULATION OF THE RESULTS?]

If someone were to say a year ago, create an electoral map for a race between Trump and a generic Democrat, it would look, well, very much like this one based on voting history and demography.

There is going to have to be a better understanding of what went wrong. Do Trump voters not pick up the phone or answer polls because they don't trust the media or pollsters? Is there some other reason why pollsters underestimated Trump's support?

Being wrong is never a position that a survey researcher or a nonpartisan analyst who uses the data wants to be in.

Trump needed an even bigger polling error than 2016 to pull off what he's pulled off, and that's exactly what happened.

NPR says the 2020 Presidential election night was among the strangest in recent history. That’s an understatement, implying if obliquely a problem with the conduct of the election—BUT IT WAS PRECISELY WHAT THE RADICAL LEFT ENVISIONED, AND THE RESULT WAS FOREORDAINED AGAINST A TRUMP VICTORY.

Trump took legal action for recounts in closely fought States, including those he had won in 2016. This action is normal, understandable, and legal. There is nothing unusual or illegal about this. But Biden’s lawyers fought the recount efforts. See, e.g., the articles in Forbes, Fox 4 News, and USA Today. Trump was invariably rebuffed by the Courts. See, e.g., the article in The Washington Post.

Why is that? The allegations of election fraud were reasonable, as pointed out supra.

That Trump’s challenges were denied at every turn smacks of a well-orchestrated coverup. Even the AG, William Barr, appeared tied to this effort to prevent an accounting. The BBC reported,

"‘To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,’ he [Barr] said.”

But beyond the perfunctory statement, Barr had nothing further to add. AQ would like to know:

Who did the investigation? How many Government agents were involved? What was investigated? When did the investigation occur? How long was the investigation? What was found? What factors led Barr to infer the absence of fraud “on a scale” that would otherwise suggest the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was stolen?

BARR SAYS NOTHING! AND WORSE, THE MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA DOESN’T TROUBLE ITSELF TO POSE THESE QUESTIONS TO BARR.

The coverup extends well beyond all efforts to prevent an accounting. The events of January 6, 2021, point to massive efforts to silence and to PERSECUTE AND PROSECUTE anyone, including Trump himself, for fostering any idea of a “stolen election.”

THIS SMACKS OF VIOLATION OF A CITIZEN‘S FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO DISSENT.

THE RADICAL LEFT INSISTS the Electorate accepts as Gospel that the 2020 Election was fair and aboveboard. IT WASN’T.

THIS IS ALL ORCHESTRATED DECEPTION AND ILLUSION BY A DESPERATE TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT DELIBERATELY TARGETING TRUMP AND THOSE AMERICANS WHO SUPPORTED HIS ELECTION IN 2020—THE ELECTION THAT WAS ILLEGALLY DENIED HIM—AND WHO SUPPORT HIM IN THE ATTEMPT TO RECTIFY THE STOLEN ELECTION OF 2020.

AND, THE SAME RADICAL LEFT FORCES THAT HAVE UNLAWFULLY PREVENTED DONALD TRUMP FROM SERVING A SECOND TERM AS U.S. PRESIDENT BY MANIPULATING THE ELECTORAL PROCESS IN THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION HAVE CREATED NEW OBSTACLES TO PREVENT TRUMP FROM RUNNING IN 2024.

Trump SHOULD BE in the OVAL OFFICE, NOT Joe Biden.

AT LEAST ONE-HALF OF THE ELECTORATE KNOWS THIS.

The Electorate knows, through intuition and observation, that the Biden Administration is a gangster operation and a fraud perpetrated on the Country. The most recent Zogby Polls illustrate this. More Americans are waking up from the propagandist-induced slumber thrust on them. THE RADICAL LEFT WANTS TO KEEP THE ELECTORATE ASLEEP. AND THOSE THEY CANNOT CONTROL THEY INTEND TO SILENCE, AND THEY ARE DOING THAT WITH THE HELP OF BIDEN ADMINISTRATION PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY HIS ATTORNEY GENERAL, MERRICK GARLAND.

On January 5, 2024, Merrick Garland addressed the Nation.

Three years after the January 6, 2021 incident, Garland is still at it, making clear the Government will continue to target Americans. On the face of it, his speech suggests that this is ALL FOR THE GOOD, “TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE” and “TO UPHOLD THE RULE OF LAW.” It is all an absurd lie.

GARLAND’S ACTIONS TARGETING AMERICANS FOR THEIR POLITICAL BELIEFS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH "PROTECTION” AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH COMPULSION AND PROMOTION OF FEAR. GARLAND ISN’T UPHOLDING THE “RULE OF LAW” (WHICH, BY THE WAY IS AN ARCANE LEGAL CONCEPT). HE HAS ABUSED HIS AUTHORITY AND CONTINUES TO ABUSE THAT AUTHORITY. UNDER ANY FAIR ANALYSIS OF THE DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION OF “RULE OF LAW,” MERRICK GARLAND AND HIS ATTACK DOG, JACK SMITH, HAVE NOT OPERATED WITHIN THE STRICTURES OF THE CONSTITUTION AND FEDERAL STATUTE BUT HAVE TINKERED WITH CONSTITUTION AND FEDERAL STATUTE, MAKING A PRETENSE OF COMPLYING WITH BOTH, CLOAKING ILLEGAL AND UNETHICAL ACTIONS UNDER THE GUISE OF ADHERENCE. The DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs released Garland’s speech on January 5, 2024.

Good morning everyone. The Deputy Attorney General and I are joined today by leaders from each of the Justice Department’s law enforcement components — the FBI, ATF, DEA U.S. Marshals — as well as leaders of other Department components.

I have convened this group to discuss two areas of continuing concern to the Department:

First, combatting violent crime; and second, prosecuting and deterring those who would criminally threaten public servants, including law enforcement personnel, members of Congress, judges, and election workers.

First, with respect to violent crime.

We know that hard fought progress can easily slip away, and we must remain focused and vigilant. That said, we are encouraged by the data we are seeing indicating a decline in homicides.

The FBI has reported that the number of homicides fell over 6% nationally between 2021 and 2022.

And the Major Cities Chiefs Association has reported a double-digit decrease in the number of murders across 69 major cities through September 2023, as compared to the same time period during 2022.

This is not a time to relax our efforts. We have so much more to do.

In May 2021, we launched our violent crime reduction strategy aimed at addressing the spike in violent crime that occurred during the pandemic.

Central to that strategy has been the importance of our partnerships: partnerships among federal law enforcement agencies who are assisting in the fight against violent crime; partnerships with the state and local law enforcement agencies tasked with protecting their local communities; and partnerships with the local communities themselves.

As part of that strategy, we have been bringing to bear our technological tools — including advanced ballistics analysis, firearms tracing, crime gun intelligence centers, and local fusion cells — to support joint law enforcement investigations to identify the principal sources of violent crime in specific local communities.

We have also been bringing to bear our federal statutes and prosecutorial tools to arrest and convict the repeat offenders and criminal organizations that are the principal drivers of violent crime.

In addition, we are making good use of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, known as BSCA, which expanded our authority to prosecute firearms traffickers and straw purchasers who buy guns for those barred by the law from possessing them. We have already charged over 300 defendants under that authority.

And we are continuing to implement the enhanced background check requirements of BSCA for purchasers under the age of 21.

Today, we are announcing that in the 19 months since the Act’s passage, those checks have already kept 527 firearms out of the hands of young people who are prohibited from having them.

We have also been utilizing our grantmaking authorities to support the local anti-violence initiatives being led by both our law enforcement and our community partners.

In this regard, we have focused on strengthening Project Safe Neighborhoods, which puts community partnerships, community trust, and violence prevention at the center of anti-violent crime efforts.

We are also funding community violence intervention initiatives that we know save lives.

In light of the encouraging results we have seen in many parts of the country in 2022 and 2023, we are meeting today to build on those efforts.

We will evaluate which local initiatives are working, how we can reinforce them, and how we can replicate those successful initiatives in places that have not yet seen the same improvements.

One such place is Washington, D.C., and we will be sharing more about our additional efforts here very soon.

As I said at the outset, we have so much more work to do.

Violent crime is not just a threat to people’s physical safety. It is a threat to their ability to freely go about their daily lives.

Violent crime isolates people and their communities. It deepens the fractures in our public life.

And when it is not addressed, it can undermine people’s trust in the government and in each other.

This Department, and our state and local partners, will not rest until every community in our country is safe from the scourge of violent crime.

At the same time that we are seeing an encouraging downward trend in violent crime, we are also witnessing a deeply disturbing spike in threats against those who serve the public.

In just the final months of 2023, the Department investigated and charged individuals with making violent threats against FBI agents, federal judges, including a Supreme Court Justice, presidential candidates, members of Congress, members of the military, and election workers.

Just this week, several bomb threats were made against courthouses across the country. 

The U.S. Marshals Service, FBI, and our state and local partners are aggressively investigating those bomb threats, which constitute serious offenses.

And just yesterday, we arrested and charged an individual with threatening to kill a member of Congress and his children.

This is just a small snapshot of a larger trend that has included threats of violence against those who administer our elections, ensure our safe travel, teach our children, report the news, represent their constituents, and keep our communities safe.

These threats of violence are unacceptable.

They threaten the fabric of our democracy.

Over the past several years, the Justice Department has dedicated itself to combating these threats. 

We are meeting today to determine how we can double down on those efforts in the new year.

Before beginning our meeting, I want to take a moment to recognize that tomorrow marks the third anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

For our country, January 6 was an unprecedented attack on the cornerstone of our system of government — the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.

For many of the law enforcement officers defending the Capitol on that day, January 6 was also dangerous, painful, and personal.

On that day, officers were punched, tackled, and tased as they defended the Capitol and those inside. One officer was crushed in a door, and another was dragged down a flight of stairs.

Officers were attacked with chemical agents that burned their eyes and skin.

They were assaulted with pipes, poles, and other dangerous and deadly weapons.

Over the course of several hours, law enforcement officers defending the Capitol sustained a barrage of repeated, violent attacks.

140 officers were assaulted.

We honor the officers who selflessly defended members of Congress and others inside the Capitol that day.

Our efforts are with the loved ones who are grieving for the five officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty as a result of what happened to them on January 6.

We must never forget the terrible violence inflicted on law enforcement officers on January 6.

Since the January 6 attack, the Justice Department has engaged in what has become one of the largest and most complex and resource-intensive investigations in our history.

We have initiated prosecutions and secured convictions across a wide range of criminal conduct on January 6, as well as in the days and weeks leading up to the attack. 

We have secured convictions of those who brutally assaulted officers at the Capitol.

We have secured convictions against those who obstructed the certification of the presidential election.

We have secured convictions of leaders of both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy.

So far, we have charged over 1250 individuals and obtained over 890 convictions in connection with the January 6 attack.

Our work continues.

As I said before, the Justice Department will hold all January 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under the law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.

In the ongoing January 6 investigations and prosecutions led by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matt Graves and Special Counsel Jack Smith, the Justice Department is abiding by the long-standing norms that ensure our independence and the integrity of our investigations.

We are following the facts and the law, wherever they lead. 

We are enforcing the law, without fear or favor.

We are honoring our obligation to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of everyone in our country.

We are upholding the rule of law.

And we are protecting the American people.

Trump is ahead of Biden and rapidly pulling away from him. Maybe that is the impetus for Garland’s speech: TO FRIGHTEN THE DICKENS OUT OF TRUMP SUPPORTERS: “TOE THE LINE” OR ELSE!

“SHOW ME THE MAN, AND I WILL SHOW YOU THE CRIME.”

The criminal indictments brought against Trump and the civil lawsuits filed against him DO NOT POINT TO civil misconduct and crime. Rather, they demonstrate State and Federal prosecutorial misconduct. These actions exasperate the insult perpetrated on the American people and disparage our Constitution. It is all a sign of the Radical Left’s rashness, leading to acute desperation and further injury to our legal system and to our Judeo-Christian ethical system.

These forces have ensconced a Grand Imposter in the Highest Office in the Land: the emotionally weak, physically frail, innately corrupt, clearly demented, and dementia-riddled Joe Biden—a man perfect for the role DESIGNED FOR HIM and ASSIGNED TO HIM: “MESSENGER BOY” and “ERRAND RUNNER.”

Here, one sees a man the RADICAL LEFT finds easy to manipulate and control.

Biden had no problem PLAYING HIS PART IN A COMEDIC TRAGEDY—ASSUMING, HE IS AWARE, if only dimly, OF THAT FACT AT ALL.

Biden would be the public face of the Nation, fittingly emblematic of the ruination of a once great independent, sovereign Nation-State—a buffoon who, in his speech and in his conduct, looks and acts the part. And that is the point. He is expected to play the part of a Buffoon.

And, denigrating the United States through installing an ABJECT DOLT in the Oval Office would constitute A GRATUITOUS BONUS for those machinating the Nation’s downfall.

Yet, of late, these forces have grown concerned. Most Americans “are onto them.” Americans have pushed back against the worst and most blatant excesses of these forces.

The U.S. Presidency is up for grabs in 2024.

Donald Trump WILL BE the Republican Party Nominee. That isn’t a guess.

The forces that seek to crush him don’t want to see this. They are deathly afraid of this. They have thrown everything they have at Trump and at his supporters in the hope of preventing this. They fail at every turn.

Nothing they do can prevent Donald Trump from securing the Republican Party nomination. And they know it. Still, they try.

The absurdity of the efforts to constrain and contain Trump bespeak their distress at their failure.

While some Americans don’t mask their ire at Trump, few there are who want another four years of Biden.

And of those who prefer another four years of Biden to a Second Term with Trump, all fret over whether Biden’s increasing physical decrepitude and decay remain manageable and that his attempt at “Presidential” comportment remains even remotely convincing.

Although Kelly doesn’t discuss these matters in his book, this is the backdrop for important matters he does discuss.

Kelly exposes the omnipresent, insistent, and incessant dangers Americans face in securing for themselves and for generations of Americans to come, the vitality of, and, in fact, the continued existence of our Country as a truly Free Constitutional Republic—the only one of its kind in the world—free from Tyranny.

And that means a Country free from the depredations of ruthless, innately amoral or outright immoral, perverse forces and influences that care not of the destruction they inflict on the people and on the Nation if, by their actions, they amply reward themselves.

I have returned several times to Kelly’s book as I continue to draft content for my website detailing “the rape” of our Country. I realized I would need to do a more detailed examination of “Justice For All,” for it has become a springboard to flush out, expand upon, and refine my own ideas, especially now in light of what has emerged as an increasingly dour outlook for our Country and a truly dire state of affairs.

I wish to thank Greg Kelly for having the strength of character and fortitude to express his concerns for the Country in the face of so many who would keep the Truth veiled. Kelly removes the veil, grounding his remarks on irrefutable facts.

This ESSAY complements my previously published review but expands substantially upon it as I juxtapose my ideas with Kelly’s insightful exposition.

It is a comprehensive explication and elucidation of major points raised in Kelly’s book as perceived through a substantial body of work I and my business partner, Roger J. Katz, a licensed attorney, have prepared and published on AQ since the site’s founding in early 2013.

Yet, as I began my draft, the ESSAY grew more expansive than I had envisioned.

The extent of the ESSAY necessitated dividing it into several segments.

Each segment (“PART”) involves a distinct subject matter with some unavoidable overlap.

My motivation for preparing this ESSAY, however, stretches beyond a simple desire to expand on ideas generated from points raised in Kelly’s book.  

As we head into the next U.S. Presidential cycle, as alluded to above, this Country faces a dire threat. It is one Greg Kelly undoubtedly feels as well, and may, in part, explain his motivation for penning “Justice For All.”

Explicating the nature of that threat and its import underpins this ESSAY and is the central theme of it.

THE FOCUS OF KELLY’S BOOK

Kelly’s “Justice For All” focuses primarily on the “RADICAL LEFT.”

AQ expands on the all-encompassing threat to the Republic posed by the “RADICAL LEFT.” That is the salient theme of this Essay—a springboard for AQ that commences through a detailed examination of Kelly’s book, “Justice For All.”

Kelly explores and explains the ideology and goals and the negative effects of the RADICAL LEFT agenda.

As a native New Yorker, Kelly is well aware of and sensitive to the negative impact that Radical Left policies, aims, and actions—as manifestations of the Left’s ideology—have had on the Country, particularly on New York City and its residents.

Unscrupulous City and State leaders both in New York and across the Country have taken this ideology to heart and have devised and implemented policies that further the agenda.

Through decades of intentional, incessant, unlawful, calculated, and callous use of propaganda targeting Americans, many Americans have succumbed to it, seduced by the vacuous, insipid nonsense presented to them through the mainstream media (MSM), social media, and Government.

Many Americans are blind to the devastation that municipal, State, and Federal Regulatory rules, legislative enactments, and executive actions have wrought on their life, safety, and well-being, and on the health, well-being, and security of their respective cities, states, and the Country.

Ample evidence of this blindness to the TRUTH rests before all Americans if they would but pay attention to it and reflect upon it.

New York City and New York State are prime examples of “BLINDNESS TO THE TRUTH.”

A plurality of New Yorkers continue to elect the same people, or the same kinds of people, to high office and continue to profess support for them, bordering on mindless reverence, oblivious to the devastation such legislation and policies have had on the social and economic vitality of the City and State and the health and well-being of the residents these political leaders pompously, but disingenuously, claim to serve.

These damaged New Yorkers and other Americans around the Country either deny outright the harm wrong-headed public policy and legislation have wrought, or they blame others for the rot and contagion infecting their communities and the Country and for the concomitant economic and societal misfortunes that befall them, personally.

Incessant brainwashing has convinced them that, as bad as things are, matters would be worse if Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans were once again to take control of Government at all levels.

But ask those people, if Trump were so terrible, what is it that he did during his four-year tenure as U.S. President that they find objectionable? I have asked this question of many people.

A few don’t respond. They just walk away, apparently presuming the question is rhetorical or foolish or that there must be something wrong with me that I would pose such a question to them.

Some become visibly angry or giggle uncontrollably but remain uncommunicative in any rational sense.

Others look at me poleaxed, and then, visibly confused, or, perhaps, embarrassed, feeling they should attempt a logical, rational reply, blurt out something tepid, using epithets such as: “he is an awful person” and “he is an autocrat.” They call him “HITLER.” They say he is a “Racist,” a “Misogynist,” a “Xenophobe,” a “Serious Threat to Democracy.”

They internalize and then mindlessly recite the same idiotic nonsense and chatter they hear endlessly over the airwaves. These people refuse to debate, to argue logically, to explain to me what they mean by the abusive language they employ against Trump. They simply resort to childish name-calling and leave the matter at that.

But does the problem rest with Trump and with those Americans who support him, or does the infirmity rest in the mindset of the Americans?

Does the problem not rest in those who, having inculcated messaging from all the wrong sources and not troubling themselves to reflect on and critique the accuracy of that messaging, take it as self-evident true even as their life and well-being and that of the Country collapses in upon them and all around them?

Back in 2022, the Messenger Boy Biden said this about Trump and his supporters, as reported by NPR:

"MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards" . . . backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love."

Biden’s omissions are curious. He doesn’t recite fundamental, eternal rights such as the right to armed self-defense, the right of free speech, and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Apparently, THE BIDEN PUPPET and his RADICAL LEFT CONTROLLERS feel that exercising these fundamental, eternal rights would only serve to take the Nation “backward” to a time when THE AMERICAN PEOPLE were SOVEREIGN OVER GOVERNMENT and the Country was TRULY a FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.

This same PATHETIC IMPOSTER rails endlessly against America’s modern Patriots.

Biden has the gall to make his first 2024 campaign speech at Valley Forge.

The RADICAL LEFT BIDEN administration that arranged for that must have had a good laugh over the irony of it: exploiting the American Revolution TO REVERSE IT, RETURNING the Country and its people to a STATE OF TYRANNY—UNDERTAKING a RADICAL LEFT COLLECTIVIST COUNTERREVOLUTION.

The AP provides a transcript of Biden’s speech, delivered on January 5, 2024.

THE TRUTH IS IN THE PUDDING

Through his words, Kelly provides ample evidence of the degradation of our Country, generally, and of New York City in particular, and of the responsible parties for this ruination.

His remarkable prose succeeds in that it impresses a host of unsettling, disturbing imagery upon the reader’s mind. His book is an honest assessment of a horrific reality inexorably materializing.

He compels the reader to face the ugly truth even if that reader is not inclined to do so.

And in that, Kelly’s work succeeds in fracturing a false and corrosive belief system—its application in a society grounded in an insufferable pseudo-morality.

Kelly’s book and those of several others I have read complement and support well that of AQ.

For well over a decade, through dozens of articles published on our website and reposted on several others, AQ, too, has pursued the truth, setting forth the nature, the details of, and the intensity and magnitude of the threat posed to our Country.

Both Kelly and AQ wash away the mask cloaked over the grand design of those who seek our Nation’s destruction, THIS “Radical Left.” Yet, if their grand design materializes, the consequences to our Nation and its people would be catastrophic and irreparable.

In that event, there would be no turning back. There would be no means to do so.

But to understand THE NATURE of the Radical Left’s GRAND DESIGN, we ought first to consider this THING that goes by the catch-all short descriptor, the “RADICAL LEFT,” that conservative writers and commentators, including Kelly and AQ, refer to by the expression and regularly discuss, but that many others (the “RADICAL LEFT” itself?) disdain use of and never make mention of.

Yet, it is real enough. But WHAT IS IT?

What is this THING that has become such a formidable force, an obdurate foe of America’s Patriots, intent on destroying the Republic, claiming all the while to be its protector (or, rather, the protector of a simulacrum of it)?

Curiously, this antagonist eschews the use of the term ‘Republic’ preferring to use the term ‘Democracy,’ yet never bothering to explain what they mean by it. And why is that? America’s True Patriots can only wonder.

THE “RADICAL LEFT”: WHO THEY ARE AND THE NATURE OF THEIR AGENDA

THREE POWERFUL COMPONENTS or CONTINGENTS— operating at times singly, and often jointly—comprise the “RADICAL LEFT”:

• Neo-Marxist (Racialist) Globalist Idealogues,’’ Classical Marxist Idealogues, and Gender Idealogues

  These are the “TRUE BELIEVERS” (Cultists).

  These “TRUE BELIEVERS” include militant Marxist-Anarchist organizations and their members: “THE ACTION ARM.”

  They infest the social media sphere and tech companies

  Substantial numbers are found in higher-tier academia and lower-tier education: “THE PSEUDO-RELIGIOUS ARM.”

  They include major NEWSPAPERS, PERIODICALS, CABLE and BROADCAST NEWS ORGANIZATIONS, and RADIO.

  There is an expansive “CONTENT DELIVERY ARM,” which includes: Major PUBLISHING HOUSES, large-scale and small-scale WEBSITES and PODCASTS, and

  OPINION WRITERS for newspapers and periodicals or commentators in Cable and Broadcast news (the “mainstream media”).

  These Neo-Marxist Cultists also proliferate in mid-level management positions in the private sector and mid-level management positions in the public sector (Federal, State, and local bureaucracies). They populate Congress, the Federal Bureaucracy, and state, county, and municipal governmental offices.

  They include individuals who work for powerful NGOs, the UN, and the EU, and many are staffers for Congress.

  They are also found in the vast Entertainment and Sports industries. 

• Neoliberal Globalist “Elites”—the Billionaire Industrialists and Financiers. These people control the vast corporate sectors. Their acumen, political interests, and influence extend to the U.S., EU, and the British Commonwealth Nations—essentially over all of Western Civilization.

• Political Leaders, Policy Makers, and other High-ranking Bureaucratic Functionaries at all levels and Branches of Government (Federal and State)

  These people populate much of Congress. Many are crass opportunists who, for personal gain, espouse loyalty to those orchestrating the destruction of the Republic, and do their part to effectuate its dissolution.

  Many are proponents of “Democratic Socialism,” also referred to as “Political Progressivism”—benign verbiage for ‘Communism’ or ‘Leninism’).

  They include Political “Moderates” (sometimes referred to as “Centrists”) and “Liberals.” Many Republicans also fall into this camp as well (chameleons?)

Operating often in unison, they bear responsibility for the calamity affecting and negatively impacting our Nation, our Constitution, and our people.

These three components have formed an informal confederation or coalition of sorts, often operating in unison.

They draw many of the hoi polloi to their cause—assisting, if unconsciously, in the ruin of a Free, Independent, Sovereign Nation-State.

Inexorably and with increasing swiftness, a transformation of our Free Republic has occurred.

This transformation is antithetical to, incompatible with, and alien to the social, political, economic, cultural, ethical, and jurisprudential underpinnings of our Republic, as conceived by the Founders of it.

The motivations of each component of the “RADICAL LEFT” may differ, and there is likely overlap in belief systems. But their agendas cohere, centering around a commonality of ultimate purpose, the accomplishment of a singular aim:

DISSOLUTION OF THE REPUBLIC AND EROSION OF THE CONCEPTS OF ‘NATION-STATE’, ‘CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES,’ AND ‘NATURAL LAW RIGHTS,’ ALONG WITH THE EVENTUAL ERADICATION OF THE APPLICATION OF THESE CONCEPTS.

This commonality of purpose involves an all-out Assault on “THE COMMON MAN” and on the ideas of ‘FREEDOM’ and ‘LIBERTY.’

But what does that mean? What would the realization of it entail? And what would the effects on the Nation and people look like?

The aims to be achieved and the mechanisms employed to achieve them as applied to our Country include——

•  ERADICATION of the U.S. Constitution

•  ANNIHILATION of American Culture, including its History, Heritage, National Ethos, Core values, and American Identity,

• REPUDIATION of the Judeo-Christian Ethical System and of our Normative Ethical Theory Grounded on DEONTOLOGICAL precepts, to be replaced by UTILITARIANISM’, specifically “UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENTIALISM,”

• EXTIRPATION of the notion of “NATURAL LAW” and, concomitantly, of “NATURAL LAW RIGHTS OF MAN,”

•  SUPPRESSION of the notion of the “DIVINE BEING” and of the Nature of This Singular DIVINITY of THE GODHEAD as——Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omni-Benevolent, and Morally Perfect,

• ELIMINATION of the concept of ‘Citizenship’ and, especially, of the concept of ‘CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES

• COMPELLED Uniformity And Conformity Of Thought And Action through Utilization of Psychological Conditioning

• DESTRUCTION of the Elemental Family Unit as understood by Classical Sociology and Cultural Anthropology,

• INSINUATION OF MILLIONS OF UNASSIMILABLE ILLEGAL ALIENS into and Throughout the Heart of the Country,

• RELOCATION of the Population (Citizens and Illegals) into Constricted Population Centers,

• REDUCTION OF LIVING STANDARDS, through Deliberate Implementation of Disastrous Economic Policies, resulting in the Population’s Dependence on Government Largess for All Its Needs and Comforts,

• COMPELLED DETENTION of all “Malcontents,”

• OBLITERATION of the SANCTITY, INVIOLABILITY, INVINCIBILITY, AND IRREDUCIBILITY OF ONE’S INNATE BEING, requiring

• SUPPRESSION of the UNITY and AUTONOMY OF SOUL, SPIRIT, and MIND.

These are ambitious aims—the accomplishment of them far-reaching, to be sure—matched only by their insidiousness and vileness.

The RADICAL LEFT intends, then, not simply to make a few changes to our Nation’s laws, ethical system, and culture. It intends to obliterate every vestige, REPLACING THEM WITH A TRULY HORRIBLE, HORRIFIC NEW SOCIO-POLITICAL and ECONOMIC REALITY, centering around a GARGANTUAN and PERFIDIDIOUS CONTRIVANCE, euphemistically described as

—A WORLD ADHERING TO AND OPERATING UNDER “THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA 2030” PROMULGATED BY THE UN.

The UN unsurprisingly describes its project in glowing terms. The Heritage Foundation, for one, observes this Agenda a bit differently.

Just two decades ago, most Americans would have seen the RADICAL LEFT’s ideas and agenda, its proposals and aims, as crude, profane, and ludicrous.

RADICAL LEFT’S IDEAS GO MAINSTREAM

MOST AMERICANS WOULD HAVE PERCEIVED SUCH AIMS AS THESE AS DIABOLICAL AND MONSTROUS, OF COURSE, BUT ALSO SO FAR BEYOND THE PALE AS TO BE INCOMPREHENSIBLE.

The DESTRUCTION of THE REPUBLIC? Who in their right mind would dare such a thing? Who, in their right mind, would even conceive of such a thing?

Even if conceivable, what sane person would want such a thing for themselves or for their offspring, for their fellow countrymen, and for the Country?

Why would a rational mind work with such ferocity and tenacity toward an end that means subjugation and tyranny?

HOW FAR WE HAVE COME. THE NATION IS INSANE.

Many THERE ARE, unfortunately, who would want this, who strongly desire this, and who would work to accomplish this, or, at least, see no problem with the fact of it, even as they, outwardly at least, decry tyranny and the thought of subjugation of the masses.

Yet, the fact that so many Americans are onboard with the Radical Left or are otherwise oblivious to the threat means this Nation is at a proverbial “Tipping Point.”

The Radical Left has the means, or access to the means, necessary to achieve its unholy aims.

That the destroyers of our Country have seduced so many Americans to adopt the righteousness of their cause should, therefore, give one pause.

Major advances in both psychological conditioning and technology have now provided a mechanism for disseminating the Radical Left’s bizarre and logically fatuous Dogmas with ease across the Country.

This is cause for serious reflection by America’s true Patriots, who are fortunately inured to the proselytizing of the powerful forces seeking our Nation’s demise.

This is our last chance, short of a civil war that I fear is on the horizon—given the dire nature of the threat posed by the Radical Left—if we don’t secure for us and our young today and for generations of Americans yet to come: the promise born from American Revolution of 1776——

A COUNTRY GROUNDED ON FREEDOM AND LIBERTY—A COUNTRY WHERE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THE COMMON MAN, IS LORD AND MASTER OF HIS LIFE—A COUNTRY WHERE THE COMMON MAN IS AND REMAINS SOLE SOVEREIGN OVER GOVERNMENT.

Without the American Revolution, WE, as an independent sovereign Nation-State and Free Constitutional Republic, would not exist.

And if we, Americans, fail to secure the success brought about by the American Revolution of 1776, our Nation, in the form of a free Constitutional Republic, as envisioned and constructed by the Framers, will fail to persist.

THE RADICAL LEFT’S AGENDA IS MEANT TO REVERSE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776

The Radical Left intends to return us to A STATE OF TYRANNY.

But the TYRANNY facing us TODAY is worse even than that TYRANNY that caused such consternation among America’s First Patriots and compelled them to revolt against the British Monarch, George III, and, by implication, caused them to revolt against the power behind the throne: The Central Banking system.

The artifice of the central banking system has since spread to every major Nation on Earth.

It sits like a “Black Hole,” a sinister object at the center of every major country with few, if any, remaining exceptions, gobbling up every bit of matter and energy.

The central banking system is an ominous presence: Its appetite is insatiable; its lust for the accumulation of monetary wealth voracious; Its effect on a country is acute and pernicious; its inner workings are secretive; its collective powers are unimaginable.

For those who treasure LIBERTY and FREEDOM, the central banking system persists as an implacable, unendurable foe, a vortex that threatens to swallow all of America and other nations.

Those who wield control over the central banking system—Globalist financial “elites,” as a component of the “Radical Left”—have at their disposal technology and mechanisms enabling them to strangle and crush Freedom and Liberty and to subjugate the masses to an extent the Founders of our Republic could not likely have imagined and would be horrified to contemplate.

But what they did observe of Tyranny was horrific enough to risk all to defeat it.

HOW AND WHY THE ARBALEST QUARREL CAME INTO BEING

My business partners and I had decided, after months of careful thought, to create our site, the Arbalest Quarrel—which came online in early 2013—to deal with our Nation’s Bill of Rights and, more specifically, with the importance of the fundamental natural law right to self-defense.

We take as axiomatic the idea of armed self-defense—codified in the Second Amendment to our Constitution—as a fundamental right that does not stand apart from but is simply a reaffirmation of the most basic right a human being has within him—the right of Personal Survival, Physical Existence and Freedom of Conscience.  

This right of Physical Existence is instinctual, true of any animal on God’s Green Earth, of course. But for man as a thinking creation of the Divine Creator, it is something more. It is tied to Freedom of Conscience—the result of the ability to reflect on one’s selfhood.  

The fundamental, unalienable “RIGHT” to PERSONAL SURVIVAL PLUS FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE also points to something more: A RESPONSIBILITY, that is to say, a PERFORMATIVE DUTY one person has, in certain instances, to another, quite apart from the CONSTITUTIVE RIGHT to protect oneself from physical harm and to protect the INTEGRITY of one’s OWN SOUL, SPIRIT, and MIND from outside destructive influence or outright coercion.

As a PERFORMATIVE DUTY apart from a PERSONAL CONSTITUTIVE RIGHT, I am referring to the duty of a parent to protect his children from predatory attack from man or animal and the duty of the citizen to protect his Country and his fellow countrymen from foreign enemies and the Tyranny of the man-beast, GOVERNMENT.

Constitutional law expert David B. Kopel discusses this concept of performative duty, specifically in his book, “The Truth About Gun Control,” on page 7.

A firearm in the hands of the responsible person who is well-versed in the proper use of that firearm and prepared to use it when necessary to protect his life and the life of those near and dear to him is the most effective means by which a human being can protect self and well-being and the life and well-being of others. That fact was true in the time of the American Revolution and well before, and that fact is no less true today.

THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE is then a NATURAL LAW RIGHT. It is NO DIFFERENT IN KIND FROM THE BASIC NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE and is SUBSUMED IN IT.

But, for the force of arms, our Nation would not have come into being. And, but for the continued presence of our armed citizenry—this Free Republic of ours would not, could not, continue to exist and persist for decades and centuries.

All these points, AQ takes as AXIOMATIC, i.e., AS SELF-EVIDENT, TRUE.

The Framers took these points as SELF-EVIDENT, TRUE.

THE CONSTITUTION THEY DRAFTED THAT THE STATES RATIFIED EMBODY THESE POINTS AS SACRED PRINCIPLES, TENETS WITHOUT WHICH THE PERPETURATION OF A FREE REPUBLIC IS IMPOSSIBLE.

But many Americans today fail to recognize this and fail to reflect on it.

It is difficult for them to do so. The Federal Government—under the current Biden Administration and its propagandists—tries to short-circuit and disrupt rational, logical, coherent thought. The corrupt, unconscionable actions and antics of this Administration are directed to deliberate, unjustifiable interference with a person’s very Selfhood.

THIS PERVERSE GOVERNMENT TRIES TO CONTROL A PERSON’S THOUGHT PROCESSES, THEREBY PREVENTING CONSCIOUS, SERIOUS, INDEPENDENT,  ROBUST, REFLECTIVE DISCERNMENT, AND TOWARD SIMPLE, AUTONOMIC, REFLEXIVE, EMOTIONAL RESPONSE, INDICATIVE OF THE SIMPLIST OF ONE-CELLED CREATURES.

Many Americans—through the power of technology that enables the broadcasting of simple, simplistic propagandist messaging to the masses on an industrial scale—buy into the idiocy projected by the Administration’s propaganda arm.

They either choose not to recognize and acknowledge this fact or otherwise are incapable of realizing or recognizing the sanctity and of inviolability of their own PERSONHOOD.

And there are fewer Americans yet who are inured to the Government’s mass and massive, non-stop and lethal campaign of psychological conditioning and ongoing surveillance of Americans’ thought processes, as their machinery gobbles up all of electronic and digital information.

Few there are of us who have the will to acknowledge this, expound upon it, and warn Americans of what would befall them if they sacrifice their ability and will to think for themselves.

Greg Kelly is one of the very few who have the intellect, the ability, and the fortitude to see through the deception of powerful, evil influences at work in our society that intend to disrupt and ultimately destroy a Country that has served as a beacon of liberty for such people who recognize the sanctity of selfhood and choose to reside in one Country that not only provides for this but truly allows for this beyond superficial and false rhetoric.

My business partners and I at AQ share a commonality with Kelly here.

That is why I proposed to my business partners that we draw upon and harness Kelly’s “Justice For All” as a springboard for further useful discussion and analysis. They concurred.

They saw this would be a worthy and worthwhile endeavor.

THIS PROJECT WOULD SERVE THE INTERESTS OF OUR  REPUBLIC, THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY, AND OUR GREAT CONSTITUTION.

No other constitution in any other country has endured as long as ours. This, too, is a testament to its Greatness. It has stood the test of time.

However, on one matter alone, Kelly’s book has caused us concern.

There is a passage in Kelly’s book where he discusses guns and crime.

This is found on pages 102 through 103 in Chapter Five of “Justice For All.”

Kelly writes,

WHY DOES THE U.S. HAVE SO MUCH CRIME? GUNS MAY BE PART OF THE REASON. CERTAINLY OUR COUNTRY IS ALMOST UNIQUE IN THE WORLD IN CODIFYING THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS IN ITS MOST BASIC FRAMEWORK OF LAWS. A SIDE EFFECT OF LEGAL GUN OWNERSHIP IS THAT CRIMINALS HAVE EASIER ACCESS TO GUNS HERE THAN THEY MIGHT IN COUNTRIES THAT RESTRICT GUNS [CCP China is one but then China is an unapologetic, unabashed Collectivist Dictatorship (controlled by the Communist Party) and Singapore is a second, which, although Singapore describes itself as “A Sovereign Republic” in Part 2 of Singapore’s Constitution (if the Translation into English is accurate), it IS a Dictatorship but one that some scholars and journalists might describe as a “Benevolent Dictatorship,” but use of that terminology strikes me as a prime example of an oxymoron]. [Use of upper-case lettering for emphasis in quoting Kelly, my own]

This passage would seem to suggest that the author is discounting this Nation’s MORAL, LEGAL, HISTORICAL, and NATURAL LAW imperative pertaining to gun ownership.

AQ’s Roger Katz will deal at length with Kelly’s remarks on “GUNS AND CRIME” in a forthcoming segment of this Multipart Essay.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t point to an important matter at this juncture, for Kelly’s remark about “guns” troubles me. The remark does not, to my mind, serve the book's rationale, lessens its impact, and undermines the import and purport of it.

If the issue of “CRIME and GUNS” has any logical application to, or bearing on, ONE’S NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, then it is to add another supporting argument FOR IT, NOT AGAINST IT, namely——

A PRAGMATIC argument for securing the NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE in a Country awash in violent crime and for the reason that Kelly asserts and supports with hard facts and which we infer from those facts:

The U.S. has a disproportionately high crime rate—one rapidly accelerating—in relation to other countries, precisely because the Radical Left policymakers have taken over control of the Federal Government through the Biden Administration. And they have bought off many in Congress and, further, wield extraordinary power and influence in some jurisdictions.

These jurisdictions have demonstrated a disturbing tolerance for crime and criminals to an extent one might surmise the political leaders and officials of these States actively, even avidly, enable lawlessness. They have shackled both their police and their criminal justice systems.

See, e.g., New York Post article published on December 16, 2022, titled, “NYPD cops can no longer detain people while checking for warrants”; New York Post article published on July 19, 2022, titled “Chicago cops making record-low numbers of arrests as violent crime soars”; the article in Townhall published on June 27, 2022, titled, “Chicago Police Officers No Longer Allowed to Pursue All Criminal Suspects”

Implementation of the “RADICAL LEFT” agenda has created a malaise impacting police work, not only in Cities one would expect, like New York and Chicago, but across the Country. See the USA Today article published on December 18, 2014, titled “Police Stop Pursuing Nearly 79,000 Fugitives”.

USA Today writes,

Nationwide, police and prosecutors quietly told the FBI they had abandoned their pursuit of nearly 79,000 accused felons during the past year and a half, a USA TODAY investigation found. They have given up chasing people charged with armed robbery and raping children, usually without informing their victims. Police in one county in California reported they would no longer pursue three of their most-wanted fugitives and a man charged with a murder for which prosecutors have sought the death penalty.

The authorities had previously told the FBI – which maintains a vast index of the nation's fugitives – that they would arrest each of those suspects if police anywhere else in the United States happened to find them, a process known as extradition. But in each case, police and prosecutors have since indicated they will no longer fetch the fugitives if they flee.

So each can now escape the charges simply by crossing state lines. And FBI records suggest many do.

Kelly points to the need for a strong criminal justice system, asserting explicitly that criminals belong in prison. Radical Left States and municipalities shouldn’t be mollycoddling criminals, but they do. The Radical Left Agenda has infected the entire Country.

Kelly writes,

Even to say that America ‘over-incarcerates’ people is a matter up for debate. ‘Over compared to what? There’s a lot of crime in America, and it’s gone up sharply since the glorious summer of 2020, when so many marched in honor of black lives. The United States puts a lot of people in prison, but we also have a high crime rate compared to other advanced nations. . . . But when it comes to the question of American overincarceration, consider the fact that, according to the FBI between 2010 and 2018 the United States averaged about 1.2 million violent ‘index crimes’ (murder and manslaughter, robbery, rape and assault) and vehicle theft, and arson) annually. But less than half of all violent crimes, and fewer than 20 percent of property crimes, are ‘cleared,’ meaning that most of these crimes go completely unpunished. Many crimes may have been committed by malefactors who were arrested and jailed for something else they did, but it’s not unreasonable to look at the data and realize that there are millions of people who ought to be in prison but aren’t. There is a solid argument to be made that we under-incarcerate.

BUT ARE GUNS A FACTOR FOR SOARING CRIME?

When Kelly asserts that “guns may be part of the reason” for high crime, he draws the tacit conclusion that New York’s constraints on the exercise of the right to armed self-defense are justified. But there is a missing premise in that argument.

The missing premise is: “Reduction of guns overall—in the hands of the law-abiding and criminal alike—will lead to lower crime rates.” But is that true?

If so, how is it that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens CAUSE or, at least, “CORRELATE” with a higher crime rate in New York City?

To my mind, and my business partners concur, this means either that law-abiding gun owners themselves happen to commit a statistically significant number of crimes, lending to the overall high crime rate, or that, for some unknown, mysterious, inexplicable reason, the total number of guns in the hands of both the non-criminal (law-abiding citizen) and criminal alike, accounts for the high crime rate.

The former proposition is demonstrably false. The latter is inherently vague and impossible to verify because no meaningful testable hypothesis can be generated from it.

While the U.S. does have extraordinarily large numbers of guns in circulation, it does not follow, logically or empirically, that this explains the high crime rate.

See the article, plus extensive use of graphs, published by the Crime Prevention Research Center on January 13, 2019, titled “UPDATED: Correcting Gun Control False Claims About ‘America’s Unique Gun Violence Problem’ And ‘How to Reduce Shootings.’”

The article is insightful.

Updated, originally Posted April 3, 2018: An article at Vox has gained attention for illustrating America’s ‘unique gun violence problem’ in 17 maps and charts.  A similar New York Times opinion piece by Nicolas Kristof on ‘How to Reduce Shootings’ and another at the BBC titled ‘America’s gun culture in 10 charts’ have gained attention.  Below, we will respond to the individual graphs on Vox’s and then on Kristof’s terms.  But there are a lot of assumptions behind their graphs.  Often, just one or two public health studies are cited to make a particular point, without discussing any of the known weaknesses with these studies.  It would also be valuable for both to acknowledge and critique research that reaches the opposite conclusions.

There are many countries that have higher gun homicide rates than the United States, but simply don’t report firearm homicide data.  Many of these meet the criteria to be members of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development).  While 192 countries report total homicides, only 116 countries report firearm homicides.  The average homicide rate among countries that don’t have firearm homicide data is 11.1 per 100,000. The US rank based on firearm homicides looks higher than it actually is because the high homicide countries don’t report their firearm homicide rates.

Homicide is not synonymous with murder.  Homicides count both murders and justifiable homicides (when a police officer or a civilian kills someone in self-defense).  In the five years from 2011 to 2015, the US experienced 11,577 firearm homicides and 8,786.4 firearm murders.  This gap is much larger in the US than in other countries, so comparing homicide rates gives a more unfavorable impression of the US than if we looked only at murder rates.

Murder isn’t a nationwide problem in the United States; there are vast swathes of the country that don’t experience any murders. It’s only a big problem in certain urban areas.  In 2014, the worst 2 percent of counties accounted for 52 percent of the murders. Five percent of counties accounted for 68 percent of the murders. Even within these counties, there are large regions without any murders.

Clearly, drug gangs have contributed a lot to the violent crime problems in America’s cities.  Drug dealers use guns to protect their very valuable property, and they supply guns just like they sell drugs.  Unfortunately, it is just as difficult to stop drug dealers from getting a hold of guns as it is to stop them from getting a hold of illegal drugs.

The popular press likes to compare crime rates in different places at the same point in time.  But academics are aware of the limitations of this simple, cross-sectional comparison.  Gun control advocates often compare the US and the UK, pointing out that the UK has stricter gun control and lower homicide rates than the US.  Omitted is the fact that the UK’s homicide rate went up relative to the US after its gun control laws were enacted.

The UK’s homicide rate was still lower than the US’s, but it was despite the country’s counterproductive gun control laws, not because of them.  The homicide rate was very low even before the UK had any gun control laws.  To understand the effects of the laws, we have to see how homicide rates change before and after their implementation.  Then, we can compare these changes in crime rates with the changes in places that didn’t reform their laws.

One thing gun control advocates such as Vox would never mention is that every single time that guns are banned — either all guns or all handguns — homicide/murder rates rise.  This is a remarkable fact.  One would think that just due to random chance, one or two countries would have a drop in homicides after banning guns.

Vox begins its discussion on mass public shootings using data collected by Jaclyn Schildkraut of the State University of New York-Oswego and H. Jaymi Elsass, a researcher at Texas State University.  Unfortunately, in December 2015, when it was pointed out that their list was missing a lot of cases, Washington Post ‘Fact Checker’ reporter Michelle Lee wrote Dr. Lott: ‘[Schilkraut] said they are still adding cases, and that it’s not a complete database.’ However, Schilkraut and Elsass had already gone public with their findings about how the U.S. compared to other countries. They did so with full knowledge that they were missing many shootings in foreign countries.  Not only did they miss cases, but Vox also doesn’t present the numbers for different countries on a per capita basis.  It is startling that Vox puts other numbers in per capita terms, but not these numbers. . . .

Vox offers no explanation for why it compares only these 14 countries or why the New York Times looks at just 11. The New York Times graph is also mislabeled, as it clearly concerns firearm homicides, not murders. OECD, the organization of developed countries, has 34 member nations. But 192 countries worldwide provide homicide data.

The US rate looks much higher relative to other countries, but that is primarily because the countries with the highest homicide rates are the ones that don’t report their firearm homicide rates.  Indeed, about 45% of the countries that report homicide numbers don’t report firearm homicide data.

Excluding the US, it’s not true that there is an association between more guns and more gun deaths. In fact, higher gun ownership rates are associated with lower homicide rates.”

The problem of high crime rate, that Kelly discusses, is grounded on THE TRUTH OF THE PROPOSITION THAT THE U.S. DOES IN FACT “UNDER-INCARCERATE,” as Kelly says. But that high crime rate has nothing to do with guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens in New York City or anywhere else in the Country.

More handguns in the hands of the law-abiding citizen prevent the dire impact of crime since the armed citizen is in a position to protect both his life and that of others, as the Crime Prevention Research Center points out, supra.

Kelly is now aware of this and has since corrected the error in his book, albeit without referencing it.

I refer to Kelly’s remarks on Newsmax TV, “Greg Kelly Reports,” replayed on YouTube.

Kelly titled that story, “Mass shootings wouldn't happen if people had guns”.

Commenting on the horrific shooting incident in Maine on October 28, 2023, Kelly was spot on when he stated that, had one or more citizens been armed, the number of casualties would have been significantly fewer. He also mentioned that people could not rely on the police because they were nowhere in the vicinity to engage the maniac.

In that commentary, Kelly added something one would think need not require mentioning and should not need mentioning, namely that “to keep and bear arms, it’s in the Constitution.” What could be more plain?

But many people take their cue from Joe Biden and other dangerous imbeciles like him. Biden and other members of the “Radical Left” presume, wrongly, that the Second Amendment doesn’t mean what it says but denotes something less than THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE it is.

“THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” OPERATES AS A CONSTRAINT ON GOVERNMENT ACTION AGAINST IT.

THE RIGHT IS PREEXISTENT IN MAN.

IT IS NOT A THING CREATED BY THE GOVERNMENT. FOR, IF THE GOVERNMENT WERE THE CREATOR OF THE RIGHT, THAT WOULD MEAN THE RIGHT REMAINS NONEXISTENT UNLESS OR UNTIL THE GOVERNMENT CREATES IT. THE RADICAL LEFT WRONGLY BELIEVES THIS TO BE THE CASE.

ALONG WITH THAT ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION IS THE IDEA THAT THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS PROTECTED BY AND ENFORCED BY THE GOVERNMENT. THAT IS ALL PATENTLY UNTRUE. AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DO NOT NEED NOR DO THEY WANT THE GOVERNMENT’S PROTECTION OF OR ENFORCEMENT OF IT.

FOR, THROUGH THE PEOPLES’ EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT, THEY PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM GOVERNMENT. THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT THEIR FRIEND IF THE PUBLIC SHOULD HAVE NEED OF FEDERAL OR STATE GOVERNMENT TO PROTECT AND DEFEND THEIR LIBERTY INTERESTS. THE PEOPLE ARE PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF PROTECTING THEIR LIBERTY INTERESTS WITHOUT ANY ASSISTANCE FROM THE GOVERNMENT.

WERE THAT OTHERWISE, IT WOULD MEAN THAT THE GOVERNMENT, AS THE CREATOR OF THE RIGHT, WOULD HAVE THE SOLE POWER TO ENFORCE IT AND “PROTECT IT” (WHATEVER THAT MEANS) AND, IF IT SO CHOSE, THE GOVERNMENT WOULD RETAIN SOLE POWER TO REVOKE THE COMMON MAN’S EXERCISE OF IT AND TO MODIFY IT, OR ABROGATE IT; REJECT OR JETISON IT, OR ENCROACH ON THE CORE OF IT WHENEVER THE GOVERNMENT SO WISHED. NONE OF THAT IS TRUE.

So, to say that the RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS IN THE CONSTITUTION IS TRUE acknowledges the OBVIOUS, TRIVIALLY TRUE FACT, which may not, unfortunately, be recognized by many Americans, WHO may not be AWARE THAT OUR NATION HAS A BILL OF RIGHTS.

AND, IF THEY ARE AWARE OF THIS, THEY MAY, NONETHELESS, NOT BE AWARE OF THE IMPORT AND PURPORT OF OUR BILL OF RIGHTS.

THE IMPORT OF OUR FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE RIGHTS IS THAT THE RIGHTS ARE NOT CREATIONS OF MAN OR OF HIS ARTIFICES (SUCH AS GOVERNMENT).

THE RIGHT EXISTS INHERENTLY IN MAN, AND PREEXISTS CREATION OF ALL GOVERNMENT.

THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, ETERNAL, AND ILLIMITABLE RIGHTS, FOR IT IS THE ONLY ONE THAT IS NECESSARY TO KEEP TYRANNY AT BAY—THAT IS TO SAY, ESSENTIAL TO LIBERTY AND FREEDOM.

THEREFORE, THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS DOES NOT DERIVE ITS EFFICACY FROM A WRITTEN EXPRESSION OF IT. THE LANGUAGE MERELY CODIFIES THE RIGHT.

THE EXISTENCE OF THE RIGHT DOES NOT, THEN, PROCEED FROM NOR IS IT DEPENDENT ON OVERT DESCRIPTION SET DOWN IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

AQ takes as axiomatic—and consistent with the position held by the Framers of our Constitution——THAT “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” IS NATURAL LAW, BESTOWED IN MAN BY THE DIVINE CREATOR.

THE RIGHT IS NOT BORN OF, NOR DOES IT EMANATE FROM, OR SPRING FROM THE SECOND AMENDMENT ITSELF—WHICH WOULD SUGGEST THAT IT IS SIMPLY A CREATURE OF GOVERNMENT. IT IS NOT AND NEVER HAS BEEN SO CONCEIVED BY THE FRAMERS.

The SECOND AMENDMENT simply CODIFIES what PREEXISTS IN MAN.

HAD THE SECOND AMENDMENT NEVER BEEN SET DOWN IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS, THE RIGHT WOULD STILL EXIST IN MAN, BEYOND THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT TO DENY OR TO TOY WITH IN ANY MANNER.

THESE ARE SIGNIFICANT, SEMINAL POINTS.

THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, i.e., THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, ALONG WITH OTHER NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, ARE PRECISELY THE SORTS OF THINGS THE RADICAL LEFT REFUSES TO ACCEPT.

THE RADICAL LEFT ABHORS THE VERY CONCEPT OF NATURAL LAW THEORY AND OUR NATION’S NATURAL LAW JURISPRUDENCE THAT UNDERPIN THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.

OUR FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, ETERNAL RIGHTS ARE SACROSANCT AND INVIOLATE. THEY ARE BESTOWED ON AND IN MAN BY THE DIVINE CREATOR.

IF ANY OTHER GOVERNMENT HAPPENS TO ACCEPT THIS ONLY IN THEORY, YOU WON’T SEE ANYTHING MADE OF IT IN PRACTICE. THAT GOVERNMENT TREATS ALL RIGHTS—EVEN “FUNDAMENTAL” RIGHTS—SIMPLY AS MAN-MADE CREATIONS, SUBJECT TO MODIFICATION OR ABROGATION OR AD HOC TAMPERING.

OUR BILL OF RIGHTS IS DIFFERENT. GOVERNMENT DOES NOT CREATE THESE RIGHTS AND IS NOT THE ENFORCER OF THEM. RATHER, THE AMERICAN CITIZEN ENFORCES HIS FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, UNMODIFIABLE, ETERNAL, AND ILLIMITABLE GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS—RIGHTS THAT THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT LAWFULLY ABROGATE, IGNORE, REPEAL, OR TAMPER WITH OR TOY WITH IN ANY MANNER—AGAINST GOVERNMENT.

NO OTHER CITIZEN (OR “SUBJECT) OF ANY OTHER COUNTRY OR POLITICAL SYSTEM CAN LEGITIMATELY MAKE SUCH A CLAIM. THIS IS WHAT SERVES TO DIFFERENTIATE OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PEOPLE FROM ALL OTHER COUNTRIES AND PEOPLES ON THIS EARTH, AND IT IS WHAT MAKES AMERICANS UNIQUELY AND TRULY “AMERICAN.”

IT IS ONLY THROUGH THE FREE EXERCISE OF THESE SACRED RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES THAT WE, AMERICANS, ARE ABLE TO KEEP TYRANNY AT BAY. PEOPLE OF NO OTHER NATION CAN EVER HOPE TO DO SO BUT MUST EVER DEPEND ON THE SOVEREIGN STATE TO TEMPER ITS PROCLIVITY AND INCLINATION TO TYRANNY.

THUS, THE RADICAL LEFT IN OUR COUNTRY SEEKS, AS A MAJOR GOAL, TO ERASE FROM THE MIND AND HEART OF AMERICANS ANY NOTION OF NATURAL LAW RIGHTS THAT REST WELL BEYOND THE LAWFUL POWER OF THE STATE TO WEAKEN AND EVENTUALLY ELIMINATE.

IF THE RADICAL LEFT COULD ERASE OUR NATURAL LAW RIGHTS—ESPECIALLY THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE AGAINST THE TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT, IT WOULD DO SO.

DOING SO WOULD MAKE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THEIR AIM TO IMPOSE TOTALITARIANISM (UNABASHED TYRANNY) ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SO MUCH EASIER.

I will explore this matter in depth in the next segment.

_____________________________

*AQ is aware that the expression ‘RADICAL LEFT’ is, grammatically, a singular noun and pronoun usage should reflect that. However, we will take poetic liberty when using pronouns to describe it, substituting the plural, ‘THEY,’ or ‘THEIR,’ and ‘THEM’ for the usual ‘IT’ and ‘ITS.’ On that score, the RADICAL LEFT should have little to quibble about, given the much greater liberties they take, having MULTIPLIED ENTITIES UNNECESSARILY with all the nonsense centering around the idea of a multiplicity of “genders” they have conjured up.

Some readers may find all this amusing. Others may find this hypocritical and not amusing, as we seem to be doing something akin to the similar mauling and pummeling of the English language demanded by the RADICAL LEFT, requiring that the public embrace the politically correct gender-neutral terminology and a hodge-podge of newly constructed “gender-specific“ terminology of a purported “victimized” class lest those suffering from Gender Dysphoria, a mental aberration recognized by Psychiatry that appears in the DSM-5-TR, become annoyed.

See, e.g., the AP article published March 24, 2017, by Lauren Easton, regarding the use of pronouns in a radically transformed America.

We are aware of the allusion, so we make note of it and strongly object to it, for this is but one more instance of the RADICAL LEFT intention to confound the American Psyche through a deceitful, wholly uncalled-for, artificial alteration of the English language.

Contrariwise, our intentions are wholly innocuous in utilizing the plural ‘THEY’ for the singular ‘IT’ when we mention and discuss the “RADICAL LEFT” THROUGH USE OF PLURAL PRONOUNS.

We will do this to make clear we are referencing and emphasizing the salient components of this powerful, ruthless, and dangerous force that has captured both the major institutions of our Country and the psyche of the American people.

On the way to transforming the Nation out of all semblance of its natural form as a TRULY FREE Republic—THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD—THIS “RADICAL LEFT” is coldly, callously sucking the very life and vitality out of our Nation and its people.

This isn’t an unplanned, unintended consequence of the Radical Left’s agenda and aims, and one would be sorely mistaken to think it so and to dismiss it as such. It is all “part and parcel” with their agenda and aims.

The Radical Left would have a difficult time of it, accomplishing its far-reach aim of instituting a ONE-WORLD GOVERNMENT, if it were unable to annihilate the singularly most powerful Independent, Sovereign State IN ALL OF Western Civilization today, the United States of America, IF IT IS UNABLE TO BRING A ONCE PROUD NATION AND ITS PEOPLE TO ITS KNEES.

Brainwashing the American people—turning many of them into, a barely conscious, amorphous, incoherent, blubbering mob, inculcated with the precepts of Herbert Marcuse Marxism and Mao Zedong Collectivism, and then detaining and imprisoning those inured to the sophisticated, all-encompassing indoctrination program thrust on the populace, and unwilling to pretend to conform to it—is the primary vehicle utilized BY THE RADICAL LEFT TO DESTROY the SOUL, SPIRIT, AND MIND OF THE CITIZENRY.

IS NY GOVERNOR HOCHUL PLEASED WITH THE ANTONYUK DECISION? SURE! NOW ASK JUSTICES THOMAS AND ALITO WHAT THEY THINK.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit came down with its decision in Antonyuk* on December 8, 2023.

The case is mostly bad news for present or prospective concealed handgun carry licensees in New York although it’s not surprising news to us.

There is much to glean from the decision.

But to get a handle on it and to understand what it all portends, it helps to review the Second Circuit’s prior rulings, and we will do that in future articles.

The rationale behind the Court’s decision in Antonyuk is not to be found in its overt language or in the arcane interstices of it but, rather, in the Court’s earlier rulings.

Those rulings bespeak an ideology and philosophy alien to our Constitution and to our Nation’s Bill of Rights and antithetical to man’s natural law right to armed self-defense.

The Second Circuit’s rulings in Antonyuk expressly and defiantly reaffirm the Court’s own prior rulings and cohere with them.

They are inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings— giving, at best, if one were to think that much of them, mere lip service to them, but twisting the rulings to support the Federal Appellate Court’s own prior rulings and reasoning. 

In Heller and Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court explained the faultiness of the Second Circuit’s approach to the Second Amendment and that of several of its sister Federal Appellate Courts that, like the Second Circuit, also abhor the natural law right codified succinctly and clearly in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

The Second Circuit apparently felt it could defy Heller because the Heller rulings, while directly affecting New York’s Handgun Law, didn’t directly refer to that Law. The Bruen rulings, though, did.

The impetus for the Heller rulings, apart from the major reaffirmation of the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right, was directed to the D.C. Law on handguns.

However, since Bruen specifically dealt with New York’s Handgun Law, the Second Circuit found itself in a quandary.

The nature of that quandary we had previously discussed.

See the Arbalest Quarrel article, posted on January 20, 2023, in Ammoland Shooting Sports News. We discuss two scenarios.

The first scenario, as outlined in the AQ article, is the one the Second Circuit has taken.

We said,

The Second Circuit ultimately rules in favor of the Government. The Court strikes down the PI [Preliminary Injunction] and dismisses Antonyuk vs. Nigrelli (Antonyuk II) with prejudice.

Plaintiffs will immediately file their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. That is a dead certainty.

And the High Court will take the case up for review. That [too] . . . is a dead certainty. The Court must accept the Writ of Certiorari. Why is that?

If the U.S. Supreme Court demurs from hearing the case, it defeats the Second Amendment and weakens its prior holdings, Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.

It makes a mockery of itself—slits its own throat, and undermines the authority of the High Court, this Third Branch of Government. It won’t do that.

The [Concealed Carry Improvement Act] CCIA legally and logically contradicts the Second Amendment and an insult to the High Court’s rulings in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.

An adverse decision in Antonyuk vs. Nigrelli (Antonyuk II) weakens the three prior seminal Second Amendment cases.

The Second Circuit has now played its hand. Acceding to the wishes of the New York Hochul Government, it has spurned the rulings and reasoning of, and mocked and provoked, its parent, the U.S. Supreme Court.

It has echoed and amplified the sentiments of Kathy Hochul and of other New York Government officials and leaders and has made clear its own contempt for those citizens who wish to exercise their right to armed self-defense in New York.

THE ESSENCE OF THE SECOND CIRCUIT’S DECISION IN THE ANTONYUK CASE

We turn now to a gist of the Opinion.

To begin, the decision of the three Federal Appellate Judges was unanimous.

In summary, the Court said this:

In these four cases, heard and now decided in tandem, Plaintiffs raise First and Second Amendment challenges to many provisions of New York's laws regulating the public carriage of firearms. In Antonyuk, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York (Suddaby, J.) enjoined enforcement of more than a dozen such provisions. In Hardaway, Christian, and Spencer, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York (Sinatra, J.) separately enjoined a subset of the laws previously enjoined in Antonyuk, though based on slightly different reasoning. We stayed the various injunctions pending appeal, expedited the appeals, and, in light of the substantial overlap among the cases, heard arguments in tandem on March 20, 2023.

We now AFFIRM the injunctions in part, VACATE in part, and REMAND for proceedings consistent with this opinion. In summary, we uphold the district court's injunctions with respect to N.Y. Penal L. § 400.00(1)(o)(iv) (social media disclosure); N.Y. Penal L. § 265.01-d (restricted locations) as applied to private property held open to the general public; and N.Y. Penal L. § 265.01-e(2)(c) as applied to Pastor Spencer, the Tabernacle Family Church, its members, or their agents and licensees. We vacate the injunctions in all other respects, having concluded either that the district court lacked jurisdiction or that the challenged laws do not violate the Constitution on their face.

A cursory inspection of the decision may convey the impression to some that the U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found a way out of the morass:

Reassuring Governor Hochul and the Democrat Party-controlled Legislature in Albany that the Government can continue to enforce the CCIA and, at once, placating the Plaintiffs New York concealed handgun carry license holders and the Second Amendment Foundation.

But, as for the latter, only a fool would think the Second Circuit gave Party Plaintiffs much of anything to be happy about.

The Appellate Court prohibited Government licensing authorities from demanding applicants reveal their personal identifiers for social media accounts. And the Court did prohibit Government licensing authorities from mucking about in a person’s private social media accounts.

But the constraints are lessened if not negated by the Court’s copious rulings on Good Moral Character, whose use the Court said is Constitutional, and its enforcement by the Government will therefore remain a serious concern for applicants.

Yet, “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” is one of the two foundational components of the CCIA that infringes on the core of the Second Amendment right.

The other one is “SENSITIVE LOCATION” RESTRICTIONS. See, infra.

Since the Court held that assessment of one’s “MORAL CHARACTER” is a legitimate prerogative of Government and since, as the Court opines, the perusal of social media is a key component in the review of a person’s moral character, the Court had no wish to prevent licensing authorities from accessing social media information that would assist them in a determination of one’s character to possess a handgun in the public sphere.  

So, the Court reinforced the licensing authority’s discretion to peruse an applicant’s social media with a workaround:

The Court said,

More generally, we have already explained that it is constitutional for a state to make licensing decisions regarding an applicant's ‘good moral character,’ at least where that ‘character’ is defined in terms of dangerousness. It must, therefore, be constitutional for the licensing authority to investigate the applicant's character, and no one argues that a licensing officer may not inquire into the applicant's trustworthiness beyond the challenged disclosures. It follows that the State can also require modest disclosures of information relevant to that investigation, making the (permissible) assessment of dangerousness more efficient and more accurate.” [More on this thing, ‘dangerousness’, below]

The CCIA falls apart IN THE ABSENCE of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” and New York’s “SENSITIVE LOCATION RESTRICTIONS.”  

These two things are the guts of Hochul’s CCIA.

The Government insists on their retention, and is adamant that the Government can enforce them. The Second Circuit has obliged the New York Government.

The Court has set forth a comprehensive, albeit defective, legal and logical argument to support the pragmatic need for the GOOD MORAL CHARACTER Requirement and SENSITIVE LOCATION RESTRICTIONS. Worst of all, the Court assumes, rather than articulates, the constitutionality of the GOOD MORAL CHARACTER Requirement and SENSITIVE LOCATION RESTRICTIONS.

RE: GOOD MORAL CHARACTER

The problem with the GOOD MORAL CHARACTER is that, Constitutionally, application of it in the Second Amendment right is contra exercise of the Right.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals knows this or should know this.

But, because the Court presupposed and did not proffer an argument to support a finding that the “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” requirement is Constitutional, its arguments come across as strained and uncompelling.

And, it is noteworthy the Court found its application problematic and said so.

The Court remarked,

“We recognize that ‘good moral character’ is a spongy concept susceptible to abuse. . . .”

The concept is more than “spongy.” The Second Circuit uses that word as a makeweight to avoid acknowledging the concept is facially unconstitutional.

The Court slithers around that fact, doing what it can to deal with pragmatic concerns attendant to the concept’s application only.

But, logically, the Court’s approach is flawed.

Having perfunctorily dismissed a facial challenge to it, the Court proceeded directly to pragmatic concerns. But those concerns are of secondary importance, and they lose all significance without a compelling argument to deal effectively with the facial challenge that goes directly to the constitutionality of the concept in the context of a fundamental natural law right.

The nature of one’s character is irrelevant to one’s exercise of the natural law right to self-defense.

Therefore, its application is constitutionally suspect at the get-go.

But, assuming, for argument’s sake, that consideration of one’s character to possess a concealed handgun for self-defense in the public domain is constitutional, the Court’s perception that Government abuses can be dealt with is no simple task.

The Court simply says that, notwithstanding the susceptibility to abuse, “such abuses, should they become manifest, can still be vindicated in court as they arise.”

They can’t because assessing one’s character is a complicated undertaking and subject to abuse even where its application is legally permissible.

The Government licensing authority’s bias against the applicant is inextricably bound to that authority’s personality.

Even if mechanisms to handle such abuse exist, what do those involve?

•   An Administrative Appeal?

• A Court action?

The Second Circuit doesn’t concern itself with the time, monetary expense, effort, or psychological impact on the applicant whose application is denied.

Its argument that abuses can be vindicated as they arise is lame. The Court suggests, as it must know, that abuses will invariably occur. That fact alone should have given the Court pause.

The Court should have investigated whether and not have assumed that GOOD MORAL CHARACTER is an appropriate, legitimate, legal, logical, ethical, and pragmatic concept to be employed in a matter involving exercising a fundamental, natural law right.  

It dispensed with all of that except for the ostensible pragmatic reason for retaining it. 

Among the arguments offered, the Court said this:

. . . The character requirement states that ‘[n]o license shall be issued or renewed except for an applicant . . . of good moral character.’ . . . 

Since 1913, New York has required concealed carry licensees to possess ‘good moral character,’ but this phrase was left statutorily undefined until the CCIA added the following definition: ‘having the essential character, temperament and judgement necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself or others. . . .’”

The CCIA's definition of ‘character’ is a proxy for dangerousness: whether the applicant, if licensed to carry a firearm, is likely to pose a danger to himself, others, or public safety. And there is widespread consensus (notwithstanding some disputes at the margins) that restrictions which prevent dangerous individuals from wielding lethal weapons are part of the nation's tradition of firearm regulation. We therefore cannot conclude that every denial on grounds of ‘good moral character’ as defined by New York will violate the Second Amendment, though various avenues lie open for as-applied challenges.

From a close reading of the opinion text, one can infer that the Second Circuit concedes, albeit tacitly, the dubious legality of employing “CHARACTER” to deny the exercise of a fundamental, unalienable, natural law right.

More to the point, if “DANGEROUSNESS” is really of concern to the Court, then why do two standards for GOOD MORAL CHARACTER exist in the New York HANDGUN LAW——

One for those few individuals who make application only for a restricted “PREMISE” license that does not permit the licensee to use a handgun lawfully for self-defense while in the public domain, and another, a new, more robust standard for those individuals—most individuals—who apply for a concealed handgun carry license that ostensibly allows for the lawful use of a handgun for self-defense in the public domain?

The Second Circuit doesn’t bother to explore the disparity.

The principal, overarching issue is the Constitutionality of assessing one’s character before obtaining a New York State concealed handgun carry license.

What other fundamental right necessitates showing “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” as a condition precedent to an American citizen exercising his natural law right? 

The answer? “There is none.”

To demand that one demonstrate “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” is incongruous and patently absurd.

So why is an exception made here?

The Court says “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” serves as “A PROXY FOR DANGEROUSNESS.”

Pay close attention to the verbiage. Why did the Court say this, and what does the Court mean by it?

The Court knows that assessing one’s character has nothing to do with exercising any natural law right.

CONSIDER——

• FREE EXPRESSION (AS LONG AS THAT DOES NOT ENTAIL SPECIFIC THREAT OF VIOLENCE TO ANOTHER)

• FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION (UNCONSTRAINED AS LONG AS THE IMPETUS OF THAT RELIGION DOES NOT ENTAIL PHYSICAL HARM TO OTHERS)

• FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION (WITH THOSE OF LIKE MIND, UNIMPEDED BY GOVERNMENT OR ANY OTHER ENTITY.

• SELF-PRESERVATION, THAT IS TO SAY, SELF-DEFENSE (AND THIS IMPLIES, BY LOGICAL IMPLICATION, THE USE OF THE BEST MEANS TO SECURE ONE’S LIFE AND WELL-BEING—A FIREARM)

Yet, the natural law right of “SELF-DEFENSE” and the natural law right to “ARMED SELF-DEFENSE” are treated by many elements both inside Government and outside it, as two distinct things.

Why is that?

Major advances in information and communication technology have enabled the common man to express himself efficiently and effectively and immediately disseminate his ideas to the world.

Ought those technological advances require a person to demonstrate moral character consistent with the Government’s imposition of arbitrary standards before he’s permitted to apply that technology?

Some might think so. Some have said so.

Government and Business have impliedly done so through illegal censoring of speech, which presumptively means the party censored exhibits “BAD CHARACTER,” necessitating that one’s ideas should be censored.

AND CONSIDER——

Major advances in the technology of personnel weapons have now provided otherwise weak, essentially defenseless people the ability to defend themselves effectively, assertedly, and immediately against the abnormal strength exhibited by rabid aggressors who intend to harm, maim, or kill them.

Ought those technological advances require a person to demonstrate moral character consistent with the Government’s imposition of arbitrary standards before applying that technology?

Some have said so. Many there are who would deny a person the right to secure his own life against an external, dangerous threat because they discern the life of an innocent individual to have less “utility” than the greater utility allocated to the masses, existing in a well-ordered, well-engineered, Collectivist world order.

The Second Circuit didn’t explore the normative implications of its rulings for individuals.

Rather, it focused on finding a plausible explanation to justify (i.e., rationalize) its finding that the use of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” makes practical sense, and it erroneously and fatuously assumed it passes constitutional muster.

And so, the Court focused on the concept of ‘dangerousness.’

That concept is as fascinating as it is disconcerting, for “dangerousness,” as a function of GUNS and of GUN USE, underscores every argument ever made by those who find civilian possession of firearms abhorrent and senseless.

They see guns as inherently dangerous and of minimal utility, regardless of the sentient agent who wields them and the end for which he uses them.

Those who find civilian possession of guns distasteful and of no practical use in a purported “civilized society” take as axiomatic the following DECLARITIVE STATEMENT and utilize it as a MORAL IMPERATIVE.

“GET RID OF GUNS AND THE PROBLEM OF ‘DANGEROUSNESS’ WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF.”

But, at the moment, it is impossible constitutionally in our Country “to get rid of guns” by systematically and dramatically banning civilian possession of guns outright, even as many want and would undertake, if they could, notwithstanding constitutional limitations standing in their way.

So, meanwhile, those governments and those private interests that detest civilian possession of firearms employ A PLOY. They describe this or that person as “dangerous” to himself or others. That is what the New York Hochul Government has done.

Applying a new robust standard for GOOD MORAL CHARACTER, in effect, operates as a stand-in for the old “PROPER CAUSE” standard the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as facially unconstitutional, as applied to New York concealed handgun carry licenses.

Application of GOOD MORAL CHARACTER restricts the domain of civilians allowed access to guns for lawful concealed carry in the public domain.

The Government’s handgun licensing authorities serve as the gatekeepers for the Government’s leaders who abhor civilian access to firearms, especially access to handguns or any other semiautomatic weapon.

This concept of “dangerousness” crops up elsewhere to prevent a person from exercising his God-given right to armed self-defense.

State Governments have employed “RED FLAG” laws to prevent a person from exercising his natural law right.

State Governments have used the ploy of misdemeanor convictions or even mere charges of  “DOMESTIC VIOLENCE” to prevent citizens from ever having access to firearms.

The Party Plaintiffs in Antonyuk will challenge the constitutionality of GOOD MORAL CHARACTER facially and various aspects of it that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has upheld as both valid and constitutional and not subject to “facial” attack.

There is a procedural question of whether this issue is ripe for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Plaintiffs can ask for an “en banc” review of the decision by the entire Second Circuit instead of a direct appeal immediately to the High Court, or they might—as the three-judge panel and the Government hope—proceed to the lower Federal District Court to deal with the issues the Second Circuit has remanded to it. That would buy the Government more time as it allows for continued enforcement of the CCIA during the pendency of further review.

Or the Plaintiffs can file for immediate review of one or more or all of the issues directly to the U.S. Supreme Court and hope the Court will take up final appealable issues and even those that the Second Circuit has remanded to the lower District Court.

THE BOLSTERED GOOD MORAL CHARACTER REQUIREMENT AND A “SENSITIVE LOCATION” RESTRICTIONS LAW OPERATE TOGETHER AS A REPLACEMENT FOR NEW YORK’S “PROPER CAUSE” REQUIREMENT

The concepts of “SENSITIVE LOCATION” RESTRICTIONS and the bolstered “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” REQUIREMENT are as ingenious as they are devious.

The two—“GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” AND “SENSITIVE LOCATION”—operate in tandem as a SUBSTITUTE for “PROPER CAUSE” (i.e., “EXTRAORDINARY NEED”), which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.

The Hochul Government overhauled the “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” complicating the process for obtaining a license for those people applying for a New York concealed handgun carry license.

The new bolstered “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” requirement places unnecessary obstacles in the path of those individuals who wish to acquire a valid New York concealed handgun carry license, burdening and frustrating them.

The Government intends to limit, to the extent possible, the number of applicants who can qualify for a New York concealed handgun carry license.

And, for those applicants who apply for a valid State concealed handgun carry license and who do receive said New York State concealed handgun carry license, the Hochul Government has imposed “SENSITIVE LOCATION” RESTRICTIONS to frustrate a person’s lawful use of a handgun for self-defense whose life is threatened while in the public sphere of activity.

Unlike “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER,” there is no precedent in New York Gun Law for “SENSITIVE LOCATION RESTRICTIONS.”

RE: “SENSITIVE LOCATION” RESTRICTIONS

The Hochul Government concocted a “SENSITIVE LOCATION RESTRICTIONS” mechanism to transform the “UNRESTRICTED” CONCEALED CARRY LICENSE into—what is now effectively—a “HIGHLY RESTRICTED” CONCEALED CARRY LICENSE, and for all such license holders.

Why did the Hochul Government do this? It did this BECAUSE The U.S. Supreme Court has compelled the Hochul Government to grant more concealed handgun carry licenses to many more applicants, and the Government is decidedly unhappy about this—enraged, in fact.

The Government has, therefore, imposed on all holders of valid New York concealed handgun carry licenses a bizarre, extensive, ad hoc patchwork quilt of areas in the public sphere where civilians who hold valid licenses are prohibited from lawfully carrying a handgun for self-defense, thereby transforming all unrestricted carry into restricted carry.

The situation now facing holders of concealed handgun carry licenses is analogous to one that always faced holders of highly restrictive premise handgun licenses.

The New York Government allows holders of restricted premise handgun licenses “to carry” their handgun in public when they GO TO OR COME FROM a shooting range, take their handgun in for repairs, or surrender their handgun to the proper government authority.

BUT, IMPORTANTLY, IN EACH OF THOSE INSTANCES, HOLDERS OF A RESTRICTED PREMISE LICENSE CANNOT LAWFULLY USE A HANDGUN FOR SELF-DEFENSE IF THE NEED WERE TO ARISE.

And, as a matter of practical necessity, the use of a handgun in a life-threatening emergency is empirically impossible.

A restricted premise license holder must carry his handgun in an appropriate gun case, and the ammunition must be separated from the handgun.

A declaration of certain areas as “SENSITIVE LOCATIONS” operates in much the same way for holders of concealed handgun carry licenses.

They must not carry their handguns in those areas, for the Government does not allow lawful use of them for self-defense against life-threatening aggressive attacks.

N.Y. Penal L. § 265.01-e is the “SENSITIVE LOCATION” statute.

There are now many areas where a concealed carry license holder is prohibited from carrying and using a handgun for self-defense, as stated in this statute, passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Hochul in 2023.

The lower District Court imposed a preliminary injunction on most of these areas, and apart from one instance involving one Church, the Second Circuit broadly vacated the District Court’s granting of the Plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction.

This means the Hochul Government may continue enforcing concealed carry restrictions in those areas. The Second Circuit has set its imprimatur on this.

Plaintiffs will likely appeal the “SENSITIVE LOCATION” RESTRICTIONS to the U.S. Supreme Court.

There is no point in the Party Plaintiffs spending time and money to request an en banc hearing of the full complement of Second Circuit Judges to rehear the case. The Court’s full complement can peremptorily deny rehearing anyway.

The U.S. Supreme Court, for its part, is likely to take the case up for review since the CCIA is a direct, unabashed assault on and affront to the Bruen rulings.

The U.S. Supreme Court would do this because New York’s “SENSITIVE LOCATION” RESTRICTIONS not only implicate and infringe upon the right to armed self-defense in the public domain but also defy the High Court’s specific assertions and admonitions to the Hochul Government. But Hochul didn’t care. It was what she intended to do. Her Government intends to turn much of New York State and most of New York City into a GUN-FREE ZONE. 

Similarly, the “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” REQUIREMENT is anathema to exercising the fundamental, natural law right to armed self-defense and has an unconstitutional chilling effect on the First Amendment right of free expression, as well.

Likely, the High Court will not have kind words for the Second Circuit, whose reasoning and rulings in Antonyuk are blatantly inconsistent with the High Court’s own reasoning and rulings in Bruen and Heller.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The Second Circuit mentions licenses and licensing 159 times in its opinion, but never deals directly with it, as it could have done, at least in dicta, and should have done.

New York’s Handgun Licensing Regime is the “Elephant in the Room.”

It is the source of all the problems in New York’s Handgun Law Regime that harkens back to the start of handgun licensing with the enactment of the Sullivan Act in 1911. It is not a new issue that commenced with the passage of the CCIA.

The Second Circuit should have considered the problem of licensing. It mentions licensing constantly but does nothing to address it directly.

The CCIA is simply the logical end result of over 100 years of wrongheadedness by the New York Government.

The Sullivan Act that created “handgun Licensing” was promoted on a lie—to deal, ostensibly, with rising crime in the City of New York. Yet, its enactment had no appreciable effect on crime.

But, then, that was never the intention. It was all a myth.

New immigrants to the City—Jews from Eastern Europe and Italians from Western Europe—were the targets: Don’t allow Jews or Italians to have access to guns. That was the mantra.

It wasn’t a secret.

One would think a rational mind in the New York Government would, at some point, have stated the fact expressly. It is what everyone knew. The Legislature should have repealed the Sullivan Act well before it grew into the monster it now is. That never happened.

The Sullivan Act might be compared to abortion.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood—who created the organization around the time of enactment of the Sullivan Act—had despised the Black Race and wanted to prevent their propagation. That, too, is no secret.

She conceived of “contraception” and abortion as ways to make it easy for Black women to avoid conception or to deal with it after it arose.

A hundred years later, no one calls Sanger out for this, but women of all races and socio-economic status proclaim abortion to be a fundamental right. It isn’t and never was, and it is discordant to think that the murder of an innocent child could be rationally construed as a right at all, let alone a fundamental, unalienable right.

If it were possible, one might wish to ask Sanger what she thinks of the new attitude today toward abortion and what she would make of her “Planned Parenthood” as it exists today.

One might also wish to ask Timothy Sullivan, sponsor of the Handgun Licensing Act of 1911, what he thinks of his Act—what it has evolved into after more than 110 years. Would he be pleased or horrified?

___________________________

*The case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was originally captioned Antonyuk vs. Hochul.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York dismissed out Kathy Hochul. The Court found her not a proper Party Defendant to the action, and recaptioned the case to reflect acting New York State Police Superintendent Steven Nigrelli as the principal Party Defendant: Antonyuk vs. Nigrelli.

Nigrelli resigned his post last summer when Hochul failed to make his appointment permanent and as he faced employment harassment issues which further complicated his retention in the position.

Hochul needed a New Superintendent of State Police, and she eventually found one.

The Federal Court then recaptioned the case to reflect the new acting New York Superintendent of State Police that Governor Hochul appointed in early October 2023, Dominick Chiumento.

The case, now captioned Antonyuk vs. Chiumento, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 32492, consolidates four cases challenging, inter alia, two major portions of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act of 2022 (CCIA)—The “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” REQUIREMENT and “SENSITIVE LOCATIONS” RESTRICTIONS.

_______________________

A COUNTRY HAS NO ETHICAL RIGHT TO EXIST IF IT WILL NOT PROTECT ITS PEOPLE FROM HARM AND AT ONCE PREVENT ITS PEOPLE FROM PROTECTING THEMSELVES

“When a strong man fully armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: Luke: 11:21 King James

“The first right of individuals and countries is self-preservation.” See the article titled “The Functions of Government” on the website Digital Encyclopedia Britannica.*

No one can reasonably doubt the truth of the natural law right to self-preservation, i.e., the right to self-defense, of which the natural law right to armed self-defense is no more than an affirmation of the salient right to self-defense.

This means the right of a man to secure his personal survival from all threats, presumptively implies the fundamental, eternal right to employ the best means available to secure his life and safety and well-being from those threats.

Let’s explore this idea.

At first, a man had nothing more than the use of his body to protect himself from all threats, but he found that of little use against powerful beasts of prey and against other physically stronger men.

But, through the invention of knives, swords, and armor, and a willingness and ability to utilize those implements effectively, men found themselves more on an equal footing when combatting animals and other men who threatened their lives and safety.

Centuries later, with the advent of the firearm, every man had a fighting chance to best preserve his life against aggressive threats. That is clear enough.

But what does the afore-referenced second part of the quotation from Brittanica mean: that the first right of COUNTRIES, as WITH MEN, is SELF-PRESERVATION?

Is that notion to be construed as distinct from a right of self-preservation of each denizen of the Country? No!

Consider—what IS a country, but the people who comprise it?

Some may protest, pointing out that a Country and its Governance are certainly MORE than the sum of the people in it.

They would say——

There are laws, history, culture, heritage, ethos, core values, an ethical milieu, and an economic, political, and social foundation. Surely, then, a country and its governance is more than the sum of its people.

And all of that is true, of course.

But what purpose would all that be, and what might all of that amount to if there were no people in it?

In the manner in which one poses the question, doubt arises.

It is always in the manner a question is posed that a person finds himself constrained in how to proceed in framing a response to it.

So, let us rephrase the question: “Why is it, and how did it come about that countries formed in the first place?

We may assume that countries didn’t spontaneously emerge from the aether. Their emergence was a slow and steady process.

People likely banded together first in a family and did so to best provide for the protection of their mate and their offspring.

One can infer that was true when men first came on the scene tens of thousands of years ago.

Still, the elemental AND one indivisible unit is THE INDIVIDUAL MAN himself.

The second elemental unit is THE FAMILY.

And, unless a person is a proverbial “LONER,” truly unconnected to an immediate family, the imperative of the FAMILY UNIT remains each country's salient elemental, functional unit today, and it retains its resilience.

The import of the “FAMILY UNIT” retains its premier status in any community in any part of the world and exists in any socio-political construct.

Given this fact, is it not strange to see forces at work today, especially in our own Country, that seek to destroy this functional fundamental societal unit of a country?

The development of ever-expanding societal units did not erode the functional importance and imperative of the basic family unit. But the NUCLEAR FAMILY UNIT realized that ever-present enemies required the banding together of larger familial units to repel enemies effectively and ensure a family’s safety and well-being.

Through time, families—while still retaining their imperative as the core unit for survival—realized that where enemies grew in number and were near or had taken to roving to harass families—it made sense for families to band together into larger, extended units, often referred to as ‘clans’ to enhance chances for their mutual survival against marauding, aggressive and dangerous foes.

Clans eventually merged into tribes and tribes into city-states. The concept of a complex ‘SOCIETAL COMMUNITY’ arose.

City-states eventually developed into countries. And the size of political-societal structures often did not stop there.

Some countries merged into empires. A few, such as the Roman Empire, proved successful and lasted nearly a thousand years. Most empires did not survive. They tended to collapse in upon themselves from their own weight.

We see this occurring in real-time with the European Union—an empire in the making that is collapsing in on itself after several decades because the populations of the respective countries comprising this bizarre confederation realize the rulers of that empire-in-the-making aren’t interested in providing for the safety, security, and well-being of the populations of countries of the European Union.

The European Union (EU ) operates against the interests and well-being of the populations of the countries that comprise it through the EU’s Government in Brussels. The EU Government in Brussels is amassing powers, usurping the powers retained by the respective countries, and destroying the culture, history, and heritage of those countries in the process.

WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP, FUNCTION, AND PURPOSE OF ‘GOVERNMENT’ TO A ‘COUNTRY’ AS A LARGE COMMUNITY—I.E., AS A POLITCO-SOCIAL ORGANIZATION?

Government is simply a mechanism through which a social organization provides for the safety and well-being of its people. That is true of local governments in this Country, and that is true of State governments and of the Federal Government. At least, that is what Government, at all levels, is supposed to do. And, if it cannot or will not perform that basic function, then it has no purpose for existing.

The people then must either form a new government within the existing societal structure or split off and reform itself, forming into a smaller socio-political group or several smaller socio-political groups and creating a new government.

The aim of the reconstruction or reformation of a new societal structural framework is to fulfill the fundamental function of all social communities: To provide for the physical safety and well-being of the individuals within it—that which the former societal framework had either never truly failed to provide for adequately or had since failed to provide for.

Since a country is a complex community, a country constructs a government to serve as the mechanism through which it provides for the protection of its people. See the article on the website, “USHistory.”

Governments almost certainly originated with the need to protect people from conflicts and to provide law and order. . . . governments first evolved as people discovered that protection was easier if they stayed together in groups and if they all agreed that one (or some) in the group should have more power than others. This recognition is the basis of Sovereignty, or the right of a group (later a country) to be free of outside interference. A country, then, needs to not only protect its citizens from one another, but it needs to organize to prevent outside attack.

The present government of the United States, in the hands of the Biden Administration, has demonstrated a lack of interest in providing for the American people's interests.

It has endangered the life, safety, and well-being of the citizens of the Country. Most electorate members suspected this would be true, and many knew this to be true, but many voted for Biden anyway, and some would still vote for him in 2024.

Conditioned psychologically through the systematic, incessant use of highly efficient state-of-the-art propaganda campaigns—delivered to the masses across the vast expanse of the Country—many Americans suspend their reasoning and vote against their own best interests.

In so doing, whether consciously or not, they have assisted those ruthless manipulators of the electoral process to take down the rest of the citizenry who, themselves, remain inured to the brainwashing.

Given the sheer scope of and severity of the damage the Biden Administration has done to this Country and to its citizenry, this has to be more a product of callous, calculated design and less the result of mere incompetence and ineptitude.

Many states and their localities serviced by Radical Left “WOKE” Politicians and mesmerized by the bizarre and overtly absurd secular religious dogma of “DIVERSITY, EQUITY and INCLUSION” that has metastasized across both our Country and many other Western countries around the world have come to realize that these political bodies have little or no interest or incentive in securing the life, safety, and well-being of the citizenry, which should be and IS the first order of business of any society.

See the article in the Washington Examiner, posted in October 2022.

What does this mean for our Country? It means that the citizenry cannot rely on Government to protect them.

It means the Government is not only NOT providing for the physical safety and well-being of Americans, it is decisively, avidly, disconcertingly, working against the safety and well-being of Americans. It is doing this to bring about the very dissolution of a COUNTRY AND PEOPLE the founders had created to serve and protect them from TYRANNY and THREATS emanating at HOME and abroad. The nature of that societal-political construct is:

A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.

This Government does not operate within the parameters set for it. This Government has grown perverse, corrupt, and perverted.

Police, Law Enforcement, and Justice at the Federal Level (FBI and DOJ) operate against the well-being of the American people. And this is clear from policy actions—even if the policies themselves are not expressly articulated or are deliberately and deviously disguised.  

Those federal policies have filtered down to several states and many more localities. And that means community police can no longer provide for or even deign to provide a modicum of security for their communities.

It means that most Americans, now aware of the truth about their Federal Government and of their State and local governments, realize they are on their own and must provide for their personal life, safety, and well-being.

A large-scale, complex Governmental structure has failed to provide for its people, contrary to the rationale and purpose for its existence.

Once again, the public realizes something that man realized instinctually at the dawn of existence: THAT IT FALLS TO EACH  INDIVIDUAL TO PROVIDE FOR HIS OWN SELF-PRESERVATION AND THAT OF HIS IMMEDIATE FAMILY. The complexity of society does not change this singular IMPERATIVE.

PERSONAL SURVIVAL IS THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS AS IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE.

Americans are arming themselves, and in droves—THIS—notwithstanding the Government’s myriad and continuous attempts to disarm the citizenry and to dissuade Americans from owning firearms.

See, e.g., New York Post article, December 4, 2023, titled, “NYC bodega owners, grocers arming themselves with guns amid violent thefts plaguing Big Apple.”

Hundreds of Big Apple supermarket and bodega owners are arming themselves as the epidemic of violent theft continues to plague their businesses.

Over the past year, the United Bodegas of America and the Bodega and Small Business Group said they’ve helped at least 230 store owners apply for their gun licenses, connecting them with concealed-carry classes required by the state to obtain a permit. 

The National Supermarket Association, which represents roughly 600 independent grocers, estimated a quarter of its members in the city are packing heat, compared to 10% pre-pandemic.

‘You see the necessity because the city is getting out of hand with the crime rate,’ said one supermarket owner, who purchased a 9mm SIG Sauer handgun two months ago, after thieves cut a hole in the roof of his Ridgewood, Queens, store to steal $3,000 and smash up the registers and camera system.

‘I feel safer having a . . . weapon with me,’ the 50-year-old said, especially when going to the bank.

The gun-toting grocer said he hasn’t had to use his firearm, but practices once a week for the worst-case scenario where he needs to defend himself and his staff.

‘I don’t know who is coming in, what I’ll confront, on my way in, on my way out,’ he said.

Radhames Rodriguez, who owns several bodegas in the Bronx, said he purchased a 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol after obtaining his concealed-carry license two months ago ‘If I see somebody coming to me and I’m going to lose my life because somebody’s got a gun aimed at me, a knife, I need to protect myself and my family,’ said Rodriguez, 60, who is also the UBA president.

Rodriguez said he previously had a ‘premises’ gun permit to protect his business during the crime-ridden ’80s, but as the city cleaned up under the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, he let the license lapse.

With the recent wave of violence, ‘it started looking like in the ‘80s, the ‘90s,’ he said. ‘That’s why I applied [for my new gun license], and this is why I have it.’

Many grocers have felt an increasing need to arm themselves partly because of slower police responses to their emergency calls, according to retired NYPD Sgt. Johnny Nunez, who leads 18-hour courses covering gun safety and live firearm training that are required by New York State for obtaining a concealed-carry permit. ‘They recognize that there’s less cops on the street, they’re attending all these rallies, and [they] have to defend [themselves],’ said Nunez, whose classes have been attended by many bodega and supermarket owners.

In an article titled, “NBC Poll: Record Number of American Voters Report Having a Gun in Their Home,” posted on November 21, 2023, on the website, “Reload,” the author, Jake Fogleman, had this to say:

More than half of the nation’s voters now live in a gun-owning household.

NBC News unveiled the results of its latest national survey on Tuesday. The poll found that 52 percent of registered voters say they or someone in their household owns a gun. That’s the highest-ever percentage of voters who acknowledge being in a gun-owning household since the outlet began tracking the question in 1999.

‘In the last ten years, we’ve grown [10 points] in gun ownership,’ Micah Roberts, who works for the poll’s creator Public Opinion Strategies, told NBC News. ‘That’s a very stunning number. By and large, things don’t change that dramatically that quickly when it comes to something as fundamental as whether you own a gun.”

The poll results provide the latest empirical evidence of a surge in American gun ownership rates. The chaos caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, subsequent bouts of civil unrest, and a sharp uptick in violent crime led 2020 and 2021 to set a series of gun sales records. Industry survey data suggests that first-time gun buyers made up an unprecedented share of the sales spike over that time. The NBC survey departs from earlier polls that have shown only modest increases in gun ownership since 2019 and provides more evidence that industry accounts have been accurate.

The outlet noted that the last time it polled gun ownership, before the pandemic in 2019, 46 percent of Americans reported living in a gun-owning household. In February 2013, the survey found that the share was 42 percent.

The poll also found evidence of another phenomenon the industry and previous polling have pointed at during the past few years: a rise in minority gun ownership. NBC found that 41 percent of Black voters now say they or someone they live with owns a gun, up 17 percentage points from 2019. White voters continue to be most likely to report living in a gun-owning household at 56 percent. But that number increased by just 3 points from 2019.”

See also the article in NBC News, posted on November 21, 2023.

Back in 2007 only 33% of Democrats said they owned a gun. In 2023, that number has jumped to 41%.

‘In the last ten years, we've grown [10 points] in gun ownership. That's a very stunning number,’ said Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm that co-conducted the poll with members of the Democratic polling firm Hart Research.

‘By and large, things don't change that dramatically that quickly when it comes to something as fundamental as whether you own a gun,’ Roberts added.

But, note the discrepancy with Pew Research data on Democrat percentages, cited in a September 13, 2023 article.

Even so, news report accounts suggest, from these statistics, that Americans of all political stripes no longer accept the claptrap spouted by the news and social media propaganda mill, nor the efforts of the Biden Administration and myriad Soros-state and local governmental leaders and officials, misdirecting concerns over personal safety.

These Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxists attempt to deflect attention away from the soaring VIOLENT CRIME infecting and impacting the Country incessantly and toward discussion over and criticism of ARMED SELF-DEFENSE.

These forces bent on the destruction of a free Constitutional Republic know well of the profound, emphatic effectiveness of firearms in preserving one’s life and securing one’s physical safety and well-being from threats posed by violent aggressors. They also know that THE WELL-ARMED CITIZENRY is the best defense against the TYRANNY of GOVERNMENT.

But these ruthless forces that crush entire countries—hell-bent on the destruction of the United States as the only TRULY free Country in the world—rail constantly and vehemently on their singular and fundamental obsession, apprehension, and dread: MILLIONS OF ARMED AMERICANS (THE “COMMON MAN”) who can thwart their TYRANNY. And why is that?

Instances of VIOLENT CRIME serve the purpose of TYRANTS as they must disrupt and ruin a FREE REPUBLIC to usher in their TOTALITARIAN REGIME. But they talk of none of this. They don’t even suggest this. CRIMINAL VIOLENCE IS MERGED INTO “GUN VIOLENCE.” AND PROPAGANDISTS REFRAIN FROM DRAWING A DISTINCTION BETWEEN WHO IT IS THAT WIELDS GUNS AND THE PURPOSE FOR KEEPING AND BEARING ARMS.

It is for this reason the FORCES THAT CRUSH inculcate a fear of firearms in the minds of the public and, at once, attempt their damnedest to dispel and dissipate concern over skyrocketing crime.

This topsy-turvy reconstruction of needs, concerns, and fears serves the agenda, aims, and interests of those who seek to demoralize and confound the public and topple society.

They attempt to distract the COMMON MAN. But it isn’t working.

The COMMON MAN isn’t buying any of the irrational, simplistic narratives any longer—not when reality sets in with clarity: THE LIFE, SAFETY, AND WELL-BEING OF THE COMMON MAN ARE IN JEOPARDY, AND THE GOVERNMENT IS OBLIVIOUS TO THAT FACT OR, OTHERWISE, RUTHLESSLY, AND DELIBERATELY, AND ACTIVELY AND AVIDLY ENDANGERING THEIR LIVES.

See the November 29, 2023 article from the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal published in the paper's print edition, titled “Opinion: Many More Voters With Guns.” The Editorial Board pointed out that “Black households with firearms have gone up 17 points since 2019.” This is a stunning statistic, especially since Blacks remain an especial target of Neo-Marxist and political Progressive proselytizing and propagandizing that try incessantly and vociferously to dissuade innocent Blacks from arming themselves against violent attack. Blacks are not buying this. While all Americans are less safe due to escalating violent crime across America, urban City Blacks feel the brunt of this more so than any other ethnic group.

The WSJ Editorial Board reports that,

The share of voters with a firearm in the household is 52%, up from 46% in 2019 and 42% in 2013. A partisan split is evident. Gun households now include 66% of Republicans, 45% of independents, and 41% of Democrats. This is no surprise, in part because rural areas tilt right, and that’s where hunting is a family event and bears might be prowling the woods.

Notable, though, is that the numbers are increasing the fastest on the left side of the aisle. In 2019, 64% of Republican voters reported that their household had a firearm, compared with 33% of Democrats. The figure for Republicans has risen two points over four years, compared with eight for Democrats.

Twenty-four percent of black voters were in gun households in 2019. Today it’s 41%, up 17 points. Over the same period, the number for white voters rose three points, to 56% from 53%. Could this increase in black ownership be related to self-defense concerns amid the runup in urban crime? The survey doesn’t delve into the reasons, but it’s a reasonable guess.

The NBC survey includes 1,000 registered voters, and the margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 points. But it fits other evidence, and the trend is hard to miss. The Second Amendment protects Americans who want to own firearms for self-defense, and lately millions more people have availed themselves of that right.

Radical Left political organizations don’t deny high crime rates across America, especially in the large, confined urban areas run by Soros-supported political leaders. They run with it. See, e.g., the articles posted in “Cap 20” (American Progress), Brady United, and the Alliance For Gun Responsibility.

But these Leftist organizations duplicitously merge the notion of ‘CRIMINAL VIOLENCE’ (which they never mention overtly) into the notion of ‘GUN VIOLENCE’ (which they recite ad nauseam).

They do this intentionally to dissuade Americans from arming themselves against ENDEMIC VIOLENT CRIME, which they have no intention of dealing with.

The Radical Left mob attempts, insidiously, to create in the mind of the public an internal phobia toward an inanimate object, THE GUN, and thereby deflect attention away from where attention belongs: the violent psychopathic criminals and dangerous lunatic elements, terrorizing the public.

The Marxists and the “Goody-Goody” Progressive “elites” construct false narratives, propagated by a seditious Press and social media, about a socialist utopia they wish to construct for the seeming betterment of all mankind. But, they must destroy free Republic to do that. And one aspect of their agenda is to incentivize criminals and lunatics, urging them to run amok to demoralize the public, harm businesses, and destabilize society.

Those hitherto mesmerized public members have begun to see through the thick gauze of deceit.

Those previously docile sheep have begun to see that——

The answer to curbing high incidences of violent crime in Black communities is simple: get criminals and lunatics off the streets and encourage the public to arm themselves.

BUT THIS REQUIRES A CHANGE IN MINDSET—AWAY FROM PRIOR COMPLACENT, MINDLESS, SENSELESS ACQUIESENCE TO NONSENSICAL, IRRATIONAL PROPAGANDA PROPAGATED AND DISSEMINATED BY COMPLICIT NEWS—TOWARD USE OF ONE’S CRITICAL REASONING FACULTIES.

If there are any decent, honest, moral, incorruptible Politicians, they must understand that the criminal justice system and codes must be utilized vigorously to bring criminals to justice. They are not to be utilized for mollycoddling. And the police are to be utilized to protect their communities from the frightful impact of criminal violence instead of handcuffing and straitjacketing them.

These Politicians must come to recognize and acknowledge that while “PUBLIC SAFETY” is and remains the purview of the Police and the Criminal Justice System, “PERSONAL SAFETY”—i.e., “PERSONAL ARMED SAFETY”—goes hand-in-hand with “PUBLIC SAFETY.”

Most Americans—regardless of ethnicity—know this and always knew this to be true—and those having previously fallen prey to constant, industrial-strength brainwashing have slowly come to their senses. See the November 22, 2023, posted in “The Hill,” reiterating and emphasizing the import of the NBC poll.

More than half of American voters, a record-high number, say they or someone in their household owns a gun, a new NBC News poll found.

According to the survey, which has polled voters since 1999 about U.S. household gun ownership, 52 percent of respondents this year said they or someone in their home owns a gun.

The number is up from 46 percent in 2019, according to an NBC News and Wall Street Journal poll. More than a decade ago in February 2013, the share of U.S. households that owned a gun was 42 percent.

‘In the last 10 years, we’ve grown [10 points] in gun ownership. That’s a very stunning number,’ Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies, who co-conducted the poll with Hart Research, told NBC News. “By and large, things don’t change that dramatically that quickly when it comes to something as fundamental as whether you own a gun.

The survey found that gun ownership falls along partisan lines, as it has for years.

While Republican respondents have always surpassed Democrats in gun ownership, the survey shows that more Democrats own guns than ever before.

Since 2004, Republican gun ownership has increased incrementally. Nearly 20 years ago, 57 percent of GOP respondents owned a gun compared to 66 percent who said they do now.

Democrats also have seen increases. According to the survey, 33 percent of Democrats in 2004 said they or someone in their household owned a gun. This year, 41 percent said the same.  

The poll found that white voters tended to own guns at higher rates than voters of color, but gun ownership among Black voters has “jumped in recent years.”

The survey found that voters were split about how to view government intervention regarding gun ownership: 48 percent said they are concerned the government will not do enough to regulate access to firearms and 47 percent said they think the government will go too far in restricting gun rights, NBC News reported.

The NBC News survey was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and members of Hart Research from Nov. 10-14 among 1,000 registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

So, even as the Press and broadcast and cable news and social media spout their nonsense about the dangers of guns, and even as they continue to bemoan the armed American citizen, and even as they thrust their “WOKE” policies on the populace, and even as they claim that ‘WOKENESS” is THE FUTURE of THE WHOLE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, the fact remains that most Americans aren’t buying any of it.

A preponderance of “Independents” and, truth to tell, even a growing number of Democrats have come to see the error of their ways in having voted for such false “Moderate Politicians” as the corrupt, dementia-riddled, feeble Joe Biden and Soros-sponsored state and municipal political officials.

Yet these Progressive and Marxist state governments, along with a corrupt, deceitful, and seditious Biden Administration, continue on their way—heedless of the public’s legitimate concerns, contemptuous of the public’s needs, and oblivious to Government’s duties, responsibilities, and obligations to the citizenry, and to the Country, and to the Constitution of the United States.

These governments continue to defy the natural law right to armed self-defense.

They disregard and disdain the High Court’s Heller, McDonald, and Bruen rulings.

They design and implement a constant stream of illegal policies and enact scores of unconstitutional laws, which require the filing of expensive lawsuits to counter them.

And the seditious Leftist Press, Cable and Broadcast news organs, and social media companies continue to support the passage of these unlawful, abjectly absurd laws, proselytizing, pontificating on, and reiterating their fanciful fairy tales about a plague of “Mass Shootings” infecting America. They do all this to separate the common man from his firearms and ammunition, to leave him abjectly defenseless, completely and helplessly and hopelessly dependent on a Government that has no desire to provide for his physical safety and couldn’t care less about his life and well-being.

A seditious Government controlled by Radical Leftists go on about the pervasiveness of “Assault Weapons” and all those “Large Capacity Magazines” and of the existence of  “Gun Violence” and the persistence of a “Gun Culture,” making the erection of a presumed “civilized” well-ordered, well-engineered “Democratic Socialist Society impossible.

The American public would, wisely, have none of it and demand that the Government acknowledge, honor, and respect the fundamental, unalienable, illimitable, unmodifiable, eternal right to armed self-defense and of the covenant made between the Government and the American people at the inception of the Republic. The horrors wrought by the Biden Administration—and all those wrongs perpetrated by that corrupt Administration on the American people—have unfortunately seen replication in a frightful number of Soros-backed State and local governments.

Having had enough of New York’s consistent failure to abide by the Heller and McDonald Rulings for well over a decade, and sick and tired of a century of illegal New York handgun licensing that, through the decades, had become increasingly more repressive, leaving New Yorkers increasingly defenseless due to increasing violent crime and through negative actions and pitiful inaction of an uncaring, unresponsive, and irresponsible State Government, New Yorkers challenged New York’s Hochul Government in Federal Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court Bruen case came about as a specific challenge to the “Proper Cause” requirement of New York’s concealed handgun carry license law.

The Hochul Government likely worked for months, anticipating a negative ruling, and then concocted new ways to get around the ruling. It devised a “sensitive location” requirement, added a training requirement, and incorporated new standards for its “good moral character” requirement, among other things.

None of this is surprising, but it is all reprehensible because the actions of the Hochul Government demonstrate overt disdain for the Judiciary, i.e., the U.S. Supreme Court (the Third Branch of the Federal Government), and demonstrate, too, a continued defiance of the natural law right to armed self-defense, which is the cornerstone our Nation’s heritage. As a Natural Law Right, it is important for the American citizen to understand today, as the as Americans understood at the founding of our Republic, that the right propounded in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution is not to be perceived of as an invention of man, but is, a preexisting, illimitable, unmodifiable, eternal right that therefore precedes the existence of a Country and a Country’s Government.

No other Country on Earth professes to understand this, accept it, and abide by the stricture of it, even as a few of them, at least, do make allowance for it by permitting some citizens, at least, to keep and bear arms for their personal defense.

But for those Countries that do, such as Switzerland and Israel, those Countries perceive the right as emanating from the State, from the Government, and not as a natural right emanating from the Divine Creator.

But such “RIGHT” bestowed onto man by the grace of the State is not truly a “RIGHT” at all but only a “PRIVILEGE,” one subject to suspension, revocation, or rescission at any time.

This is the position of New York’s Hochul Government. If there is any doubt about this in the mind of a person seeking to possess a handgun in New York, that person might well reflect on why it is and how it came to be that he must acquire a handgun license as a condition precedent to the lawful exercise of a fundamental, unalienable, eternal right. And, he might well note the language on the back of his License that sets forth in clear and succinct language that the Government declares its right to revoke the license at any time.

It is discordant to hear from Governor Hochul that the State has a duty to provide for “PUBLIC SAFETY” and that the High Court’s Bruen rulings make that duty difficult through the very idea that a person might wish to provide for his “PERSONAL SAFETY” by arming himself against the very real possibility of violent assault by an aggressor.

WHY SHOULD THE ONE OBLIGATION —THE OBLIGATION OF GOVERNMENT TO PROVIDE FOR PUBLIC SAFETY (A DUTY THE GOVERNMENT DOES A HORRIBLE JOB OF PROVIDING FOR ANYWAY) OVERRIDE OR SEEMINGLY MAKE REDUNDANT ONE’S RIGHT TO PROVIDE FOR HIS PERSONAL SAFETY? THE BRUEN RULINGS DON’T SO MUCH AS SUGGEST THAT ONE’S RIGHT TO PROVIDE FOR ONE’S PERSONAL SAFETY MAKES REDUNDANT A DUTY OF GOVERNMENT TO PROMOTE AND PROVIDE FOR THE SAFETY OF THE COMMUNITY GENERALLY.

MOREOVER——

THE HIGH COURT IN BRUEN DIDN’T DEIGN TO CREATE A NEW RIGHT. IT DID NO MORE THAN REAFFIRM ONE’S NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE AND, SO, ADMONISHED THE NEW YORK GOVERNMENT FOR UNCONSTITUTIONALLY AND UNCONSCIONABLY CONSTRAINING THE EXERCISE OF THAT RIGHT.

HOWEVER, THE COURT DID NOT SUGGEST THAT NEW YORK WAS HENCEFORTH PROHIBITED FROM UNDERTAKING THE STATE’S RIGHT AND DUTY TO PROVIDE FOR THE COMMUNITY’S SAFETY.

Hochul’s assertions about “Public Safety” are duplicitous, insulting, and justifiably anger the public.

Her Government DOES NOT provide for “PUBLIC SAFETY.” Yet that Government would demand the citizenry refrain from providing for their own PERSONAL SAFETY.

This obstinancy is especially hard to stomach given the following:

• First, the State’s peculiar and consistent policy of leniency toward hardened, vicious, psychopathic criminals and dangerous lunatics,

• Second, the State’s failure to do anything concrete to turn a dysfunctional Criminal Justice System into an effective, efficient, functioning one,

• Third, shackling the police from so much as attempting to provide the community with a modicum of “PUBLIC SAFETY” and,

• Fourth, establishing bizarre, absurd priorities such as placing the comforts of illegal aliens over the needs of American citizens and expending scarce taxpayer funds on dubious projects that do not serve the interests of the taxpayer.

One is compelled to infer that Kathy Hochul and her Government have no genuine desire to promote or provide for public safety for New Yorkers.

Hochul’s admission of her open hostility to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen rulings is, therefore, mystifying.

For, if, as is clear, Hochul’s Government has no desire to provide for PUBLIC SAFETY—even if the Government could provide for PUBLIC SAFETY if it wanted to—why would this Governor deny outright an innocent individual’s natural law, unalienable right and prerogative to provide for his own safety and that of his family? The answer is that she doesn’t want the public to provide for its own PERSONAL SAFETY either.

Hochul’s words and actions, reflective of her attitudes and inclinations, are both logically and pragmatically incoherent, ethically indefensible, and overtly absurd.

It is as if psychotic mental asylum patients had taken over the Government.

This sad condition of the State proceeds from and mirrors the policies of its leaders.

If Governor Hochul were truly insane, then one could reasonably forgive the policies she implements. They would be the product of that insanity: the ineptitude and incompetence of a truly discordant mind.

But likely, Governor Hochul is not mentally unfit nor legally insane. In that event, she knows exactly what it is she is doing. Her policies come out of a secretive agenda. They are carefully designed to destabilize society and demoralize the populace. and, in so doing, rend the socio-philosophical fabric of our Nation’s history, heritage, and culture.

Of course, she can’t make her intentions known to the polity. So she cultivates the necessary “spin” to make terrible goals and strategies sound rational—or at least plausible. And our tax dollars are utilized against us. See the article on Fox News.  

In June 2022, immediately after the publication of the Bruen, on decision, Hochul began with this announcement to the public and to the Press:

“Good morning, everyone. We just received some very disturbing news from Washington that the Supreme Court of the United States of America has stripped away the state of New York's right and responsibility to protect its citizens with a decision—and which we are still digesting—which is frightful in its scope of how they are setting back this nation and our ability to protect our citizens back to the days of our founding fathers. And the language we're reading is shocking.”

Hochul went to work. She revamped New York’s concealed handgun carry licensing requirements. She made them even more restrictive, in absolute defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen rulings.

In August 2022, Hochul made this further announcement, in seeming defense of those actions:

“In response to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down New York's century-old concealed carry law, we took swift and thoughtful action to keep New Yorkers safe. . . . ‘I refuse to surrender my right as Governor to protect New Yorkers from gun violence or any other form of harm. In New York State, we will continue leading the way forward and implementing common-sense gun safety legislation.”

A challenge to the outrageous, unconstitutional action of the Government came swiftly.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York denied the initial suit, Antonyuk versus Bruen, on procedural grounds, strongly suggesting the Plaintiff should refile as the Plaintiff would likely succeed on the merits.

The Radical Left Attorney General, Letitia James, still claimed a victory, attempting to deceive the public. Her remarks don’t address the substance of the Court decision. Her remarks are simply an advert, through which she reiterates the talking points of the Government’s policies contra Personal Safety and the right of fundamental right of the individual to armed self-defense. The AG bombastically exclaims:

As gun violence continues to impact communities across the country, today’s decision is a victory in our efforts to protect New Yorkers. Responsible gun control measures save lives and any attempts by the gun lobby[?] to tear down New York’s sensible gun control laws will be met with fierce defense of the law [of New York]. We will continue to defend the constitutionality [of our State’s laws] to protect all New Yorkers.

The Plaintiff, Ivan Antonyuk, and several other New York handgun licensees refiled their lawsuit and in the same U.S. District Court. The Court, this time, found for the Plaintiffs, issuing a Temporary Restraining Order, preventing the State from enforcing several pertinent—as the AG Letitia James described them—”integral aspects of New York State’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) . . . .”

See “Memorandum Of Law In Support Of Motion For A Stay Pending Appeal And An Administrative Stay Pending Resolution Of The Motion,” filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by the AG, Letitia James, on behalf of the State, in the case Antonyuk vs. Hochul [Antonyuk II]. The State filed the case on October 10, 2022.

Note: Antonyuk versus Hochul was subsequently recaptioned Antonyuk versus Nigrelli after the Court dismissed Kathy Hochul from the suit, finding the Governor an improper Defendant to the action.

The Second Circuit lifted the TRO, allowing the State to proceed with enforcement of the CCIA during the pendency of the suit.

On the Plaintiffs’ appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the lifting of the stay, The Court, in a rare hearing on an interlocutory order, allowed continued enforcement of the CCIA but did not make any other ruling other than to warn the State not to tarry in the prosecution of the suit.

Once again, the State claimed a victory where there really was none. On January 11, 2023, Hochul issued the same idiotic and false pronouncement in her Press Release.

Keeping New Yorkers safe is my top priority. I'm pleased that this Supreme Court order will allow us to continue enforcing the gun laws we put in place to do just that. We believe that these thoughtful, sensible regulations will help to prevent gun violence, and we will keep working with the New York Attorney General's office on protecting the laws.

Antonyuk II remains on the Second Circuit’s docket over one year after the State filed its Memorandum asking the Second Circuit to lift the Stay of the TRO.

On September 2023, two months after the High Court allowed continued enforcement of the CCIA, Hochul sought to remind New Yorkers of her apparent commitment to keeping the public safe.

“As Governor, I took swift action to keep people safe following the Supreme Court's decision in Bruen to strike down our state’s century-old concealed carry law. One year later, we are continuing to lead the nation in the fight against gun violence and saving lives.”

Well, New York isn’t safe from violent crime, be it violence through the use of a gun or through the use of any other implement, including an aggressor’s own limbs and body.

It is all pretense. There is nothing “safe” about New York for its residents. So, any suggestion of caring about public safety is a ruse and isn’t believable. Statistics paint a different picture from the one presented by Hochul.

Both from her words and actions, it is clear Hochul did not ever intend to promote public safety. See criminal justice statistics for the entire State of New York:

See also the articles published in the New York Post:

March 25, 2023, May 24, 2023, July 12, 2023, July 29, 2023, and September 9, 2023. See the article on the crime surge in NYC in 2023, as reported by the City Journal.

Hochul’s pronouncements are no more than empty words. Violent crime continues to soar in New York, especially in the largest City in the State.

Failing to protect the people of New York from the actions of violent criminals is bad enough. Worse is her pretense of protecting people by preventing them from allowing them to protect themselves.

But what is perhaps less noticeable, except through a recitation of the New York Government’s statements about a supposed commitment to protect the public from “Gun Violence” as provided hereinabove for the reader, is the nature of the State’s pronouncements.

It is the same monotonous refrain about public safety and protecting the public from “guns.” The public hears it over and over again.

Is the State Government trying to place the public in a hypnotic trance by droning on endlessly repetitiously, simplistically about an intention to promote PUBLIC SAFETY and by claiming that PUBLIC SAFETY is obtained and maintained by constraining the public’s access to firearms for self-defense?

The message delivered IS CLEAR ENOUGH.

But——

The intention to deliberately deceive and seduce New Yorkers through the systematic use of psychological conditioning—the hypnotic recitation of a  couple of key phrases over and over again—MAY NOT BE.

But the desire to brainwash the public into accepting the false belief, one, that the New York Government under both Kathy Hochul and a Democrat-controlled Legislature in Albany honestly desires and intends to promote PUBLIC SAFETY in the State, and, two, that the safety and well-being of the public is a true and pure pursuit of the New York Government, and, three, that public safety can only be attained through the State’s commitment to continually restrict a New York citizen’s exercise of his or her natural law right to armed self-defense, is readily deduced from the State’s messages and messaging apparatus.

And the reader should keep in mind that in the State’s messaging about PUBLIC SAFETY and restraining a natural law right to armed self-defense, nothing at all is said about CRIMINAL VIOLENCE on the streets or of CRIME GENERALLY, such as property crime, of which violence often follows and must be seen as an inevitable byproduct of any crime; nor is there any statement by the Government of a commitment to crack down on a CRIME.

Whenever Kathy Hochul or another Democrat Party politician says anything about crime, it is only to mislead the public or lie outright about the nature of and the scope of crime in the State and, especially, in the City of New York.

Governor Hochul need not remind New Yorkers that PUBLIC SAFETY is a PREROGATIVE of the State.

In fact, PUBLIC SAFETY IS a duty of the Government.

PUBLIC SAFETY IS THE PRIMARY DUTY AND OBLIGATION OF GOVERNMENT.

But it does not follow from the Government’s duty to perform THE PUBLIC SAFETY FUNCTION—one that THIS STATE happens to be notoriously and continuously derelict in—that the GOVERNMENT can lawfully or ethically deny the people their right to defend their own life.

PERSONAL SAFETY precedes PUBLIC SAFETY, for the right to self-preservation is the most basic of all natural law rights, and that right preexists the State and any State function.

And no State function can take over or override one’s natural law proclivity to provide THE defense of that matter most sacred to him: HIS OWN LIFE, HIS OWN SAFETY, and HIS OWN PERSONAL WELL-BEING.

And that NATURAL LAW RIGHT becomes, as well, a personal duty and obligation when it comes to caring for one’s own family.

As so understood, one should infer that the state’s obligation to provide for PUBLIC SAFETY should not be seen as in conflict with or inconsistent with the individual’s natural law right to provide for his own PERSONAL SAFETY. And this is as it must be for: the State is under NO OBLIGATION to provide for and to guarantee anyone’s personal safety except in very narrow, defined circumstances that are exceptions to the general rule of sovereign immunity.

Hochul tacitly claims that PERSONAL SAFETY is subsumed in PUBLIC SAFETY. It isn’t and never was.

See the Arbalest Quarrel article posted in Ammoland Shooting Sports News on April 5, 2022.

The article recites and links to several other AQ articles on both the subject of the role of police and the application of “sovereign immunity” to the Government’s immunity from liability for any harm.

We point to the fact that the Government is not ordinarily liable for loss of life that accrues to a citizen due to a claim of police having failed to protect” an individual from harm. This remains true even in cases where a police department generally asserts it will protect a specific person from physical harm but fails to do so, and the person comes to harm or death from a threat made known to the police beforehand.

However, states do not make this fact known to residents. That is less problematic in those states that do not actively and avidly constrain one’s right to personal armed defense.

But this is problematic in Anti-Second Amendment States such as New York that do actively and avidly constrain the right to armed defense.

The Hochul Government expressly promotes the idea that it provides PUBLIC SAFETY—it doesn’t—at least not effectively and competently and, indeed, not even adequately.

The Hochul Government suggests that New Yorkers need not concern themselves with PERSONAL SAFETY when out and about in public because the State’s duty to provide for PUBLIC SAFETY resolves that matter to mean that the Government CAN AND DOES provide for one’s PERSONAL SAFETY by providing for PUBLIC SAFETY. That is nonsense.

The State provides for neither. And as for the former, it has no obligation to do so even if it does have an obligation to provide for the latter.

The true horror evinced from Hochul’s assertions comes, then, not merely from her failure to provide even a modicum of public safety but that, at one and the same time, she denies residents the right to secure their own personal safety and perfunctorily dismisses any idea that such is necessary.

All the while, Hochul suggests disingenuously that either one’s PERSONAL SAFETY and one’s PUBLIC SAFETY are one and the same thing—that the one merges into or is subsumed by the other—or that there is no such thing as a “Right” to PERSONAL SAFETY anyway, whether “ARMED” or not.

This is seen by the fact the Hochul Government never expressly uses the phrase PERSONAL SAFETY or “PERSONAL ‘ARMED’ SAFETY.”

The Hochul Government is oblivious to the need for PUBLIC SAFETY and PERSONAL ARMED SAFETY.

Her avowed abhorrence toward and strong remonstrations against the natural law right to armed self-defense—especially given the fact of soaring violent crime and her Government’s reluctance to do anything concrete about crime and criminals—points to a failed Government and a society that is falling into ruin.

Hochul is fooling no one with her lies and pretense of piety and concern.  

And, for his part, the Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, is taking his cue from both the Governor of the State and from the Biden Administration.

Adams is doing nothing to protect the people who live or work in the City.

But at least Adams isn’t pretending to care about the innocent residents of the City. He points to a budget shortfall that, as he tries to explain it, requires him to reduce the number of police available to protect the residents. But is that true? No, it isn’t.

Adams demonstrates that his priority is seeing to the comfort and well-being of illegal aliens, not the citizens of the United States who reside or work in the City.

One might think this means Adams is suggesting that innocent, average, law-abiding, rational New Yorkers would do well to consider obtaining a handgun for protection, especially when out in public because the crime rate in the City—as horrible as it was during de Blasio’s tenure as Mayor—has undergone no visible significant improvement once Adams took over. But Adams doesn’t mean this at all.

Yet, if the imperative of armed self-defense in a dangerous City like New York was always great, that imperative is of another order of magnitude now with police cuts on the horizon and over a hundred thousand illegal aliens milling aimlessly about, including murderous international cartel members. All of this magnifies exponentially the enormity of the incipient threat to American citizens residing in and/or working in the City.

But Mayor Eric Adams is no more a proponent of the idea of ARMED SELF-DEFENSE than is either New York Governor Kathy Hochul or the Grand Harlequin-In-Chief, the weak-willed, dementia-riddled, corrupt Joe Biden.

So, then, millions of average New Yorkers are left to fend for themselves—but without the effectiveness of a handgun.

And, for those who have obtained a valid New York concealed handgun carry license and can therefore carry a handgun in public for self-defense, it can be of minimal usefulness since much of the City is now considered a “sensitive place” where firearms cannot be lawfully used for self-defense.

‘Sensitive Place Restrictions” are not, of course, an issue for the psychopathic criminal or the crazed lunatic.

The entire City remains under siege.

New Yorkers are not left in a “good place”—THAT PLACE being New York, especially that State’s largest City, home to millions of people.

The Government has failed New Yorkers at both the State and municipal levels. And the Biden Administration has failed the Country at the Federal level.

But, once a government fails its people at a fundamental level—protecting them from harm—no reason exists for that government’s continued existence. The individual is bereft of protection. And it is as if he is residing again in the wild but with one qualifier. In the wild, there is no government to tell the individual that he cannot prevail on himself to provide for his personal protection.

In a failed State, such as the United States is rapidly becoming, that State does not provide for the safety of the community but nonetheless prevails on the citizen to refrain from arming himself to provide for his own protection.

There are all too many public officials at all too many levels of Government who represent an omnipresent danger to the well-being of the people and to the prosperity of the Country. This disturbing fact means the continued existence of our Country as a free Constitutional Republic is very much in doubt.

The continuation of a Democrat Party regime in 2024 is too awful to contemplate.

Even a Republican, other than Donald Trump, cannot save our Republic. We are too far gone.

Much is being made of Nikki Haley.

The fact that Neoliberal Globalist forces are flocking to her and would like to see her as the 47th President of the United States is not cause for celebration. See, e.g., the November 25 article published in the New York Times titled, “Could Haley Really Beat Trump? Big Donors Are Daring to Dream”.

And, if Biden drops dead during the new year or, otherwise, becomes so incapacitated it is impossible to wheel him into a Press Conference even to have him say two words, then whom do the Democrats present: Kamala Harris? Gavin Newsome? Michelle Obama?

The fact remains the only hope to salvage our Republic is to see Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.

This appears probable if one trusts the poll numbers. But the poll numbers can change. And attempts are afoot to try to keep him off the ballot. And, even if those attempts fail, and Donald Trump emerges as the clear primary favorite, can the RNC manipulate the rules at the Convention to nominate someone else? See, e.g., the article in Vox.

Let us pray that Trump retains his fortitude and that even as myriad forces work in front of and behind the scenes to destroy his candidacy or to orchestrate his defeat once again at the ballot box, he will become the 47th President and our free Republic will continue to exist and persist for decades yet to come, after all.

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*The digital encyclopedia, “Brittanica,” is the modern rendition of the comprehensive hard copy reference tomes, Encyclopedia Brittanica, for those old enough to remember.

GREG KELLY’S “JUSTICE FOR ALL”—A BOOK REVIEW BY STEPHEN L. D’ANDRILLI

Everybody who’s anybody has a new book out these days and is promoting sales. This book adds to the lengthy list.

But Greg Kelly’s book “Justice For All” stands out among the others as a must buy, must read because it is based on a unique perspective.

To understand Greg Kelly it is first important to know something about his father, Raymond  Kelly, to whom he dedicated his book.

In the “Acknowledgments,” Greg states, “The Impetus For Writing This Book is to honor my father, Raymond Kelly, the longest-serving and most highly regarded police commissioner in New York history.”

Greg points out that his father served as the “Top Cop” under two Mayors, David Dinkins and Michael Bloomberg.

There is no doubt the author of “Justice For All” is emulating his father who was an inspiration for him and whose life and career stand as an inspiration for all patriotic Americans.

Greg says “. . . though I took a career path different from [my father], I absorbed his core values. After I finished high school, while preparing to enter Fordham University in the Bronx, I signed up for Marine Officer Candidates School. My father and his brothers were all Marines. When I asked by father why he had joined the Marines, he told me, “I wanted to be with the best.’ That sounded like a reasonable goal and one that I wanted to follow, too.”  

The Marines served Greg well, and he in turn has served his Country well.

Greg Kelly, like his father, has had a distinguished military record. Greg was an aviator. He served as a U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel fighter pilot and he is a decorated combat veteran. He is obviously highly motivated, and that motivation and success continued after his military career.

See The Greg Kelly Podcast, “About Greg.”

Greg became a leading broadcast journalist and political reporter at NY1 covering 911, at “Ground Zero,” the WTC.

Thereafter, working for FOX News as a reporter, he was the first reporter to broadcast live images of U.S. forces reaching Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace in Baghdad. See, e.g., the article in “TV Spy.”

He hosted “Good Day New York” for almost ten years, and he is presently the anchor of “Gregg Kelly Reports” on Newsmax, the host of “The Kelly Show” on WABC, and “The Greg Kelly Podcast.”

Given his father’s fame and stature as Police Commissioner, and given his own notability as a conservative commentator, Greg was on the radar of the Mainstream Media (“MSM”) Press that sought to discredit him. And it found an opening when Greg Kelly was accused of rape.

The story was blown up out of all proportion to the facts, but it garnered national headlines, as it was designed to do. Kelly weathered the storm. The Press could not bring him down.

Perhaps because of the personal vicious attack on him by the Press and, realizing both the nature of its power and whom it is that power is directed to—the American people, rather than the treacherous Government—Greg Kelly is acutely sensitive to the manipulativeness and duplicity of evil forces within our Country. And those forces, unfortunately, include the Press.

Although Greg dedicated his book, “Justice For All,” to his father, as I have pointed out at the outset, and, although he discusses his father’s background at some length in the “Introduction,” he did not intend for this book to be a biography about his father. It isn’t, nor is this book to be considered an autobiography. It isn’t that, either.

Rather, Greg writes this book as a warning to the American people. He makes clear that our Country is under attack. But unlike the war that his father fought as a Marine in Vietnam and unlike the reporting of the aftermath of the Gulf War in the Middle East that Greg covered as a journalist, a present war for the survival of our Country is underway right here at home. And the American people must wake up to that fact.

“Justice For All” serves as a profound “wake-up” call for the American people. And that, the reader may reasonably infer, is the salient reason for this book.

As a news reporter, the author is well-attuned to current events and his training and acumen both as a past combat aviator and working today as a news reporter, he is acutely observant of events around him, and he is profoundly concerned by what he sees.

America is under dire threat of destruction from within. The reader comes away with a clear understanding and appreciation of this threat, as Greg explains its nature and the extent of it in excruciating detail.

The reader comes to see that the title of the book, “Justice For All,” was not chosen casually.

The title, taken at face value, expresses “hope,” but, after reading the book, I realize the title conveys sarcasm, too, because there is massive injustice in America.

The Framers of our Constitution expected the Press to be the Guardian of our Republic.

They would be appalled to learn that this Press is now working, not on behalf of the Republic and the people, but on behalf of a treacherous Government which, under the present Biden Administration, is actively, avidly plotting against the people whose interests it claims, falsely, to serve, and is deliberately undermining the safety and security of our free Constitutional Republic—a brazen betrayal of the oath those serving in the Administration had taken.

The American people find themselves disconcertingly but incontrovertibly at war with their own treacherous Government—a Government in league with our mortal enemies.

An International Marxist Socialist Counterrevolution to the American Revolution of 1776 is underway.

The Biden Administration, many members of Congress, and a seditious Press are intricately and inextricably tied to it.

This present war is not being fought with firearms and cannons. At least not yet.

Hopefully, a “hot” war at home fought by American Patriots against those evil forces, both foreign and domestic, that desire and intend to destroy our National history and heritage, our core values and Christian ethos, our Nation’s Constitution, and our fundamental, unalienable rights and liberties—all that makes us Americans and that define what it means to be “An American”—can and will be avoided. Yet, that remains to be seen.

Greg doesn’t venture into an exploration of this area.

But I see the ominous portents and there is every indication our Nation stands on the brink of irreparable ruin.

Powerful, well-organized, and funded Radical Progressive Left-Wing forces have mobilized in recent years, at a markedly rapid pace, to destroy America as we know it.

Their aim is to divide and demoralize the American people and destabilize society.

In effectuating that, they seek to replace a free Constitutional Republic with a Socialist/Marxist Collectivist State through which the acolytes of Marxism ruthlessly subjugate the citizenry, reduce them to penury, and exercise control over their every thought and action.

With a sure journalistic purpose and expertise, “Justice For All” explains the “why” and the “how” of this Radical Left takeover of our Nation.

This Government, under the control of the Biden Administration, has obtained assistance from a seditious Press, from Marxists in academia, and from powerful and wealthy foreign and domestic business and financial interests.

Many average Americans have fallen prey to a deluge of propaganda infecting their mind, extolling the purported virtues of residing in a Marxist State.

“Justice For All” cuts through this propaganda and opens up, for the reader to see, the rot that is destroying our Nation from the inside out. The reader cannot help but be left despondent. But Greg doesn’t wish that and doesn’t leave the reader in a state of abject despair.

As the adage goes, forewarned is forearmed. Greg has warned us Americans, but how does he intend to “arm” us, to contend with this obstructive, destructive “Radical Left” if we are not yet to proceed to our firearms?

He explains toward the end of his book.

In his “Conclusion,” Greg says there is much Americans can do to take back their Country. But to do that Americans must first avoid attempts at intimidation from the “Left” through the propaganda leveled against Americans about “race.”

Greg provides Americans with mechanisms to repel the “Left.” He mentions the benefits of old letter writing for one. He writes,

“. . . this probably sounds corny, but it’s a good idea to write letters to politicians and other people in charge if you have complaints. Phone calls don’t mean anything. Emails are deleted on receipt. Internet comments are radio static. But letters, especially if they are handwritten. They get noticed.”

He also says that “it’s important for us to organize, . . . The Left is composed largely of losers who don’t have anything better to do than get together and complain. Conservatives have jobs, families, and churches to attend to. We prefer to spend our free time doing something fun or useful. . . .”

Greg is also not averse to using metaphors to get his point across.

He says,

We are past the point where the crazies and losers are tossing pebbles at our car. They have broken the windshield, deflated the tires, and are trying to rip out the distributor cap.

We have to act fast. Voting is fine, but we can’t assume that voting will save us. We need to gather as like-minded citizens who care enough about the future of our country to oppose the rabid Left, which is set on shredding everything we cherish about our beautiful country. The storm clouds are gathering, and the hour grows late.

So, then, like the Founders of our Republic when forced to either confront or capitulate to a mighty Tyrant, we Americans at the present time, must choose as well. We can’t sit on the sidelines. There is no “fence” to straddle. All Americans must take a stand. We can still preserve our freedoms and liberty.

It is definitely disturbing and not a little ironic that dangerous enemies, including the Biden Administration and a “Free” Press, lurk, some of them seen and some of them unseen, among us.

Americans must remain ever vigilant and wary. The “Rabid Left” can’t count us American Patriots out, just yet. There is still Hope. And where there is Hope, there is a Way forward.

THE ARBALEST QUARREL CLARIFIES CONFUSION OVER NEW YORK'S CONCEALED HANDGUN CARRY, AMMUNITION, AND GUN TRANSFER LAWS

NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL’S ATTACK ON THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE IS BOTH ILLEGAL AND UNWORKABLE*

New York's licensed firearms dealers and gun ranges are getting swamped with questions over confusing new laws concerning concealed handgun carry licenses, ammunition, and firearms “transfers” (that is to say, purchases, trade-ins, and giveaways).

In this article, we address these important and timely issues and provide clarification on what the law is.

On enactment and enforcement of New York’s Concealed “Carried Improvement Act” (“CCIA”), including recent amendments to the CCIA, licensed firearms dealers and those also operating gun ranges have unfairly suffered the brunt of attacks by frustrated New Yorkers who have seen constant and infuriating delays in their taking possession of firearms and ammunition.

These delays did not occur prior to the amendments to New York’s Gun Law which points to a disturbing fact: the Hochul Government’s changes to the Gun Law, purporting to comply with the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Bruen, did no such thing. In many ways, the Government’s amendments to the Gun Law made matters worse.

Hochul and the Democrat-Party-controlled Legislature in Albany simply gave lip service to the Bruen rulings.

As a matter of fact, the Hochul Government merely continues the policy established by her predecessor Andrew Cuomo.

The aim of this State Government in the Twenty-First Century is to continue the process of further constraining and constricting the exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms in New York, and to do so with increasing rapidity.

It is therefore business as usual for a New York Government that is virulently opposed to the Second Amendment of the Nation’s Bill of Rights.

And it isn’t only New York civilians who are facing frustrations and confusion. The new amendment is also impacting active-duty New York Police Officers. And both citizen civilians and police officers are all taking out their frustration on the wrong people: the Gun Dealer and Gun Range Owner.

This impossible situation is all by design and then enhanced and perpetuated by the Hochul Government.

Is there any way out of this morass?

Yes. But it is important to understand that Hochul’s recent “ammunition” amendment to the Handgun Law isn’t alone the cause of the problem. It is simply a reflection of the New York Government’s long-standing and deep-seated abhorrence of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms and the Government’s contempt for those citizens residing in New York who are intent on exercising their right, regardless of the many obstacles placed in their path by the Government.

It is also important to understand that this new amendment isn’t a standalone provision. It is simply the most recent addition to the Hochul Government’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA”).

Moreover, the ammunition background check requirement is not something new that Governor Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party-controlled Legislature in Albany dreamed up. It has been done before.

Hochul’s predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, tried to impose an ammunition background check system on New York firearms owners in 2013—ten years before the passage of Hochul’s CCIA.

Cuomo’s ammunition background check provision was written into the New York Safe Act of 2013. It didn’t pan out, then, just as it isn’t panning out now.

The Superintendent of the New York State Police could not get the damn thing to work even in 2014, one year after the Safe Act was implemented. And it was costing the taxpayer millions of dollars.

So Cuomo scrapped it, and the Superintendent of State Police and those working to get the thing operational breathed a sigh of relief.

Hochul never pointed this little matter out to the public when she resurrected Cuomo’s little scheme.

She, too, is having problems implementing this ammunition background check system—hence the delays in processing transfers of ammunition and firearms. Nothing has changed, ten years after Cuomo promulgated an ammunition background check provision and placed it in the Safe Act.

The difference between Hochul and Cuomo is that Hochul doesn’t mind the constant problems and obviously doesn’t care about the many people—citizen civilians, licensed gun dealers and owners of gun ranges, and even active duty New York Police officers voicing vociferous and incessant complaints, and doing so with justification.

If Hochul is going to create a mechanism of enforcement, then at least make the damn thing work. Otherwise, do away with it. But she won’t do that.

She won’t do that because it is obvious that Hochul relishes the delays. Otherwise, like Cuomo, she would have either scrapped the thing or would have urged the State Legislature in Albany to formally repeal the amendment or she would have placed continual pressure on the Superintendent of State Police who is tasked with getting this thing to work efficiently and effectively.

But, as far as we can tell, Hochul has done none of these things and has no plans to do so. She simply doesn’t care.

She doesn’t care because she is doing exactly what her wealthy benefactors, and what the Biden Administration, and what those citizens residing in New York, who voted her into Office, want her to do.

Hochul knows she is on safe ground politically on this, and that is all that matters to her—at least at this moment. Hopefully, this will change as increasing violent crime and the frustration of the public ramps up.

But, what about the New York Superintendent of State Police?

Does he care about the problems he is faced with in getting a notoriously difficult database up and running? This thing does, after all, sit on his lap.

Well, he doesn’t care either because, at this moment, there is no New York Superintendent of State Police.

Steven Nigrelli, the Acting Superintendent, and the most recent Superintendent, resigned his post on September 23, 2023, after Governor Hochul refused to make his position permanent, ostensibly because he faced employment harassment charges. See, e.g., the article published in the New York Post.

Nigrelli’s resignation took effect on October 6. See Spectrum 1 News.

So, who is the new acting Superintendent of State Police? Who can say? We don’t know. No news account to date we are aware of has reported an appointment of a new acting Superintendent of State Police. So, if Hochul did appoint someone, anyone, she failed to mention that person’s name. And, if she is considering an appointment, she hasn’t made that fact known either.

This only complicates matters, not only for the State Police that cannot get the NICS DATABASE working but for every New Yorker who suffers a delay in obtaining either a firearm or ammunition.

New York law now requires a Licensed Gun Dealer and Gun Range Owner to run NICS background checks only through the Superintendent of State Police and not directly through the Federal Government for firearms and ammunition transfers. And, keep in mind that, even if Hochul authorized Licensed New York Gun Dealers and owners of Gun Ranges to utilize the Federal NICS system for undertaking background checks, the FBI only does background checks involving transfers of firearms. They are not legally authorized, even if they were willing to do checks on those individuals who simply wish to purchase ammunition.

And this delay is affecting active duty police officers as well because they are not exempted from the NICS background check requirement either for the purchase of ammunition or for the purchase of firearms beyond Departmental issued firearms.

If there is a delay in running a check, everyone is, then, in the same boat.

But none of this negatively impacts your run-of-the-mill criminal element or murderous international cartel member that, thanks to Biden’s Open Border misadventure, has enabled millions of illegal aliens to take up residence in our Nation, and like a horrific viral infection, these illegals have coursed through the entire body politic.

The criminal element doesn’t bother with Hochul Gun Regime compliance matters, anyway.

If criminals get hit with a gun charge among other things, these noxious elements can expect a lenient judicial system to give them a slap on the wrist and send them on their merry way to create more mayhem for both police and the average citizen. And this is exactly what is happening in New York.

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*For those readers interested in the specific operative State Statutes and Municipal Codes, Rules, and Regulations, feel free to contact the Arbalest Quarrel, and we will be happy to answer your questions and provide you with the citations.

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WHAT OTHER QUESTIONS ARISE FROM HOCHUL’S “CCIA” THAT ARE NOT YET THE SUBJECT OF A LEGAL CHALLENGE?

One burning question concerns whether, under the CCIA, a valid concealed handgun carry license issued in a New York county or municipality, other than the City of New York, enables a license holder to carry his or her handgun for self-defense IN the City of New York.

The answer is an emphatic “no.”

NEW YORK CITY STILL REQUIRES A PERSON TO ACQUIRE A VALID CONCEALED HANDGUN CARRY LICENSE THAT CAN ONLY BE ISSUED BY THE NYPD LICENSE DIVISION IN ORDER TO CARRY A HANDGUN LAWFULLY IN THE CITY

The New York City Government will not recognize the legitimacy of a valid concealed handgun carry license issued by any other County Government or municipality in New York. And this matter has not, to our knowledge, been contested in a civil suit.

Handgun PREEMPTION LAWS that most States follow have no application in an Anti-Second Amendment State like New York.

This means that, as long as New York City, or any other county or city in New York, establishes rules and codes that appear legally consistent with the State’s Handgun Law—found in Penal Code Section 400.00 et. seq.—then those jurisdictions are free to create and implement new rules, codes, and regulations that are more detailed and potentially tougher than the State’s own Handgun Law requirements. This has always been true of New York City.

Even with the passage of the CCIA in July 2022, State law does not preempt the Rules of the City of New York on the matter of the City’s continuing refusal to honor the validity of concealed carry licenses issued by another New York jurisdiction.

Anyone who applies for a New York City Handgun Concealed Carry License must comply with the City’s stringent Handgun Rules, the NYPD License Division enforces those Rules rigidly. This means that if a person wishes to carry his or her concealed handgun in New York City, that person MUST first acquire a valid New York City-issued handgun carry license.

But, wouldn’t that mean, from a logical standpoint, that a rule, code, or regulation that’s more stringent than the State law, is, by logical implication, illegal by the very reason that such rule, code, or regulation is more restrictive than the State Law?

Of course. But when was a New York Gun Law ever internally consistent, let alone consistent with the Second Amendment of the Bill of the Rights of the U.S. Constitution?

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York’s “Proper Cause” requirement in Bruen, sure.

But this doesn’t legally prevent any jurisdiction in New York, be it municipal or county, from establishing its own Gun rules, codes, or regulations, applicable to that jurisdiction, that a prospective handgun carry applicant must follow.

New York City requires anyone who wishes to carry a handgun lawfully, in the City, to obtain a handgun carry license issued by the NYPD License Division regardless of the fact that a person may already possess a valid handgun carry license issued by another New York City or County.

DOESN’T THE CURTAILMENT OF THE PROPER CAUSE REQUIREMENT NEGATE THE NEED TO ACQUIRE MULTIPLE NEW YORK CONCEALED CARRY LICENSES

The fact that no jurisdiction in New York is allowed any longer to require a person to show extraordinary (“Proper Cause”) need as a condition for obtaining a handgun carry license, doesn’t legally prevent any city or county from requiring compliance with its own peculiar rules, codes, and regulations involving concealed handgun carry licenses.

In that case, a city or county can mandate that a person obtain a concealed handgun carry license for that jurisdiction, regardless of any other valid New York concealed handgun carry license he or she might happen to hold, applicable for the specific county or city. At the moment, New York City is the only jurisdiction, now as before, that requires a person to acquire a license to lawfully carry in the City. Nothing in the CCIA changes that old mandate.

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REMAINING NEW YORK GUN-RELATED QUESTIONS NOT PRESENTLY BEFORE THE COURTS

ANOTHER THORNY QUESTION FOLLOWING UPON THE ENACTMENT AND ENFORCEMENT OF THE CCIA: FOR A PERSON TO LAWFULLY CARRY A HANDGUN IN NEW YORK CITY, THE CITY GOVERNMENT STILL REQUIRES THAT PERSON TO ACQUIRE A VALID CONCEALED HANDGUN CARRY LICENSE ISSUED BY THE NYPD LICENSE DIVISION. IS THAT LAWFUL?

A New York Gun Dealer asked the Arbalest Quarrel the other day whether a person residing in another State can obtain a New York State handgun license.

The New York State Gun Law doesn’t assert categorically that a person must be domiciled in New York to obtain a handgun carry license. New York case law bears that out. So the consensus of opinion in the Courts to date is that a person need not be domiciled in New York to obtain a New York Concealed Handgun Carry License.

However, an out-of-state applicant must still comply with both the training and “Good Moral Character” requirements of the CCIA and other applicable State and Federal Statutes.

A SECOND THORNY QUESTION CONCERNS THE LEGALITY OF CHARGING A PERSON A FEE FOR THE PURCHASE OF A FIREARM AND/OR AMMUNITION.

The fees are assessed by the State Police, ostensibly to cover the cost of undertaking a background check on a person to verify the person is not under Statutory disability that would preclude the transfer of a firearm and ammunition to that person.

The fee for the transfer of a firearm has increased.

New York never before charged a fee for the purchase of ammunition. But it does so now. A fee of $2.50 is now assessed for the background check that the State Police now undertakes on the purchase of ammunition.

NOTE: The fee of $2.50 applies only to the background check itself, not to the number of boxes of ammunition a person purchases.

But, each time a person purchases a new box or boxes of ammunition, there is a new $2.50 fee imposed because the State Police is required to undertake a new background check on that person. It therefore behooves a person to purchase as much ammunition as he can afford at any one time to keep the fee at a straight $2.50, total, for each purchase.

A COUPLE MORE POINTS CONCERNING FEE ASSESSMENT ON FIREARM AND AMMUNITION TRANSFERS

First, the background check is charged to the seller of firearms and ammunition, not to the buyer. A seller must provide the State Police with a valid Credit Card. The State Police applies a charge to the seller’s credit card immediately. The seller doesn’t eat the charge but passes the fee onto the purchaser. This is perfectly legal.

This creates consternation, and that is understandable. But gun dealers and gun range owners have substantial expenses. They have to make a living too.

If there is a delay—the usual occurrence—in completing the NICS background check, the transferee must still reimburse the seller of the firearm or ammunition immediately even though the transferee doesn’t take immediate possession of the firearm or ammunition. That is one reason why a person—a civilian citizen or active duty police officer—gets upset with the Gun Dealer or the owner of the Gun Range. The transferee pays out of pocket immediately and gets nothing for his troubles as he must await the State Police processing of the transfer. That can take hours or even days.

Second, are both the fees and the dollar amounts of those fees lawful? They are. New York law specifies the State Police can assess fees for conducting NICS background checks and also provides a mechanism for determining what dollar amount is lawful.

A THIRD THORNY QUESTION PERTAINS TO THE LEGALITY OF AGENCY POLICY: DOES AGENCY POLICY HAVE THE FORCE OF LAW?

A third question is whether the Superintendent of the New York State Police can require a person who owns and possesses several firearms to show proof of having acquired a firearm safe to store those firearms.

A licensed New York Gun Dealer and the owner of a Gun Range has posed this question to us.

The New York State Police has required a person who holds several firearms on a restricted handgun premise license to present the State Police with a photograph of that safe.

This suggests that the person does not presently have a firearm safe, which is an expensive purchase, and would probably wish to defer the purchase of a safe if that were possible. It isn’t.

It is our reasoned belief that the State Police can require proof of purchase of a firearm safe once a New York premise license details possession of a certain (arbitrary) number of firearms on a premise license.

Is this true? If so, why?

The question is considered more a matter of policy than of law, according to New York Courts.

But Gun Policy, apart from State Statutes or County or Municipal codes, rules, or regulations, still operates with the force of law.

New York Courts have dealt with this issue and have so stated.

When a complainant contests a “Gun Policy, New York Courts have said that the complainant must prove that a given New York Gun Policy is “arbitrary and capricious” before a Court will strike that Policy down.

This follows from the “Primary Jurisdiction of Agency Rule” that Courts have followed since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its rulings in the Chevron case that came down decades ago, and a long line of cases that followed Chevron, since.

This Term, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a renewed look at Chevron and is considering either constraining the Court’s prior rulings in that case or overturning the High Court’s rulings in that case outright.

The Biden Administration is apoplectic with rage over this.

But, at the moment Courts generally acquiesce to agency decisions because of Chevron. Agencies have tremendous discretion. And, so, failure to prove to the satisfaction of a Court that a gun “policy” is “arbitrary and capricious,”—a difficult standard to meet and the burden of which falls on the complainant—the policy will stand.

New York Police Departments are therefore given substantial freedom of action to create and implement policies directed at firearms licensing requirements.

This also follows from the fact—as New York Courts routinely make in their rulings, and which remains “Black Letter Law”—that, while the keeping and bearing of firearms remains a basic, fundamental, and indisputable Right, the licensing of a person to keep and bear arms remains a privilege.

The Arbalest Quarrel has pointed out that possessing a license (a Government bestowed privilege) as a condition precedent to the enjoyment of a fundamental, unalienable Right is not only logically fallacious and legally unsupportable, but nonsensical.

But, unless, or until, the U.S. Supreme Court has the courage to abolish the nonsense of allowing a State or Federal Government to license the exercise of a God-given right, the citizen will continue to suffer the consequences of the rudeness of State actors who refuse to countenance the sanctity of natural law, eternal rights.

And, the worst consequence by far is the insinuation of Tyranny upon us and our inability to effectively contend with that Tyranny if the citizenry is unable to bear arms to defeat it.

That, of course, is what a Treacherous Government’s concern is really all about—the power of the armed citizenry to thwart the will of the Tyrant who would dare subjugate the common man.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with ensuring “Public Safety” and preventing “Gun Violence.” Those things are nothing more than makeweights, mere cliché, that only a fool would believe.

And there are, unfortunately, plenty of them residing amongst us.

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“GUN CONTROL” IS ABOUT “PEOPLE CONTROL”—NOT “PUBLIC SAFETY”

PART ONE

THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AND THE NEW YORK GOVERNMENT ARE OVERTLY SUSPICIOUS OF AND CONTEMPTUOUS OF AMERICA’S ARMED CITIZENRY AND ARE INTENT ON DISARMING IT

When New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, signed into law the New York Safe Act of 2013, the Cable News network, CNBC, hailed it as——

“. . . the toughest gun control law in the nation and the first since the Newtown, Conn., school shooting, calling for a stricter assault weapons ban and provisions to try to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill who make threats.” See the article posted on CNBC.

Cuomo himself boasted that the “Safe Act” was the toughest “gun control law” in the Nation and did so on more than one occasion. since signing it into law in January 2013. See the article in Politifact.

Yet, while, one Anti-Second Amendment Group, the “Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence,” had acknowledged the “ NY Safe Act” to be the most “comprehensive legislation to be passed in 2013,” IT did not call it the toughest in the Nation, as noted by Politifact in its article, supra.

According to Politifact, the Gifford organization ranked New York’s “Gun Law” as the fifth toughest in the U.S. in 2012, behind California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, and that status did not budge in 2015.

Americans who recognize the singular importance of the right of the people to keep and bear arms in the maintenance of a free Constitutional Republic would rightfully look with a jaundiced eye at any State of the Union that would take pleasure in securing for itself a first place trophy for profaning a fundamental right without which the life, safety, and well-being of the common man falls victim to the predatory beast, and to the predatory man-beast, and worst of all, to the predatory, monstrous Government.

Governmental action that whittles away at the most important of fundamental, natural law rights, that of armed self-defense, is not worthy of emulation.

That is especially true in a free Constitutional Republic such as our own—one that prides itself as a bulwark against tyranny. This is exemplified in the nature of the Government the Framers constructed for a new Nation.

Such a Government must recognize the autonomy, sanctity, and inviolability of the individual.

That idea explains why our Government is one of carefully limited, circumscribed powers and why our natural law rights and liberties are set forth in a Bill of Rights this Government is prohibited from tampering with.

These included the right of self-expression, the right of personal ownership of property, and the right of each person to br secure and ensure his health, safety, and well-being from an overbearing Government.

The design of the U.S. Constitution asserts that the citizenry is sovereign over the Government and that the Government’s sole purpose is to serve the needs of and interests of Americans, the common man, not those of itself, nor those of a privileged few.

The Federal Government under the present Biden Administration, along with Political “Progressives” or outright Marxists in Congress and those presently running several State Governments, have forgotten this or otherwise consciously, perfunctorily dismiss out of hand, the core governing principles, precepts, tenets, and philosophical underpinnings of our Free Republic.

The Government of New York from its inception, as one of the first member States of a fledging Nation, has never accepted the core principles and values of the founding fathers.

CONSIDER——

New York ratified the U.S. Constitution on July 26, 1788, and in so doing became the 11th State of the Union.

Roughly one and a half years later, on March 27, 1790, New York signed and sealed its Ratification of the Bill of Rights and sent it to the Federal Government. See the article in the National Archives.

The Nation’s Bill of Rights that New York ratified included a codification of the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms.

But roughly two years before, on April 20, 1777, the New York State Government shunned recognition of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms for the residents of New York.

Although the State agreed to recognize the God-given right to armed self-defense on the Federal level, it pretended that this fundamental, unalienable right did not apply to itself and would not recognize the right to armed self-defense in its own Bill of Rights. Citizens residing in New York would suffer the consequences, and through time, those consequences worsened.

As one of the original Thirteen States, the history of New York’s attack on the sacred right to armed self-defense is unparalleled.

In the Nineteenth Century, New York adopted three new Constitutions. It adopted a fifth in the Twentieth Century, in 1938. That would be the last one to date, although the State made several incremental changes, as amendments, to the 1938 rendition.

But the Government of New York never recognized, Constitutionally, a basic right of the people to keep and bear arms for the citizenry that resided in New York, and it would never create compacts with other States that did recognize in THEIR Constitutions the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

So, residents of other States visiting New York would do well to leave their firearms outside the borders of New York on pain of arrest, conviction, and confinement for failure to heed New York laws on the matter.

The only concession New York would deign to make for those New Yorkers who sought to exercise their Second Amendment right to armed self-defense was a legislative enactment.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms exists only in New York’s Civil Rights Law, NY CLS Civ R § 4. That law was enacted in 1909.

However, unlike a Constitutional Amendment, what the Legislature in Albany creates, it can easily modify or repeal.

Albany hasn’t done so, realizing it need not do so as the elaborate restrictions Albany has imposed, through time, on those wishing to exercise the right are so numerous and so onerous that little benefit is derived by those who are “privileged” to possess one.

The New York Government’s gun laws and the Governmental policies developed around them reflect an odd attitude, one wholly antithetical to the thoughts, wishes, and intentions of the Founding Fathers.

The view of the New York Government is one that has gained traction today throughout much of America among the radical Left element of society.

This element along with dangerous foreign actors have become increasingly emboldened by a weak, effete Renegade Federal Government whose policies have endangered the life and safety of Americans at home and abroad, as well as populations of the common man, throughout the world.

The Biden Administration and State Governments like New York convey a contemptuous attitude toward the common man, one belying a claim to cherish a “Democratic” spirit that our “Free” Press and the “Democrat Party” constantly go on about.

This attitude of scorn, ridicule, and contempt, toward the common man is the hallmark of Despotism, but masquerading as seemingly innocuous “Political Progressivism”—a phrase that has gained currency especially today.

Political Progressivism in America is a betrayal of our sacred heritage.

In a bitterly fought battle for independence from Tyranny—our forefathers succeeded in vanquishing a mighty foe, against long odds.

Yet, with the American Revolutionary War fresh in the minds of New Yorkers during its early days of Statehood, one must wonder how it is and why it is that the New York Government would eschew recognition of the importance of the armed citizenry by failing to mirror the language of the Second Amendment of the Nation’s Bill of Rights, in its own Constitution after ratifying such an Amendment for the Nation’s Constitution.

But that contradictory attitude never changed. Rather, through the years and centuries, that attitude solidified and metastasized.

And through it all New Yorkers were fed a lie about civilian citizen ownership and possession of “guns,” and they continue to be fed a lie.

Such is the power of and the philosophy of Political Progressivism in New York and in the Country at large.

An adherent of Progressivism models economic policies on the principles of socialism, and his ethics are grounded on the creed of utilitarianism, a system that justifies the worst outcomes for individuals, albeit arguing a purported greater good accruing for society as a whole.

But who decides what that “greater good” is if not Progressives who arbitrarily construct it?

That “Greater Good” inevitably aligns with the principles, precepts, and tenets of social and political Progressivism that the Government extols.

And this present New York Hochul Government, not unlike those of other Northeastern States, some Midwestern States, and those States on the Pacific Coast, professes to adopt legal principles grounded on internationalist, cosmopolitan norms, wholly alien to our own.

Adoption of such jurisprudential norms would strip our Nation of its history, heritage, culture, identity,  and freedoms upon which our Country, in less than 250 years, had, beyond dispute, become the most powerful, culturally vibrant, economically robust, and wealthiest Nation in the world.

Why would any State Government and why would the present Biden Administration wish to destroy that legacy? Yet, they are doing this, and at a frenetic pace, apparently afraid of the outcome of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.

Many passive Americans are forced to reassess their faith in “Progressivism.”

And these Governments that have blatantly sold out our Nation and its people know this and they are trying to break the will of the American people.

To accomplish this, these State Governments and the Federal Government, have strongarmed business, finance, and the technology sectors. And, having enlisted assistance from radical ideologues in both Academia and the Press as well, they have attacked Americans’ sacred natural law rights.

They have done this openly, and brazenly, using the flimsiest of arguments to justify their illegal actions.

In this race to the bottom, Progressive Governments are systematically attacking the most important right a human being can have—the natural law right of self-preservation. And they are of one mind on this and they are unequivocal about this.

A firearm is the most effective means available to secure one’s life and safety from predatory man or predatory Government. This fact is never admitted, and it is often denied, but it is true, nonetheless.

American Despots know this and attempt to ignore it. Like a stage magician, they deflect attention away from this. They talk about “Gun Violence,” “Public Safety,” “Mass Shootings,” “School Shootings,” “Civilized Society,” and even “International Norms.”

This is a blind. It is an attempt to hide the truth of their true beliefs and aims from the American people.

Many Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court know the threat posed by Tyrants in Government, too. But can their decisions in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen do anything to stop that threat when State Governments and the Federal Government’s Biden Administration contemptuously ignore the High Court’s rulings?

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PART TWO

GOVERNMENT’S OSTENSIBLE DESIRE TO PROMOTE PUBLIC SAFETY DOES NOT SUPERSEDE OR OVERRIDE A PERSON’S RIGHT TO PROMOTE PERSONAL SAFETY THROUGH ARMED SELF-DEFENSE

It took over two hundred years for the U.S. Supreme Court to come down with a ruling stating positively in law what was always plain enough in the language of the Second Amendment—that the right to armed self-defense is an individual right, unconnected with one’s service in a militia. This was the salient ruling in Heller. But, some States chose to ignore this, arguing that Heller applied only to the Federal Government, not to the States.

So, two years later the High Court had to pronounce in the McDonald case that the individual right to armed self-defense applies to the States no less than to the U.S. Government.

But, whether utilizing the Fourteenth Amendment, the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution, or any other section of the Constitution to bring the Second Amendment to bear on the States, the fact remains that the Founders of the Republic understood the Bill of Rights to codify universal laws that apply to all men at all times. The Court applied the language of the Fourteenth Amendment to the right codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. But was that legal maneuver even necessary?

The application of the Bill of Rights to the Federal Government as doctrinal stems from the concern the framers of the Constitution had—primarily the Antifederalists—over the creation of a powerful Centralized (“Federal”) Government, with its own standing army.

For what would prevent that “STANDING ARMY” from turning against the American people? In a word, “nothing.”

The Founding Fathers took as axiomatic that the natural law right of self-preservation through armed defense was all that was needed to check the power of a tyrannical Government and its standing army. Indeed, was that point made not clear enough in our Nation’s original founding document, “THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.” And, did not a TYRANT across the seas learn how formidable a force a determined armed American Patriot could be when standing his ground against THE TYRANT?

Natural law rights of men were understood well enough by all the Founding Fathers working to hammer out the Nation’s Constitution and, as well, by the States, apart from New York, that for many, a formal bill of rights was thought of as unnecessary.  

The Framers of the Nation’s Constitution for their part understood that natural law rights preexist in man, prior to the construction of all nations and governments of men.

Such rights are universal, unalienable, illimitable, unmodifiable, and eternal.

That means NATURAL LAW RIGHTS ARE NOT CREATURES OF GOVERNMENT but are BESTOWED ON AND IN MAN BY THE DIVINE CREATOR.

The Federalists among the Framers of the U.S. Constitution understood the concept of natural law rights well enough no less so than the Antifederalists, but the Federalists felt a written Bill of Rights unnecessary because such a document is tacitly understood and therefore redundant, or otherwise dangerously self-limiting.

Fortunately, the Antifederalists prevailed on this. They insisted on a formal written codification of the most important natural law rights and utilized the Ninth Amendment to address lingering concerns by the Federalists that the Bill of Rights IS NOT SELF-LIMITING.

The common man in America would be in dire straits if the Nation’s TEN PROMINENT AMENDMENTS HAD NOT BEEN SET DOWN IN STONE.

Just imagine, America’s Patriots claiming today a natural law right to armed self-defense, and a natural law right to dissent, and a natural law right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

THE NATION’S FORMAL BILL OF RIGHTS CODIFIYING NATURAL LAW, BEYOND THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT TO TAMPER WITH, ENRAGES PRESENT-DAY WOULD-BE DESTROYERS OF OUR NATION

With the existence of a formal, express Bill of Rights, Political Progressives, and Marxists, taking their cue from inordinately powerful and wealthy Globalists, are compelled to deal with the fact of a TRUE BILL OF RIGHTS BEYOND THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT TO LAWFULLY TAMPER WITH, much as they would prefer to ignore it.

And tamper with the Bill of Rights, these HATERS OF FREEDOM AND LIBERTY do happen to do, even though they know their actions are illegal.

Since information is predominantly digital, the Government and its proxies in business, finance, and media routinely and illegally surveil Americans’ private communications and personal thoughts. And they routinely censor information. All of this is inconsistent with both the FIRST AND FOURTH AMENDMENTS.

But the major concern of the GLOBALISTS and of the POLITICAL PROGRESSIVES and outright MARXISTS is the ARMED CITIZENRY.

GUNS AND AMMUNITION—AS PHYSICAL OBJECTS—ARE DIFFICULT “TO TOY WITH.”  

The Antifederalists were prescient. Their most pressing concern if the Framers were intent on creating a powerful centralized “FEDERAL GOVERNMENT” was to do place the ultimate FAIL-SAFE in place if that FEDERAL GOVERNMENT would one day—consistent with the nature of ALL GOVERNMENT—turn against its own people.  

The Antifederalists, among the Framers, knew that strong centralized Governments have short memories. If natural law rights were not written in stone, such strong Governments would, consistent with the nature of all Governments, one day, having resorted to treachery against their own people, deny that such natural law rights existed.

Our own Federal Government—even with such LIMITED POWERS AND ALL SORTS OF CHECKS AND BALANCES in place could and would, one day, turn against its own people.

That Federal Government would DENY, OUTRIGHT, THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE—THE EXERCISE OF WHICH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAD EFFECTIVELY AND SUCCESSFULLY BROUGHT TO BEAR AGAINST THE MOST POWERFUL ADVERSARIES OF THAT TIME—THE MIGHTY ARMY AND NAVY OF THE MONARCHY OF ENGLAND, AND THE ROTHSCHILD CLAN’S BANK OF ENGLAND, THE LATTER OF WHICH FINANCED THE MONARCH’S ESCAPADE AGAINST THE AMERICAN COLONIES.

A treacherous Government would deny that such NATURAL LAW RIGHTS are burnt in the Soul of each man. And, with that amnesia of Government, those treacherous servants of the American people, would argue that it is but through the grace of Government, NOT of God (whose existence they rudely denied), whether Government wishes to bestow those seemingly “natural law” rights on the people or, just as easily, rescind exercise of those rights, once bestowed, or bestow such rights arbitrarily on this one or that one, or forbid bestowing such rights on any of the common people at all.

Many, if not most, Progressives and Marxists, ideologically adhering to Atheism, would deny the notion of natural law rights out of hand. They would deny that such rights are anything more or other than any other law and that all law springs only from the mind of man.

These people would argue that no “right” has the force of law unless a Government of men “creates” those rights, accepts them, and provides a mechanism for their enforcement, which, of necessity, must come from the Government. As they see it, “Rights,” no less than any other law, are man-made constructs that have no separate existence apart from the Government that creates and enforces them.

The Biden Administration has fought this notion of a natural law right to armed self-defense since it took over the Executive Branch of Government in January 2021.

Progressives and Marxists in Congress have worked with that Administration to illegally constrain the exercise of that right.

And a sympathetic Press mouths the arguments and silly, simplistic platitudes of Government, to effectively corral the common man.

While the Federal Government’s attack on the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms GOES BACK DECADES, New York, for its part, as one of the original thirteen States of the Union, has fought this idea of a natural law right to armed self-defense FOR CENTURIES.

By invoking the “POLICE POWERS OF THE STATE,” and the lie of “PUBLIC SAFETY” TO COMBAT “GUN VIOLENCE,” the New York Government has long taken as axiomatic, the false idea THAT AN ARMED CITIZENRY AND PUBLIC SAFETY ARE LOGICAL OPPOSITES—THAT YOU CAN HAVE ONE OR THE OTHER BUT NOT BOTH. 

THE NEW YORK GOVERNMENT CONTINUES WITH THIS: As the police are agents of the State, SO, then, if anyone has the right to carry a firearm, then it is for the police, alone, not the average civilian citizen, to promote this “public safety.” That was the argument made. That is the argument the New York Government still makes.

And THIS ARGUMENT is reflected in STATE CODE that has, through time, grown into an elaborate, monolithic, monstrous regime, that extends through the length and breadth of the Consolidated Laws of New York—well beyond one statutory “Gun Law” enactment recited in the Penal Code of New York.

Thus, the Government of New York has extolled the notion of “PUBLIC SAFETY”—an enforcement power of the State—as a substitute for the individual Right to armed self-defense to secure his “PERSONAL SAFETY.”

The State does not recognize such a right, except grudgingly, due to the express language of the Second Amendment and the rulings of the High Court.

But State enforced “PUBLIC SAFETY,” promoted ostensibly FOR THE “GOOD OF SOCIETY” and the fundamental right of the individual to armed self-defense to secure one’s “PERSONAL SAFETY,” AREN’T logical opposites.

“PUBLIC SAFETY” AND “PERSONAL SAFETY” ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. They are, instead, LOGICAL COMPLEMENTS.

It isn’t, then, the armed citizen—understood as a rational, responsible, law-abiding, hard-working American, the common man, the very person who “MADE AMERICA GREAT,” and can do so “AGAIN”—who poses a threat to public safety.

The threat to public safety comes from the criminal element. But Government never mentions this, nor draws a distinction between actual gun violence caused by criminals and lunatics, and the mere logical possibility of gun violence by anyone else—the average, rational, responsible citizen who simply has a gun in his keeping.

AND THE GOVERNMENT OF NEW YORK, AND SIMILAR PROGRESSIVE AND MARXIST GOVERNMENTS AROUND THE COUNTRY FAIL TO DEAL EFFECTIVELY WITH CRIME AND, ESPECIALLY, WITH CRIMINAL VIOLENCE.

WHY IS THAT?

THIS FAILURE TO DEAL EFFECTIVELY WITH CRIMINAL VIOLENCE SUGGESTS THAT GOVERNMENT ITSELF CHOOSES TO ENABLE CRIMINAL VIOLENCE. THE CRIMINAL HAS BECOME A TACIT AGENT—AN ACTUAL IF UNCONSCIOUS, UNSUSPECTING PROXY OF GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION OF THE COMMON MAN.

The notion of Government’s EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO SECURE THE SAFETY OF THE CITIZENRY, ergo, to provide for Public Safety, is, then, nothing but a lie.

Government does not provide for Public Safety and in its singular attack on the individual’s right to arm himself so as to secure his own personal safety, the Government leaves the common man well-nigh defenseless.

THIS IS ALL BY DESIGN—the better to suppress the possibility of the potential for armed revolt against Government Tyranny as the State slowly corrals the common man both in Mind and Body as THAT TREACHEROUS GOVERNMENT PROCEEDS ON ITS WAY MERRY WAY TOWARD OUTRIGHT TYRANNY.

None of this is stated though. None of this can be stated. Rather than explain the desire to constrain free expression and one’s right to armed self-defense against Government and its minions, the Government OF NEW YORK and similar State Governments create the myth that it cares deeply about providing for the safety and security of the common man, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Since psychopathic criminals and lunatics serve as useful proxies of Government in fomenting calamity and insecurity, the Government seeks to compel the common man to look to the Government for succor from all harm. So, Government does not talk about the threat posed by criminal violence, but only the threat of “Gun Violence” generally, which is but code for the potential threat posed by the common man to the Government itself.

Thus, the very fear of the Nation’s Founding Fathers has come home to roost in Government situated in the United States today—THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT—and many STATE and LOCAL MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS.

On deep reflection, the appeal of the propagandists of Government to end “GUN VIOLENCE,” does nothing to disguise the fact that what they mean is “GUN CONFISCATION”—PLAIN AND SIMPLE—and they look with envious eyes at the easily secured success of the EU and of GREAT BRITAIN and of such major BRITISH COMMONWEALTH NATIONS like NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, and CANADA.

But the EU and CANADA have false and ludicrous simulacrums of a TRUE NATURAL LAW BILL OF RIGHTS, with nothing at all said about an individual natural law right to armed self-defense. And GREAT BRITAIN doesn’t even have a “CODIFIED” CONSTITUTION, much less a Bill of Rights.

And, “[b]ecause New Zealand lacks an identifiable constitutional charter that delineates the scope of constitutional law, the boundaries of New Zealand constitutional law have never been precisely drawn. Constitutional rules may be changed by less formal means than under a written constitution, and the spheres of public and private law are merged rather than separated.” See the article published on New Zealand’s slipshod Governmental structure, posted by The University of Melbourne.

And, Australia’s Constitution is a bizarre document, incomplete, and doesn’t trouble itself to express a right to individual freedom and liberty. See the article posted from “The Conversation,” and a publication of the Parliament of Australia.

And yet the wealthy, powerful GLOBALISTS, and the POLITICAL PROGRESSIVES and MARXISTS emulate the EU and the BRITISH COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES and hold them up as positive examples for the United States to follow in dealing with the Nation’s armed citizenry.

Be that as it may, the best that the DESTROYERS of our FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC are able to do or attempt to do is to frustrate, inhibit, and constrain the EXERCISE of the NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS through the use of quasi-legal, pseudo-legal, extrajudicial, and outright illegal Executive, Legislative, and Administrative actions, and through reliance on dubious rulings of some U.S. Courts that ground those rulings on personal opinion and animus, and on personal ideological bent instead of sound legal reasoning and proper jurisprudential considerations. 

The aim of these DESTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS AND INFLUENCES in our COUNTRY is to corral and eventually eliminate the armed citizenry—an armed citizenry that never exhibited violence to anyone, yet is presumed by the Government to pose a tenable threat to society itself, i.e., a threat posed by the common man to society, which means the threat posed by the common man to a treacherous Government because of the fact that an armed citizenry, weaned on liberty, won’t long abide, or surrender to, or accept a life of subservience to TYRANNY.

The common man is thereby assaulted by both the criminal element, and by obedient Business, Finance, Social Media, a sympathetic Academia and Press, and complacent, uninformed members of the public to pay homage to “THE NEW LIBERAL INTERNATIONAL RULES-BASED ORDER” that is slowly amassing and exerting firm control over all of WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

Note: the Progressives in control of the Federal Government and many State Governments do nothing to suppress the actions of violent criminals who prey on the common man—often using the very firearms that they would dare confiscate from the average citizen.

Progressives have no desire to incarcerate violent criminals. They refuse to incarcerate them. Indeed, some advocates of Congress propose doing away with prisons altogether. See the article in the New York Post. And the insufferable, hideous Hillary Clinton, calls for “the deprogramming” of Trump supporters, those Americans who hold true to their sacred heritage. See, e.g., the article in “The Wrap,” providing a video presented by CNN.  And Biden places a bug in the ear about purported dangerous “MAGA” supporters of Donald Trump. See, e.g., the article in Reuters.

And it so happens that Americans who cherish their heritage, and who profoundly cherish their fundamental, unalienable, natural law rights, especially the right of the people to keep and bear arms happen to include, in great numbers, “MAGA” Americans. Strange that, isn’t it?

But it isn’t these Americans who are a threat to the Republic. They are only a threat to Tyrants. But who is the threat to the Nation? Americans who cherish a free Constitutional Republic and their sacred Rights and Liberties, or an illegitimate Government that has betrayed the American people, in service to our Nation’s enemies?

If CIVIL WAR COMES TO AMERICA, it will be the TYRANT who fires the opening salvo, not the American Patriot. So, naturally, the TYRANT wishes to ban civilian citizen arms and ammunition.

The phrase “GUN VIOLENCE” serves as a useful propaganda tool, a device, a makeweight, to seduce the public into believing that the armed citizen is the gravest threat to the Nation. Yet, the armed citizen isn’t a threat, and never was a threat to the well-being of the Nation.

It is the desire of the armed citizen to protect the Nation in the form for which it was created and upon which the Nation prospered.

Whatever “Gun Violence” that accrues to this society emanates from the Government, either directly or through its agents in Departments, Agencies, and Bureaus that have compromised and betrayed their Oath to the Constitution, and through proxies, such as the criminal element.

Such Violence that is allowed by the criminal element and foreign, international cartels running rampant in this Country is evidence of a Government disposed to Tyranny that seeks to harm and demoralize the public, and to destabilize society. But Government would not care to admit that fact to itself, and much less care to admit that fact to the citizenry.

So, of course, State Governments like New York, do little to nothing to stem criminals from committing “Gun Violence,” or from committing violence using guns or any other implement. This may sound strange to many Americans, and therefore difficult for them to accept this, but  this conclusion is difficult to deny as borne out by events.

Still, a certain fear pervades the thought patterns of the “Political Progressive” today, especially those IN Government. But, it isn’t fear of the criminal element whom Government itself and the Progressive elites are protected from, aware that the criminal element, an uncontrollable and unconscious, rabid force could easily turn on Government and on those “Elites” if they are not careful, to take the necessary precautions, unavailable to the average citizen.

It is, then, this average citizen, as the armed citizen, whom Government and the “Elites” perceive as posing the greatest, gravest threat to Government and those in control of it who carefully engineer society, to protect “Democracy”—so they say, even as they tighten the noose on that very thing they proclaim, in their march toward subjugation of the American people.

This direct advocacy of and appeal to “Democracy,” although a new propagandist tool, is grounded on the fear exhibited by all Tyrannical, Totalitarian regimes in Europe, in Asia, and in America. It is an old fear—a natural phobia of THIS, common man.

Hence, FREEDOM AND LIBERTY is a RARE COMMODITY today, no less so today than it was centuries ago. But, for a Country that was ACTUALLY created on “FREEDOM AND LIBERTY” and for a NATION that THRIVED ON IT, it is difficult for the DESTROYERS of IT to make a case against IT, and they must therefore be very careful and circumspect in the language they employ when attacking IT.

Tyranny of Government will not ABIDE BY FREEDOM AND LIBERTY OF THE COMMONALTY and, SO, WILL NOT SUFFER AN ARMED CITIZENRY CREATED FOR JUST THAT PURPOSE TO FIGHT AGAINST TYRANNY THAT WOULD DARE SUPPRESS FREEDOM AND LIBERTY AND OPPRESS THE COMMONALTY.

IT IS IN THE NATURE OF THE TYRANT TO TAMP DOWN FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND FREEDOM OF ACTION, TO FORCE ITS WILL ON THAT OF THE COMMONALTY. AND IT IS THE NATURE OF THE COMMON MAN TO REPEL SUBSERVIENCE TO THE TYRANT, TO DENY TO THE TYRANT THE DESIRE OF THE TYRANT TO FORCE ITS WILL ON THE COMMON MAN.

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND PERSONAL FORTITUDE AND THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS ARE ALL THAT THE COMMON MAN HAS TO RESIST THREAT TO THE SANCTITY AND INVIOLABILITY OF BODY AND MIND, SOUL AND SPIRIT.

THE TYRANNY AND FREEDOM OF ARE LOGICAL OPPOSITES. THE TYRANT IS DISPOSED TO DESTROY INDIVIDUALITY AND THE DESIRE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IS TO BE INDIVIDUAL.

THE TYRANT AND THE FREE MAN ARE AT LOGGERHEADS WITH EACH OTHER.

FOR THE ONE IMPOSES ITS WILL ON THE CITIZEN AND THE OTHER RESISTS THE ILLEGAL, IMPROVIDENT, AND IMMORAL IMPOSITION OF WILL ON HIM BY DINT OF ARMED FORCE.

All this talk today, in America, by Globalists, Progressives, and Marxists for a need to create more and more “COMMONSENSE GUN LAWS” to fight “GUN VIOLENCE” is really no more than an acknowledgment of Government moving closer to a State of Tyranny and THAT STATE OF TYRANNY cannot, WON’T EVER, abide THE ARMED CITIZENRY.

But the Tyrant cannot express that thought openly—certainly not in America, whose very existence came about by the armed American Patriot whom a Tyrant in England who professed to be nothing other than a Tyrant, aimed to crush.

And here we have, today, a new Tyrant, PROFESSING TO BE ANYTHING BUT A TYRANT, claiming disingenuously to be a strong proponent of this thing they call (but never define) “DEMOCRACY.” That TYRANT means no such thing. He doesn’t even know what he is talking about. But use of the word—recited seemingly convincingly and so often, sure sounds nice—at least to some.

This NEW Tyrant, in the form of INVERTED TOTALITARIANISM, arising in America today, aims, no less, than the OLD OVERT TYRANTS OF THE PAST, existent throughout history—to crush the will of the American Patriot and free citizen today, by denying to him his store of firearm and ammunition, just as the TYRANTS OF THE PAST aimed to do so years, decades, and centuries ago to the populations they ruled.

TYRANNY AND FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY ARE AGE-OLD ENEMIES. They are the most basic of enemies.

Even the best of Governments cannot shed their desire to become treacherous toward their people.

And the people, for their part, must be ever on guard to the reality that TYRANNY is only a hairbreadth away from realization.

THE WORST FEARS OF THE FOUNDERS OF OUR REPUBLIC ARE NOW FULLY UPON US.

The sad irony is the Constitution they created to protect a free Republic from THE TYRANT, proved insufficient for that purpose, but for the BILL OF RIGHTS, and especially, but for the LANGUAGE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS THAT MADE PLAIN THAT GOVERNMENT SHALL NEVER INFRINGE THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. And the Biden Administration and the Governments of many State Governments are doing just that—BETRAYING A SACRED OATH BETWEEN THOSE WHO SERVE IN GOVERNMENT AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHOSE INTERESTS THESE SERVANTS OF GOVERNMENT ARE SWORN TO SERVE.

The Biden Administration, taking its orders from shadowy forces both here and abroad, that are intent on maintaining a stranglehold on the common man throughout the Country, TOGETHER with the present New York Government, and other State Governments, intent on doing the same for those citizens residing in their respective States, have illustrated, for those who would but see, that Tyranny has come to this Country, and it means to take up permanent residence here.

In the next article we take a look at CUOMO’S SAFE ACT and HOCHUL’S “CONCEALED CARRY IMPROVEMENT ACT.” We point out that the two Acts mirror each other—are part and parcel of the same vision, the same goal.

And, on the issue of recordation of ammunition sales, the recent law is not something new at all, but was planned for and was a component of the SAFE ACT, back in 2013, that never panned out. Hochul is attempting another “go” at it, and she is struggling with implementation of this horrific action just as her predecessor did.

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NEW YORK’S “CCIA” NOT STRONG ENOUGH? HOCHUL NOW SOCKS IT TO NEW YORKERS FOR PURCHASING AMMO

HOCHUL’S PLAN IS OFF TO A ROCKY START

As many Americans know, especially those residing in New York, the Hochul Government’s assault on our Nation’s most sacred right—the right to armed self-defense against man, or beast, or the man-beast of Government (i.e., Tyranny)—continues unabated.

When the U.S. Supreme Court came down with the Bruen decision in late June 2022, Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party-controlled Legislature in Albany wasted no time with a response.

The Governor and the State’s massive Anti-Second Amendment army situated in the Executive offices and in the Legislature had long expected a negative outcome, ever since the oral argument back in late 2021.

No doubt the Government had worked on a response to the decision for months. It needed but to place the finishing touches on that response once the majority opinion came down. This it did.

The Hochul Government’s response came in the form of a set of amendments to the State’s handgun law.

That law, a decidedly and decisively noxious, illegal, bloated licensing regime that had its origin well over a century before, with the enactment of the Sullivan Act of 1911, had grown progressively more onerous and destructive of the most important God-Given right a free people can wield: the right to bear arms against intolerable, suffocating, Government Tyranny.

A century after the enactment of the Sullivan Act, Hochul’s Predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, thrust the New York Safe Act on unsuspecting New Yorkers.

Cuomo did this in secret, deliberately bypassing the normal three-day waiting period, having “invoked a message of necessity.”

But what do New Yorkers really know about that message of necessity?

They know Cuomo and Anti-Second Amendment Democrats needed to hoodwink Senate Republicans.  

At the time, Republicans controlled the State Senate. Had the bill undergone a careful reading by the full Senate and, had the Senate undertaken calm, sincere, reasoned debate, it’s unlikely the NY Safe Act would have seen passage.

But, by the time Kathy Hochul became Governor of New York, Democrats controlled the entire Legislature.

Flash forward to early July 2022.

Just days after the Bruen decision, the Legislature in Albany passed a set of amendments to the State’s handgun law. On that same day, July 1, Hochul signed the bill into law.

Referred to as the Concealed Handgun Improvement Act, or “CCIA,” this seemingly innocuous descriptor for the Act did little to disguise the Government’s sinister intent.

One need not be a lawyer to see the CCIA for what it is: an act of unabashed hatred toward the exercise of the citizen’s absolute and eternal right, codified in the Nation’s Second Amendment, and an act of blatant, contemptuous defiance directed to the U.S. Supreme Court, our Nation’s Third Branch of Government.

Despite numerous challenges to the CCIA, almost a half dozen of which sit at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, awaiting a decision, Governor Hochul and her compatriots in Albany felt the need to add more salt to an open wound. And it came in the form of further amendments to the State’s Handgun Law.

The salient amendment is found in the Consolidated laws of New York, NY CLS Penal § 400.03:

It involves, one, a change in the mechanism gun dealers and sellers of ammunition must now adhere to when doing background checks for a person purchasing ammunition in New York, and, two, a monetary outlay pertaining to the new background check necessitated by that purchase.

The specific amendment is shown below, with “strike-throughs” for the deleted original wording, and emphasis for the new wording.

“If the superintendent of state police certifies that background checks of ammunition purchasers may be conducted through the national instant criminal background check system or through, a dealer or seller shall contact the division of state police once the division has been designated point of contact, use of that system by a dealer or seller to conduct such check which shall be sufficient to satisfy subdivisions four and five of this section and such checks shall be conducted through such system, provided that a record of such transaction shall be forwarded to the state police in a form determined by the superintendent.

Hochul’s stated reason for the amendment is always the depressingly familiar need to promote “public safety” and prevent “gun violence”—pretexts, masks, and codewords for an agenda aimed at disarming the citizenry.

This explains why Hochul’s gun laws only target the average, responsible, rational, law-abiding citizen, never the psychopathic criminal and rabid lunatics in New York who commit violent crimes, whether by firearm or other means.

Hochul doesn’t dare express the truth to New Yorkers.

The real but unstated purpose for enactment of such elaborate, convoluted gun laws is to frustrate and discourage the citizens residing in New York who wish to exercise their fundamental, eternal right to armed self-defense, and to create difficulties for licensed New York gun dealers who provide a necessary service, supportive of the citizen’s right to armed self-defense.

However, the passage of a bill reflecting a politician’s wishes does not always translate easily into effective real-world operations.

Passage of the novel ammunition background check amendment occurred on July 15, 2023, and became effective on September 13, 2023, just one month later. But it ran into problems.   

Some New York Gun dealers argue the system still has bugs given the delays encountered in processing ammunition purchases. See article and video in the New York CBS affiliate, WCAX3.

At best, the new NICS system operated erratically. See, e.g., articles posted by WIVB4 News, Outdoor News, and Bearing Arms.

Note: Gun transfers still require use of the FBI NICS system which operates smoothly. Why, then, didn’t New York use the FBI NICS?

One may infer Hochul would have liked to do so but didn’t because she couldn’t. There is no Federal statutory mechanism for the use of FBI NICS for the purchase of ammunition alone. See the FBI.gov website (re: NICS).

And, even if, legally, the FBI could voluntarily take this task on, it would be an added chore the Bureau would have no interest in undertaking.

So that task falls on the Superintendent of the New York State Police. See NY CLS Exec § 228. National Instant Criminal Background Checks. Section 1(a) sets forth,

“The division is hereby authorized and directed to serve as a state point of contact for implementation of 18 U.S.C. sec. 922 (t), all federal regulations and applicable guidelines adopted pursuant thereto, and the national instant criminal background check system for the purchase of firearms and ammunition.”

But it is unlikely the New York State Police Superintendent is ecstatic about setting up a separate NICS specifically directed to handling background checks for purchases of ammunition in the State because, if that operation fails, it is on his head.

But, the Superintendent has no choice in the matter. He serves at the pleasure of the Governor who appoints him. And that person, at the moment, is Kathy Hochul. See NY CLS Exec § 210:

“The division of state police in the executive department shall be known as the ‘New York State Police.’ The head of the New York state police shall be the superintendent of state police who shall be appointed by the governor by and with the advice and consent of the senate, and hold office during his or her pleasure.”

Hochul’s last appointment to the position of Superintendent of the New York State Police was Steven A. Nigrelli.

Hochul appointed Nigrelli as acting Superintendent, on October 19, 2022.

Eleven months later, Nigrelli “abruptly announced his retirement as the acting superintendent of the New York State Police . . . after learning that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration was no longer considering making him the permanent superintendent.” The Buffalo News adds that “Hochul’s decision comes after the state Office of Employee Relations investigated and substantiated several harassment and mistreatment allegations against Nigrelli.”

More to the point, as reported by Spectrum local news, it was “Gov. Kathy Hochul [herself, who] rescinded [Nigrelli’s] candidacy to permanently serve in the role [of Superintendent] officials said.”   

So, then, for Nigrelli it was either voluntarily retire or be fired. See also the New York Post article.

At the moment, then, the New York State Police doesn’t have an acting Superintendent. This comes at a bad time for Hochul.

Likely, Nigrelli timed his departure to demonstrate his displeasure with the Governor.

Perhaps he hopes the ammunition background check program becomes an unmitigated disaster and personal embarrassment for the Governor. Or, perhaps, Nigrelli doesn’t care one way or the other whether the ammunition criminal background check program runs into constant irremediable snags or not.

And what is the story about those new fees? Bearing Arms, for one, reports this:

“The new law . . . makes it more expensive to purchase a gun and ammunition in the state (new background check fees on gun purchases add an additional $9 to each sale, while each background check for ammunition comes with a $2.50 surcharge). . . .”

But are assessment of these fees lawful? Apparently, they are. See NY CLS Exec § 228 National Instant Criminal Background Checks. Section 5(a) says,

“Each licensed dealer that submits a request for a national instant criminal background check pursuant to this section shall pay a fee imposed by the bureau for performing such background check. Such fee shall be allocated to the background check fund established pursuant to section ninety-nine-pp of the state finance law. The amount of the fee shall not exceed the total amount of direct and indirect costs incurred by the bureau in performing such background check.”

The dealer thereupon passes the fees onto the purchaser.

But we wondered whether the $2.50 fee is per individual box of ammunition or per individual sale, regardless of how many boxes a customer purchases. News accounts don’t say. We did some digging.

Contacting the New York State Police, we learned the price charged is per sale: one background check equals one $2.50 fee, regardless of how many boxes or cartons of ammunition one purchases. And that is consistent with the language of the Statute, NY CLS Exec § 228, supra.

Also, keep in mind that these most present amendments to the Handgun Law are to be construed as a component of the CCIA, not as something distinct from it.

The reader should understand that these constant amendments to New York’s handgun laws are not accidental.

New York’s approach to undermining the right codified in the Second Amendment is not sporadic or mere kneejerk reactions to specific events even if that appears to be the case.

The present amendments are a component of the CCIA.

Both the CCIA of 2022 and the NY Safe Act of 2013 before it, and all the other amendments to New York’s Gun licensing regime, are the product of a meticulous, devious, deliberative process, that one must trace back to the Sullivan Act of 1911.

The actions of the New York Government and that of several other States, along with that of the Biden Administration, all illustrate a carefully planned, concerted, and coordinated effort to whittle away at the citizen’s right to armed self-defense.

And this effort has moved ahead exceptionally fast in the last fifteen years, in spite of or, perhaps, because of the Supreme Court’s rulings in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen. And more such rulings are expected in the weeks and months to come.

These rulings are, however, at loggerheads with the worldwide effort of powerful Globalist interests to reduce the populations of the U.S., the EU, and the British Commonwealth nations to impoverishment, subservience, and abject misery. They are succeeding.

The United States is the only Nation that recognizes the natural law right to armed self-defense. That fact drives the Globalists and their stooges in the Federal Government and in such States as New York, New Mexico, California, and several others, to a frenzy of rage and frenetic action to constrain and even punish Americans’ Patriot yearnings.

Tyranny cannot exist where a citizenry is armed. That fact is axiomatic.

If Americans remain true to their core beliefs, that hearken back to the American Revolution, we can and will defeat all Tyrants.

NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR GRISHAM HASN’T CONCEDED DEFEAT: SHE REMAINS UNDETERRED IN HER DESIRE TO CURTAIL EXERCISE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT

PART THREE

This is a follow-up to two recent Arbalest Quarrel articles on New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s unconscionable and unconstitutional “Public Health Order” Grisham issued on September 8, 2023:

“No person, other than a law enforcement officer or licensed security officer, shall possess a firearm, as defined in NMSA 1978, Section 30-7-4.1, either openly or concealed, within cities or counties averaging 1,000 or more violent crimes per 100,000 residents per year since 2021 according to Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting Program AND more than 90 firearm-related emergency department visits per 100,000 residents from July 2022 to June 2023 according to the New Mexico Department of Public Health, . . . .”

Ammoland Shooting Sports News posted our articles on September 11 and September 15.

In our earlier article, we pointed to Grisham’s misuse of New Mexico Statutes to support her draconian (original) Order.

In our second article, we explored Grisham’s motivation.

Although Grisham expected a backlash—in fact welcomed it (thinking a sympathetic Press would herald her cause)—she probably didn’t expect the ensuing backlash to occur so quickly. And she likely didn’t expect such a vehement backlash from county and city police, and from the Mayor of Albuquerque, and from the State’s Attorney General.

See the article in U.S. News & World Report, posted on September 11, titled, “Outrage Intensifies Over New Mexico Governor's Temporary Gun Ban as Sheriff Vows Not to Enforce It.”

And she certainly did not expect backlash from fellow Democrats, nor did she expect a call for her impeachment. See, The New York Times article, posted on September 17, titled, “Facing Pushback From Both Parties, New Mexico Governor Scales Back Firearms Order.”

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico on Friday scaled back a temporary public health order restricting the carrying of firearms in the Albuquerque metro area, limiting a ban to only parks and playgrounds. The initial ban, which was issued Sept. 8 and was to have covered 30 days, had prohibited the carrying of open and concealed firearms in public areas or on state property.

Several individuals and groups had sued to block Ms. Lujan Grisham’s original order, and a federal judge on Wednesday sided with the plaintiffs, who argued that the suspension of gun rights violated the Constitution. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge David Urias granted a temporary restraining order blocking the governor’s suspension. The governor’s most recent executive order essentially replaces the blocked one.

The governor’s initial ban was swiftly met with pushback from Republicans and fellow Democrats alike. Two Republican state representatives, Stefani Lord and John Block, called on Sept. 9 for Ms. Lujan Grisham to be impeached, saying that she had violated her oath to New Mexico and the nation.

And in letter on Tuesday, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, wrote a letter to the governor saying that he did not believe that the ban “will have any meaningful impact on public safety” and that his office would not defend her in cases that challenged the order.”

In the face of vociferous and multivarious and multifaceted blowback, Grisham apparently realized that “discretion would be the better part of valor,” as the old adage goes.

But, in an attempt to save face, she didn’t rescind the Order in total. In a September 15 Press Release, she stated, in pertinent part,

‘I’m going to continue pushing to make sure that all of us are using every resource available to put an end to this public health emergency with the urgency it deserves,” said Gov. Lujan Grisham. ‘I will not accept the status quo – enough is enough.’

Provisions in the updated public health order issued Friday include: Removing the previous provision around firearms and replacing it with a provision that temporarily suspends the carrying of firearms at parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County.”

None of these events needed to happen. But they did happen and we had pointed out the “why” of this.

Had anyone in the Press given this some thought? Well, a Fox News story, published on September 16, titled, “NM governor's 'Orwellian,' 'twisted' excuse to ignore 2nd Amendment may be political play for VP: column,” cited an article in the Washington Post, written by Henry Olsen, that explored some of Grisham’s possible motivations.

Jeffrey Clark, the Associate Editor of Fox News Digital, writes,

Democrat New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was criticized in a Washington Post column for her ‘twisted,’ ‘Orwellian logic’ after she issued an emergency order to temporarily suspend gun carry rights in the Albuquerque area.

Lujan Grisham's gun carry ban has been met with vocal opposition among Republicans and Democrats over it violating the Second Amendment.

‘The governor is no dummy,’ Henry Olsen wrote in a column headlined, ‘New Mexico's governor seems to think it's okay to ignore the Supreme Court.’ 

‘She has held appointed or elected office for nearly 20 years. She couldn’t possibly be so naive to think her order would be uncontroversial even among Democrats,’ he added. 

‘So what was the real intention behind her order?’ the columnist wrote. ‘It could be that, like many ambitious politicians, she simply wants attention. She was said to have been on President Biden’s shortlist when he was deciding on his vice-presidential pick. Perhaps with Biden’s low approval ratings, she decided this is a good moment to raise her national profile. In that sense, she has succeeded wildly, even if her order loses in court.’

Olsen also called out Lujan Grisham's argument that the gun carry suspension was required as a matter of public safety and health after several high-profile shootings of children.

‘This reasoning is twisted on its face. The affected right exists specifically to help people defend themselves. Yet Lujan Grisham says increased threats of bodily harm eliminates the means that residents would use to protect their safety,’ he wrote. ‘Talk about Orwellian logic.’

Olsen also speculated Lujan Grisham was using ‘her order to show her party how to use this conflict to undermine Supreme Court decisions they disagree with.’

‘But Lujan Grisham could be playing an even longer game than that,’ Olsen added. ‘Democrats remain furious that a conservative-dominated Supreme Court is likely to strike down progressive rulings in the coming years. That means Democratic officeholders in deep-blue states will have to enforce rulings they deeply resent or hate.

The last thing Governor Grisham wants to do is jeopardize her own political future. She had apparently thought that issuance of this Order would work to her advantage as well as strengthen her ties with her Marxist benefactors. She was wrong. It didn’t do any of that. It drew too much attention and too fast in a direction that the Democrats and Marxists weren’t prepared to venture to.

Given the imbroglio, she has taken a step back. But, the point is that nothing really changes. Grisham’s goal as with the goal of all Political Progressives and Marxists is to disarm the American citizenry.

That task is a condition precedent to dismantling our Republic, subjugating the populace, and merging the remnants of our Nation into a world federation.

Immediate political demands and niceties take precedence over the desire of these Marxists to disarm the citizenry and be done with it. But, they have to tread carefully.

Grisham apparently thought the time was ripe for a mammoth move forward in dispossessing Americans of their firearms by making use of them for self-defense de minimis since the Order banned the carrying of them in public, for self-defense. She was wrong.

If she were acting on the advice of her benefactors behind the scenes, well, then, they were wrong, too, misreading the tea leaves. And, so, Grisham attempted to salvage what she could from the original Order and do her best to avoid admitting that her reason for issuing the “Public Health Order” in the first place was not only wrong-headed but unjust.

Let’s take a closer look at the actual Washington Post story, by Washington Post columnist, Henry Olsen, published on September 12, and zero in on a couple of Olsen’s points and his suppositions concerning possible motives behind the issuance of the Order.

The article is titled, “New Mexico’s governor seems to think it’s okay to ignore the Supreme Court”:

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s executive order to suspend the open and concealed carry of firearms in her state’s most populous county is blatantly unconstitutional. It’s fair to ask: Is she trying to invent a way for Democratic officeholders to ignore Supreme Court rulings they despise?

Lujan Grisham’s order flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to carry a weapon in public for self-defense. The governor contends that a recent spate of murders in the state’s largest city, Albuquerque, constituted a public health emergency that trumped people’s constitutional rights.

This reasoning is twisted on its face. The affected right exists specifically to help people defend themselves. Yet Lujan Grisham says increased threats of bodily harm eliminates the means that residents would use to protect their safety. Talk about Orwellian logic.

Her rationale is so tortured that even allies have condemned it. Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, a Democrat, would be tasked with enforcing her order, but has stated that he won’t do so because it’s unconstitutional. Other Democratic leaders in the state, including Attorney General Raúl Torrez, joined the sheriff in refusing to cooperate. . . .

None of this should have surprised the governor. The court’s decision in Bruen was unmistakable. It surely angered many Democrats, but respect for the rule of law demands officeholders follow even the most controversial rulings. . . .

Lujan Grisham, during an interview with CNN on Tuesday, dismissed arguments that her order is unconstitutional by deploying typical talking points among gun control activists. ‘I’m focused on everyone’s constitutional rights, not just those the [National Rifle Association] says I should be focused on,’ she said.

The governor is no dummy. She has held appointed or elected office for nearly 20 years. She couldn’t possibly be so naive to think her order would be uncontroversial even among Democrats.

So what was the real intention behind her order? It could be that, like many ambitious politicians, she simply wants attention. She was said to have been on President Biden’s shortlist when he was deciding on his vice-presidential pick. Perhaps with Biden’s low approval ratings, she decided this is a good moment to raise her national profile. In that sense, she has succeeded wildly, even if her order loses in courBut Lujan Grisham could be playing an even longer game than that. Democrats remain furious that a conservative-dominated Supreme Court is likely to strike down progressive rulings in the coming years. That means Democratic officeholders in deep-blue states will have to enforce rulings they deeply resent or hate.

Perhaps this is why she is focusing so much on the public health rationale of her order. State and local officeholders must uphold federal statutes and Supreme Court rulings under the Constitution’s supremacy clause. They cannot simply openly reject a ruling they do not like and refuse to implement it, . . . .

But states and localities do have constitutional authority to make decisions to protect the health and safety of their residents. . . .

This means there is a theoretical conflict between a state’s constitutional authority to protect its citizens and the federal government’s authority to enforce rights guaranteed by the Constitution. . . . Perhaps Lujan Grisham is using her order to show her party how to use this conflict to undermine Supreme Court decisions they disagree with.

Time will tell whether Lujan Grisham’s order is just another failed effort at political signaling or the start of a much more serious challenge to the Supreme Court’s authority. Either way, the constitutional rights of her state’s residents will suffer.

Consider the disturbing import of the assertions, “Democrats remain furious that a conservative-dominated Supreme Court is likely to strike down progressive rulings in the coming years,” and “Democratic officeholders in deep-blue states will have to enforce rulings they deeply resent or hate.”

This last point is key. As a Marxist, or simply a crass opportunist politician beholding to her Marxist/Collectivist benefactors, Grisham is a willing tool. Her goal, as a Marxist and/or political opportunist is to comply with the agenda and goals of her benefactors. Neither she nor they give a damn about the U.S. Supreme Court or any other Branch of the Government. Their goal is to neutralize all three and do away with the Constitution.

To accomplish that, a major goal of all these Marxists, adherents of the tenets and precepts of Collectivism, is the annihilation of the armed citizenry.

The armed citizenry is much feared by Collectivists, and rightly so. The armed citizenry is not enamored with the prospect of existing under a state of Tyranny—domination, subjugation, and the total destruction of Soul, Spirit, and Mind.

Remember, as we have said and as we constantly harp on:

Dangerous, Ruthless, Powerful Forces both here and abroad are desirous of and determined to dismantle the fabric of our Free Republic. But to accomplish that, America’s citizenry must be disarmed to a man.

Their efforts to date are more noticeable, more numerous, more creative, bolder, more cunning, and demonstrative of outward and outright disdain for those Americans intent on exercising their right to keep and bear arms, than at any time in the past.

People like Grisham, holding high Government leadership positions and vested with and wielding enormous power over the citizens residing in their jurisdictions, are funded by and supported by George Soros through nongovernmental organizations. He has created and funded “a ton” of them. See, e.g., “flip HTML,” “The Will County News,” and an article in CNBC.

Soros, and other ruthless, wealthy, and powerful Marxists, fund campaigns of people who satisfy either one of two conditions:

First, people, who by their nature, share the same sensibilities and Marxist ideology as George Soros.

Second, people, who by their nature, are mere crass opportunists, i.e., political prostitutes, whose loyalty is up for grabs to the highest bidder.

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is one or the other, or perhaps a little of both.

Wherever her allegiance rests and with whomever it rests, that allegiance is not tied to our Country and Constitution, and it is not in accord with the best interests and needs of the citizenry.

Washington Post columnist, Henry Olsen, is correct, in his assertions that “Lujan Grisham’s order flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen,” and that New Mexico’s residents will suffer under a Governor who defies U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

The mere notion that powerful figures in the State or the Federal Government can ignore U.S. Supreme Court rulings because they happen to disagree with those rulings is deeply troubling, especially, where, as here, those rulings cohere plainly with the import and purport of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

But then, Political Progressives and Marxists seek to change the composition of the Court, to seat individuals, Marxists, such as themselves, who have no intention to render rulings consistent with and in strict accordance with the plain meaning of the U.S. Constitution, as written. For, ultimately, they wish to undo it, and do away with it. And, in the interim, they wish to sabotage it.

In the interim, these Political Progressives and Marxists simply choose to ignore those rulings that are antithetical to their Collectivist musings and cravings.

Olsen is incorrect in his blanket statement, “there is a theoretical conflict between a state’s constitutional authority to protect its citizens and the federal government’s authority to enforce rights guaranteed by the Constitution.”

That assertion is wrong for two reasons.

First, the Federal Government and the States both have a duty to serve the interests of the citizenry. Government of any kind, under a free Constitutional Republic such as ours (and we are the only truly free Constitutional Republic on Earth), has no other purpose than that. There is no conflict on that score.

Second, concerning the Nation’s Bill of Rights, the Federal Government enforces nothing and must not be permitted to enforce anything because the Federal Government enforces nothing and must not be permitted to enforce anything because the Bill of Rights does not come under the purview of Federal Government enforcement (or, for that matter, under State enforcement either).

The American citizenry doesn’t need or want either the Federal Government or the States to interfere with the Nation’s natural law rights in any manner. Enforcement is just another instance of interference.

Rather, it is the American people, themselves, who enforce their fundamental, natural law rights against the Government whenever the Government attempts to infringe on those rights.

The Bill of Rights serves to remind Government (Federal, State, and local) that the American citizenry is and remains the sole sovereign over Government, and any attempt by Government to enforce its will on the populace by constraining the exercise of its fundamental natural law rights—rights that precede the formation of any Government—bespeak Government Tyranny.

The citizenry is not Constitutionally bound, legally obligated, or morally obliged to abide by the ad hoc edicts of Tyrants.

In fact, the legal and ethical duty of the American citizenry is to resist Tyranny with all its might.

The natural law right codified in the Second Amendment has carried the brunt of Government efforts—aided by a flaccid, placid, compliant Press and social media, academia, along with the business and financial sectors—to constrain exercise of the right precisely because an armed citizenry is the ultimate bulwark against Tyranny.

Grisham, Hochul, Newsome, and the Biden Administration—just a few of the major purveyors of Marxism, and toadies of foreign Marxist powers—have made clear, through their words and their actions, where their allegiance rests. And it does not rest in the precepts and tenets of our Constitution, nor is it tied to this Nation and its people.

IS NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR GRISHAM DELIBERATELY INCITING THE CITIZENRY INTO OPEN REBELLION?

PART TWO

Soros-sanctioned high-ranking State, County, and Municipal officials do not initiate unconscionable, unconstitutional actions out of the blue. And that is no less true of New Mexico’s present Governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham.

This pretentious, sanctimonious, deceitful political leader of New Mexico is a Soros-backed toady.

The New York Post reported on September 9, 2023,

“New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, whose campaign was backed by left-wing billionaire George Soros, riled up conservatives and gun owners after she issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public in Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days.”

See also the news account from a local New Mexico newspaper, the Pinon Post, that reports,

According to Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s campaign filing between October 4, 2022, and November 1, 2022, the far-left governor got a last-ditch surge of cash from the George Soros family — this time from Soros’ third child Jonathan and his wife, Jennifer.

The billionaire’s son and his wife gave $10,000 each to Lujan Grisham on October 6. 

The Democratic Governors Association (DGA)-linked PAC ‘A Stronger New Mexico,’ which is helping Lujan Grisham, received an October 7 surge of cash from Democrat billionaire ex-New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He dunked $1 million into the PAC to help save the governor’s hide. His anti-gun group ‘Everytown for Gun Safety’ also dunked $100,000 into the PAC. 

Other contributions to the pro-Lujan Grisham PAC included $150,000.00 from the abortion up-to-birth group EMILY’s List, as well as $4.7 million from the DGA, and $150,000 from the enviro-Marxist Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) Votes.

The Soros-Grisham connection goes back years before, in 2017, when she ran for Governor of New Mexico for the first time, against Republican, Steve Pearce. See the article in the “Santa Fe New Mexican” newspaper.

See also the article posted by the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA).

The RGA reports that,

Desperate to stand out in a crowded Democrat gubernatorial primary field, Michelle Lujan Grisham is looking for assistance from one of America’s most infamous radical left-wing billionaires, George Soros. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that Soros ‘gave Lujan Grisham $11,000, the maximum allowed under state law,’ while his son, Alexander Soros, gave an equal amount. In her campaign for New Mexico’s highest office, Lujan Grisham is now cashing checks from a far-left billionaire who has spent decades backing candidates who will support his radical anti-jobs agenda.

By taking money from George Soros for her gubernatorial campaign, Lujan Grisham has made it clear that she will side with promoting his reckless left-wing policies ahead of fighting for New Mexicans.

Not fighting FOR New Mexicans is the least of it. How about her fighting AGAINST New Mexicans?

Although the Soros connection is worth mentioning, the pressing concern is over what Michelle Lujan’s Grisham’s deep ties to Soros portends for the people of New Mexico.

It is enough to say these ties exist. Soros intends to tear down the social fabric of this Nation and the Constitutional underpinnings of it. And he is doing that. His zealous, contemptuous, attitude toward our Nation, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our History, Heritage, culture, and core Christian values knows no bounds.

The Soros TOOLS are the toadies that Soros and his myriad Non-Governmental Organizations (“NGOs”) fund to get elected.

There is no need to guess on that. Just take a look at the actions of Soros-backed (or linked) prosecutors across the Country. See the article in the Washington Examiner.

And this includes legislators and executive officials.

Do Americans honestly believe that Michelle Lujan Grisham’s unconscionable, unconstitutional actions, suspending the exercise of the fundamental, natural law right of armed self-defense in numerous jurisdictions across New Mexico, springs from a true public safety concern and that the Public Health Order is really just temporary?

Do Americans surmise Grisham happened to wake up the morning of September 8, 2023, deciding how nice it would be to issue an Executive Order that suspends the operation of the Second Amendment, ignores U.S. Supreme Court Bruen rulings, and disobeys the strictures of her own State’s Statutes and Constitution?

Are Americans that naïve?

No! They are not. Grisham is taking her cue from powerful forces both here and abroad that fully intend to destabilize American society and dismantle the only truly Free Constitutional Republic in the world: the United States. Most Americans understand this.

Governor Michelle Grisham in New Mexico, along with Governors Kathy Hochul in New York and Gavin Newsome in California, and several other Governors across the landscape of America, are “Moles.”

They are waiting to spring into action when called upon by their secretive “Case Officers” to do so, and with the U.S. Supreme Court rulings, they have begun to spring into action—some earlier, some later.

But they are all intent on assuaging the concerns of their Marxist benefactors and fully adhering to the Marxist agenda.

Soros and his International Marxist “Open Society” Initiative could never abide by U.S. Supreme Court rulings strengthening the Second Amendment natural law right to armed self-defense in accord with the plain meaning of it.

Such strong High Court rulings required equally strong responses.

Hochul provided one response with her “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA”), in New York. Enforcement of that Act was the subject of ongoing litigation from the get-go.*

Newsome did the same thing in California with Senate Bill 2 (the Portantino bill) that passed the State Senate just the other day, on September 12, 2023, and is headed to Newsome’s desk for signing.

Now, Grisham is doing the same in New Mexico. And her “Public Health Order” is the most serious violation of the fundamental, natural law right to armed self-defense, yet.

Governors invoke different strategies, as required, given the nuances of each State, but all are directed to the same outcome: destruction of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

And, for those Americans who think their State is immune from the coming Soros-initiated and inspired conflagration, think again.

States like New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado were once reliably “Red States.” That was true once, but no longer. Soros and other powerful Marxists and their organizations have seen to that. And these insolent, arrogant characters intend “to turn” many other “Red States,” “Blue.”

GRISHAM’S STRATEGY FOR DEFEATING THE RIGHT OF AMERICANS TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IN NEW MEXICO.

While the news media has focused attention on the bizarre and dangerous gambit of the Governor, little to no attention is focused on why this is. What brought this on?

What motivated this Soros-Flunky to act in the bold and brazen way she did?

Grisham would like the public to believe her actions stem from what she, along with sympathetic voices, in the Press refer to as an “epidemic of gun violence” rampaging across the State.

But, if this is true, it can only mean that New Mexico is beset by a wave of criminal violence. And that is true enough.

But, given that fact, why issue an emergency Public Health Order targeting innocent citizens residing in New Mexico?

Why not mobilize the police across the State to arrest the perpetrators of violent crime, root out the criminal violence, and, if need be—if the police cannot handle this problem on their own—then call out the State militia to assist the police, to deal with violent crime and criminals and lunatics rampaging through the State, methodically and vigorously.

If the extent and intensity of violent crime caused by a myriad of psychopaths and lunatics wielding guns across New Mexico is that great, then zero in on that issue and leave average, law-abiding, rational, responsible American gun owners who reside in New Mexico alone.

But she won’t do that. She won’t do that because it is THESE average Americans in New Mexico that she wishes to target, hundreds of thousands of them.

What is going on here?

The answer or a major part of the answer is found in a story we uncovered on (of all places) on the political left, progressive website NPR.

Note: the April 14, 2023 article mentions Albuquerque and it is Albuquerque that bears the brunt of the impact of Grisham’s September 2023 “Public Health Order.” Is this just coincidence? We don’t think so.

The NPR article proceeds with this:

Home to about 2.1 million people, New Mexico has one of the highest rates of police killings per capita in the country.

Last year, 32 people — around 15 people per million — were killed by police in the state, according to data from MappingPoliceViolence.org. The project is part of Campaign Zero, a nonprofit focused on policing reform.

New Mexico is second to Wyoming, with a population of about 581,000, where around 17 people per million were killed by police.

‘Who would have thought New Mexico would have one of the highest rates in the country?’ said Howard Henderson, founding director of the Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University. He's also a professor in the university's school of public affairs. . . .

Critics of police response in New Mexico say a bigger gun culture in the state compared to much of the rest of the country and lax police training play a factor in the high incidence of police killings.

Police in the state's largest cities say they are making changes to alter how police use lethal force. . . .

‘We know that commonsense policies like requiring de-escalation and a high standard for when to use force keep all of us safer,’ Jones said. ‘Despite New Mexico having one of the highest, if not the highest, per capita rate of killings by police in the nation, robust legislation addressing police use of force did not pass this year. It doesn't have to be this way.’ [Is the Governor’s issuance of a “Public Health Order” four months later the answer? It seems so.]

Gun ownership and culture play a factor

As of 2021, there were 122,968 federally registered firearms in the state, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The data is collected under the National Firearms Act, but this reflects only a subsection of weapons.

Using data from the Rand Corp., CBS News reported that roughly 46% of adults in New Mexico had at least one gun at home in 2021. The state ranked 21st in a list of states and gun ownership. Texas, with more than 1 million gun licenses and roughly 46% of adults reporting they live in a home with guns, ranked first.

Most of New Mexico ‘is rural, people rely on self protection’ and there's more of a culture of hunting compared to the rest of the country, so high gun ownership makes sense, said Maryam Ahranjani, a law professor at the University of New Mexico.

But this likely plays a role in higher levels of fatal use of force by police. Officers are more likely going to respond to a call assuming an individual may be armed, Ahranjani said. . . .

‘It makes sense from a personal safety standpoint that officers want to keep themselves safe too,’ Ahranjani said.

Because of the state's high gun ownership, Ahranjani said police should be trained in a way that prepares them to de-escalate situations rather than use lethal force.

For many years, the Albuquerque Police Department, the law enforcement agency in the state's largest city, has had difficulties with its officers' use-of-force. It has been investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for its pattern of excessive force. Federal officials reached an agreement with the city to improve training and to keep tabs on its progress. . . .

Following the federal consent decree, the department has shown that ‘97% of use-of-force incidents were within policy during the most recent monitoring period,’ Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, told NPR.

‘There's a hodgepodge of policies from Farmington, New Mexico, all the way down to southern New Mexico in Las Cruces,’ Jones said. ‘That could have something to do with [the higher levels of deadly use of force by police].’

. . . .

Under state law, all police officers in New Mexico are required to complete in-service training twice a year and report this to the state. But, according to a 2021 analysis provided by the New Mexico ACLU, during the during the last biannual training cycle ‘only 47 % of law enforcement agencies complied with state reporting requirements, with over half of agencies' compliance with statutory training requirements unclear.’

In recent years, many advocates have said law enforcement shouldn't be the ones responding to mental health-related calls.

A review of Albuquerque Police Department shootings between 2018 and 2022 showed that deadly force was used when attempting to apprehend violent suspects, when citizens were experiencing a mental health episode, or when people were acting badly while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the city's police chief said in November.

In search of a solution Albuquerque developed a specialized department staffed to react with a non-law enforcement-led response to 911 calls related to mental health, substance use and homelessness. . . .”

The NPR article would suggest the problem in New Mexico is two-fold: Inadequate police training (which may or may not be true), and New Mexico’s high rate of violent crime, which is true and very well-documented.

Assuming for purposes of argument that NPR is correct and a problem does exist with too many “trigger-happy police officers” in New Mexico, and especially in Albuquerque, then the Governor should do something concrete about improving police training.

And since New Mexico is the second most crime-ridden State in the Country, which FBI Statistics DO bear out, the Governor should crack down on incidents of violent crime. See the article in the Pinon Post. Also, see the article in “Inside Sources.”

Responding strenuously to THE LATTER (raging violent crime) would resolve any perceived problem with THE FORMER (shootings by police in defense of their own life and well-being and that of innocent others when apprehending dangerous, psychopaths and lunatics. For, violent crime would drop abruptly, once the State Government unshackles the police, allowing them to sweep violent offenders from the streets, and once the justice system incarcerates the lot in prisons or places them in lunatic asylums).  

But Grisham is doing nothing to deal effectively and strenuously with the crime problem that has gotten out of hand. The same situation exists in New York and California.

Instead of dealing with crime, these Marxist Governors pretend the problem rests with “guns.” And, since most of those guns fall within the control of the non-violent, ordinary citizen, these Governors ignore the crime and target the citizen. But, that was their desire all along. For, it isn’t the violent crime that concerns the Marxist Governors. It is and always was “the armed citizen” that troubles them.

In fact, violent crime serves them well, as criminals and lunatics demoralize the citizenry and destabilize society.

The existence of violent crime allows these duplicitous Marxists to argue that the problem was never criminals but, rather, the mechanism of “the gun” that criminals may or may not use.

And even among those criminals who have used guns to commit violence and who continue to use guns, these Marxists don’t concern themselves with that issue at all, for, they have done nothing concrete to deal effectively with that.

It isn’t guns in the hands of criminals that concern these Marxist Governors. It is, rather (and always was) guns in the hands of tens of millions of average citizens that concern these Marxist State leaders. And that is who they target and they do so with a vengeance.

Getting rid of guns in the hands of tens of millions of average, responsible, rational, law-abiding citizens serves to avoid the real problem any Tyrant faces—the armed citizenry.

For, the exercise of the natural law right to armed self-defense serves as the ultimate effective deterrent to a Ravaging Tyrant.

So, of course, Grisham’s illegal Public Health Order exempts police from carrying firearms in public and, of course, there is nothing in the Order that so much as suggests an attempt to tackle violent crime.

Oh! The Irony!

New Mexican Governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham concerns herself neither with purportedly “untrained” police officers nor with curbing and curtailing violent criminals.

She goes after the most innocent members of society—the law-abiding citizen who happens to own and possess firearms for his or her own safety. And what is the harm in that, she thinks?

After all, for Marxist leaders, the armed citizen is the gravest danger. But they never say that. They cannot. So, what is it they do?

They simply mask their illegal, unconscionable acts in seemingly innocuous verbiage: a quest to end the “Gun Violence Epidemic” and a desire to ensure “Public Safety.”

But neither goal is achieved. Neither goal can be achieved. Neither goal is meant to be achieved.

For, criminal violence is what these people want. That is clear from the evidence: the very existence of crime, violent crime, that keeps escalating at a frightening, precipitous rate.

A violent crime rate works to their benefit, for it is what they seek to achieve: destabilization of society, and restructuring American society to reflect a Totalitarian Marxist State.

So promoting public safety is not in the cards. It never was.

The phrase “Gun Violence Epidemic” refers to the idea that too many average, rational, responsible, non-violent, law-abiding people—ordinary Americans—keep and bear arms: tens of millions of Americans. That fact frustrates the Tyrant and the Tyrant’s Tyrannical Government.

Tyranny cannot exist and persist in an environment where the citizen is sovereign over the Government. And that is precisely what the framers of our Federal Government had in mind.

It is no wonder that Democrats, Progressives, and Marxists perfunctorily point to the right of the people to keep and bear arms as archaic and anachronistic.

They argue that the Second Amendment of America’s Bill of Rights is not consistent with the international norms of those countries that severely constrain or altogether curtail civilian ownership and possession of guns. But, so what?

Those countries have no history of or even conception of the natural law right to right to armed self-defense.   

So, of course, Grisham’s illegal Public Health Order exempts police from carrying firearms in public and of course there is nothing in the Order that so much as suggests an attempt to tackle violent crime.

Such crime is therefore permitted to go unchecked and in fact to flourish in New Mexico.

And, so, psychopaths and lunatics continue on their merry way, creating mayhem and havoc whether they wield guns or not.

The phrase, ‘Epidemic of Gun Violence’ serves the New Mexico Marxist Tyrant, Governor Michelle Grisham, as a convenient makeweight. And, it goes undefined.

The Radical Left propagandist creators of the phrase “Gun Violence Epidemic” never defined the expression. They don’t need to.

But, then, they don’t want to.

Its purpose is clear even if the meaning is cunningly masked.

The phrase is a codename for a military operation. And that operation takes many forms, depending on the nuances and the needs of a given Marxist jurisdiction.

And no Soros-controlled jurisdiction is exempt from this military operation.

The goal involves, first, precluding those who keep and bear arms from employing them for self-defense (which severely compromises their ability to defend their health and well-being, (especially in the public sphere), and, second, dispossessing the civilian population of their firearms.

After releasing her “Public Health Order,” Michelle Lujan Grisham smugly and disingenuously asserted, as reported by The New York Times in an article published on September 9, 2023, that unabashedly and wholeheartedly approves of Grisham’s actions,

‘I welcome the debate and the fight about making New Mexicans safer’ . . . [and] the ban [will] be lifted at the end of 30 days if the gun violence epidemic [is] over. But she added, ‘I bet it’s not over in 30 days’ and that the ban [will] likely [need] to be modified.

‘We’ll make adjustments, and I intend to make Albuquerque the safest place in America, . . . . ‘It’s a tall order, and I am on it.’

Governor Grisham is on nothing but her high horse.

And, if it is a debate that the Governor wants then, fine, let’s have at it.

But let the public, the State Legislature, and the Governor’s Office debate “making New Mexico safer” BEFORE not AFTER executing an order that merely presumes what must be proved and that would inevitably be proved false, even nonsensical anyway——namely, guns in the hands of average, responsible, rational, law-abiding American citizens living in New Mexico are the root cause of both New Mexico’s rampaging criminal violence and New Mexico’s “trigger-happy cops.”

Is this Soros-backed Marxist Governor defiantly, ardently daring the armed citizenry to respond to her shameless brash Order through open armed revolt? It sure looks like it.

If so, she will come to rue what she has so cavalierly initiated and incited.

______________________________

* A ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is likely to be handed down next month, and it is likely to be taken up by the High Court if the Second Circuit rules against New York’s gun owners. The 2023-24 term starts in October, with the Court hearing its first oral argument on October 2. _____________________________  

NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR MICHELLE GRISHAM’S SEPTEMBER 8, 2023 PUBLIC HEALTH ORDER IS NOT ONLY INCONSISTENT WITH THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AND THE BRUEN RULINGS BUT ALSO INCOMPATIBLE WITH ITS OWN STATE STATUTES

PART ONE

The unilateral action by New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham declaring a ban on civilian possession of a firearm, whether open or concealed, in public “to remain in effect for the duration of the public health emergencies. . .” is unconstitutional, unconscionable, and illegal.

See the Governor’s Press Release as issued from her Office.

Since the issuance of the Order on September 8, 2023, the number of articles coming out on this is legion. John Crump’s recent article, which appears in Ammoland Shooting Sports News is insightful. He points out that,

“The order will almost certainly be challenged on Constitutional grounds. The move seems to run afoul of the Bruen Decision, which said individuals have the right to carry firearms outside the home. The Supreme Court did not make any exceptions for ‘public health.’”

He continued, a challenge came swiftly. The case is  National Association for Gun Rights v. Grisham.

See also Article in “Reason,” posted by “The Volokh Conspiracy,” citing the case filed in the U.S. District Court of New Mexico.

The Nat’l Ass’n for Gun Rights moved for a Temporary Restraining Order to enjoin enforcement of Grisham’s Order, on September 9, 2023, just one day after the Governor signed the Order.

Citing Bruen, the Plaintiff Challenger laid out the legal framework supporting the TRO:

Bruen states that the appropriate test for applying the Second Amendment is: ‘[1] When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. [2] The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s unqualified command.’ Id., 142 S. Ct. at 2129-30 (internal citation and quotation omitted).

In Bruen, the Court wrote: ‘We therefore turn to whether the plain text of the Second Amendment protects [plaintiffs’] proposed course of conduct – carrying handguns publicly for self-defense. We have little difficulty concluding that it does.’ 142 S. Ct. at 2134. The [New Mexico] Carry Prohibition flatly prohibits Plaintiffs from carrying handguns (or any other firearm) in public for self-defense. Therefore, Plaintiffs’ burden under step one of the Bruen analysis is easily met for the same reason it was met in Bruen. Hence, the Constitution presumptively protects Plaintiffs’ Proposed Conduct. Another way of saying the same thing is that the Carry Prohibition is presumptively unconstitutional. C. The Government Cannot Carry its Burden Under Bruen.’

But, apart from the illegality of Grisham’s Public Health Order on Second Amendment grounds and on U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen rulings, the Order runs contrary to Mexico’s own Statutes.

This latter matter has not yet been discussed. We do so here. But, to get a handle on this, we must do some unpacking of concepts.

We begin with the phrase, “Gun Violence,” which appears in the Governor’s Public Health Order.

For the longest time, the Anti-Second Amendment establishment has raged over this thing, “Gun Violence.” 

Both the Arbalest Quarrel and others have written about the fallacy connected with this expression.

Ammoland Shooting Sports News has published articles on this. See one by Dean Weingarten, published on November 29, 2022, and a second by Roger Katz, published on September 11, 2019.

The idea implicit in ‘Gun Violence,’ if one insists on the expression, is that of ‘Criminal Violence’ where a criminal uses “a gun” in the commission of a crime.

In that commonsensical view the phrase ‘Gun Violence’ simply denotes criminal use of guns, nothing more.

So why not eschew talk of Gun Violence for the appropriate expression, ‘Criminal Violence’?

Doing so would drive public policy where it belongs, on crime and criminals and away from the mechanism criminals sometimes employ, although not invariably, to do their horrible misdeeds.

But Democrats and Progressives don’t want to talk about crime and criminals. They don’t even want to talk about criminal use of guns.

They only want to talk about guns and reducing the number of them, and that creates a real problem.

For, who is it that owns and possesses most of those “guns?”

The answer is tens of millions of innocent, rational, responsible, law-abiding citizens.

And why do tens of millions of Americans wish to keep and bear guns?

Well, they do so for many reasons, all lawful, and one of which stands out as predominant, self-defense. 

The citizen’s exercise of his fundamental, natural law right to secure his life and well-being and that of his family with the most effective means to do so is both a noble purpose and an essential one, especially now, since many communities across the Country have suffered an acute shortage of police officers.

But little mention of this finds its way into the public square because Democrats and a sympathetic Press won’t allow it. They don’t want it. And the reason is plain.

These anti-American interests are the cause of our societal decay and they don’t want to acknowledge that. They dare not. For it is what they want, what their agenda is all about: the dissolution of our Free Constitutional Republic?

Anti-Second Amendment elements in Government, in the Press, and in the greater society have their own uses for ‘Gun Violence.’ It is they, after all, who have coined the expression.

And that phrase is the driving force behind the New Mexico Governor’s  Public “Health” Order.

The Governor’s message as reflected in her Order, is an arrogant assault on the conscience. Boiled down to its essence, the tacit message conveyed is this:

“Guns are a virus, a virulent contagion, and like all virulent contagions, must be rooted out, quarantined, and eradicated, and I, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, intend to do just that!”

The idea of Guns as a virulent contagion is not a novel idea. It goes back decades.

Back in 1995, in an Academic Article, Don Kates and others wrote about the strategy to deny one’s exercise of the natural law right of armed self-defense by viewing guns as a health menace. The writers of the article referred to this strategy as “The Public Health Agenda.”

In 1979 the American public health community adopted the ‘objective to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership,’ the initial target being a 25% reduction by the year 2000. Based on studies, and propelled by leadership from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the objective has broadened so that it now includes banning and confiscation of all handguns, restrictive licensing of owners of other firearms, and eventual elimination of firearms from American life, excepting (perhaps) only a small elite of extremely wealthy collectors, hunters, or target shooters. This is the case in many European countries. . . .

In sum, health leaders see violence as a public health crisis and the firearm as something akin to an infectious disease. For example, one author characterized guns as ‘a virus that must be eradicated.’ Their views receive wide exposure because, unlike criminology and other social scientific journals, medical and health periodicals announce the appearance of their articles on firearms with press releases describing their anti-gun conclusions. This follows the health advocate sages' avowed intention to promote the idea that firearm ownership is an evil and that its elimination is a desirable and efficacious means of reducing violence.

From “Guns And Public Health: Epidemic Of Violence Or Pandemic Of Propaganda?”, 62 Tenn. L. Rev. 513, Spring, 1995, by Don B. Kates, et. al.

Viewing “Gun Violence” as a medical matter is inane. It involves tortuous use of a literary device, metaphor, as a mechanism upon which to design and implement public policy.

The metaphor is that guns are like a virus.

But the CDC and other elements that demonstrate a rabid fear and abhorrence toward firearms don’t stop with metaphor, or they fail to see that what they take to be a “reality” is only a literary device. And we are the worst for it. They argue that “guns” ARE a virus, and therefore must be treated like any other virulent plague: vigorously attacked and stamped out.

And Governor Grisham’s Order is based on the metaphor of GUNS AS VIRULENT VIRUS and she attempts to apply the metaphor to law.

The effort, absurd to begin with, is doomed to fail if one stops to observe the absurdity of it and calls her out for it.

Our free Constitutional Republic is grounded on law, not metaphor.

Nonetheless, Grisham trusts that she can skate around the Second Amendment issue and the constraints of State law by focusing on guns as a public health menace and she hopes that no one will notice the card trick she employs, the use of metaphor, to do this.

It is unfortunate that pervasive and undeniable lunacy doesn’t prevent ideological fanatics who wield immense power from thrusting their lunacy on everyone else, embroiling us all in their nightmarish reality.

So, why isn’t anyone attacking the Governor’s lunacy head-on? That is where attention should first be directed.

Grisham cites several State Statutes to support the imposition of her unprecedented, draconian Order, suspending the operation of the Second Amendment in several areas of the State. Do these Statutes offer her support? Let’s see.

The most important of the Statutes upon which she bases her Order falls within the category of Public Health because Grisham points to the Order specifically as a “Public Health Order.”

N.M. Stat. Ann. § 12-10A-5 provides that,

A. A state of public health emergency may be declared by the governor upon the occurrence of a public health emergency. Prior to a declaration of a state of public health emergency, the governor shall consult with the secretary of health. The governor shall authorize the secretary of health, the secretary of public safety and the director to coordinate a response to the public health emergency.

BUT THE PERTINENT QUESTION HERE IS WHETHER THE MERE POSSESSION OF GUNS IN PUBLIC EQUATES WITH “GUN VIOLENCE” SUCH THAT THIS GUN POSSESSION QUA “GUN VIOLENCE” FALLS WITHIN THE LEGAL DEFINITION OF A ‘PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY’ UNDER NEW MEXICO LAW.

In New Mexico, public health emergencies fall within the purview of N.M. Stat. Ann. §§ 24-1-1 — 24-1-44.

N.M. Stat. Ann. § 24-1-2 says this:

As used in the Public Health Act [Chapter 24, Article 1 NMSA 1978]:

A.  ‘condition of public health importance’ means an infection, a disease, a syndrome, a symptom, an injury or other threat that is identifiable on an individual or community level and can reasonably be expected to lead to adverse health effects in the community; . . . .

So, then: Does “a condition of public health importance” include “Gun Violence” qua “Possessing Guns in Public” under New Mexico law?

No, it does not. This kind of thing does not fall within the purview of New Mexico’s “Public Health Act,” and therefore cannot be construed as a “Public Health Emergency” under New Mexico law.

A declaration of a Health Emergency Order must uniformly and internally follow all applicable laws.

N.M. Stat. Ann. § 12-10A-3 is the applicable “Definitions,” and Section. N.M. Stat. Ann. § 12-10A-3 (G) defines the phrase, ‘public health emergency.’

 ‘Public health emergency’ means the occurrence or imminent threat of exposure to an extremely dangerous condition or a highly infectious or toxic agent, including a threatening communicable disease, that poses an imminent threat of substantial harm to the population of New Mexico or any portion thereof.

Does the phrase “exposure to an extremely dangerous condition” that appears in the afore-cited statutory section embrace “Gun Violence” qua “Possessing Guns in Public,” under New Mexico Law?

Such an idea would be a stretch—an impossible stretch. N.M. Stat. Ann. § 12-10A-2 explains why.

N.M. Stat. Ann. § 12-10A-2 (Purposes of the Act) says,

The purposes of the Public Health Emergency Response Act [12-10A-1 NMSA 1978] are to:

A. provide the state of New Mexico with the ability to manage public health emergencies in a manner that protects civil rights and the liberties of individual persons;

B. prepare for a public health emergency; and

C. provide access to appropriate care, if needed, for an indefinite number of infected, exposed or endangered people in the event of a public health emergency.

Paragraph “C” implies the presence of an ongoing and serious chemical, biological, or epidemiological hazard, causing illness to many people. Such a health emergency is objective and the harm caused to many is measurable and extensive.

A health emergency does not include criminological problems, sociological concerns, or matters deriving from political biases or animosities.

Paragraph “A” makes abundantly clear that any declaration of a public health emergency must be conducted in a manner that “protects civil rights and the liberties of individuals.”

The right of the people to keep and bear arms is one such fundamental right that requires protection when the New Mexico Governor declares, as here, a “Public Health Emergency.” 

BUT HOW CAN THE EXERCISE OF A FUNDAMENTAL CIVIL RIGHT, THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS—THAT THE GOVERNOR IMPLIES IS THE PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY (FOR THAT IS WHAT THE NEW MEXICO PUBLIC HEALTH ORDER TARGETS), AND ONE THAT MUST BE HARSHLY DEALT WITH—TRULY BE CONSIDERED A HEALTH EMERGENCY UNDER NEW MEXICO LAW WHEN THAT HEALTH EMERGENCY IS THE VERY FUNDAMENTAL CIVIL RIGHT THAT MUST, AS NEW MEXICO LAW MAKES CLEAR, BE PROTECTED DURING AN EMERGENCY?

The answer is, IT CANNOT! And that is the crux of the problem for Grisham and her “Public Health Order.”

Governor Grisham’s Order is legally incoherent, incompatible with State Statute, logically inconsistent, and, on analysis, overtly nonsensical.

The Order must be struck down because, as a matter of law, it is (1) illegal under State Statute, (2) illegal under both the United States Constitution and the Bruen rulings, and, as a matter of elementary symbolic logic, it is (3) self-contradictory.

We hope someone challenging Governor Grisham’s “Public Health Order” in Federal or State Court will make that argument.

____________________________________________________________________

“THE RETURN” BY DICK MORRIS: A REVIEW AND COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS BY STEPHEN L. D’ANDRILLI

“The Return” is  a warning from a person who Time Magazine has called “the most influential private citizen in America [i.e. Dick Morris].” See articles in PBS and “Broadcast Pioneers.”

We have one last chance to preserve our Nation and Government in the form the Founders intended, a Free Constitutional Republic.

“The Return,” is timely and even more important now than it was when published in 2022, before the Midterm Elections of that year.

The Book lays out a convincing case of “shenanigans” [a word that Morris uses] by Democrats to secure the 2020 election for the corrupt, physically and emotionally weak, mentally inept, and malleable puppet, Joe Biden.

The Democrats’ intention was to prevent Trump from serving a Second Term, thus depriving him of completing his policy initiatives and goals—all of which are designed to strengthen the Nation, economically, societally, and geopolitically.

If Trump had served a second term, commencing January 2021, his Administration would have averted the dangers now posed by destructive forces that seek to severely weaken the Country internally, with the aim of hastening the destruction of a powerful Nation-State and Free Constitutional Republic.

In fact, as Americans are now observing, coming up to three years, the Biden Administration’s plans for America are clear: Destruction of the whole of it. That is plain. One needs only to observe what this Administration has wrought: rampant crime, open borders, runaway inflation, a falling economy, wasteful spending, endless war, a failing public education, and confusion, despair, and misery among the citizenry who are treated with contempt—all that it intended to accomplish—or, rather, all that the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist Internationalists have intended to accomplish, utilizing Joe Biden and his Administration as a quasi-legitimate mechanism through which ti surreptitiously destroy the United States, from within.

How has this happened? Why has this happened? “How has this Government steadfastly, arrogantly moved toward Tyranny? “The Return” explicates all of this.

The Constitution, the Blueprint for our Free Constitutional Republic, has served this Nation and its people well for over 240 years. Why would anyone wish to tamper with that? But a substantial number of Congressional Democrats, and their benefactors, and a large segment of Americans would like to do just that and are doing that: ignoring it, making illegal ad hock adjustments to it, and denigrating portions of it, even questioning the need for it.

The last chance for the American people to peacefully prevent the crushing of our Nation, a condition precedent to bringing the Neoliberal Globalist and the Neo-Marxist Internationalist nightmare world vision to fruition is now tied to one singular event—the U.S. Presidential Election of 2024, coming up in little more than fourteen months from now.

Trump has made adamantly clear, come Hell or High Water, that he intends to run for U.S. President in 2024 and that he IS running as President to preserve our Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic, who intend to destroy it,  and WHO ARE inexorably destroying our Republic, along with the sovereignty of the American people over Government.

What Morris says, in “The Return,” operates as an air raid siren—demanding attention and action—impossible to ignore unless a person is deaf, dumb, blind, and incapable of rational thought.

Some may wish to debate the point. But is debate necessary?

The evidence is plentiful and concrete. Many Americans were long aware of the danger. And Trump was certainly aware of the danger to the Country and made clear he would reverse the damage to Country, Constitution, and Citizenry. That was his impetus for running for U.S. President in 2016, and from what he could see first-hand during his first tenure in the White House, and from what he had experienced, he realized the need to serve a second term to achieve his goals to “Make America Great Again.”

The American people gave him his shot to turn matters around. And he made good on his promise to do just that. And for his troubles, Trump was ridiculed and demonized by Democrats, and Neo-Marxist Cultists, and even by some Republicans. And that demonization of Trump, and of the millions of Americans voted for him and that support him, continues to this day.

The forces seeking our Nation’s demise were both shocked and dismayed by that turn of events. How could their chosen puppet, “Hillary Clinton,” lose to an upstart, brazen businessman who had never been in politics? The integrity of the 2020 election was secure because the Democrats and their benefactors didn’t believe a Trump victory was likely.

But the American Electorate were ready for a change.

The Electorate wanted an outsider. They believed in that outsider’s message, “Make America Great Again” (MAGA)—an expression that no American can sensibly take offense with. And yet, many Americans do. This must mean they don’t take pride in their Country, nor in anyone who does and, further, that they look forward to its demise as a free Republic.

Still, “Make America Great Again” did resound with most Americans.

They saw they were losing their Country—losing the promise made to them by the Framers of the Constitution who gave Americans a Nation constructed as a Free Constitutional Republic through which Americans can thrive, not merely survive. Americans were in danger of losing that, along with the exercise of their God-Given fundamental, unalienable, eternal natural law Rights by which and through which they could resist encroaching tyranny of Government.

Donald  J. Trump fashioned this slogan as his vision for the Country, a vision held by the Founders. And Trump remained true to that vision; true to his Oath of Office to faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and true to his commitment to the Electorate, doing his best to fulfill the promises he made to the American people during his 2016 Campaign.

And despite all the efforts to dissuade him from adhering to his Oath, and to his Vision, and to his pledges and promises, he remained true to his Oath of Office and he accomplished several of his campaign promises and pledges. Before his first term ended he was well on his way to accomplishing the remaining ones.

Trump would have completed those and thereby would have secured for Americans the promise of a free Republic if he had served a second Term in Office.

This was something the Obstructors and Destructors of a free Republic did not want, would not and could not abide, and made certain would not occur.

But, during his First Term as President, the American people regained through Donald Trump, something they had lost under the Presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama:

HOPE and, more, TRUST, once again in a Government that maybe, just maybe, could and would work to serve the peoples’ interests as it was designed to do, instead of working against those interests.

There was no reason to think that Americans would not wish to vote Trump into Office for a Second Term to continue to serve the interests of the citizenry. But that didn’t happen.

The question is, “how did Trump lose the U.S. Presidential election of 2020?” He should not have but he did, OR DID HE?

That question is a profound one and deserves an answer, and it is one that Dick Morris responds to and seeks to answer in his book, “The Return.”

If the hard lessons learned about the conduct of the 2020 election are not taken to heart, all is lost.

The paramount question raises an important corollary question:

What transpired during the 2020 election and what transpired years before that would manifest in Trump’s defeat in 2020, and the seating of an emotional and physical wreck of a man, a corrupt, dementia-riddled, inveterate liar—this Joe Biden—in the Oval Office?

The image-makers tried to create the illusion that Joe Biden was a political moderate who would unite the Country. But during his campaign, the few times that the Globalist puppetmasters permitted Biden to speak publicly, did he ever refer to himself as a “moderate?” Not that I can recall.

Did Biden ever say anything that made sense? The only thing that has come out of his mouth then or since are outright lies, vacuous platitudes, and public disdain for Trump and disdain for what he refers to as “MAGA” Republicans.

The propagandists for the Biden Administration tried to turn the acronym “MAGA,” into a pejorative. They did this through use of incessant, repetitious, noxious, simple messaging. Many Americans internalized the negative memes, as intended, magnifying ill-will toward Trump and his supporters.

This demonstrates the power of propaganda—the deliberate softening up of the mind of the target population—so that the population reacts spontaneously and in the direction that the propagandists and the psychologists want to take it; in the direction these manipulators of the public psyche want the target population to go.

Through massaging of the mind on an industrial scale, Americans become conditioned to react to political messaging emotionally, foolishly, reflexively, not rationally, skeptically, and reflectively.

In the first few weeks of Office, the Biden Administration reversed all of Trump’s signature achievements and returned to the destructive agenda of the Obama years. And this act, carefully filmed and staged, was fed to the public as something good, and right, and proper. It was nothing of the kind.

Many Americans were duped by the display. Most were not. And many of those who bought into the charade have second thoughts about Biden now.

Americans are ready for “The Return.”

BUT, WHAT REALLY IS “THE RETURN” THAT DICK MORRIS SPEAKS OF?

The expression, ‘The Return,’ is multifaceted and multilayered.

On a basic, matter-of-fact level, the citizenry yearns for “The Return” of Trump in 2024. That idea comes across immediately and is a central theme of Morris’ book.

In the “The Return,” Morris talks about Trump’s RETURN as President of the United States in 2024. And Trump DOES intend to Return to Office. He always had.

That was never in doubt, from the moment the 2020 Election was yanked from him. He made that clear and unequivocal. And that intention goes undiminished even in the frenzy, and frenetic fury and rabid rage of the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats to prevent that from happening, through the reprehensible actions of the Department of Injustice and through Soros-planted State district attorneys.

The jacket cover displays a photograph of Trump to emphasize Trump’s Return to Office, to complete, during his Second Term, what he commenced in his first term, on behalf of both the Nation and the American people: To Make America Great Again.

This idea is emphasized in the words appearing underneath the photograph of Trump on the book’s cover.

For, underneath the photograph, are the words, “Trump’s Big 2024 Comeback.” THAT IS THE HOPE of America’s Patriots.

Trump’s loss of the White House in 2020, and the loss to the Nation of a truly “GREAT PRESIDENT,” as Morris correctly, not hyperbolically recites—to the conscious, unconscionable, and unconstitutional manipulation of the electoral system—has led to unmitigated chaos in our Country.

This has occurred rapidly, once Democrats and their Neoliberal Globalist benefactors, had seated their manikin in the Oval Office.

They now had, in Joe Biden, a willing, obsequious, if not a fanatic, partner in, and agent to, the systematic rape, and pillage, and sale of the Nation.

The Destroyers of our Nation could now proceed once again with their agenda, one that saw the rapid transformation of the Country—commencing in the Bill Clinton years, moving forward in the George Bush years, and rapidly coming to fruition in the Barack Obama years—into a bankrupt and disruptive, Socialist failed State.

Under Hillary Clinton, the demise of a free Constitutional Republic would be complete. That, fortunately, didn’t happen.

The Electorate and Trump didn’t allow that to happen.

The Neoliberal Globalists, aided by their Neo-Marxist Internationalist allies, would see their goal of a unified Socialist world empire coming to a screeching halt. For, without the torturous rape and murder of the only true Free Republic and truly independent, sovereign Nation-State in the world, that nightmare goal could not come to fruition.

And this matter segues into a second meaning of the title “The Return.”

The words, ‘The Return,’ allude to Trump’s intention and ability once again, to throw a wrench into the agenda of the Democrats and their benefactors who had sought to bring to fruition, the demise of the Nation. These ruthless forces have never wavered in their desire to destroy this Country.

Trump said he would waylay their plans. And he WOULD DO JUST THAT and WILL DO JUST THAT, when he returns to the Oval Office to complete what was unlawfully taken from him, and, by extension, unlawfully taken from the American people: Trump’s Second Term in Office.

Once having returned to Office, taking the Oath of Office, in January 2025, he will fulfill the promise he made to the American people in his 2016 campaign—a promise he could not fulfill and a goal he was unable to achieve during his first four year term in Office.

But, the words, “The Return,” have yet another meaning.

On a third level, the words, ‘The Return,’ connote something even bigger than Trump, and definitely bigger than those forces that plotted to undermine his Presidency all along—who failed in that endeavor and then sought to remove him from Office, and failed in that to, unable to fathom the fortitude and the resilience of the man.

But they did succeed in preventing him from serving a second term in Office. They are now machinating once again, through misuse of the Law and the Constitution, for purely partisan political purposes, to deprive Trump from running for Office and securing that Office in 2024.

The Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats, along with their powerful, wealthy, benefactors operating secretly and subversively, behind the scenes—planning, advising, and ordering the actions of both Congress and the Administration—intend to destroy Trump, politically, personally, financially—in every conceivable way, short of outright murder.

But even, apropos of the last, there are Progressive Democrats, along with their Neoliberal Globalist benefactors and Neo-Marxist collaborationists who would love to see Trump, “Dead,” literally.

The tenacious prosecution of Trump on a litany of criminal charges, all far-fetched and absurd, is meant to make an example of him to all Americans, demonstrating the power and ruthlessness of those forces marshaled against him.

The newest stratagem employed against Trump sees the unscrupulous, heinous, indefensible, manipulation of the Nation’s Federal and State criminal laws, and criminal procedure, and jurisprudence.

Attorneys like Merrick Garland and Jack Smith should be ashamed of themselves. But they have no remorse, no code of ethics.

These people have betrayed their Oath to Office to preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution. They have tarnished whatever is left of their reputation and character, and integrity—if they ever had these qualities.

They are motivated solely by achieving their one goal and they have pulled out all the stops to achieve it. They have exhibited no compunction against tinkering with, contorting, and distorting law, and procedure, and Constitution to achieve their goal: Prevention of Trump from securing the U.S. Presidency in 2024.

Compliance with law and Constitution, the Professional Code of Ethics, their Oath of Office, and basic morality and reverence for fairness and humility when exercising the awful powers at their disposal, mean nothing to these men.

Nothing constrains them—not even the legacy Press. For even the Press is fully onboard with this unprecedented, reckless, destructive endeavor.

If they succeed they will have prevented Trump from becoming U.S. President, thereby preventing him from returning to his principal goals of strengthening the Nation against all enemies both foreign and domestic, preserving the Nation as a free Constitutional Republic, and utilizing the resources of the Government to serve the American people instead of weaponizing Government against them, and keeping the American Dream alive—his soul motivation.

Trump has sacrificed much. But he is doing this for all Americans and for their descendants. That fact is missing from the Press account of how these absurd lawsuits are draining Trump financially. But the Press gloats over that, not realizing—or otherwise conveniently slithering past the idea—that, if Trump is motivated simply by making money, he would not have run for the Presidency in 2016, nor for a second term in 2020. And he certainly would not pursue a run in 2024.

This perseverance cannot be explained by the Press. And it doesn’t try to do so, but the fact belies the attempt to describe Trump as selfish, pompous, and self-centered. There is nothing for Trump to gain, personally, from the incessant, rabid assault on him, not to mention the toll on his immediate family.

Seven years of constant assault on Trump must have taken a toll on him emotionally and physically.

To explain Trump’s desire to soldier on despite personally suffering constant vicious and vile attacks is not the mark of a coward, and it is not the mark of an autocrat, desirous of accruing wealth and power. It is rather the mark of a true visionary—a true American Patriot.

Trump exemplifies our Nation’s Great Men who took in stride, personal adversity and did so for the sake of the Country, commencing with our Nation’s Founders—who fought against, and who defeated Tyranny imposed on them by the mighty British Empire. And then there are our Great Generals of World War II, including men like Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley, and Patton; and our Admirals, including Nimitz, Dewey, and Halsey.

What would the Founders and our Nation’s great Generals and Admirals have to say about the fate of the “Security of a Free State” under the Biden Administration, and under “Progressive Democrats,” and under weak-kneed Republican sellouts?

The words, ‘The Return,’ therefore ultimately speak to the return of the promise made by the Founders of our Republic to their descendants: that this Country, OUR Country, the United States of America, would always exist as a truly free Republic, one where Tyranny would never gain a foothold, and where a free people, sovereign over Government, would succeed in keeping Tyranny at bay through the exercise of their God-Given fundamental, unalienable, eternal natural law rights, primarily those of speech and force of arms.

And it is this latter meaning of “Return” that the Democrat puppets in Congress and in the Biden Administration, and the puppet masters who control them, detest and fear most.

Trump is the vehicle through which a free Constitutional Republic is preserved.

Through his Second Term in Office he would make that happen. And the forces are many and legion and powerful both inside the Federal Government and outside it. And these forces intend to prevent him, if they can, from securing that Second Term. 

The Biden Administration has tasked the DOJ under Merrick Garland to accomplish this. And Garland has carefully selected an attorney, Jack Smith, a person on an unholy crusade to crucify Trump, misusing criminal law and criminal procedure under the guise of pursuing justice.

Criminalizing protected speech and distorting law to accomplish a political goal demonstrate both the feral ferocity of those forces intent on destroying Trump and the contempt those forces have for the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The would-be destroyers of our Country are systematically eroding that message, and, with the avid assistance of a seditious Press, they intend to obliterate it. They intend to return the Country to the tyranny the founders of the Republic succeeded in overturning.

But will they succeed in that endeavor? That all depends on the sanctity and integrity of the electoral process.

In “The Return” Morris discusses in disturbing detail the deliberate attempts by Democrats to manipulate the electoral process to prevent Trump from securing a Second Term in Office in the 2020. And they succeeded in that endeavor.

“The Return” serves as a “WARNING,” first and foremost but it also offers “CAUTIOUS HOPE”—but only if the public recognizes the fact of and the aim of those powerful forces that desire to destroy our Republic, and they understand the mechanisms by which this is to be accomplished.

The stakes in the upcoming 2024 election could not be higher.

Morris writes,

In past elections, we were always told that the stakes have never been higher. Pundits regularly warn us about the consequences of the other party winning. The other party will bring disaster. But the elections of 2022 [now behind us] and 2024 are different. The other party already won the election of 2020—sort of—and disaster is already upon us.”

To win these next two elections, we must realize that these are new rules under which any electoral battle in the future will now be conducted. We must adjust to them and learn to win under them.

Morris makes abundantly clear that the U.S. Presidential Election of 2024 is crucial to preserve our Republic. “It’s our last chance.”

Our Free Constitutional Republic has survived for over 240 years. These Democrats and their benefactors have deliberately and insidiously ignored or distorted the processes by which a Free Republic can continue to exist.

Morris writes,

Negotiation lies at the core of our system of checks and balances. Our entire political system is designed to foster it and to require it. But now, negotiation and compromise are anathema to the new unrecognizable American the Democrats are creating.

Our Founding Fathers . . . had a very different view of democracy from that of their contemporary colleagues in France. There, Enlightenment philosophers felt that it was the duty of government to heed what they called the ‘general will.’ So they developed a political system in which there were no checks and balances, but the popular will ruled the day. Every Day. [Is this an allusion to “Mob Rule”].

By Contrast, our Founders were skeptical of the ‘general will,’ and worried that it could be easily inflamed by passion and prejudice [the very thing that Democrats and their benefactors and a seditious legacy Press appeal to, rather than to reason, for they do not want people to think, calmly, clearly, intelligently, and rationally, but, rather, not to think at all, but to react (as directed by them), agitatedly, turbidly, emotionally, and irrationally]. So [the Founders] developed a constitutional system designed to prevent attempts by Government to thwart the popular will by making it wait until after passions had cooled. . . . [Today, the Government manipulates the public psyche through propaganda and other mechanisms of psychic control to blind the polity to the reality of Tyranny and bind the polity to that Tyranny].

The suspicion of the general will led to their decision to stagger the terms of presidents, senators, and congressmen so that one election could not completely change the government. . . .

[And our system has ably demonstrated workability where others have failed] Our democracy and constitution have lasted since 1788, while France’s has been through five republics and several dictatorships and monarchies during that period. The decision of our Founders would appear to have the right one.

This coming 2024 U.S. Presidential election is, as Morris says at the outset, “our last chance” to preserve our Nation as a free Constitutional Republic.

We, Americans must be steadfast in maintaining our Republic against the tenacity and ferocity of a multitude of forces intent on destroying it. 

This means that Trump must secure a Second Term in Office. But will he?

Morris says, unequivocally, that,

It is the essential premise of this book that we must examine why we lost the popular vote by such a margin, and focus on winning it in the future. We cannot, and should not, expect to stay in power by frustrating the will of the majority of the voters just because the Constitution says we can. Majority rule is still the bedrock principle of democracy. . . .

We must not self-indulgently avoid the reality that the Democrats did a better job of getting their people to vote than we did. They won the turnout war, and with it, the election.

Elsewhere in his book, Morris says this,

We can and must change these laws and administrative procedures to stop post-election voting, drop boxes service by party workers, and ballot harvesting. We’ve got to require full signature verification, and above all, we must require photo identification to register and vote. We must demand that every mail-in ballot has the last four digits of the Social Security number correctly entered.

However, the likelihood is that, even had we done all that, we probably would still have lost the national popular vote. The Republican fortunes might have been rescued by carrying certain swing states to provide an electoral majority, even amid a popular win for the Democrats [which is all we would need, as our system of electing the President serves to check what would otherwise amount to the power of a runaway mob majority vote manipulated by Democrats and propagandists].

Were the elections in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia free from Democratic shenanigans, Trump probably would have won some, or all, of these states, likely enough to carry the Electoral College and re-elect him President.

But we must not let this likely fact obscure the equally evident reality that more people voted for Biden than for Trump, by a massive number.

But is Morris’ last remark true? The statement made as unequivocally true begs the question we pose is this:

DID THE DEMOCRATS IN FACT FAIRLY GENERATE A GREATER PROPORTION OF THE OVERALL POPULAR VOTE?

Americans simply don’t know. Trump himself denies that, and from what I can see from the many instances of unethical behavior, outright fraud, and State reliance on private business use of proprietary voting machines to tabulate results, substantial investigation is necessary, and none of it is forthcoming.

I agree with Trump 100%: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election was Rigged. There is no doubt in my mind.

And I believe that most Americans agree with me that the 2020 Presidential election was rigged but are afraid to say that. And there are those Americans who suspect the election was rigged but either don’t care or believe that it is a good thing that the Election was rigged to ensure that Biden won.

To ensure the integrity of the 2024 election, the States should initiate several steps. Below are a few of the essential ones:

•  ONE DAY TO VOTE LAW AND SPECIFIC HOURS: POLLS OPEN AT 6:00 A.M. AND CLOSE AT 8:00 P.M.

  NOTE: THERE IS NO FEDERAL LAW AT PRESENT DECLARING VOTING DAY, NOVEMBER 8 A NATIONAL HOLIDAY, BUT THERE SHOULD BE. Congress should enact a “One Day to Vote HOLIDAY LAW, ACROSS THE BOARD FOR WORKERS BOTH IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR AND PRIVATE SECTOR.

  THERE WOULD THEN BE NO EXCUSE FOR A QUALIFIED AMERICAN TO REFRAIN FROM VOTING IN PERSON.

  VOTING DAY SHOULD BE AN AMERICAN FAMILY TRADITION, SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO, NOT A CHORE.

  IT SHOULD BE LOOKED UPON AS AN ACT THAT WOULD GIVE THE AMERICAN CITIZEN A SENSE OF FULFILLMENT FOR HAVING TAKEN PART IN THE MOST IMPORTANT ACT OF A CITIZEN—CHOOSING THE NATION’S LEADERS.

  IF ONE DOESN’T VOTE, ONE SHOULD NOT BE HEARD TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THE RESULTS.

• EVERY VOTE COUNTS, AND EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD VOTE WITH THE UNDERSTANDING AND EXPECTATION THAT HIS VOTE DECIDES THE ELECTION.

• AMERICANS MUST REGISTER TO VOTE TO ENSURE THAT THOSE WHO VOTE ARE DULY AUTHORIZED TO VOTE. NON-CITIZENS AND UNDERAGE AMERICANS ARE NOT PERMITTED TO VOTE. CITIZENS WHO ARE CONVICTED FELONS, WHO HAVE NOT RECEIVED A RELIEF FROM DISABILITY ISSUED BY A COURT OF COMPETENT JURISDICTION ARE NOT PERMITTED TO VOTE.

• NO ABSENTEE VOTING EXCEPT IF IMPOSSIBLE DUE TO THOSE AMERICANS SUFFERING FROM SERIOUS DISABILITY, OR FOR MILITARY PERSONNEL WHO ARE OUT OF THE COUNTRY, OR FOR THOSE AMERICANS WHO, DUE TO WORK EXIGENCIES OR OTHER EMERGENCY SITUATIONS, WILL NOT BE IN THEIR DISTRICT ON THE OFFICIAL DAY OF VOTING. AND UNIFORM PROCEDURES TO ENSURE THE PERSON VOTING BY ABSENTEE BALLOT IS THE PERSON TO WHOM THE BALLOT WAS SENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MEASURES TO ENSURE THAT ABSENTEE BALLOTING IS SECURED FROM FRAUD.

• RETURN TO USE OF MECHANICAL, ANALOG VOTING MACHINES, OR PAPER BALLOTS, BY THE STATES; ALL VOTING INSTRUMENTS MUST BE UNDER THE CONTROL OF EACH STATE;  AND ALL VOTING APPARATUS MUST BE SUBJECT TO INSPECTION BY DULY APPOINTED REPRESENTATIVES OF EACH MAJOR PARTY.

• NO USE OF PRIVATE BUSINESS PROPRIETARY DIGITAL VOTING MACHINES ALLOWED, BY OPERATION OF FEDERAL LAW.

• ALL VOTES TO BE TALLIED ON VOTING DAY WITH RESULTS TO BE REPORTED TO THE PRESS FOR RELEASE TO THE POPULACE BY 12:00 MIDNIGHT.

• THE IDENTITY OF EACH PERSON VOTING AT THE POLLS MUST BE VERIFIED

• UPON VOTING AT THE POLLS, EACH PERSON SHOULD RECEIVE A RECEIPT CONFIRMING THE PERSON HAD VOTED.

WHY IS IT THAT EVEN SUGGESTING THE INTEGRITY OF THE 2020 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION HAS BEEN COMPROMISED IS SUBJECT TO VEHEMENT ATTACK?

In fact, the relentless, vociferous, incessant attack on those who simply wish to ascertain the integrity of the 2020 election raises its own red flag. Why are the Government, the Press, Social Media, and many voices in academia anxious to shut down all inquiry?

And, so, as to whether Biden did indeed fairly secure the lion’s share of the popular vote in the 2020 election, this is, to my mind an open question and I respectfully demur from Morris’ unequivocal assertion that Biden did in fact defeat Trump on the popular vote.

Much of Morris’ exhaustive discussion deals with the unethical actions of the Democrat Party machinery in manipulating the electoral process to secure the outcome they wanted. But unethical actions aside, were there outright illegal actions taken?

Morris does discuss the opportunity for voter fraud—a specific strategy that Democrats sought to exploit and did exploit.

How much of that strategy did result in a false vote count—fake ballots tallied as legitimate votes and manipulation of digital technology to fraudulently move votes from one candidate to another, suggesting, then, that Biden obtained more POPULAR votes than Trump when the opposite is true.

And, if massive fraud did occur in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, how do we know that Democrats won’t continue the fraud in the upcoming 2024 General election, considering the stakes.

Tantalizingly Morris, does ask the salient question:

“Did Donald Trump win or lose the election of 2020?

“Would a fair vote count of only timely ballots cast by eligible voters award the election to Trump or to Biden?

“The deliberate efforts of the Democratic machine politicians in swing states to conceal and obfuscate the truth has meant that we many never know the correct answers to either question. And, the cowardice of the US Supreme Court provides us no help on clarification.”

“Filling this critical information gap are the various state sponsored audits of the 2020 election, now under way in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. We hope they will give us an accurate portrait of what happened in the 2020 election.”

But the audit reports are in. But they raise more questions than they answer. Part of the problem is that each State has established its own system for conducting audits. And how many of those audits are transparent? See Report of U.S. Election Assistance Commission, released October 6, 2021.

And see the August 4, 2021, article published in the Washington Times.

Also, consider that State and Federal Courts routinely dismissed complaints filed across the Country, despite disturbing allegations that demanded the parties be allowed to undertake discovery to substantiate allegations of massive fraud in the conduct of the 2020 election, across the Country. The Courts routinely disallowed discovery, perfunctorily dismissing the cases.  

Reuters reports, on February 15, 2022, that Courts, Federal and State, dismissed 50 lawsuits, and uses that fact to infer, erroneously, and more, disingenuously, and deceptively that the perfunctory dismissals are evidence of an absence of wrongdoing in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.

The writers of this sham Reuters report don’t trouble themselves to answer the question (or even to ask the question) why the Courts routinely dismissed the suits? Was there subject matter jurisdiction issues? Standing issues? Were those dismissals legitimate or were they attempts by Courts across the Country to deliberately deny a fair accounting for fear of what “DISCOVERY” would uncover, when evidence obtained proved the allegations made were sound?

Is it the uncovering of the truth of massive fraud that these Courts were afraid of? One is led to think so. If so, the ongoing Press narrative of Trumpian “lies” of fraud would be shot out of the water, and the caustic, corrosive, callous criminal indictments against Trump would draw attention to the true conspirators.

These conspirators aren’t Trump and his lawyers, but domestic and foreign powerbrokers who seek the destruction of our Republic.

They had made substantial headway in accomplishing that objective up until the day Donald Trump became President Trump.

Trump and his team were not conspiring TO UNDERMINE “Democracy.” To the contrary, they were undertaking the effort, on behalf of the American people, consistent with the authority of the U.S. Constitution, TO STRENGTHN OUR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC AND TO EXPOSE THOSE INTENT ON UNDERMINING IT.

The real perpetrators of a conspiracy to defraud this Nation have staged a play, and, insidiously and ironically, have used taxpayer monies to fund their scheme deflecting attention away from themselves and directing attention onto innocent persons, namely Trump and others closest to him.

Recall the expensive farce of the Mueller investigation. It was just a façade—real conspirators fabricating a fake conspiracy against Trump, to hide evidence of their own conspiracy to retain illicit control over the Federal Government.

So, then, what can be expected of the U.S. Presidential Election of 2024? Will Trump obtain the Republican Party nomination? He is the preferred Republican Party candidate by substantial double digits and has remained so for months.

If rank and file Republicans prefer Trump to any other candidate, will the RNC abide by the will and desire of rank and file Republican voters and formally declare Trump to be the Party’s U.S. Presidential nominee for 2024? 

If so, will any one or more of the ludicrous criminal lawsuits that “Special Counsel Jack Smith and State DISTRICT ATTORNEYS  have filed against Trump prevent Trump—from a legal or pragmatic perspective—from seeing his name on the General Election ballot for 2024, in every State of the Union? And, if Trump’s name does appear on the ballots of every State, will the integrity of the 2024 General Election be secure?

And, if so, will Trump secure sufficient numbers of votes of independents and even some Democrat votes, and votes from Bush Republicans to secure the Electoral votes needed to become the U.S. President in January 2025, thereby serving a Second Term that had been rudely denied him in 2020?

THERE ARE A LOT OF “BIG IFS” HERE.

But, of Trump’s formidable courage and tenacity to fight in the face of relentless, seeming overwhelming forces marshaled against him, there is NO “IF” in that. Trump will carry on despite the most virulent attacks that no man running for U.S. President has ever faced before in our Nation’s history.

Never before have Americans witnessed painful and continuous assaults on a man that would turn most people into physical and mental wrecks. That should convince any doubters among Americans, that, Trump, is a man who has the strength of will and physical and mental stamina, and tenacity to weather any storm—thus having both the fortitude, the ability, and, now, the experience to protect our Nation and people against all internal and external threats that would dare impose tyranny on our Nation and, by extension, would impose a tyranny on all of Western Civilization.

Morris says this of a man who has the strength of character to lead the United States against the Nation’s many adversaries:

Trump is Trump. Like it or lump it. He’ll never change, and I came to realize that his manner could not be divorced from his successful outcomes. Change one, and you would forfeit the other.

Morris is emphatic that Donald Trump must be the Republican Party candidate for U.S. President in 2024. On that point, Morris doesn’t waiver or equivocate. And I agree with that assessment wholeheartedly and unreservedly.

If the American people are to prevent the transformation of the Country into a totalitarian Dictatorship and a cog in the Globalist goal of achieving its so-called “Liberal International Order,” then, only Trump can stop that nightmare scenario, short of outright civil war to overthrow a Tyrannical Government.

Morris makes adamantly clear,

Our candidate in 2024 will be, and must be, Donald Trump. Accept no substitutes. Only he can put together the coalition that generated 74 million votes in 2020. And we don’t want a bleached-out, kinder, nicer, gentler Donald Trump, either! We want and need the same Donald Trump who won in 2016, increased his vote share in 2020 by eleven million votes, and in between, was one of our truly great presidents.

A Lot of People Come up to me and say, ‘Trump is his own worst enemy. They mean that they largely approve of his direction and policies, but that his constant battles with the media, Congress, and many of the leaders of this own party are a turnoff.

‘Why can’t he just modulate his style—be nicer and less confrontational?’ they ask, echoing our poll finding that a quarter of the voters like his [programs and positions,’ but not his ‘personality and temperament.’

These folks don’t get it—that his temperament and accomplishments are cause and effect. If you modulate the temperament, you won’t get the accomplishments.

Like it or not, Trump governed by intimidation. He got his way with his own party, Congress, foreign leaders, and even the media by threats, loud complaints, accusations, and bullying. In 2016, Trump did not so much win the GOP nomination as orchestrate a hostile takeover of the party. Not a pretty picture, but an effective way to govern [especially considering the powerful forces at work to destroy the Nation, its Constitution, and a free and sovereign people. Trump was a force to be reckoned with, uncorruptible, true his Oath, and to the promises he made to the Electorate]. . . .

Morris devotes an entire section of “The Return” to prove, not simply declare, that the appellation of “One of Our Great Presidents” is aptly applied to Trump, and, in that section of his book, Morris emphasizes the point at the outset:

Donald J. Trump has been one of America’s great presidents. Not just good, but great. Part of his greatness is reflected in his immense achievements. But the greater tribute is how he defied almost every establishment in the country to achieve what America needed, and what our people demanded.

Morris then begins to recount those achievements:

He defied the economic establishment by getting Congress to pass a massive tax cut, skillfully crafted to aim at the middle class, the working poor, and small businesses. The establishment said cut taxes on the wealthy, and it will trickle down to the rest of society. But Trump knew that trickle-down doesn’t always happen. So he made sure his tax cuts were the first in recent history to target the lower middle class—the working class. . . .

Then he disregarded the complaints of the pro-China lobby and globalists, distributed among the corporate and foreign policy elites, by holding Beijing accountable for its unfair trade practices through massive and highly effective trade sanctions.

The establishment wanted free trade. . . . [recall that Clinton pushed our Nation into NAFTA, (and less known, Bush signed onto CAFTA). Subsequently, we see Obama’s secret plan to saddle our Nation with the mammoth “TPP” and T-TIP that would further erode our manufacturing base, drastically weakening our economy, subordinating the U.S. Constitution and both Congressional and State Statutes to international law and norms, and to international tribunals; all of this a slippery, insidious, subtle mechanism with a two-fold purpose: Further enrich the Mega-Billionaire Globalist class, and corrode the Nation’s sovereignty and independence, sealing our Nation’s fate, subordinating it, through a plethora of secret foreign pacts, treaties and agreements, to overt and covert multinational corporate globalist control, a major step toward creation, ultimately. of a de jure world-wide corporatist empire].

The establishment cautioned him not to mess with China. They said that we owe them so much money, they could pull the plug on us anytime they want to. But as a businessman, Trump understood that it is we who have the upper hand because we buy three times as much from China as they buy from us. . . .

The establishment wanted free flow of labor and open borders. But Trump demanded that we keep illegal immigrants out. He said that if we have millions of people willing to work for very little, there’s no way the middle class can move up in wages.

The environmental establishment wanted to scrap fossil fuels and go to wind and solar energy. But Trump pointed out that we have worked hard for forty years to be energy independent. So why would we give that power away? . . .

The legal establishment said that when illegal immigrants come over the border, they are entitled to constitutional rights. But Trump didn’t see it that way. . . . [And Morris provides many more accomplishments stemming from sound reasoning that benefitted the majority of Americans but that enraged the Washington, D.C. establishment].”

But Morris wasn’t aware of and couldn’t be aware of the new strategy, devised in 2023 (likely much earlier) but implemented in 2023, and designed to turn the Country against Trump, preventing Trump from securing the Republican Party nomination for U.S. President in 2024, and, perhaps, even preventing him from legally running for Office at all.

The Biden Administration having “weaponized” the DOJ, tasked Merrick Garland with devising a scheme to bring Federal Criminal charges against Trump. And the appointment of Jack Smith as “Special Counsel”—a man who holds a rabid hatred of Trump—was all too willing to contort and distort the law to suggest that Trump is a serial criminal who should be behind bars. It is all a ploy, from conception to execution. But does it change the equation in Trump’s bid for the U.S. Presidency in 2024?  It certainly was meant to.

The Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats were well aware that Trump was steadfast in his desire to run for President in 2024 and was likely to become the Republican Party nominee for U.S. President.

Would the mere filing of absurd Federal and State criminal charges against the former President, “hyped” by a sympathetic Press and Political Pundits, serve to turn the public away from Trump, even creating doubt in some Americans who had, in the past avidly supported him? That was the plan.

And, if the Biden Administration plotters could secure a conviction on any one or more of 90 plus charges, currently filed against Trump, the plotters would see that as an added benefit.

But the sheer enormity of the criminal charges filed against Trump is fueling a public backlash. The DOJ leadership and the Soros-backed District Attorneys are plowing ahead with their relentless persecution of Trump, masked as lawful prosecutions. Their single-minded effort to bring down Trump blinds these people to the idiocy of the entire venture. The public—a goodly segment of it—sees this thing for what it is: audacious farce.

Yet, that these “Officers of the Court” would manipulate our Nation’s system of laws, justice, and jurisprudence to effectuate what to their minds is a desirable political outcome, is, for them, justification enough (really a rationalization) to proceed with their rambunctious, rapacious assault on Trump.

This is analogous to the actions of Congressional Democrats who had designed an immense scheme to control the mechanisms by why which and through which federal elections are conducted in the several States—to ensure that a physically, morally, and mentally defective and irredeemably corrupt Joe Biden could defeat a sitting President, Trump, who was vastly superior to Biden on every index of performance, ethical bearing, character, and intelligence.

The difference between Congressional Democrat manipulation of the Electoral Process and the antics of the DOJ and some States is that Democrats plot to manipulate that Process. And the execution of it was mostly opaque, conducted in the shadows.

But, the Biden Administration’s manipulation of our Nation’s system of laws and justice to attack an innocent man, while meticulously conceived in secret, must, in its effects, be readily observed by all.

This is required both by the nature of our judicial system that requires openness in procedure—more openness on that score than people like Merrick Garland and Jack Smith would want—as the public can see through attempts to rein in much of what the Administration would like for the public to see.

Still, the outward filing of criminal charges against Trump is precisely what the Administration wants the public to see, and it wants the seditious unfree Press to echo news of the indictments against Trump and to offer up commentary that supports the notion that wholly unethical and illegal and, quite frankly, barbaric actions by a once venerable institution of justice IS American Justice in action, when in fact it is not.

The public is observing the perversion of American Justice in real time.

Many Americans, fortunately, see through the charade. Trump’s popularity is not diminished by these criminal charges, but increases in direct proportion, to them.

And, now in its apoplectic rage, observing that support for Trump has waxed, not waned, the ILLEGAL JUSTICE SYSTEM has extended its rampage, persecuting many individuals who have had a connection to Trump.

The Electorate is well aware that the Biden Administration and those shadowy forces standing behind the Administration’s actions and that of Congressional Democrats, plotting their every move, is an example of gamesmanship planned out meticulously at the highest levels of Government.

The fact is America is at war with its own Government. THAT Government is no longer bothering to hide the Tyranny that it has imposed on the American people. It is fully embracing it and daring the public to call the Government out for it. And Trump is well aware of this.

But much of the American polity is standing with Trump, giving him full and undiminished support. And this support is due not DESPITE the filing of over 90 Federal and State Criminal Charges but, in part, BECAUSE of the absurdity of them.

The actions and antics of the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats are on full display, unprecedented, and made all the worse due to the extent, intensity, and audacity of State and Federal Government persecution of Trump.

This tells the public they are NOT SEEING THE APPLICATION OF JUSTICE but something else entirely, something sinister, terrible, even evil, and, in a Free   (ostensibly Free) Republic indicative of and evidencing TYRANNY in awful, unadulterated horror, on FULL DISPLAY.

The Puppetmasters behind this travesty of justice are speaking to those Americans who do support Trump, telling them in no uncertain terms:

“See, this is what we are doing to an ex-U.S. President. If we can do this to him and get away with it, think about what we can do to you, using your own tax dollars against you. So, if you do not wish to come to a bad end, you would do well to mind your manners, be careful of your conduct and associations, and keep your damn mouth shut, or we will come after you next!”

But, in answer to this challenge—for a challenge it is—do Americans remain silent, retreat into the background, and become wallflowers? Or do they take a stand: Do they Speak out against Barbarity, Tyranny, and Cruelty now emanating from what was supposed to be, what was designed to be, their own Federal Government?

How would the Founders of our Republic react to this Government that has turned renegade?

Morris would likely agree with my estimate that the extent of, and ferocity of, and insistence of the Biden Administration’s unprecedented attack on our 45th President, Donald Trump, demonstrates less a show of force than a desperation, borne of frustration with Trump himself, of course, but also with the American people, tens of millions of us.

The Biden Administration and Democrats, and their wealthy benefactors, intend to prevent Trump from assuming the Office of Chief Executive of the Nation in 2024. They were focused on preventing Trump from serving as U.S. President, but now that laser intensity is matched by the fear of what will become of them and their agenda once Trump wins the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. That has to be the greatest motivator of all to bring Trump down!

They are concerned he would resume with the campaign promises he made to the American people in 2016 and which he faithfully carried out, against all odds to the best of his ability, consistent with his Oath of Office, and would have continued to do so if he had successfully secured the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, serving his Second Term in Office.

That idea was anathema to the Democrats. And they and their benefactors machinated to destroy the integrity of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, knowing full well that, without contrivance and subterfuge, and a massive campaign of propaganda, directed to the entirety of the polity, the perverse and perverted puppet, Joe Biden, would never have secured the electoral votes needed to win the White House.

But it is important to keep in mind that it isn’t Trump, himself, the Destroyers of the Country are truly concerned about.

Sure, they loathe the man and through use of vicious propaganda unleashed on the entire Nation, they have convinced a segment of the polity to loathe Trump as well.

But those powerful forces that seek to destroy Trump are not motivated to do so simply because they detest Trump’s character and personality. Their concern runs much more deeply.

 They care about completing their agenda, envisioning the creation of a new “Liberal Rules-Based International Order.”

The realization of that goal requires the destruction of the United States as a sovereign, independent Nation-State beholding to the U.S. Constitution, upon which the framework of a free Republic is grounded.

But Donald Trump wishes to preserve and strengthen the Nation as a sovereign, independent Nation-State and Free Republic.

That is what MAGA is all about. And THAT import of MAGA IS antithetical to the aims of Democrats and those forces behind them, supporting them.

In their eyes, Trump’s “real crime” is that he took his Oath of Office seriously, and acted accordingly. For that reason they launched their campaign to destroy an innocent man.

Trump sought to preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution, the blueprint of a free Republic and of a Sovereign People, to the best of his ability.

For this, he was ostracized, ridiculed, threatened, denigrated, and demonized, as were those tens of millions of Americans who supported him in his efforts to preserve our Nation in the form the Founders gave it to us—those first Patriots and the millions of other Americans, who, down through the decades and centuries had risked their life—some paying the supreme sacrifice—to preserve and defend Country and people, against the onslaught of Tyranny.

Is that all to be for naught? Apparently, for some Americans it is.

Millions of hapless Americans, some otherwise highly intelligent, have allowed themselves to be seduced by ludicrous Marxist ideology and dogma.

The Biden Administration has given the Neo-Marxist Cultists free rein to spout their nonsense over the airwaves. It has bought into that ideology and dogma and has made it de facto Government policy, commanding that adopted across the entire Federal Government, and thrust on all Americans and on American businesses.

The psyche of many Americans, having fallen prey to the incessant messaging has grown malleable, pliable, and receptive to the idea that the destruction of their Country is right, proper, just, and good.

Many Americans take, as self-evident true, the false and preposterous idea that the Nation consists of two classes of people: Oppressor and Oppressed: White (Masters) and Colored (Slaves) and that the history, heritage, culture, and ethos of the Country is inherently horrible and evil, and that the Republic doesn’t deserve to exist in its present form, and must be dismantled to make way for something “better.”

And what is this “something” better? It goes by many names. A few of them are the “Rules-Based International Order, the “Liberal International Order,” the “Peace-Keeping World Order,” the Soros “Open Society,” the “Great Reset,” or, as originally referred to, “The New World Order”—and so on and so forth.

But, these aren’t simply rhetorical devices. They are shorthand descriptors for a nightmarish reality that powerful, ruthless forces are working to bring to fruition and that is indeed to encompass the world.

The agenda put together to bring this world vision into actuality views the very concept of ‘nation-state’ as anarchistic, archaic, and antithetical to the interests and desires, and aims of the Neoliberal Globalist community and to the Neo-Marxist Internationalists.

Their paradigm for a new world government is one that eschews independent nation-states, each with its own unique political, economic, social, and cultural milieu, and independent National Governments with their own system of laws.

Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxists perceive the concept of the nation-state as archaic, and anachronistic. They intend to eradicate all of them. And high in their agenda is the dismantling of the United States as a powerful independent, sovereign Nation-State and Free Constitutional Republic.

The forces that had effortlessly controlled Clinton, Bush, and Obama, all of whom had complied with Globalist demands to implement policy detrimental to the well-being of the Country but beneficial to the realization of the Globalist goals, tried to control Trump.

To do that, they first had to corrupt him, not an easy thing to accomplish. For the others, they already were seriously corrupted, compromised individuals. It took little to no effort to make them willing puppets.

But these forces found it exceedingly difficult—ultimately an impossible task —“to turn” Trump. Flattery, entreaties, bribes, cajoling, coercion, and threats all failed. Nothing they tried seemed to work.

Trump remained true to his convictions, to his Oath of Office, and true to the promises he made to the American people. His aims were the obverse of those of the Internationalists. Trump’s agenda was directed at “MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” That agenda was grounded on the principle of “AMERICA FIRST.”  

Democrats and their benefactors found all this intolerable. They tried a new tack.

They attempted to subvert those around him. They tried to sabotage his policy aims and engaged the DOJ and eventually the House of Representatives, under the control of Democrat Party House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in an attempt to rid themselves of their nemesis. That didn’t work either. Nothing worked: not feigned criminal investigations, nor impeachments.

Trump plowed ahead, unfazed, continually frustrating the efforts of those evil, ruthless forces intent on removing him. He proceeded with his policy aims and goals, consistent with the preservation of the Nation as a free Republic and in accordance with the campaign promises and pledges he made to the Electorate that supported him.

But, although terrible in their destructive influences on the sanctity of U.S. Law and the Constitution, Progressive, and Neo-Marxist Congressional Democrats, and the mega-billionaire, extraordinarily powerful Neoliberal Globalist “elites” — illegally maneuvering around Congressional law and the U.S. Constitution and manipulating Congress and the Federal Bureaucracy, and also manipulating the Administrations preceding Donald Trump, and the Biden Administration that succeeded Trump—there is one institution more insidious and invidious, if not as sinister, due to its very openness. But that institution is just as damaging to the well-being of a Free Republic as the institution of Government.

I am referring to the Legacy Press, which includes broadcast and cable “news” stations.

This Press whom the Founders felt would serve as a powerful bulwark against Tyranny has ultimately, and ironically, become a tool of it.

One would think the Press, a truly “Free Press,” would support a man of the people, a President who sought to return the Federal Government TO the people and would rail against the entrenched “establishment” Government that had long since lost its way; had long since lost respect and regard for the common man and had long ago forgotten the truism that the Federal Government exists solely to serve the interests of the American people and has no other purpose for being. That President, who sought to return the Country TO THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE SOVEREIGN OVER GOVERNMENT, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, was Donald Trump.

The Press wasn’t interested in that.

But a noble purpose is a dangerous thing. It had to be attacked quickly and harshly. And the Press joined forces with malevolent, malignant agencies to try to turn the polity against Trump lest the American people, united, one voice, rise up against Tyranny. Had not the First American Patriots done this, and successfully, once before, long ago?

The Press could have and should have joined forces against this incipient, evil tyranny and the foreign agents working in secret, consolidating their control of the Federal Government and urging their puppets to use the awful power of that Government against the American people.

But the Press didn’t do that. For that institution, too, had long since become a wholly captive of the Neoliberal Globalist and Neo-Marxist forces—a willing tool of their agenda.

But what is the duty of the Federal Government to the American people?

The Duty of Government is aptly expressed in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

That IS the SOLE PURPOSE of THIS strong central, “FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.” The Preamble made categorically clear that IT IS THE PEOPLE who created the GOVERNMENT and that the sole purpose of the People’s creation is to serve the People that created it. The GOVERNMENT has no other purpose.

Implicit in the Preamble, in that statement of purpose, is the moral and legal right of the Sovereign American people who created that Government, to end that Government when the Government contravenes the purpose for which the Sovereign American people created it. This is a serious question for the American people given the terrible harm done to this Nation and the danger posed to it by the Biden Administration.

That question would not arise under Donald Trump’s Presidency for Trump fully intended to comply with and did adhere to the will of the people, expressed in the Preamble. That was why they elected Trump President in 2016. To set things right, so that the public wouldn’t be forced to dismantle the Government that had fallen to the seductive lure of power.

Having amassed more and more of that power in the ensuing decades for itself, beyond the limits established for it in the Constitution, which had assiduously delineated and demarcated those powers among three co-equal Branches, the Government that was taking shape under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden was loath to surrender that power to the people, from whom it had unlawfully usurped powers and authority that did not rightfully belong to it.

The Framers had designed the Articles of the Constitution to prevent, or, at least, to forestall Government from transforming into a Beast of Prey, looking upon the American people as a prey animal instead of its Lord and Master.

And so it wouldn’t tolerate a Chief Executive, Donald Trump, who sought to contain and constrain a Government that had devolved into Tyranny under his immediate predecessors and that had returned to Tyranny under his immediate successor.

But, a true Republic, which Trump attempted to return the Country to was not something the Tyrants wanted.

In a sordid, sardonic, caustic, even mocking act of hostility against the American people and against Trump, the shadowy, secretive, ruthless forces that had been controlling the Government, turned against the Chief Executive, Donald Trump, and against the American people.

These forces created the illusion that Donald Trump, the Defender of the Constitution and of the People’s Sovereignty over Government, was the foe of the People and of that thing (they never bothered to define and that has long since crumbled into a trite cliché) “Democracy.”

And many Americans came to believe the lie. And the Press was at the forefront of conveying the lie, echoing it, bellowing it out.

And for that, this “UNFREE” PRESS will go down in history as the GREAT BETRAYER of the American People, and not as the GREAT DEFENDER of the American People.

The fundamental natural law rights codified in the Bill of Rights were intended to secure the sovereignty of the American people over Government and to act to buttress the Constitution’s Articles, to prevent or, at least, to forestall Tyranny.

The Framers of the Constitution need not have stated “Freedom of the Press” as a manufactured Right, as the Natural Law Right of Free Speech encapsulates all Speech.

That they did so, was meant to exemplify what the Framers felt to be the most important bulwark against Tyranny to prevent the Government from losing its way—a FREE PRESS.

But if the Press refuses to speak up in defense of the AMERICAN PUBLIC, the COMMON MAN, against Tyranny, and if the people themselves find the Government constraining, censoring FREE SPEECH, to whom or to what then do the people turn, to assert their LIBERTY against TYRANNY? There is only one last resort, the last “FAILSAFE”: FORCE OF ARMS.

The Second Amendment remains a powerful natural law right for the people to combat Tyranny that refuses to yield to the Sovereignty of the People.

In that event, the people have both the MORAL RIGHT and the LEGAL DUTY to take it upon themselves, through force of arms, to preserve their FREE STATE from the imposition of TYRANNY, as there would be no one left to stand by their side and nothing else left upon which to rely to secure their LIBERTY, for them.

It was through the mere fact of Trump’s assumption to the position of President of the United States that it became abundantly clear THE PRESS was no friend of the COMMON MAN.

Morris says,

He [Trump] paid for his sins with his presidency when the establishments he offended ganged up on him and tried to finish him off.

But his most serious error was to incur the wrath of the media. They hated him as they have never hated any politician, crime boss, dictator, or even mass murderer before. It was a blood lust.

Why? Because he was their rival for power—the only force that could defeat him, and it did.

But what did Trump really do to incur the wrath of the Press? Was it truly, as Morris says, that he was “their rival for power” or was it that Trump had merely expected the Press to do what was expected of them, when reporting the news: SIMPLY TELL THE TRUTH. When the Press did not do that, Trump rightfully called the Press out for its failing.

Did Trump really demand too much of the Press? Was it really too much to ask of it, indeed, to expect of it, that it simply report THE TRUTH. Apparently so.

Morris writes,

He [Trump] labeled the media ‘fake news,’ and caught them in a massive lie—with their pants down—in the Russia meddling scandal.

The media had skewered presidents before, but never like a paid hit job. Their credibility was under attack, and their power threatened to its core. Trump had to go. For The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Reuters, ABC, NBC, CNN, and even The Wall Street Journal, it was a matter of survival to bring him down by any means possible.”

The "Russian Scandal” was a lie, a bald-faced lie. And one that is still repeated. The Press never acknowledged that it had lied, nor did it recant, nor did it even deign, at least, to call it a mistake—even though it wasn’t that. The Press knew what it was doing. It knew that it had concocted lies about Trump to hurt Trump and to harm his Presidency, and by extension, to hurt the American people and to harm the Country.

Trump intended to fight these forces, so he ran for a second term. He should have won and would have won but for the machinations of Democrats, of the Press and of Social Media, and of massive fraud occurring in every facet of the U.S. Presidential Election of 2020.

The many and powerful forces aligned against Trump saw the 2020 Presidential Election as the last-ditch effort to rid themselves of Trump, as all their other numerous attempts to unseat him and to sabotage his Administration had failed. And they did succeed in preventing Trump from serving a Second Term.

But Trump is as tenacious as are the forces that are intent on crushing them.

Trump is running for President in 2024.

Short of assassination, which would spark outright Civil War, the forces marshaled against Trump are hoping they can wear him down emotionally and financially through unethical, even unlawful use of the criminal justice system, that these destroyers of the Republic control.

Can they succeed? It doesn’t appear so if the integrity of the 2024 Presidential election is maintained.

Hopefully, the Globalists through their toadies in the Democrat Party and in the Press, and in Business, Finance, Technology, and Social Media, won’t succeed in preventing Trump from securing the Republican nomination for U.S. President in 2024, and will not be able to manipulate the electoral process in 2024, (like they did in 2020) to prevent what is likely to be a landslide victory, for Trump, and not for Biden, or for whatever other stooge Democrats and their benefactors select to run against Trump in 2024.

Democrats can’t even claim convincingly that they have the “Latino” vote to fall back on.

Morris writes,

. . . the Democratic Party goofed. For two decades, Democratic strategists have counted on winning the Latino or Hispanic vote overwhelmingly, establishing dominion over this ethnic group, much as they have done over Jewish and African-American voters. So they have worked overtime to bring mor Hispanics into the country, urging open borders and amnesty. . . .

They saw the future clearly. With Hispanics rising steadily as a proportion of our population, all they had to do was win the Latinos and ride that demographic into permanent power. Indeed, as the Latino population soared, now nearing 19 percent (versus 12 percent for Blacks), there seemed to be method to their madness.

So they worked passionately to bring more Hispanics into the country, urging open borders and amnesty.

In 2013, smarting from Romney’s defeat at the hands of Obama in the 2012 election, Republican national committee chairman Reince Priebus commissioned an audit of the Republican defeat to identify why it had happened, and suggest ways the party could grow and win in the future.

The Republican strategists aimed their report squarely at making inroads among Hispanic voters. They flat out said that the party’s standing with Latinos had gotten so dangerously low that if it didn’t change, ‘our Party’s appeal was in danger of shrinking to its core constituencies only.’

Having identified the problem dramatically, they proclaimed what they said was the solution, the only solution: they demanded that Republicans embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.

The pre-Trump Republicans of 2013 put it this way: ‘The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. To stop talking only to like-minded people, driving around in circles in an ideological cul-de-sac.’

In other words, we can win if we sellout and change our positions and rhetoric to suit the media.

Well, we didn’t. The Republicans drew the line at another round of amnesty for illegal immigrants, saying it would only lead to more coming over the border [which under Biden’s open border policy has done just that and in fact has led to over 6 million illegal alien border-jumpers from around the word since the Great Pretender ascended to a seat in the Oval Office [see May 2023 article in Townhall].

Instead, the Republicans nominated Donald Trump, a president who attacked illegal immigrants, noting that among their numbers were ‘rapists and murderers.’

The Democrats had a field day publicizing the remark and claiming that it was Trump’s death knell in his pursuit of the Latino vote. He was accused of out-and-out racism and bias against Hispanics.

Then Trump did himself one better and made his demand for a Southern border wall to keep out illegal immigrants the centerpiece of his campaign.

After Trump won, he battled hard to build his wall, grabbing funds from every budge he could his hands on to pay for it.

Democrats licked their chops. They figured they had drawn a line in the sand, and that Trump had stepped over it. Now he could not win the Hispanic vote, and would probably be defeated for re-election.

But fortunately, the Democrats were dead wrong. The 2020 election shows clearly that the Hispanic/Latino vote is trending Republican, impelled by Trump’s policies. Regardless of who you think really won the 2020 election, everybody now agrees that the Hispanic vote, for the first time in history, swung dramatically to the Republicans. Trump’s vote share among Hispanics grew by eight points between his 2016 victory against Hillary, and his 2020 run against Biden. Not only did Trump not repel Latino voters, he proved to be a positive magnet in attracting them!

Trump was supposed to lose Texas and Florida because he had alienated Hispanics. Yeah? He carried Texas by six points and Florida by three. . . .

Even in totally Democratic Hispanic regions like the South Bronx, Trump got five and six times more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.

Overall, Trump’s gains among Hispanics defied all the predictions. Democrats were stunned. How the hell did that happen they wondered. We had a Republican president who opposed immigration reform and even built a wall to keep illegals out. And then he goes and gets 40 percent more Hispanic votes than Hillary got. What’s going on?

I’ll tell you my theory: Hispanics are patriots. They, their parents, and their ancestors voted with their feet to come to America. Behind them, they left governments dominated by socialism corruption, drugs, and violence. When they saw the radical Left tearing America down, attacking the police, defacing our history, and displaying the same kind of corruption that ruined their own native countries, they were appalled.

In the Trump campaign, we figured there would be a big backlash among white high-school voters against the tactics of Antifa and the radical Left. There was, and we did gain, but less than we thought we would. Our big wins came among people had chosen to be Americans. Not just those who were born here, but those who have wanted, all their lives, to be Americans, and were proud that they had made it.

The Hispanic vote for Trump rose 8 percent, and his Asian support went up 6 percent. There were the folks who are really determined to save America, the country they dreamed of. . . .

Of course, the Hispanic vote is not monolithic because more than a dozen Spanish-speaking countries contribute immigrants to the United States—each of whose people have a different experience in their former lands—their opinions of Democrats, socialists, and Leftists vary considerably.

Cubans, Venezuelans, Columbians, and most Central Americas—with the experience of communism right before them all of their lives—voted heavily for Trump. The high proportion of the Hispanic population of Florida that comes from the Caribbean area, where communism is a real threat, propelled Trump to carry the state.

But the message that America’s Latinos of all stripes sent to the Left is abundantly clear: This country is the best in the world, and we will not vote for any party that would deliver it into the hands of the socialist or communists.

And, yet, despite these votes, are we Americans to believe that Joe Biden, a corrupt, weak, dementia-riddled fool really did legitimately win the 2020 U.S. Presidential election? Or did he have a little help from many, many elements who had their own reasons to get this buffoon into the White House, precisely to introduce Socialist Tyranny in the Country as a step toward the remains of the Country into a dictatorial world empire?

So, then, will Congressional Republicans and most of the States do their best to implement standards and procedures to ensure the integrity of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election? In other words, will the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election truly be fair and aboveboard, in all respects?

Of all the “BIG IFS” mentioned, supra, this is the biggest “IF” of all.

From what I have seen of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and from what I have seen of the conduct of the 2022 Midterms, and from what I have seen since I have grave concerns.

ULTIMATELY, THE QUESTION BOILS DOWN TO ASCERTAINING:

ONE, THE AUTHORITY OF THOSE CASTING VOTES (are those individuals who are casting votes duly registered U.S. citizens?)

TWO, THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE VOTES CAST (is the individual who is casting the vote the actual citizen who is duly registered to vote, and not a third party pretending to be a registered U.S. citizen?)

THREE, THE LEGITIMACY OF THE VOTES (have fraudulent ballots been added?)

FOUR, THE ACCURACY of the TABULATION

Apocryphally, Communist Dictator, Joseph Stalin, had stated something to the effect that it matters not who votes, but who counts the votes. Whether true or not, the import of the point should not be lost on Americans.

Dictators often use “elections” to create the illusion that the public has a say in who it is that runs the Government. But in a true Representative Democracy, an election of public officials is presumed to be a fair and honest expression of the public will. That once held true in the United States. But does that still hold true today?

What if anything are Congressional Republicans doing to ensure the integrity of the 2024 election? Apart from a flurry of Republican bills in the House to secure the integrity of the 2024 election, all of which are stuck in Committee, nothing that I can see gives me confidence that Republicans will be able to take positive steps prior to the 2024 General Election to ensure the integrity of the election.

And, even if by some miracle, one of these bills does pass the House, none of these bills will pass in the U.S. Senate.

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will see to that. So, then, it will be left to the States to ensure the integrity of the elections, and a great part of that falls to the Secretaries of State, as they have operational control over elections in their respective States. And Morris has much to say about this.

This issue is dealt with in comprehensive detail by my Business Partner and Co-Founder of the Arbalest Quarrel, Roger Katz, in an upcoming exegesis of Morris’ “The Return.”   

But let us assume for the sake of argument that the integrity of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election will be secured, that still doesn’t ensure that Trump will win.

But Morris suggests a winning strategy, and that involves, first, identifying the three key issues, and second, utilizing a three-part test that he devises for dealing with each of these issues.

THREE BIG ISSUES DOMINATING THE 2024 ELECTION THAT MORRIS LISTS AND DISCUSSES

Morris identifies three big issues that will dominate the 2024 elections: inflation, immigration, and crime.

He says, “Each of the three has the same unique feature; none was a problem under Donald Trump, and all emerged as serious issues on the day that Biden was inaugurated.”

Morris says this:

Three Big Issues Look to dominate the political landscape as this is written: inflation, immigration, and crime.

Each of the three has the same unique feature: none was a problem under Donald Trump, and all emerged as serious issues on the day that Biden was inaugurated.”

Morris says the three big issues are “Inflation,” “Immigration,” and “Crime.” And he discusses all three at length. To those, I would add several other major ones to the list that illustrate major policy failings of the Biden Administration.

•  “Education,” which Morris also expends considerable time on

•   “Foreign Policy issues”—abject weakness dealing with China, the mess of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and the lack of any clearcut goal in Ukraine that has left us with dangerously low reserves of arms and armament, and wasting over $75 billion of precious taxpayer dollars (see article July 2023 article published by the Council on Foreign Relations), and drawing us to the brink of Global Thermonuclear War with Russia, a major nuclear power

•  Starving the U.S. of energy resources (the U.S. has always been energy independent, but no longer) [On returning to Office in 2024, Trump says his first objective will be to return the Country to energy independence. As reported on the website Oil Price, in May 2023: “‘Drill, baby, drill’ will be the first order of business for Donald Trump should he be elected president, the former president said at a Republican presidential town hall on Wednesday.  Asked about what would be the first thing he would do to cut food and gasoline costs, Trump simply said, ‘Drill, baby, drill.’ See also Larry Kudlow on Fox Business.

  Of course, Trump and others have used the expression before and Trump has also used it since.

  But. Trump wouldn’t have had to resort to asserting that at all if Biden had not made such a mess of things, requiring him, in an unprecedented move, to release the Nation’s oil reserves (a move that would have been altogether unnecessary if he had not cut oil drilling and refining in our Country in March 2022). See Report by the BBC; and see October 2022 Report by the New York Post detailing Biden resorting, unsuccessfully, to begging the Saudis not to cut their own oil production, until after the 2022 Midterms because, after all, America needs oil (no kidding!)]

• This insufferable “woke” dogma and ideology that few Americans are on board with, but has been thrust on the entire Nation, undermining our Nation’s heritage, national ethos, and core ethical beliefs.

Morris then discusses how to go about framing “Our Message” to the voters.

“Despite their obvious severity, making our big three issues work for us in 2022 and 2024 will be a tricky business.

It’s not easy to find issue to bring down a president, much less to have three of them.

It’s not enough to find issues on which you and your opponent disagree, even if they concern a vital area of great importance to the voters.

For an issue to work, it has to pass a three-part test:

Fault. You have to prove that the problem is the other side’s fault

We’ll do better. You need to establish that you and your approach will do better at solving it.

Your opponent can’t change his spots. You’ve got to choose an issue on which your opponent will stick to his guns and not fudge or change his views when it is apparent that your attacks are scoring and gaining ground. Remember that an incumbent  has many ways to duck your punches.” . . .

Fault. It’s obvious that the problems of inflation, immigration, and crime are all Biden’s fault. They simply weren’t problems before he took office.

For forty years, there had been little or no inflation. Then suddenly, prices for gas and almost everything else began to take a sharp rise. Sixty percent of voters, according to a Morning Consult poll, blame Biden for inflation, specifically citing his big spending proposals.

Note: The Biden Administration very recently attempted something of a mea culpa on inflation to get ahead of the many and strong criticism directed at him on this. As reported in the Washington Examiner, on August 18, 2023,

“President Joe Biden conceded he wished the Inflation Reduction Act had another name before its first anniversary next week.

‘I wish I hadn't called it that because it has less to do with reducing inflation than it does to do with dealing with providing for alternatives that generate economic growth, . . . .”

Morris continues,

Crime, too, is obviously spreading on Biden’s watch. Crime rates were miniscule during the first three years of the Trump administration, until the angry (and justified) outrage at the George Floyd murder—and the Democratic response to it—emasculated the police, sending murder rates up. Biden’s push to cut police budgets and transfer spending from cops to social workers, his support for eliminating cash bail and ending mandatory sentences, all were misguided policies (from which Biden is now trying to run) that laid the basis for the meteoric rise un crime under Biden.

The case is even clearer that illegal immigration is Biden’s fault. Before he dismantled Trump’s immigration policies and stopped construction on his wall, illegal immigration had slowed to a trickle. Now, under Biden, it has become a torrent in less than one year.

The second prong? Proving that Trump would do better? That one is easy.  We know that Trump would do better, because when he was president, he did do better. Coming off four years of no inflation, little illegal immigration, and for the first three years of his term, little rise in crime, who can disagree that Trump succeeded—and will again—where Biden failed?

Biden can’t change his position. The Democrats are stuck with their record of inflation, illegal immigration, and rising crime, and no amount of maneuvering or clever talking points can get them out of it. . . .

Biden would lose his progressive Democratic base if he tried. He is so firmly on record as demanding higher government spending and larger social benefits that he cannot reverse filed. Nor will his leftist political base tolerate it if he backs away from his spending programs or their pet issues of climate change, Medicare expansion, and health insurance.

By the same token, the Left sees illegal immigration not as a problem, but an opportunity. There would be hell to pay if Biden suddenly were to start enforcing the Southern border.

Neither would the Left look kindly on any Biden backsliding on his anti-police policies. His political base, particularly in the minority communities, would rebel quickly were he even to attempt it.

No, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the entire Democratic Party are stuck with trio of issues: inflation, immigration, and crime.”

The problem I see with Morris’ three-part test is that it assumes Americans are all rational agents. If that were true, Biden’s 2020 vote count would be so pitifully few, that Democrats couldn’t plausibly mask the enormity of the fraud of their “popular vote” for Biden.

Democrats didn’t even attempt to attack Trump on his policies. How could they? Instead, Democrats resorted to defaming him:

They called him a “Racist,” “Sexist,” and “Bigot,” and “Autocrat,” among others. And those stick and continue to stick. And the Press echoes those over and over again.

So, then, how do we get out our message out about Trump?

And, assuming we can, why would Morris believe that Americans who voted for Biden in the past, would not continue to do so in the future? Why would Americans accept the truth? Can they not observe the truth for themselves? Clearly, Americans do.

But many Americans are so blinded by their hatred of Trump, that it matters not at all, the extent of and the seriousness of the harm the Biden Administration has caused this Country and its people and that harm continues.

So convinced are they of their own invincibility in the upcoming election, the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats, and their benefactors don’t bother to moderate their extremist policies that are devastating to the economy and to society, generally.

The nature of and extent of this harm does not register on many Americans.

The only thing they know or care to know is the message that has been drummed into them for years: “Trump is a threat to Democracy.” That comes out crystal clear.

Everything else is lost on those Americans who have bought into the absurd notion that Trump is THE threat to “DEMOCRACY” despite clear evidence that the REAL THREAT to “DEMOCRACY” and REAL EVIDENCE OF THAT THREAT rests upon the actions of the Biden Administration. This is so obvious that argument is redundant.

Trump is the natural answer to the threat. Many Americans don’t see that because they don’t wish to see that. They don’t wish to see that because the propagandists have conditioned those Americans to ignore the nature of, fact of, and severity of the threat posed by the Biden Administration.

Recall the line from the Marx Brothers Comedy, “Duck Soup.” Chico Marx says,

“Well, who ya gonna believe me or your own [lyin’] eyes?”

Morris is aware of the power of propaganda and the illusions created by Democrats. He mentions these in “The Return.”

He writes,

Democrats live off illusions. The illusion of rising incomes fuels their claims of economic growth and prosperity. But over our shoulders, as we read the Washington economic propaganda, we notice inflation sneaking up behind us, taking away our buying power and eroding our paychecks.

But Washington wants us to believe that’s not happening.

So, the constant demonization of Trump coupled with the illusion projected that the Country is doing just fine are sufficient mechanisms to keep a great swath of Americans—certainly Democrats, many Independents, and even Bush/RINO Republicans— asleep.

Even if some corner of their higher mental faculties tells them that this Country is not doing okay, that Trump isn’t the Ogre that the Press and Social Media and the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats and Neo-Marxist Cultists make him out to be, and that IT IS Biden and the Press and others who are the true threat to our Nation and to the well-being of our people.

Many Americans are beyond the point that those higher mental faculties can hold sway over their emotions. They are oblivious to the truth. In other words, they believe the false messengers rather than the truth conveyed to them through their own eyes and through their own reason.

Thus, many Americans are not Rational Actors. And it isn’t because they can’t be, but, rather, because THEY CHOOSE NOT TO BE. And there are many such Americans.

How else can one explain the dire situation facing this Country? It is Americans who allowed this to happen to themselves and, by extension, to everyone else who is not taken in by the utter rot emanating from Government and from the Press, and from Social Media.

THAT is what WE, America’s Patriots are up against. And THAT is what Trump is up against.

Thus, Morris’ “Three-Part Test” isn’t adaptable to the present situation.

But suppose Americans were all rational actors. In that case, Trump would be elected to a second term in Office, and by a landslide. There’s no doubt about it.

So, then, what would TRUMP’S “RETURN” TO THE WHITE HOUSE LOOK LIKE?

Well, the Nation would return to its former glory: a strong, robust economy; a safe society, free from criminals and lunatics who would now be incarcerated in prison or asylums where they belong, not free to roam at will, preying on innocent Americans; a system of justice that is truly just, and fairly applied; a strong military, untainted and weakened by “woke” ideology and dogma; an educational system that actually teaches children the core skills they need to inculcate to survive, thrive, and prosper in a Country that prides itself on encouraging individual responsibility and achievement, and recognizes and awards hard work and merit; a vigorous foreign policy that makes clear to our enemies that America is not to be toyed with; and a Nation that doesn’t prostrate itself to foes or allies.

But above all, Trump’s “RETURN” would mark “THE RETURN” to a Nation founded as a TRULY FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, as the Founders of our Great Nation intended and which they fought courageously to create both for themselves and for those Americans who would follow.

Trump’s “Return” would mark the Nation’s “RETURN” to its unique status as the only Nation in the world that is truly the indefatigable champion of the COMMON MAN.

This idea is not simply a desire, it is a FACT, manifested in the Nation’s BILL OF RIGHTS, upon which the sanctity and inviolability of Individual Selfhood is enshrined and cherished, not degraded to the status of wretched and debased COG in a pretentious, vulgar GLOBAL COLLECTIVE.

Will this All come to be? It MUST! But WILL IT?

In his Introduction, Morris writes,

ONE, “The Trump Revolution cannot succeed without Trump.”

[I agree. This point is self-evident true.]

TWO, “Will he run in 2024? You bet he will.”

[I agree. Trump is IN FACT, running, and this is all the more remarkable and worthy of commendation, considering the vile actions of the Biden Administration’s DOJ attempting to prevent this through the fabrication of criminal charges against Trump. Trump remains unfazed.

THREE, “Will he be the GOP Nominee? Absolutely.

[I agree. Two years since the publication of “The Return,” the polls show Trump consistently ahead of all other candidates for the Republican Party nomination, and by such a large percentage count as to reduce these people to Lilliputians standing amidst a giant. But will the RNC deign to declare Trump the winner when the dust clears? That is not so clear. But, as to his lead, even the Leftist Propagandist for the Biden Administration, CNN, acknowledged this, albeit grudgingly, as it also made sure to include in that May 2023 article, its usual vile smears of Trump. See also May 2023 NBC Report, and see the latest August 2023 polls reported in “FiveThirtyEight.”].

FOUR, “Will he win the election? Yes.” [I agree, but only if the 2024 General Election is fair and above board. I firmly believe that the 2020 General Election was slipshod, untidy, patently unfair, and the target of massive Democrat Party fraud, as discussed, supra].

I agree with Trump. He did in fact win that election in 2020 and was denied a Second Term that was rightfully his, consistent with the will of the Electorate.

Everything we have seen since—censoring comments and canceling accounts of anyone who so much as suggests massive fraud in the 2020 election, up to criminalizing speech—points to efforts on the part of the Government and the Press to cover up the truth and in a manner so incessant, so vicious, so over-the-top that this leads me to suspect the Government and the Press KNOW of FRAUD on an enormous scale and are both frantically attempting to cover up THE TRUTH.

The Government and the Press attack anyone who investigates the matter, and silence anyone who simply offers a contrary opinion about it. If the 2020 General Election were truly fair and aboveboard, why would the Government, the Press, and Social Media be so interested in—even frantic about—shutting down all discussion? This doesn’t make sense to me.

I recommend Dick Morris’ “The Return” to all Americans, and I commend Humanix Books for publishing it.

______________________________

AMERICA’S WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE WAS NEVER REALLY WON; THAT WAS BUT ONE STERLING “SET PIECE”—THE WAR REMAINS ONGOING!*

MULTISERIES ON THE DELIBERATE RAPE OF THE NATION AND THE DANGER TO THE PRESERVATION OF A FREE REPUBLIC CONTINUES UNABATED

PART THREE

INTRODUCTORY QUOTES

“You know what a miracle is. . . another world’s intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there’s cataclysm.”

“Everybody who says the same words is the same person if the spectra are the same only they happen differently in time, you dig? But the time is arbitrary. You pick your zero point anywhere you want, that way you can shuffle each person’s time line sideways, till they all coincide.”

Two Quotations from the novel, “The Crying of Lot 49,” by Thomas Pynchon

America rests at the intersection of two possible realities.

OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS: QUANTUM COLLAPSE AND A NEW NIGHTMARE REALITY WHERE THE UNITED STATES NO LONGER EXISTS AS A SOVEREIGN, INDEPENDENT NATION-STATE AND A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

According to the first and dominant theory of quantum mechanics, based on the idea of the “wave function collapse,” only one world, one universe, one reality of many possible realities exists. And that reality is dependent on the OBSERVATION by a SENTIENT AGENT.

Is this only theory? What if it is true?

In the macro socio-political realm of present-day America, what do American citizens— TENS OF MILLIONS OF US—THOSE COMPRISING “SENTIENT OBSERVERS’ perceive of their Country when they “OPEN THE BOX”—to observe “Schrödinger’s Cat?” Is the Cat alive, or is it dead? Is America living, or is it Dead? And if America Goes, so Goes The World.

ONE OF TWO POSSIBILITIES EXISTS:

• AMERICA, A NATION PRESERVED AS A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC AND A SHINING EXAMPLE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD OF WHAT LIBERTY AND FREEDOM MEAN AND THE WONDROUS LIFE THAT OPENS UP FOR EACH HUMAN BEING. SUCH IS THE PROMISE AND IMPORT OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776—seen in the creation of a Free Constitutional Republic upon which an Independent, Sovereign, Powerful Nation-State Flourishes, and a free and Sovereign People remain free and Sovereign over Government—holds true and continues unabated through the Twenty-First Century, and beyond indefinitely at least for the next few hundred years, A SHINING BEACON OF LIGHT AND EXEMPLAR FOR THE WORLD—OR,

• A DEAD AMERICA and, by EXTENSION, a DEAD WORLD: One in which a Monolithic, Neoliberal Globalist cum Neo-Marxist Internationalist Counterrevolution prevails, superseding the Promises Made to the American People—a Nation conceived in Liberty for People who cherish Liberty—all lost. And all of it dashed, for us and the world. In this World, this Reality, one sees the DESTRUCTION of the ONLY TRULY FREE Constitutional Republic, heretofore existent in the world. Additionally, one sees the DISSOLUTION of an Independent, Sovereign, Powerful Nation-State and the DISSOLUTION of all nation-states.

WHAT WOULD THE END OF A SOVEREIGN PEOPLE’S FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC PORTEND FOR BOTH THEM AND FOR THE REST OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION:  

• The subjugation of the American people and all peoples, as a new socio-political reality, fuzzy at first, takes shape, and soon, sharpens into clarity, forcing out the old REALITY

•  The emergence of a Neo-Feudalistic world empire, governed by an OLIGARCHY comprising extremely wealthy, powerful, and ruthless businesspeople and financial interests

• The populations of Earth at once reduced to abject poverty, unrelenting misery, oppression, and the suppression of all dissent—courtesy of the 2030 UNITED NATIONS AGENDA FOR SUSTAINED DEVELOPMENT (AGENDA 2030) SOLD TO THE MASSES AS “A shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.”

This is one possible scenario once the “Wave Function” Collapses if the tens of millions of Americans—the Electorate—are induced to observe and seduced into observing, through psychological conditioning, an America that the Destroyers of the Country want America to observe. This is forced on Americans through carefully constructed “measuring tools of observation” (vigorous propaganda) an artificial projection, through which Americans are urged to see the world that the “film director” creates. But Americans can have the power within themselves “to look away.”

They can reject the measuring tools of propaganda thrust upon them if they have the strength of will to do so.

SO, THEN—

What sort of Country, and, by extension, what sort of world, will YOU, the AMERICAN CITIZEN wish TO OBSERVE? One created for you by propagandists in accordance with the wishes of the Government and those forces controlling the Government? Or, one which your own mind and physical senses and sense of ethics tell you are right and proper and the way things are and ought to be.

What SORT OF REALITY do you wish for yourself and for your children, and for your grandchildren to reside in: A Country envisioned by our wise Founders that has served the Nation and its people well for over two hundred and forty years, or a new one, a nightmare construction created by forces that are intent on engineering a world reality that serves THEIR interests, not that of Americans nor that of the rest of western civilization? It is a REALITY that IS rapidly overlaying the reality cemented into place through the American Revolution of 1776.

What ultimately transpires depends on what YOU, the SENTIENT AMERICAN OBSERVER and tens of millions of SENTIENT OBSERVERS—THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE “CHOOSE TO OBSERVE as they “OPEN THE BOX” to view “Schrödinger’s Cat.”

IS THE CHOICE OF WHAT TO OBSERVE AN EASY ONE TO MAKE?

WHAT Americans CHOOSE to OBSERVE IS A PRODUCT of what they have COME to BELIEVE. And——

WHAT Americans COME to BELIEVE IS A PRODUCT of a COMPLEX of SOCIO-POLITICAL-ECONOMIC-CULTURAL-ECONOMIC-EHTICAL-PHILOSOPHICAL presuppositions, propositions, principles, and hypotheses that underlie that BELIEF SYSTEM,

And——

THAT complex of factors induces a world view—an OBSERVATION that manifests as an OBJECTIVE REALITY—FORMED BY MILLIONS OF MINDS THAT DISCERN A REALITY BUILT ON A CONSENSUS THEORY OF TRUTH—It is one the majority of people wish to accept and have accepted —forcing NONBELIEVERS to RESIDE IN THE REALITY OF THE MOB MAJORITY.

THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM REALITY, AS IT IS A “TRUTH” FORMED BY MASS CONSENSUS (EVEN IF THAT CONSENSUS WAS MOLDED AND SHAPED BY MALEVOLENT, MALIGNANT FORCES AND DOESN’T REPRESENT WHAT THE MASSES WOULD WANT IF THEIR WILL HAD NOT BEEN TAMPERED WITH.

Is it any wonder that Democratic Party Pawns of the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist Cultists extol the virtues of Rule by DIRECT DEMOCRACY? This has nothing to do with creating an America that represents the WILL of the People when that WILL is the product of subtle and—often—not-so-subtle psychic manipulation, A TECHNIQUE HONED BY neuroscientists, PSYCHOLOGISTS, and PROPAGANDISTS, in AN ONGOING illegal, unconstitutional campaign directed to “MANUFACTURING CONSENT” (See Noam Chomsky’s Book on the subject of propaganda employed on an industrial scale, and, although published over twenty years ago, in 2002, it is a compelling read today—still relevant today and even more compelling given the present state of affairs).

One’s Will becomes subject to MOB-RULE. And, what IS “MOB RULE” if not the conscious MANIPULATION of the PUBLIC PSYCHE—unconscionable EXPLOITATION of the masses to effectuate Public acceptance of GOVERNMENT POLICY that would not meet with PUBLIC APPROVAL if the Public was aware of the manipulation?

USE OF PROPAGANDA IN OUR NATION is contrary to a free-thinking Public. Such a tool is inconsistent with the NOTION OF INFORMED CONSENT, SUCH CONSENT NOT CONTRIVED AND  MANIPULATED BY PROPAGANDISTS.

CRITICAL DEBATE and FREE WILL ARE ESSENTIAL FEATURES of INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY—and consistent with precepts of INDIVIDUALISM and respectful of the SANCTITY AND INVIOLABILITY of the INDIVIDUAL. THIS IS THE UNSTATED ESSENCE UPON WHICH OUR NATION’S BILL OF RIGHTS IS GROUNDED.

HOW DOES PROPAGANDA WORK

A controlling agent, generally unbeknownst to the target population, surreptitiously injects ideas, subtle hints, at first, about how to think toward a particular state of affairs, around which policy is generated to effectuate an outcome the controlling agent wants. That agent then utilizes the manufactured consent of the populace as evidence that the agent is simply conforming policy to the “WILL” OF THE PEOPLE when the “WILL” OF THE PEOPLE is nothing but ARTIFICE made all the worse because of PSYCHIC DAMAGE to the PUBLIC. The public has nothing but THE ILLUSION that they are in control and that it is their wishes and desires the Government fulfills. It is nothing of the sort. That is the nature of “manufactured consent.”

Manipulation of the Public Psyche can also be directed to controlling how the public thinks toward a given person or object.

Government generates policy around the manipulation of public thought pertaining.

EFFECTIVE PROPAGANDA——

INDUCES THE MASSES TO LOVE OR TO HATE THIS OR THAT PERSON OR THIS OR THAT OBJECT; INDUCES HYSTERIA, BLIND RAGE, AND THEN DIRECTS THAT RAGE TO LASH OUT AT A SELECTED TARGET. “MOB DEMOCRACY” IS NOTHING MORE THAN MOB ACTION DIRECTED BY A POWERFUL AGENT TO EFFECTUATE CHANGE CONSISTENT WITH THE WISHES OF THAT AGENT.

ANY THOUGHT CONTRARY TO THE INTERESTS OF THE MOB SO EXPLOITED IS NOT PERMITTED TO RECOGNIZE THE MANIPULATION AND, WORSE, WOULD NOT CARE TO LEARN THE TRUTH.

A MAJORITY of People, for good or naught, determine BOTH for themselves and for THE MINORITY inured to PROPAGANDA, THE ILL EFFECTS OF MANIPULATION OF THE PSYCHE:

Speech of “DISSIDENTS” is CENSORED, and, if “DISSIDENTS” were on social media, they find they and their accounts—to use the vocabulary of the present day—“CANCELLED” and “SHADOW BANNED,” and “DOXXED,” and the MOB is encouraged “TO GHOST” that disaffected minority).

And, AS THE WAVE FUNCTION BEGINS TO COLLAPSE—THE UNFOLDING OF A NEW NIGHTMARISH REALITY COMES INTO BEING.

Powerful, shadowy interests and forces seek to impose their own desired REALITY on us AMERICANS, and that REALITY serves to benefit THEM, NOT US.

The new REALITY DOES NOT serve to benefit the average American, THE COMMON MAN.

The mechanism of manipulation, propaganda, is old. But advances in neuroscience and technology have devised sophisticated means for INSERTING fabricated belief systems in the target population’s psyche and rapidly disseminating the mental viruses into that population, blanketing the entire Country.

The success of the targeted campaign to hoodwink Americans to become disciples of a false belief system is seen in the effects:

• The Failure of Government to abide by and adhere to the very laws it has itself created because they do not benefit, or no longer benefit, the interests of powerful forces that control that Government

•  The Utilization of Taxpayer money against the Taxpayers’ interests and often directed against Americans, thereby destroying their fundamental rights and liberties.

•  The Deliberate Misapplication of Law and Justice to effectuate a desired outcome and a Contemptuous Disregard for the Strictures of the U.S. Constitution.

The American public is induced to observe Schrödinger’s Cat, i.e., the Nation’s FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, ALONG with the Nation’s sacred documents, namely the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE and the U.S. CONSTITUTION, and the BILL OF RIGHTS, in a negative light.

And, so, the society created that embodies the precepts of these documents as immoral overlays the old and is the obverse of the old, projecting a new and harmful socio-political philosophical reality on the Nation.

These are the conclusions AQ draws from the propaganda tools utilized to induce a belief system in Americans designed to turn Americans against their own Country. See, e.g., articles in “Discovery.org,” and the “Heritage Foundation.”

How are Americans led to accept an entirely new Belief System—one completely contrary and antithetical to one that has enabled this Country and its people to prosper for decades and centuries?

WHAT ARE THE MECHANISMS OF THE HORRIFIC PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING THAT THE TRUE OPPRESSORS, THE SHADOWY FORCES THAT CRUSH, USE AGAINST THOSE TRULY OPPRESSED, WE THE PEOPLE, THE AVERAGE AMERICAN — THE COMMON MAN?

The NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST “ELITES” and NEO-MARXIST INTERNATIONALIST CULTISTS, the TRUE OPPRESSORS of the COMMON MAN, have devised a multitude of communication tools to disseminate the ideas they wish to inculcate in the masses.

These TOOLS include A CAPTIVE PRESS, TREACHEROUS STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS, ACADEMIA, SOCIAL MEDIA, CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS, AND BIG BUSINESS ENDORSEMENTS AND URGING, AND CONSCIOUS DELIBERATE CHANGES TO SOCIAL MARKETING TO ACCOMMODATE THE POLICY GOALS OF THE TRUE OPPRESSORS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

THUS, MANUFACTURED DOGMAS, and VITRIOLIC HATRED FOR “THE OTHER” —THE NATION’S 45TH PRESIDENT AND “MAGA” REPUBLICANS—FLOOD THE AIRWAVES, THE WORLD-WIDE WEB, AND THE PRINTED WORD.

THE MESSAGING IS DISTRIBUTED WIDELY, AND THE CONTENT IS BROADCAST  INCESSANTLY, NOXIOUSLY, TO THE PUBLIC, INFECTING THE MIND AND THENCE, SUBJECTIVE PERCEPTION, MODIFYING OBJECTIVE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REALITY.

Many Americans, having FULLY absorbed the ILLOGICICAL FACT of the messaging, have begun to view a new Reality taking shape—ONE IN WHICH THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776 is perceived to be an inherent evil— a REVOLUTION that never should have taken place.

This idea, something relatively new, a non-subtle direct onslaught on our Nation’s most sacred ideas, SUFFUSING THE POLITY and the COUNTRY, means the Destroyers of our Nation feel secure in the powers they have accumulated and that they now wield. And they are using those powers to attack, directly and boldly, the Nation’s most sacred ideas. And they feel a new urgency to do so with the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election just around the corner.

AND SO HERE WE ARE TODAY—AT THE GRAVEST MOMENT IN OUR NATION’S HISTORY, EVER SINCE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR.

But, Even the American Civil War pales in significance when one sees that it isn’t just the secession of some States from the Union.

For, neither the North nor the South had forsaken the cause of LIBERTY, as each had, appealed to it, relied upon it, and, having appealed to the strictures of the Constitution, they had found in it both moral and legal justification for their CAUSE—one proclaiming the right to leave the Union and the other demanding the Union remain whole.

The States that seceded from the Union DID create a new Constitution, BUT it was one modeled after that of the original Constitution ratified in 1788:

The constitution resembled the Constitution of the United States, even repeating much of its language, but was more comparable to the Articles of Confederation —the initial post-Revolutionary War U.S. Constitution–in its delegation of extensive powers to the states. The Constitution also contained substantial differences from the U.S. Constitution in its protection of slavery, which was ‘recognized and protected’ in slave states and territories. However, in congruence with U.S. policy since the beginning of the 19th century, the foreign slave trade was prohibited. The constitution provided for six-year terms for the president and vice president, and the president was ineligible for successive terms. Although a presidential item veto was granted, the power of the central Confederate government was sharply limited by its dependence on state consent for the use of any funds and resources.

Slavery, while reprehensible, is as old as civilization. It wasn’t an American invention, contrary to the pronouncements of some American politicians.

The engine that drove slavery in the South, was ECONOMIC, NOT RACIAL. See the article on history.com.

Although racial bigotry was embedded in the SLAVERY of BLACKS, it was likely MORE THE EFFECT of the SOUTH’S economic reliance on slave labor and LESS THE CAUSE OF IT.

The North, not a major agricultural economy had no economic need for slavery. There was nothing to be gained from it. They could and would argue, vociferously, for an end to it, and many ABOLITIONISTS did so.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ended slavery AS AN INSTITUTION, but not until after the American Civil War had concluded, in 1865. 

If the South had won the Civil War, slavery would have continued in the South—FOR A TIME, TRUE ENOUGH.

But, likely, with industrialization on the horizon, in the South as well as the North, at the turn of the Century, slavery would have ended anyway. Economics that gave rise to it in the South would be the cause of its demise thereafter.

See the article in lawaspect.com.

While some may dismiss this, the fact remains the impact of machines on labor would make slavery obsolete, just as robotics (and recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI)), and cheap labor overseas has wrecked and continues to wreck the economy in the U.S. today.

This has NOTHING to do with race. In fact, the emergence of AI will likely decimate those in the PROFESSIONS, as well as the TRADES. 

When Blacks entered the labor force at the end of the Civil War, Whites began to fight that—again the cause was economic, not social. And such laws occurred in the North no less than in the South, including New York. Id.

Today, the enactment of comprehensive Civil Rights Laws and U.S. Supreme Court case law have made persecution and injustice toward Blacks AND, in fact, against, any person, on the basis of Race, National origin, religion, sex, age, and infirmity too, ILLEGAL.

Yet, dogmas espoused by the Neo-Marxists resurrect racial bigotry to destabilize society. The Neoliberal Globalist Business “Elites” know these dogmas are false, even ludicrous, but they play along because doing so serves their interests, too: bringing to fruition the dissolution of a free Constitutional Republic in hopes of sparking a race war, one where the Common Man regardless of race wastes energy battling among itself, rather than directing its attention where it rightfully belongs, namely on those elements that are deliberately, unconscionably, fueling this strife—the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS and NEO-MARXIST INTERNATIONALIST CULTISTS.

Is this to suggest that racial animosities and suspicions and tensions don’t exist? They do, but not to the extent the NEO-MARXIST CULTISTS would have the public believe.

The NEO-MARXIST CULTISTS fabricate ill will among the Common Man so they can coax animosities and suspicions and tensions to the surface, from the darkest parts of one’s psyche, and they do this so they can then exploit these things for their own evil purposes.

This nonsensical notion of WHITE OPPRESSOR and BLACK (COLORED) OPPRESSED has got to end.

As we have pointed out, supra, there is, in fact, an OPPRESSOR and OPPRESSED. BUT IT ISN’T WHAT THE PRESS AND SOCIAL MEDIA, AND GOVERNMENT, AND SOME IN ACADEMIA, PROCLAIM IT TO BE.

INSTEAD——

THAT OPPRESSOR (OPPRESSOR CLASS) IS THE NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST with NEO-MARXIST INTERNATIONALIST CULTIST CONGLOMERATE ALLIANCE —THESE COMPRISE THAT RUTHLESS ENGINE OF DESTRUCTION, THAT WE AT AQ, HAVE REFERRED TO AS THE “FORCES THAT CRUSH” NATIONS AND PEOPLE.

AND——

THE OPPRESSED (OPPRESSED CLASS) AND THE OPPRESSED IS THE COMMON MAN (EVERYONE ELSE), perceived by the OPPRESSOR CLASS “ELITES” as SERFS, THE SUBJUGATED “NEO-SLAVES,” THE “PRETERITE,” i.e., THE “DAMNED.”

And the PUPPETS of THE FORCES THAT CRUSH maliciously run with the MYTH CREATED and PROPAGATED. In fact, the Biden Administration has institutionalized it.

The Biden Administration, the puppets of the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST “ELITES” and NEO-MARXISTS INTERNATIONALIST CULTISTS have openly, callously, blatantly betrayed the Nation, the U.S. Constitution, and the American People.

DO RACIAL AND ETHNIC PREJUDICES EXIST, AND, IF SO, CAN THEY BE PURGED, AND, FURTHER, CAN ETHNIC PREJUDICE BE PURGED BY GOVERNMENT EDICT, AND OUGHT GOVERNMENT TRY TO DO SO, AS THE ATTEMPT INVOLVES HARMFUL MANIPULATION OF THE HUMAN PSYCHE?

The fact remains that, trying to purge Racial prejudices through indoctrination—if, in fact, the NEO-MARXISTS are really attempting to do that and not really diabolically just “messing with” the human mind to encourage the very prejudices they claim they wish to erase (in order to destabilize and fracture society, as that is what they seek and that is in fact what is occurring). But, this is a fool’s errand. And, the attempt will lead to irreparable psychic harm.

Even if Marxist Cultists believe one’s biases can be easily purged by brainwashing without destroying the psyche (assuming they even care about that), there are moral constraints to be considered in the attempt to do so through the vehicles of social engineering and psychological conditioning.

PREJUDICE IS A HUMAN CONDITION

Prejudice is not simply a WHITE vs. BLACK phenomenon. NO ONE IS IMMUNE.

The Irish have suffered prejudice by the English and vice versa.

Catholics and Protestants have waged wars against each other for centuries.

Even Scandinavians (“Nordic Supermen”) with their foreign languages and accents suffered prejudice when they first came to America.

And when Italians immigrated to America in the early Twentieth Century, they suffered prejudice.

In fact, New York’s notorious Gun law, the Sullivan Act, that introduced handgun licensing to the State in 1911—and which remains to this day, and much more noxious and debilitating than back in 1911, when first enacted—targeted Italians whom New Yorkers perceived to be biologically predisposed to be criminals.

The Chinese people have suffered brutal discrimination in America, and the Roosevelt Administration interned Japanese in detention camps during World War II.

And of course, everyone hates the Jews, and on many fallacious, spurious, scurrilous grounds, one common one of which is that they are by nature all moneychangers who live for and lust over money.

To this day, ethnic animosities exist and persist.

But, people get over this, get on with their lives, and they do just fine.

The U.S. has promoted more freedom of opportunity for everyone than any other Country on Earth, and this has resulted in America becoming the wealthiest, most prosperous Country on Earth for the majority of citizens. All those who by effort and motivation do invariably succeed.

Americans, regardless of their racial, religious, or ethnic differences have carved out a place in the sun for themselves and their families.

Americans retain their ethnic identities. But, even so, an American ethos has emerged and there is no contradiction in Americans holding onto their ethnic origins and inculcating an American ethos.

But, the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS and their compatriots, the NEO-MARXIST INTERNATIONALIST CULTISTS want to destroy this “American Identity.”

These malignant forces denigrate the very idea of assimilation. Why is that?

They do this because an American Identity is tied to a love of Nation and family. Patriotism and Nationalism are the hallmarks of the Nation-State—the very thing that the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS and NEO-MARXIST INTERNATIONALIST CULTISTS wish to destroy.

These ruthless forces intend to pave the way for a new world order—sans nation-states and national borders, and concepts of a unique national history, heritage, and culture that identify a people.

In the world that these FORCES THAT CRUSH seek to create, there is only conformity, a confounding, bland sameness that infects a person down to that person’s very core and essence. They seek to destroy one’s sense of Individual Uniqueness and Selfhood—destroying one’s Spirit and Soul, one’s very reason for being. And that they deem to be the ultimate GOOD.

To the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST ELITES the corralling of both the human body and mind—herding the populations of Earth into dense structures to bind them physically to a place and enslave their minds—is a way to maintain control lest violence breaks out as the COMMON MAN seeks FREEDOM—A NATURAL HUMAN CONDITION, a NATURAL HUMAN RIGHT AND YEARNING.

But, the GLOBALISTS can’t be bothered by that. To them, the COMMON MAN is a danger to the well-being of the Collective, the “Hive”—a “THING” THAT MUST BE CONTAINED.

To rule a world empire—to do so effectively—demands that tight constraints on human conduct and human thought be maintained. And once they have erected their world empire they will control the populations with edicts and with “religious dogma” generated by their Neo-Marxist compatriots. All of this is designed to keep the masses in check. And military, paramilitary police and municipal police will stand at the ready to clamp down harshly on any inkling of grumbling among the masses.

EMPIRES DEMAND BLIND OBEDIENCE. AN EMPIRE, BY ITS VERY NATURE, IS TYRANNY WRIT LARGE. IT MUST BE SUCH IN ORDER TO SURVIVE GIVEN THE VERY SIZE OF IT AND “DIVERSITY” OF THE POPULATIONS IN IT.

THE COMMON MAN IS A BURDEN, NOT AN ASSET, TO GLOBALISTS, AND WITH DWINDLING RESOURCES, AND LITTLE NEED FOR LABOR WHERE MACHINES AND AI TAKE OVER, THE AVERAGE MAN IS A BANE TO EXISTENCE. AT TIMES, THE EMPIRE, ENVISIONED, WOULD ENGAGE IN SYSTEMATIC PURGING OF THE COMMON MAN TO MAINTAIN A “HEALTHY” WORLD POPULATION SIZE, CONSISTENT WITH AVAILABLE RESOURCES THEY MAINTAIN EXCLUSIVE CONTROL.

THE COMMON MAN IS PERCEIVED AS A SUPERFLUOUS, WASTEFUL, A POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS THREAT TO PUBLIC ORDER IN THE EMPIRE BUT HE IS ALSO PERCEIVED TO BE—IN THEIR “BILLIONS”—A BURDEN TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER, GIVEN LIMITATIONS ON FOODSTUFFS, SHELTER, AND HEALTH CARE, AND OTHER NATURAL AND MANMADE RESOURCES.

And, as for the NEO-MARXIST CULTISTS, the truth is they have no less regard for the COMMON MAN REGARDLESS OF HIS COLOR, BLACK OR WHITE, RED OR YELLOW, BROWN OR GRAY, OR ANY OTHER COLOR.

Neo-Marxists only recognize people as members of GROUPS, not INDIVIDUALS. The Neo-Marxist philosophy—whether from a social, racial, or economic framework—is perceived from the perspective and standpoint of GROUP DYNAMICS. And all policy is grounded on what they perceive to be in the best interests of the SOCIETAL COLLECTIVE, not from the framework of INDIVIDUAL NEEDS, CONCERNS, FEELINGS, DESIRES, WISHES, GOALS AND AIMS, PERSONAL IDIOSYNCRACIES, AND PREDILECTIONS. All of that is irrelevant, even meaningless to the NEO-MARXISTS. In this, the Neoliberal Globalists agree. In a nutshell, that is their socio-political philosophy.

In this NEO-FEUDAL WORLD EMPIRE, the GLOBALISTS and MARXISTS envision, the MARXIST LEADERSHIP will serve as the PRIEST CASTE. And their GOD is the STATE.

IN this bizarre world, THESE PRIESTS operate as both dispensers of Religious Edicts on behalf of the “STATE AS GOD,” AND also AS “GODS” THEMSELVES, FOR THEY ARE OVERSEERS OF THE EMPIRE, SHARING POWER WITH THE GLOBALIST ELITES. THIS IS HORRIFIC but this is the WORLD COMING INEXORABLY INTO EXISTENCE.

The Common Man, regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, is the target of subjugation, slavery affecting most of America and most of the world. He becomes a veritable SLAVE BOTH IN BODY AND MIND.

But the American public, especially, isn’t permitted to see the EMERGENCE OF THIS HELL WORLD. So, the PROGPAGANDISTS MANUFACTURE the fiction of OPPRESSED and OPPRESSOR CLASSES: WHITE VERSUS BLACK (AND “COLORED”).

But TRULY, THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN OPPRESSOR and OPPRESSED isn’t a matter of, or relegated to, one RACE or COLOR, or, SEX or NATIONAL ORIGIN, or what have you. THE DISTINCTION has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THAT.

It is MONEY and POWER and not just some MONEY, but EXTRAVAGANT WEALTH: Tens or hundreds of Billions of Dollars, or, in the case of the CENTRAL BANK DYNASTY CLAN, a COUPLE OF TRILLION DOLLARS AND THE POWER THAT DERIVES FROM SUCH WEALTH THAT MOTIVATES THESE PEOPLE. They have that kind of wealth ALREADY, and they already exert substantial power over entire nations and populations but they intend to GROW THAT POWER AND WEALTH EXPONENTIALLY, and in that desire and aim, they find nation-states and national governments, too confining, fundamental hindrances.

Economic pacts, treaties, and agreements go only so far as to assist these powerbrokers in accumulating ever more monetary wealth and power.

They want to dissolve all nation-states, and they intend to end them all.

They treat the concept of the ‘nation-state’ as an anachronism, of no service to them, and so they intend to dismantle them.

Such a belief that informs the policy aims of these people poses an existential threat to the continued existence of the United States as a free Constitutional Republic and a threat to LIBERTY and FREEDOM of the American people.

That threat facing our Country is of an order of magnitude above the issue at the heart of the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.

Consider: The AMERICAN CIVIL WAR focused on the composition of the Republic, NOT ON THE FACT OF A REPUBLIC.

Depending on the outcome of the War, the Republic would either continue as a single entity, where all States were united in ONE United States, or the Republic would become TWO, not ONE, where some States would go their own way, forming a new Republic, each with its own Constitution. But the Country, whether one Nation or two, would still exist AS A REPUBLIC (or if the South had won the war, then there would be two independent, sovereign nation-states, and each a Constitutional Republic).

As the North saw it (in the days leading up to the American Civil War), the secession of the Southern States from the Union was an outrage.

But, as the South saw it, secession was the only way the South could grow and prosper as Northern Businesses were destroying the economic life of the South. See the article on encyclopedia.com.

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the Northern and Southern regions of the United States struggled to find a mutually acceptable solution to the slavery issue. Unfortunately, little common ground could be found. The cotton-oriented economy of the American South continued to rest on the shoulders of its slaves, even as Northern calls for the abolition of slavery grew louder. At the same time, the industrialization of the North continued. During the 1820s and 1830s, the different needs of the two regions' economies further strained relations between the North and the South. . . .

Then, in the late 1820s, federal actions on two major issues made Southern lawmakers angrier than they had ever been before. First, the federal government attached high purchase prices to most of the territory out west in order to increase its revenues. Southerners had hoped that the land would be inexpensive so that they could buy land to increase their production of cotton and other crops without spending too much money.

The action that most angered Southerners, however, was the federal government's decision to impose high tariffs, or taxes, on goods from other countries. This system of tariffs was passed in 1828 at the insistence of Northern businessmen, who knew that people would continue to buy their products if European goods were made more expensive by the tariffs. Southerners reacted furiously, calling the 1828 tariff a ‘tariff of abominations.’ They said that the tariff would force Southerners to buy products from Northern merchants who, protected by the tariff on foreign goods, would be able to charge higher prices. Ignoring Southern complaints, Congress passed a second Tariff Act in 1832 that was also seen as providing benefits to the North at the expense of the South.”

THAT WAS THEN. But TODAY, it is the continued existence of FREE REPUBLIC, in ANY form, regardless of composition that is endangered.

The THREAT TO A FREE REPUBLIC must be viewed against the backdrop of and in the context of the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST’s fear—TERROR REALLY—over the possibility of a second Presidential Term for Trump.

And, so, The NEOLIBERAL GLLOBALISTS through their collaboration with the NEO-MARXIST INTERNATIONALISTS have created a new set of stressors for Donald Trump and for the American electorate:

An elaborate set of taxpayer-funded criminal actions undertaken by the Biden Administration/DOJ puppets to drain Trump MONETARILY, MENTALLY, PHYSICALLY, AND EMOTIONALLY, and TO SUBVERT the ELECTORATE’S support of his Presidency.

Never before in the history of this Country, have Americans seen such concerted effort by and TREACHERY of GOVERNMENT, and AT THE BECK AND CALL OF powerful unelected interests—all directed at delivering the physical, mental, emotional, and economic ruin of one man.

No less, it is a thing to behold that this man would be able to generate the strength of will to continue to fight against the unlimited power and money, and resources at the disposal of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT to crush him.

Given the extent of treachery and corruption, and raw anger and rage at work here—such effort and boundless energy fed by such all-consuming wrath and fury, one must marvel at the 45th President’s staying power—and marvel at his ability to channel the anger and rage directed at him and throw it right back at those FORCES THAT CRUSH and at their puppets in the Federal Government.

Still, it is frightening to watch a Government so obsessed with the destruction of ONE MAN, that it would marshal the forces of the PRESS (A FREE PRESS?) and SOCIAL MEDIA to bring him down and would continue to exert such monumental power and expend unlimited human and monetary capital and organizational resources to utterly destroy a man.

Trump is up against dynamic forces that are not at all restrained.

Merrick Garland and Jack Smith demonstrate the traits of psychopathy.

The few words they speak to the public are vacuous. But their treachery, expressed in their actions speaks volumes.

These men are not bounded by ethics and morality, which one would expect from “Officers of the Court” whose zeal one would also expect to be tempered by a measure of humility for the power they wield, ostensibly on behalf of the Nation and the Constitution and the people.

But from what we see, Criminal Law and Procedure are simply tools to be exploited by men like Garland and Smith. They perceive the strictures of the U.S. Constitution and the Code of Professional Responsibility as tools to be manipulated or as nuisances to be ignored.

The treachery and corruption of this Biden Administration so consume it that one wonders if Americans can still honestly, justifiably call the Nation a FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. But they still have some semblance of their Bill of Rights, and they are armed. And these facts are not lost on the FORCES THAT CRUSH, and on the puppets they have installed in Government, who do their bidding.

But it isn’t Americans making the decision to dissolve a free Republic here. That is coming from outside the Country.

Americans within the Country, like Biden, his Cabinet, his under-officers, and many members of the U.S. Congress, and much of the Bureaucracy are taking their orders from forces emanating outside the Nation. And the ruthlessness of those forces is apparent in the actions of the Government that those forces control and whip into a frenzy.

What the Nation and its people face today is something entirely new, frightening in the conception and that in the horror unfolding, beggars the imagination.

What has happened to this Country? Consider:

The duty of those people who SERVE in the Federal Government, IS to preserve, protect,  and defend the Constitution of the United States, and, in so doing, serve and protect the security of the Nation and the interests of the Sovereign American people.

The U.S. President is the Principal Agent through which the Laws of Congress and the strictures of the Constitution are carried out. The importance of that position is reflected by the fact that the Oath the President takes during his Inauguration is the only Oath that appears in the Constitution itself. All other elected officials and bureaucrats, including the military, do take a similar Oath but that Oath is Statutory.

Thus the content of the Oath of the U.S. President and the fact that it appears in the U.S. Constitution itself attests to both the Founders’ realization of the importance they placed on it and the justifiable concern they felt over the power the Chief Executive wields, trusting, hoping that future Presidents would not be consumed through the exercise of the power of the Office of the President.

The Framers had good cause for worry.

The President can exercise humility in his service to God, Country, Constitution, and People, or he can become a Despot—OR, other people (unelected officials, wealthy, powerful GLOBALISTS) can hover like birds of prey in the wings, flattering the President, bribing him to follow their orders, to implement THEIR policies. And it is this last situation that we see has occurred IN OUR COUNTRY. For the Office of the President is now in the hands of powerful outside forces.

If a President is unwilling to take their bribes and dismisses their flattery, these powerful interests can resort to cajoling or threatening the President. Such was what the FORCES THAT CRUSH found in their dealings with Trump. So, they resorted to more strenuous means to control him: Cajoling and Threatening.

But, if cajoling or threatening doesn’t work to dissuade the U.S. President to follow their dictates (and this didn’t work with Trump), they will resort to a more extreme measure: removal from Office.

Attempts at removal can take one of two basic forms.

The surest, but most extreme form, is Assassination—in other words, MURDER. The other involves the manipulation of the Nation’s laws and legal procedures to effectuate removal. The latter method takes time—often substantial time, and it offers no guarantee of success. That makes the use of assassination desirable to malevolent, malignant forces.

These powerful, ruthless forces are not averse to using assassination. They have utilized it in our Country, before.

And they have sold the idea of the “LONE GUNMAN” theory of assassination many times in the past.

Many Americans bought into that idea. Many more HAVE not. There were always holes in the theory—a lot of holes, but so long as an armed revolt did not transpire, the powerful interests behind the assassinations didn’t care what some dissidents, in the public, thought.

But, in America, at least AT PRESENT, assassinations cannot be utilized whenever dealing with a problematic President who refuses to comply with the wishes of those FORCES THAT CRUSH NATIONS AND PEOPLE.

WHY MANIPULATING AN “INTRANSIGENT” U.S. PRESIDENT WHO REFUSES TO BE CORRUPTED IS A DIFFICULT TASK FOR THE NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALISTS AND NEO-MARXISTS

Controlling Governments such as the British Commonwealth Nations and the nations of the EU is fairly easy for the FORCES THAT CRUSH but not so easy to accomplish in the U.S., precisely because of the nature of our Government—grounded on the doctrine of THREE CO-EQUAL BRANCHES, each with a set of clearly defined, demarcated powers and authority—and because Americans have, in their possession, a true BILL OF RIGHTS, where the concept of an ARMED CITIZENRY to keep TYRANNY at bay sits deep in the psyche of Americans, who have always retained a healthy suspicion of powerful governments.

Yet, for all that, the Country sits, today, on a razor’s edge. The Forces that Crush had successfully engineered a quiet coup of Government, setting aside the will of the voters who sought to elect Trump to a second term in Office, and casting aside Trump who resisted the Forces that sought to control his policies and agenda, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, for those policies and agenda were antithetical to theirs. They ensconced a willing puppet in Office, Joe Biden. Although Biden’s incipient dementia was problematic for them. They could work around that. But that dementia would work to their advantage, too. A willing slave to them. He would provide, with his signature, all they needed to reinvigorate their agenda. And in two and half years, the Biden puppet and his puppet Administration have wrought the worst destruction on this Country—economically, socially, politically, geopolitically, juridically, culturally, and even impacting basic governance—that this Nation has ever suffered. And, by extension, the destruction of this Country has negatively impacted world stability. Reality had undergone considerable fracturing. The FORCES THAT CRUSH WERE PLEASED.

An entirely new world order, a new social and political reality, negatively impacting the entire world—the erection of a completely new socio-political structure—a Neo-Feudalistic World Empire was now feasible, and rapidly taking shape, as envisioned.

The importance of the United States in the creation of a one-world government is not only helpful to the realization of that end but essential. And, to that end, the Republic must fall. This is why the Globalist Elites have spent considerable resources to undermine the Country, its Constitution, and its institutions, and to obliterate the idea that Americans have that they are EXCEPTIONAL by virtue of the rights they exercise—rights and liberties that come to them from the Divine Creator, not from Government of men. That idea is unlike any that exists on any other nation on Earth.

As we posited at the beginning of this essay —One of two kinds of America is possible but only one can become a reality.

Many Americans have accurately posited that malevolent forces have gained control of the Executive Suite and much of Congress, and that is and has been AQ’s central thesis since we began our website over 10 years ago. And we have been in continuous existence since, we have not changed that stance or qualified it or modified it.

We have constantly reiterated that position and have further expounded upon it, and, as our investigations have continued, we have seen and heard of nothing to suggest that our general inference is in error.

And, as our understanding of the nature of this threat to our Nation and to our Constitution, and to our way of life, grounded on the sacred principles that this Nation has never denied—at least as true of most of the Electorate—we feel the need to exhort to the public to follow our lead and that of other American Patriots, too, such as the writers David Horowitz and Dick Morris, who have recognized the very real danger to our Republic and have expressly made their concerns known, clearly evidenced and substantiated, through their many writings and public discussions.

THE TRUTH IS: Donald Trump has served our Nation well for four years, repairing some of the damage caused by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations that have devastated our Country, financially, politically, economically, militarily, geopolitically, and societally. They have delivered our Country as a boxed gift to our enemies.

Those enemies are many and powerful and many of them are presented to the American polity as our allies. They aren’t. They never were.

The ultimate aim of the Forces that Crush is the overthrow of the U.S. Government, the governments of all nation-states and the dissolution of the very concept of ‘nation-state.’ With their vast wealth, organizational skills, and abject ruthlessness, they have made many strides in the last twenty-five years, to bring to fruition, the de facto demise of the United States as a free Republic.

Trump’s election to the U.S. Presidency in 2016 threw a wrench in their plans for world conquest. Worse, the inexorable process to defeat this Nation from within and the strides made were skillfully hidden, and, so, barely recognizable and cognizable to the American people.

But Donald Trump cast a bright light on the entire clandestine affair, and THESE FORCES were apoplectic with rage, both for Trump’s having shut down further work on their agenda that was so close to completion and second for demonstrating to the public the extent of the deception and the nature of and the seriousness of the damage these forces had wrought.

THE PLAN TO DESTROY A FREE AND SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT NATION AND FREE REPUBLIC COMMENCED MUCH EARLIER THAN PRESENTED

The effort to overturn the success of the AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776 had actually started at the very moment the Nation’s first Patriots won the War for liberty against Tyranny, tough as that War was, and unexpected as the result turned out to be—A SHOCK to the defeated British and the Rothschild Bank of England that had bankrolled the operation, and a welcome SURPRISE to much of Europe. 

Yet, the plot to destroy a FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC and the strides made to accomplish that weren’t easily cognizable until the last decade of the 20th Century, when the FACT of the THREAT, the NATURE of the THREAT, the EXTENT of the THREAT, and the DESTRUCTION wrought by the plot to undercut this Nation’s free Constitutional Republic, clarified for much of the polity. The polity revolted, in the only way they could, short of Civil War, against the plotters and their stooges and the standing army they controlled—through the electoral process that, at the time, in 2016, had not suffered illegal manipulation, as the plotters saw no need to do so. That changed when, for the plotters and those in league with them, and for some members of the public, Donald Trump was elected to the Office of President of the United States. This happened because the majority of the American people had perceived, during the first decade and a half of the Twenty-First Century, more than an inkling of serious fractures in a Free Constitutional Republic, and they sought to repair those fractures.

In that first decade and a half, up until the election of a political outsider (the successful Businessman, Donald Trump), a majority of Americans came to the correct and no less painful conclusion that powerful outside forces had gained control over the Federal Government and that much of Congress and including U.S. Presidents were not servants to the American people, but their masters, as they were subservient vessels of unelected forces that resided in the shadows, to whom they gave their allegiance betraying their Oath of Allegiance to their Country, to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

STILL, THE EXACT NATURE OF THE THREAT, THE EXTENT OF IT, AND THE SPECIFIC OPERATIONAL METHODOLOGY WAS NOT KNOWN. Even now much of what AQ has deduced is a product of guesswork, well-thought-out guesswork, but guesswork just the same.

THE FORCES THAT CRUSH GUARD THEIR IDENTITY WELL, AND HIDE THEIR INFLUENCE OF GOVERNMENT, IN IMPENETRABLE OPAQUE LAYERS. THEIR PUBLIC FACE IS THAT OF THE PRESIDENT AND HIGH-RANKING OFFICIALS IN THE PRESIDENT’S ADMINISTRATION AND OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS WHOM THEY HAVE CORRUPTED AND NOW CONTROL.

But regardless of subterfuge, the dire effects of the aims OF THESE FORCES THAT CRUSH are noticeable to all who trouble themselves to look and do not allow themselves to be misled by the PURVEYORS of dishonesty in the Government, and in the Press, Cable, and Broadcast “News,” and in Social Media, and in Academia, and in Entertainment.

The FORCES THAT CRUSH have an agenda, and the ultimate goal of that agenda had been inexorably, and without interruption, coming to fruition UP UNTIL January 2017 when Donald Trump took Office. And, the PLOT, designed to destroy the one truly Free Constitutional Republic on Earth, and the AGENDA designed to accomplish the aim of that PLOT, came to a screeching halt.

The polity elected Donald Trump to High Office precisely to put an end to that Plot, and to the Plotters’ Agenda. That is what he campaigned on, and his Campaign Slogan, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” became the title of a blueprint to restore the Nation to its former GREATNESS. The goal was to initiate a policy that cohered to the tenets, the precepts, and the principles of Individualism upon which the Constitution is grounded, and one, then, that is consistent with the idea that all actions taken must be designed with considering and placing the needs, and desires of the Country, FIRST.

THE PLOTTERS WERE FURIOUS TO SEE THEIR AGENDA AND AIM TO DISSOLVE THE REPUBLIC COME TO AN ABRUPT HALT AND TO SEE A NEW AGENDA FORMULATED—ONE ANTITHETICAL TO AND, IN FACT, THE OBVERSE OF THEIRS—ONE DESIGNED TO STRENGTHEN THE REPUBLIC AND TO EXTOL IT.

THE PLOTTERS SOUGHT TO CHANGE TRUMP’S MIND. IF SUCCESSFUL THAT MEANT GETTING TRUMP TO RENEGE ON ALL OF HIS CAMPAIGN PROMISES AND TO BETRAY HIS OATH TO PRESERVE, PROTECT, AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

But would he DENY the electorate that voted him into Office AND BETRAY his OATH? Would he renege on all those campaign promises and pledges and goals, change course, and “play ball” with the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST “ELITES” just as Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barach Obama had done, and as Hillary Clinton would certainly have continued to do had she come into Office instead of Trump. In other words, could Trump be corrupted?

These POWERFUL MALEVOLENT AND MALIGNANT FORCES tried the usual ploys: playing to Trump’s ego which—like all Presidents—was, admittedly, large. Trump was unmoved by their flattery and entreaties. And he could not be bribed, nor would he simply look the other way, and rubber-stamp the policies these FORCES THAT CRUSH generated for him.

And Trump would not willingly support and sign into law the enactments of the Pelosi House and Bush Republicans in the Senate that are harmful to Americans.

All this remained a MAJOR UNKNOWN to these FORCES THAT CRUSH. But, the TRUTH soon became painfully apparent to them.

The forces did not feel they had firm enough control over the military and police to assassinate Trump, much as they would have liked to. It would have been a simple matter for them if they could simply murder Trump, and get away with it, as they had in the past.

But the public was becoming wise to them. They knew there would be a backlash—true hell to pay, especially where, as here, in America, a massive armed citizenry lay at the ready.

They accepted the delay. They used taxpayer money against the taxpayer, undertaking expensive, unjustified investigations of Trump. When that failed, they came up with an implausible, truly ridiculous, excuse to impeach him—the entire thing orchestrated—including utilizing a “non-whistleblower whistleblower” (whose identity would remain unpublished although since made apparent) (but don’t all whistleblowers eventually come forward—and in fact must they not do so? Isn’t that the point of being a whistleblower? After all, how can a “whistleblower” remain secret and still carry the gravitas of being a whistleblower? What is the point if you cannot see and hear THAT whistleblower?).

But none of this seemed to matter: NOT TO THE GOVERNMENT, NOT TO THE MANY AMERICANS WHO HAD OBVIOUSLY BEEN THOROUGHLY BRAINWASHED into believing that it is okay to break the Law of the Land (to SAVE THE LAW AND THE LAND? REALLY!)

BUT THE FORCES THAT CRUSH HAD FIRM CONTROL OF CONGRESS AND OF THE PRESS AND OF THE ELECTORATE, THAT ELECTORATE WAS EITHER ON BOARD WITH THE ENTIRE CHARADE OR WAS DOCILE OR UNCARING OR IGNORANT. So, the damn thing would have to play out. 

Through the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST “ELITES” control of the Democrat Party leadership that at the time had control over the House, Pelosi and her team, went to work, undertaking their impeachment.

The Pelosi House DID impeach Trump.

But the U.S. Senate, under the control of Republicans—most of whom were not Bush Republicans—and a few Republicans who were aware of the GLOBALIST’S control over much of the Executive Branch and much of Congress, and which knew the Articles of Impeachment against Trump were bogus, ridiculous, and would not convict Trump. And Trump had obtained for himself an excellent Defense Team that pointed out, legally, the idiocy of the Articles of Impeachment and made that fact crystal clear.

And Pelosi, likely fuming, was left simply to mouth an empty gesture of defiance, asserting Trump would go down in history as a President who had suffered impeachment. She left out the fact that Pelosi and the Democrat Party-controlled House would go down in History as jackasses who misused the Constitutional Process to attempt to bring down an innocent man and that man would force Pelosi to play an incredibly weak hand.

And, at the end of the day, what did Pelosi accomplish except play to her base, waste time and taxpayer money instead of doing the work of the American people and heed the orders of her Globalist overlords?

It is she, not Trump whom history will say much of her treachery to the Country, Constitution, and people. And, of the present matter, so she has her seemingly moment in the sun. She has an impeachment of Trump under her belt.

SO WHAT?

Trump was still President and he would serve out his First Term.

Moreover, enough of the Electorate was pleased with the success of Trump’s efforts to preserve and protect the Nation and prove to the Electorate that, in the face of adversity and attempts to control him, he was a man OF HIS WORD AND TRUE TO HIS WORD UNLIKE Clinton, and Bush, and Obama who preceded him.

The ELECTORATE WANTED TRUMP TO SERVE A SECOND TERM. THAT WAS CERTAIN. AND TRUMP INTENDED TO SERVE A SECOND TERM. HE WAS NOT COWED BY THE MANY EFFORTS TO DEFEAT HIM. HE WEATHERED THE STORM AND WAS ADMIRED ALL THE MORE FOR IT.

AND PELOSI AND THE OTHER BRIGANDS, AND THE FORCES THAT CRUSH, AND THE PRESS, THE NEO-MARXIST CULTISTS, AND THOSE BRAINWASHED MEMBERS OF THE POLITY WERE ALL LEFT TO STEW.

A SECOND TERM FOR TRUMP?

The NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST “ELITES” found the idea of a Second Presidential Term for Trump to be intolerable.

They had hand-selected the corrupt, mentally, physically, emotionally weak, and dementia-riddled Biden Puppet to succeed Trump.

This poor excuse for a man, and one whom as President of the United States was the very definition of insanity and absurdity. Biden could not be trusted to campaign. But how could a person running for President of the United States, selected as the Democrat Party Candidate, not campaign for Office? And he was just a contender, not the presently sitting President. So he must campaign. And yet could not, must not campaign. This was a veritable conundrum.

How could a person hide from the public during the Campaign season—especially a contender for Office?

Yet, a large section of the polity had fallen prey to psychological conditioning.

People who had no intention of voting for Trump in 2020 could not tell you what it was that Trump had done during his First Term that warranted voting for Joe Biden—the weakest man, emotionally, physically, and mentally ever to run for President of the United States.

An obliging Press filled in the gaps, to conjure up additional reasons for the American Electorate to vote for Biden, and not vote for Trump.

Still, the idiocy of how this 2020 Election was playing out would not be lost on the American people.

The Neoliberal Globalists and the Democrats knew this.

They both knew that they could not rely on a fair election to see a majority of the polity actually voting for a physically and emotionally frail, weak-willed, incompetent, and corrupt individual, and one exhibiting unmistakable signs of incipient dementia.

Never before had someone with the mass of infirmities and deficiencies of a man like Biden ever served in the Highest Office of the Land before.

The public expected their Chief Executive to be a person of courage, and fortitude, exhibiting strength of mind and body, and not susceptible to bribes or threats—someone whom Joe Biden was not. He had not one saving grace, not one redeeming character trait.

Biden’s weaknesses were painfully obvious to everyone. And to believe that millions of people would vote for Biden simply because he wasn’t Trump could not be relied on to get Biden the 270 ELECTORAL VOTES needed to win an ELECTION.

So, even that matter had to be taken care of. And the image makers went to work.

The Press would argue that Trump was an awful person and that he was an “Autocrat” and that, even if there was no evidence of his being a Despot in his First Term, he definitely would become one during the Second Term. Such was the power of propaganda that many Americans fell for that nonsense.

And Trump did lose the 2020 Election—Or SO THE PUBLIC WAS TOLD.

THAT WAS THE RUNNING NARRATIVE, AND ANY WHO WOULD DARE SAY OTHERWISE INCLUDING TRUMP WERE ROUNDLY CONDEMNED, CANCELLED, RIDICULED, AND OSTRACIZED FOR HAVING THE AUDACITY OF SAYING SO.

And, as we see now, the latest charges against Trump brought by Merrick Garland’s Attack Dog, Jack Smith, amount to literally criminalizing what had hitherto been Press and Social Media attacks on anyone who would dare assert or even suggest that the 2020 General Election wasn’t fair or aboveboard.

See the report of the FEC:

There was apparently 158,383,403 cast in the 2020 General Election overall, which included a few million votes cast for write-in candidates. The FEC says that, as for Trump and Biden, alone, there were a total of 155,485,078 votes cast. And, of that number, the FEC says Biden won the election, receiving 81,268,924 votes, amounting to 51.31% of the vote for those two candidates; and that Trump received 74, 216,154 votes, amounting to 46.86% of the total votes cast for the two candidates.

That, at any rate, is the official story. But, there is much more to this.

In his well-researched book, “Final Battle,” the writer David Horowitz points to a number of disturbing matters, and patterns of behavior, across multiple States, pertaining to the behavior of the courts refusing to hear Trump’s lawsuits [including those he filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, as reported by Forbes].

Horowitz writes,

When the votes were counted and the results were in, two factors stood out as particularly painful for Trump. The first and most important was the conviction that he had won. For more than four years Democrats and their media allies had waged a relentless slander campaign against him. . . .

Despite the constant drumbeat of these lies, when the 2020 election results were in Trump has outperformed every incumbent president before him. Every one, including Barack Obama, had received fewer votes in his run for a second term. But in 2020, Trump miraculously increased his margin by 11.2 million votes, making his total of more than 74 million, the most votes ever cast for an American president in the past.

On the other hand, to believe that Biden had won, one would have to believe that a mentally challenged candidate, who campaigned from his basement, who could hardly sustain a train of thought and couldn’t get through a campaign speech without a teleprompter, whose crowed were generally in the low double-digits, while Trump was drawing thirty and fifth thousand supporters to his rallies—one would have to believe that this fumbling figure received nearly 12 million more votes than Barack Obama at his peak.

Trump was also confident he had won because despite all the irregularities and unconstitutional practices by the Biden campaign, Biden’s margin of victory was still razor thin. Roughly 159 million total votes had been cast in the 2020 presidential election. Biden’s margin of victory was 43,000—or 0.027 percent of the total. If the votes illegally cast in Pennsylvania and two other battleground states had been properly thrown out by the courts, Trump would have won.

A Second Painful Fact

Trump’s recognition of this gut-wrenching fact was accompanied by another—the knowledge that in five of the six battleground states, Republican majorities ruled the legislatures but had refused to enforce the constitutional provision that would have declared the Democrat rules unconstitutional, and secured his victory. Despite his direct appeals to these Republican legislators, they had sat on their hands and refused to either investigate or rectify the illegal proceedings.

As the new year approached, Trump was running out of authorities he could appeal to if he was going to reverse the election result. The Trump team had filed 61 suits in the lower courts, nearly all of whom refused to examine the evidence. The only hope they had left was a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas. The Texas suit was backed by 126 of 196 Repbulicans in the House and 19 Republican States that filed motions in support. Trump referred to the case as ‘the big one.’ It sought to delay the vote by presidential electors in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, arguing that voting procedures in those states had been changed in violation of their own state laws, and of the Constitution. These illegal votes in turn devalued the votes in other states like Texas by weighting the overall election result.

On December 11, despite its conservative majority, the [Texas] Supreme Court refused to hear the suit. ‘The Supreme Court really let us down,’ Trump tweeted in disappointment. . . . There would be no justice for him in the judiciary. . . .

The betrayals of the Republican legislatures were accompanied by the betrayals of other prominent Republicans who Trump and American voters more fealty than they were able to muster. This included Attorney General William Barr, Vice President Mike Pence, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, all of whom could have stepped forward to support his quest for a fair hearing but didn’t.

Throughout Trump’s efforts to rectify a corrupt election, Democrats deliberately and consistently confused the act of questioning an election result with an attack on democracy itself, which they pointedly associated with treason. . . .

Democrats and their partisan media leveled this grave charge calculating that to do so would intimidate their opponents into inaction. To be accused of being an enemy of democracy and a traitor to your country is obviously a damaging accusation for anyone with political ambitions, particularly, with a media that functions as an echo-chamber for such charges. This was no doubt a significant factor in the defections of Republican elected officials.

Despite the Democrats’ claim that challenging a vote is treason, the fact remains that such challenges happen all the time and are perfectly legitimate within a democratic framework. Dictatorships outlaw critics of their elections; democracies don’t. But raising hypocrisy to whole new levels, the Democrats themselves had questioned the results of all three Republican presidential election victories since 2000, agitated to decertify electors, and attempted to reverse the results.

Since the Courts refused Trump’s legitimate challenges, inexplicably refusing even to hear the cases, Trump appealed to the voters themselves, and for his troubles—over two and half years later—the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST’ PUPPETMASTERS—would go after Trump again. Seeing that Trump did intend to run for U.S. President for a second term after he was unlawfully denied doing so in 2020, and seeing Trump as popular as ever, and having no one to challenge him but the same idiot they had set up as a Department Store mannikin the first time around, they likely ordered the Biden Administration to order the DOJ’s Merrick Garland to launch a flurry of criminal actions against Trump. The latest of these played on Trump’s last attempt at obtaining a modicum of justice when Trump gave his speech to his supporters on January 6, 2021. Garland’s Henchman, the thoroughly reprehensible Jack Smith, filed a number of “conspiracy” charges against Trump, stemming from that speech.

David Horowitz writes,

In a last-ditch effort, Trump announced that he would hold a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on January 6, 2021, the time the House of Representatives was scheduled to convene to certify the electors and confirm the election result. Because he was aware that lawlessness had become an accepted norm in Democrat cities since the death of George Floyd in May 2020, and since there were bad actors battling each other from both sides during those riots, Trump offered to provide 10,000 federal National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on January 6, His offer was rejected by the Democrat Mayor and Black Lives Matter supporter, Muriel Bowser. Trump’s offer was also rejected by Nancy Pelosi and the Capitol Police. [See article in PM, cited by Horowitz].

Curiously Left-wing websites and the Legacy Press denied there is any proof of this. See e.g., the article in Politifact and the article in the Dispatch

Even more curiously, the news website, “The Hill” never mentions Trump’s assertion of a request made to Pelosi or Bowser, but merely cites to an AP account, referring to confusing inconsistent remarks by Pelosi once people did gather at the Capitol. The Hill never follows up on this.

‘As Speaker of the House, Pelosi does not direct the National Guard,’ the AP reported in its fact check. ‘Further, as the Capitol came under attack, she and the Senate Majority leader called for military assistance, including the National Guard.’” [Well, what became of that?]

But even the Leftist NPR pondered this matter, simply adding compounding to the disparities.

The former chief of U.S. Capitol Police says security officials at the House and Senate rebuffed his early requests to call in the National Guard ahead of a demonstration in support of President Trump that turned into a deadly attack on Congress.

Former chief Steven Sund— who resigned his post last week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for him to step down—a made the assertions in an interview with The Washington Post published Sunday.

Sund contradicts claims made by officials after Wednesday's assault on Capitol Hill. Sund's superiors said previously that the National Guard and other additional security support could have been provided, but no one at the Capitol requested it.” See also New York Post article. There isn’t much of a clue, just confusion. Nor does the Military Times offer anything concrete, just more obfuscation.

Horowitz concludes his chapter on 2020 voting irregularities with the following Trump remark delivered during the “Stop the Steal” Rally on January 6, 2021:

‘In Pennsylvania,’ . . . ‘the Democrat secretary of state and the Democrat state Supreme Court justices illegally abolished the signature verification requirements just 11 days prior to the election. So think of what they did. No longer is there signature verification. . . . Eleven days before the election they say we don’t want it. You know why they don’t want it? Because they want to cheat. That’s the only reason. Who would even think of that. We don’t want to verify a signature?’

It was a good question, but to raise it, according to the Democrats, was treason.”

The term, ‘Treason,’ is not a frivolous term to be bandied about.

But Democrats and the Press and many other people who should be careful about the words they use don’t seem to mind saying the most outrageous things when it comes to Trumps and “MAGA” Republicans.

Let’s in fact have this discussion about “Treason.” Treason and sedition are in ample supply in this Country. But, those horrible crimes are not to be found in the hearts, minds, or actions of Trump, nor in those of his supporters and followers—tens of millions of Americans, but, rather, in those high-ranking officials of Government who have sold out this Country, and who have betrayed both the Nation’s Constitution and the American people. And what clearer way to demonstrate that betrayal than through the only mechanism available to the public through which they can have a small voice in the running of their Government—the electoral process? If that process is compromised, then, as AQ, sees it, the only other way to preserve and protect the Republic is through outright Civil War. To avoid such a dire happenstance, Americans must insist on and Republicans in the States and in Congress must take steps to ensure the integrity of our Electoral Process.

In his section on, “Staying the Course,” Horowitz says,

In sum, the in the wake of the rejection of their policies and agendas at the ballot box, Democrats were determined to double down as though the vote hadn’t taken place. Like the authoritarians in whose footsteps the Democrats were following, they regarded elections as obstacles rather than opportunities. That would explain their determination to demonize their opponents, to take authority away from the states and centralize the voting system in Washington, to press for universal unsolicited mail-in ballots, and to make their primary political campaign a crusade against voter IDs and election integrity. . . .

Biden won the State of Georgia with fewer than 12,000 voters, yet according to the Democrats themselves, 270,000 voters in Georgia have no ID and were still able to vote in the 2020 election.

Democrats have already codified their plans to centralize elections under Washington control, rely on fraud-friendly unsolicited mail-in ballots, legitimize ‘ballot harvesting’ and ‘vote navigators,’ along with other practices that the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform warned were fraud-facilitating practices in HR-1, the ‘For the People Act’ passed by Nancy Pelosi’s House in 2021. Nothing could be clearer than the fact that the Democrat Party is on a mission to dismantle the political system under whose auspices Americans have prospered for more than 240 years. Believing, as so-called progressives, that they are on the ‘right side of history’—it is not clear what, if anything, would deter them, from this destructive path.”

Of course, AQ argues that blatant attempts to destroy the integrity of the Electoral Process—both the extent of the measures devised and implemented and the severity of them, so harmful to our system of elections—cannot be adequately explained away as opportunism exploited by overzealous Political Progressives. There are grounds for impeachment aplenty against these people and probable cause of criminal activity that is completely lacking in the nonsense drummed up by Jack Smith and his team in recent days and weeks.

People like Pelosi and Schumer in Congress, and renegades in the DOJ/FBI and DHS, DOD, Military, and the Intelligence Apparatuses would not dream of doing what they have been doing and have done against the Constitution and Country if they felt they would have to answer for their serious felonies. No! This is coming from unelected forces outside the Federal Government and outside the Country and these elements have taken control of vast swaths of the Government, of the States, of Business, the Press, and Technology. And they answer to no one.

Those who owe their allegiance to the United States and to our Constitution are apparently more afraid of these outside forces than they are of the American people, whom they have betrayed and whom they continue to betray.

David Horowitz lays out the facts of betrayal eloquently, and he perceptively and presciently inferred that Trump would forever remain a target of persecution. In a section of his book, titled, “Trump the Target Forever!”, Horowitz writes,

For five years, Pelosi had led Democrats in their attempts to convict, remove, and charge Donald Trump for alleged crimes against the Constitution, against the country, and against common decency, and had failed. By now, most people not affected by Trump hysteria had concluded, that in all these efforts, the target was not really Trump himself but the party he led, the country he put first, and the record 74 million voters who still supported him despite all the attacks.

By ignoring these voters and dismissing them as racists, the Democrats had effectively told them their votes did not count—and would never count. This was made apparent by the reactions of the Democrats to Ron DeSantis, a rising Republican star. The Florida governor had implemented the border and Covid-19 policies embraced by Trump supporters and had shown himself to be a fighter in Trump’s mold. The Democrats’ reaction to his rising popularity was to characterize him as ‘more dangerous than Trump,’ which showed that as far as they were concerned, Trump would continue to function as a bar to judge, and a whipping boy to dismiss any Republican who reflected the views of the movement that Trump had called into being.

Demonizing Trump was—and had been for more than five years—the Democrat’s chief political weapon in their relentless drive to create a one-party state. Demonizing Trump and his followers laid the necessary groundwork for a political system in which dissenters were rendered powerless, and ‘bipartisanship’ an empty promise.

If Democrats could still deploy Trump-hatred and serial slanders of Republicans as ‘white supremacists,’ patriotic extremists,’ and ‘violent insurrectionists,’ and use them to win the 2022 midterms, they would be in a position to secure the provisions of the For the People Act—to federalize elections, to make mail-in balloting the law nationwide, to outlaw voter IDs, to enforce open borders, to change the electoral map, to abolish the Electoral Collect, to pack the Supreme Court, and to establish that tyranny of the majority [MOB RULE] they had spent so much political capital to achieve.

On the other hand, if Republicans supporting America-first policies, secure borders, free markets, law and order, and a color-blind society won the midterms, the Democrats’ entire nation-transforming agenda would go down in defeat. And every indicator—past and present—was pointing toward a Republican landslide which would accomplish just that.

Democrats and Progressives as “Radical Utopians” [as coined by Horowitz] can’t be bothered with the such little details and concerns as preserving the integrity of America’s Electoral Process. They are in a hurry.

David Horowitz says,

Radical Utopians Seeking to change the world invariably have three traits in common. These flow from the radical nature of their mission, which is to change the world. First, radicals are in a hurry. Their task is large and the opportunities to achieve it scarce. America’s political culture is specifically designed to support incremental reforms, not abrupt breaks with the past. Ramming through transformational changes on eh basis of razor thin majorities is exactly what the American system is designed to frustrate and thwart. But this is the very goal of radicals, and they are consequently pitted from the outset against the majority.

Second, because radicals are in a hurry, they are impatient with process and persuasion [hence the reluctance to engage in debate], which makes them generally tone deaf to the majority that opposes them. Radicals dismiss their opponents because their schemes are implemented—by whatever means necessary—they are confident that a majority will see just how liberating their policies are, and they will be grateful. Blinded by arrogance, they prefer government mandate and diktat to the frustrating conversations that are the lifeblood of a democratic system.

Third, radicals generate energy for their movements by singling out a social subgroup, usually a racial or religious minority, to demonize as the enemy of these liberating schemes. In this way they remove opponents from the deliberative process and deny them a proverbial ‘seat at the table’ where they can express their opposition.

And the transformation of society the Democrats Progressives push for is meant to rupture the Nation to its core.

Horowitz convincingly argues,

Progressives seek a fundamental transformation of society that, the claim, would establish peace, justice, and equity as the orders of the day. Why, then have they killed so many people in peacetime, and taken away the freedom of so many others in gulags and concentration camps? This is a question better examined before the American radicals achieve a one-party state than after.

[But][t]he answer to the question should be obvious. When a righteous elite becomes a party powered by hatred and marches in lockstep toward its ideological goal, and when this same party sets out to transform society into a politically correct realm, there is no limit to the control they will require to achieve the perfection for which they strive. There will always be another politically incorrect deviant who needs to be canceled, another microaggression that needs to be punished, another dissent that needs to be suppressed. . . . Already if you are white but fail to concede to a workplace diversity trainer that your skin color makes you a white supremacist, you are facing the loss of a job and possibly a career. Already, the party of righteous Democrats is planning to impose internal passports on the entire population, putting its freedom of movement and access to services under the government’s thumb.

With such a wide-encompassing, severe transformation meant to shred the sanctity and inviolability and supremacy of our Constitution, and to eradicate our Nation’s history, heritage, culture, national ethos, and Judeo-Christian ethic, and to disrupt the entire social fabric of society, and when exhibiting extraordinary impatience to accomplish all of that, is it any wonder that Democrats and Progressives would resort to manipulating the American Electoral Process to their advantage, all the while claiming, disingenuously, the changes they wish to implement are meant to promote fairness and ease in voting, even as they skirt over the potential for massive fraud, thereby compromising the integrity of the system and, in so doing, severely weakening, not strengthening the goal of securing fundamental fairness of voting? For, a fraudulently cast ballot doesn’t promote fundamental fairness to one. Rather, it denies to another the worth of that person’s honest vote.

In his book, “The Return,” Dick Morris poignantly asks:

Is our blessed democracy to be debased by altered ballots, phony signatures, and ghost voters, all because the burden of voter identification is too onerous [this last point is likely meant to be a trifle facetious].

Dick Morris ends his book with several questions, as a haunting echo of the well-recited litany of treachery that has occurred in this—the first couple of decades in Twenty-First Century America.

Although neither author offered prognostications of the DOJ bringing serious criminal charges against Trump, albeit charges created out of whole cloth to prosecute (really persecute) Donald Trump—how could they divine the depths to which the Biden Administration and the Neoliberal Globalist puppet masters would plunge, to keep a strong-willed, successful President and true leader of the Nation, who did in fact “MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN,” as he had promised, from seriously contending for the 2024 U.S. Presidential election against an emotional and physical wreck of a man, hopelessly, irrefutably and irredeemably corrupt, wholly immoral, clearly dementia-riddled travesty posing as Chief Executive, and altogether incapable of engaging in serious debate—these authors, Horowitz and Morris would not at all be surprised. And, as mentioned, supra, Horowitz pointed out that attacks on Trump would never end. And, as Morris points out, “Each futile attempt distracted our attention from a crucial national crisis.” So, there were diabolical reasons for these incessant attacks against Trump. They served to keep both him and tens of millions of his supporters preoccupied and off-balance and played to that segment of the polity that wanted Trump harmed and eventually, gone.

But, after years of investigating Trump on fabricated, absurd, allegations, and coming up empty-handed, and after two impeachments grounded on flimsy, spurious claims, would the Democrats and those behind the scenes who control them, relent? Not a chance—certainly not as long as Trump represented a tenable threat to their agenda.

So these authors, Horowitz and Morris, would not be surprised to learn of a new plot to damage Trump: A flurry of criminal charges being hurdled at him.

BUT HOW LONG CAN THIS GO ON? WHAT HAPPENS TO THE NATION IF THE FORCES THAT CRUSH PREVENT TRUMP FROM RUNNING IN 2024 OR THAT, IF HE DOES RUN, AND LOSES TO BIDEN, OR SOME OTHER TOADY SELECTED TO SERVE AS A PLACEHOLDER FOR THOSE FORCES INTENT ON DESTROYING OUR NATION SECURE THE ELECTION FOR THE DEMOCRATS AND PROGRESSIVES AND FOR THOSE POWERFUL RUTHLESS MALEVOLENT, MALIGINANT FORCES BEHIND THEM? WHAT THEN? DARE WE ASK?

Given the import of the title of his book, “FINAL BATTLE,” AQ asks, “Is Horowitz surmising or alluding to the fact—and would Dick Morris agree with him—that we, Americans, are at the stage where, if positive change does not occur in the General Election of 2024, then our Country is lost, that nothing further can be done to save it, to salvage it?

From what each of these authors has said and laid out in detail, with substantial supporting evidence, and, given, as they make clear, the tenacity of the forces that seek to harm this Nation, and the dire nature of the measures they wish to implement which would do no less than transform our Nation into a Marxist/Communist nightmare if successful, which IS there goal, do Americans just capitulate? Or do they try to take their COUNTRY back by force from those who betrayed Country, God, Constitution, and People? That of course means CIVIL WAR. One must wonder, what advice the Founders of our Republic would have for us.

NEITHER AUTHOR ALLUDES TO CIVIL WAR, and this means they do not see the need to go there. They emphasize HOPE and the need to work to make sure that the Republicans maintain control of the House, regain control of the Senate, and return Trump to the White House in 2024.

But, both authors are nonetheless blunt. In the last chapter of his book, “The Return,” Dick Morris makes a pointed remark, and asks pointed questions:

We Cannot Read the plans of the woke left without understanding, in a way that we never have, the true stakes involved in the elections of 2022 [which have yielded mixed results for America’s Patriots] and 2024 [which happens to be the most important U.S. Presidential Election in our Nation’s History. America’s Patriots know this. And, both the Neoliberal Globalist Empire Builders and Neo-Marxist Internationalists Cultists know this, too, given the extraordinary lengths they are going to in a naked and unlawful attempt to prevent Trump from running against Biden (or any other Democrat Party candidate in 2024, in the event Biden drops dead at some point in time either on or before the November 2024 election or otherwise is too feeble to continue even to go through the charade of running for a Second Term as “Great Pretender,” assuming he is running anything now during this First Term)].

In other words, Americans still have a VOICE, which can be used at the VOTING BOOTH in 2024, and AQ ADVISES that America’s Patriots better USE that VOICE at the VOTING BOOTH (NOT SIT THIS ONE OUT) THAT THEY NEED NOT BE COMPELLED to use FORCE OF ARMS to combat TYRANNY.

Morris continues,

Are the gains of generations of American families to be burned alive on the coals of woke envy? Is all that we have achieve as a nation, as families, to be held hostage in order to punish us for slaves we never owned (and our ancestors died to free), discrimination we never practiced, and racism we never felt in our hearts.

Are our children to be taught to hate and envy one another? Is the emerging post-racial era in our society to be forfeit in new cancel culture? Are our heroes to be debased, and our great past presidents to be demeaned as slave-owning imperialists? Is brotherhood to be sacrificed for hatred? Is reconciliation to be wiped out in the name of meting out what the Left calls ‘equity’—balancing the accounts of history by robbing the present to pay the supposed debts of the past?

Are the shared sacrifices of the past . . . to be swept aside with each swipe of the woke guillotine of the cancel culture?

Are the rungs of the ladder we all need to use to climb above our current stations in life to be sawed away by what President Bush 43 called ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’? Are to be yoked to a technocracy where our innermost thoughts can be read by Chinese and American Big Tech masters?

Are we to be drowned in a sea of illegal immigrants?

Will crime again rule our streets at night? Will blind partisanship, motivated by class hatred and envy, so divide us that we become one another’s enemies?

And, in “Final Battle,” David Horowitz makes these perspicacious point:

Overnight, it seemed, America had been transformed from a nation of inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution—and the right to assemble, to worship, to speak freely—into a nation in which those rights were now contingent upon doing what unelected health experts and government officials demanded. . . .

Indeed, Communist governments discovered long ago that the best way to control a population was through a ‘reward-punishment-type system’—benefits earned if people did what they were told, benefits denied if they did not. In totalitarian states. . . people who failed to comply with government orders were often not overtly punished. Instead, disobedient or dissenting citizens simply saw their promotions denied, their children’s applications for university rejected, their efforts to acquire a car stymied, long-planned vacation trips canceled,

Historically, Americans reject this vision of total government control over their lives as the opposite of the freedoms they have fought and died to protect. But now the nations is divided and the Democrat Party and its followers have embraced a totalitarian vision and mentality. This has produced a resistance by patriotic Americans. . . .

Biden’s response to these challenges was to portray himself as the nation’s savior and his opponents as misinformed and misguided enemies of essential remedies for the nation’s plight. . . .

Historically, Americans reject this vision of total government control over their lives as the opposite of the freedoms they have fought and died to protect. But, now the nation is divided and the Democrat Party and its followers have embraced a totalitarian vision and mentality. This has produced a resistance by patriotic Americans. . . .

During a television interview with Fox’s Laura Ingraham, DeSantis spoke to the hypocrisy of Biden’s claim to represent the truth about the [Chinese Communist Covid Health Crisis] and to possess a monopoly on the virtuous way to deal with it. ‘This is a guy [said DeSantis] that ran for President saying he would shut down the virus. He was not going to shut down America or the economy. He would shut down the virus. Yet what is he doing? He is bringing in people from over 100 different countries across the southern border. Every variant on this planet—some we don’t even know about—are absolutely coming into our country that way. . . . He is lecturing people about imposing Covid restrictions and lockdowns and not only doing nothing to stop the border surge but actually facilitating it. And then addressing [Biden] directly, DeSantis said: ‘Why don’t you do your job? Why don’t you get this border secure? Until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about Covid from you.

It was a classic standoff—one that spoke to the heart of the political debate over whether the country would stand by its constitutional principles and traditions or, under the cover of a malleable crisis, transition to a one-party state that sought total control over the population.

WHAT OUR COUNTRY FACES IN LIGHT OF WHAT THE DESTRUCTORS OF OUR COUNTRY HAVE WROUGHT—AS HOROWITZ MAKES CLEAR IN “FINAL BATTLE” AND IN “DARK AGENDA,” AND AS DICK MORRIS MAKES CLEAR IN HIS BOOK, “THE RETURN”—SHOULD GIVE ALL AMERICANS PAUSE. THERE IS NEED FOR CONCERN, DEEP CONCERN, AND NEITHER AUTHOR PULLS ANY PUNCHES ON THAT SCORE.

The Horowitz and Morris Books stand out as messages of caution but also hope and they provide a recipe for curing what AQ has referred to as “the rape of our Country” by the “Forces that Crush.”

On the first page of “The Return,” Dick Morris says,

“All is Not Lost. Thank God we live in a democracy with regular elections, and what liberty and democracy have lost on one cycle can be restored in the next. It’s our last chance! In past elections, we were always told that the stakes have never been higher. Pundits regularly warn us about the consequences of the other party winning. The other party will bring disaster. But the elections of 2022 and 2024 are different. The other party already won the election of 2020—sort of—and disaster is already upon us. To win these next two elections, we must realize that there are new rules under which any electoral battle in the future will now be conducted. We must adjust to them and learn to win under them.

But before we turn ahead to the coming contests, let’s frankly and honestly answer the core question:

Did Donald Trump win or lose the election of 2020?

Would a fair vote count of only timely ballots cast by eligible voters aware the election to Trump or to Biden?

The deliberate efforts of the Democratic machine politicians in swing states to conceal and obfuscate the truth has meant that we may never know the correct answers to either question. And the cowardice of the US Supreme Court provides us no help or clarification. . . .

But one thing is clear: The voter turnout, on both sides, was overwhelming, vastly outpacing any in modern history. The turnout in 2020 exceeded that in 2016, just four years earlier, by almost 20 percent. . . .

Everything we knew—or thought we knew—about American politics is obsolete in this new era of massively higher turnout.

Did the Democrats win because of fraud? Was the election stolen?

It’s certainly true that many paper ballots were forged or cast in the names of voters who had died or moved away—or who simply did not exist.

Much of the fraud involved real, active voters casting real ballots but doing so after the time deadlines specified by law.

Still, more were cast by eligible voters under the in-person pressure of a Democratic election worker standing in the doorway, compromising their right to a secret ballot.

We can and must change these laws and administrative procedures to stop post-election voting, drop boxes serviced by party workers, and ballot harvesting. We’ve got to require full signature verification, and above all, we must require photo identification to register and vote. We must demand that every mail-in ballot has the last four digits of the Social Security number correctly entered.

To all the corrections needed to safeguard the integrity of our Electoral Process, AQ would add the need to scrap the use of proprietary run and owned digital voting machines. Even The Radical Leftist CNN reporting acknowledges that the Dominion machines utilized by many States during the 2020 U.S. Presidential election allow for tampering, even while then denying that such occurred, relying on the findings of the intelligence community whom we know well cannot be trusted to be truthful with the public. Back in May 2022, CNN said,

Federal cybersecurity officials have verified there are software vulnerabilities in certain ballot-marking devices made by Dominion Voting Systems, discovered during a controversial Georgia court case, which could in theory allow a malicious actor to tamper with the devices, according to a draft analysis reviewed by CNN.

The vulnerabilities have never been exploited in an election and doing so would require physical access to voting equipment or other extraordinary criteria standard election security practices prevent, according to the analysis from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

But see the November 2018 article in “Mashable.”

Experts have also found that electronic voting is incredibly vulnerable to hacking. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia attempted to penetrate the voting systems of 21 states in 2016, and were successful in at least one (Illinois).

It also turns out that the recommended way people should vote is with a paper ballot that allows voters to check that they're casting the ballot the way they intended. That's known as a ‘voter-verified paper audit trail’ (VVPAT). It means that the most secure and accurate way to vote is through leaving an analog record.

‘We need an election system that is resilient to the threats,’ voting security expert Bruce Schneier writes. ‘And for many parts of the system, that means paper.’

So why did we turn to electronic voting in the first place?

Also, see the article on the problem of electronic voting machines reported in EFF:

Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy. The mechanics of how we vote, and how those votes are counted, are critical to ensuring our votes are meaningful. EFF supports paper records for every vote, and automatic, risk limiting audits for every election. We'll oppose legislation that doesn't include those two critical measures. EFF opposes online voting.

In 2018, several senators introduced the Protecting American Votes and Elections (PAVE) Act. This proposal mandates the use of paper ballots and risk-limiting audits in every federal election, which will assure that our democratic process isn’t hijacked by hackers or foreign powers. It’s a great step forward, and we hope Congress considers a similar bill in a future session.

Touchscreen voting machines, counting machines, and other devices involved in elections are subject to hacking. Such attacks by their very nature can be stealthy and ambiguous. A skillful attack can tamper with voting machines and then delete itself, making it impossible to prove after the fact that an election suffered interference. Paper records ensure that it is possible to detect and quickly correct for such interference. Many states still don't follow this baseline best practice.

Risk Limiting Audits

To catch vote tampering, it's important to check some paper records by hand, and not rely on a machine “recount.” An audit shouldn't be a special occurrence during a disputed election. High-quality audits should be automatic, regular parts of our democratic process. Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs) are a proven, innovative way to pick a small sample of ballots for manual counting while achieving a very high level of statistical confidence that any electronic vote-tampering will be detected. This makes them cheap enough to perform audits on every election. As of 2018, three states have implemented RLA mandates, with Colorado leading the way. The other forty-seven should do the same as soon as possible.

No Online Voting

Proposals surface every now and then to allow voting from home or abroad via smartphones or laptops. Security experts are near-unanimous that this is unacceptably risky, and EFF supports this conclusion.

But, then, none of the suggestions by experts and none of the bills prepared by Republicans to secure the integrity of our elections have been implemented. Quite the opposite has transpired, and there is nothing that AQ has seen that suggests massive changes to secure the integrity of our U.S. Presidential election coming up in 2024. Why is that? What is preventing action? What we do see is that any attempt to deny the fairness of the 2020 Presidential Election and the Midterm Election of 2022 the latter of which oddly saw the worst sorts of people elected to the U.S. Senate, giving the Senate to Democrats (as Schumer pompously declared would happen—did he know something that the public wasn’t privy to?) is met with anger or derision and subject to the censoring of speech and “cancellation” on social media and—as is presently happening to Donald Trump—actual charges of criminal conspiracy for exercising one’s First Amendment Right to question the fairness of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.

Dick Morris points out succinctly, “The Democrats are trying to transform America into a nation none of us will recognize.” But, would they be able to do that if they did not control so much of the Federal Government apparatus? Morris says, “Before We Even Get to 2024, we have to retake Congress in 2022.” His book, “The Return,” came out in 2022, obviously before the results of the 2022 Midterms. And Republicans did retake the House—barely—but they lost the Senate.

And, in his work, “Final Battle,” David Horowitz points to the fact that,

Progressives seek a fundamental transformation of society that, they claim, would establish peace, justice, and equity as the orders of the day. Why, then, have they killed so many people in peacetime, and taken away the freedom of so many others in gulags and concentration camps? This is a question that is better examined before American radicals achieve a one-party state than after.

The answer to the question should be obvious. When a righteous elite becomes a party powered by hatred and marches in lockstep toward its ideological goal, and when this same party sets out to transform society into a politically correct realm, there is no limit to the control they will require to achieve the perfection for which they strive. There will always be another politically incorrect deviant who needs to be canceled, another microaggression that needs to be punished, another dissent that needs to be suppressed. . . . Already, if you are white but fail to [answer] to a workplace diversity trainer that your skin color makes you a white supremacist, you are facing the loss of a job and possibly a career. Already, the party of righteous Democrats is planning to impose internal passports on the entire population, putting its freedom of movement and access to services under the government’s thumb. . . . Such is the awesome and terrifying power of an ideological zeal justified by planetary crises and mostly imagined social inequities.

The 2022 Midterms were a mixed bag at best. Horowitz points to major wins for Republicans in the States and a repudiation of Democrats’ policy issues but Democrats thereupon made clear their intention to take firm control over the mechanics of America’s elections. We reiterate, to emphasize, the point about elections that David Horowitz makes in his book, “Final Battle,” that we quote from, supra.

In sum, in the wake of the rejection of their policies and agendas at the ballot box, Democrats were determined to double down as though the vote hadn’t taken place. Like the authoritarians in whose footsteps the Democrats were following, they regarded elections as obstacles rather than opportunities. That would explain their determination to demonize their opponents, to take authority away from the states and centralize the voting system in Washington, to press for universal unsolicited mail-in ballots, and to make their primary political campaign a crusade against voter IDs and election integrity. . . . Democrats have already codified their plans to centralize elections under Washington control, rely on fraud-friendly unsolicited mail-in ballots, legitimize ‘ballot-harvesting’ and ‘vote navigators,’ along with other practices that the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform warned were fraud-facilitators. . . .

CONCLUSION

It is the firm belief of AQ that the extent of and severity of and the rapaciousness of and the constancy of the violence done to our Constitution and laws and institutions, especially in these first few decades of the Twenty-First Century, cannot, ALONE, be the result of designs and actions by Radical elements in our Congress, and in the myriad offices, departments, bureaus, and agencies of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government and by Radical elements in many State Governments, contemptuous of our Constitution and Laws and Institutions. NO! This involves the coordinated work and effort of more powerful, sinister, and jealously guarded and secretive elements, unelected and unaccounted for and unmentioned in any Legacy Press news accounts or Cable and Broadcast News commentary.

AQ cannot know and we will not surmise that David Horowitz and Dick Morris would agree with our inference (there is nothing in our review of their books that we recall that would suggest this), but to our mind, the rapid transformation of our Country—completely at odds with every aspect of our Nation’s core beliefs upon which our Constitution was crafted and upon which our Nation has prospered—leads AQ to infer that many and powerful and secretive enemies are behind an effort to tear down the foundational structure of our Country, to eradicate our history, heritage, culture, ethos, and Judeo-Christian ethic, and to destroy the social fabric of our society beyond all recognition. And these forces have compromised and corrupted those Americans who have sworn an Oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. These American Oath-Breakers have betrayed their Nation, their Constitution, and their people. They have explicitly or implicitly sworn allegiance to an “agency” that abhors the very concept of the ‘sovereign, independent nation-state, whose laws reign supreme and are not subordinate to foreign laws, “international laws,” or foreign norms and ethical systems. And this “agency” has specifically targeted the United States, the most powerful, prosperous, productive Nation on Earth and the only truly Free Constitutional Republic, where the American people themselves are sole sovereign over Government.

These ideas don’t sit well with those powerful forces that seek to dominate all Governments, and must, therefore, expend considerable effort on destroying the United States—and from within, using corrupt, radicalized Americans themselves to do the dirty work. We have identified the nature of this malevolent, malignant entity, and we make inferences of their intentions from the effects wrought by their designs, as implemented by the puppets in Government who do their bidding.

Those FOREIGN ELEMENTS from outside THE COUNTRY that have infiltrated us, ELEMENTS INORDINATELY POWERFUL, EXTRAVAGANTLY WEALTHY, AND INCOMPARABLY RUTHLESS NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST FORCES THAT CRUSH, along with those FORCES INSIDE OUR COUNTRY—DISGUSTINGLY TREACHEROUS BETRAYERS OF OUR NATION’S PEOPLE AND OUR NATION’S CONSTITUTION.

AND FOR WHAT HAVE THEY BETRAYED OUR COUNTRY, OUR CONSTITUTION, OUR PEOPLE?

FOR THIRTY COINS OF SILVER?

FOR LOVE FOR THE TRAPPINGS OF POWER?

FOR FEAR OF PERSONAL HARM FROM THOSE RUTHLESS FORCES TO WHOM THEY SWORE AN UNHOLY OATH OF ALLEGIANCE TO, WHEN THEY NEED NOT HAVE DONE SO, BUT CONSCIOUSLY AGREED TO DO SO, AND NOW MIGHT BE HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS BUT FOR THE FACT THAT IT IS MUCH TOO LATE FOR THEM TO REFORM THEIR ACTIONS WITHOUT INCURRING THE WRATH OF THOSE FORCES THEY SIGNED AWAY THEIR SOULS TO?

SO WHO FIGHTS FOR US, THE COMMON MAN, IN THIS THE “FINAL BATTLE” THAT DAVID HOROWITZ TALKS ABOUT?

WHO ARE these combatants in this FINAL BATTLE to do battle against those Americans who betrayed us and those foreign elements who should never have gained a foothold in our Country but would not have but for the weaknesses of the MISFITS IN GOVERNMENT who allowed this to happen, allowed these FORCES THAT CRUSH to RUIN THE COUNTRY and to INJURE—NAY, MURDER—Average Americans, these the “COMMON MAN.”

BUT WE KNOW THE ANSWER

IT IS FOR US, WE THE PEOPLE, AS IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN——FOR THE COMMON MAN——AMERICA’S PATRIOTS, NOW, JUST AS IT WAS FOR AMERICA’S FIRST PATRIOTS BACK THEN, LONG AGO.

It is for AMERICA’S PATRIOTS to take a stand against TYRANNY for the SAKE OF and for their LOVE OF LIBERTY.

Was it not always so? Will it not always be so?

________________________

*This Essay consists of additional content, including the editing and revision of earlier published content, controverting or clarifying a few of our earlier remarks.

THE RUINATION OF A FREE REPUBLIC: ACCIDENT OR DESIGN? INCOMPETENCE OR CONSPIRACY?

MULTISERIES ESSAY ON THE DELIBERATE RAPE OF THE NATION AND THE DANGER TO THE PRESERVATION OF A FREE REPUBLIC IF THIS GOES ON——THIS IS AMERICA’S “FINAL BATTLE” THE TITLE OF AND MAJOR THEME OF THE NON-FICTION BOOK BY NOTED AUTHOR DAVID HOROWITZ

PART TWO

WILL AMERICANS RESOLVE TO SECURE THEIR NATION AGAINST ALL ENEMIES BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC OR WILL THEY CAPITULATE TO THEM WITHOUT A FIGHT?

IF THIS GOES ON: A LOOK AT A NOT-TOO-DISTANT FUTURE

Introductory Quote:

A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

The cited passage is taken from Taylor Caldwell’s novel, “A Pillar of Iron,” published in 1965. See “Short Biography of Taylor Caldwell.”

Taylor Caldwell, a prolific and accomplished writer, (born  1900 and died 1972), utilized the vehicle of fiction to express basic truths about society and man.

Through years and decades, of observing and processing world events and the operation of governments, she realized that many of the evils prevalent in the world didn’t come to be by accident or happenstance but by design.

This disturbing reality did not “except” the United States, notwithstanding that it had emerged as a Phoenix free and independent from the raging fires of Tyranny, a dominating force for Freedom and Liberty.

Indeed, it is precisely because of the import of the Bill of Rights and the indomitability of Americans that has made it a prime target for destruction by the powerful forces that crush countries and people—those forces intent on creating a worldwide tyranny.

These powerful malevolent and malignant forces at work to destroy a Free Constitutional Republic and independent sovereign Nation-State and a free and sovereign people know that to make their nightmare vision a reality, they must first Crush the will of the American people.

To do that, they must Dissolve their Constitution, Deny to the American People their National Emblems, Dismantle their Monuments, Desecrate their Art, Erase their History and Heritage, Make Mockery of their Culture and Ethos, and, above all, Eradicate their Faith in the Divine Creator, upon which Moral Truth and the Sanctity and Inviolability of the Spirit and Soul and Selfhood and Individuality and Personal Autonomy alone resides.  

This is a monumental task, but their first order of business. And they have made substantial strides in the last thirty years to accomplish this, but then, unexpectedly, for Four Years, from January 2017 to January 2021, the Presidency of Donald J. Trump brought their Agenda to a Screeching Halt, almost Derailing Decades of Prodigious Effort to cut the Legs of a Mighty and Proud Nation.

The American People have long prided themselves on the idea that it is they and they alone who decide the fate of their Nation. They do this through belief in the integrity of their electoral system. It is they who decide who shall run for High Office and it is they who elect those members of Congress and that individual who serves as leader of the Nation, the President of the United States. And the people elect these people to High Office with the belief that they  will best serve their interests and the interests of their Nation, consistent with the import and the purport of the U.S. Constitution. But is that true? Was it ever really true? And if not, what has prevented absolute Tyranny? Might it be the forces that crush has been unable to date, try as they might, to dismember the Bill of Rights, a codification of Natural Law Rights that cannot easily be—and certainly not lawfully—eliminated because these rights are of a different order of magnitude.

THESE RIGHTS PREEXIST IN MAN, PRIOR TO THE CREATION OF GOVERNMENT BY MEN BECAUSE THEY WERE BESTOWED ON MAN BY THE DIVINE CREATOR. THEREFORE THESE RIGHTS ARE NOT THE CREATURES OF MEN, AND, SO, CANNOT BE LAWFULLY TAKEN FROM MEN BY OTHER MEN.

No other nation or group of nations, such as those of the EU, and no NGO, i.e., the UN, make such a portentous pronouncement or allude to such, or imply such in their pretentious but vacuous delineation of “rights of men” as set forth in their tracts or constitutions.

Americans have their natural law rights that the powers that crush have not been able to dislodge although they have made inroads in confining, constraining, and even ignoring in the past several years, despite the efforts of one Branch of the Federal Government, the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent this.

But these forces that crush have neutralized the integrity of America’s Electoral Process, that many Americans, through the machinations of a compromised “Free Press” and powerful social media organizations deny. And many Americans believe the lies conveyed to them through the Press and through the airwaves. They believe they control the destiny of their Nation through their elected leaders whom they have duly and fairly elected. That is a strong belief and a necessary one. For, if the people doubt the integrity of the electoral process, then they would have to acknowledge that they have no control whatsoever over the Federal Government. Many Americans don’t believe that, refuse to accept that, and the propaganda mill does its best to foster the myth of a fair electoral process, going so far as vehemently condemning and censoring any voice to the contrary. And so many Americans—perhaps even most Americans—believe that their elections are fair and aboveboard, and, therefore, that the American people do in fact control their Nation’s fate and destiny.   

Taylor Caldwell provides a compelling argument that this is a false notion.

Like Sir Thomas More, a philosopher and politician and advisor to King Henry VIII, centuries ago, who realized the dangers inherent in those who wield absolute power, and who described those dangers and foibles through the vehicle of fiction—a little work titled, “Utopia,” which spawned an entire genre of literature bearing the name of that title—Taylor Caldwell does the same.

Thomas More utilized fiction, expounding basic truths, to avoid certain death were he to draft a non-fiction account of the ruthlessness of Henry VIII.

More was later beheaded anyway, becoming an object lesson to anyone who crosses a Tyrant. Sir Thomas More was, however, a principled man, thoughtful and of profound courage. He would rather face death than deny his sacred principles and bow to Tyranny.

The founders of the United States, centuries later, would do the same. They would suffer not Tyranny, but would willingly sacrifice their life to secure liberty for themselves and their fellow man.

Today, in America, people aren’t hanged for expressing a thought contrary to that of the Ruler. Or are they? And, in that regard, who IS the present Ruler of the United States?

Is that Head of State and those seemingly elected by the people of the United States to serve Congress truly bound to service to the U.S. Constitution?

Is the legislation enacted by Congress and supposedly implemented by the U.S. President consistent with the Supreme Law of the Land, the U.S. Constitution? And are the American people truly in control of their Nation’s fate and destiny?

Taylor Caldwell suggests otherwise, and what she saw transpiring in the Country, during the mid-Twentieth Century in the middle years of her life, during which she wrote the preponderance of her great novels, she perceived that things were not as they might seem.

What profound works would she have penned today if she could but see the horrors impacting the Country and threatening the world in this, the first decades of the 21st Century under such “elected Presidents” as George Bush, Barack Obama, and, presently, Joe Biden.

George Bush, with the backing of or inaction of Congress, and awfulness of the privately owned central banking system referred to by the abbreviation, the “Fed,” (as if to suggest this is a public institution), and, at the time, under the tutelage of the pompous Alan Greenspan, drove the Country to war with Iraq. George Bush said the war would cost only $50 Billion to $60 Billion. See the article in the Guardian.

Lawrence B. Lindsey, . . . was ousted as President Bush’s first economic adviser partly because he predicted the war might cost $100 billion to $200 billion. . . . [and] Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and critic of the war, pegs the long-term cost at more than $4 trillion.

This is all Taxpayer dollars gone to waste and causing substantial harm to the Nation’s security in the process. 

A report from Brown University revealed that 20 years of post-9/11 wars have cost the U.S. an estimated $8 Trillion and have killed more than 900,000 people.”

To this day, no Mainstream Media account would remark the Iraq War was grounded on a lie—which it was, but only a “mistake.”

CNN calls the war a “terrible mistake.”

Forbes calls the Iraq war “The Biggest Mistake in Military History.”

And Slate calls the war “a grotesque mistake.”

Apart from that “military mistake,” and partly because of it, Bush and Greenspan destroyed the American economy. See, e.g., Judiciary Report, written in 2007.

After this mess the people voted a Democrat into Office, Barack Obama, a man of “many slogans.” See the Washington Post article.

Did America have enough of wars and the costs and all the ravages of them? Would Barack Obama do something to alter that? With a little urging from his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton—who was expected to succeed him in 2017—the two created a new vacuum in the Middle East, by giving the Green Light to destroy Libya’s Ruler, Ghaddafi. See, e.g., the article in CATO. And Obama added to the mess in Afghanistan. See the article in Yahoo News, citing the Washington Times, citing Brigadier General Don Bolduc.

The American public had had enough. Unhappy with both Bush Republicanism and the Democrats’ sense of “feel-goodism,” the polity opted for a person with a new vision, Donald Trump, and decided to give him a chance. They elected him to the Office of the President of the United States.  

Trump’s lasting legacy, promulgated on a campaign slogan for his policies and initiatives, as promised, “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) did just that, but the Biden Administration subsequently reversed all of Trump’s crowning achievements in service to the U.S. Constitution and the American people.

To besmirch the prior President’s policies, the Biden Administration transformed the acronym, “MAGA,” into a pejorative, even an obscenity—aided by a sympathetic Press and compliant social media.

Biden’s Administration made a mess of all of Trump’s gains. The Administration’s policies negatively impacted both foreign policy and domestic policy.

Worst of all, the Biden Administration demonstrated a perverse propensity, not merely to criticize, denounce, and even condemn the legitimate rulings of the Nation’s Third Branch of Government, the U.S. Supreme Court. But that wasn’t enough. It went much further. The Administration contemptuously, arrogantly, and illegally, defied those rulings. See, e.g., the article in Next News Network.

The many perverse and damaging actions and policy aims of the Biden Administration are too numerous to discuss, even to list in this essay. But AQ goes into that in another essay we are presently at work on and will publish shortly.

All this alludes to the matters that Taylor Caldwell saw at the time she worked on her novel, a work that became her magnum opus, “Captains and the Kings.”

What she observed she wrote about, and the inference she drew from this is damning.

Her conclusion is that a conspiracy is afoot to manipulate both the Federal Government and the governments of other Western nations.

The propaganda machine working overtime for this conspiracy against the population of the United States and the populations of other Western nations talk glowingly about “Democracy” and the virtues of the “Democratic Process” but without ever defining what they mean by the use of those expressions. It is all illusion, but one cunningly conceived, carefully crafted, assiduously cultivated, and meticulously disseminated to the populations of America, the British Commonwealth Nations, and the Nations of the EU.

Caldwell plainly and unmistakably exclaims the existence of a criminal conspiracy and of the conspirators who control the United States Government. That is the central theme of “Captains and the Kings” and is a major theme in many of her writings.

She writes, in Captains and the Kings,

“They were a criminal conspiracy, but they did not regard themselves as either criminal or conspirators. They were businessmen, realists. What gave them power, was in their eyes, virtuous and righteous and reasonable, for who was more worthy than themselves to control and manipulate the world of me? Someone had to rule, and who better than men of intellect, money, strength, and unemotional judgment.” ~ passage from Taylor Caldwell’s magnum opus, “Captains and the Kings,” published 1972.

This statement of a conspiracy against the polity of the United States, and of western civilization generally, is the essence of her magnum opus. And this conspiracy is her greatest concern, and it should be of grave concern to us.

There are forces at work that override the political process and they have clout and money to do this.

And, as Caldwell points out, they do this because they believe their decisions better serve the interests of the people whom these forces consider too stupid and naïve to be entrusted to make such decisions affecting the nation themselves. This is evidence of a criminal conspiracy.

WHAT DOES THE WORD, ‘CONSPIRACY MEAN?

The word, ‘conspiracy’ although utilized by propagandists who have crafted a colloquial meaning for use of the term for political purposes to manipulate the American public, the word is a legal term of art.

In federal law, the word, ‘conspiracy,’ refers to a crime—a felony—and it is defined thus:

“If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” 18 USCS § 371.

As used in popular culture for malicious purposes by the legacy Press, the word has nothing to do with the crime of conspiracy, as understood in law.

Rather, the Press uses the word to describe people whom the Press wishes to mock: Americans who ascribe to a belief that the Press dismisses as false and spurious, even absurd.

In popular parlance, the word ‘conspiracy’ (to which the word ‘theory’ is attached, yielding, ‘conspiracy theory’) is defined as “a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators” (Merriam Webster Dictionary Definition).

The online encyclopedia, Brittanica.com adds this:

“Conspiracy theory [is] an attempt to explain harmful or tragic events as the result of the actions of a small powerful group. Such explanations reject the accepted narrative surrounding those events; indeed, the official version may be seen as further proof of the conspiracy.”

A detailed explanation of ‘conspiracy theory’ in pop psychology (see the article in “Psychology Today”), asserts a connection between those “conspiracy theory” and “psychosis.”

Conspiracy theories are defined as a minority theory, or alternative explanation, for important events. Conspiratorial thinking typically challenges conventional wisdom, and has often been likened to paranoid ideations. In fact, recent evidence suggests there are commonalities underlying certain personality traits of individuals who strongly endorse conspiracy theories to those with psychological illness.

Conspiracy theories often result when an explanation for a major event is unfounded or believed to be insufficient. It is, therefore, the result of the human tendency to need resolution and understanding. Specifically, conspiracy theories attempt to explain events in ways that foster a sense of control and safety in the mind of the believer (Douglas, Sutton, & Cichocka, 2017). Conspiracy theories tend to be formed in monological thinkers (i.e. those who garner information from a singular source that is believed to be true and is without consideration of contrasting discourse).

It is not surprising, then, that conspiracy theories tend to flourish, and they do so for a number of reasons. For one, conspiracy theories are attractive as they appeal to the emotions of belief-holders. Conspiracy theories offer an answer, or explanation of events, that reduces anxiety. In doing so, conspiracy theories give a false sense of control to the believer. Conspiracy theories also flourish by nature of their tendency to be neither testable nor, as a result, falsifiable. Take, for example, the classic hypothesis-testing paradigm: if you want to prove that all swans are white, you shouldn’t look for white swans. You must look for black swans. The design of conspiracy theories is to look for white swans, it is thus both unscientific and self-perpetuating.

However, conspiratorial beliefs also persist in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. Herein lies the correlation to psychotic processes. A primary symptom of psychosis is delusional thinking. Delusions are defined as false beliefs. They can be paranoid, grandiose, or persecutory in nature, however, they all share their tendency to be unwavering in the face of contrasting evidence. This type of poor reality testing is also found amongst individuals who hold strong beliefs in conspiracy theories.

Other commonalities amongst individuals with psychosis and those who hold conspiratorial beliefs are a tendency to be anxious, to hold other paranormal and paranoid beliefs, to engage in monological thinking, and to overly endorse their own intuition/causal attributions rather than engage in analytical and rational problem-solving. The jumping-to-conclusions bias, which is well-documented in individuals with psychosis, has also been attributed to conspiratorial believers (Drinkwater, Dagnall, & Parker, 2012).

While finding causal explanations for events is a crucial part of understanding the world around us, the deviant cognitive processes underlying both psychosis and conspiratorial thinking can be dangerous. For example, delusions are a key factor in psychosis that leads to poorer quality of life and are typically resistant to antipsychotic medications.

One might wonder how it is and whom it is that came up with the modern concept of “conspiracy theory” as a pejorative.” Likely, it did not materialize out of the void. As with expressions, like ‘assault weapon,’ ‘MAGA Republican,’ ‘Gun Violence,’ ‘White Privilege,’ ‘Christian Nationalist,’ and ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion,’ and dozens of others, these phrases were carefully crafted and utilized by news people, psychologists, and propagandists to serve a purpose: the manipulation of public thought, to obtain a  consensus in support of Government policy, to serve an agenda—one contrary to the well-being of the American people, contrary to the Nation’s interests, and contrary to the strictures of the Constitution.

It is the Press, propagandists, and psychologists that fabricate, with abandon, extravagant “conspiracy theories” about America’s 45th President, Donald Trump. Many Americans, treat THESE conspiracy theories as gospel, never bothering to question the veracity of the assertions made, nor the motivations of the news organizations that thrust such outrageous and defamatory assertions about Trump on the public.

Of course, the newspapers and cable and broadcast news organizations that spread this nonsense don’t dare refer to their own fairy tales about Trump as “conspiracy theories” but as verifiable Truth, that they never trouble themselves to verify, nor bother to proffer sources by which audience or readership might verify for themselves, the assertions made.

So, then, when a person holds to a theory that runs contrary to the narrative propounded by a seditious Press, then that person is deemed a proponent of a “conspiracy theory,” that is to say, a ‘conspiracy theorist.’

And once so categorized, that person is held up to public ridicule, and contempt.

But, if it is the Press itself that creates a myth and foists it on an unsuspecting, naïve public to effectuate a political outcome, and the public accepts unquestioningly the myth crafted and propagated, with the aim that it become a part of the American psyche, those members of the public that immerse themselves in the myth are deigned “normal” members of the community. And, those Americans who think something amiss are deemed abnormal, “conspiracy theorists.”

Were she alive today, Taylor Caldwell would not be one subject to mass amnesia.

Reality is not so easily malleable. Either public policy that leads to negative consequences for the American public is accidental or it is purposeful.

Ineptitude does exist in Government. There is no question about that, but incompetence cannot account for the same negative consequences occurring with regularity and then worsening over time.

One must then conclude that such awful states of affairs are due to constant accident—unintended consequences of sound policy happening over and over again that cannot be avoided regardless of the ability of the policy advisors and policy makers intentions to create and implement sound Governmental policy, in service to the American people, consistent with law and the Constitution—or one is left to consider and ultimately to infer that incidences of horrible states of affairs occurring with regularity are and must be deliberate. And if so, that suggests an evil intention at play. This is a matter of logic, not political rhetoric.

Taylor Caldwell writes,

“But the ‘Captains and the Kings’ haven’t ‘departed’ at all! They were stronger than ever, . . . . They would continue to grow in strength, until they had the whole silly world, the whole credulous world, the whole ingenuous world, in their hands. Anyone who would challenge them, attempt to expose them, show them unconcealed and naked, would be murdered, laughed at, called mad, or ignored, or denounced as a fantasy-weaver”

——and, we might add, prosecuted, as we see in the endless ludicrous and quasi-legal and pseudo-legal prosecution (really persecution) of Donald Trump.

Why it is that such powerful and ruthless forces should be motivated to destroy a successful Constitutional Republic need not be considered here. That such forces do exist and are at work in this Country is of major importance, given the extent of the damage they have already done to the Nation and to the people and the damage yet to be done. And the end goal is plain: the destruction of the United States as an independent sovereign Nation-State and free Republic to bring to fruition the creation of a world socioeconomic and political empire.

Such people do exist and do exert influence on Congress and on the U.S. President and his Administration, and to such an extent that they essentially run the Country as unelected officials.

These people constitute a malevolent and malignant force whose harm to the Country is so extreme their actions do constitute Conspiracy or worse.

They must be found out, and named, and prosecuted for heinous crimes committed against the Nation.

IF, IN FACT, there are such people exerting such force on Government and on our institutions, to rule with impunity as TYRANTS (and unelected TYRANTS at that), they obviously would not wish to be found out, or caught, much less charged, and convicted of federal conspiracy or of something worse. They would wish and must reside in the shadows.

Consider possible other charges that may be levied on these people——

The Federal crime of “Insurrection and Rebellion”:

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. 18 USCS § 2383

And, if such people who manipulate elected policymakers  operate to such an extent that such manipulation amounts to overthrowing the Government, they have committed the serious crime of “Advocating the Overthrow of the Government”:

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.” 18 USCS § 2385.

And if such individuals owe allegiance to the United States, especially those individuals who as U.S. citizens owe allegiance to the United States by law, (unless they take steps to renounce such allegiance), these people have effectively levied war against the U.S. They should then be charged with the crime of Treason, which, if convicted, is punishable by death, or by some lesser punishment. 18 USCS § 2381.

Taylor Caldwell no doubt inferred that such criminal conspiracies do exist. But she would wish to avoid the appellation of “Conspiracy Theorist” with all the baggage attached to that appellation. Writing a novel avoids that.

There are forces that intend to manipulate the public for their own evil and this is mentioned in “Captains and the Kings” as well, noting that the forces that crush are ever-present.

Caldwell makes clear, in “Captains and the Kings,” that elected officials were taking their marching orders from forces beyond what the public had wanted, and what they thought and had reason to believe they had agreed to through the electoral process.

Caldwell realized that the public had been sidelined, and whatever policies aims and goals they sought to see assiduously implemented, just the opposite had occurred.

Through years of careful observation and processing of America’s political processes, in the middle decades of the Twentieth Century, she came to realize the public was played for a fool.

Although Caldwell thought that these forces that had captured control of the Federal Government had believed such to be necessary to serve the best interests of the people as well as themselves—even if this bespeaks the height of arrogance as well as a serious violation of the U.S. Constitution and contrary to the concept of a Free Republic, where elected officials of the people craft and implement policy consistent with their wishes, in strict accordance with the U.S. Constitution—today the forces that crush, that have captured this Government, have no interest in serving the people of the Country and make no pretense of doing so. This is clear from the dire effects of the policies their pawns, the elected representatives of the people, have implemented.

These ruthless, malevolent, malignant people serve THEIR OWN interests.

Their interests ARE NOT the interests of the American people. their interests DO NOT promote the Nation’s security. Their interests are in fact diametrically opposed to those of the Nation and its people. Their interests are contrary to the strictures of the Constitution.

Through the pernicious invasion of the U.S. Government, these pretentious unelected, uninvited guests deign to take over the reins of Government. They comprise a criminal cartel. And the Government officials who obsequiously bend to their will are cowards as well as criminals, who, through bribes, threats, or flattery, have betrayed their Oath to the Country and have sold out their Nation and their Countrymen. Such people deserve the contempt of the American people. They should be imprisoned for their crimes and publicly denounced, shamed, and condemned.

Public officials such as George Bush, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and now Joe Biden and Cabinet Level officials of Biden’s Administration are implementing policy that manifestly harms the well-being of the Nation and the people and is contrary to the strictures of Congressional Statute and the U.S. Constitution.

This is not mere ineptitude we are seeing. It is deliberate orchestrated destruction of a free Republic.

These public officials are taking their order from extraordinarily powerful and wealthy people whose intention it is to dissolve the U.S. Constitution and to destroy the United States as an independent and sovereign Nation-State and Free Constitutional Republic.

Unlike the assertions made in Captains and the Kings, there is no longer any pretense of serving the interests of the people, grounded on the idea that these wealthy, powerful “businessmen” know what is best for the common man. They have nothing but contempt for the common man. And it is ironic that these very people would invoke “Democracy” as the catchword to describe what they are doing.

If the word has anything to do with the notion that the people, qua “common man” in deciding policy through their elected officials who purportedly act on the will of the people to effectuate policy aims that they promised to the people but renege on because they are taking their cue from forces who deem “the American people,” mentally deficient, having not capacity to realize what is in their best interests anyway.

This means their use of the word, “Democracy” to describe both the system of our Government (which, by the way, is a “Republic” NOT a “Democracy”) and the inherent morality of “Democracy” are both a bad joke and outright lie propounded by politicians, from the get-go. It is parody or burlesque. Worse, it is outright farce.

Most Americans see the joke played on them and are not amused. Many Americans, however, do not and would not care if they knew the truth, and that is unfortunate for the rest of us.

But the use of public officials as pawns by unscrupulous, arrogant individuals to obscure the manipulation of public policy is another matter. That fact is so outrageous, it cannot be tolerated.

The idea must be wiped from the public conscience and consciousness. And much of the American public refuses to believe what their senses show them and their mind tells them. Rather, they engage in cognitive dissonance and in other psychological tricks to avoid admitting the truth to themselves.

They play mind games. People have a knack for avoiding unpleasant realities when they wish to block them out of their consciousness, and many Americans are doing just that

They tell themselves all the evil they see around them is accident, or that it is the result of an act of nature, or that it is Trump’s fault, or that the current state of affairs is not so bad after all, or that such evil that exists is due to white extremism and to centuries of oppressing the black man or oppressing “people of color” or they block out the evil altogether by taking vacations away from the dangers of noxious places, and lunatics, and criminals if they can afford vacations or can afford to reside in castles surrounded by moats.

But most people cannot easily avoid the noxious reality around them—a reality they did not ask for, and do not want, but that was thrust upon them by a wholly corrupt Government taken over by forces that have long ago—a half-century past the time that “Captains and the Kings” was published.

Yet, the average American must bear a measure of responsibility for it. For there was and still is enough of the rights secured in our Bill of Rights to take stock of our situation and do something about it if the public has the will to resist.

The first order of business is to recognize that a problem exists by looking for evidence of a problem. And that part is easy. Just take a look at our Country. Dick Morris, in his book, “The Return,” published in 2022, devotes an entire Chapter to this, with evidence aplenty. The Chapter is titled, appropriately, “The Unrecognizable America.”

He says, in part,

The radical Marxist, and revolutionary forces that propped up a senile and dysfunctional Joe Biden”— [which itself raises a few evidentiary questions: Who in their right mind would vote to elect such a man to the Highest Office in the Land? How many Americans did actually vote to elect Biden, President? And why are the voting machines “proprietary” denying the public access to the voting tabulation tapes?]—demanded the enactment of legislation and executive action that would has fundamentally altered our nation as to render it unrecognizable were they to have been enacted. . . .

Partisanship Becomes a Blood Sport. . . Election Fraud Becomes Normalized. . . Impeachment Becomes Routine. . .”

In the chapter of the book titled “Race and Gender,” Morris writes,

“Let’s start with race—and Everything now is about race. Even as race disappears from the American demographic—due to inter-racial marriage—our politics has become polarized around race and issues of privilege and discrimination.

After the civil rights movement of the ‘60s, race seemed to be on its way out as a dividing line in our society. . . .

Today, about nine million people live in bi-racial households, including a large number of African Americans.

But despite the demographics, race is back, stronger than ever, as a dividing line in our politics and society. The idea of a colorblind America is farther from reality now than it has been.

Segregation has made an astonishing comeback. No longer is it the exclusive province of racist Southern Democrats and the Ku Klux Klan. Now, it is openly embraced and spread by the leftist academic, corporate, and political elite.

In 2021, Congress passed Biden’s stimulus program, which contained a $5 Billion program only to “people of color” in rural areas. . . .

And reverse racism continues.

Back in the sixties and seventies, Black Muslims, led by Elijah Mohammed and Malcolm X, rejected integration and touted Black supremacy. But, now, in our unrecognizable America, this twisted, racist thinking lies at the core of both the current civil rights movement and much federal legislation. . . .

[And] Democratic race-based policies are especially destructive. . . .

The Left has drawn a line in the sand to distinguish equity from equality. While we have come to see these terms synonyms, leftist dogma holds that they are, instead, opposites.

Equality means the treatment of all people equally, regardless of race.

To the new, racist Left, that dream is nightmare.

They prefer to emphasize equity, in which people of color are given preference over whites to compensate for past injustice and discrimination, presumably going back nine generations. . . .

Paula Dressel of the leftist Race Matters Institute wrote, ‘The route to achieving equity will not be accomplished through treating everyone equally. It will be achieved by treating everyone justly according to their circumstances.

In that dichotomy, the Biden Administration casts its lot—and its money—decisively behind equity and rejects equality. . . .

Now let’s look at gender. Of all the nutty policies the Left is trying to foist on us, the most absurd is its attempt to change our gender and sexuality. . . .

They go to extreme lengths to eliminate gender from the national language. . . .

This evidence of the deliberate destruction of the National Ethos, and the Judeo-Christian Ethic, is the Billionaire Neoliberal Globalists’ nod to the Neo-Marxist Theocrats. The Globalists “Elites” couldn’t care less about this Neo-Marxist nonsense. But they realize that the Neo-Marxists share with them, the same ultimate goal: Destruction of the United States as a sovereign independent Nation-State and Free Constitutional Republic, having clearly defined and defended geographical Borders.

The Globalists who comprise the shadowy force drafting and preparing the Biden Administration’s foreign and domestic policies directed to weakening the Nation’s economy and security, know that the Neo-Marxist agenda as implemented weakens the psyche of the Country.

The Neoliberal Globalists have allowed the Neo-Marxist Cultists to implement, through the Biden Administration, policies designed to weaken and eventually destroy the moral fabric of the Country.

The David Horowitz book, “Dark Agenda,” published in 2018, four years before his latest book, “Final Battle,” is devoted specifically to the Marxist war on Religion in America.

The Arbalest Quarrel uses the expression, “Neo-Marxism,” to distinguish this American-driven version of Marxism from “Classical Marxism.” David Horowitz uses the term, “Cultural Marxists” to describe this dangerous phenomenon. But, David Horowitz and AQ are referring to the same negative force that, when given free rein, can tear down America’s Judeo-Christian Ethical system upon which the moral foundation of the Country.

Marxism has no use for America’s natural law rights. In fact, the idea of God-Given rights beyond the power of the State to lawfully tamper with is anathema to Marxists, whether of the modern, American “cultural” bent or of the Classical bent. David Horowitz says this:

Religious liberty is America’s first freedom and the foundation of all American freedoms.” [AQ believes that Horowitz is referring to the idea of the sacred autonomy of the human “Self”. If so, we would agree that the sanctity and inviolability of the Individual Self is the cornerstone of U.S. Constitution, as it is based on the tenets, precepts, and principles of Individualism, that recognizes the sanctity of the Individual. This idea is antithetical to that of the Marxists who hold the Collective as superior to the Individual. In fact, Marxists insist that Individualism is a threat to the power and authority of the State, which demands conformance of all behavior and thought, lest the individual threaten the State. Further the State is perceived as a Supreme Being, eschewing any idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and morally perfect Divine Being, whose power and authority is of an order of infinite magnitude beyond that of even the most powerful Government on Earth. Marxist Rule is not possible where the people look to the Divine Creator for moral guidance].

Horowitz adds:

The left’s attacks on religious freedom, and general hatred for those who don’t agree with them, are driven by ‘identity politics.’ Identity politics is an anti-American ideology and a sanitized name for cultural Marxism. Marx viewed market societies as divided into capitalists and workers, to which he ascribed moral attributes: oppressors and oppressed. Society was the site of continual warfare between these classes. Cultural Marxists have extende this picture of class warfare to races, genders, and sexual orientations, attributing all inequality to the institutions and actions fo the oppressor groups: whites, males, heterosexuals, and religious ‘reactionaries’—in particular Christians—whose views allegedly serve the interests of the oppressors.

Contrary to Marx and the identity politics left, which now includes the Democratic Party, the source of inequalities between individuals is not the work of oppressor groups but is a combination of circumstances (often beyond one’s control), individual talents, and choice. As Christians, the American founders believed in freewill—the responsibility of individuals for their actions and the results of those actions and the results of those actions. . . .” [Deontological ethical systems predicate morality on one’s intentions unlike utilitarian ethical systems which place essential or exclusive emphasis on the consequences of one’s acts, grounded on the notion of utility (however the State defines the “good”, where maximizing utility for the benefit of the State, the Hive, the Collective, is the essence of morality. Concepts of ‘Free Will’ and ‘Motive’ or ‘Intention’—internal characteristics of morality, springing from a Higher Power are either irrelevant or meaningless to those who espouse utilitarianism and advocate for the application of Utilitarian Ethical systems in all facets of American life and in all of its institutions. One can see that, if Marxists were to employ their concept of utilitarian consequentialist ethics to criminal law, State and Federal Criminal Codes, along with our Nation’s massive body of jurisprudence would have to be replaced because they are all inconsistent with utilitarian ethical systems. Deontological approaches to morality, ‘Free will” and intention, are the mainstay of our present Criminal Codes that spring from the English Common Law and from the Nation’s Christian heritage, as Horowitz accurately asserts].

Horowitz continues,

Free will is what makes us equal, so long as the government does not restrict our freedom. Recognizing that individuals make choices, which affect their destinies, puts responsibility for overcoming the handicaps of circumstance squarely on the individual’s shoulders. This is a liberating idea. It is why triumph of the underdog, the ability of individuals to overcome their circumstances, to rise above their allotted stations in life, to achieve something better. For over 200 years that vision has been the American dream.

Until now. Identity politics—which is currently the politics of the Democratic Party—rejects this inspirational idea and attributes inequality to the machinations of oppressor groups, who are defined by race, gender, and sexual orientation, characteristics that an individual cannot change. This is a prescription for true oppression, as the government steps in to create ‘social justice’ by depriving those who have earned it, the fruits of their labor, and distributing them to those who have not. It is a prescription for irreconcilable conflict and division, not the compromise and coexistence that the American founders worked so hard to achieve. The success fo the cultural Marxists in reshaping our institutions is why America now appears to be two nations instead of one. . . .

Of course, Trump was halfway through his Presidency when Horowitz published his book. Horowitz realized that “Cultural Marxism,” a product of the Obama years was deeply entrenched in America. Horowitz says that

Observers were bewildered by Trump’s success, particularly his support from evangelicals and religious Americans. According to Pew Research, 81 percent of evangelicals voted for Trump, a man who seemed anything but a model of Christian morality. Evangelicals still voted for him—and it made leftists apoplectic. . . . The left could not fathom why Christians preferred a morally flawed man in Trump, who promised to defend religious liberty over a morally flawed woman, in Hillary, who was bound to take it away.

Not only did liberals attack Trump viciously, but they held Trump responsible for the unhinged nature of the attacks on him. To Trump’s enemies, he provoked this bitterly personal warfare against him by unorthodox, combative political style. They thought: What should Trump expect after tagging his opponent, ‘Crooked Hillary’?

In fact, Trump is more accurately seen as a political counterpuncher and most of his barbs were reactions to others’ attacks on him. . . .”

The 2016 Democratic presidential campaign was a classic prosecution of these identity politics. . . .

A seminal moment occurred during the 2016 presidential campaign when Hillary addressed an ‘LGBT for Hillary’ fund-raising event. Speaking to the crowd of radical activists, she said, ‘You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic—Islamophobic—you name it. . . . Now, some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.”

This is a revealing statement. According to Hillary and her supporters, America is divided into two kinds of people. On the one hand there are real Americans who care about gay people, minorities, and other victim groups. On the other, there are the Trump supporters, the un-American ‘deplorables’ who hate an oppress society’s victims.

This was a frank expression of the Democrats’ hatred for their political opponents. It’s also a major departure from traditional American values of tolerance, compromise, and respect for dissenting opinions. It exposes how the very language of the Democrats’ politics is designed to dehumanize and delegitimize anyone who disagrees with its leftist agendas. . . .

Remember, Horowitz published “Dark Agenda” five years ago. The polarization of America was already well underway. And Trump, who the Left refers as the cause for the polarization wasn’t that at all.

The Left’s attack on its opponents is notable for the ease to which it posits on its opponents the very faults that not only exist in itself but that are policy predicates of all that it does.

The Neoliberal Globalists use this to their advantage. They allow these Cultural Marxists (Neo-Marxists) to force confrontations among Americans on every social, political, and philosophical point. But the Leftists don’t debate. They just shout. And the Press emboldened them to do this, actually joining in. This manifests itself as a major clash of ideologies. A COUNTERREVOLUTION OF 2024 embracing the techniques of TOTALITARIAN CONTROL discussed in George Orwell’s Classic, “1984” directly attacking the historical and sociopolitical and ethical philosophical system upon which the AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776 based its struggle against Tyranny. And it appears that the AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776 is not to be construed as absolute victory over TYRANNY, but rather, an HISTORICAL EVENT THAT MUST BE CONTINUALLY DEFENDED FROM THE DEADLY FORCES THAT CRUSH EMANATING FROM WITHIN THE NATION AS MUCH AS FROM ANY THREATS EMANATING FROM OUTSIDE THE NATION.  

HOW DO AMERICANS COUNTER THESE TWO DIRE THREATS TO THE NATION—THOSE POSED BY NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS AND THE OTHER BY NEO-MARXIST CULTISTS—BOTH OF WHOM ARE WORKING IN TANDEM TO DESTROY A SOVEREIGN, INDEPENDENT NATION AND FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

Unfortunately, there are too many Americans too far gone—having been taken in by incessant propagandist messaging, becoming seduced by the media and the Press and politicians telling them how to think and what to think and that they are bad people and that all the bad heaped on them is due to their own behavior or due to the “sins of their fathers” that they must now bear. Many Americans have become rueful and soulful and accepting of this nonsense even as they don’t become outright disciples of it.

Other Americans flagellate themselves mercilessly, becoming Neo-Marxist Cultists, joining the ranks of the most extreme and alien systems known to man, and having to deal with them right here in the only truly Free Republic on Earth. And, it is precisely because of this, our Country is attacked with such ferocity. Many Americans have fallen to the viral messaging emanating from the Biden Administration, from Congress and from Social Media, from the Entertainment Industry and Big Tech; from Big Business and Finance. Very little remains of American that has been untouched and left unscathed by the relentless attack on every core value and belief; on every sacred precept upon which this Nation was built. Many Americans—especially many young people have succumbed to this. These people are too far gone to be successfully “deprogrammed.” Any attempt to decouple the noxious virus of cultism from their sentient mind would result in psychosis or death.

Then there are many Americans who simply don’t give a damn about anything. In fact, they would be hard-pressed to notice, difficult as it is to believe this.

For these people, as long as their appliances are working and they have clothes on their backs, and food in their belly, and are left pretty much to their own devices—not complaining to give a conspiratorial Government reason to go after them—they remain contented sheep.

These Americans remain oblivious to the fact that they are about to lose their Country and those little freedoms, set down in the Nation’s Bill of Rights.

But, as long as they have access to the necessities of life and a modicum of comforts and they are content to live with the illusion of freedom, that is enough for them. But even that illusion of freedom will eventually be lost to them, and the necessities and comforts of life in America will be denied them, requiring them to rely exclusively, not just extensively on Government largess to care for their needs.

Defending one’s fundamental rights from those intent on eradicating them, takes conscious effort. The founders knew that—and fought a war to assert their fundamental, unalienable rights bestowed upon them by the Divine Creator—a hard fought war against a mighty foe—the British Empire.

The Founders of our Nation would be absolutely appalled to see the slow dissolution of a free Republic that they had placed their own life on the line to create.

They would visit contempt, and with good reason, on those Americans who exhibit apathy.

Fortunately, there are enough Americans—the rest of us—who see the inexorable dissolution of their Country, the corruption of public officials, the shadowy presence of a monstrous evil that has taken hold of our Government and has robbed many Americans of rational thought.

At least a few authors today bear the mantle of Taylor Caldwell. They lay out, clearly, plainly and painfully, the fact of and the nature of the threats to our Nation, to our Constitution, our people, our entire way of life.

AQ has looked intently at what Horowitz and Morris have  said. We point to their assessment and discuss what we see as the endgame fate of our Country and of the western world if the American public doesn’t wake up to the danger and put a stop to it.

The authors David Horowitz and Dick Morris have written extensively about the attack on America. Their works are prescient, and what they have to say is frightening. The attack on our Nation’s core values are very real and this is no accident.

There is a concerted effort to destroy this Country. And the forces behind this are powerful and they are winning.

See AQ’s recitation of select passages from the book, “Dark Agenda,” by David Horowitz and, “The Return,” by Dick Morris, that we recite, supra.

These authors show in plain and forthright language, with clear supporting evidence—something missing in much of the hallowed institution of what was once known as the “Free Press”—the PLAIN, UNVARNISHED TRUTH, what we Americans face. A day of reckoning is quickly coming upon us.

David Horowitz lays this out at length in a book that is due to become a classic, “FINAL BATTLE,” published in 2022. See, generally, the Arbalest Quarrel essay, posted on July 20, 2023.

WHERE IS THE INSTITUTION OF THE “FREE PRESS” IN ALL OF THIS MORASS?

The American institution of the “Press,” which has itself fallen prey to corruption, jealously guards the Freedom provided to it under the First Amendment while showing no reluctance in denying the exercise of the Right of Free Speech and exercise of other fundamental Rights to the common man. And, so, this vaunted Press has become not the guardian of a free Constitutional Republic, but as one with those forces that seek the destruction of it.

IF AMERICANS DO NOT CONFRONT THE ILLEGAL DESTRUCTION OF THEIR FREE REPUBLIC, THAT REPUBLIC WILL BE IRRETRIEVABLY LOST.

Many Americans are oblivious to the danger. Bizarrely, and frighteningly, some Americans even welcome this. That demonstrates the power of psychological conditioning and the technology that has permitted the dissemination of propaganda on an industrial scale over a period of many years.

WHAT THE ARBALEST QUARREL SEES IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DO NOT STOP THE RAPE AND ROUT OF THEIR COUNTRY—AND SOON

The Neo-Marxist Internationalist Counterrevolution of 2023 cum Neoliberal Globalist expansionist program to overturn the American Revolution of 1776 is full upon us, the people of the United States. This is, as Horowitz accurately proclaims, the “Final Battle.” The shared goal of both of these forces is the destruction of all independent, sovereign nation-states, and the emergence of a multicultural, socio-economic, and political Neo-Feudalist empire that spans the globe. Proof of this is all around us. Tracts, treatises, policy, and position papers drafted by the UN; and the creation of international organizations. See, e.g. the website Defense Adda for a list.

As these world organizations increasingly become more powerful—less mere advocates and more dictators of policy—treacherous national Governments, including the Biden Administration secede power to them.

Not that long ago, in March of 2022, the Globalist Elites’ messenger boy, and Great Pretender, Joe Biden, said this, as reported by Steve Forbes, himself, the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes:

In off-the-cuff remarks at a recent meeting of the Business Roundtable, President Biden said, ‘There’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it.’

This episode of What’s Ahead argues that if the President is serious about the U.S. leading positively for a better world order, there’s one crucial area in which we’ve been negligent and need to make a course correction: international monetary policy.

Sounds boring, but the 1930s demonstrated what happens when we get this wrong.

We got it right after WWII, with the creation of the Bretton Woods monetary system, whereby the dollar’s value was fixed to gold and the value of other currencies were tied to the dollar at a fixed rate. Bretton Woods was a critical reason that the U.S., Western Europe and Japan experienced incredible economic booms even after prewar levels of production were exceeded.

For fallacious reasons we destroyed Bretton Woods in the early 1970s. Since then, our historic average rates of economic growth have fallen by more than one-third. The performances of other developed countries have suffered as well.

We and the world would benefit enormously from a new Bretton Woods-type monetary system.

Referring to the U.S. as the world leader in creating the “new world order” is a remark both sly and sinister. This remark, contrary to Steve Forbes’ statement is definitely, not “off-the-cuff.”

There was no retraction here by Biden’s handlers, which is often the case when Biden DOES assert “off-the-cuff” remarks—those that do not cohere with, conflict with, or directly contradict the Globalists’ policy directives. The remark that Biden delivered is a message, probably well-rehearsed. Those dictating policy in the White House, had to be certain that their puppet, Joe Biden, physically and emotionally fragile, and riddled with dementia, would get the words right.

The message delivered by the Grand Harlequin in Chief is that the United States, under this Administration, is not an independent-sovereign Nation-State and does not ascribe any longer to be one.

Biden proclaims that his Administration the United States Government is no longer an independent, sovereign Nation-State and free Constitutional Republic whose sole allegiance is supposed to be directed to the Nation and to the Nation’s Sovereign, the American people, and whose sole duty is, as set forth in the Oath of Office of the U.S. President: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Article 2, Section 1, Clause 1, Clause 8.

Instead, Biden asserts his allegiance to some shadowy group of others, those unnamed, Mega-rich “Neoliberal Globalists,” who jealously guard their privacy, and with good reason for their goals and interests are not that of the United States, and whose allegiance is to the creation of a world empire through which they would reign supreme.

This world empire, a new socio-political entity, that is projected to supersede the power of all State governments of heretofore independent and sovereign nation-states is variously described as:

One, the “New World Order” (the first descriptor utilized and well recognized by Americans and, for this reason, utilized by the Biden puppet as an “in your face” assertion of contempt and a challenge directed toward Americans who wish to preserve a Free Constitutional Republic),

Two, the “Liberal International Order,”

Three, the “Rules-based International Order,”

Four, the “One World Government,”

Five, “Global Governance,”

Six, “Sustainable Development,”

Seven, the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,”

Eight, “Agenda 21/2030,”

Nine, the “Great Reset,” and

Ten, the (Soros) “Open-Society.”

So, then, by referring to the United States as the leader in promoting a grandiose world empire, Biden isn’t asserting the transcendence of the United States, but promoting and predicting something quite different: the Nation’s demise; its rout and ruin; its dissolution.

The Biden Administration like the Obama Administration before it, and as the Clinton Administration was destined to be, had the American electorate said otherwise in 2016, “is become” a giant caretaker institution whose allegiance is not to this Nation, “ONE NATION, UNDER GOD,” in which the strictures of the United States Constitution, as the Law of the Land are supreme, but to some other lesser god. This lesser god, Mammon, is this new world empire. And the remains of a once great Nation is destined to be unceremoniously passed to a new Ruler a new Caesar—  amoral, fabulously wealthy, extraordinarily covetous, and utterly ruthless: the Neoliberal Globalist Materialist Barons, descendants of the Rothschild international banking clan.

But, establishing political-social stability across the world will be a massive undertaking, albeit a necessary one to sustain a mammoth empire. But the masses, those living in Countries with their own history, culture, and morays, will resist.

The Neo-Marxist Theocrats, working in league with the Billionaire Neoliberal Globalist Robber Barons have an answer for that: teach a new dogma—a new religion, but a secular one—and give it a name. Develop precepts for the people to adopt and adhere to and entrust a new Unholy Order of Priests and Priestesses to deliver the Gospel and to ascertain that all the institutions of the State, adopt it and instill it in the members of those institutions by which “this new flock” become willing disciples. But this Gospel is not designed to enshrine free will but to trap it, imprison it, enslave it.

Those who inculcate this Gospel—meant to induce cult behavior—are not free but slaves, easily betraying friends and families to the STATE, not realizing they have first of all betrayed themselves TO themselves, having lost their own soul. And yet, they live with the illusion of freedom and morality, treating harshly those who do not readily accept the new Gospel. They will censor them, ostracize them, and ridicule them mercilessly, and remorselessly, as Taylor Caldwell points out in “Captains and the Kings.”

And for those dissenters who have a strong following, those people will be silenced quickly, and permanently, and this will be announced to the masses, as an object lesson for those tending to dissent and disobey the edicts, prerogatives of the STATE.

Today, in America, though, assassination, while employed in secret, cannot be so readily used against a person who is in the limelight. There are repercussions, possible Civil War and that is to be avoided for those that control the levers of Government, powerful as these individuals are, they do not yet wield absolute power.

But they can employ harsh punishment against those dissenters who have a massive following. In attempt to silence these people they have to be more circumspect. So they misuse the legal system. They indict these people on false charges to harass them, hound them, cause them misery, and they utilize sounding boards, such as the Press and cable and broadcast news organizations and social media to turn the public against them. And, while many Americans see through this, others are cowed by it. Even some previous supporters now exhibit doubt.

But the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist Radicals who have met with some success in turning “Democratic” States into “Autocratic” ones while insidiously disguising that fact, have met with limited success in the United States. And there is a reason for that failure.

In the United States, the Law of the Land is premised on the Sanctity and inviolability of the individual.

The sovereignty of the American people over Government is grounded on fundamental rights and liberties bestowed upon him BY THE DIVINE CREATOR, NOT BY MAN, NOR BY GOVERNMENT OF MEN.

The history, heritage, culture, ethos, and Judeo-Christian ethic rests deep within the psyche of most Americans.

Dislodging that FAITH and BELIEF SYSTEM, grounded on a TRUTH beyond that of MAN or GOVERNMENT OF MEN that resides deep in ONE’s SOUL is not so easy a task.

THE NEED to destroy the United States—required if the aim of a Global Empire is to be achieved—coupled with THE DIFFICULTY in destroying a Free Constitutional Republic, A FREE REPUBLIC IN FACT, NOT JUST IN NAME, explains the monumental effort the would-be Destroyers of America have expended on the Nation and its people. For, IT WAS the power of this Nation, derived from FAITH in the Divine Creator, and upon a TRUTH upon which that FAITH rests that had allowed a band of upstart Colonists to revolt against Tyranny and to succeed in their Revolution, the American Revolution of 1776 against that Tyranny. And most Americans intend to keep the promise of that REVOLUTION and the gains derived from it, alive.

THE ATTEMPT TO DEMOLISH THE SUCCESS AND THE GOOD THAT DERIVED FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THROUGH THE COLD, CALLOUS MANUFACTURING OF A COUNTERREVOLUTION —ONE THAT IS BASED ON A HORRIFIC EVIL BUT MASKED AS TRUTH, AS GOODNESS, FAIRNESS, AND MORALITY, THE GOSPEL OF “DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION,”—DEMONSTRATES THE DEPTHS OF DEPRAVITY THE DESTROYERS OF THIS COUNTRY WILL GO, TO UNDERMINE IT—FOR THEY SEEK NOT JUST ONE’S PHYSICAL SUBMISSION AND OBEISANCE TO THEIR WILL, BUT THE DESTRUCTION OF ONE’S SACRED SELFHOOD—ONE’S SPIRIT AND SOUL, TO ATTAIN THEIR AIM.

To bring three hundred and fifty million Americans and billions of people around the world—a world of so many different cultures and belief systems—into the frame of a ONE WORLD STATE requires the eradication of culture and ethos and national pride. It requires that the masses be forced into conformance upon which subservience may be easily derived and maintained.

But how do the malevolent, malignant forces that seek to create a ONE WORLD STATE intend to accomplish that?

This requires implementation of a stratified hierarchical class structure, and a system of controls on human beings not hitherto possible, [in the time of Caldwell but recently made possible through substantial advances in technology and neuropsychology. But the stratification of society into a major caste system is nothing new. This one will be like others before it.

It will include Royalty and Noblemen (Mega-Billionaire Neoliberal Globalist “Elites” to issue legal edicts AND Neo-Marxist “Theocratic” “Elites to impose the ethical, moral, and cultural dogmas on the masses. These dogmas are designed to induce a compliant, docile populace. We already have seen the outlines of this as well as the effects from it: “DEI”—DIVIDING THE COMMON PEOPLE AGAINST EACH OTHER: CREATING A FICTION OF OPPRESSORS AND OPPRESSED YET ALL OF THEM SLAVES, UNAWARE THAT THE OPPRESSORS ARE THOSE WHO FEED THE DOGMA TO THE MASSES, THOSE THAT DESIGNED THE DOGMA.

Immediately below the Rulers, there are the Technocrats. These are the Rulers’ overseers, through which the daily mechanics of economic and financial matters are tended to, and through which the Rulers’ legal edicts and the Theocrats’ moral and cultural codes are operationalized.

Below the Technocrats are the Knight-Retainers (Military and heavily armed Paramilitary Police, and many more complementary Civil Police and Intelligence apparatuses). This class is tasked with ensuring the legal edicts and the moral and cultural codes are adhered to by the masses to keep them constrained.

At the bottom of this stratified structure is everyone else, the populations of Earth (the subjugated masses, that is to say, the “Serfs”) herded, corralled, constrained and cowed whose serried ranks—billions of people—will be quietly culled as inadequate food stores, and water, and energy resources dwindle from time to time as will invariably happen despite the best efforts of the Technocrat Class to deal effectively with this, aided by “AI” and automation.

This system will not suffer problematic people.

Common criminals will be carted off to prisons, sans trial.

Lunatics will be sent to insane asylums and tranquilized.

Dissenters/agitators will be carted off to detention/re-education centers or, in worse cases, to hospitals for the hopelessly insane, along with lunatics. In worst cases, these people will simply be erased.

Like all empires, this one eschews freedom of thought and expression and it will not tolerate, in the hands of serfs—that mass of peasants, cattle, serfs, preterite—weaponry of any kind, especially firearms.

But can America be goaded or tricked into selling its birthright?

In her classic, “Captains and the Kings,” the writer Taylor Caldwell dealt with the secret Government that seeks the demise of the United States as a Free Republic. Perhaps as a firm belief, or perhaps as a hope that the American Revolution could be eviscerated, one of the characters in that magnum opus, representing the Neoliberal Globalist would-be destroyers of the Nation said this:

Republics never survive, for their people do not like freedom but prefer to be led and guided and flattered and seduced into slavery by a benevolent, or not so, benevolent despot. They want to worship Caesar. So, American republicanism will inevitably die and become a democracy, and then decline, as Aristotle said into a despotism.

And it is a curious thing indeed that the puppets of the Billionaire Globalists who seek to destroy our free Republic constantly mouth the word, ‘Democracy.’

They never define it, but they keep mentioning it as if some sort of Divine Goodness exists in the term that should be self-evident, true.

But the ‘Democracy’ that today’s Neo-Marxists and Progressives and Liberals in Government and in the Press talk about is really Mob Rule—using the ignorance of the public to vote for something they do not understand but profess belief in just the same. And they are oblivious to the fact that the bastards who placed the thoughts in their heads about what to think and how to think have gone one step further, in coming to think that those thoughts were theirs all along, not germinating weeds.

That ignorance has led to the installation of a walking ghost—a man so feeble in mind and body—that to look at him and hear him speak makes one queasy. Americans are told this wreck of a man is the President of the United States, the leader of the Country and of the Free World. But no one really believes that Joe Biden leads anything. It is he that is kept on a leash and is led by others——

THOSE FORCES THAT CRUSH: THE MEGA-BILLIONAIRE NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST “ELITES” AND THE NEO-MARXIST CULTIST THEOCRATS.

Still, America is a Republic, not a Democracy, and that Republic is still free because Americans still are able to exercise their natural law right of speech to dissent against the ravaging hordes of Marxists that seek to squelch any voice but their own. And Americans still have alternatives to see and hear over the B.S. that they hear day in and day out on the airwaves and that they see in the Legacy Press, and even if that alternative voice is often difficult to track down due to illegal censorship.

Dissent is not as free as it should be, as it must be, in a free Republic but it still exists.

And the American people still have access to firearms but the Biden Administration and some States, such as New York, fight extensively, vociferously, rigorously, against exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms—contemptuous of the right and contemptuous of the U.S. Supreme Court that issued a ruling on June 23, 2022. See the recent essay posted in the Arbalest Quarrel on July 11, 2023.

The High Court in Bruen reaffirmed the key rulings of the Heller case, making clear that the right to armed self-defense doesn’t stop at the doorstep of one’s house.

And see the recent article published Friday, July 28, 2023, by the website, “The City.” The article is titled, “NYPD Granting Fewer Gun Permits After Supreme Court Ruled It Had To Grant More, Data Shows.”

Despite the negative pronouncements of this essay. There is still a glimmer of hope.

First, the 2024 General Election is still months ahead. Despite the concerted effort of the Biden Administration’s DOJ to damage Trump politically, through these absurd Federal charges, those efforts have not borne fruit.

If anything Trump is stronger than ever. He has retained a commanding lead in the quest for the Republican Party nomination and a substantial portion of the electorate strongly support him in his bid for a Second Term that was wrongly, unlawfully denied him in 2020. The electorate is itching for payback.

Second, the Democrats, pawns of Neoliberal Globalists and the Neo-Marxist buffoons, have no one but the frail, brain-addled Biden as their Presidential nominee to serve a second term if they can keep him standing upright long enough to make it to November 2024. And, what then? Do they have a backup? And who might that be? They will need someone? And whoever it is, it will have to be someone the public is familiar with.

But would the public really vote for Kamala Harris? Gavin Newsome? Michelle Obama? Some members of the public would, of course. But how many? Seeing what the Biden Administration has wrought, the public knows that a Democrat Party win in 2024 will see the end of the Republic. That fact should give the electorate pause.

Third, the public is turning away in disgust from the abhorrent tenets of Collectivism and the bizarre ideological beliefs of the Neo-Marxist Cultists and their rude, abhorrent behavior. Americans have had enough of them.

One major concern rests with the integrity of the electoral system. How do we know it is secure? Why should we, Americans believe anything is different from the election of 2020 and 2022. There is much doubt, and little reason to trust the kind of system we have with proprietary digital voting machines, and few checks and balances to ensure security of ballot processing. And, we don’t see anything to suggest that Republicans are working to revamp the electoral system to correct the abuses of the prior two elections and the systems that allowed for those abuses to occur. That remains a nagging concern.

_________________________________ 

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR THE UNITED STATES IN THE COMING 2024 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION? ONE OF TWO POSSIBILITIES: PRESERVATION OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC OR ITS UTTER DESTRUCTION

MULTISERIES ARTICLE

PART ONE

DO AMERICANS HAVE THE NECESSARY RESOLVE TO PRESERVE A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC OR WILL THEY CAPITULATE TO THE MALIGNANT, MALEVOLENT FORCES THAT SEEK THE REPUBLIC’S DEMISE?

ONE LAST CHANCE REMAINS FOR AMERICANS — THE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024

THAT ELECTION WILL TELL THE TALE:

CONTINUED REWARD GAINED FOR US AMERICANS AND FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS OF AMERICANS THROUGH THE COURAGE AND SACRIFICES OF AMERICA’S FIRST PATRIOTS IN THEIR VICTORY OVER TYRANNY IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776, OR UTTER CHAOS AND IRRETRIEVABLE LOSS

PART ONE

SUBPART ONE OF SEVEN

THE IMPORTANCE OF “LEGITIMACY” IN THE EXERCISE OF POLITICAL POWER BY INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS

A sense of legitimacy attaches to those individuals or groups that connect themselves to venerable institutional structures.

In our political system, connection with one of the three Branches of the Federal Government, the Legislative (Congress), the Executive (the President), and the Judicial (the U.S. Supreme Court) secures “legitimacy.” Broadly, this means an individual has the “right to be there” which assumes the integrity of the electoral system had not been compromised. A person thus fairly elected to the position “legitimately” wields and therefore legitimately enjoys all the power, authority, and perks attendant to the political position thus secured.

This fact creates a problem for those individuals or groups that are not vested in, or that do not have behind them, the gravitas of a Governmental institution through which they gain, with the fact of that power, the “legitimacy” needed to wield and use the power and authority of that Office, which implies that the power and authority obtained was legitimately derived from the vote of the people. And that, in turn, implies the integrity and, hence, the legitimacy of the electoral process was preserved.

But what if a wealthy, powerful person, representative of a Group with vested personal interests destructive of the well-being of the Republic does not obtain high office that would otherwise provide for him and for the Group the vehicle through which they can “legitimately” wield vast power and authority? Such Groups are left to attempt, through their vast wealth and “connections,” to entice those in power to enact legislation or implement edicts or render judicial opinions that serve the interests of that Group.

Lobbying Congress, for example, is one such mechanism developed and honed through time. Lobbying Congress for favors is not part of the U.S. Constitution, and the framers of the Constitution would be justly appalled to believe that “LOBBYING” Congress is lawful and a that it has, through time, grown into an institution.

Lobbying Congress is generally considered lawful if the lobbying does not involve outright “bribes.” But the old saying “money talks” is as true today as it ever was. A donation to a Congressman’s campaign is in effect a bribe to that person, even if “legally” permissible, for it always involves a quid quo pro transaction: a monetary exchange in return for Congressional action pursuant to the wishes of the lobbying effort that might not be consistent with the Congressman’s own belief system and, in many instances—and probably most instances—is not in the best interests of the Country and the American people, and is contrary to the strictures of the U.S. Constitution.

LOBBYING QUA “INFLUENCING THOSE PEOPLE IN POWER” can take many forms.

Congressional lobbying is one thing, but influencing a U.S. President, thereby compromising a U.S. President is quite another—patently illegal, and dangerous “TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE.” But it is a way to urge or compel action in accordance with one’s desires or aims when that person or group cannot wield power and authority directly.

But, if a U.S. President is subject to manipulation, is that not also true of the U.S. Supreme Court? Quite simply, it is not done. First, U.S. Supreme Court Justices are not elected. But, they still have to attain their position through the “legitimate” means prescribed by the Constitution.

In our political system, to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice is a two-step process. First, the U.S. President has to nominate a person to serve in that position. Second, the person has to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. If the U.S. Senate does not confirm that person, the person does not become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

But, if confirmed to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, that person then wields legitimate authority—such authority consistent with Article 3 of the Nation’s Constitution. A U.S. Supreme Court Justice serves for life unless the Justice resigns or is impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate.

Since 2022, there have been 116 Justices that served on the Court.  Of that number one, Samuel Chase, has been impeached by the House but he wasn’t convicted in the Senate. There was a trial in the Senate, to be sure. But since the Senate did not convict him, Chase continued to serve on the High Court until his death in 1811.

The second Justice, Abe Fortas resigned from the Court under the threat of impeachment, in 1969. See the article posted on the “History” website.

U.S. Supreme Court Justices generally have an abundance of integrity. And a lifetime appointment further ensures a Justice is not subject to outside influences in rendering his or her legal Opinion on a case.

A lifetime appointment reduces the threat of outside influence to a near nullity as over two centuries of the U.S. Supreme Court’s existence attests to.

But, the nine Justices can and do influence each other. That is perfectly acceptable, expected, and normal practice.

Justices often render decisions that may be unpopular. This attests to the Justices’ freedom from coercion. But, of late, some in Congress, along with Joe Biden, and many regular Americans have viciously attacked several recent Opinions of the Court. The attacks are emotionally laden rhetorical diatribes, often laced with invective directed at Justices personally. The diatribes are both legally and logically unsound and aimed at exploiting anger and resentment in that segment of the polity sympathetic to the aims and goals of the person who delivers the diatribe.

Many Americans are easy prey for this, easily swayed by emotion, having been captured by a bizarre, irrational belief system through years of psychological conditioning delivered to the public by an unethical Press, unethical cable and broadcast news organizations, and unethical social media companies. One of the most notorious and pernicious examples of unethical rhetorical attacks on the High Court, and one that borders on the criminal as it threatens the life and safety of Justices is that presented by U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Charles (“Chuck”) Schumer, attacking the Dobbs decision (involving the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of the rulings in the Roe vs. Wade abortion case). See the YouTube video. See also the article in “Vox.”

The Chief Justice, John Roberts wasn’t amused and he delivered a strong rebuke.

Republican Senators rightfully called Schumer out for his despicable behavior. But Schumer never apologized. “U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday issued an unusual rebuke of ‘dangerous’ comments by top U.S. Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer about two conservative Supreme Court justices appointed by President Donald Trump and how they might rule in a major abortion case.” See the article in Reuters. Schumer never apologized.

The National Review said this—pointing to intent to “DELEGITIMIZE” the Court.

“The senator’s despicable attack is part of a concerted effort to delegitimize the court.

‘If, then, the courts of justice are to be considered as the bulwarks of a limited Constitution against legislative encroachments, this consideration will afford a strong argument for the permanent tenure of judicial offices,’ argued Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78.

If we ever needed a pristine example of why justices are bestowed lifetime appointments and shielded from the vagaries of the electorate and the intimidation tactics of unethical politicians, Chuck Schumer has now provided us with one.

While speaking to pro-abortion protesters in front of the Supreme Court today, the Senate minority leader threatened — there’s no other way to put it — two sitting justices with repercussions if they ruled to uphold a Louisiana law requiring abortionists to gain admitting privileges to hospitals before offering their services to women:

I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.

It’s conceivable that Schumer — who, like the rest of his party, doesn’t have the slightest interest in protecting babies who’ve survive botched abortions — can’t think of any good reason for hospital-admitting privileges. But treating as an “undue burden” any laws that require abortion clinics to provide basic medical facilities for women is just an example of the Democrats’ extremism on the issue. Threatening justices over the case is hysterical.

Moreover, Schumer’s thuggish attack on Kavanaugh and Gorsuch is a transparent attempt to intimidate justices. And wow — a sitting senator threatening an independent judiciary. Surely the champions of norms and decency will be horrified by this development. When Donald Trump, rather absurdly, demanded that Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse themselves from “Trump-related” Supreme Court cases because of their partisan positions — and, yes Notorious RGB is openly partisan and anti-Trump — it was a major national story. In this case, I suspect we’re going to hear a lot about a general ‘coarsening’ of discourse.”

These reprehensible members of Congress, along with a debilitated, decrepit, demented, corrupt Messenger Boy, pretentiously pretending to be the leader of the Nation, deliberately and callously incite mob reaction directed not only toward the Court’s Opinions, but to specific Justices themselves.

Each Branch of Government should respect the roles and powers and authority of another Branch when authority is exercised consistent with the U.S. Constitution. Of all the Branches of the Federal Government, the U.S. Supreme is the least susceptible to action outside its Constitutional PURVIEW OF AUTHORITY.

If Congress and the Executive Branch disagree with a U.S. Supreme Court decision their reaction should be respectful of the institution. Objections to Opinions should address the soundness of the Opinions if they can. If they can’t, then Congress and Biden should respectfully indicate disagreement on policy grounds if they wish. But they don’t do this. They didn’t do this. They respond with  spurious, illogical, and unsound invective, directed to the emotion, not to reason. It is in the nature of this renegade Executive Branch Office of the U.S. President and in the members of Congress who have sold out this Country to confound the public with implausible rationalizations.

THE ONLY BRANCH OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT—INDEFATIGABLE AND RESOLUTE IN DEFENDING ITS INDEPENDENCE AGAINST ENCROACHMENT BY THE OTHER TWO BRANCHES—HAS, TO DATE, SUCCESSFULLY RESISTED ALL ATTEMPTS BY THOSE WHO SEEK TO CONSTRAIN IT AND PLACE IT UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE BRANCHES AND, IN EFFECT, TO CREATE ONE UNITARY BRANCH.

The High Court Justices abide by their Oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. They do not render opinions designed to win popularity contests. This sours powerful interests at home and abroad that have grown frustrated by Supreme Court Opinions that run counter to their Global aims and trajectory. So, they try to change the Court’s composition or attempt unconstitutionally to usurp the Court’s Article 3 Authority. Those elements they control—Congress, and Biden and his Administration, and much of the Federal Bureaucracy, Social Media and the Entertainment and Sports Industry, Finance and Big Business, Technology, the Cable and Broadcast “news” Organizations, and even some in Academia—come out in force to vilify the Court.

“Joe Biden is setting up a bipartisan commission to consider reforming the US Supreme Court, including expanding the bench beyond its current panel of nine justices. The president on Friday fulfilled a campaign promise by issuing an executive order forming the commission of experts, including legal scholars, former federal judges, lawyers and reform advocates. The White House said the purpose of the group was to “provide analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform”. The executive order directed the commission to issue a report on its findings within six months. The commission marks a significant development for liberal advocates of expanding, or ‘packing’, the Supreme Court with additional judges, as well as those who want term limits imposed on justices.”

The Commission issued its comprehensive report in 2021. Fortunately, the Commission indicated its concern over Biden’s proposals. The Commission was of the mind that changing the Court’s composition and constraining the Court’s jurisdiction over a substantial range of cases would compromise the proper functioning of the Court, placing it under the Control of Congress. This would be unconstitutional. The Court has an essential role to play in the preservation of a free Constitutional Republic.  

The Biden Administration’s attempt to tamper with the Court would imperil the Court. The Administration failed. The integrity of the High Court’s structure would, for the moment at least, remain unscathed, independent. The National Constitutional Center said this,

“On May 28, 1788, Alexander Hamilton published Federalist 78—titled “The Judicial Department.”  In this famous Federalist Paper essay, Hamilton offered, perhaps, the most powerful defense of judicial review in the American constitutional canon.  On the one hand, Hamilton defined the judicial branch as the ‘least dangerous’ branch of the new national government.  On the other hand, he also emphasized the importance of an independent judiciary and the power of judicial review.  With judicial independence, the Constitution put barriers in place—like life tenure and salary protections—to ensure that the federal courts were independent from the control of the elected branches.  And with judicial review, federal judges had the power to review the constitutionality of the laws and actions of the government—ensuring that they met the requirements of the new Constitution. Other than Marbury v. Madison (1803), Hamilton’s essay remains the most famous defense of judicial review in American history, and it even served as the basis for many of Chief Justice John Marshall’s arguments in Marbury itself.” See the article posted in the “Constitution Center.”

The Biden Administration and one of its major echo chambers, The New York Times, couldn’t care less about any of this. If the Biden Administration doesn’t like a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court because the Court’s Opinion doesn’t cohere with the Administration’s policy objectives, then the Administration attacks the Court, mercilessly, without any consideration to the import of the Court’s findings.

The New York Times actively, avidly supports the wild and toxic statements of Biden, suggesting that the Court is not operating lawfully. In reference to the Court’s recent decision on affirmative action, for example, the Times provided a platform for Biden to unleash his fury on the Court without justification, attacking the integrity of the Court, grounded solely on the Administration’s personal disagreement with the Court’s decision:

“President Biden declared on Thursday that the Supreme Court ‘is not a normal court,’ delivering an extraordinarily critical assessment of another branch of government shortly after the court’s conservative majority ended nearly a half-century of affirmative action in college admissions.”

THE COURT’S JUSTICES DO ELICIT CONTRARY VIEWS ON A CASE, GROUNDED ON THEIR PERSONAL JURISPRUDENTIAL PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES THAT GOVERN AND DICTATE THE METHODOLOGY THEY EMPLOY WHEN APPLYING THE LAW TO THE FACTS OF A PARTICULAR CASE  

It may well be that the Opinions of the liberal wing of the High Court, comprising Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and recently, Brown-Jackson, satisfy the Neo-Marxist Cultists, a particularly vocal group, along with the Press, and the Neoliberal Globalists since those Opinions cohere with attempts to harm the Constitution and the foundation of a system derived from America’s First Patriots success in defeating a mighty empire, in the American Revolution of 1776. But the Opinions of these Justices follow upon, are consistent with, and reflect their jurisprudential political and social ideologies and preferences which cohere with the methodologies employed in rendering their decisions. They remain true to their convictions even if their approach to the case is colored by jurisprudential precepts that are contrary to historical precedence.

Similarly, the Conservative wing of the Court, comprising stalwarts Justices Thomas and Alito, do not compromise their principles when rendering their Opinions that seem out of favor with some members of the polity and that are abhorrent to the Biden Administration and the Democrat Party. For these Justices begin their analyses with a basic premise that dictates the methodology they employ when considering the merits of a Governmental action that impacts a fundamental, unalienable right of the people.

These Justices vigorously defend the Constitution in accordance with the original and plain meaning of it. And their reasoning and rulings ably reflect the methodology they employ.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, from her rulings as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and on her rulings as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Her jurisprudential philosophy is in line with that of her brethren, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Justice Neil Gorsuch is reliable and consistent on matters involving the Bill of Rights, but statutory interpretation seems at times discordant. Justice Kavanaugh is a bit of a cypher. His concurrence in the New York City “Gun Transport Case” is difficult to fathom. It reads as if the Justice felt at odds with his vote on the issue of mootness and seems almost as if he is asking for forgiveness (from whom it isn’t clear) for his decision. For, without his vote, the Court would have reviewed the case on the merits and a decision on the right to armed self-defense outside the home might have obviated the need for the Bruen case that arose a couple of years later that Justice Kavanaugh seemingly predicted and welcomed. And that raises the question of why Kavanaugh cast his vote with the Liberal wing and with the Chief Justice John Roberts in the first place.

The jurisprudential philosophy of the Chief Justice, too, is difficult to get a handle on. It seems at times his decisions are motivated more by a desire to achieve equanimity among the two wings of the Court and less by a strict adherence to his professional jurisprudential convictions about a case. But there is no doubt Roberts will defend the Court indefatigably and forcefully against those foes in the Press and antagonistic voices emanating from the other two Branches of Government that castigate him and “His” Court mercilessly.

It wasn’t by accident that Chief Justice Roberts decided to author the Majority Opinion in the recent “student loan” case. The Chief Justice obviously saw a serious problem posed by the Biden Administration that could seriously endanger the doctrine of three Co-Equal Branches and that case illustrated more directly and acutely than any other action of the Administration, that “the President”, Joe Biden, was not only betraying the Oath of Office by failing to faithfully execute the duties of that Office that require a U.S. President to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, but that he, Joe Biden, and those in his Administration intended clearly to defy Congressional Statute.

And now, it is apparent that, because the Administration dislikes the Court’s decision in Biden vs. Nebraska, 2023 U.S. LEXIS 2793 (the “Student Loan” case), Biden will defy the Court as well.

But why defy the Court on this case in particular?

Might this not have something to do with the fact that Biden had “promised” millions of students that he, on his own initiative, and contrary to law, would waive one-half trillion dollars in student loans? And might the Biden Administration’s motivation for waiving repayment of loans have something to do with an unethical, and no less illegal attempt “TO BUY” votes—millions of votes in the coming 2024 U.S. Presidential election, thereby operating contrary to the Congressional Statute, and outside the strictures of the Electoral System?

And does not this action of the Administration along with many others allude to an Administration that is not only corrupt but wholly compromised by private and foreign interests whose aims are contrary to the well-being of the American People and the Nation, and inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution? And what does this mean in terms of “LEGITIMACY” of the Office of the U.S. President?

It means that the present holder of the Office of the U.S. President serves with only “THE TRAPPINGS” of “LEGITIMACY”—a FAÇADE OF LEGITIMACY, and NOT THE FACT OF LEGITIMACY.

But these TRAPPINGS of LEGITIMACY exclusive of the FACT of LEGITIMACY appear to be enough for this Great Pretender and for the Legacy Press and for many Americans.

And as has become plain, the policies generated by the Office of the U.S. President ARE NOT THOSE OF the “President,” but OF THOSE who tell the President what he can and must do.

Democrats constantly bluster that the Country was in the midst of a Constitutional crisis when Trump was President but that was deflection. Trump brought the Country back in line with the Constitution as dictated by its strictures, and consistent with the intention of the Framers of it. It is Biden, and those many elements inside and outside that are complicit with him, that have brought this Nation to the reality of a TRUE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS, that can only be repaired, at the Federal Governmental level by Trump himself. No other individual running for U.S. President on the Republican Party ticket has the fortitude of Trump to resist the powers that crush entire Countries into submission.

David Horowitz, author of “Final Battle,” doesn’t mince words when calling Biden out for treason and betrayal, and explicitly questions why Biden hasn’t been prosecuted for his crimes. On June 15, 2023, in a Newsmax article, Horowitz made plain that——

“. . . that President Joe Biden ‘has been committing treason’ for three decades in what has been nothing less than a ‘betrayal of the United States.’

While discussing his latest book ‘Final Battle: The Next Election Could Be the Last’ on ‘American Agenda,’ Horowitz pointed out that even though former President Donald Trump has been embroiled in a series of legal challenges, ‘there are no charges against Biden’ despite ‘massive evidence that he has been committing treason for 20 or 30 years.’

Referring to allegations by Republican House leaders on the Oversight Committee, Horowitz said about Biden: ‘He's received payments, millions and millions of dollars, and his whole family is on the payroll,’ he said, adding that "what people call ‘influence peddling’ . . . it's really betrayal of the United States.’”

In an earlier Newsmax article, dated, January 4, 2023, David Horowitz categorically expressing his well-reasoned belief that this Country is facing a Constitutional crisis.

“New York Times bestselling author David Horowitz has released a new book, ‘Final Battle: The Next Election Could Be the Last,’ and he tells Newsmax that the book details how the United States is facing a crisis that is the ‘direct result of the Democrats' decision to declare all-out war on Republicans.’

‘Five days after [Donald] Trump's election, they held a meeting with Nancy Pelosi to form what they called a resistance,’ Horowitz said on ‘National Report.’ ‘They never accepted Trump as a legitimate president. They are free with their slanders and lies about him. This is so antithetical to what democracy needs to function.’

He used the example of Jan. 6, telling Newsmax that the first response from Democrats was to call the protests an ‘armed insurrection.’

‘This is before they knew anything,’ he said. ‘There was no investigation. There were no real facts, and then immediately it was revealed that no arms were confiscated, so they just dropped the armed and called it an insurrection, which is treason. How can you have an insurrection if you don't have arms?’”

In such desperate times the Nation needs a leader who has proved his mettle in confronting forces that are intently focused on destroying our Free Republic, subjugating a sovereign people, and bringing ruin to a sovereign, independent Nation-State—the greatest, grandest, and most powerful and successful the world has ever seen.

Even Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida who has done tremendous good for the State has backpedaled his position on Ukraine. See, e.g., AP News Report of March 23, 2023.

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is walking back his characterization of Russia’s war in Ukraine as a ‘territorial dispute,’ following criticism from a number of fellow Republicans who expressed concern about the potential 2024 presidential candidate’s dismissive description of the conflict.

In excerpts of an interview with Piers Morgan set to air Thursday on Fox Nation, DeSantis said his earlier comments referenced ongoing fighting in the eastern Donbas region, as well as Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea. Ukraine’s borders are internationally recognized, including by the United Nations.

‘What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now, which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately, but they had,’ DeSantis said, according to excerpts. ‘There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting, and that’s what I was referring to, and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it.’”

As courageous as this man is, Ron DeSantis does not have the necessary resolve to steadfastly hold to his convictions and his attempt to clarify his position on Ukraine, is proof of this.

_______________

SUBPART TWO OF SEVEN

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A WEALTHY PERSON OR POLITICAL BLOC HAS NO LEGITIMATE POWER OR AUTHORITY BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT “IN” GOVERNMENT, BUT WISH TO CONTROL THE DECISIONS OF THOSE WHO ARE IN GOVERNMENT?

WHAT CAN an inordinately wealthy powerful individual or group DO, that is not “IN” the Office of the President and so does not have the LEGITIMATE POWER and the LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY to exercise the POWER and AUTHORITY of that Office but deigns to do so—deigns to gain access to the Office to EXERCISE INFLUENCE over the U.S. President?

The Office of the U.S. President—the INSTITUTION OF U.S. PRESIDENCY—wields tremendous power since it controls the vast apparatuses of military, police, and intelligence, among others, and executes policies that generate great effects, for good or naught, on the Nation and the World. Those policies implemented have grave and lasting consequences for the Nation and the World.

This was the situation faced by the mega billionaire Neoliberal Globalists when Donald Trump won the U.S. Presidency in 2020, defeating the Globalists’ choice, Hillary Clinton, whom they thought was a shoo-in. How do these extraordinarily wealthy, powerful, and ruthless individuals, along with the powerful groups they belong to, and those potent and evil forces aligned with it, now “TRANSACT BUSINESS” with an unknown quantity? Is Trump a man whom the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS can subvert and control?

CONSIDER——

Trump ran on a campaign to reverse what is plain—a SELL-OUT of the Nation. This SELL-OUT commenced under Bill Clinton, proceeded well under George Bush, and greatly expanded, gaining speed under the Presidency of Barack Obama. The results of the SELL-OUT were to be completed once Hillary Clinton gained the mantle of the U.S. Presidency. It is all disheartening.

But the wife of Bill Clinton, DID NOT SECURE A WIN FOR THE NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALISTS.

Both NEO-MARXIST CULTISTS and NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS were both alarmed and flabbergasted and irked by Trump’s win over their chosen candidate Hillary Clinton. Many were enraged.

The NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS HAD A FRIEND IN HILLARY CLINTON. She was, after all, one of their own.

As President she would wield enormous power—all of it gained through THE LEGITIMACY attaching to her election. But her POLICIES and INITIATIVES would be governed or tempered by the wants, needs, and desires of her benefactors, of whom she saw herself as one among them. They had nothing to fear from her Presidency. Their goals were, after all, her goals.

And those goals of the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS were singularly focused on manipulating and binding the world’s economies to them; inextricably tying them to each other through economic pacts and compacts and treaties among nations. The whole would operate on a global scale, with minimal interference from governments of nation-states, and the wealthy Globalists would reap yet further monetary benefits and tremendous power for themselves, therefrom. Globalization would ensure their ability to continue to amass extraordinary wealth and exert control never before realized.

They would be unaffected by multivarious concerns of the populaces of the nation-states and would not be impeded by Governments of the various nation-states, including the United States. That was the aim; that was the goal.

They have had success before, as reported by the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance (“CAFTA”).

“The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a free trade agreement between Canada, the United States (US), and Mexico. NAFTA was built on the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), which was brought into force in 1989 and superseded by NAFTA in 1994. Designed to eliminate trade and investment barriers between the three countries, the agreement came into force on 1 January 1994. In addition to being one of the most ambitious trade agreements in history, NAFTA also created the world’s largest free trade area. Since 1994, NAFTA generated economic growth and rising standards of living for the people of all three member countries.

Under NAFTA, tariffs on all covered goods traded between Canada and Mexico were eliminated in 2008. In 2015, NAFTA represented 28% of the world’s gross domestic product, which amounts to a combined total of US$20.7 trillion in trade despite having less than 7% of the world’s population. Over the nearly three decades of NAFTA and the CUSFTA, Canada’s agri-food exports grew by more than five-fold, from under $10 billion in 1988 to $56 billion in 2016. Together, the United States and Mexico account for more than half of these exports.

NAFTA served as an institutional cornerstone to agri-food trade in North America and was very beneficial for Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Canada is among the top five suppliers of in eight of ten of the United States’ top agri-food food imports, and is the a top supplier in nine of ten of Mexico’s top agri-food imports. Since the adoption of NAFTA, US agri-food exports to Canada and Mexico have more than quadrupled from $8.9 billion in 1994 to $38.6 in 2015.

 While Canadian agri-food exporters have largely benefited from NAFTA, there are areas in which NAFTA could be improved. Renegotiation should not allow new tariffs, new non-tariff barriers, or any other provisions that could be used to limit trade. A successful modernization of NAFTA could serve as a model agreement that can be used by the partners to promote trade liberalization in other multilateral and plurilateral negotiations.”

The creation of previous trade pacts in the latter part of the Twentieth Century and into the first years of the Twenty-First was just a steppingstone.

The NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS had grander objectives.

They directed their immediate goal to subordinating the laws of the individual nation-states to international law. Legal issues that arise were to be dealt with either in international tribunals or in the courts of member nation-states that would be compelled to apply international law, rather than local law. Those laws would be established in the various pacts, agreements, and alliances.

And those laws would be weighted heavily in favor of the WILL of the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS as specified in meticulous detail in those TRADE AGREEMENTS, PACTS, and TREATIES that were expected to be passed by the GOVERNMENTS of the member nations, and with relative ease, having previously obtained compliance from the leaders of those Governments.

Through time, once NEOLIBERAL GLOBAL POLITICS gained a measure of “LEGITIMACY,” the GLOBALISTS would next turn their attention to devising strategies to further subordinate, to their will, such powers wielded by Governments of nation-states in other spheres, impacting the societies of those nations generally.

Their ultimate goal was clarifying to the astute observer: Through the device of multilevel and expansive “FREE TRADE,” the GLOBALISTS would not derive immediate monetary benefits, these devices would drastically reduce the independence and sovereignty of individual nation-states. Eventually the import and purport of nation-states would become superfluous and redundant. The very idea of and concept of ‘NATION-STATE’ would become meaningless. For all Economic, Political, Social, and Juridical matters would devolve to them, THE NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALISTS, in fact if not in perception. They would become the world’s OVERSEERS.

To the meaninglessness of the concept of ‘nation-state’ would there now be added the concepts, ‘citizen’ and ‘patriotism.’ These expressions, too, would grow to be strange, archaic, anachronistic.

A NEO-FEUDAL WORLD EMPIRE would emerge. A new reality would manifest for billions of people throughout the world, and—with the aid of technology—a that would not take long to be achieved, aided by weak and compliant Governments, whose allegiances would be secured with bribes and with the trappings of power.

The culture, history, and heritage of many nation-states would erode and eventually be extinguished.

Mass conformity of thought and conduct would be encouraged, and eventually legally enforced. The vast populations of the Earth would be subjugated and reduced to penury. The United States would be no exception to this.

America’s vast wealth and resources, and the strength of America’s military, police, and intelligence apparatuses and the innovations coming out of the technology sector, would all be harnessed by and utilized by the Neoliberal Globalists, who as supreme rulers, would maintain that power through legions of military and paramilitary forces, and intelligence apparatuses. All laws and edicts would come from these new NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST LORDS and TASKMASTERS of PLANET EARTH—changing at will as whim or circumstance dictate. A world PRESS/PROPAGANDA ORGAN would pass along and explain the news laws and edicts to the world’s new SERF CLASS—THE PRETERTITE—BILLIONS OF PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. That was the goal—the NEW NEOLIBERAL INTERNATIONAL ORDER.

_____________________________

SUBPART THREE OF SEVEN

THE STUMBLING BLOCK FOR THE NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS: DONALD TRUMP AND THE DEMISE OF THE NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST INITIATIVES: TPP AND T-TIP

Back in 2016, Brookings Executive Vice President  Martin Indyk, said, “I think that Hillary Clinton—if she is the nominee of the Democratic Party, which seems to be a fair assumption at this point—will continue a lot of Obama’s policy as I’ve outlined it. . . .” But what of Donald Trump if he were to become President? Martin Indyk said this, as reported in Brookings,

“In the case of Donald Trump, it’s a complete guess as to where exactly he’s going to come down, partly because it’s not clear that he actually means what he says at any particular moment, partly because in the foreign policy speech that he outlined [April 27], which was the most coherent expression of his foreign policy, there were a lot of contradictions . . . . On the one hand, he’s going to be a reliable ally, but on the other hand he’s going to make our allies pay for [our] part of defending them, as opposed to paying for their own part of defending themselves, paying more for that. And if they don’t do that, then he’s going to break the alliances, and that doesn’t make us a very reliable player.

“Then there’s the whole suggestion that he would enter into trade wars; [and] the big question mark over what he would to do with ISIS, because he says he’s not going to let anyone know about that. So we don’t have a really good, clear sense of where he’s going except that he’s clearly much more in the kind of nationalist, populist, and perhaps isolationist mode of America foreign policy.”

WITH TRUMP IN THE WHITE HOUSE GLOBALISTS WOULD NOT DARE MISTAKE HIM WITH CLINTON. THEY HAD NO ILLUSION THAT HIS PRESIDENCY WOULD BE A CONTINUATION OF THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY. See article in the “New York Intelligencer,”

“One of the phrases that kept cropping up in Republican election rhetoric is that Hillary Clinton is ‘running for Obama’s third term.’ Oftentimes it is used as though the distastefulness of such a scenario is self-evident. ‘POTUS making no bones about it: Hillary running for Obama’s third term,’ gloated Republican senator John Cornyn during Obama’s convention speech.”

The import of a THIRD OBAMA TERM through his SECRETARY OF STATE is that the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST goal of creating more “FREE TRADE PACTS and TREATIES and ALLIANCES through which they would ultimately neutralize Government control over their activities AND permit them to control Governments POLITICALLY as well as ECONOMICALLY was to be recognized and realized through a massive new venture that they were working on in secret, first with its first stirrings in the Bush Administration at the turn of the Century and then moving apace under Obama, a centerpiece of his Administration, as reported in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and it was fast-tracked to be enacted and signed by the member nations. See also articles in “Cultural Survival”, and “The Balance.” It was completed in 2015, the year before the U.S. Presidential election. An election that would be a milestone for the People and headache, ultimately for the wealthy NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS.

And it was all taking shape beyond the purview of the American public. See report by the Electronic Frontier Association (EFF).

This NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST “TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP (TPP) controversy became a subject of conversation back on July 27, 2016. The controversy arose during a U.S. Presidential Debate between the Democrat Party Candidate, Hillary Clinton, and the Republican Party Candidate, Donald Trump. The details of what was said about the TPP during the Debate proved interesting. CNN reported this,

“Hillary Clinton hasn’t even said anything about the Trans-Pacific Partnership recently – and yet, in 24 hours, she became embroiled in a new controversy about her stance on the deal.

A top ally’s prediction that Clinton would flip-flop after the election and support the trade pact – after escaping the political threat from Bernie Sanders.

Making things more uncomfortable: President Barack Obama’s appearance Wednesday night to make the case for Clinton. His administration negotiated the deal; she says she opposes it.

Whether that was ever true, her opponent, Donald Trump, DID OPPOSE it, and he seized on the Democrats’ mixed messaging Tuesday to slam Clinton, as reported by CNN.

Referred to colloquially, as “NAFTA on Steroids”, the Bernie Sanders Neo-Marxist crowd hated it, the Trade Unions hated it, Trump supporters hated it, but Bush Republicans and the Neoliberal Globalists who supported Obama and Hillary Clinton who helped craft the thing, in secret, for many years, loved it, wanted to have it, and intended to make it a reality once Clinton got into Office on January 20, 2021. That was necessary; an important condition precedent to gaining supremacy over the world’s economies and piggybacking off that to gain further control over the political, social, and legal institutions of western nation-states. See article in “The Nation.”

CNN added this about the TPP:

“Think of the TPP as a stealthy delivery mechanism for policies that could not survive public scrutiny. Indeed, only two of the twenty-six chapters of this corporate Trojan horse cover traditional trade matters. The rest embody the most florid dreams of the 1 percent—grandiose new rights and privileges for corporations and permanent constraints on government regulation. They include new investor safeguards to ease job offshoring and assert control over natural resources, and severely limit the regulation of financial services, land use, food safety, natural resources, energy, tobacco, healthcare and more.” Id.

During their debate, on September 26, 2016, a little over a  month before the election, Donald Trump pointed out that Clinton said TPP was a wonderful thing, “a Gold Standard in Trade Agreements.”

Hillary Clinton demurred. She lied and even the Radical Left Washington Post Rag had to acknowledge Clinton’s bald-faced lie:

“Fact Check: Clinton did call TPP ‘the gold standard’

TRUMP: You called it the gold standard of trade deals. You said it’s the finest deal you’ve ever seen.

CLINTON: No. 

TRUMP: And then you heard what I said about it, and all of a sudden you were against it. 

CLINTON: Well, Donald, I know you live in your own reality, but that is not the facts. The facts are — I did say I hoped it would be a good deal, but when it was negotiated.

THE FACT CHECKER: Trump is right. Clinton is subtly adjusting her words here when confronted with a question about her consistency on policy positions.

But the fact is she never used the word ‘hoped.’ Instead, she was more declarative, using the phrase ‘gold standard’ when she was Secretary of State.”

“This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field,” she said in Australia in 2012. ‘And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment.’”

Clinton was caught in a difficult situation. To appease the Neo-Marxists Sanders supporters in the Party and in the Nation at large, and thereby encourag them to vote for her rather than sit out the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, she constantly stated she would not support the TPP. And the Press and media, avid supporters of Clinton, pushed the narrative on the American public. See, e.g., articles in Time; October 8, 2016 article in Politico; and October 7, 2015 article in CNN Politics.

But the Neoliberal Globalists would have none of this. The TPP wasn’t just something they wanted to have. It was something THEY HAD TO HAVE.

 There was no way in Hell that Clinton, a Globalist in her own right, was not going to sign the TPP into law when or if she became President. In fact the Neoliberal Globalists knew her overtures to the Bernie Sanders crowd was an inveterate lie, mere “posturing” as they said, as reported in an article on the website, “Our Future”:

“The business community, for example, sees Clinton's position as simple posturing to voters for the election, believing she will switch back to supporting the agreement immediately after the election, as Obama did on NAFTA after promising throughout the 2008 campaign to renegotiate the agreement.

 For example, Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue went so far as to say in a recent Bloomberg TV interview that he believes Clinton will switch to supporting TPP after the election. . . .

The business community doesn't believe for a minute that Clinton really opposes TPP.”

Fortunately, for the American people and the welfare of the Nation Clinton lost to Trump, surprising to most people and the Press, and to the rest of the world.

Democrats were infuriated, but all that anger, fury, and frustration, was somewhat ameliorated by the fact that Trump would not sign on to the TPP.

The Neoliberal Globalists, i.e., the “BIG BUSINESS COMMUNITY,” for their part, was worried.

Shortly after he became U.S. President, Trump, in one of his first actions as President, as reported by the BBC on January 24, 2017, said that——

“President Donald Trump has fulfilled a campaign pledge by signing an executive order to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The 12-nation trade deal was a linchpin of former President Barack Obama's Asia policy.

‘Great thing for the American worker what we just did,’ said Mr. Trump as he dumped the pact with a stroke of a pen.

He also cut funding for international groups that provide abortions and froze hiring of some federal workers.

Mr. Trump's executive order on TPP was largely symbolic since the deal has not been ratified by a divided US Congress. [But the executive order served another purpose apart from that of a campaign pledge. Trump was telling Congress that, if they passed the TPP, he would veto it. Congress never took the thing up. The Neoliberal Globalists were furious, for all their secretive work hammered out over years, since the early days of the Bush Administration, came to naught]

During his presidential campaign, he criticized the accord as a ‘potential disaster for our country’, arguing it harmed US manufacturiHis action won some plaudits from the left as well as the right.

Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders told the BBC he backed it because trade deals like this have been a ‘disaster’ and cost millions of jobs.”

But the TPP was only part of the picture. There was another major Trade Agreement the Neoliberal Globalists were hammering out on the other side of the world: The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP).

This project started in 2013. See article in Investopedia.

Also see archival report of the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) that posits:

“The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) is an ambitious, comprehensive, and high-standard trade and investment agreement being negotiated between the United States and the European Union (EU). T-TIP will help unlock opportunity for American families, workers, businesses, farmers and ranchers through increased access to European markets for Made-in-America goods and services. This will help to promote U.S. international competitiveness, jobs and growth.

The U.S. and EU economies are two of the most modern, most developed, and most committed to high standards of consumer protection in the world.  T-TIP aims to bolster that already strong relationship in a way that will help boost economic growth and add to the more than 13 million American and EU jobs already supported by transatlantic trade and investment. T-TIP will be a cutting edge agreement aimed at providing greater compatibility and transparency in trade and investment regulation, while maintaining high levels of health, safety, and environmental protection. T-TIP presents an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen the bond between vital strategic and economic partners.”

The British Guardian newspaper points out that what is good for the Globalists is not good for average workers:

“TTIP will hit Europeans like you in the pocket, critics argue, so you need to pay attention. While the European commission estimates that, by 2027, TTIP could boost the size of the EU economy by £94bn or 0.5% of GDP, an economic study by Jeronim Capaldo of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University argues that the commission’s econometric modelling is jejune and that, in fact, TTIP will clobber Europeans. Capaldo predicts 600,000 European job losses as a result of TTIP, a net fall in EU exports, declining GDPs for EU member states and a fall in Europeans’ personal income.”

Trump halted T-TIP negotiations as well since they were inconsistent with his agenda to protect American business.

He was using Tariffs, a mechanism incompatible with the T-TIP and TPP, and the economy was doing well under his tutelage.

Back in June 2018, The New York Times acknowledged if grudgingly, as its benefactors were and are Neoliberal Globalists, that, under the Trump Presidency, there was little to be gained from signing on to T-TIP because——

“The United States is fighting from a position of strength, with the American economy on track for one of its strongest years in a decade. Europe doesn’t have the same defenses. Growth in the region is slowing, and that weakness has been compounded by political turmoil in Italy and Germany, as well as Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.”

But, the mega-billionaire Neoliberal Globalists attempted to change Trump’s mind. They sent their messenger, Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, to talk to Trump; to attempt to appease him.

During a meeting of the two at the White House, on July 26, 2018, there was an inkling of an agreement on T-TIP, as reported by The New York Times:

“Mr. Trump’s threat to impose large new unilateral tariffs on imported automobiles shook German business to the core — and it would also have had a large impact on the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Spain and other countries that are important suppliers and manufacturers to the German car industry.

Now the president has agreed to push that threat to the side as the two parties begin broader negotiations. The trade war erupted after Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, and the European Union responded with retaliatory tariffs on iconic American products like bluejeans, bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Those tariffs will remain for now, but will be part of the negotiations.

‘Juncker’s achievement was to get Trump to say publicly that he would reconsider’ steel and aluminum tariffs and not impose car tariffs in return for a negotiation,’ said Guntram B. Wolff, director of Bruegel. ‘For the E.U., the gun is still loaded but it’s not pointed at our heads, so for us it’s a good moment to negotiate.’

Indeed, some analysts argued that the new negotiations effectively represent a resurrection, in some fashion, of the effort begun by former President Barack Obama — and halted by President Trump — for a free-trade pact with Europe, known then as the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP. Together, the United States and the European Union comprise half of the global economy, and analysts were optimistic about the commitment by Mr. Trump and Mr. Juncker to work together to overhaul the World Trade Organization, especially given the rising power of China.”

There would be no deal.

The Neoliberal Globalists, first furious over the TPP failure, now added T-TIP to the list of their reason to hate Trump. These Trade Agreements were essential to their goal to amass further wealth by reining in governments’ exercise over them as they sought to gain control over the world market.

Given the tone of the Guardian Newspaper’s report of the failure of T-TIP, it is apparent the Neoliberal Globalists were venting their anger toward Trump.

And to add to this the Globalists, through their Press mouthpiece, wouldn’t allow Trump to receive benefit for his actions from the Sanders crowd and from the Unions. The Guardian said the deal was dead anyway, regardless of Trump’s actions.

But this simply means that European workers themselves had nothing to gain from T-TIP and everything to lose from it if Trump had agreed to it, which, as President, he could have done. So, by helping America’s workers, Trump was also aiding Europe’s workers.

Neither the workers in Europe nor those here at home, in the U.S., had any say in the matter. 

The Neoliberal Globalists, through the British Guardian newspaper, did a Hit Piece on Trump, arguing that, although the political left in this Country might be appeased by Trump’s actions, Trump should get no credit for it, as his actions were self-serving and it “helped him to get his racist message a hearing”—What? “[R]acist message”?——

“Donald Trump’s victory should be a warning to those on the centre left pushing for more ‘market’ in our lives. But early signs suggest that there is every danger of Europe’s leaders falling into an even deeper sleep.

The United States-European Union Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership trade agreement has become a hated modern symbol of the power of big business and the market over our societies. The TTIP deal has rightly been seen as less a traditional agreement on tariffs and more an attempt to give big business new powers over our laws and public services. All of this would be enforceable in special ‘corporate courts’ only accessible to large foreign investors.

Trump cynically exploited working-class anger over these sorts of trade deals. He spoke of the devastation caused by TTIP’s forerunner, the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which radically speeded up the ability of corporations to ‘offshore’ jobs to Mexico, leaving communities hollowed out and their voices silenced in the mainstream media. He also promised to halt TTIP’s sister deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

All this helped him to get his racist message a hearing in traditionally Democrat parts of the US. But Trump offers no hope for those who are rightly angry about the sort of politics that TTIP represents.

First, TTIP is already dead. It has been killed off by the millions of European and American activists who have campaigned against it for the last three years. This campaign has been run not by Trump supporters but by people who believe in an open, equal and democratic society where diversity is embraced and everyone’s rights are respected.

These activists objected to TTIP largely because it will further erode our democracy and hand power to big money – and to businessmen like Trump. In fact, Trump proudly admitted during his campaign that he has got rich by exploiting trade agreements such as Nafta to ‘offshore’ jobs and avoid regulation.

Second, despite his rhetoric, Trump believes in the power of big business. Within a certain framework, he supports the deregulation and privatization agenda embodied in TTIP. Where he differs is in his belief in massive public investment and industrial strategy, but for Trump this is all about creating a much closer relationship between big business and the nation state.

Trump’s support for public investment and industrial strategy are, at their most basic, simply essential tools any governments should use to plan and manage economies. Neoliberalism’s rejection of these tools is economically illiterate. It’s how these tools are used that should be the central question.”

Just what is it that the Guardian newspaper, on behalf of the Neoliberal Globalists, is saying? Is it that multi-Billionaire Neoliberal Globalists don’t give a damn about European workers but that is okay because Donald Trump doesn’t care about America’s workers either? That remark is false. But if it were true, so what? What matters is Trump’s policies and their impact on the Country and on the American people. And his policies benefitted small business and the hard-working American.

What the NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS were beginning to see from the actions of Trump on TPP and T-TIP was that Trump had no compunction about crafting and then implementing policies that did not coincide with their wishes, and that would have ramifications beyond these abstruse economic desires and aims of the Neoliberal Globalists.

Neither entreating Trump to play along nor cajoling him to go along would not work. The GLOBALISTS saw further problems looming. They did not wish to contend with a U.S. President who, for four years, would uproot their goals, carefully developed for and planned for decades, hammered out with difficulty but that had  moved ahead inexorably, if not altogether smoothly, for twenty-six years before Trump’s election to the U.S. Presidency. They began to consider removing him from Office.

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SUBPART FOUR OF SEVEN

TRUMP’S INTERESTS NOT IN LINE WITH THE NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS BUT WAS TRUMP TRUTHFUL TO HIS MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO SUPPORTED HIM AND VOTED HIM INTO OFFICE?

The legacy Press never made much of any claim that Trump came into Office serving his own interests. If there is anything on the World-Wide Web about it, it is well hidden. How could there be anything? The headaches that the job brings to any man is plentiful and the ugly forces martialed against Trump from the first day he assumed the heavy task to the day he left Office was one long slugfest. In fact, he was attacked incessantly long prior to taking Office, while campaigning. There was certainly little if any money to be made in the job. In fact, Trump was the one of a very few Presidents in history to give away most or all of his salary. See, e.g. story in the Business Insider. The website says Trump promised to give away all his U.S. Presidential salary, and did not do so, but acknowledges that, for the first three and a half years he did give away his salary, which left the last 6 months uncertain, and yet if he kept his salary for the last 6 months, is that supposed to be a worthy basis to hound him for it? But that is what Business Insider does, retrieveing information from and referencing an article from the Washington Post. Business Insider says,

“It is unclear what Donald Trump did with his salary from his last 6 months in office, which he promised to donate, according to The Washington Post.

While in office Donald Trump pledged to give away all of his $400,000 annual presidential salary. For the first three and a half of his presidency, he donated the money to federal agencies.

The Washington Post said it surveyed all major federal agencies and none reported receiving anything from Trump after a gift in July 2020.

The paper said it could not account for the last $220,000 of his salary.”

Of course, if Trump gave his salary away for the entire 4 years of service to his Country, there would be no story. But, the fact that his enemies in the Press would nitpick this shows poor form.

To say that Trump took the job of U.S. President for personal profit would be ridiculous. In fact the incessant, vicious, virulent, vile attacks on him and his family during his entire tenure in Office belie any claim that the U.S. Presidency was a boon to him and his family. So his enemies in the Press forbear.

Rather, his enemies in media, both at home and abroad, talk incessantly about Trump’s purported “CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.” See, e.g., the BBC article posted in 2017, and a 2016 article appearing in Time Magazine.

The arguments made against Trump are weak and should not be of matter to anyone unless there is corruption. And a case for that against Trump would be weak at the get-go, unlike corruption in the Biden Administration. In fact, Joe Biden is arguably the most corrupt person to ever sit in the Oval Office. His corruption and lies concerning that corruption are legion.

The Press should have a field day with this. In fact, the Press, for the most part, seems not only uninterested but has actively engaged in a media blackout over myriad scandal. See, e.g., May 13, 2023 article in The Hill.

WHAT A PERSON CAMPAIGNING FOR PUBLIC OFFICE, AND, WHAT IS ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT FOR A PERSON WHO IS CAMPAIGNING FOR THE U.S. PRESIDENCY IS, ONE, HIS OR HER POSITION ON MATTERS OF NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE, TWO, THAT PERSON’S POLICY STATEMENTS (WHAT EACH SEEKS TO ACCOMPLISH IN THE JOB AND, EXPECIALLY, DURING THE FIRST THIRTY DAYS), AND, THREE, THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE PARTY WHO GAINS THE PRESIDENCY ATTEMPTS TO ACHIEVE THOSE CAMPAIGN PROMISES?

IN REGARD TO THREE, DID THE PRESIDENT  ATTEMPT TO ACHIEVE THE CAMPAIGN PROMISES MADE? IF SO, HOW MANY? AND, OF THOSE, DID THE PRESIDENT ACHIEVE HIS POLICY AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OR, ACHIEVE THEM PARTIALLY, OR AT THE VERY LEAST, DID THE PRESIDENT ATTEMPT TO MEET THOSE CAMPAIGN PROMISES? AND DID HE FORBEAR FROM ACHIEVING SOME? IF SO, WHICH OF THEM WERE SIDELINED. AND, WORST OF ALL, DID THE PRESIDENT WORK TO ACHIEVE THE CONTRARY OF ONE OR MORE CAMPAIGN PROMISES? DID HE LIE TO THE PUBLIC AND ACTIVELY WORKED  AGAINST ACHIEVING CAMPAIGN PROMISES OR OTHERWISE DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT POLICY THAT CONTRADICTS THE PROMISES HE MADE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?

WHAT MATTERS OR SHOULD MATTER TO THE VOTER IS WHETHER A PERSON WHOM A VOTER SUPPORTS IS TRUE TO HIS WORD ABOUT THE PROMISES HE MAKES TO THE VOTER TO OBTAIN THAT VOTER’S VOTE.

Integrity is of late in very short supply, especially when discussion turns to politicians. A person campaigning for the U.S. Presidency, or for any public office for that matter, is that the person is true to his word, and to his message, and to the promises he makes.

A voter is called upon to trust the person campaigning for public office. The person campaigning is telling the voter that the voter can rely on what the person campaigning is saying to him, especially in regard to campaign promises and pledges. If a person agrees with the messaging and the promises made, he tends to vote for that person. If the person does not agree with the messaging and the promises, then doesn’t vote for that person, or certainly shouldn’t. If none of the people campaigning for a particular office, are not to the liking of the voter, both equally repugnant to the voter, then he has the right to abstain or to write-in a candidate of one’s choosing.

For all the caustic, vile remarks made about Trump by politicians, the Press, and by ordinary Americans, no one ever claimed—certainly with any proof or conviction—that Trump wasn’t truthful about his campaign promises and pledges.

In fact, in one fair, comprehensive appraisal, the BBC provided the reader with a list of Trump’s major accomplishments on October 15, 2020, based on the promises he made to the voter.

The report shows that Trump made good on the majority of the promises and even on those the BBC labels “No Progress” because the BBC’s explanation following upon the label belies the label. President Trump did make true progress on those. Finally, apropos of those that the BBC labels, “Abandoned,”—there are only three—the label suggests that Trump made a campaign promise that he later reneged on. In two cases that is true, and in one, the BBC is categorically wrong, and, in fact, miscategorized. We provide a synopsis of these forthwith and encourage our readers to peruse the BBC report, themselves. 

On 20 major campaign promises, the British BBC captions them either ‘DELIVERED,” or “PARTIALLY DELIVERED” and proceeds to assert what they are.

In the case of three of the election promises that the BBC designated “PARTIALLY DELIVERED”, Trump’s achievements involved multi-step processes and were therefore complicated endeavors that were subject either to changed events in the world or to a situation where Trump was unable to follow through due to Court action or Congressional action that blocked him.

On four of the election promises, the BBC uses the label, “NO PROGRESS.” But the accompanying explanation on three of them belie the label since Trump made specific progress in achieving those campaign promises, and more could have been accomplished but for the actions of the Courts and/or Congress that created hurdles for Trump.

In fact, no U.S. President in history has suffered such extensive and intensive constraints imposed on him by Congress, the Press, or by many other forces than what President Trump had to contend with for the four years of his tenure as U.S. President.

On one of those seeming, “NO PROGRESS” items, the BBC says, as Democrats and the Press point out, that Trump promised to have Mexico pay for a “Wall” on the Southern Border and that didn’t happen. So what? That’s de minimis. Trump DID build the Wall, thereby doing his best to protect the Nation’s security, and Congress fought him all the while on this, abandoning a wall—allowing building materials to rust, once the Great Pretender, and Grand De-Unifer, Biden took over.

Apart from Congressional obstacles, in some instances, Trump faced outright sabotage from his own people: staff and bureaucrats dutybound to assist the President.

For example, Trump wanted to post 250,000 troops on the Southern Border to help secure it. His own Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper countermanded the order from his Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump. See the article in The Hill.

Trump wanted to send troops into Mexico to hunt cartels if the Mexican Government refused to help. There was no serious work done on this. Trump’s National Security officials balked. See the article in “Business Insider.”

On another promise labeled, “NO PROGRESS,” that had involved the deportation of illegal aliens, the BBC quotes the President as having said during his campaign “that every single undocumented immigrant—of which there are estimated to be more than 11.3 million—‘have to go’.” To say that these illegal aliens “have to go” doesn’t mean that Trump promised that he will deport every one of them. It simply alludes to his desire to remove them. And, in fact, he did deport 267,000 of them.

Trump also sought to rescind Obama’s “DACA” program, taking the matter all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against him. The fault for failing to deliver on his desire to remove millions of illegals, then, does not rest with Trump, it rests with the Court. Trump respected the decision of the Court even if he disagreed with it, something that Biden would not do in the very recent Biden vs. Nebraska (Student Loan Case) that we discuss in Part Three of this essay to be finalized and posted as soon as time permits.

The British Public Broadcasting Corporation placed the label “ABANDONED” on three campaign promises. But the matters involved in those election promises are more nuanced, as explained in the BBC’s explanation of them.

On “Rebuilding Infrastructure,” the BBC quotes Trump as saying, during his victory speech that “The country's infrastructure ‘will become, by the way, second to none, and we will put millions of our people back to work as we rebuild it.” The BBC said that he had “ABANDONED” this. But did he? By way of explanation, the BBC says,

“By March 2018 Congress had allocated $21bn for infrastructure spending - far short of the $1.5tn Mr Trump has called for. The money will be spent on a wide range of upgrades and investments, according to a congressional graphic. In April 2019, Mr Trump and Democratic leaders agreed to spend $2tn on infrastructure, an agreement that later fell apart. This June there were reports the Trump administration had a $1tn plan in the works, but no announcement has been made.” This doesn’t sound at all like Trump abandoned the campaign promise. In fact by the BBC’s own account, Trump sought to make this happen. But Congress controls the purse strings, and Congress would not provide the monies that would make the policy goal a reality. Both Republicans and Democrats are to blame for this. See, e.g., a May 17, 2018 article in The Hill.

Two of the items that the BBC marks “ABANDONED” are, concededly, the result of false bravado, and Trump would have done better not to recite them as campaign promises. One of them had to do with reinstating the Bush program of “torture” on international terrorists. Trump’s comment is, admittedly, ridiculous, and would be contrary to our own laws and the U.S. Constitution if employed, quite apart from international law. And, yes, we are aware that the Bush Administration sought to get around legal issues by creating a new category for Islamic Terrorists, referring to them as “ENEMY COMBATANTS” rather than as “PRISONERS OF WAR” or simply common “CRIMINALS.”

Press Reports, Government papers, papers written by the ABA and others, and academic articles on this are legion. But, the reader should keep in mind that, with this Biden Administration, the DOJ and White House have both said or insinuated that Domestic Terrorists, loosely defined as “WHITE EXTREMISTS,” WHITE SUPREMACISTS,” and even people designated by the Administration and by the legacy Press as “MAGA REPUBLICANS,” or “CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS” and possibly including anyone who vocalizes opposition to the BIDEN REGIME to be the most serious threat posed to “DEMOCRACY” and to the COUNTRY. If so, and if “Torture” were reinstated as a matter of Government policy, what would stop the Biden Administration from using “Torture” on American citizens.

Just consider the outrages committed to date on ordinary Americans who happened to venture into the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, at the behest of people like Ray Epps and others, and suffered from Biden Administration prosecution and persecution as a result. See e.g., recent Washington Examiner article on Ray Epps, posted July 18, 2023, and article that appeared in the New York Post on March 8, 2023.

Trump had also stated that he would request the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to take a fresh look at Hillary Clinton’s ostensible criminal behavior on a multiple of matters. Trump did abandon this. Chalk this one up to simply playing to his base of supporters. It was right to address the egregious conduct of the DOJ and FBI in this matter. But, Trump should simply have said that this matter should be looked into, without committing to doing anything on it that would just rile the Democrats and their mob of NEO-MARXIST CULTISTS, and as Trump said, as reported by the BBC in the article, Trump “had other priorities,”—definitely true, even if Clinton has walked away, free, as have so many other politicians and bureaucrats. Such is the state of our Country.

And, last, the BBC said that Trump pointed out that NATO is obsolete but, on assuming Office he said that NATO isn’t obsolete, but he did point the following out in 2018, as reported by the BBC, “suggesting the US might still leave [NATO] if allies did not acquiesce to his budget demands.” See also December 12, 2019 article in the New York Post.

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SUBPART FIVE OF SEVEN

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SHOULD NOT EVER SUFFER GOVERNMENT TYRANNY; THEY MUST THEREFORE REMAIN VIGILANT, EVER ALERT TO SIGNS OF ITS MANIFESTATION

THIS NATION’S HISTORY, HERITAGE, CULTURE, ETHOS, AND JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ETHIC ARE ALL REFLECTIONS OF ITS CORE VALUES, GROUNDED ON THE TENETS AND PRINCIPLES AND PRECEPTS OF INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE WHOLE OF IT IS IN DANGER OF BEING SWEPT ASIDE, REPLACED WITH THE TENETS, PRINCIPLES AND PRECEPTS OF COLLECTIVISM

The concept of Individualism undergirds the U.S. Constitution. And the essence follows upon recognition of the sanctity and inviolability of one’s Selfhood. Compare that with the concept of Collectivism, which is the political and social philosophical foundation of the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist internationalists. During the period of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, AQ wrote: From a political, social, cultural, juridical standpoint, the coming election is one between adherents of the tenets of Collectivism and the adherents of Individualism. It is about those who support the Bill of Rights—and the one fundamental right that preserves all other rights along with the sovereignty of the American people, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—and those who abhor, absolutely loathe, the very notion of the supremacy of the individual over that of the Collective, and who intend to erase free speech, free association, and the ability of the American citizen TO BE his own person, individual; to see Government amass unlimited power, usurping the natural sovereignty of the people. These radical Marxists and Billionaire Globalists do not intend to leave the American citizen alone, but to subjugate the citizen, reduce the citizen to penury, and to keep the American citizen in a constant state of fear. We see the plans of these Destructors of our Nation playing out today, even before the General election. These Destructors of our Nation are providing the American citizenry a foretaste of what it can expect and what it will experience if the Destructors do secure complete control over the Federal Government. They will never permit the individual TO BE individual. They will never leave the individual alone. They will control all thought and conduct. And to avoid revolt, they will never sanction the citizenry's ownership of and possession of firearms and ammunition. Guns and ammunition will be the first things they will confiscate. They will reconfigure the Country, turning it from one where Government is the servant of the people to one where the people are the servants of Government, a Government to be merged into a new world order. Supporters of Individualism are fighting back against this push of Destructors both here and abroad who intend to wrest the Nation from the citizenry. Supporters of Individualism wish to preserve our Nation as the founders presented it to us, as set forth in the Nation’s blueprint, the U.S. Constitution; as the framers of our Constitution intended for our Nation to remain: a free Constitutional Republic, in which the people, themselves, are sovereign. Supporters of Collectivism want to eradicate our Nation’s history, culture, and core Christian values. They intend to create an entirely new and alien economic, political, social, cultural, and juridical construct, grounded on an expansive, powerful, centralized governmental authority through which the lives, thoughts, and actions of individuals are strictly controlled and modulated, according to a uniform standard, permitting no deviancy in thought, action, or conduct. Nothing better exemplifies the vast irreconcilable differences between those who adhere to the tenets of Individualism and those who adhere to the tenets of Collectivism than in the manner each perceives the Bill of Rights. Individualists perceive the Nation’s Bill of Rights as codifications of natural law bequeathed to man by the Divine Creator.” See the AQ article posted on July 9, 2020. Also see the AQ article title, “In The Throes of America’s Modern Day Civil War.” Peruse our Blog for many other articles on this subject.

The Constitution together with the Nation’s Declaration of Independence are assertions of the Framers’ strongly held belief that the sole purpose of Government is to serve the interests of the people. And if Tyranny arises within it, then it is the moral right—and, under the Constitution, the legal duty and responsibility—of the American people to take the strongest action against it, to restore and secure their sole and ultimate sovereignty and authority over it.

This may also necessitate the people forcibly compelling a recalcitrant Government to yield—when it demonstrates a disinclination to do so or outright repugnance to do so—to the fundamental, unalienable, unmodifiable, immutable eternal, and absolute Natural Law Rights of the people as the Divine Creator bestowed those Natural Law Rights on them, which therefore preexist in them, mandating the Government refrain from imposing any constraints over or curtailing the exercise of them.

DOES A COUNTRY NEED A STRONG CENTRAL GOVERNMENT?

This was the most urgent focus of the Founders when hashing out a Constitution for the Nation, for it brought into question whether the Nation needed a Constitution at all if the primary purpose of a Constitution was to establish THE FACT of a powerful CENTRAL GOVERNMENT, apart from the States.

In that debate there were two camps: The FEDERALISTS and the ANTIFEDERALISTS. See, e.g., the article from the Gilder Lehrman Institute.

“The differences between the Federalists and the Antifederalists are vast and at times complex. Federalists’ beliefs could be better described as nationalist. The Federalists were instrumental in 1787 in shaping the new US Constitution, which strengthened the national government at the expense, according to the Antifederalists, of the states and the people. The Antifederalists opposed the ratification of the US Constitution, but they never organized efficiently across all thirteen states, and so had to fight the ratification at every state convention. Their great success was in forcing the first Congress under the new Constitution to establish a bill of rights to ensure the liberties that the Antifederalists felt the Constitution violated.”

See, also the article in the “National Archives” on this:

“The Federalists, who believed that a strong central government was necessary to face the nation’s challenges, needed to convert at least three states. The Anti-Federalists fought hard against the Constitution because it created a powerful central government that reminded them of the one they had just overthrown, and it lacked a bill of rights.”

The Federalists won the day on this. But they, no less than the Anti-Federalists, realized the danger inherent in a strong centralized Government for the Nation because all Government, regardless of the nature of it, tends to tyranny. That is an inherent dilemma inherent in the existence of a strong centralized Government.

The Antifederalists concluded there is no way out of the dilemma, so they felt that the best way to deal with the problem is avoiding entangling one in it at the outset since it would be extraordinarily difficult, and probably impossible, to extricate oneself from the negative effects of Government devolving into Tyranny, short of war, and that next war would involve Americans fighting other Americans.

One of the great Founders of the Republic and Framers of the Constitution was James Madison. He said this:

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In forming a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” (James Madison, The Federalist No. 51” cited in the CATO Institute).

This passage might suggest that Madison was an Antifederalist. He wasn’t. He was a Federalist. He felt a strong central Government for the United States was necessary. He therefore felt the dilemma of Tyranny in Government could not be avoided but must, then, be dealt with.

The Federalists began with this assumption: All Nations require a strong Central Government for self-preservation.

But self-preservation from whom, exactly. If from abroad, that is understandable. For, with the American Revolution of 1776 foremost in their mind, and with their knowledge of both Ancient History and European History, in their time, they understood that the most efficient and effective way for a Nation to deal with outside threats was through a strong Central Government and a STANDING ARMY.” Protecting the Nation, then, for the Federalists, also meant protecting the citizens of the Nation from Outside Threat.

Okay, fine. And now suppose the threat to the Nation and its people comes from the Government itself? This is the dilemma, and it isn’t hypothetical. Americans now living in this 21st Century see TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT COME TO THE LAND, firsthand, OR IS IT? Many Americans—perhaps even most Americans—would say that this present Government, especially with the present Biden Administration is problematic, but would balk at saying the Nation’s Central Government, i.e., the Nation’s “FEDERAL” GOVERNMENT HAS DESCENDED into Tyranny even if there is a threat the Government “MAY” DESCEND into Tyranny. And that, in any case, the best way to deal with THAT EVENTUALITY is through the ELECTORAL PROCESS.

But, what if the Nation’s “ELECTORAL PROCESS” is compromised? What if the “ELECTORAL PROCESS” was compromised during the 2020 General Election? If so then, the person sitting in the OVAL OFFICE” isn’t really the LEGITIMATE U.S. PRESIDENT” at all. That would mean the Nation has suffered a coup d’état. And that fact entails the disturbing conclusion that TYRANNY HAS DESCENDED on America. For, if one BRANCH of GOVERNMENT is FALSE, the entirety of Government is FALSE.

Of course there can be no debate over the issue of the integrity of the 2020 Electoral Process. Both the Federal Government, and the Legacy Press have placed a damper on that. And what might “WE THE PEOPLE” expect of a fair and aboveboard General Election in 2024, if the same mechanisms and procedures in place in 2020, are utilized once again in 2024?

 Once the Antifederalists were forced to capitulate to the Federalists on the question of drafting a Constitution for the Nation which meant, most importantly, creating FOR THE NATION, a central “FEDERAL GOVERNMENT,  the salient issue for the Framers of the CONSTITUTION, and one that underwent substantial debate and iterations, focused on the precise nature of this CENTRALIZED “FEDERAL GOVERNMENT” for the NASCENT Nation with the aim of GRANTING TO THIS GOVERNMENT specific, i.e., limited, although significant powers and authority. Carefully, carving out for the Government a set of powers and authority but describing and explicating the nature of them, demarcating their parameters, and doling them out among three CO-EQUAL BRANCHES, was all expected to FORESTALL, or INHIBIT, or “CHECK,” but LIKELY NOT  PREVENT the onset of TYRANNY.

THAT at least was the ANTIFDERALISTS CONSTANT CONCERN. Hence, after “OFFICIAL” ratification of the ARTICLES of the U.S. CONSTITUTION, on June 21, 1788.

The Antifederalists insisted on inclusion of a set of AMENDMENTS to it, that would serve better or as a final FAILSAFE to prevent TYRANNY through subsequent ratification of a BILL OF RIGHTS for the AMERICAN PEOPLE. And the Bill of Rights was “OFFICIALLY” Ratified on December 15, 1791.

James Madison and Thomas Jefferson engaged in serious debates on the matter. See “Teaching American History.”

But, from what is in evidence today, the debates would have been unnecessary. Whatever reservations that Madison might have had over a formal, written “Bill of Rights” at the time, would be moot if he could but witness those forces at work today attempting to destroy the fundamental natural law rights of the American people. The only thing that constrains these forces that crush is the fact that our Bill of Rights is explicit, formally codified and incorporated into the U.S. Constitution.

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SUBPART SIX OF SEVEN

IF THE FOUNDERS OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC COULD VIEW THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES TODAY, WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY WOULD MAKE OF IT AND THE WHETHER OR NOT TYRANNY HAS COME TO AMERICA TODAY”

IF FOUNDERS CONCLUDED THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS DESCENDED INTO TYRANNY WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE THE FOUNDERS WOULD SUGGEST THE PEOPLE DO ABOUT IT? ANYTHING AND, IF SO WHAT? NOTHING? AND THEN WHAT?

The Framers of the Constitution of a fledging Nation were well aware of a paradoxical concern in creating such a Government: the rise of Tyranny. What would they think of the monstrous creature they had spawned that was supposed to protect the Nation and its People and not has turned on the Nation and its People? They must have known the Federal Government—a Powerful Entity—is by definition a FORMIDABLE BEAST, as it was clearly expected to be. A perusal of Articles 1 through 3 makes the point. But, what if that FORMIDABLE BEAST turns its back on foes outside the Nation and, facing the Nation and its People, turns against the Nation and its People, using the mighty powers it has to destroy the Republic and to subjugate the people? It has then become a MONSTER, wielding MONSTROUS POWERS WIELDED AGAINST THE PEOPLE.

The Founders of the Republic, having eliminated one Tyranny, did not wish to see a new one take its place and one, all the worse, because they themselves had a hand in seeding it, albeit unintentionally. Recognizing the possibility of this, they created a Government of three Co-Equal Branches—each with substantial but carefully defined, limited powers. NO one organ or “BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT” would be lawfully permitted to exercise all the powers of this new central “FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.”

The purpose of each BRANCH would be explicated and demarcated in the Constitution, principally, in the FIRST THREE ARTICLES. And to each BRANCH, would be allotted specific powers and authority.

To make clear the powers and authority of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT were not to consist of any but those that the Articles of the CONSTITUTION provide for, a BILL OF RIGHTS was thereafter ratified by the States and then incorporated into the CONSTITUTION to make certain the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WOULD NOT ASSUME FURTHER POWERS AND AUTHORITY FOR ITSELF, USURPING THE POWERS AND AUTHORITY RESERVED TO THE STATES AND TO THE PEOPLE AND CURTAILING THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE.

The Doctrine of Federalism, proclaimed in the TENTH AMENDMENT of the BILL OF RIGHTS, establishing the RELATIONSHIP between FEDERAL GOVERNMENT and STATES said expressly that——

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Other provisions of the Bill of Rights, the FIRST NINE AMENDMENTS, and those held by the people in the TENTH, or JOINTLY held by the People and the States, are construed as clear and categorical CODIFICATIONS OF “NATURAL LAW RIGHTS” or, in a few instances, imply CODIFICATIONS of NATURAL LAW RIGHTS preexisting in man, and, so, fall outside the lawful power of Government to deny, forbid, ignore, dismiss, modify, or abrogate.

The distinction between the Bill of Rights and the Articles is stark. The BILL OF RIGHTS are EXPLICIT GOD-GIVEN LAW, NOT MANMADE.

The ARTICLES are MANDMADE CONSTRUCTS and those subsequent Amendments to the Constitution that are PROCEDURAL MECHANISMS are MANMADE LAW or “POSITIVE” MANMADE RIGHTS, (see discussion infra).

THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND. A FREE REPUBLIC EXISTS DUE TO IT, AND WILL CEASE TO EXIST IF IT IS ERASED OR ELSE, NOT ADHERED TO.

The PREAMBLE of the CONSTITUTION DECLARES THE PURPOSE OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, FROM WHOM IT DERIVES, namely, “WE THE PEOPLE” (AND NOT GOVERNMENT), THE RULES UPON WHICH THE CENTRAL “FEDERAL” GOVERNMENT OPERATES, and THE NATURE OF AND MANNER OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND THE STAES AND THE PEOPLE.

Importantly, the PREAMBLE of the CONSTITUTION makes categorically clear that it is the PEOPLE that have created the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT and are therefore SOLE SOVEREIGN over it. Since the People alone have created the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, it is THEY and THEY ALONE, who may LAWFULLY DISSOLVE IT.

Of the BILL OF RIGHTS itself—AMENDMENTS ONE THROUGH EIGHT CONSIST OF A SPECIFIC SET OF ENUMERATED RIGHTS, and ONE, the NINTH, is a statement of UNENUMERATED RIGHTS of MAN.

The TENTH AMENDMENT is a STATEMENT of RESIDUAL, UNENUMERATED RIGHTS HELD BY THE STATE which also serve an explicit description of the relationship between the STATES and the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, which is a reference to the DOCTRINE OF FEDERALISM, alluding to the fact that STATES reserve to themselves through the powers they wield, SOVEREIGNTY that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT must respect. Since “THE PEOPLE” are also mentioned in the TENTH AMENDMENT, this must be given effect. THE PEOPLE HOLD POWERS TOO. But the use of the term, ‘OR’ in the TENTH AMENDMENT is not clear: IS IT AN “INCLUSIVE” or an “EXCLUSIVE” ‘OR’?

If, ‘INCLUSIVE,’ this means that the PEOPLE hold the same POWERS as the State which may be a statement of PARALLEL POWERS, or a single set of POWERS “JOINTLY” held. And to the extent that THE BILL OF RIGHTS is an expression of “GOD BESTOWED” NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, this means such POWERS that THE PEOPLE have may be expressed as RIGHTS. This is, admittedly, a novel theory. But, it helps resolve a problem remaining between the STATES and PEOPLE, especially apropos of the STATES’ use of their POLICE POWERS to curb the PEOPLES’ EXERCISE OF THEIR RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE.

Several States, such as New York claim a right to interfere with the right of the people to keep and bear arms even after the rulings in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.

The McDonald case relied extensively on the DUE PROCESS CLAUSE of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT to bring the exercise of the SECOND AMENDMENT into the ORBIT of mandatory State recognition of the RIGHT. But States, like New York, New Jersey, California, et. al., still balk.

There is an argument to be made though, whether States are required to adhere to the SECOND AMENDMENT through the PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES CLAUSE of the “FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT,” apart from the DUE PROCESS CLAUSE. An appeal may also be made to the PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES CLAUSE that appears in ARTICLE IV, SECTION 2 of the U.S.  CONSTITUTION, which obviously predates inclusion of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT to the U.S. CONSTITUTION.

There is substantial room for debate on this.

ON THE NATURE OF “NEGATIVE” NATURAL LAW RIGHTS AND “POSITIVE” NATURAL LAW RIGHTS”

The FIRST NINE AMENDMENTS OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS ARE REFERRED TO, AND ARE TO BE UNDERSTOOD BOTH LOGICALLY AND LEGALLY, AS “NEGATIVE RIGHTS” meaning that such rights accruing to MAN by DIVINE RIGHT and are not to be intruded upon by any other MAN or GOVERNMENT. See article posted in the Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics on this.

“POSITIVE RIGHTS” unlike “NEGATIVE RIGHTS” are essentially MAN-MADE, NOT NATURAL LAW RIGHTS—inclusions that help secure one’s well-being: gainful employment, a good education, housing, medical care, food, are examples.

“NEGATIVE NATURAL LAW RIGHTS” emanate from God, not from MAN, nor from GOVERNMENT. These RIGHTS operate as prohibitions on GOVERNMENT and on OTHER MEN. They are ETERNAL and they are ABSOLUTE.

They are basically laws of NONINTERFERENCE. It is through these NEGATIVE “NATURAL” LAWS that the SANCTITY and INVIOLABILITY of the INDIVIDUAL is understood and realized.

The Federal Government under the Biden Administration and many of the States have waged war on exercise of the Bill of Rights. The FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH, the RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO THE FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION, the RIGHT TO BE FREE FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES, AND SEIZURES PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, AND THE RIGHT ARE SEVERELY CONSTRAINED, AND RE: FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES, THE GOVERNMENT HAS INTRUDED INTO THIS AREA, ALONG WITH PRIVATE BUSINESS THAT OFTEN OPERATES AS A PROXY FOR GOVERNMENT THAT EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT NOW NO LONGER EXISTS. IT’S BEEN  ESSENTIALLY EXTINGUISHED, AND MUCH OF THE PUBLIC DOESN’T EVEN KNOW THIS.

Erosion of NATURAL LAW RIGHTS is one salient sign of TYRANNY. The problem arises what to do about it. If Americans are expected to deal with it through the Electoral Process alone, and, if powerful forces seeking to harm this Country—both those in Government, and those outside it—have effectively compromised the Electoral System, what then might Americans do? Reliance on the Second Amendment is a drastic measure, and while armed resistance by one hundred million Americans with assistance from parts of the military might effectively topple a Tyrannical Government, much tragedy and bloodshed would be the result. But there are other issues before one even gets to the utility of armed resistance.

Below in BULLET POINTS, we simply set down a few of them, to be dealt with at a later time, although AQ has already written extensively on TYRANNY. But consider:

•  WHAT TRULY ARE THE SIGNS OF TYRANNY?

•  HOW FAR DOES TYRANNY HAVE TO PROCEED BEFORE THE PUBLIC MAY MORALLY, IF NOT LAWFULLY, TAKE UP ARMS AGAINST IT?

• A TYRANT NEVER ADMITS TO HIS TYRANNY AND MANY AMERICANS, DUPED THOUGH THEY BE, WILLINGLY ACCEPT IT, OR AVIDLY ENDORSE IT. SO IF A SIZABLE PORTION OF THE POLITY WILLINGLY ACCEPTS TYRANNY, IS IT MORAL OR IMMORAL (WHETHER COWARDLY OR NOT) FOR THE REST OF THE POLITY TO ACCEPT TYRANNY AND SURRENDER ALL  EXERCISE OF THEIR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS TO AVOID PERSECUTION, PROSECUTION, DETENTION, AND, PERHAPS EVEN, DEATH?

• ARE “LEGAL” CHANNELS TO OVERTHROW TYRANNY, I.E., THE ELECTORAL PROCESS THE ONLY TENABLE CHANNEL TO REMOVE A TYRANT? AND, WHAT IF THAT ELECTORAL PROCESS IS COMPROMISED?

•  IF THE MAJORITY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SEE TYRANNY IN THEIR MIDST AND WISH TO RESIST TYRANNY, DO THEY HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT TO DO SO, APART FROM THE MORAL DUTY? AND, IF SO, WHAT ARE THE LEGAL GROUNDS FOR TAKING UP ARMS AGAINST A TYRANNICAL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?

The first and last bullet points are the most perplexing and vexing. And we will deal with them at length in a future essay. We are focused here primarily on the legal and moral and historical bases for resisting tyranny, and this necessarily raises important Bill of Rights issues—especially Second Amendment right to bear arms issues, and First Amendment Right of speech/dissent and freedom of (political-expressive) association, entailed by the freedom of speech clause.

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SUBPART SEVEN OF SEVEN

THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP TO THE PRESIDENCY IN 2016 SERVES AS AN EXPRESSION OF AMERICANS’ REASSERTION OF THEIR RIGHT TO BE LEFT ALONE—A REASSERTION OF MAN’S FAITH IN THE PROMISES GAINED FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776.

AMERICANS SAW IN RECENT PRESIDENCIES A DISTURBING  DRIFT TOWARD TYRANNY, AS GOVERNMENT BEGAN TO INTRUDE ON THEIR NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, AND MANY AMERICANS TURNED AWAY IN DISGUST.

Several writers today, having seen the damage done to the Country through the Presidencies of Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama.

These writers recognized in the Presidency of Donald Trump, a return to normalcy—a return to the core values of this Country.

One writer, Dick Morris, writes, in “The Return,” that “Donald J. Trump has been one of America’s great presidents. Not just good, but great. Part of his greatness is reflected in his immense achievements. But the greater tribute is how he defied the economic establishment by getting Congress to pass a massive tax cut, skillfully crafted to aim at the middle class, the working poor, and small businesses. This establishment said cut taxes on the wealthy, and it will trickle-down doesn’t always happens. So he made sure his tax cuts were the first in recent history to target the lower middle class—the working class. Trump sighed a law giving a tax credit of $2,000 per child, and changed tax rates so the lower-income people did not even have to file returns.”

Does this sound like a man who has an uncaring attitude toward American workers and the plight of low income families? Trump represents American workers like Democrats once did or purported to do, but no longer care about decades later.

Bill Clinton knew that, in the coming General Election of 2016, Hillary should not take the vote of workers for granted. She did. She apparently thought the Union Head, like AFL-CIO Richard Trumpka would be able to get Union workers to toe the line and vote for Clinton over Trump. She was wrong.  They didn’t.

To this day the Democrat Party Big shots can’t wrap their head around the idea that most Americans are individuals, first, not anonymous, conformist, amorphous, unthinking blobs. Democrats can’t see this because, at an extremely deep level of the psyche below clear conscious awareness rests the foundational premises of their ideology grounded on Collectivism.

The problem for Democrats is that the foundation of American culture, history, heritage, and National Ethos, is grounded on the tenets and precepts of Individualism and those tenets and precepts are reflected in the Constitution itself, through the first Three Articles that recognizes the threat of a large, powerful Federal Government. Thus, the framers constructed a Government of limited, demarcated powers, distributed among three co-equal Branches. Then, there is the Bill of Rights, unlike any existent in the world for the fundamental rights and liberties set forth in the Bill of Rights are, unlike the Articles, not the man-made constructs, but codifications of Natural Law, preexistent in Man, and bestowed upon Him by the Divine Creator.

None of this is accepted by the Democrat Party leadership nor by many rank and file Democrats, whether they see themselves as wealthy, sophisticated, fashionable, liberal “elites” or Neo-Marxist Cultist Academicians, or simply knee-jerk Democrat Party members, whatever their race or socio-economic standing. What many of these people seek is the creation of a new America, over-throwing the ideals of the American Revolution of 1776 but for others, who simply vote the Democrat Party ticket because that is something they have always done, and that is something  their parents and grandparents and relatives have always done, but without realizing that that Democrat Party of today has transformed into something manifestly different from the Party of Roosevelt, Kennedy, Carter, and even Bill Clinton. But the Legacy Press and the Propagandistic organs of broadcast and cable news, and social media, and “influencers” on Tick Tock, and the popular sports figure heroes of the masses and the groupies who follow singers, and actors all create a mythology that hides a sinister agenda. And, now that the Neoliberal Globalist puppet masters have in Office puppets who do their bidding, unhesitatingly, without complaint, legitimizing the power of High Office even though they do not make policy but simply implement the policy made for them, it is not necessary for these powerful interests to hold Office themselves.

That was very much different when Trump came into Office. He was a force to be reckoned with. By nature he isn’t the sort of person to take orders from the Globalists.

As the writer says, in “The Return,” “The establishment wanted free trace, just like Adam Smith prescribed. But Trump insisted that we use our power to stop China from cheating, and force it to compete on a level playing field. The establishment cautioned him not to mess with China as we owe them so much money, they could pull the plug on us anytime they want to. But, as a businessman, Trump understood that it is we who have th upper hand because we buy three times as much from China as they buy from us.

The establishment wanted free flow of labor and open borders. But Trump demanded that we keep illegal immigrants out. He said that if we have millions of people willing to work for very little, there’s no way the middle class can move up in wages.” Curiously, the Communist Bernie Sanders said the same thing, back in 2019 (see the article in Politico) before it became unfashionable to buck the Democrats’ changing position that an “Open Borders” policy is good for the Country, although they don’t wish to acknowledge the obvious that the Southern Border of the Country is, in fact, open.

The Conservative Economist, Milton Friedman, agreed with Trump’s assessment on Open Borders and with the same assessment that Sanders came to—a Libertarian concept out of sync with Communism but at least Sanders at the time did wish implement policies that would aid the low or middle income American wage earner.

The Heritage Foundation pointed out, back in 2007 that,

“A decade ago, Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman admonished the Wall Street Journal for its idée fixe on open-border immigration policy. ‘It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state,’ he warned. This remark adds insight to the current debate over immigration in the U.S. Senate.

To be fully understood, Friedman's comment should be viewed as applying not merely to means-tested welfare programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and public housing, but to the entire redistributive transfer state. In the ‘transfer state,’ government taxes the upper middle class and shifts some $1.5 trillion in economic resources to lower-income groups through a vast variety benefits and subsidies. Across the globe, this sort of economic redistribution is the largest, if not the predominant, function of government in advanced societies.

The transfer state redistributes funds from those with high-skill and high-income levels to those with lower skill levels. Low-skill immigrants become natural recipients in this process. On average, low-skill immigrant families receive $30,160 per year in government benefits and services while paying $10,573 in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of $19,587 that has to be paid by higher-income taxpayers.

There is a rough one-to-one fiscal balance between low-skill immigrant families and upper-middle-class families. It takes the entire net tax payments (taxes paid minus benefits received) of one college-educated family to pay for the net benefits received by one low-skill immigrant family. Even Julian Simon, the godfather of open-border advocates, acknowledged that imposing such a burden on taxpayers was unreasonable, stating, ‘immigrants who would be a direct economic burden upon citizens through the public coffers should have no claim to be admitted’ into the nation.

There is also a political dimension to the transfer state. Elections in modern societies are, to a considerable degree, referenda on the magnitude of future income redistribution. An immigration policy which grants citizenship to vast numbers of low-skill, low-income immigrants not only creates new beneficiaries for government transfers, but new voters likely to support even greater transfers in the future.”

Trump was obviously aware of all of this. He sought to find common ground between helping lower income wage earners and also upper-middle Class Americans. In other words, as U.S. President he recognized that implementing policies that benefitted most of the citizenry would be the best way to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

The Democrats, including the radical NEO-MARXIST CULTISTS AND the fabulously wealthy NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISTS didn’t care about any of this. Application of their policies provided the worst of both worlds. Kept lower income workers in a constant state of despair, and possibly throwing them and many lower middle class workers into abject poverty, while adding yet more wealth to the most wealthy individuals in the world. Whether the Neo-Marxists could understand any of this is debatable. They were and are so wrapped up in bizarre dogmas they take to be reality that the Globalists accede to their games, and both go their merry way to destabilize and destroy the United States, each gaining something from destruction of the U.S. Constitution and the dismantling of the world’s only truly free Constitutional Republic.

Dick Morris writes, “The civil rights movement (more specifically, the Black Lives Matter movement) said that minorities have been discriminated against for decades and that we must abandon the idea of equality. Instead, they claimed that we must begin discriminating against white people. They called it ‘equity.; Trump stood firm for colorblind government and cut the ground out form under them by ushering in policies that led to Black household income rising to historic heights.”

Myth creation is a major component of the Neo-Marxist plan to reeducate “WHITE” and “BLACK” America. It is not an easy thing to do, involving a lot of work to create, fabricate, manufacture new dogmas and to sell them to the public. That requires assistance from Government, from the business, social media, the legacy Press, academia and education. It involves marginalizing core traditional institutions like the family and traditional Religion, love of one’s Country. It involves denigrating the cherishing of our Nation’s fundamental, unalienable, eternal Rights and Liberties bestowed onto man by the Loving, omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect and omni-benevolent Divine Creator. It involves besmirching the lofty works and texts of Founders of our Republic and being respectful of their memories. It involves the desecration of and dismantling of our sacred artifacts, including statues, monuments, and art work, and our historical relics, including flags, medals, uniforms—every conceivable referent to our history—to erase the whole of it.

In his work, “Final Battle,” the author David Horowitz alludes to the Neo-Marxists’ reprehensible resurrection of race hatred; the conjuring of armies of White Supremacist hordes—Ghosts from the Antebellum South—to support their new mythology, comprising batteries of Dogmas and vocabularies to thrust on the American public and on the school children, all with the help of the Press, Academia, and NGOs, and not least of all by word of mouth. This is all aided by the marvels of technology that allow for rapid  dissemination of content on an industrial scale throughout the Country, via television, radio, and smartphone. Such is the power of the World-wide Web.

Horowitz writes, “Because America in 2021 was such a racially integrated and egalitarian society, and because racists were such an obviously marginal group, the left had developed an entire Aesopian vocabulary to obscure the fact that racism was already confied to a marginalized and insignificant social fringe. Terms such as unconscious bias, implicit bias, and structural racism, which for cecades were mainly the purview of academia, came to the fore, deployed by the left to obscure the rarity of visible racist in the body politic and also to absolve supposed victim groups of responsibility for their circumstances.”

Donald Trump had to contend with this insidious, caustic, dangerous nonsense during his Presidency. It exploded on America when the Great Pretender, Joe Biden, took over the Executive Suite on January 20, 2021.

Horowitz continues, “The importance of these subterfuges became apparent as the Biden administration unveiled a new term to describe the central theme of its policy agenda: equity [a point recognized by Dick Morris, too, see quote infra]. This buzzword quickly emerged as the guiding principle of the new administration’s social and economic policies.”

In his book, “Justice for All,” the author Greg Kelly, son of celebrated NYPD Police Commissioner, Ray Kelly, also mentions the word, ‘equity’ and devotes an entire section of his book to it. He writes, ‘Equity’ is a funny word, as the wokesters use it. It sounds a lot like equality but actually means the exact opposite. When we talk about equality in society, we usually mean that everyone should get an equal shot—equality of opportunity. Everyone should have access to education and training. Everyone should get treated fairly when it comes to getting a bank loan or getting a job. That’s why we instituted antidiscrimination laws almost six decades ago, in order to ensure that people could get equyal treatment before the law.” The author continues,

“Equity is something else. Equity means taking into consideration the fact that not everybody gets an equal shot at opportunity for a variety of reasons. . . .

According to Ibram X. Kendi, ‘Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals.’ Equity means equality of outcome, in other words.” . . . Equity is meant to eliminate ‘disparate impact,’ which is the tendency of different groups to do different things and excel in different ways. Economist Thomas Sowell has analyzed the ways in which different ethnic or national groups all over the world have, for a variety of reasons pertaining to culture, family, caste, or history gravitated toward specific trades or professions. This ‘sorting’ is occasionally the result of discrimination but occurs naturally in free societies. . . .

In any case, all discussion of disparate impact, equity, structural racism, etc., is pointed toward one main idea: that America is a white supremacist authoritarian state, and white Americans are in a stupor of denial about it because the current state of affairs protects their ill-gotten riches. According to the 1619 Project, among many other leftist misreadings of history, all of the wealth of America was generated by the unpaid labor of black slaves which demands repayment in the form of reparations. White people owe black people trillions upon trillions of dollars—essentially everything.”

Note, the fiction of this 1619 project is actively and avidly promoted by the New York Times. This speaks volumes of the newspaper’s complicity in destroying this Nation. In an attempt to justify this monstrous action, the editors, curiously don’t try to hide the fact of their deception, but actually engage in relishing it. The NY Times writes: “The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country. [“The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” (from the NY Times)]

The Biden Administration having having sympathetic agencies such as the New York Times to assist it, crafted its propaganda campaign targeting the American people, and it wasted no time in implementing this destructive, psychic damaging meme on the Nation.

In the Horowitz book, “Final Battle,” the author continues,

“On Inauguration Day, Biden issued an executive order outlining his agenda titled ‘On Advancing Racial Equity,’ which read, in part: “Equal opportunity is the bedrock of American democracy, and diversity is one of our country’s greatest strengths. But for too many, the American Dream remains out of reach. Entrenched disparities in our laws and public policies, and in our public and private institutions, have often denied that equal opportunity to individuals and communities.”

“But, if there were actually ‘entrenched disparities’ in American laws and policies resulting in discrimination against particular races and genders, they would be illegal. This made it clear from the outset that the new administration had no intention of dealing with actual denials of equal opportunity. It would instead implement a socialist vision in which government would redistribute income and privilege on the basis of gender and race. Mere disparities would become the unexamined rationale for this unconstitutional, unlawful, and anti-American redistribution of wealth by the Biden administration.

Biden’s Executive Order continued: ‘Our country faces converging economic, health, and climate crises that have exposed and exacerbated inequities, while a historic movement for justice has highlighted the unbearable human costs of systemic racism. . . .’ This was a veiled reference to the Black Lives Matter Movement, a Marxist organization that was officially endorsed by the Democrat Party and which had allegedly helped raise $60 million for Biden’s presidential campaign but produced no evidence for its claims of systemic racism and white supremacy and showed no interest in justice if the injustices were committed by blacks.”

The Marxist group Black Lives Matter plays a central role in the development of and implementation of mythology of endemic, systemic racism. And reference to the group crops up with frequency in “Final Battle.” “The Democrat Party had already enthusiastically endorsed Black Lives Matter and its many fictional slanders, despite or perhaps because of its leaders’ dedication to convicted domestic terrorists such as cop-killer Assata Shakur. Biden campaign staffers even donated money to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, an organization that funded bail for the rioters charged with serious crimes. . . .

On the very day Joe Biden assumed the office of the presidency, he described the inspiration for one of his first Executive Orders as ‘a historic movement for justice [which] has highlighted the unbearable human costs of systemic racism,’ a clear allusion to Black Lives Matter. A more accurate description of what Black Lives Matter had done was to highlight and exploit the lives of the new anti-white, anti-cop hatred that was driving the lft’s violent assaults on American cities.”

Clearly, “Black Lives Matter” has a use beyond its rhetoric. It provides a vehicle through which the Biden Administration can engage in societal terrorism by using this organization as cover for what would otherwise be  evident unlawful conduct engaged in by the Government itself. That would mean the Biden Administration, and by extension, the entire Executive Branch of Government is a renegade syndicate, consciously, contemptuously, and  systematically, engaging in terrorism against society, the Constitution, and the American people in furtherance of a heinous agenda. Some Americans are onboard with all of this. Many other Americans are oblivious to this, refusing to see the truth that exists before their very eyes—so blinded are they by a rabid hatred of Trump. They refuse to countenance the fact that Trump had actually improved their personal lives and secured the Nation from grievous harm caused by the very agents and agencies they think are their friends.

And how did this abhorrence of Trump come to be? There is no real secret to this.

It is the result of four years of incessant, vicious, vile, erroneous messaging, a wall of noxious noise, simplistic sloganeering, reiterated endlessly, buffeting their psyches relentlessly, and delivered to them, mainly through Cable and Broadcast “news” organizations including such old stalwarts as ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and PBS—all working in tandem with and at the behest of the DNC and the Biden Administration, likely with assistance of and guidance from wealthy, powerful, well-organized, shadowy, sinister individuals and groups, operating both here in the U.S. and overseas.

We continue our discussion of the dire threat facing our Country in PART TWO of this MULTISERIES on the DIRE THREAT TO THE CONTINUATION OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, INDEPENDENT, SOVEREIGN NATION STATE, AND A FREE AND SOVEREIGN CITIZENRY.

This Nation is at a flexion point. The Country can go either way:

PRESERVE A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC BORN OF THE FOUNDERS’ VICTORY IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776, OR LOSE EVERYTHING AS A RESULT OF THE UNSTATED BUT VERY REAL NEO-MARXIST/NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST COUNTERREVOLUTION THAT MALEVOLENT, MALIGNANT FORCES HAVE ACTUALLY UNDERTAKEN SINCE THE BIRTH OF OUR NATION, HAVE PROCEEDED INEXORABLY IN THE DECADES AND CENTURIES SINCE AND WHICH MAY ARGUABLY BE SAID TO HAVE SUCCEEDED IF “DEMOCRATS”  RETAIN CONTROL OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH IN 2024.

Democrats and their wealthy secretive benefactors here and abroad have shown no sense of moderating their wild radical policies at least for the next several months preceding the 2024 election.

This suggests that they feel they have sufficient control over the levers of power of Government, over “Big Tech”, “Big Business”, the Press, the Electoral System, the populace, and other major institutions, that they feel secure in their belief they will emerge victorious after the 2024 General Election.

But, Patriotic Americans inured to the propaganda permeating all around them, voted Trump into Office once, and he began to turn matters around, for the benefit of the Country, revitalizing the economy, securing our physical borders, providing hope for the future of our Nation to millions of Americans.

The Neoliberal Globalists were furious, but despite all the monies and organization effort to remove Trump from Office, they could not do so. Such was the energy and fortitude of the man. In a last ditch effort, these malevolent, malignant forces took control over the electoral process and engineered a coup, sitting a weak, corrupt, demented fool in the White House—someone who would willingly act the part of messenger boy without moral compunction, likely unaware of what he was even doing or saying. And, in less than three years, the forces that crush civilizations had reverted the Nation back to the place it had been when Obama had left Office.

Slowly, the forces that crush have secured a noose around the neck of an independent, sovereign Nation-State and free Constitutional Republic, and the Hangman has slowly, inexorably tightened that noose, strangling the life out of the Nation.

Americans can still turn the nightmare around. We can rid ourselves of the diseased corruption of the Administration presently holding Office. This requires first and foremost that Patriotic Americans support the most recent attacks on Trump—this time through the filing of a multitude of lawsuits, Federal and State.

The prosecution and persecution of this man continues unabated. This means that the forces that crush are very, very worried. Let them remain fearful.

We must all support Trump and we must encourage the RNC and the candidates for the Republican Party Nomination to switch gears and get behind Trump. Trump is a force to be reckoned with. We, Americans can still save our Nation. And the way to do so is to support Trump’s candidacy for the Republican Party Nomination so that he can serve the second Term that was wrongly denied him and secure for our Country and for all Americans the promise of the Founders of our Republic: continuation of the only truly Free Constitutional Republic on Earth. Trump is the only person that can do this for us. He is the only one with the fortitude to stand up to those powerful ruthless elements that seek to destroy our Great Nation and to reduce the average American to servitude and misery. Trump has proved his mettle to fight for Americans. Let us not lose faith in him.

__________________________

OVERCOMING BRUEN TO SAVE THE SULLIVAN ACT: NEW YORK GOVERNOR HOCHUL’S GAMBIT

POST-BRUEN—WHAT IT ALL MEANS AND WHAT ITS IMPACT IS BOTH FOR THOSE WHO SUPPORT AND CHERISH THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AND THOSE WHO DO NOT; THOSE WHO SEEK TO UNDERMINE AND EVENTUALLY DESTROY THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT AND THOSE WHO SEEK TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN THE RIGHT BOTH FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

MULTI SERIES

SUBPART ONE OF PART TWENTY-EIGHT

REPLACING THE “PROPER CAUSE” REQUIREMENT WITH “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER”

Once Oral Argument had concluded in the  New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111, 2155 (2022), the New York Government under Governor Kathy Hochul likely didn’t wait for an adverse ruling it knew was coming.

The Government scrambled to overhaul the State’s Handgun Law (the Sullivan Act) in anticipation of a major ruling striking at the heart of the State’s concealed handgun carry licensing regime: the “Proper Cause” requirement.

The Hochul Government intended to be ready for that. And, in fact, the U.S. Supreme Court did just that.

The Court held that Proper Cause, the mainstay of New York’s Handgun Law (the Sullivan Act), violates the Fourteenth Amendment because it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms. The Court thereupon struck “Proper Cause” down. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2155.

The High Court knew that application of the “Proper Cause” requirement is not only useful to New York’s Handgun Licensing Regime but essential to its functioning in constraining civilian citizen access to handguns for the purpose of self-defense.

But why is “Proper Cause” essential to the Sullivan Act?

To understand why “Proper Cause” was essential to the Sullivan Act and why it so worried Hochul and the Anti-Second Amendment Democrat Party Controlled Legislature in Albany when the High Court, having found the application of it to infringe the core of the Second Amendment, had thereupon struck it down—and to understand the problems attendant to the Hochul Government’s attempt to find a suitable replacement for it—it helps to know what this concept “Proper Cause” is, and how it has functioned in the Sullivan Act.

Justice Thomas, writing for the Majority in Bruen, offers by way of explanation, this:

“No New York statute defines ‘proper cause.’ But New York courts have held that an applicant shows proper cause only if he can “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.” E.g., In re Klenosky, 75 App. Div. 2d 793, 428 N. Y. S. 2d 256, 257 (1980). This ‘special need’ standard is demanding. For example, living or working in an area “‘noted for criminal activity’” does not suffice. In re Bernstein, 85 App. Div. 2d 574, 445 N. Y. S. 2d 716, 717 (1981). Rather, New York courts generally require evidence ‘of particular threats, attacks or other extraordinary danger to personal safety.’ In re Martinek, 294 App. Div. 2d 221, 222, 743 N. Y. S. 2d 80, 81 (2002); see also In re Kaplan, 249 App. Div. 2d 199, 201, 673 N. Y. S. 2d 66, 68 (1998) (approving the New York City Police Department’s requirement of “‘extraordinary personal danger, documented by proof of recurrent threats to life or safety’” (quoting 38 N. Y. C. R. R. §5-03(b))).

When a licensing officer denies an application, judicial review is limited. New York courts defer to an officer’s application of the proper-cause standard unless it is ‘arbitrary and capricious.’ In re Bando, 290 App. Div. 2d 691, 692, 735 N. Y. S. 2d 660, 661 (2002). In other words, the decision ‘must be upheld if the record shows a rational basis  for it.’ Kaplan, 249 App. Div. 2d, at 201, 673 N. Y. S. 2d, at 68. The rule leaves applicants little recourse if their local licensing officer denies a permit.”

The U.S. Supreme Court found “Proper Cause” unlawful and unconstitutional because it is incompatible with the concept of “Armed Self-Defense,” which rests at the heart of the fundamental, unalienable, immutable right codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

The Right to Armed Self-Defense isn’t subject to two “degrees” of threat: “extraordinary” versus “ordinary.” A threat to one’s physical safety is absolute. It doesn’t admit degrees. It either is or it is not. To create an arbitrary distinction is logically flawed and legally indefensible. The New York State Government created it for one purpose only: to unlawfully constrain an American’s lawful right to keep and bear arms. And the Government succeeded.

For years New Yorkers have fought the Government over the Government’s extraordinarily restrictive handgun measures. But only in recent years, beginning with District Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570; 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) has the U.S. Supreme Court, one Branch of Government, done anything about it.

The Executive Branch, for its part, has done nothing to strengthen the Second Amendment, and the Legislative Branch has, through the passing decades, done much more harm than good.

Thus, States, like New York, that have abhorred the Second Amendment, have not been reluctant to tread all over it, have found Heller, 554 U.S. at 570, 128 S. Ct. at 2783, and, subsequent to Heller, McDonald vs. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S. Ct. 3020 (2010), annoying, but not insurmountable.

The State Government simply ignored the rulings in those cases and went its merry way, proceeding unimpeded with its agenda to continue to frustrate those Americans residing or working in New York, from exercising their fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense; devising and implementing even more outrageous assaults on the Second Amendment and toward those Americans who sought to exercise their fundamental right to armed self-defense.

In 2013, the New York Governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, rammed through the Legislature in Albany, the New York Safe Act of 2013.

Since that date, both he and his predecessor signed into law further burdensome measures. This culminated in the first major challenge to New York’s Handgun Law that the High Court agreed to review in the 21st Century: New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs. New York City, 140 S. Ct. 1525 (2020). Although the High Court could have reviewed the constitutionality of a Handgun Law that patently infringed the right to armed self-defense outside the confines of one’s home, at that time, Chief Justice Roberts confined the issue on review to one specific challenge: the constitutionality of a New York City rule regarding the transportation of Petitioners’ handguns outside the City.

Petitioners, who held valid but highly restrictive New York City handgun licenses challenged the rule that prevented them from transporting their firearms to a second home or shooting range outside the City. Obviously realizing that the Chief Justice had provided the Governor (at the time, Governor Cuomo) with a way to avoid a discussion of the issue on the merits that would have likely brought into play the import of “armed self-defense” (for holders of restricted handgun licenses cannot have access to their handguns when transporting those handguns outside the home, even if an aggressor threatens their life, which is the point of rendering the handguns useless for self-defense), the Governor simply amended the State Law, and the NYPD License Division amended its Rules, to allow Petitioners to transport their handguns to a second home or to a shooting range outside the City. The Majority then dismissed the case, ruling it moot.

Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, was not pleased with this. In a vigorous Dissent, Justice Alito first made plain what the real issue in the case was. He said, “We granted review to consider the constitutionality of a New York City ordinance that burdened the right recognized in Heller.” 

So, the central issue to be dealt with goes to the import of the concept of armed self-defense and what, if any, are the parameters for exercising the right of armed self-defense inherent in the Second Amendment. Justice Alito also pointed out that the Majority had not applied the proper test for mootness.

Justice Alito wrote in pertinent part,

“Thus, in this case, we must apply the well-established standards for determining whether a case is moot, and under those standards, we still have a live case before us. It is certainly true that the new City ordinance and the new State law give petitioners most of what they sought, but that is not the test for mootness. Instead, ‘a case “‘becomes moot only when it is impossible for a court to grant any effectual relief whatever to the prevailing party.’” Chafin v. Chafin, 568 U. S. 165, 172, 133 S. Ct. 1017, 185, L. Ed. 2d 1 (2013) (emphasis added). “‘As long as the parties have a concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the litigation, the case is not moot.’” Ibid. (emphasis added).”

Although New York had, since its inception as a State, a blatant dismissive attitude toward the Common Man’s exercise of the right to armed self-defense, evidenced by the failure to recognize the right in the State’s Constitution—a matter never rectified up to the present day—the State’s negative attitude has not at all softened through the passing years decades and centuries, but has instead hardened to the point that the Government abhors the notion of the armed civilian citizen.

People carried handguns in New York for decades in New York without major Government interference, until 1911. In 1911, New York introduced licensing of handguns. This meant the State Government would henceforth insist on interposing itself between the people and exercise of the right embodied in the Second Amendment. At the time, the New York Government felt it was on firm ground as the Nation’s Bill of Rights was simply viewed as a limitation on Federal Government action directed against the people, not the States.

The Sullivan Act, rudimentary as first enacted, would become the vehicle through which, the State would slowly but inexorably erode operation of the Right to armed self-defense so that, at the time that the McDonald case ruled that the individual right to armed self-defense applies to the States as well as to the Federal Government, the machinery for frustrating a person’s exercise of the right to armed self-defense in New York had long since been in operation. The constraints on the average person’s exercise of the right to armed self-defense in New York had far exceeded anything the New York Government had first effectuated in 1911 and likely extended far beyond anything the Government at that time, over a century ago could have imagined, although the proponents of the Sullivan Act would certainly be gleeful at what the Sullivan Act had grown into.

Still, even in the early years of the Sullivan Act, the New York Government had intimations of the utility of handgun licensing as a device to constrain civilian citizen access to handguns.

Just two years after the enactment of Sullivan, in 1913, the Government amended the Sullivan Act, adding the “Proper Cause” requirement. And “Proper Cause” became a fixture of the Sullivan Act for 110 years.

The New York Government felt invincible. It felt that neither McDonald nor Heller could touch it. And with the Government’s ability to weather a crisis posed by NYSRPA vs. New York City (colloquially referred to as “the New York City Gun Transport case”), it had no reason to believe that any new case would come along to severely challenge the mighty handgun regime that the Government had created and that it had added to in 110 years since the enactment of Sullivan.

But, then Bruen came along.

Many Anti-Second Amendment forces knew that Bruen posed a potential problem—more urgent than that posed by the New York City Gun Transport Case. It would not be easy to frame the central issue of Bruen precluding a review of the core of the Sullivan Act—concealed handgun carry. Bruen directly impacted concealed handgun carry licensing, which meant impacting the “Proper Cause” standard that drastically reduced the number of concealed handgun carry licenses issued.

But the application of “Proper Cause” requires one to suspend rational thought. “Proper Cause” mandates that the average civilian citizen hoping to obtain a coveted unrestricted concealed handgun carry license prove, to the satisfaction of the Government licensing official, that his need to carry a handgun for self-defense transcends the basic need of most everyone else who might lay claim to a need to possess on his person the best means available by which he can best defend his life against a violent aggressor who threatens that life. In other words, an applicant for an unconcealed handgun carry license must somehow convey the idea that a threat to his life is greater and graver than that threat faced by essentially everyone else in New York.

But, for the New York Government to require a person to establish ‘extraordinary need’ to carry a handgun for self-defense to the satisfaction of a Government agent (the licensing authority) is ludicrous.

It either manifests in a jurisdiction such as New York City, where the License Division constructs a set of arbitrary standards that some people may be able to meet while most cannot. Most other jurisdictions in New York, perhaps realizing the futility in creating arbitrary standards and attempting to apply them fairly doesn’t bother to do this.

Instead, these license officials issue concealed handgun carry licenses piecemeal on the basis of one’s position in life: great wealth, fame, or power. But that creates equal protection problems as wealthy, powerful, influential, well-connected people become the principal beneficiaries of a system that leaves the “Common Man,” the vast majority of us, defenseless. This is ironic.

The Second Amendment was meant to make certain that the Common Man might exercise his God-given right to keep and bear arms to safeguard his life and that of his family and to maintain his sovereign authority over Government but that has not come to be—certainly not in New York. But Bruen meant to change that.

And the U.S. Supreme Court finally did something about this. The Court reset the balance of power by issuing a series of rulings, culminating in the Bruen decision, making clear that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right, applicable to all Government, State as well as Federal, and that the right to armed self-defense extends beyond the perimeter of one’s home. Heller also makes clear that the Second Amendment’s salient function is to function as a failsafe—the final check on the power of a Government that tends toward tyranny.

The concept of armed self-defense is, then, multifaceted, and critically important to the maintenance of liberty and to the preservation of a free Constitutional Republic. While emphasizing the common man’s right to armed self-defense against predatory attacks in one’s community, the idea inherent in the U.S. Supreme Court’s three seminal Second Amendment case decisions is the common man’s right to thwart a graver threat—the predatory Government: State or Federal.

Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party that controls the Legislature in Albany were forced to jettison “Proper Cause.” There is no question about it. If Hochul refused to do so, her Government’s disregard for the Article 3 authority of the U.S. Supreme Court would be too blatant. Kathy Hochul and her Government were not prepared to go that far. She could rant and rave about the Bruen rulings, but she wasn’t going to defy a Court holding directly, by refusing to strike “Proper Cause” from the New York Handgun Law and applying it as if the Court never held the standard unconstitutional. She would have to confront the Court circumspectly—at least give some suggestion of forbearance to the Court’s decision. So the Hochul Government did strike “Proper Cause” from the Handgun Law but the Government then needed to find a suitable replacement for it. And that would be no easy task.

The Hochul Government had no intention of acceding directly and categorically to the Court’s dictates, thereby overturning 120+ years of an agenda focused on subjugating the Common Man, who as a Free and Sovereign Man would suffer no predator, whether that predator be beast, man-beast, or beast-Government.

The Hochul Government intended to secure her State Government’s Tyranny and the vehicle for doing so was the Sullivan Act. As long as the Common Man could be kept in fear of man-beasts running amok, her predatory Government could keep the impulses of the Common Man’s desire for Liberty in check. But to secure and strengthen the Sullivan Act the Hochul Government had to devise an effective replacement for “Proper Cause.” Clearly, the Biden Administration would be curious to see how and to what extent the Hochul Government might tie up the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since the Biden Administration, and a weakened, ineffectual Congress that the Executive Branch could manipulate, might constrain the Common Man’s exercise of his salient Rights, the present composition of the Court—most of whom wish to preserve a free Republic that the Founders created—pose an obstacle to those forces, both here at home and abroad, who are slowly strangling the life out of the Nation, and that wish to destroy a free Constitutional Republic, and that intend to subjugate a free and sovereign people.

Could the Hochul Government successfully battle the U.S. Supreme Court? States like California along with the Federal Government wanted to know this and needed to know this in formulating their own policies.

A replacement for “Proper Cause” must, in the first instance, not only prevent damage to the heart of the Sullivan Act and remain true to the State’s long-standing agenda—one committed to further constraining the average citizen (the Founding Fathers’ “Common Man”) from exercising the right to armed self-defense—but it must also suggest, however implausibly, to the Press and to the Public, the appearance of compliance with the salient rulings and reasoning of the Court that would, hopefully, withstand any new challenges to the Sullivan Act that Hochul and the State Legislature in Albany knew were coming.

Hochul and Albany were hoping that the lower New York Federal District Courts, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which had heretofore demonstrated acquiescence to the Government’s unlawful, unconstitutional meddling with and intrusion upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms, would continue to side with the Government against the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hochul and Albany wanted and needed to buy time before the next case would wend its way to the High Court, hoping that, with a reconstituted Court (with more people like Ketnaji Brown Jackson on board), the Court would reverse course and strike down the central holdings of Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.

Such a reconstituted Court, no longer beholding to the Constitution, would cast aside a methodology for analyzing cases grounded on “textualism” and “originalism,” as championed by the late Justice, Antonin Scalia, and as adhered to by Justice Scalia’s contemporaries, Justice Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and replacing “textualism” and “originalism” with a completely different methodology antithetical to the preservation of the Constitution as constructed by the Framers of it. This replacement methodology is  called “pragmatism.”

The pragmatic approach to Constitutional case analysis involves redefining the Constitution to cohere with the radical transformation of society presently taking place, and to reframe decisions and reasoning to be consistent with “international norms” even if they are antithetical to this Nation’s. Application of this methodology entails the slow eradication of the import and purport of the Constitution as understood by the Framers of it.

TWO SALIENT HOLDINGS OF THE THREE SEMINAL SECOND AMENDMENT U.S. SUPREME COURT CASES

While Justice Thomas spends considerable time—actually an excruciatingly lengthy amount of time—expounding on the test a court of competent jurisdiction must employ to ascertain the constitutionality of Government action that impinges on the Second Amendment, the two salient points coming out of Bruen are straightforward and are found in two specific places. We quote them explicitly, below.

The First one is a reiteration of a central holding in Heller and McDonald:

It is this:

“In Heller and McDonald, we held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.”

The Second one is this:

“Although we remarked in Heller that the need for armed self-defense is perhaps ‘most acute’ in the home, id., at 628, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, we did not suggest that the need was insignificant elsewhere. Many Americans hazard greater danger outside the home than in it. See Moore v. Madigan, 702 F. 3d 933, 937 (CA7 2012) (‘[A] Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower’). The text of the Second Amendment reflects that reality.

The Second Amendment’s plain text thus presumptively guarantees petitioners Koch and Nash [Bruen Plaintiff Petitioners] a right to ‘bear’ arms in public for self-defense.”

To secure the Sullivan Act and, at one and the same time, to strengthen it the Hochul Government’s Gambit involved a two-prong process.

Kathy Hochul knew the New York Government would be processing many more applications for concealed handgun carry licenses and that it would be required to issue many more licenses because of Bruen.

The Government sought to constrain the issuance of a sizable chunk of applications even if the “Extraordinary Need” predicate of “Proper Cause” was no longer available to it.

The Hochul Government settled on a concept already existent in the Handgun Law: “Good Moral Character.” That was the first prong of a plan to revitalize the Sullivan Act in light of Bruen. It involved significantly strengthening “Good Moral Character” and making it the centerpiece of the Sullivan Act. But that would create a whole host of new problems for the Government.

The second prong, “Sensitive Place” (also referred to as “Sensitive Location”) applies only to those individuals whom the State licensing authority approves for issuance of a concealed handgun carry license under the New York Penal Code § 400.00 (2)(f). These two concepts are the foundational bases of a reformulated Sullivan Act.

We analyze this second prong of “Sensitive Place,” at a later date.

When reconfiguring, reconstructing, and embellishing “Good Moral Character,” the drafters of the amendments to the Handgun Law—that, as a package, are referred to as the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” or by the acronym, “CCIA”—must have paid significant attention to what the U.S. Supreme Court said about it before the Hochul Government would expend time on developing a scheme around it.

The Majority Opinion mentions “Good Moral Character” twice in Bruen.

First, the Court writes:

“A license applicant who wants to possess a firearm at home (or in his place of business) must convince a ‘licensing officer’—usually a judge or law enforcement officer—that, among other things, he is of good moral character, has no history of crime or mental illness, and that ‘no good cause exists for the denial of the license.’ §§400.00(1)(a)-(n) (West Cum. Supp. 2022). If he wants to carry a firearm outside his home or place of business for self-defense, the applicant must obtain an unrestricted license to ‘have and carry’ a concealed ‘pistol or revolver.’ §400.00(2)(f ). To secure that license, the applicant must prove that ‘proper cause exists’ to issue it. Ibid. If an applicant cannot make that showing, he can receive only a ‘restricted’ license for public carry, which allows him to carry a firearm for a limited purpose, such as hunting, target shooting, or employment.

The reader will note that the factors, “good moral character,” “no history of crime or mental illness,” and that “‘no good cause exists for the denial of the license’” are and continue to be, after Bruen, conditions precedent to obtaining a handgun license of any sort. For, without meeting these factors, a person cannot legally possess a handgun anywhere in New York. These requirements remain true Post-Bruen, as they do Pre-Bruen.

Second, the Court writes,

To obtain a concealed-carry license for a handgun, an applicant must satisfy certain eligibility criteria. Among other things, he must generally be at least 21 years old and of ‘good moral character.’ §400.00(1). And he cannot have been convicted of a felony, dishonorably discharged from the military, or involuntarily committed to a mental hygiene facility. Ibid. If these and other eligibility criteria are satisfied, New York law provides that a concealed-carry license ‘shall be issued’ to individuals working in certain professions, such as judges, corrections officers, or messengers of a ‘banking institution or express company.’ §400.00(2). Individuals who satisfy the eligibility criteria but do not work in one of these professions may still obtain a concealed-carry license, but they must additionally show that ‘proper cause exists for the issuance thereof.’ §400.00(2)(f ).”

The point here is that Pre-Bruen, satisfaction of all the requirements for possession of a handgun at one’s residence or place of business remains one of two conditions precedent to obtaining a concealed handgun carry license. “Proper Cause,” the second condition precedent, had to be proved to the satisfaction of the licensing authority before the Licensing official would issue the applicant a concealed handgun carry license under § 400.00 (2)(f ).”

Post-Bruen, in the absence of “Proper Cause,” and in the absence of a suitable substitute for “Proper Cause,” the satisfaction of requirements for possession of a handgun, restricted to the home or place of work would mean that one ALSO SATISFIES the requirements for carrying a handgun concealed outside the home or place of business.

So, then, why would an applicant for a New York State handgun license apply for a barebones highly restricted residence license when he would automatically qualify for a license to carry a handgun concealed outside the home or place of business? The answer is there would be no reason for doing so and there would be no reason for maintaining a litany of different kinds of licenses issued as there have been Pre-Bruen. That is what Bruen intended to accomplish—to simplify the process by which an individual might exercise his Second Amendment right, cutting through all the garbage inherent in the Sullivan Act that had become increasingly more elaborate and cumbersome in the century since its enactment.

The High Court ruled that the right to armed self-defense exists no less outside one’s home (or place of business) than inside it.

Implicit in this was an order by the U.S. Supreme Court, telling the Hochul Government to dismantle the Sullivan Act.

Hochul would do no such thing. And her remonstrations against the High Court and its ruling came fast and vociferously.

Obviously, such a thing as dismantling the Sullivan Act was anathema to a Government that had, since New York’s inception, as the eleventh State to become part of the United States, never recognized for the denizens of the State the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms even as the State did ratify the Bill of Rights for the Nation, which, of course, included the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms.

Happy, then, the State Government was when it took as self-evidently true that the right to armed self-defense only applied to the Federal Government, not to the States. So the States could decide not to recognize an immutable, eternal right of man—the fundamental, eternal, illimitable right to preserve his own life and well-being against anyone, man or animal, or any Government that might desire to, and have the ability to, take his life from him.

Odd that, the right to armed self-defense—the central import of the language of the Second Amendment—as the best means, now, as then, to secure one’s life against predatory animal, man, or government, should have been a matter tacit but ignored and dismissed by several States since the founding of the Republic, until the U.S. Supreme Court, through the tenacity and courage of Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, would demand that matters regarding the most Basic of all Elemental Rights of Man be set aright.

The three Justices evidently knew that but for a strong Second Amendment, no other Right could exist. It was high time that the Court stated explicitly in the text of a U.S. Supreme Court case that an American does have the fundamental right to defend his life against unlawful aggression, with the best means available by which to preserve it, and this Basic Right of armed self-defense applies wherever a person happens to be, inside a home or outside it. Bruen was that case. But it would be wrong to read Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, as three distinct, discrete cases. They all work together and are inextricably tied to each other. Bruen doesn’t extend Heller. Bruen simply elucidates Heller.

And McDonald makes plain what is implicit in the notion of Natural Law Rights—Rights that preexist Government. Such Rights exist within Man. They are not Rights or Liberties created by the State. These Rights exist independently of States and Governments which are artificial constructs created by Man. Natural Law Rights are eternal, embodied within Man. Those politicians, many members of the Press, and many scholars don’t accept the truth of Natural Law Rights. They believe that all such Rights are man-made, no less than any other man-made construct. So, they infer that the Justices read into the Second Amendment what coheres with their particular belief systems. But, the rulings in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen are not creations of the Justices. They are no more nor less than the reaffirmations of the plain meaning of Natural Law. And the Second Amendment is simply a codification of that Natural Law, plainly stated. The sad state of affairs is that Heller, McDonald, and Bruen were needed at all. And, given the Hochul Government’s stubbornness, it must come to pass that the U.S. Supreme Court will be required yet again to respond to Government action that refuses to accept the import of Natural Law Rights.

Governor Kathy Hochul, her wealthy benefactors, and many deluded residents of New York hated Heller and McDonald. But they could dismiss those rulings—at least for a time and they did so, with Courts happy to oblige them. But, when Bruen came down the pike, they could not easily ignore the right of the people to keep and be armed.

The idea of the ‘Common Man’ as the ‘Armed Citizen,’ Sovereign over Government, any Government, is absolutely abhorrent to Hochul and to her benefactors and to many other elements both inside the Country and outside it who view the Second Amendment as a veritable abomination that must be dealt with accordingly so that they can achieve their goal: the dismantling of all Nation-States, with the remains of them to be merged into a monstrous, bloated Neo-Feudalistic world empire that serves the interests of the few and mercilessly oppresses the lives of the many. Achievement of that goal is not possible as long as America adheres to the tenets of Individualism upon which the U.S. Constitution is grounded. And the linchpin of a strong, vibrant America is, as history demonstrates, a strong, independent citizenry, whose independence and personal autonomy are secured through the right to dissent from conformist Government dictates and absurd dogmas thrust on a free sovereign citizen, and through the right to bear arms to secure that independence from a predatory Government that would rob the individual of his Selfhood. It is this the Hochul Government and the Biden Administration fear. But they don’t talk about their tyranny. They talk about “Public Safety” and the fact that, as they exclaim, an armed citizenry poses a danger to “Public Safety.” So, let’s talk, then, about “Public Safety.”

The right to armed self-defense is reason enough to carry a handgun for self-defense when out and about, and that right of armed self-defense is presumed. Hence, a person applying for a concealed handgun carry license need not state it and the Government cannot require him to do so, to explain a “reason” to carry for self-defense. It should be apparent that the problem here rests with the entire notion of State licensing. But, for that, the striking of “Proper Cause” from the Sullivan Act would have been the death knell for New York State Licensing of Handguns.

But the High Court DID NOT strike down handgun licensing as unconstitutional, and Hochul and company had no intention of conflating the entirety of the Sullivan Act to “Shall Issue” concealed handgun carry licenses—as they saw it—pell-mell, no matter what the High Court opined and insisted upon.

Still, the Hochul Government had to come up with something to replace “Proper Cause,” and “Good Moral Character” was something already in the Statute. So, it seemed like a good device to use. But how is this “Good Moral Character” now to be utilized?

Since the Court had not ruled against “Good Moral Character,” the Hochul Government machinated a scheme through which “Good Moral Character” would operate like “Proper Cause” had operated for decades: as a means to preclude the issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses to tens of thousands of New Yorkers who might wish to secure one.

But “Good Moral Character” cannot operate exactly like “Proper Cause” because the High Court made clear that, since the right to armed self-defense exists as much outside the home as in it, the Government could no longer require an applicant to demonstrate “extraordinary need.”

But could the Hochul Government transform “Good Moral Character” into a devastating force through which many applications could still be denied even if it were still not as effective as “Proper Cause” had been?

Although not as useful as “Proper Cause,” the newly reconfigured “Good Moral Character” requirement would have to suffice, and, when utilized in conjunction with another device—a novel device, “Sensitive Place” restrictions—the Hochul Government could still make life difficult for New Yorkers who wish to exercise their Second Amendment right to armed self-defense.

Worse, for many present holders of concealed carry licenses who had, through the years, adapted to the schemes that some New York jurisdictions had created to implement “Proper Cause”—the most elaborate scheme being that one devised by the NYPD License Division, tasked with governing handgun licensing in the City—might not these present holders who had “passed the test” for issuance of a concealed handgun carry license under § 400.00 (2)(f ), Pre-Bruen, fail to meet a new test devised by the Hochul Government for the entire State, utilizing “Good Moral Character,” Post-Bruen?

But, the preliminary question is this——

DOES “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” HAVE A PLACE WHERE A FUNDAMENTAL NATURAL LAW RIGHT IS INVOLVED, EVEN THOUGH NEW YORK’S “PROPER CAUSE” REQUIREMENT DID NOT?

After all, what does the nature of one’s character have to do with one’s exercise of the fundamental, unalienable, immutable, illimitable, eternal right to self-defense of which armed self-defense":  ANYTHING? EVERYTHING? NOTHING? Does anyone ever question this? Apparently not, certainly, not in New York. And why is that?  

Both “Good Moral Character” and “Proper Cause” Requirements are Government constructs, nothing more. The Government designed them for one purpose: to constrain one’s exercise of the fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense.

“Proper Cause” has served the New York Government well for decades. It has taken over 100 years for the U.S. Supreme Court to strike “Proper Cause” down.

But what sort of argument can be made that use of “Good Moral Character” is as repugnant to exercise of the fundamental right to armed self-defense as “Proper Cause” before it? There are, to date, many challenges to it, along with challenges to “Sensitive Place” Restrictions.

Many of these cases are wending their way through the Federal District Courts of New York. Several presently reside in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At some point, in the U.S. Supreme Court’s next term, the Court will have to deal one or more of these cases. The CCIA is a bald-faced attack on the High Court’s Bruen rulings and, more, a hardly subtle repudiation of the Article 3 authority of the High Court.

In the next Article, we drill down into this thing, “Good Moral Character.” We look at how the Hochul Government has rejiggered it to work like “Proper Cause” insofar as it is designed to salvage the multi-tiered handgun licensing structure and to maintain the “May Issue” paradigm that the Bruen decision intended to scrap when the Court made clear that “Proper Cause” as utilized by the New York Government unconstitutionally infringed the Second Amendment.

There is much to deal with here and we will get to it as quickly as possible and as much as practicable to demonstrate the illegality of it, discussing approaches that challengers of the CCIA may not have broached but are angles definitely worth considering.

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MAY A PERSON CARRY A HANDGUN INTO A HOUSE OF WORSHIP, IN NEW YORK? HOCHUL GOVERNMENT KEEPS GUN OWNERS GUESSING.(article extensively updated on July 8, 2023)

INTRODUCTORY QUOTATION

“When Hitler came for the Jews. . . I was not a Jew; therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler came for the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions, and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church — and there was nobody left to be concerned.” ~ Quote best ascribed to Martin Niemoller, German Theologian, and Lutheran Pastor. Also check out Stephen Halbrook’s book, “Gun Control in the Third Reich” that Robert Unger cites.

We wish to thank Robert Unger, Attorney at Law, for pointing this quotation out to us. He writes, “As documented by the cutting-edge book, ‘Gun Control in the Third Reich,’ the totalitarians are once again trying to prevent Jews from defending their lives. Every decent human being, whether Jew or Gentile needs to be concerned. As the Rev Martin Niemoller stated in this shortened paraphrase, ‘First they came for the handicapped, and I said nothing, and then they came for the Jews, and I said nothing. Then they came for me and nobody was left to say anything.’”

Special Note: Robert Unger hosts the podcast, “The Bob Unger Show” @thebobungershow1567 Check out Bob’s Podcast on Rumble.

Also check out Stephen Halbrook’s book, “Gun Control in the Third Reich” that Robert Unger cites.

The Goldstein vs. Hochul Case

With dozens of cases filed challenging New York’s reprehensible “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA), which the Democrat Party-controlled legislature passed on July 1, 2022, and that Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law the same day, coming on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, published just one week earlier, on June 23, 2022, one obscure case is worth mentioning. It is Goldstein vs. Hochul, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111124 (S.D.N.Y, June 23, 2023).

The facts of the Complaint as presented by the Court are as follows:

“Goldstein ‘is a U.S. citizen who resides in Kings County in the State of New York.’ Goldstein [and other similarly situated Plaintiffs] have carried handguns for self-defense at shul [Jewish Temple] prior to the enactment of the CCIA. They allege that after the enactment of the CCIA, they have (1) decreased their attendance at shul due to their inability to carry a firearm, ‘significantly curtail[ed]’ their religious practice, Plaintiffs further allege that the prohibition of concealed carry within places of worship and religious observation ‘acts as a deterrent for law-abiding people to enter’ and makes religious locations more dangerous. On the same day, Goldstein individually and on behalf of the Congregation, and Ornstein filed a motion for TRO and PI enjoining Defendants Governor Hochul, Attorney General James, Commissioner Sewell, Sheriff Falco, District Attorney Gonzalez, and District Attorney Walsh from enforcing the Sensitive Locations restriction, the provision in CCIA designating ‘any place of worship or religious observation’ as a Sensitive Location. Plaintiffs claim that the Sensitive Locations restriction of the CCIA violates their rights under the First, Second, and Fourteenth Amendments. Plaintiffs seek to enjoin Defendants from enforcing the places of worship and religious observation exclusion, alleging that they would suffer immediate and irreparable harm without immediate injunctive relief.” [document citations omitted]

The Goldstein lawsuit is directed to the unconstitutional “Sensitive Place” (also referred to as “Sensitive Location”) restriction/prohibition to otherwise lawful concealed handgun carry that the Hochul Government has imposed on all holders of valid New York State concealed handgun carry licenses who derive their licenses to carry through the operation of NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (2)(f) of the State’s Handgun Law.

Goldstein’s motivation for filing a lawsuit against the Hochul Government is not hypothetical.

In recent years Synagogues in the United States, have been selectively targeted in a spate of “hate crimes.” See, e.g., the NPR article, dated February 17, 2023; the ABC News report, dated, January 19, 2022; and an updated June 16, 2023, CBS News report.

The essence of the Plaintiffs’ claim is that the meaning of ‘House of Worship’ in the New York State Penal Code is vague and that the Government’s prohibition on the carrying of a handgun violates the First, Second, and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Goldstein and other Plaintiffs have asked for immediate relief. But, the Court ruled that the Plaintiffs had not met the stringent standards required for a Preliminary Injunction and that the Plaintiffs’ Constitutional Arguments did not outweigh the Government’s solitary claim (coming solely from a Press Release) that the Governor has a duty to “‘protect New Yorkers,’ and that ‘keeping the people of New York State safe’ was their greatest priority.’”

Apparently, armed Congregants in a “House of Worship” setting are a present danger to “keeping the people of New York State safe.” This is simply a platitude and a trite, vacuous banality, and, worst of all, a bald-faced lie. The Hochul Government, under Governor Kathy Hochul, and the Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams have not protected the people of New York. Violent crime has skyrocketed in New York, especially in New York City. See, e.g., Arbalest Quarrel essay, dated, June 26, 2023.

But Hochul’s assertion that “keeping the people of New York Safe” is her Government’s “greatest priority” comes across not simply as empty political rhetoric—which is bad enough—but as sarcasm, in the face of horrific incidents of often random violent crime perpetrated on innocent people going about their daily life in New York.

In such a climate, it is incumbent on average, innocent, rational people to take responsibility for their own safety and well-being. And a responsible person carrying a handgun, concealed, in public for their own personal protection, and knowledgeable in the use of it and prepared to use it if or when the need arises, provides hands-down the best means of personal protection against violent, aggressive attack. It has always been so. But, IT IS the very effectiveness of a handgun for personal self-defense that the New York Government abhors. For the well-armed citizenry is the gravest threat to the Tyrant. It is THIS fact, more than anything else, that drives the Hochul Government’s antagonistic firearms policy—a fact left unremarked on. But why, after all, would Tyrants acknowledge their own Tyranny? The Tyrant need not assert a Tyrant’s fear of their own people. That fear is exhibited clearly enough in their self-righteous, deceitful rhetoric and in the subsequent actions taken to constrain dissent and to strenuously constrain if not curtail the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

It is the same dreaded fear of the armed common people that drove Kathy Hochul’s predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, to institute further firearms restrictions in the State, which he accomplished when he signed the New York Safe Act into law, in 2013.

And it is that same fear of the common people that drives the present Biden Administration to attack the fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense.

It is this fear of the armed citizenry that motivates the Administration to craft and implement a plethora of policies aimed at maximizing control over that citizenry—the common people of the United States.

The aim of the Government should be to provide “Public Safety,” not merely to recite it in a Press Release.

But, the Government act of providing for “Public Safety” need not be and ought not to be construed as antithetical to one’s right and responsibility to provide for his or her “Personal Safety.”

The two can coexist happily together. They are not logically inconsistent concepts. One is the aim and responsibility of the Government. The other rests with and is the responsibility of the individual.

But the Hochul Government treats the two as incompatible, adversarial concepts, or otherwise, presumes, albeit wrongly, that the one, “Personal Safety” is subsumed in the other, “Public Safety.”

Yet the Government’s duty to provide for the one doesn’t offset or replace the responsibility of the individual to adhere to and provide for the other. And the sad truth is that both fail in the reality of a failed State, which is what New York is becoming.

The Hochul Government gives lip service to “Public Safety” concerns, yet faults the U.S. Supreme Court for ordering the State to adhere to the plain meaning of the language of the Second Amendment that speaks incisively and decisively of the basic human right of “Personal Safety”—understood as the fundamental, unalienable, illimitable, immutable, and unmodifiable right to Armed “Self-Defense.” The two are co-extensive.

The Hochul Government pretends to provide for the one, that it must, and does not, and yet denies a person his right to secure the other, but cannot, given the constraints of Government, preventing him from doing so even though it be inextricably tied to his very Being. And, so, a person is left with neither. How can that be?

The concept of Armed Self-Defense is nothing new. Our Country, a free Constitutional Republic would not have existed without the application of it.

The fundamental right to Armed Self-Defense proceeds from the right to Self-Defense. It is not distinct from it. It is one with it, inextricably bound to it. ‘The Right to Self-Defense’ means ‘The Right to Protect one’s Life.’

The Right to Armed Self-Defense’ is not then, to be perceived as a thing different in kind from ‘The Right to Self-Defense.’ It is simply an aspect of it: Recognition that a firearm provides the best, most effective means of defense available to thwart an aggressive attack—whether such an attack emanates from a predatory beast, predatory man, or predatory government.

The Hochul Government and the Biden Administration must know this. Both are Tyrants. Both know they are Tyrants and both know that a free Constitutional Republic cannot and will not long suffer Tyrants. An armed citizen presents a tangible threat to the Tyrant. That troubles the Tyrant, as well as it should. And, so, an armed citizenry troubles the Tyrant.

For, if the armed citizen has the fundamental right to defend himself against an aggressive predator threatening his life, that armed citizen also has the fundamental right to defend himself against a tyrannical, predatory Government. And, in both instances, he has a duty to do so. The Tyrannical Government would rather not talk about the right of the people to keep and bear arms against that Tyrannical Government. So, instead, the Government talks about the armed citizen in connection with criminal violence.

The Government argues, deceptively, cunningly, that it is the job of the Government, not the citizen, to deal with the violent criminal (which the Government has done a very poor job doing), and that an armed citizen will eventually commit criminal violence by virtue simply of being armed, even though there are no statistics to support that conclusion.

Thus, the Government deflects conversation away from the subject of Tyranny, and of the predatory behavior of Government, and of the natural tendency of all Governments to eventually turn to Tyranny in the absence of substantial Checks and Balances on Government behavior and in the absence of a well-armed citizenry—the ultimate fail-safe to prevent, or curb or, at least, frustrate the onset of Tyranny.

But even as we see today strenuous attacks against the Divine Right to Armed Self-Defense to secure one’s life and safety and that of one’s family from a predator, we see scurrilous and bizarre attacks by the Government on the very notion of a right to ‘Self-Defense’ at all. This suggests clear intent on the part of the Government, today, to devalue human life. The Framers of the Constitution would be appalled. Such an idea is inconsistent with the basic tenets of the Constitution grounded on the sanctity and inviolability of human life.

The U.S. Constitution is grounded on the tenets, principles, and precepts of Individualism. Those tenets, principles, and precepts are anathema to those holding power in Government today who are attempting to foist an entirely new political philosophical system on the Country—one that is based on the tenets, principles, and precepts of Collectivism.

CCP China is a prime example of this. But, even in CCP China, the State does provide for “Public Safety,” if, for no other reason, than to promote stability within the State. Crime is not tolerated in China. Violent crime is dealt with quickly and harshly. Physical safety exists, but it comes at a cost. The sanctity of the individual counts for little if anything. There is no notion of individual autonomy. One might well wonder whether life under Tyranny is better than no life at all. The Founders of our Republic didn’t think so. And they fought a war to a successful conclusion to make their feelings known.

Had they failed, they would have been hanged. Some Patriots caught by the British were hanged.

In America today, the Government, under the Biden Administration, talks about favored and disfavored “Groups,” not “Individuals.”

One either belongs to a favored Group or one belongs to a “Group of Outcasts,” such as “MAGA” Republicans, “Christian Nationalists,” and “Political Conservatives,” generally.

But, unlike CCP China, the Biden Administration and several State Governments such as that of New York don’t even provide a modicum of “Public Safety.” Violent criminals are not dealt with harshly. Rather, they are continually released to commit more violence on innocent people.

And these same Governments that refuse to provide any measurable “Public Safety,”  talk not of “Personal Safety.” That concept isn’t part of their political philosophy and, so, does not appear in their lexicon. And there is a reason for that. ‘Personal Safety’ is tied to ‘Self-Defense,’ and that entails ‘Armed Self-Defense.’ And those concepts are anathema to these Governments.

The Biden Administration and the Hochul Government eschew both, finding Self-Defense inconsistent with their adherence to Collectivist principles that place value on “Group Conformity” over “Individual Autonomy.” And they especially abhor the concept of “Armed Self-Defense” as that represents an existential threat to their accumulation of and lust for power and concomitant absolute control over the common people.

A Government that operates within the strictures of the U.S. Constitution has nothing to fear from an armed citizenry. A Government that does not has much to fear from an armed citizenry. And Government today is much afraid of an armed citizenry that hews to a belief system that adheres to the principles of the Founders who constructed a free Constitutional Republic when the Government, today, no longer does so.

When a Government—this Government—forgets that its sole existence derives from a free sovereign people, then it becomes a veritable enemy of the people. And, knowing that it has become an enemy of the people, commences to treat its people as a threat, and proceeds, unlawfully, to constrain the fundamental rights of the people whose best interests it has a duty to serve, but has long since removed itself from.

New York’s Hochul Government, for its part, could, if it truly wished to do so, clamp down on rampant, violent crime, plaguing the State, and particularly the City of New York, but it chooses not to do so. There are several reasons for this. Two major ones are worth mentioning here.

One, her base of supporters, her constituency, will not allow concerted efforts to clamp down on violent crime. Even as that constituency, itself, suffers the consequences of violent crime, its mindset is so confounded and befuddled by incessant psychological programming, that it refuses to consider the impact that a highly restrictive firearms policy has on its own safety and well-being and, at one and the same time, insists upon a lax justice system and a shackled police, thereby inviting the very crime visited upon it.

Two, Kathy Hochul and her Government take their cue from the Biden Administration. The Biden Administration’s end goal is the dissolution of the Republic, the dismantling of an independent, sovereign Nation-State, and the subjugation of a once free and sovereign people.

Thus, the Biden Administration and the Hochul Government devise more and more scurrilous lies to cover their unethical, and patently unlawful objectives, pretending that all their policies are well-intentioned, even as they deliberately, duplicitously set one American against another, lest they organize and unite against the true threat to their well-being and safety: the Government, itself.

And, so it is that Hochul goes on and on clamoring over “Public Safety” and how her application of it is impeded by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Pistol and Rifle Association vs. Bruen, and that it is she and not the High Court that has the best interests of New Yorkers at heart.

But truth to tell, Hochul has jabbered about “Public Safety” well before the Bruen decision came down. And, with the publication of Bruen, the public hears this constantly, insistently without reprieve. See the article in the Gothamist, posted on March 25, 2022, and note the “props” on the stage. But, even if the Hochul Government truly desired to provide for “Public Safety,” that doesn’t obviate the responsibility of the individual to provide for his or her own “Personal Safety.”

The fact remains the right to armed self-defense and the responsibility for it rests, as it always did, with the individual, not the State. See January 19, 2020 article posted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News. In that same publication, see also the article posted on August 6, 2020, titled, “The Government Cannot Protect You; You Must Protect Yourself,” and the article posted on November 26, 2019, titled, “Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us.”

It is with the realization of the failure of the Hochul Government to truly promote “Public Safety,” despite her vehement remarks to the contrary, and it is with the equally important realization that one’s “Personal Safety” and that of one’s family ultimately rests solely with the individual, that Goldstein and others similarly situated filed their lawsuit against the Hochul Government.

The Goldstein case is the latest of the dozens heretofore filed in New York Federal District Court that present holders of valid New York concealed handgun carry licenses filed against the Hochul Government for refusal to abide by the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Bruen.

Enactment of New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act—although presented by Hochul as evidence of the State’s compliance with the Bruen rulings—was and is a bald-faced violation of the Bruen rulings and, at one and the same time.

Striking “Proper Cause” from the State’s Handgun Law serves as mere window dressing. The amendments to the Law (the CCIA) as enacted are more of an arrogant remonstration against the U.S. Supreme Court and a contemptuous repudiation of the Article 3 authority of the Court than they are a concerted effort to comply with the Court’s rulings. It would have come, then, as no surprise to Kathy Hochul that New York handgun licensees would see through the ploy.

The Plaintiffs in Goldstein filed their Notice of Appeal, of the adverse decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, on July 5, 2023.

On July 6, 2023, Arbalest Quarrel had an opportunity to talk to a spokesman for the Temple who is knowledgeable about the lawsuit, Tzvi Waldman. Mr. Waldman’s group, the “NYS Jewish Gun Club,” is backing the lawsuit. And on July 10, Bob Unger (whom we reference in the first paragraph of this article) invited Tzvi Waldman to appear on Bob’s Podcast that aired on July 10, 2023, on the Rumble Video Platform.

When AQ spoke with Mr. Waldman on July 6, 2023, a few days before Bob’s Podcast, we pointed out that the Arbalest Quarrel cannot and does not give legal advice, but we do provide non-legal, well-researched information about the Second Amendment for educational purposes.

Both Bob Unger and the Arbalest Quarrel wish to assist the NYS Jewish Gun Club in their challenge to the Hochul Government’s unlawful attempt to abridge the fundamental right to armed self-defense of the Jewish Community in New York that has suffered substantial hate crime attacks, especially in the last few years.

The Hochul Government is oblivious to the needs and concerns of Jews, and of all innocent New Yorkers despite her claims to the contrary.

On her official website, on January 10, 2023, Hochul said this:

“Public safety is my top priority. . . .“I am committed to using every tool at my disposal to protect the people of this state, crack down on gun violence and violent crime, and invest in proven solutions that keep New Yorkers safe.”

It is all empty rhetoric. While spurning a person’s fundamental right to provide for one’s own “Personal Safety” through the exercise of the basic right to armed self-defense, the Hochul Government leaves the Common Man abjectly defenseless, for she provides neither “Public Safety” for the New York communities, nor allows the Common Man to bear arms for his own personal defense.

Concerning the salient legal matters for Plaintiffs to address apropos of the Goldstein case——

First, we mentioned to Mr. Waldman that, as the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and others have ruled that Governor Kathy Hochul is not a proper Party defendant for a lawsuit involving the CCIA, any case naming her principal Party Defendant will be dismissed for lack of standing since she is not the person actively implementing and enforcing the CCIA. For the same reason, the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, is not a proper Party Defendant to the lawsuit. The Plaintiffs should strike her name from the Goldstein case.

Consistent with the allegations of the Complaint, the principal and proper Party Defendant is the NYPD Police Commissioner, since it is the NYPD Police Commissioner, here, not the Governor, who is directly involved in the enforcement of the CCIA, as it affects the Plaintiffs in the Goldstein case, and notwithstanding Hochul’s obvious connection in getting the thing enacted and then signing it into law in the first instance. Had she not signed the CCIA into law, there would be nothing about the CCIA that the Police Commissioner would be able to enforce. Hence, it is quite understandable that the Goldstein Plaintiffs would assume that the New York Governor would be a proper Party Defendant and the principal Party Defendant, even if Hochul, is not, after the fact, the person who is enforcing the CCIA. It

The present interim New York City Police Commissioner, Edward Caban, recently appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, is the proper and principal Party Defendant in the Goldstein case. This is a ministerial problem that is easily corrected. See the NY Times article published on June 20, 2023. The Times reports,

“Edward Caban, the New York Police Department’s first deputy commissioner and an ally of Mayor Eric Adams, will become the interim head of the agency, the mayor said Friday.

‘There’s a natural process in place that the first deputy commissioner falls in line until we make a permanent announcement on who the commissioner is going to be,’ Mr. Adams said during a radio appearance on 1010 WINS. ‘And we are going to find a suitable replacement.’

The announcement coincided with the last day in office of Keechant L. Sewell, the department’s first female commissioner, who abruptly announced her resignation two weeks ago, after finding that her powers had been circumscribed by the mayor and his allies.”

And, the Plaintiffs should also add the name Steven Nigrelli, the acting Superintendant of the New York State Police, as a Party Defendant to the suit. All or most Post-Bruen New York cases challenging aspects of the CCIA in a United States District Court for one of the four Districts in the State have captioned these cases with the name Steven Nigrelli, as the principal Party Defendant. This practice is consistent with the captioning of the parent case, NYSRPA vs. Bruen, challenging the Constitutionality of New York’s Handgun Law, where, at the time, Kevin Bruen was the Superintendent of the New York State Police. The recaptioning of the case is essentially a ministerial, administrative matter that does not go to the substantive matters of the case.

Second, and much more concerning, is the Court’s opinion that fails to mention the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Hardaway v. Nigrelli, U.S. Dist. LEXIS 200813 (W.D.N.Y. November 3, 2021). This flaw impacts the salient substantive matter pertaining to the right of worshippers to carry handguns into a House of Worship for self-defense. The only qualifier is the worshipper must be the recipient of a valid New York concealed handgun carry license issued by the appropriate New York licensing official. But, the U.S. District Court ruled that Houses of Worship are “Sensitive Places” under the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, and therefore a worshipper cannot carry a handgun into a House of Worship. This flies in the face of the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the Hardaway case.

The Court, in Goldstein, must have known about the Hardaway case, and the matter addressed by the Second Circuit in its interlocutory order is certainly relevant to and directly impacts the central issue in the Goldstein case, namely, whether a member of the Temple can carry a concealed handgun into the Temple for the purpose of self-defense. But the U.S. District Court, in Goldstein, says not a word about that Opinion. In fact, the District Court’s opinion on the matter is summed up in a paragraph where the Court asserts,

“Laws forbidding ‘the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings’ are consistent with the Second Amendment. Lower courts may ‘use analogies’ to historical regulations of sensitive places, such as schools, government buildings, legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses, to ‘determine that modern regulations prohibiting the carry of firearms in new and analogous sensitive places are constitutionally permissible. Although the Court does not explicitly define what constitutes a sensitive place, it does address specific examples that provide lower courts with some guidelines on the limits of doctrine. For example, we know that it would be ‘too broad’ to classify the entire island of Manhattan simply because it is ‘crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department. However, it is also not so narrow that the Government must find an identical law from the relevant historical periods for the modern-day regulation to be allowed.” [Citations Omitted]. The District Court does not consider the fact that Houses of Worship are exempt from the CCIA’s “Sensitive Place” Restrictions to the lawful carrying of a handgun.

But the District Court says nothing about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruling in Hardaway, where the Court pointed out (prior to the Goldstein case) that a lawfully licensed person carrying a handgun concealed in a House of Worship is exempted from the ‘Sensitive Place’ prohibition when that person is “tasked with the duty to keep the peace.” The failure of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to acknowledge this ruling and either adhere to it or attempt to argue around it constitutes a fatal flaw in the District Court’s reasoning, negatively impacting the entirety of the District Court’s Opinion in Goldstein.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Hardaway v. Nigrelli, said this:

“Appellants request a stay pending appeal of the district court's order dated November 3, 2022 (W.D.N.Y. 22-cv-771, doc. 52), enjoining Appellants from enforcing a provision of New York's Concealed Carry Improvement Act criminalizing possession of a firearm in a place of worship or religious observation. See N.Y. Penal Law § 265.01-e(2)(c). Having weighed the applicable factors, see In re World Trade Ctr. Disaster Site Litig., 503 F.3d 167, 170 (2d Cir. 2007), we conclude that a stay pending appeal is warranted. Accordingly, upon due consideration, it is hereby ORDERED that the motion for a stay pending appeal is GRANTED and the district court's November 3 order is STAYED pending the resolution of this appeal. To the extent that the district court's order bars enforcement of § 265.01-e(2)(c) as it pertains to persons who have been tasked with the duty to keep the peace at places of worship, such category is EXCEPTED from this order.” [emphasis our own].

The failure of the Court in Goldstein to even mention the Hardaway Opinion is concerning and disconcerting. But, on the Plaintiffs’ new appeal to the Second Circuit, the Second Circuit should see through the flaw in the District Court’s Goldstein opinion. The Second Circuit should find that consistent with its earlier Opinion in the Hardaway case, people who have a lawful license to carry a handgun in New York must be allowed to carry a handgun in a House of Worship precisely because that “Sensitive Place” Restriction is now EXCEPTED from Government enforcement.

A decision of the Second Circuit involving one U.S. District Court applies to all the lower U.S. District Courts in New York. Apparently, the Southern District of New York, where the Goldstein case was brought, doesn’t see this. That might explain why the Court doesn’t mention the Hardaway opinion. But, there is a wrinkle to this, and it is one that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Goldstein might have and should have fleshed out for itself. That it did not do so is troubling.

But there is a potential problem, and it involves the meaning of “with the duty to keep the peace.” If that phrase implies that anyone who carries a handgun in a “House of Worship” is, ipso facto, presumed to be carrying “with the duty to keep the peace,” which is a reasonable conclusion to be drawn, then any person who desires to carry a handgun in a House of Worship for the Constitutionally protected purpose of armed self-defense, and who holds a valid New York State concealed handgun license to carry has complied with the CCIA.

However, if the phrase means that only armed security guards are those individuals who are considered as having “the duty to keep the peace” (apart from Police Officers, Peace Officers, and others exempted from “Sensitive Location” restrictions, as set forth in N.Y. Penal Law § 265.01-e), then a person who wishes to carry a handgun into a House of Worship must comply with stringent and onerous requirements to obtain a special license to carry. See, e.g., requirements as set forth on the New York Government’s Division of Criminal Justice Services website.

But the State Statute doesn’t explicitly refer to armed security guards in the context of “House of Worship” in the Penal Code.

It may well be that the phrase “with the duty to keep the peace” was intentionally meant by its drafters to be vague. If so, that explains why the State Legislature in Albany would add that phrase as a trap for the unwary. In effect, it would mean that carrying a handgun into a House of Worship remains a “Sensitive Place” where one cannot lawfully carry a handgun for self-defense, after all.

If this is true, and it may be an argument the Government would henceforth make, when its agents commence arresting worshipers who happen to be carrying a handgun in a House of Worship, that would be in keeping with the State’s agenda to continually harass handgun owners, as the Government continues to constrain the exercise of one’s fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense.

The New York Government’s end goal seems to be to make the entire State into one all-encompassing “Sensitive Place Gun-Free Zone,” and the common people and the U.S. Supreme Court* be damned if they don’t agree with that.

________________________________

*Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority in Bruen, aware that the New York Government would attempt to transform broad swaths of New York into “Sensitive Places,” expressly cautioned the State against doing this. The Justice writes, “Although we have no occasion to comprehensively define ‘sensitive places’ in this case, we do think respondents err in their attempt to characterize New York’s proper-cause requirement as a ‘sensitive-place’ law. In their view, ‘sensitive places’ where the government may lawfully disarm law-abiding citizens include all ‘places where people typically congregate and where law-enforcement and other public-safety professionals are presumptively available.’ Brief for Respondents 34. It is true that people sometimes congregate in ‘sensitive places,’ and it is likewise true that law enforcement professionals are usually presumptively available in those locations. But expanding the category of ‘sensitive places’ simply to all places of public congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement defines the category of ‘sensitive places’ far too broadly.”

NEW YORK’S HANDGUN LICENSING REGIME AT ODDS WITH THE SECOND AMENDMENT

MULTIPART ESSAY SERIES ON POST-BRUEN CASE ANALYSIS

POST-BRUEN—WHAT IT ALL MEANS AND WHAT ITS IMPACT IS BOTH FOR THOSE WHO SUPPORT AND CHERISH THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AND THOSE WHO DO NOT; THOSE WHO SEEK TO UNDERMINE AND EVENTUALLY DESTROY THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT AND THOSE WHO SEEK TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN THE RIGHT BOTH FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

INTERLUDE

IMPORTANT POINTS OF THIS ESSAY

• ATTACKS ON THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF DEFENSE AND ON AMERICA’S ARMED CITIZENRY WAGED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND BY A FEW STATE GOVERNMENTS SUCH AS NEW YORK ARE SERVILE RESPONSES TO INTERNATIONAL DEMANDS THAT AMERICA SUBORDINATE THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AND LAWS TO AN ALIEN BELIEF SYSTEM  

• INTERNATIONAL “NORMS” CONTRA THE NATION’S NATURAL LAW RIGHTS TRANSGRESS AND DEFY THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHICAL TENETS ON WHICH THIS NATION WAS FOUNDED AND ON WHICH IT HAS WELL PROSPERED FOR OVER TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY YEARS.

New York’s handgun licensing regime is an omnipresent and omnipotent roadblock to Americans’ exercise of their fundamental and unalienable right to keep and bear arms in that jurisdiction.

But the licensing regime isn’t the cause of New York’s strenuous antipathy toward the commonalty’s natural law right to armed self-defense. It is merely the effect of the Government’s longstanding dismissiveness toward the average man’s exercise of his unalienable right to armed self-defense.

Apart from the untenability of the New York Government’s stance toward a fundamental right of the American people on both legal and philosophical grounds, there are societal consequences; horrible repercussions that follow from this Government stance.

First, there is the scourge of random criminal violence. This didn’t just happen. It occurred because of specific policy choices, including cashless bail; a reluctance of prosecutors to prosecute criminals; and a disinclination of a justice system to incarcerate dangerous elements, thereby preventing them from harming innocent members of the community.

This diffidence toward criminals and lunatics coupled with Government’s confrontational attitude toward the rank and file municipal police forces and toward State’s rural county sheriffs, and pathological abhorrence to the notion of civilian armed self-defense have all had a deleterious impact on the welfare of the people and well-being of the community.

The public no longer feels safe because quite simply the public isn’t safe.

When the New York Government couples its resentment of police, its tolerance toward the worst elements of society, a callous disregard for  the safety of the citizenry, and a refusal to countenance a person’s natural law right and responsibility to defend his or her own life against insistent predatory threats, then destabilization of society is imminent.

Such is evident in New York. It all results from deliberate policy choices of the New York Government. And there is something both devious and weird for a Governor of the State—in this instance, Kathy Hochul—who  insists she cares deeply about public safety but does nothing to secure it, handcuffing police, mollycoddling murderous criminals and dangerous lunatics, and presumptuously declaring that it is the armed citizen, and not the armed criminal, who endangers the very thing, “public safety,” she vociferously  declares and adamantly claims that it is she, not the U.S. Supreme Court, who seeks to protect the life, safety, and well-being of New Yorkers.

In an article posted on the National Shooting  Sports Foundation (NSSF) website on July 7, 2022, two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Bruen, and one week after Albany passed and Hochul signed into law a comprehensive package of amendments to its Handgun Law, called the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” of 2022 (“CCIA”), Larry Keane, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the NSSF, aptly demonstrated that Hochul’s defiant sanctimony was nothing more than vacuous rhetoric, self-serving gibberish, created for the cameras:

“It only took 30 seconds, that’s all. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul held a press conference calling back her state’s legislature for an ‘extraordinary’ session to pass more gun control after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York’s restrictive and subjective ‘may issue’ pistol permit license scheme.

In 30 seconds, she vocalized why her gun control agenda is destined to fail.

Failed Approach

Gov. Hochul exclaimed, ‘I’m absolutely shocked,’ after the Supreme Court held in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding Americans to carry a firearm in public for self-protection. She shouldn’t be. It only takes a simple reading of the actual amendment.

She called her state’s Democratically-controlled legislature back to Albany to restrict where licensed conceal carry permit holders can lawfully carry their firearms. The new laws include even more restrictive provisions like background checks and a state database for ammunition purchases, increased training requirements to obtain the permit, a mandatory sit-down, in-person interview and even requiring applicants to submit social media accounts for content review.

‘Do you have the numbers to show that it’s the concealed carry permit holders that are committing crimes? The lawful gun owner will say you’re attacking the wrong person,’ asked Albany-based CBS 6 News anchor Anne McCloy. ‘It’s really people that are getting these guns illegally that are causing the violence, not the people that are going to get the permit legally and that’s the basis for the whole Supreme Court argument. Do you have the numbers?’

‘I don’t need to have numbers,’ the governor shot back. ‘I don’t have to have a data point to point to to say this is going to matter.’

That’s what is called ‘the tell.’  These laws aren’t aimed at stopping criminals. They’re designed to rob law-abiding citizens of their rights.

What’s The Data Say?

Some estimates suggest New York has more than 200,000 conceal carry permit holders. For the entire United States, it’s over 21.5 million. These are law-abiding gun owners that meet state requirements and were approved after an FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verification. New York is one of the states with the most stringent conceal carry requirements.

The actual data shows concealed carry permit holders are among the most law-abiding people in America. The Heritage Foundation’s 2019 data says, ‘. . . concealed-carry permit holders accounted for 801 firearm-related homicides over a 15-year span, which amounts to roughly 0.7% of all firearm-related homicides during that time.’

A Fox News report paints a picture Gov. Hochul would rather ignore. According to the FBI, Census Bureau and Rand Corporation data, states with lower rates of gun ownership and more restrictive gun control – like New York – have more firearm murders per 100,000 residents as a percentage of gun-owning population than states with high gun owner rates.

New York ranks fifth, with just 19.9 percent of households saying they possess a firearm and 1.53 firearm homicides per 100,000 residents. The Violence Policy Center attempted to ‘fact check’ a claim about concealed carry holders committing fewer crimes but ended up ‘revealing’ there were 37 firearm incidents (not specifically intentional homicide) involving concealed carry permit holders between May 2007 and May 2022. That’s less than 2.5 per year in the entire country.

Crime rates, especially in New York City, continue to climb.”

But if “public safety” and “Gun Violence” are just deflection created by the New York Government, and by a handful of other “May Issue” jurisdictions around the Country, and by the Federal Government under the present Biden Administration, what, then, is the true reason for the constant and vigorous assault on the armed citizen?

This is the second and more serious problem facing the commonalty of the Nation because the Federal Government and New York and these other “May Issue” concealed handgun licenses are outliers.

These Governments that act contrary to the tenets of the U.S. Constitution damage the core ethos of the Country.

It is one thing for a Government to disregard the general welfare of the Community. That is bad enough. But it is quite another for a Government to prevent, to deny, to the individual his right and duty to do what he can and must to secure his own life and well-being and that of his family.

A recalcitrant Government that trusts not its own people will expend much of its energies to exerting control over its people. The result is totalitarianism—the worst sort of authority under which a human being can live. And we are rapidly moving toward that. And in a free Constitutional Republic, upon which this Nation was constructed, such usurpation by Government of that sovereign authority belonging solely to the American people is an abomination.

The Biden Administration and many in Congress intend to disarm the public, and the common man rightfully resists. And States, like New York, sympathetic to the goals of the Biden Administration and to the mindset of the Collectivists in Congress perceive any American who holds to the values of the founders of the Republic is perceived as a threat that must be contained. Attempts to rein in speech and access to firearms and ammunition is Government’s response to a perceived threat to its power and authority. But who is the defiant rebel, here? Is it the common man who holds to the Constitution and to the Laws of the Land, and to the natural law rights bestowed upon him by the Divine Creator? Or is it Government actors themselves who betray their Oath to Country and God and Constitution and People? Many academicians would argue that Government cannot itself be capable of treachery to people and Constitution. But, if that is true, then tyranny is impossible. For, if it were possible, then the American people would have both the moral and legal right, and the duty to rise up against tyranny, as indeed the first Americans once did. Curiously, those first Americans are today denounced for it, by those who speak of a New American Revolution, by which they mean, although they don’t say, a Counterrevolution against the American Revolution. That explains the attacks against both the American founders and the Constitution they drafted and that the States ratified.

This present Federal Government under the Biden Administration and some States like New York, do not trust the common man, and therefore will place all manner of obstacles in his path to frustrate his personal autonomy and the power he wields through the firearms he bears. And, so, the Federal Government and States like New York attack armed self-defense incessantly, aggressively.

THE NEW YORK KATHY HOCHUL GOVERNMENT IS A CARBON COPY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF ANDREW CUOMO, HER PREDECESSOR

The New York Government under Governor Kathy Hochul is no different from that of her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo. How it is that many Americans tend to vote for those people that, through their actions, and often through their words as well, couldn’t care less about the life and well-being of the commonalty is difficult to grasp, rationally.

This can be explained in part, at least, to advances in psychological conditioning imposed on the public.

The Government, through the Press and media, manipulate the psyche of the public.

Many fall prey to this manipulation. But many more Americans do not. They are inured to these machinations. But why does the Federal Government and States like New York attempt to ensnare the human mind if not to exert power and control over them for fear of them? But why does Government fear the common man? Would there be cause to fear the common man if Government would but forbear exerting power and authority upon him? For is it not that very power and control that Government exerts upon the common man that causes the common man to fear Government? It is an infinite loop, a vicious loop.

Government’s exercise of power and control over the common man causes anger and fear and resentment in man against Government. Government then comes to fear the common man and exerts more control over him, and thereby gradually becomes a Tyrant. And the common man then sees reason enough to overthrow the Tyrant, through force of arms. The Tyrant sees a threat to its authority and power grow in direct relationship to the power and authority wielded by the Tyrant. At critical mass, the public revolts against the Tyrant. The Tyrant sees anger brewing and rather than desisting from exercise of power, increases the exercise of it, which includes taking action against the common man, demanding, compelling the common man to forsake his arms on penalty of imprisonment or death if he fails to comply. Tyranny thus grows, becoming more evident, more strident, more emphatic with each new edict.  

At bottom the Federal Government and the New York Government fear the armed citizen more, much more, than they fear the armed, combative, violent criminal. The violent, depraved criminal and mindless lunatic are petty annoyances at worst, even if they are grave threats to the commonalty.  The Government leaders and the wealthy “elite” of society are cocooned against the threats visited daily on the average man by garden variety criminal elements and the criminally depraved and insane.

Unbeknownst to the criminal element, the Government uses this lowest common denominator of society to keep the public in check. That helps explain why the Federal Government and various State Governments are doing little to nothing to prevent rampant, raging violent crime and why it is that Government treats criminal violence gingerly, circumspectly—employing its energies to prevent the average, law-abiding, responsible, rational citizen from keeping and bearing arms, as it is the common man, not the depraved criminal and rampaging lunatic that Government sees as potentially the greater threat to IT, i.e., to Government.

But, if the Government’s first duty is to provide generally for the public safety and welfare of the denizens of the community, generally, there is something singularly odd for that Government to claim the armed citizen is himself a threat to that very public safety and order by the mere fact that he would wish to be armed to provide for his personal protection.

It is odd that the Government would see this common man doing his part to promote public safety by providing for his own safety and fault him for that.

Kathy Hochul engages in word games,  false rhetoric—at once discordant and absurd.

How is it that a Government would fear the common man—perceiving the safety and well-being of the community as threatened by that common man who provides for his own well-being and safety? Where is the harm in that? Does not that common man, in having taken due responsibility for his own well-being and safety serve the betterment of the community in which he lives? Or is there something more going on here? And of course there is. It is Tyranny that has taken over Government. And the Tyrant will ever fear the armed citizen—the keeping and bearing of firearms by the common man.

There is a singular irony though where tyranny comes to a Nation such as ours, and none not more so than ours, that is born in freedom.

Is it that the New York Government and the present Federal Government fear what is a basic truism of America: the idea that the common man is sovereign over Government? That idea clashes with the manifestation of a new world empire taking shape. It is one ostensibly predicated on global economics—a thing ubiquitous today. But that notion is also shaping political, social, and ethical thought.

The European Union has evolved, or, perhaps, metastasized is a better word, from a purely economic union—at least as explained to the populations of western Europe—to something much more elaborate and frightening. It has become a political, social union.

More power is now concentrated in Brussels than in the individual Countries.

One can understand the concern of a Country like Hungary that had lived under Soviet domination and that can perceive clearly what other Countries that had suffered under the weight of the Soviet Union are blind to—the movement of an ostensibly democratic-based confederation of nations to a decidedly undemocratic union of disparate countries that must come kicking and screaming to a new reality—thrown as they are into a burning kettle where they are all transformed into one homogenous amorphous super-state.

And the U.S. is moving in that direction. The Biden Administration, taking its lead from the EU is attempting to change the thought patterns of Americans—away from their uniqueness, which has worked well for the Country and for the American people—to an entirely new way of thinking, predicated on the tenets of Collectivism, that is decidedly contrary to the political and social and legal philosophy of the Country upon which the Constitution is based, grounded on the tenets of Individualism.

In this new Collectivist-themed universe, there is no place for freedom of thought, freedom of association with like kind, and there is definitely no place for an armed citizenry.

New York and a handful of States like it are intractable. They find anathema the promise of a secure and safe Country, one in which the American people are sovereign over Government. But given the power of a seditious Press and Government’s control over the vast apparatuses of military, police, and intelligence—and given that academia and big business and big finance and big tech are all onboard as well—this present outlier Federal Government along with several outlier State Governments have attacked the bedrock principles upon which this Nation survived and thrived. They are arguing that the sacred principles, precepts, and tenets of Individualism are archaic and no longer of significance in new neo-feudalistic empire that the world is rapidly marching toward, and must be therefore be dropped so that the remains of the United States can be easily, smoothly merged into this new Global empire.

These points aren’t mere supposition. They are supported by the weight of recent historical evidence.

Our Country has prospered like no other Country before it, and in the space of only a couple of hundred years. And, yet there are those that fault the common man, the average American for his accomplishments and the accomplishments of this Nation on behalf of and by the efforts of the common man. He is mocked and attacked. He is called a racist, a white supremacist, a nativist, and worse.

Those forces that are attempting to usher our Country into a new political, social, cultural, economic, and juridical reality are having a hard time of it.

At least one-third of the people of the Nation—a substantial number of people by any estimate—have serious reservations about that and demand to have their say.

And the Bill of Rights—a formidable ally to their Cause, hardly a little thing, although some make light of it—has their back.

No less so, do a few Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have the back of the American people, through the Court’s principled and avid defense of the Nation’s Bill of Rights.

Several Justices have come under concerted attack by many in the Legacy Press—a thing that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. It is the only Branch of Government that has remained true to its sacred duty under Article III of the Constitution and has scrupulously adhered to its singular responsibility to preserve and protect the Constitution, without which the Nation and its people would be undone.

THE THIRD BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT, AN INDEPENDENT U.S. SUPREME COURT, IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL TO THE PRESERVATION OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, AN INDEPENDENT SOVEREIGN NATION STATE, AND A FREE AND SOVEREIGN AMERICAN PEOPLE IN WHOM ULTIMATE AUTHORITY MUST REST TO THWART TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT

Some argue that the Third Branch of Government, the U.S. Supreme Court, is considered of lesser importance than the first two. That is patently ridiculous.

See New York Times Guest Opinion, posted, October 11, 2018, by Pepperdine Law Professor, Barry P. McDonald, “Should the Supreme Court Matter So Much?”

He writes,

“If you paused during the heated battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination to ask yourself whether it made any sense for the appointment of one individual to one position in our government to matter so much, let me assure you: The answer is no. It doesn’t make any sense.

Why did Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation matter so much? Because the Supreme Court has come to matter so much — indeed, because it has come to matter too much. The court has become a political actor that wields excessive power in our democracy. The uproar over the Kavanaugh hearings was, at bottom, a reflection of that unfortunate fact.

Americans have become so used to having the Supreme Court decree the country’s policy on such vital matters as abortion, gun rights, same-sex marriage and campaign finance that they assume this is how the court is supposed to function. But that assumption is mistaken.

Our nation’s founders would blanch to see how different the court is today from their conception of it. Only if we can figure out how to restore the Supreme Court to its intended role can we avoid a future in which a court nomination continues to be capable of tearing our country apart.

When the founders established our system of self-government, they didn’t expend much effort on the judicial branch. Of the roughly three and a half long pieces of inscribed parchment that make up the Constitution, the first two pages are devoted to designing Congress. Most of the next full page focuses on the president. The final three-quarters of a page contains various provisions, including just five sentences establishing a “supreme court,” any optional lower courts Congress might create and the types of cases those courts could hear.

Why was the judicial branch given such short shrift? Because in a democracy, the political branches of government — those accountable to the people through elections — were expected to run things. The courts could get involved only as was necessary to resolve disputes, and even then under congressional supervision of their dockets.

It was widely recognized that the Supreme Court was the least important of the three branches: It was the only branch to lack its own building (it was housed in a chamber of Congress), and the best lawyers were seldom enthusiastic about serving on it (John Jay, the court’s first chief justice, resigned within six years and described the institution as lacking ‘energy, weight and dignity’).”

These latter two remarks are in the nature of straw man arguments that beg the salient question at issue which Professor McDonald merely assumes to be the case rather than a thesis to be proved. Did the Framers consider the Judicial Branch to be of lesser importance than Congress and the Executive Branch? If true, that cuts into the doctrine of three co-equal Branches with carefully demarcated functions and authority.

Now, it is true that the Supreme Court does not have the power of the purse wielded by Congress, and it does not wield control over the vast military, police, and intelligence apparatuses, falling within the purview of the Executive Branch. But, the High Court is a Branch of Government that has one unique power that the other two Branches do not have: the power to say what the Law is—no small thing, that.

And Professor McDonald stretches to deal with this matter, as he must. He says,

“What about the task of interpreting the Constitution? This question is the subject of some debate, but the founders most likely believed that each branch of government had the right and duty to determine for itself what the Constitution demanded, unless the Constitution was clearly transgressed. If the Constitution was clearly transgressed, the Supreme Court had a duty to hold Congress or the president accountable — but only in the case before it. The founders almost certainly did not envision a roving mandate for the Supreme Court to dictate to Congress, the president or state governments what actions comported with the Constitution (unless they were a party to a case before it).”

If the interpretive function could be relegated to Congress, and if the Framers truly thought the U.S. Supreme Court to be “the least important of the three branches,” why would the Framers trouble themselves to create an independent Judiciary at all?

Professor McDonald recognizes this fact as problematic given the assumption he begins his paper on—taking as a given that the U.S. Supreme Court is not on an equal footing with the Congress and the Executive Branch. He asks and then responds to the question he raises:

“What about the task of interpreting the Constitution? This question is the subject of some debate, but the founders most likely believed that each branch of government had the right and duty to determine for itself what the Constitution demanded, unless the Constitution was clearly transgressed. If the Constitution was clearly transgressed, the Supreme Court had a duty to hold Congress or the president accountable — but only in the case before it. The founders almost certainly did not envision a roving mandate for the Supreme Court to dictate to Congress, the president or state governments what actions comported with the Constitution (unless they were a party to a case before it).

Professor McDonald contends that only “if the Constitution was clearly transgressed, the Supreme Court had a duty to hold Congress or the president, accountable—but only in the case before it.”

But, if Congress or the President were a party to a suit, would not that raise a political question that the Court would refuse to hear because of lack of standing, as determined by the Court, even if the Constitution were in fact transgressed by Congress and/or the President?

Consider, the recent immigration case, United States vs. Texas. Wasn’t this precisely the kind of case that Professor McDonald says the High Court could entertain—a case where the Biden Administration likely did transgress the Constitution and such an instance of unconstitutional conduct would operate as an exception Professor McDonald himself recognizes when he states, “the founders most likely believed that each branch of government had the right and duty to determine for itself what the Constitution demanded, unless the Constitution was clearly transgressed [emphasis my own].

Nonetheless, the Court Majority argued that the States lacked standing to challenge Executive Branch policy that arguably did violate Congressional law. The lone dissenter, Justice Alito, raises the tantalizing question that the failure of the U.S. Supreme Court to render a decision on the merits of the case, does not honor the separation of powers doctrine, but “actually damages that system by improperly inflating the power of the Executive and cutting back the power of Congress and the authority of the Judiciary.” See, e.g., analysis of the decision by Amy Howe. Justice Alito’s compelling Dissent serves as a powerful rejoinder to Professor McDonald’s generally dismissive attitude toward the authority of the Court.

And what would Professor McDonald’s retort be to matters involving the Bill of Rights? If Article III of the Constitution were to be repealed, and the authority to interpret cases were left to the lower Courts—those created by Congress— a patchwork quilt of decisions across the Country would leave fundamental natural law rights in tatters. Those members of Congress and many Americans across the Country who despise the Dobbs abortion case decision, correctly decided precisely because it does not involve a fundamental, unalienable right and properly belongs to the States, are in an uproar. Yet those same people—certainly Congressional Democrats—would have no issue with denigrating the natural law right to armed self-defense. And the presence of the High Court makes all the difference apropos of preserving the sanctity and inviolability of natural law rights without which a truly free Constitutional Republic and a free and sovereign people would no longer exist and, in fact, would not even be possible.

To that end, and for that purpose, the Court has set its imprimatur on three three landmark Second Amendment cases: Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, all decided in the last fourteen years. THE HIGH COURT HAS EXPLAINED WHAT THE LAW IS—AND IT IS FOR THE HIGH COURT, IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, TO SAY WHAT THE LAW IS. THAT AUHTHORITY AND RESPONSIBILITY BELONGS SOLELY TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, NOT TO CONGRESS AND NOT TO THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH.

These cases explain cogently, coherently, and categorically, what the Second Amendment says and what it means, in accordance with the plain meaning of it, as the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended.

But, what the Court has to say about the Second Amendment does not sit well with the would-be Destroyers of a Free Republic, nor fit well with the type of Country these would-be Destroyers and their puppets in the Federal Government under the Biden Administration and in some State Governments like New York, and in the Press, and by some in the academia wish to create.

The High Court—at least those of the so-called Conservative Wing—understand that public opinion (constantly changeable and ever subject to the whim and caprice of Government, Press, and media propagandists) is not a factor in their deliberations and decisions, as well such factor should never be). That frustrates and angers those forces that are determined to overthrow this free Constitutional Republic, waging a Counterrevolution to the American Revolution of 1776. But, as long as the High Court remains true to the Constitution as written, and as long as a substantial number of Americans does not allow itself to be swayed by a mobocracy under the firm control of the propagandists, who target the “Lizard Brain” of broad swaths of the population, disrupting the psyche through incessant and massive campaigns deception, the American Revolution of 1776 will remain intact and the promises made by the Founders of the Republic to the generations of Americans since, will be preserved.

___________________________

BOOK REVIEW: “FINAL BATTLE” BY DAVID HOROWITZ

“FINAL BATTLE” BY DAVID HOROWITZ

BOOK REVIEW

REVIEWED BY STEPHEN L. D’ANDRILL AND ROGER J. KATZ

“Final Battle,” copyright 2022 by David Horowitz, is a wake-up call and an ominous warning for America’s patriots, 74 million citizens who voted for Trump in 2020.

“Elections [DO] matter.” That is the title of Chapter 1 of the book. The incoming President sets the tone for the Nation, and the Biden Administration would do just that.

What the Biden Administration has wrought is a complete reversal of Trump’s accomplishments. Biden reverted to the agenda of the Obama years—the agenda that Hillary Clinton would have carried out had the American people seen to it that she would not be allowed to carry on the destruction of the Country. The electorate voted in Donald Trump, an outsider, not connected with the Washington, D.C. political elite. Trump had slammed on the brakes of the Obama agenda—one that George W. Bush too had served.

Through manipulation of the electoral system, the forces that crush nations and people, sat their stooge in Office, a shell of a man; one who was and is corrupt and pliable, compliant, and ill-informed, a person physically and emotionally weak, suffering the onset of dementia. The worst person to serve as President of the United States, on a host of factors, especially personal traits. Biden is intellectually, emotionally, physically and physically weak. And he projects that weakness to the Country and the world, just as his benefactors want and expect. Biden is the perfect placeholder for those forces that seek to destroy the Nation. They require a willing manikin to serve as the public face of an America in the throes of weakness and malady. Biden’s Administration would return to completing the agenda that Bush and Obama had worked to achieve for their powerful and shadowy benefactors. But is this what the majority of the electorate truly wanted?  

Was the 2020 U.S. Presidential election fair and aboveboard? Hardly.

Horowitz does present a convincing argument, poking holes in any claim that the election was free and fair. And he succeeds without need to dwell on the technical aspects of a fraudulent election. He doesn’t have to. A few cogent remarks speak volumes:

“. . . when the 2020 election results were in, Trump outperformed every incumbent president before him. . . . in 2020, Trump miraculously increased his margin by 11.2 million votes, making his total of more than 74 million, the most votes ever cast for an American president. On the other hand, to believe that Biden had won, one would have to believe that a mentally challenged candidate, who campaigned from his basement, who could hardly sustain a train of thought and couldn’t get through a campaign speech without a teleprompter, whose crowds were generally in the low double-digits, while Trump was drawing thirty and fifty thousand supporters to his rallies—one would have to believe that this fumbling figure received nearly 12 million more votes than Barack Obama at his peak. . . . Biden’s margin of victory was still razor thin. Roughly 159 million total votes had been cast in the 2020 presidential election. Biden’s margin of victory was 43,000—or 0.027 percent of the total. If the votes illegally cast in Pennsylvania and two other battleground states had been properly thrown out by the courts, Trump would have won.”

Election fraud permeated the 2020 election. Apart from the fraud, the hypocrisy of the Democrats is also displayed.

Horowitz points out that Democrats had questioned Republican election victories in the past to decertify electors and attempt to reverse the result.

Democrats’ hypocrisy and double standard is revealed when it is now Republicans who made accusations about the conduct of the electoral process and raised cogent, sound, and reasonable arguments for investigation into irregularities and sought a suspension of the certification of the election results until an investigation into irregularities was conducted. Democrats would not hear of it and pounced.

Vice President Pence had the authority to call a halt to the certification process in the House. He didn’t. His failure to act might have been due to fear of reprisal from Democrats and the shadowy, sinister powers behind them, or it may be due to his own close connection with Bush Republicans, who are more tied to Democrats than they let on to be.

And now Pence is running for U.S. President himself. Who is he kidding? He has as much chance of gaining the Republican Party nomination as Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney. A better chance he would have if he ran as a Democrat. The idea of ‘voter fraud” isn’t in Pence’s lexicon.

But, when Trump talked about voter fraud in the election, Democrats and a sympathetic Press called it ‘the Big Lie, and likened Trump to Adolf Hitler.

The accusations were not only false, but insulting. Trump took it all in stride, as he had done numerous times in the past, as U.S. President. Trump has a character trait that many politicians lack: fortitude, and indomitable will, essential for a person who would serve the American people as U.S. President. Fortitude and will are traits wholly lacking in Biden.

Democrats and their silent, secretive benefactors are fearful of Trump. That explains why they continue to foment vehement attacks on him; why they continue to level civil lawsuits, and criminal charges against him, and why they mock and scold those tens of millions of people who voted for him, calling them “racist.”

But why is there so much frenetic energy and urgency surrounding this matter, if Democrats honestly believed the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was conducted fairly and was wholly aboveboard? Could it be they know the truth? They must know since they plotted to manipulate the process a couple of years before it even took place.

Substantial evidence points to serious irregularities and machinations in the election system. The bottom line is that Biden did not win the 2020 general election. Trump did. The Press should be investigating this matter itself. But it never did. It did the opposite. The Press is a party to a massive cover-up.

In his book, Horowitz also draws attention to the January 6, 2021 march on the U.S. Capitol Building. Democrats and the Press erroneously refer to as an “insurrection.” The word ‘insurrection’ is a legal term of art in the Federal Code.

There was no insurrection, and, while the Biden Administration has waged an unholy crusade against those Americans who marched to the U.S. Capitol Building that day, no one has been charged with insurrection.

Even so, Democrats drew up an article of impeachment against Trump, claiming that Trump’s actions on that day point to a scheme to take control of the Capitol Building to halt the counting of the electoral votes in the House.

But did Trump truly foment a scheme to take control of the Capitol Building with unarmed civilians or was the entire episode a “False Flag” operation that the Congressional Democrats and the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had concocted to serve as a pretext to launch an impeachment inquiry against him and to hound those who took part in it, serving as an example that, regardless of the fundamental right to dissent, the new order will not tolerate dissent, the Constitution be damned?  

That is a probing question the discerning reader will ask after perusing the book. It is one the Press avoids dealing with or denies if it mentions the matter at all. But it is one that Horowitz does not shy away from.

Horowitz writes that, when Trump called for a peaceful, patriotic protest at the Capitol, he offered 10,000 federal National Guard troops to provide safety and security, and that Democrats rejected the offer.

The Capitol Police failed to secure the perimeter and those protesters who did enter the building walked in unimpeded and unopposed.

Horowitz also points out that, contrary to the claims of Democratic Party and media reports, the protesters were not armed, and that three of the four deaths that occurred on January 6 were Trump supporters, and occurred as a result from stress-related causes or other medical natural causes, not from violence.

One person, a victim of homicide, was an unarmed female Air Force veteran. A Capitol police officer shot her. It was deliberate, unnecessary, unprovoked. A reporter caught the shooting on video. That reporter was thereafter arrested, and the footage confiscated. The Capitol Police did not release the identity of the officer.

The officer’s identity came to light much later in time, and he was exonerated after a secret Justice Department investigation, despite video evidence pointing to criminal homicide. 

Still, Democrats and their friends in the legacy Press insist on referring to the protest as an “armed insurrection” and have never veered from that narrative. But it was no such thing.

Moreover, the Capitol Police refused to release more than 14,000 hours of unedited video surveillance. Why is this content being kept away from the public? Don’t they have a right to see the video evidence for themselves? And, Fox News Host, Tucker Carlson, having obtained that video footage devoted an episode to the January 6 protest and lost his job because of that. And, why is that? Had he demonstrated the flaws in the narrative produced by the Democrats and by the Press? But do the powers behind the Democrats have sufficient control over the Murdoch publishing empire, too, that they can exert their will and power on all whom they choose and compel obedience? What does this all mean and what does it portend for us, American citizens?

House Speaker Pelosi subsequently ordered 25,000 armed troops to guard the Capitol Building at a cost of half a billion dollars of taxpayer money. Was that really necessary? Or was it theater, to frighten Americans? But she did relent. Was she ordered to do so because the optics were deemed unacceptable, suggesting that, yes, the United States is in the throes of Autocracy, but that fact should not yet be made evident to the people?

Pelosi later reduced the number of troops to 1,500. And those 1,500 troops would remain at the Capitol for more than four and one-half months.

On January 11, 2021, Democrats filed an article of impeachment against Trump, charging him with “incitement of insurrection”—the second such action against Trump, altogether legally unmerited, politically unwarranted, and certainly unprecedented.

The book serves as a scathing indictment against Democrats and the Biden Administration. But Horowitz leaves to the reader the inference to be drawn.

And the inference to be drawn is that Democrats, on behalf of their powerful, wealthy, and secretive benefactors, have succeeded in an unlawful, unconstitutional, and scurrilous coup d’état of the Federal Government. The Nation is definitely all the worse for it, suffering the consequences of it. And the horror commences with Biden’s inauguration speech. Horowitz writes,

“In his inauguration speech on January 20, Biden repeated this pledge: ‘Today on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation. . . . I will be a President for all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.’

Biden’s executive actions launched the most radical regime in American history, the very opposite of what he had promised voters during his presidential campaign. It announced that Biden was coming out as the leader of the radical left in his own party and would abandon all the promises of moderation he had made during his campaign.”

Horowitz devotes the bulk of the book to a discussion of the tremendous misdeeds of the President and the horrific effects of his Administration’s agenda that followed upon the reversal of Trump’s policies. These include, inter alia:

•  Stopping the construction of the southern border wall that “opened the southern border to what turned out to be an invasion by close to 2 million unknown and unvetted individuals from approximately 100 countries, including failed terrorist states,”

• Having “the United States rejoin the World Health Organization (WHO) from which Trump had withdrawn and [restoring] much of the nearly $500 million in funding for the WHO that Trump had cut off,”

• Cancelling the “‘1776 Commission project Trump had launched at the very end of this term . . . to oppose the Times’ 1619 Project, which was designed to portray America as a white supremacist nation from its origins,” and

• Creating “‘an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda’” that was unconstitutionally discriminatory on its face, as Biden intended for this program to apply only to select groups, excluding white Americans, especially poor white Americans,” which meant “a repudiation of America’s most essential value, enshrined in its birth certificate, which proclaimed that ‘all men are created equal,”

• Blaming gun dealers for spiking crime rates, all the while mollycoddling the criminal element and shackling the police.

• Blaming Trump for the devastation caused by the Coronavirus outbreak in America, and at once censoring speech to protect the actions of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who bears significant responsibility for the pandemic, for Fauci was instrumental in funding “gain of function” research in China which he continues to deny despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary,

• Engaging in “the biggest, most destructive spending spree ever,”

• Denying responsibility for the disastrous withdrawal of American forces in Afghanistan, which also involved abandoning billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry, delivering this weaponry “into enemy hands,” and

• Shredding Trump’s achievements in the Middle East.

The last chapter of the book, “Final Battle,” is titled, “Where Are We Headed?” Horowitz recites the concern of many of us when he asks, “Is American already an empty shell of its greater self, and are its days already numbered?” The question is meant to be rhetorical. Horowitz says,

“Only a fool would say, with any certainty, no. Barbarian terrorist forces are already at the gates, and inside them, American leaders—both military and civilian—are preoccupied with delusional threats that are said to be existential—climate change, white supremacy, patriotic extremism. But the greatest existential threat to American democracy is the drive by the Democrat Party to create a one-party socialist state—a fascist state. This is manifest in their assault on the First Amendment through so-called ‘cancel culture,’ and their collusion in the deplatforming a president of the United States and his 74 million supporters.”

The central theme of the book is that upward of one-third of the Nation is being systematically ostracized, persecuted and abandoned. Reference to this 74 million Americans is mentioned throughout the book.

Horowitz doesn’t say it, but it becomes apparent that he justifiably thinks it: the Federal Government has devolved into tyranny, and a type of tyranny that suggests this Country is taking orders from malevolent, malignant, ruthless but also inordinately wealthy, powerful, and well-organized forces outside it, a type of totalitarianism unlike the classic totalitarianism of the past, where individuals wielded immense power.

The powers directing this present totalitarianism are unknown, and they wish to keep their identities private. Sheldon Wolin coined the expression “inverted totalitarianism” to describe this new totalitarianism. It is this sort that Americans see overlaid on our Republic.

The Biden Administration has come into Office manifestly unlawfully, and the purpose for doing so is manifestly to corrupt and destroy the Nation and he is obviously working for others, benefactors whom the public is not permitted to see. He is a messenger boy, nothing more, and not particularly adept one as he is hardly an adroit speaker. But he is reliable and easily controlled, and his manifold weaknesses reflect what is meant to be projected to the world: a Nation in decline. The differences between an America under Biden and an American under Trump are stark. One need only look to a Country that was well on the way to recovery under Trump whose policies and initiatives aligned perfectly with his campaign slogan to “Make America Great Again.”

This was the very thing the Biden Administration and its secret benefactors would have none of. Not content to simply ignore Trump’s campaign slogan and the import of it, the Administration denigrated it, treated it as an obscenity, and, in so doing, made clear that, far from making American great again, they intend to destroy the Nation, reduce it to rubble, further evidencing that the Biden Administration is not directing its efforts and resources for the benefit of the Country and the American people for the detriment of both, actively, avidly directing efforts and resources to destroy it, s

The horrible effects of the Administration’s policies cannot be ascribed to ineptitude and incompetence, alone, nor to events beyond the control of the Administration, for they are shapping those events. The Administration has orchestrated a scheme to weaken and drain the vital health out of the Nation: economically, financially, societally, militarily, geopolitically.

David Horowitz doesn’t say this expressly, but it is another inference to be drawn. The book is replete with evidence for it. The evidence is made explicit in the extensive documentation that the author provides in his book. The Country reels from the extent of the damage to the Nation, its people, and to the Constitution the Biden Administration has wrought. One need only look to the effects of the Administration’s policies and to the people that serve in high office in that Administration. They are not only ill-equipped intellectually, lacking native ability and experience. They lack moral scruples, integrity. Many have serious psychological issues, yet wield immense power over the Country, its institutions, and its people. Selected on the basis of and consistent with the dogma of “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion,” percolating through the Government and the Country, Americans see well, the extensive damage to people, institutions, and government, wrought through implementation of this dogma.

74 million of us, though, roughly one-third of adult population of voting age, have had enough of Biden, his Administration, and those elements both here and abroad they are beholden to that have made their intentions known, and those intentions do not have our Nation’s best interests at heart.

Horowitz references these 74 million voters and supporters of Donald Trump throughout the book.

In the last couple of paragraphs of his book, David Horowitz, summarizes the damage already done to this Nation. And makes poignantly clear that any American who objects to the ravaging of the Nation will be the next target. He writes,

“They have pressed for the dismantling of the system of checks and balances, which has been the bulwark of the American democracy for over 240 years. They have done this by demonizing their domestic political opponents, attempting to abolish the Electoral College, and pushing to abolish the filibuster and to pack the Supreme Court; they have attacked the integrity of the electoral system by opposing voter IDS; they have assaulted anyone who questions election results as enemies of American democracy; and they have replaced America’s liberating culture of individualism with a tribal identity politics that undermines the foundations of the constitutional system. Finally, while handing the Islamic terrorists their greatest victory since 9/11, they have sought to attack and discredit their democratic opponents as ‘domestic extremists’ and terrorists. Their zealous advocacy of socialist economics and political fascism sets us on the path to a totalitarian future. All that awaits the sad conclusion to these efforts are the gulags and deprogramming camps, which are not shy about promoting.”

The last sentence is particularly ominous. Is it prophetic? Consider the words of Donald Trump, in a speech he gave to his supporters in Columbus, Georgia on June 10, 2023, after Biden’s DOJ dared to bring charges against him, a former U.S. President—a thing never before seen in our Nation’s history. Trump said, “. . . in the end, they're not coming after me. They're coming after you — and I'm just standing in their way. . . .

Who the hell would vote for them with the policies that they have of open borders and no voter ID? . . .

Can you imagine if it was the other way around? . . . They spied on my campaign and we caught them. They forge false evidence to get illegal surveillance warrants. The FBI offered $1 million for a fictitious dossier written by a foreign spy. To try to frame me for it.

They're trying to do it again.

‘These people don't stop and they're bad and we have to get rid of them . . . . We have to get rid of them ourselves.

If it's somebody else, that person will not be able to withstand the fire . . . . If it's not me, you know it'll be somebody else .  . . that fire doesn't stop just with me. That fire is going to go on against any conservative, any Republican anybody other than them. Because they want the power. They actually want to destroy our country. I believe that because there could be no other reason.”

It is uncanny how Trump’s speech echoes the concerns in the Horowitz book.

Both Trump, and Horowitz, and many other people, 74 million strong, know a violent storm is on the horizon. The coming U.S. Presidential election may well be our last, as Horowitz warns. But the “Final Battle” for the Nation’s Soul may not be the 2024 election results, but what comes after if Biden or someone like him secures the Office of U. S. President and continues the disastrous policies of the Biden Administration. A possible physical, not merely metaphorical, conflagration is in the offing.

There are, then, two possibilities for the future of the Nation, and only one of them can exist.

The American people may see the promise of the American Revolution of 1776 preserved in 2024 and thereafter. That is one possibility.

The second possibility is that the American people will witness a Neoliberal Globalist/Neo-Marxist Counterrevolution that will overthrow a truly Free Constitutional Republic that came about and that had flourished as a result of the American Patriots’ success in overthrowing the tyranny of the British Monarch, George III.

The Counterrevolution is in our midst. Americans now see firsthand the inklings of what it means, of what it portends. If it succeeds, America as a free Republic will cease to exist. And an American citizenry too will cease to exist. All vestige of an independent sovereign Nation and a free Constitutional Republic, and a sovereign people will come to an abrupt halt, and once gone, all of it will be gone forever.

Perhaps a few trappings of a free Republic here and there will be allowed to exist for a time, lest the public fall into despondency, leading to catatonia. But soon enough, even those trappings will be eliminated, no longer necessary, as the young people growing up today in tyranny will know nothing of freedom. A few of them may feel a pang now and again of the past, despite indoctrination. They may have a fleeting recollection of a once free and sovereign people—through an ancestral memory floating briefly and vaguely to the surface of their mind, but that will pass.

Whatever does come to pass, that rests with the American people. To capitulate to the forces behind the Biden Administration is to betray those who fought and died to create a free Republic, having successfully overthrown tyranny and to betray those Americans who, through the succeeding years and decades and centuries, had fought and died to preserve a free Republic.

Those Americans who think they can sit this one out have, by their non-action, taken a stand against the promise of our American Revolution, and deserve to feel the pain that comes to haunt him because of their indifference. And they will suffer pain and remorse. But it will be too late for them. Unfortinately, it will be much to late for us, too, who do understand and cherish the greatness of our Country and people, and who cherish our history, heritage, culture, ethos, and Judeo-Christian ethic, and who understand and cherish the significance of our fundamental rights, codified in the Bill of Rights of our Nation’s Constitution.

Only a Trump Presidency can now protect and secure and preserve a free Constitutional Republic for us, against those intent on destroying us, using stooges like Biden and others in his Administration to carry out their edicts.

It will be difficult to read through the David Horowitz Book without coming away with the realization that, yes, in fact, Americans are facing their “Final Battle.”

The book is an easy read, but it does not entertain. It wasn’t meant to. And for many Americans, it confirms much of what we believe to be true but offers documentary proof to support what many of us believe, transforming our beliefs into knowledge—uncomfortable knowledge, to be sure, but convincing knowledge, nonetheless.

For many other people the book provides eye-opening information that will shatter any preconceived notion that the 2020 electoral process was conducted fairly, that, having taken Office, Biden and his Administration have done a good job for the Nation and for the pepple, and that any bad consequences that have befallen us, are not his fault or the fault of his Administration.

Those readers who hate Trump should instead direct that hatred onto Biden and his Administration. They have severely weakened this Country, exploiting it on behalf of others, and obtaining personal reward for their betrayal. This will make recovery difficult, especially in matters of foreign policy. On that front, Biden and his Administration has devastated this Nation, placing both it and the world in a singularly precarious situation. It is impossible to read the Horowitz book and not see this.

To the rest of the world, the United States appears weak. That does not bode well for the security of the Nation and the world. The perception of weakness, in a once strong Nation that friendly nations had gained support from and that adversaries respected, means that many countries, both great and small, will use the signal of a weak United States to engage in warfare against their neighbors and will challenge the U.S., as China and Iran, have now done. Under Trump, this would never have happened. And during the four years that he was in Office, the United States would not engage in another war, and those countries that have warlike tendencies were careful about acting on those tendencies. With Biden the world has a completely different perspective, and the damage done to this Nation’s security and to the security of the world is painfully clear.

Biden has placed the world in a state of extraordinary tension that can explode at any moment into a full blown Global Thermonuclear conflagration.

David Horowitz’s book establishes Joe Biden’s incompetence and that of his senior officials. More, the book raises the specter that this incompetence is so wide in scope and extreme in impact that the fact of them can only be explained as deliberate, as difficult it may be, for many Americans, to accept. That raises the question who or what is behind the Biden Administration’s actions to destroy our Country, and the reason for this. The damage deliberately done to the Nation cannot rationally be attributed to Biden people. They wouldn’t dare. Powerful interests, here and abroad, must be orchestrating planned destruction of the Nation.

The Arbalest Quarrel has speculated on this. For there must be an answer. A demented fool for President and the implementation of policies designed to harm the Nation don’t just happen. They happen for a reason. And that reason is found somewhere beyond a consideration of Biden and his Administration alone.

There must be powerful but unseen forces behind the horrific events that have unfolded since Biden took office of which he and his Administration have implemented but that, on a higher plane of influence, these secretive others have devised and fed to the Biden Administration. “Final Battle” alludes to this and urges the public to secure their Nation from buffoons and charlatans and corrupt officials that would sell out our Country for a little gold and for the chance to wear the trappings of power.

The first order of business is to make sure our electoral system is fair, honest, and aboveboard. If the public doesn’t have faith in the electoral process, then faith in our Republic is weakened. But how does the public demand an overhaul of the electoral process and how might the public know, really know, that our elections are conducted fairly? And assuming the public can faith in the electoral system, it is then imperative that Americans vote, and that they vote into office a person that will protect our Nation and promote policies that do not impede one’s personal growth, responsibility, and chance of success. Under Biden this is impossible. Under Trump it is not only possible. It has occurred. During the first term of his Presidency, he began to turn America around to its once greater glory—and this was all the remarkable given the efforts to harm him and to sabotage his policies and initatives.

Once he is in Office he will be more careful when nominating individuals to Cabinet Level positions, and, even though it will take effort to rebuild what Biden has destroyed, he can still make American great again.

Trump will beat these recent ridiculous lawsuits and criminal charges against him. He will gain the Republican Party nomination. He is and will remain the front runner. And once he gains the nomination, it is imperative that the voting public vote for him. Whatever biases a person has about the man, consider what four years of his Presidency have brought: a secure economy, a safe and secure world, and pronounced faith in our Nation’s history, heritage, culture, ethos, and Judeo-Christian moral system. Compare that with what just two years of Biden has brought for America and its people. And Biden has another year and a half to go, to continue the destruction of the Country on behalf of his secretive and powerful benefactors to whom he is beholden, having betrayed the Oath of Office he has taken.

Read the Horowitz book, “Final Battle.” What Horowitz has to say may not be what some wish to hear. But it is the truth. And for most of us, there is value in that. 

NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL DEFIES U.S. SUPREME COURT AND BRUEN RULINGS; INTENDS TO WEAKEN EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE

On November 3, 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court heard Oral Argument in the third major Second Amendment case, NYSRPA vs. Bruen.

The Hearing was a mere formality. Both parties, Plaintiff Petitioners, and Defendant Respondent New York State Government, knew the outcome before the hearing took place, or had good reason to suspect a positive outcome for Petitioners and a decidedly adverse one for the State.

New York’s Handgun Law was in the crosshairs of U.S. Supreme Court for at least a couple of years.

New York, like several other jurisdictions, had pushed back on the Court’s rulings in Heller and McDonald for years, angering Americans who sought to exercise their natural law right to armed self-defense, and rightfully irritating several members of the Court having perceived State Government administrations and courts failing to  jurisdictions failed to adhere to the High Court rulings in those two landmark Second Amendment cases.

Heller made clear the right to armed self-defense is an individual right, unconnected with one’s service in a militia, a point plain from the text of the Second Amendment. This is consistent with the Standard Model, grounded on “the text of the Second Amendment and its historical underpinnings.” See, e.g., Critical Guide To The Second Amendment,” 62 Tenn. L. Rev. 461, 466 (Spring 1995), by Glenn Harlan Reynolds. Heller conforms to the most reasonable interpretation of the Second Amendment, which foes of the Second Amendment dismiss outright.

Failing to appreciate the import and purport of the Second Amendment, Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions went their merry way. State Government administrations and their legislatures immediately rebelled against Heller, and the Courts of those jurisdictions, giving their imprimatur on unconstitutional acts. Through tortuous legal reasoning they gave their imprimatur on unconstitutional acts, requiring the U.S. Supreme Court to step in once again.

McDonald held the right of the people to keep and bear arms applies equally to the States and the Federal Government, albeit, apropos of the States, it applies to them through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Relying on its own case law precedent, in Barron ex rel., Tiernan vs. Mayor of Balt, 32 U.S. 243, 7 Pet. 243, 247, the High Court conceded the right codified in the Second Amendment applied originally to the Federal Government only, not to the States.

But, through its further analysis of the Constitution, the Court’s Majority inferred that the Right does in fact apply to the States, albeit through the Fourteenth Amendment.

But does that fact alter the force of the Bill of Rights, and do we treat these Rights contained therein, like any other Constitutional provision?

These are not trivial questions. For if the Rights contained therein are to be construed as elemental, fundamental, illimitable, immutable, unalienable and eternal Natural Law Rights, as the Founders of our Republic accepted as axiomatic, then these Rights are not the sorts of things that government, any government—State, Federal, or local—has the lawful authority to ignore, dismiss, tinker and tamper with, or abrogate, in any matter. That is to say, these are primordial Rights existent in the individual by Grace of the Divine Creator. They are “Natural Law.” They are not constructions by man. So, if Government, a collection of men, did not create these natural law rights, then it follows that Government has no lawful authority to bestow them on other men, or to rescind the right thus bestowed, or to deny the exercise of them. Yet many State governments do just that and insist they, alone, maintain and retain the sole right to do so. This leads inevitably to a problem of logic, more basic than one of law, and this logical conundrum plays out amply on review of the New York Sullivan Act.

New York State and Federal Courts acknowledge that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right. But then they argue that, since the State requires the individual to acquire a license as a condition precedent to the exercising of the right to keep and bear arms, and as acquisition of a license is within the sole prerogative of the State, and since the Governmental act of bestowing a license on one person and denying it to another, all the while maintaining that such licenses once bestowed are subject to rescission, revocation, or suspension at the whim of Government, this means that acquisition of a license to exercise a fundamental right, is itself, a privilege, not a right. And the Courts have ruled.

This reduces a fundamental right to mere platitude, and it is one without force or effect. The Government interposes itself between a preexisting natural law right and one’s desire to exercise it.

The impact of the logical issue is not resolved through Heller or McDonald; nor does Bruen resolve it. It is a man-made problem, arising from a man-made act——

Government licensing of firearms.

LICENSING OF FIREARMS, PARTICULARLY THE LICENSING OF HANDGUNS UTILIZED FOR SELF-DEFENSE OUTSIDE THE HOME IS AT ONCE THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM FRUSTRATING ONE’S EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AND THE MECHANISM EMPLOYED FOR DAMAGING THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE RIGHTS—EXERCISE OF WHICH ALONE FORESTALLS ENCROACHING GOVERNMENT TYRANNY

The Fourteenth Amendment that McDonald relies upon, is, of course, not part of the Bill of Rights that three-fourths of the States, then existing in the United States, ratified on December 15, 1791.

Better it would be for the High Court to rule that the Bill of Rights, as a collection of Natural Law, stand outside the power and authority of Government to regulate.

If that idea sounds outlandish, is it any less outlandish for a State, like New York, to claim that, although the right to keep and bear arms “cannot be” infringed, the ability to do so is dependent on first securing a license to do so, and the issuance of a license is a privilege gained by grace of the State, not a right existent in a person which he may therefore demand of the State? “‘That’s some catch, that catch-22. . . .’ ‘It’s the best there is.” [re: Joseph Hellers’ novel, “Catch-22.”]

The Indiana Courts recognized the problem but attempted to chart a course between Scylla and Charybdis.

‘The people shall have a right to bear arms, for the defense of themselves and the State.’ However, the Indiana Constitution also ‘affirmatively recognizes the state's police power.’ ‘It declares that government is ‘instituted for [the People's] peace, safety, and well-being.’” Id. (quoting City Chapel, 744 N.E.2d at 446 (quoting Ind.)). In this case, the governmental police power of regulating arms challenges the limitations on government when addressing the right to bear arms.” Reddington vs. State, 992 N.E.2d 823 (Ind. Ct. App. 2013). [citations generally omitted].

New York was likely the first jurisdiction to impose handgun licensing on American citizens. That was the Sullivan Act in 1911.

The Sullivan Act was created on a lie, besmirching entire national groups or ethnic classes, new to the City, Italians and Jews as “dangerous people” responsible for crime in New York City:

“Whatever the actual dangers of the automatic revolver, immigrants scared authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. Crime by Jewish and Italian immigrants spurred New York State to enact the Sullivan Law in 1911, which required a license for handgun buying and carrying, and made licenses difficult to obtain. The sponsor at the Sullivan Law promised homicides would decline drastically. Instead, homicides increased and the New York Times found that criminals were ‘as well armed as ever.’” “All The Way Down The Slippery Slope: Gun Prohibition In England And Some Lessons For Civil Liberties In America,” 22 Hamline L. Rev. 399 (Winter 1999), by Joseph E. Olson and David B. Kopel.

The Sullivan Act created out of a paroxysm of fear is still very much with us. In fact the impact of it is worse than ever.

Through time the Sullivan Act grew more elaborate, more burdensome, more restrictive. The New York Government intended this to occur.

Slowly at first, but inexorably, and gaining momentum in the second decade of the 21st, Century, notwithstanding or in spite of and contemptuous of the Heller and McDonald  rulings, the New York Government made patently clear its disgust for and abhorrence of the natural law right to armed self-defense codified Second Amendment.  

Challenges were inevitable.

New Yorkers’ anger toward the State’s actions, reining in exercise of a natural law right to armed self-defense grew in direct proportion to and relation with the Government’s own recalcitrance and arrogance.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the first challenge to the State’s Handgun Law in 2020.

The case NYSRPA vs. City of New York, 140 S. Ct. 1525 (2020), is referred to colloquially as the “New York Gun Transport” case. The Arbalest Quarrel has written several articles on this. Among our published papers,  See, e.g., article posted on April 27, 2020.

The Court could have taken up review of the merits of the case, the Constitutionality of Sullivan, head-on. Justices Thomas and Alito certainly wanted to. And had the Court done so, it might have spared both itself and handgun licensees in New York the time, expense, and frustration of having to deal with further challenges down the road.

Even as Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have wished that, the Leftwing did not and Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, sided with the leftwing of the Court.

Those Justices—Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan— don’t merely oppose exercise of the natural law right of armed self-defense, they detest it. This is plain in their opinions.

The New York Government under Andrew Cuomo, through sleight of hand, amended the Handgun Law ever so slightly to allow Roberts, Kavanaugh, and the leftwing of the Court to declare the case moot.

The Justices dismissed it, avoiding review of the case on the merits.

This is precisely what both the New York Government and those Justices, who dismissed the case on the ground of mootness, wanted.

Justices Alito and Thomas were rightfully livid.

The machinations of Cuomo did not meet the test for mootness, but there was nothing Justices Thomas and Alito could do except prepare a comprehensive dissent.

Justice Kavanaugh, who sided with Chief Justice Roberts and the leftwing of the Court, wrote an odd concurring opinion. He obliquely acknowledged the disappointment of his brethren, and perfunctorily declared there would be other opportunities to vindicate Heller and McDonald. Whether he meant it or not, another opportunity did arise: the case was NYSRPA vs. Bruen.

With Justice Amy Coney Barrett now on the Bench, the Conservative wing of the Court had garnered sufficient votes to grant review of the case but with the aim of vindicating and clarifying the salient points of the two prior seminal Heller and McDonald cases.

Unlike the previous New York City case that could have emerged as the third landmark Second Amendment case, the present Bruen case did just that. This case challenged the core of the Sullivan Act: the idea of armed self-defense outside the confines of one’s home or place of business.

Governor Kathy Hochul, who had replaced Andrew Cuomo whom the secretive and powerful Globalist elites had grown both concerned about and tired of, forcing Cuomo to resign, knew that Bruen posed the greatest risk to the Sullivan Act since the Act’s inception, over a hundred and ten years ago.

The Government could not easily amend the Handgun Law, as Cuomo did in the prior New York case.

The Bruen rulings had the potential of gutting Sullivan Act. Hochul and the Progressives in Albany had no intention of allowing that to happen, regardless of the outcome of Bruen.

But how could Hochul and Albany preserve and even strengthen the Handgun Law consistent with past practice and with its goal of whittling away at exercise of the right to armed self-defense.

News accounts would have the public believe the New York Government had worked feverishly to amend the Handgun Law only after the Court published the decision on June 23, 2022.

But, given the breadth and depth of the Amendments to the Handgun Law, and the ingenuity that must have gone  into the crafting of a response, severely weakening the impact of the Bruen rulings on that Law, it is unlikely the Hochul Administration and the Progressive Legislators in Albany could have accomplished this task within a week of publication of the decision.

Albany passed the packet of amendments, referred to as the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA), on July 1, 2022, just one week after publication of the decision in Bruen, becoming the first State to amend its Handgun Law. See CNN article published July 1, 2022.

Hochul and Albany likely knew the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the State’s May Issue “Proper Cause” Requirement, the day after Oral Argument in Bruen, held months before.

The mainstay of the CCIA includes two provisions: one aimed at restricting exercise of the right to armed self-defense in the public domain upon those whom State licensing officials have issued a concealed handgun carry license, and the other aimed at restricting the number of licenses so issued.

The upshot of all this is the Hochul Government aims, through the CCIA, to maintain the same oppressive standards for handgun carry in the State post Bruen, as it had done pre Bruen. That, of course, has led to a flurry of challenges many of which rest at the moment at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Decisions should be forthcoming.

Individuals who obtain a concealed handgun carry license pursuant to the CCIA, will see that “unrestricted carry” no longer exists.

TWO PRINCIPAL PROVISIONS OF THE AMENDED NEW YORK HANDGUN LAW SEVERELY WEAKEN THE NEW YORKERS’ RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE AND THEIR APPLICATION IS INCONSISTENT WITH THE BRUEN RULINGS

With enactment of the CCIA the Hochul Government has established a new set of stringent requirements, replacing “Proper Cause.”

It is true a person no longer has to establish a reason for carrying a handgun for self-defense in the public arena.

A demonstration of “EXTRAORDINARY NEED” to carry a handgun for personal protection” IS OUT.

The Government has deleted the words from the Handgun Law, and the import of ‘PROPER CAUSE.’

A right of Armed self-defense IS IN, and it is presumptively demonstrative of sufficient need to keep and bear arms and need not be stated in the application.

But, on scrutiny, the amendments to the Handgun Law are no less deleterious, confusing, and confounding as the Law prior to Bruen. The two new provisions establish new hurdles to acquiring a license to carry, for those who are lucky enough to acquire one, the utility of having it is now much in doubt. The provision is worrisome.

SENSITIVE PLACE RESTRICTIONS

With a plethora of “Sensitive Place” restrictions added to the Penal Code, holders of valid concealed handgun carry licenses see themselves unduly constrained from using a handgun for self-defense if the need arises. All concealed handgun carry licenses are now de facto “restricted carry” licenses, but with exemptions made for retired police officers, thereby creating an equal protection problem right off the bat.

Justice Thomas, who authored the decision in Bruen, anticipated that New York might attempt to dilute the utility of carrying a handgun for self-defense in New York and warned the Government of attempting to do so.

Hochul and the Anti-Second Amendment legislators who controlled the legislative process in Albany, didn’t listen. They did what they wanted to do anyway. They severely constrained the carrying of firearms for self-defense.

Hochul’s insolence and brazenness toward the Court isn’t subtle. It’s glaring as evidenced in her response to queries from reporters. See NY Times article, posted on June 30, 2022, titled, “N.Y. Democrats to Pass New Gun Laws in Response to Supreme Court Ruling.”

“‘When asked by reporters what areas would be left for permit holders to legally carry a firearm, Ms. Hochul said: ‘Probably some streets.’”

That perfunctory assertion is hardly reassuring. And she follows that caustic and defiant retort with another one—and this one also incongruous in light of the first:

“‘We know we have to make sure this is constitutional. we’re not looking to go back to the court,’ Ms. Hochul said, adding that, “I will go right up to the line, not cross the line.’” Id.

Well, Hochul did cross it.

If she honestly thought she would avoid a challenge, she is more of the fool for thinking so. There is nothing in the new ponderous, unconscionable amendments to the New York Handgun Law that would suggest that applicants for a New York handgun carry license would find the State’s amendments to the Handgun Law fair, aboveboard, and consistent with the Bruen rulings.

Be that as it may, the new “Sensitive Place” requirement against lawful carry of handguns only applies if a person is awarded with a concealed handgun carry license in the first instance. Just obtaining a handgun carry license is no less difficult than under the now defunct “Proper Cause” requirement. And, for renewal applicants who had met the arbitrary standards that licensing officials created—since the Legislators in Albany never defined what “PROPER CAUSE/EXTRAORIDINARY NEED” means, and each jurisdiction in New York had concocted its own standard or left entirely open what the requirement meant and what was required of an applicant to meet it—those individuals hoping to renew their applications, having, in many cases, held valid concealed handgun carry licenses for decades would now find renewing those applications in jeopardy. They would have to meet stringent new requirements, just as subjective and arbitrary as under the old “PROPER CAUSE/EXTRAORDINARY NEED” requirement.

GOOD MORAL CHARACTER

NEW YORK’S GOOD MORAL CHARACTER REQUIREMENT IS BOTH UNREASONABLE AND, IN THE CONTEXT OF THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, INCONGRUOUS

Through a combination of audacity, sly ingenuity, and craftiness, the Hochul Government has repurposed the “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” Requirement, that Justice Thomas, author of the Bruen Majority Opinion, mentions merely in passing.

Of course, the issue of whether application of a “Good Moral Character” requirement infringes the natural law right to armed self-defense was not at issue in Bruen. But clearly the Conservative wing was aware of a potential issue, reading the Hochul Government’s “mind” like an open book.

The Court clearly, categorically, emphatically ruled that “PROPER CAUSE”/“EXTRAORDINARY NEED” as used in New York’s Handgun Law is unconstitutional, the Hochul Government could not slither around it in a bald-faced attempt to keep it in the Sullivan Act. Hochul and Albany had to strike it from the Handgun Law. And, since “PROPER CAUSE”/“EXTRAORDINARY NEED” was the vehicle through which the State’s licensing regime severely constrained the number of concealed handgun carry licenses it would issue, the State needed to engineer another vehicle through which it could continue to remain a stringent “MAY ISSUE” jurisdiction, severely curtailing issuance of New York concealed carry handgun licenses, and those the State would issue would have little use for armed self-defense. The ‘SENSITIVE PLACE’ provision would suffice to deny a license holder an adequate means to lawfully defend him or herself with a handgun, without a roadmap, pinpointing the numerous areas in New York that a handgun could not be used for self-defense and, in fact, could not be lawfully carried.

To take up the slack at the other end—to control issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses—Kathy Hochul and Albany didn’t create a new device to severely constrain exercise of a Constitutional right, but reconfigured a thing already present in the Sullivan Act, which the High Court did not strike down or even carefully scrutinize: “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER.” There is much wrong with the way the Hochul Government repurposed this, and New York Plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of it, but what they did not challenge and, in fact, did not address, but merely assumed to be within the prerogative of the State to insist upon, is whether assessment of a person’s “CHARACTER” is proper to consideration of one’s right to keep and bear arms in the first instance. That, as used in the CCIA, the expression is inherently vague. That is a fault in and of itself. Plaintiffs also object to a specific  manner in which “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” verbiage appears, suggesting that a person cannot be of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” under New York Law if he were to use a handgun for self-defense. Plaintiffs in Antonyuk vs. Hochul, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 182965, ____F. Supp.3d___ (N.D.N.Y. 2022), suggested verbiage which would exclude use of a handgun for self-defense. Apparently, Plaintiffs were concerned, and justifiably so, that use of a handgun for self-defense MIGHT NOT serve as a defense to aggressive attack on a person whose life would be placed in mortal danger, and that failure to exclude armed self-defense from the language of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” means that armed self-defense is not justified and that a person cannot be considered to have “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” that he would consider using a handgun at all for self-defense—the most effective means to ensure one’s self-preservation against life-threatening assault—in an increasingly hostile environment like New York City.

But, this notion of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER,” applied to exercise of a fundamental, unalienable right, is singularly bizarre.

How does a Government of men, THIS Government of men, GO ABOUT DECIDING who, among the great body of men, have the proper character and bearing to keep and bear arms? And That question entails another one:

How does a Government of men, This Government of men, GO ABOUT DISTINGUISHING those men who exhibit the proper character to keep and bear arms from other men whom the Government infers do not have the proper character and bearing to keep and bear arms?

This was the problem besetting New York Governor Hochul and her compatriots in Albany.

But why should these questions be entertained at all?

The questions are incongruous and absurd. They presume that moral character is an appropriate area of inquiry. The Hochul Government assumes that one’s moral character is here, an appropriate area of inquiry, and, further, takes as axiomatic that only people whom the Government deems to have “Good Moral Character,” however that trait is defined and tested for, may keep and bear arms.

But the question of the NATURE of one’s CHARACTER presumes what must be proved:

IS THE QUESTION OF  MORAL CHARACTER AN APPROPRIATE AREA OF INQUIRY, where exercise of one’s fundamental, unalienable right to keep and bear arms is involved? Resolution of that question precedes inquiry into how one’s character is to be assessed—if in fact, it should be assessed at all.

Why should Americans presuppose that “Good Moral Character” is a legitimate area of inquiry here?

What does “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” or “BAD MORAL CHARACTER,” or, for that matter, the notion of “CHARACTER,” at all, have to do with one’s exercise of the natural law right of self-defense against predatory man, predatory beast, and as against the most dangerous predator of all, the MAN-BEAST predatory Government? Anything?

From whence does the natural law right of self-defense or any other natural law right derive?

The Hochul Government responds that such rights derive from the grace of Government, which entails the denial of such things as NATURAL LAW RIGHTS. But to deny such Rights is to dismiss an idea that the Framers of the Constitution, the Founders of our Republic, took as self-evident, true. But, then, Political Progressives such as Kathy Hochul demonstrate little regard for the Founders of our Republic, and dismiss out-of-hand their belief system upon which a Free Constitutional Republic sits.

From a pragmatic viewpoint, alone, it is difficult to refute the benefits and success of our Nation. So, then, why tinker with something that has worked so well for so many people, for almost two hundred and fifty years. A backwater Country has become the most powerful and successful Country in the world. Were it not so, we would not see literally millions of people from all over the world wishing to enter here, most of them illegally.

The Bill of Rights is a codification of Natural Law. That Natural law is wholly unlike man-made law.

Man-made law is transitory, modifiable, limited to a particular time and place, and subject to the whim and caprice of those men who wield power over other men. Natural law is innate, bestowed on and in man by the Divine Creator. For this reason, natural law rights are inextricably linked to one’s essence. Such rights are fundamental and unalienable, immutable and illimitable, not capable of modification, eternal.

It is in this belief of the Framers that our Constitution took shape. The Ethical System suffusing the Constitution is grounded in Deontology, predicated on morality. And that morality derives from the Divine Creator, not within Man, himself. Good conduct and bad conduct are based on one’s intentions first. Political and Social Progressives do not accept this. Their Political and Social system is based on Collectivism, the antithesis of Individualism. It substitutes the sanctity and inviolability of the Individual Soul with the well-being of Society, the Hive. The needs and desires of the Individual are secondary considerations if they are considered at all. And the Ethical System that underlies Collectivism is Utilitarianism. Consequences of actions alone dictate what constitutes good or bad moral conduct. Collectivists seek to maximize utility—the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That means the needs and desires of the individual must be sacrificed to the needs and desires of the Hive. But what constitutes the greatest good for greatest number of people? In other words, how does the Collectivism define ‘UTILITY’ and ‘UTILITY MAXMIZATION.’ We have a clue. On the Governor’s website (Undated to suggest a broad policy statement), Hochul drops a number of hints and none of them have anything to do with recognition of the right and responsibility of the individual to protect him or herself against the ravages of a society that has run amok with sociopathic criminals, psychopathic killers, and psychotic lunatics free to prey on innocent civilians——

“Governor Kathy Hochul is committed to protecting public safety, ending gun violence, and combatting the rise of domestic terrorism. The FY 2023 enacted budget invests in bold initiatives that will strengthen gun violence prevention efforts, change our public safety laws to make our state safer and more just, and protect victims of hate crimes and domestic violence.

In early June 2022, less than one month after the tragic shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, Governor Hochul signed a comprehensive legislative package to immediately strengthen the state's gun laws, close critical loopholes exposed by shooters in Buffalo and Uvalde, and protect New Yorkers from the scourge of gun violence that continues to infect our nation and endanger our communities.

In response to the Supreme Court's decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen, the State has taken steps to address the consequences of the Supreme Court decision and the resulting increase in licenses and in the number of individuals who will likely purchase and carry weapons in New York State. Less than a week after the ruling, Governor Hochul signed landmark legislation to bolster restrictions on concealed carry weapons, expand eligibility requirements, add background checks for ammunition, expand safe storage & amend a ban on body armor.”

Armed self-defense doesn’t factor into the above equation and, in fact, is considered a danger to the sanctity of and well-being of New York as a COLLECTIVE. How, then, can a person who must acquire a handgun license before he or she can exercise the fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense demonstrate the proper character to own and possess a handgun, or any firearm, if the armed citizen, the HIGHEST COMMON DENOMINATOR of society, is classified with the LOWEST by the very fact that a person chooses to exercise the fundamental right to armed self-defense?  

The natural law right of self-defense SUBSUMES armed self-defense.

There is nothing in Nation’s codification of the right of the people to keep and bear arms that mentions or alludes to an idea of “CHARACTER” as a defining or limiting factor in the exercise of a fundamental, unalienable, right to keep and bear arms.

IT BEARS REITERATING: The natural law right of self-defense proceeds from and is grounded on the instinctual need for self-preservation. As with all natural law rights, the right of self-defense is not bestowed onto man by other men but exists innately in all men.

Natural law rights are CENTRAL to the human condition. They AREN’T OR OUGHT NOT TO BE SUBJECT TO CONDITIONAL EXERCISE AS DETERMINED BY A GOVERNMENT AND BESTOWED ON ONE BY THE GRACE OF GOVERNMENT.

As with all natural law rights, the right to armed self-defense is not one bestowed onto man by other men, or by Government—which are, basically, just a collection of men—flawed, yet vested with power to act over other men and, if not themselves constrained, exercising their power and authority with impunity.

And if a man, on behalf of Government, is given authority to judge the character of another man to keep and bear arms, how does that man assess the character of another man? And there is a more basic question? Who is it that assesses the character of the judge? Is that not a fair question to ask? Apparently not for Kathy Hochul and for her friends in Albany.

When the New York Government under the Progressive Hochul, and the Democrat Party majority in control of the Legislature in Albany, mulled over the problem of constructing a new mechanism to limit issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses in New York, and decided on utilizing a robust “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” requirement, they didn’t bother themselves to ask the questions we ask, let alone provide answers for them.

And, yet answers are necessary precisely because we are discussing Government constraints here on the exercise of a natural law right.

New York does have a problem. New York has a host of problems and most of them are of the Government’s own making.

To be sure, the New York Government has a serious crime problem that it masks as a “Gun” problem. But there is no “Gun problem,” while there IS a crime problem. BUT that problem is tied to the criminal. Guns are objects, not agents. They have no sentient will.

GUNS DO NOT CAUSE VIOLENCE BECAUSE THEY CANNOT CAUSE VIOLENCE. Yet the Hochul Government insists on talking about a scourge of “GUN VIOLENCE” in New York.

What Hochul is really talking about is the Criminal Element THAT CAUSES VIOLENCE. And that Criminal Element CAUSES VIOLENCE with whatever means are available. Guns are just one of many means. If the Hochul Government dealt with CRIME and CRIMINALS with the same tenacity as she deals with GUNS, there would be little of any “CRIMINAL VIOLENCE” and little of what she refers to as “GUN VIOLENCE,” in New York.

But Kathy Hochul and her Progressive compatriots in Albany aren’t interested in tackling crime. What they are interested in doing is disrupting exercise of the right of armed self-defense of normal, average, rational, responsible, law-abiding citizens—the vast majority of Americans, WHO ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF so-called “GUN VIOLENCE.” But it is those people whom she is targeting and blaming the U.S. Supreme Court all the while for wrecking her plans to create a “GUN FREE”  NEW YORK, even as violent crime escalates. And why is this? The answer is at once plain and disturbing.

The Hochul Government is afraid of the normal, average, rational, responsible, law-abiding New Yorker. This is not something new, even as it is strange. New York has for centuries abhorred and detested and feared the idea of the armed citizen. All autocratic governments do—State Governments under Hochul in New York and Gavin Newsome in California, to name two of them, and the Federal Government under the Biden Administration.

Happy the New York Government was to ratify the Nation’s Bill of Rights in 1791 that included the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms, so long as, when having done so, the Government did not bind itself recognizing a citizen’s exercise of the natural law right in the State. In the first version of the State Constitution, a Bill of Rights was noticeably lacking. When the State got around to including a Bill of Rights in a subsequent State Constitution, there was no mention of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Perhaps, as an afterthought, the State Legislature thought it prudent to recognize the right but, would do so only by placing it in the Civil Rights Statute as an act of the State Legislature rather than in the Constitution which would require assent of the people. This is no small matter.

Situated in Statute, rather than in the Constitution, means the right is a creation of Government, not a right residing in the person, bestowed on man by the Divine Creator, instead of Government.

The New York Government could and, thereafter, would control exercise of the right by crafting a massive set of laws governing firearms, and, eventually, would create an elaborate handgun licensing regime to suppress and repress the urge of many New Yorkers to exercise their right to armed self-defense, and oppress those who would insist on exercising their fundamental right to armed self-defense, regardless of the hurdles they would be forced to contend with.

Coming now to the present, after Bruen, the New York Government has, through the creation of a discordant requirement of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER,” shown its hand. The Government intends to reduce the number of concealed handgun carry licenses that it would otherwise, under Bruen, be expected to issue.

Although the “Proper Cause” Requirement was always Constitutionally suspect because a demonstration of need for armed self-defense is inconsistent with both the plain meaning of the Second Amendment and with the logic of self-preservation, especially, where, as here, one resides in a dangerous jurisdiction, there is, in the “Good Moral Character” requirement something even more concerning and just as inconsistent with the plain meaning of the U.S. Constitution, and logic. Good Moral Character is difficult to assess even where it has utility, and in the context of a fundamental, unalienable right it has none.

Furthermore, if the Good Moral Character requirement is grounded on risk, then delineate those risk factors and, if they do not offend the core of the Right, then application of them will weed out those considered a risk to others from keeping and bearing arms.

The State doesn’t need and should not be using a “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” where application of objective  “RISK FACTORS” can be better employed and utilized. And, at the same time, the State can direct its energies to clamping down on criminals who would not bother to apply for a New York State concealed handgun carry license anyway.  

New York’s padded “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” requirement as applied to those individuals seeking a New York concealed handgun carry license is no more than a ruse, and a ridiculous one at that. We continue our analysis of The New York Handgun Law’s “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” in the next article of this Post-Bruen series.

___________________________

WHAT EXPLAINS NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL’S HOSTILITY TOWARD THE BRUEN DECISION ON CONCEALED CARRY AND HER BELLIGERANCE TOWARD THE U.S. SUPREME COURT?

MULTIPART ESSAY SERIES ON POST-BRUEN CASE ANALYSIS

POST-BRUEN—WHAT IT ALL MEANS AND WHAT ITS IMPACT IS BOTH FOR THOSE WHO SUPPORT AND CHERISH THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AND THOSE WHO DO NOT; THOSE WHO SEEK TO UNDERMINE AND EVENTUALLY DESTROY THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT AND THOSE WHO SEEK TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN THE RIGHT BOTH FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

PART TWENTY-SIX

QUOTATION FROM NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL’S OFFICIAL WEBSITE

“This is not about the Second Amendment, the Founding Fathers' murky protection of firearms. It's no more absolute than the First Amendment is. Rights have limits; they may be indistinct and subject to interpretation, but they exist, regardless of the braying of absolutists.What this is about is priorities: public safety vs. the right to own any kind of weapon; children's lives vs. the right to carry firearms designed for mass murder. In New York, there is a willingness to take facts into account, while in Texas, the compulsion, apparently irresistible, is to ignore such facts no matter how much blood is spilled or how young the victims.” From a Buffalo News editorial, reposted on Governor Hochul’s Official Website, on May 24, 2022, reflecting where the Governor’s sympathies, rest, apropos of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Note: this editorial appeared one month prior to publication of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022)and conceivably in anticipation of it: Hochul’s opening salvo directed against the High Court, taunting the Court and ridiculing, in insulting language, those Americans who support the exercise of the natural law right to armed self-defense.

WHAT EXPLAINS NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL’S HOSTILITY TOWARD THE BRUEN DECISION ON CONCEALED CARRY AND HER BELLIGERANCE TOWARD THE U.S. SUPREME COURT?

NEW YORK: THE STANDARD-BEARER FOR THOSE FORCES INTENT ON DESTROYING THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

To say the Bruen rulings directed primarily to New York’s Handgun Law were not to Hochul’s liking, nor to the liking of her friends in the State Legislature in Albany, is an understatement.Hochul was apoplectic with rage—or perhaps not. And, if not, she must, at least, appear so: feigning all sorts of righteous indignation during her Press conferences or when distributing her official Press Releases.Hochul had expected an adverse decision from the High Court, surely, and was undoubtedly prepared for it, but she had to set the stage for what would come after, the imposition of a new set of highly restrictive handgun licensing measures, building on all that came before.Those amendments were already written—the Legislature must have drafted the amendments well in advance of the publication of the Bruen decision, given the breadth of detail in them and the scale of them—well before the Bruen rulings came down. They only needed to be finalized.To that end, Hochul’s temper tantrum directed to the Court upon publication of Bruen was obviously meant to pave the way for legislation designed to cohere with related contemporaneous Anti-Second Amendment legislation, apart from, but complementing, the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA) and operating seamlessly with it.The Press Release, dated June 6, 2022, on the Governor’s website, sports the headline: “Governor Hochul Signs Landmark Legislative Package to Strengthen Gun Laws and Protect New Yorkers.” The “Ten-Bill Package” includes:“Legislation S.9458/A.10503 Bars Purchase of Semiautomatic Rifles by Anyone Under Age 21 by Requiring a LicenseLegislation S.9407-B/A.10497 Prohibits Purchase of Body Armor with Exception of Those in Specified ProfessionsLegislation S.9113-A./A.10502 Expands List of People Who Can File Extreme Risk Protection Orders and Requires Law Enforcement to File ERPOs Under Specified Set of CircumstancesPackage Also Strengthens Crime Reporting; Closes ‘Other Gun’ Loophole; Requires Microstamping of New Semiautomatic Pistols; Eliminates Grandfathering of High-Capacity Feeding Devices; Requires Social Media Companies to Improve Response to and Reporting of Hateful Content.”Approximately one month later, on July 1, 2022, scarcely one week after the publication of the Bruen decision, i.e., on June 23, 2022, and again, on the Governor’s official website, and, under the bold, brash, impertinent headline, “Governor Hochul Signs Landmark Legislation to Strengthen Gun Laws and Bolster Restrictions on Concealed Carry Weapons in Response to Reckless Supreme Court Decision,” Hochul lays out a series of amendments to the Handgun Law itself, ostensibly responding to the Bruen rulings:“Legislation (S.51001/A.41001) Restricts the Carrying of Concealed Weapons in List of Sensitive LocationsInstitutes a Default of No Concealed Carry on Private Property and Businesses Unless Deemed Permissible by Property OwnersEstablishes New Eligibility Requirements and Expands Disqualifying Criteria for Those Seeking Concealed Carry PermitsEnhances Safe Storage Requirements, Extends Requirements to VehiclesRequires Backgrounds Checks for All Ammunition PurchasesAmends Body Armor Purchase Ban to Include Hard Body Armor Used by Suspect in Buffalo Shooting.”Again, given the depth and breadth of these amendments to New York’s Handgun Law, this new package of amendments, “The Concealed Carry Improvement Act” MUST HAVE BEEN DRAFTED WELL IN ADVANCE OF PUBLICATION OF THE COURT’S OPINION IN BRUEN.At most, the Hochul Administration and Albany had merely to tidy up some of the provisions in the CCIA—perhaps striking the words, ‘PROPER CAUSE,’ from the Handgun Law if the High Court were to demand that much from Kathy Hochul’s Government—which Governor Hochul and Albany did. And that assumes, of course, that Hochul didn’t receive an advance copy of the decision from leakers at the Court. Hochul was probably kept apprised about what to expect from Bruen (probably from the same people on the Court that illegally released a draft of the Dobbs decision).On the matter of “PROPER CAUSE,” the Court ruled that, since the words were tied inextricably to the requirement that the applicant for a concealed handgun carry license must demonstrate “EXTRAORDINARY NEED” to carry, apart from and above basic self-defense, when in the public domain, the New York Handgun Law, apropos of concealed carry, was inherently illegal and unconstitutional.This was a mere annoyance. The Hochul Government could dispense with it and concoct ways around it, making the Handgun Law no less severe than before Bruen. Kathy Hochul didn’t try to hide that from the Press or from the Court.After all, Hochul used the phrase in one of her Press Releases, “LANDMARK LEGISLATIVE PACKAGE TO STRENGTHEN GUN LAWS.” See supra. And she rationalized that message of defiance directed at the Court, by adding that her Government had designed these amendments “TO PROTECT NEW YORKERS.”Did Hochul presume the High Court did not wish to protect New Yorkers? The phrase is not only troubling but also insulting. Yet it plays into a running narrative that MORE GUNS ON THE STREET EQUALS MORE CRIME ON THE STREETS—A platitude held by Progressives, but false.How many average, responsible, rational, law-abiding gun owners have turned to crime, and further, how much of this presumed bad seed committed a crime with a gun? Hardly or nary a one, notwithstanding there are millions of Americans who lawfully carry a handgun for self-defense. See the article on Gun Facts.By striking ‘PROPER CAUSE’ from New York’s Handgun Law, and then repurposing the “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” requirement along with a host of other ludicrous Anti-Second Amendment laws, the Government could and has accomplished much the same thing: DISCOURAGING AND FRUSTRATING, CONFOUNDING APPLICANTS WHO SEEK A NEW YORK CONCEALED HANDGUN CARRY LICENSE.The Hochul Government had scripted its entire response to Bruen. It would be ready to play out with the official publication of the case. And, on the very day, it was published and through successive days and weeks, Hochul would never miss a beat. She would constantly harangue and berate both the rulings of the Court and, unforgivably, the Justices themselves.The Hochul Government would make the High Court out to be the Antagonist in a play, and the State, with the Government, as Protagonist Hero.Hochul would present herself as the Defender of New York residents, desiring only to protect and serve the residents of New York against an uncaring U.S. Supreme Court.How incredibly presumptuous of Hochul and those behind the scenes, in her Administration, and in Albany, working on her behalf to make the High Court into an Evildoer and “Fall Guy.”Once the U.S. Supreme Court came down with the Bruen decision on June 23, 2022, New York Governor Kathy Hochul went to work, wasting no time in publicly slamming both the Court and its decision.But would the public buy it? Could the public be so easily manipulated? Some obviously would, most, from her perspective, hopefully. Hochul knew that, in her messaging, she was addressing not merely New York, but the Country at large, and the Biden Administration, and many in Congress too, her compatriots.But to say her words and conduct toward the Court are disrespectful and that her response to the Bruen rulings amounts to evasion, not compliance, is to trivialize the seriousness of the actions of this Governor.Necessary as it was to set the groundwork for defiance of the High Court, Hochul was playing a dangerous game. She could not do this unless she felt she could rely on powerful interests both seen and unseen that would have her back on this.For, the Governor’s actions border on contempt of Court, and all the worse was it that she would vent with unrestrained, unconscionable fury against the Highest Court of the Land; railing against a Court exercising its own proper, legitimate Article III authority under the U.S. Constitution, to interpret the meaning of the Bill of Rights which was and is within the Court’s prerogative, alone, not that of Congress, nor that of the President, nor that of the Executive or Legislative components of State Governments.Hochul didn’t care, and she didn’t mince words. She called the Court’s rulings not only “reckless” but “reprehensible.” See the article in Spectrum Local News.The word, ‘RECKLESS’ means ‘THOUGHTLESS.’The word, ‘REPREHENSIBLE’ means ‘DISGRACEFUL.’In other words, Kathy Hochul tells the Court that it is worthy of her contempt toward it and she would not abide by the Court’s rulings. At most, she would give lip service to it. And that is what both she and Albany did.Upon the conclusion of the oral argument, on November 3, 2021, in the third landmark Second Amendment case, NYSRPA vs. Bruen, the New York State Government, under Governor Kathy Hochul, wasted no time in concocting a scheme to waylay the rulings that they knew were coming down the pike. And as a precursor to that she stated in no uncertain terms, in her Press Briefings—clearly directed to the Court—what she intended to do, castigating the Court for daring to involve itself in New York law.The amendments to the State’s Handgun Law (referred to, as a package, as the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA)), are the visible manifestation of the disdain she displayed toward the Court, in her Press Releases.On July 1, 2022, about one month after signing the CCIA into law, Governor Hochul, in a provocative move proclaimed the New York Government would not abide by the U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Bruen, and in fact would defy the Court, continuing the process laid down by her predecessors of eradicating exercise of the right to armed self-defense in New York.The Headline of her Press Release, posted on the Governor’s official website, on that date, set forth in bold San Serif typeface, proclaimed:“Governor Hochul Signs Landmark Legislation to Strengthen Gun Laws and Bolster Restrictions on Concealed Carry Weapons in Response to Reckless Supreme Court Decision.”Hochul’s defiance and contemptuous attitude toward the High Court could not have been on more audacious display. The CCIA exemplifies her brashness and brazenness.These are the highlights of the CCIA that appear on her website that she has reiterated during the period of time since the publication of the case as challenges to the CCIA were filed immediately.“Legislation (S.51001/A.41001) Restricts the Carrying of Concealed Weapons in List of Sensitive LocationsInstitutes a Default of No Concealed Carry on Private Property and Businesses Unless Deemed Permissible by Property OwnersEstablishes New Eligibility Requirements and Expands Disqualifying Criteria for Those Seeking Concealed Carry PermitsEnhances Safe Storage Requirements, Extends Requirements to VehiclesRequires Backgrounds Checks for All Ammunition PurchasesAmends Body Armor Purchase Ban to Include Hard Body Armor Used by Suspect in Buffalo Shooting”Anticipating the Hochul Government might attempt to turn broad swaths of the State, especially, Manhattan Island, into a massive Gun-Free zone, and to forestall that, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the Majority in Bruen, opined:“Although we have no occasion to comprehensively define ‘sensitive places’ in this case, we do think respondents err in their attempt to characterize New York’s proper-cause requirement as a ‘sensitive-place’ law. In their view, ‘sensitive places’ where the government may lawfully disarm law-abiding citizens include all ‘places where people typically congregate and where law-enforcement and other public-safety professionals are presumptively available.’ It is true that people sometimes congregate in ‘sensitive places,’ and it is likewise true that law enforcement professionals are usually presumptively available in those locations. But expanding the category of ‘sensitive places’ simply to all places of public congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement defines the category of ‘sensitive places. far too broadly. Respondents’ argument would in effect exempt cities from the Second Amendment and would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense that we discuss in detail below. . . . Put simply, there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a ‘sensitive place’ simply because it is crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department.” [Case Documentation omitted]What did Hochul do? She and Albany concocted an elaborate nightmare of new requirements for those individuals applying for a concealed handgun carry license under the CCIA.And, notwithstanding, the High Court’s warning to the Hochul Government, the Governor, and Albany proceeded to transform much of New York into a massive “SENSITIVE PLACE” Jurisdiction anyway—in direct defiance of the High Court’s warning.Manhattan Island, which Justice Thomas specifically warned the Government about, would become a huge “SENSITIVE PLACE” restricted zone anyway.The Government had spent substantial time on this, transforming the State into a confusing patchwork quilt of SENSITIVE LOCATIONS.Most curiously, the very words, SENSITIVE PLACE,’ never before appeared in the Handgun Law prior to Bruen. That would change.Here the New York Government was deliberately using that phrase to antagonize the Court, making the ‘SENSITIVE PLACE’ prohibition a major fixture of the “CONCEALED CARRY IMPROVEMENT ACT.”Were Kathy Hochul and Albany taunting the Court by choosing to utilize the very terminology the Court had expressed concern over but had not ruled explicitly against using?Prior to the effective date of September 1, 2022, the date when the CCIA took effect, there was no mention of ‘Sensitive Place’ in Section 19 of the amended Handgun Law (NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (19)), which reads:“Prior to the issuance or renewal of a license under paragraph (f) of subdivision two of this section, issued or renewed on or after the effective date of this subdivision, an applicant shall complete an in-person live firearms safety course conducted by a duly authorized instructor with curriculum approved by the division of criminal justice services and the superintendent of state police, and meeting the following requirements: (a) a minimum of sixteen hours of in-person live curriculum approved by the division of criminal justice services and the superintendent of state police, conducted by a duly authorized instructor approved by the division of criminal justice services, and shall include but not be limited to the following topics: (i) general firearm safety; (ii) safe storage requirements and general secure storage best practices; (iii) state and federal gun laws; (iv) situational awareness; (v) conflict de-escalation; (vi) best practices when encountering law enforcement; (vii) the statutorily defined sensitive places in subdivision two of section 265.01-e of this chapter and the restrictions on possession on restricted places under section 265.01-d of this chapter; (viii) conflict management; (ix) use of deadly force; (x) suicide prevention; and (xi) the basic principles of marksmanship; and (b) a minimum of two hours of a live-fire range training course. The applicant shall be required to demonstrate proficiency by scoring a minimum of eighty percent correct answers on a written test for the curriculum under paragraph (a) of this subdivision and the proficiency level determined by the rules and regulations promulgated by the division of criminal justice services and the superintendent of state police for the live-fire range training under paragraph (b) of this subdivision. Upon demonstration of such proficiency, a certificate of completion shall be issued to such applicant in the applicant’s name and endorsed and affirmed under the penalties of perjury by such duly authorized instructor. An applicant required to complete the training required herein prior to renewal of a license issued prior to the effective date of this subdivision shall only be required to complete such training for the first renewal of such license after such effective date.”Once the CCIA took effect, the expression, ‘Sensitive Place’ suddenly appears and, for those new holders of “Concealed Handgun Carry Licenses,” and for those renewing their licenses, Section 19 of the amended Handgun Law (NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (19)) presently sets, forth:“Prior to the issuance or renewal of a license under paragraph (f) of subdivision two of this section, issued or renewed on or after the effective date of this subdivision, an applicant shall complete an in-person live firearms safety course conducted by a duly authorized instructor with curriculum approved by the division of criminal justice services and the superintendent of state police, and meeting the following requirements: (a) a minimum of sixteen hours of in-person live curriculum approved by the division of criminal justice services and the superintendent of state police, conducted by a duly authorized instructor approved by the division of criminal justice services, and shall include but not be limited to the following topics: (i) general firearm safety; (ii) safe storage requirements and general secure storage best practices; (iii) state and federal gun laws; (iv) situational awareness; (v) conflict de-escalation; (vi) best practices when encountering law enforcement; (vii) the statutorily defined sensitive places in subdivision two of section 265.01-e of this chapter and the restrictions on possession on restricted places under section 265.01-d of this chapter; (viii) conflict management; (ix) use of deadly force; (x) suicide prevention; and (xi) the basic principles of marksmanship; and (b) a minimum of two hours of a live-fire range training course. The applicant shall be required to demonstrate proficiency by scoring a minimum of eighty percent correct answers on a written test for the curriculum under paragraph (a) of this subdivision and the proficiency level determined by the rules and regulations promulgated by the division of criminal justice services and the superintendent of state police for the live-fire range training under paragraph (b) of this subdivision. Upon demonstration of such proficiency, a certificate of completion shall be issued to such applicant in the applicant’s name and endorsed and affirmed under the penalties of perjury by such duly authorized instructor. An applicant required to complete the training required herein prior to renewal of a license issued prior to the effective date of this subdivision shall only be required to complete such training for the first renewal of such license after such effective date.”And where are these“Sensitive Place” restricted areas? A new provision of the New York Penal Code, Penal Code, 265.01-e, recites them.NY CLS Penal § 265.01-e(2) provides,“2. For the purposes of this section, a sensitive location shall mean:(a) any place owned or under the control of federal, state or local government, for the purpose of government administration, including courts;(b) any location providing health, behavioral health, or chemical dependance care or services;(c) any place of worship, except for those persons responsible for security at such place of worship;(d) libraries, public playgrounds, public parks, and zoos, provided that for the purposes of this section a “public park” shall not include (i) any privately held land within a public park not dedicated to public use or (ii) the forest preserve as defined in subdivision six of section 9-0101 of the environmental conservation law;(e) the location of any program licensed, regulated, certified, funded, or approved by the office of children and family services that provides services to children, youth, or young adults, any legally exempt childcare provider; a childcare program for which a permit to operate such program has been issued by the department of health and mental hygiene pursuant to the health code of the city of New York;(f) nursery schools, preschools, and summer camps; provided that for the purposes of this section, nothing shall prohibit the activity permitted under subdivisions seven-c, seven-d, and seven-e of section 265.20 of this article where such activity occurs at a summer camp in accordance with all applicable local, state, and federal laws, rules, and regulations;(g) the location of any program licensed, regulated, certified, operated, or funded by the office for people with developmental disabilities;(h) the location of any program licensed, regulated, certified, operated, or funded by office of addiction services and supports;(i) the location of any program licensed, regulated, certified, operated, or funded by the office of mental health;(j) the location of any program licensed, regulated, certified, operated, or funded by the office of temporary and disability assistance;(k) homeless shelters, runaway homeless youth shelters, family shelters, shelters for adults, domestic violence shelters, and emergency shelters, and residential programs for victims of domestic violence;(l) residential settings licensed, certified, regulated, funded, or operated by the department of health;(m) in or upon any building or grounds, owned or leased, of any educational institutions, colleges and universities, licensed private career schools, school districts, public schools, private schools licensed under article one hundred one of the education law, charter schools, non-public schools, board of cooperative educational services, special act schools, preschool special education programs, private residential or non-residential schools for the education of students with disabilities, and any state-operated or state-supported schools;(n) any place, conveyance, or vehicle used for public transportation or public transit, subway cars, train cars, buses, ferries, railroad, omnibus, marine or aviation transportation; or any facility used for or in connection with service in the transportation of passengers, airports, train stations, subway and rail stations, and bus terminals;(o) any establishment holding an active license for on-premise consumption pursuant to article four, four-A, five, or six of the alcoholic beverage control law where alcohol is consumed and any establishment licensed under article four of the cannabis law for on-premise consumption;(p) any place used for the performance, art entertainment, gaming, or sporting events such as theaters, stadiums, racetracks, museums, amusement parks, performance venues, concerts, exhibits, conference centers, banquet halls, and gaming facilities and video lottery terminal facilities as licensed by the gaming commission;(q) any location being used as a polling place;(r) any public sidewalk or other public area restricted from general public access for a limited time or special event that has been issued a permit for such time or event by a governmental entity, or subject to specific, heightened law enforcement protection, or has otherwise had such access restricted by a governmental entity, provided such location is identified as such by clear and conspicuous signage;(s) any gathering of individuals to collectively express their constitutional rights to protest or assemble;(t) the area commonly known as Times Square, as such area is determined and identified by the city of New York; provided such area shall be clearly and conspicuously identified with signage.Police officers and other designated categories are exempted.”Failure to abide by the ‘Sensitive Place’ Restriction requirement is a Class E Felony, as specified under NY CLS Penal § 265.01-d (1)”“A person is guilty of criminal possession of a weapon in a restricted location when such person possesses a firearm, rifle, or shotgun and enters into or remains on or in private property where such person knows or reasonably should know that the owner or lessee of such property has not permitted such possession by clear and conspicuous signage indicating that the carrying of firearms, rifles, or shotguns on their property is permitted or by otherwise giving express consent.”But Note: Subsequent to Plaintiff Appellants’ Motion for a Stay pending Appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, granted the Motion in Part. In a short opinion, the Court stated, in pertinent part, in Antonyuk vs. Hochul , 2022 U.S. App LEXIS 36240 (2nd Cir, December 7, 2022): “Appellants request a stay pending appeal of the district court's order dated November 7, 2022 (N.D.N.Y. 22-cv-986, doc. 78), enjoining Appellants from enforcing certain aspects of New York's Concealed Carry Improvement Act (‘CCIA’). Having weighed the applicable factors . . . we conclude that a stay pending appeal is warranted. . . . To the extent that the district court's order bars enforcement of the CCIA's provisions related to persons who have been tasked with the duty to keep the peace at places of worship, airports, and private buses, such categories are excepted from this order. Appellees' motion to expedite the resolution of the matter is granted.”Governor Kathy Hochul’s displeasure with the Bruen decision and anger toward the Court Majority was expected, was never a secret, and, so, isn’t at all surprising.  Yet, her hostility toward the Court, amounting to a rabid denunciation of the rulings and of the Justices themselves, is of another order of magnitude, and cannot be condoned, and ought not to be tolerated.The New York Government has detested the idea of civilian citizen possession of firearms for well over a century (actually for substantially longer (see author’s comments supra and infra)).Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, author of the Majority Opinion in Bruen, made the point, tacitly, at the outset of the Court’s argument, when discussing the State’s long-standing efforts to constrain, through overzealous regulation, the carrying of handguns.“New York State has regulated the public carry of handguns at least since the early 20th century. In 1905, New York made it a misdemeanor for anyone over the age of 16 to ‘have or carry concealed upon his person in any city or village of [New York], any pistol, revolver or other firearm without a written license . . . issued to him by a police magistrate.’ 1905 N. Y. Laws ch. 92, §2, pp. 129-130; see also 1908 N. Y. Laws ch. 93, §1, pp. 242-243 (allowing justices of the peace to issue licenses). In 1911, New York’s ‘Sullivan Law’ expanded the State’s criminal prohibition to the possession of all handguns—concealed or otherwise—without a government-issued license. See 1911 N. Y. Laws ch. 195, §1, p. 443. New York later amended the Sullivan Law to clarify the licensing standard: Magistrates could ‘issue to [a] person a license to have and carry concealed a pistol or revolver without regard to employment or place of possessing such weapon’ only if that person proved “good moral character”  and ‘proper cause.’ 1913 N. Y. Laws ch. 608, §1, p. 1629.”

THE SYSTEMATIC EROSION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE IN NEW YORK SNOWBALLED THROUGH TIME.

The systematic erosion of a fundamental, immutable, illimitable, eternal, and unalienable right—the most basic of all RIGHTS and NEEDS, that of “SELF PRESERVATION”—commenced, in New York, as a result of a reluctance by the New York Government to acknowledge the right of the people to keep and bear arms in the State, notwithstanding the State did eventually ratify both the U.S. Constitution and the subsequent Bill of Rights component to it, which included a prohibition on the Federal Government to infringe that right.The nascent threat to the civilian citizens’ right to keep and bear arms in New York itself, had always existed, in fact, PRECEDED Ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights which would suggest a schizophrenia on the part of the New York Government, concerning its actions toward exercise of the Right.

NEW YORK RATIFIED THE BILL OF RIGHTS FOR THE UNITED STATES BUT ORIGINALLY REJECTED A BILL OF RIGHTS FOR ITSELF; AND IT CONSCIOUSLY AVOIDED ADDING A RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS TO MIRROR THE RIGHT CODIFIED IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, ONCE THE STATE DECIDED ON INCORPORATING A BILL OF RIGHTS INTO A LATER VERSION OF ITS STATE CONSTITUTION

ALTHOUGH NEW YORK WOULD EVENTUALLY ACKNOWLEDGE A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, IT DID SO ONLY STATUTORILY, NOT CONSTITUTIONALLY

Consider:New York is one of only a handful of States that currently does not have a fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms in its State Constitution. And it never did.“. . . The states without rights to bear arms enshrined in their state constitutions are: California, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York. Citizens of these states must rely on the federal Constitution and statutory regulation of arms. See, e.g., N.Y. Civ. Rights Law § 4 (McKinney 2012) (‘A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed.’).”“Symposium: ‘Gun Control and the Second Amendment: Developments and Controversies in the Wake of District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago’: Article: ‘The (New) New Judicial Federalism: State Constitutions and the Protection of the Individual Right to Bear Arms,’ 39 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1449, October 2012, Michael B. de Leeuw*See also, “Shocking the Second Amendment: Invalidating States’ Prohibitions On Taser With The District Of Columbia v. Heller,’ 20 Alb. L.J. Sci. & Tech. 159 (2010) By Ron F. Wright.“Ratified in 1909, New York’s right-to-bear arms provision differs from the latter provisions in that it is a statutory rather than constitutional grant. While its language is similar to the Second Amendment, contemporaneous sources carry strong undertones of keeping and bearing arms for strictly militia purposes. Looking first to New York’s treatment of the phrase ‘the people’ in its Civil Rights Law, we note that other than its right-to-bear arms provision the phrase refers to a right only one other time: the individual right to be free from unreasonable search and seizures. Furthermore, in the other appearances where the phrase ‘the people’ appears not a single instance refers to an actual right, express or implied.”In fact, in the original iteration of the State Constitution, New York did not incorporate a Bill of Rights. Later renditions did include a State Bill of Rights, but originally, involved procedural matters rather than substantive rights. The Bill of Rights of New York’s Constitution evolved sporadically over time.But New York always intended to whittle away at the natural law right to armed self-defense. Half-heartedly, or grudgingly at best, it eventually placed the right of the people to keep and bear arms in its Civil Rights Statutory scheme.NY CLS Civ R § 4 (Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms), says,“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed.” [underlining added]Note, the substitution of the words, ‘SHALL NOT’ as they appear in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, with the word, ‘CANNOT,’ in Section 4 of the Civil Right Law of New York.The word, ‘CANNOT,’ means ‘TO BE UNABLE TO DO OTHERWISE THAN.’ It isn’t a legal term of art. The words, ‘SHALL NOT’ however have a specific meaning in law: “THE ELEMENT OR ACTION IS PROHIBITED.” Is this change of major significance? Surely, the alteration of the language of the Right, in the Consolidated Laws of New York wasn’t an inadvertent oversight but made with intention.The New York Legislature made sure that “CANNOT BE INFRINGED” does not mean the Legislature has no authority to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. On the contrary, the suggestion is that no person or entity but the New York Government itself can infringe the right for the Government here establishes that it has created the right, i.e., statutorily. The Right, then, is neither something the people of New York create nor that of a Divine Being.Use of a nonlegal word establishes and avoids any foreseeable problem that might arise from a citizen contesting Government infringement of a Right that “CANNOT” be infringed. At least that is the obvious rationale for the change in construction.Providing only statutory recognition of a right to bear arms, the State could not easily be constrained from hobbling the exercise of the right. And both New York State and the State and Federal Courts were complicit in supporting each outrageous Government action, through regulation, of the “RIGHT” THAT “CANNOT BE INFRINGED.”New York's Executive Branch and Legislative Branch constantly invented ways to erode the exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms and, in so doing, to sever the people’s connection with their fundamental right—ultimately creating a permanent estrangement.Overzealous regulation coupled with a lengthy, industrious campaign of psychological conditioning, affected the mind. “Gun Possession” became identified with and equated with “Gun Violence.” Many New Yorkers didn’t mind this. In fact, they fanatically embraced the viral memes planted in their minds.The latest developments in psychological conditioning and in technology that allows for rapid dissemination of information, affecting millions of people simultaneously, made this possible.Instead of dealing with crime and criminals, the Government would instead go after average Americans, creating a nightmare for those citizens who were not taken in by the contortions and distortions of the New York Government and who insisted on exercising their natural law right to self-defense that the Government was loathed to recognize or allow.What eventually emerged in New York was an elaborate, expensive, time-consuming, and confounding licensing regime that New Yorkers would be required to navigate through. The questions no one in Government dared to consider and that a Press, sympathizing with the Government, would never ask are these:“Why should it be so difficult for me to exercise a fundamental, unalienable right?”“Why should I be compelled to navigate my way through a mass of confusing firearms regulations, and then once failing to gain State permission to defend my life with the most effective means available, I am thrown to the winds and compelled to navigate through a cesspool of criminals and lunatics that dot the landscape of New York?“Why is it the New York Government constrains my right to defend myself against depraved criminals and lunatics, and, at the same time, refuses to use my tax dollars to protect me against those elements that incessantly threaten the life, safety, and well-being of millions of average, rational, law-abiding, responsible citizens like me?”“By what inductive or deductive reasoning does the New York Government and Kathy Hochul presume to reduce the highest denominator of society with the lowest, refusing to allow me to defend myself against predators, arguing that, on the matter of firearms, I can no more be trusted to responsibly keep and bear them than would the common criminal, the psychopathic murderous gang member, or the raving drug-addled lunatic?With the enactment of the Sullivan Act in 1911—a law that introduced handgun licensing to the State—the New York Government would, through the years and decades, enact more laws, aimed at frustrating those Americans residing or working in New York who merely wish to exercise the fundamental right to keep and bear arms as is their natural law right to do so?The Sullivan Act of 1911 would serve as the New York Government’s answer, exemplifying their disdain for the average citizen. And the Government did not stop with the enactment of that. Introducing handgun licensing to New York was merely a precursor to and an inkling of what was yet to be.The Sullivan Act of 1911 served, then, merely as a stepping stone in a lengthy inexorable process, whittling away at the citizens’ exercise of their unalienable right to armed self-defense.Whether by conscious intent or by unconscious conditioned reflex, the State had effectively placed a New Yorker on a medieval torture rack, tormenting those individuals who insisted on—dared to—exercise the right that the New York Government did not wish for New Yorkers to exercise.Once on that rack, the State slowly tightened the screws, enacting more constraints on a person’s exercise of the right, through time, frustrating those New Yorkers who demanded that Government not interpose itself between the right of the people to keep and bear arms as bestowed on man by the Divine Creator, not Government, and the exercise of that right that the founders of a free Constitutional Republic recognized and insisted on.And the process of whittling away at the natural law right to armed self-defense gained speed over time, frustrating the desire of anyone who simply wished to exercise his basic right of self-preservation with the most effective means available: A handgun.Hochul’s predecessor, New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, had added extensive amendments to the Handgun Law and to related New York Statutes, affecting all firearms and possession of them. through the enactment of the New York Safe Act of 2013.Cuomo rammed that through the State Senate in the dead of night, and, once it had passed the Senate, he immediately signed it into law, on January 15, 2013.Hochul’s“Concealed Carry Improvement Act” of 2022 doesn’t ease the dire impact of the Safe Act on those who seek to keep and bear arms. One might rationally expect that the CCIA would ease the exercise of the fundamental right, consistent with Bruen. Rather, the CCIA builds upon the earlier Act and is part and parcel of several other Anti-Second Amendment laws that Hochul signed into law on or about the same date she signed the CCIA into law.Bruen changed nothing. NY Safe and the CCIA continue a process that began not with the passage of the Sullivan Act of 1911, but over a hundred years earlier—in fact earlier yet—much earlier.In fact, New York’s antipathy toward the natural law right to armed self-defense always existed, going back prior to the founding of the Republic itself, through the ratification of the U.S. Constitution on July , 1788.“The first New York Constitution was adopted by the Convention of Representatives of the State of New York on April 20, 1777,” 15 months before ratification of the U.S. Constitution that New York, among other States that existed at the time, agreed to. See Historical Society of the New York Courts and content infra.What began as a concern and annoyance over the exercise ofthe right of the people to keep and bear arms in New York, evolved, over the centuries, into distress and disgust, and anxiety over the citizens’ keeping and bearing of arms.That distress, disquiet, and disgust grew into trepidation and panic, coupled with a rabid abhorrence over the notion a person should possess firearms at all.Today, Governor Hochul proclaims her anger over the Bruen decision. Worse, she articulates a visible contempt for the Court.But, how much of that anger is grounded on true and firm belief and how much is mere political rhetoric, playing to a “woke” audience?A decade ago, Hochul, ever the consummate politician, evinced a different position toward the Second Amendment. See the article in Bearing Arms. What caused a transformation in her thought—a complete 180-degree turn?It matters not. If Hochul is duplicitous and is behaving theatrically, her present words and actions must be taken at face value, not minimized. No one should attempt to explain them away as mere emoting as if to suggest her words are not to be taken seriously. They are TO BE TAKEN MOST SERIOUSLY.Hochul’s words, both their insolent tone and the detrimental impact on those who wish to exercise their natural law right to armed self-defense at home or in public, cannot be assigned simply to fabrication or theatrics. The intent behind those words, seen in the legislation enacted, which Hochul has signed into law—a flurry of new restrictive Anti-Second Amendment legislation—has real-world impact and dire consequences for New Yorkers.Regardless of what Hochul the politician really believes the fact remains that New Yorkers, especially the politically progressive denizens of New York City, and Hochul’s wealthy, Neoliberal Globalist benefactors, have long held to a New York tradition antithetical to and wholly destructive of the Second Amendment right. And Hochul, the politician, through her present words and actions, mirrors the predilection of her base, millions of New Yorkers, most of whom reside in NYC.Attuned to her supporters’ beliefs, she rails incessantly against “guns,” “gun owners,” and that thing the Anti-Second Amendment wordsmiths had recently concocted to push their narrative against the right to armed self-defense on the public: “Gun Violence.”Long-standing New York tradition contra recognition of the basic right to armed self-defense overpowers any thought of compliance and obeisance to the dictates of “shall not be infringed,” much less acquiescence and adherence to High Court rulings on the matter.As noted, supra, several years before New York ratified the U.S. Constitution, on July 26, 1788, and, later, when New York ratified the Nation’s Bill of Rights, on March 27, 1790, the Revolutionary Convention of the Representatives of New York (see New York Archives) prepared the groundwork for a State Constitution:“In August 1776, the revolutionary Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York appointed a committee to draft a state constitution and a bill of rights. Despite this command, the constitution eventually produced did not contain a separate bill of rights. Robert Yates, a member of the drafting committee, later explained that advocates of a bill of rights thought in terms of an instrument by which ‘the power of the rulers ought to be circumscribed,’ modeled after the 1628 Petition of Right and the 1689 Bill of Rights. The committee, however, took the view that the American Revolution placed the people ‘in a state of nature’ such that the new fundamental instrument the people themselves created, the constitution ‘would operate as a bill of rights.’ This view was not uncommon in revolutionary America. John Jay, for instance, a principal drafter of the 1777 federal constitution, used the same argument when objecting to the adoption of a federal bill of rights in 1788.  The constitution adopted by the New York Convention in April 1777, did contain certain clauses guaranteeing basic rights, such as might be found in a bill of rights: all power derived from the people, right to counsel in criminal trials, freedom of religion and abolition of religious establishments, and trial by jury and prohibition of attainder (to take effect after the war). In addition, on the motion of Gilbert Livingston (later a radical antifederalist), the Convention added to the constitution a clause guaranteeing due process. In the face of Loyalist threats to the existence of the new government, the Convention refrained, however, from adding to the constitution any further assertions of fundamental rights that would hinder efforts to suppress counter-revolutionary activity.” “New York’s Statutory Bill of Rights: A Constitutional Coelacanth,” 19 Touro L. Rev. 363, 366-367 Winter / Spring, 2003, by  Robert Emery. “The New York legislature adopted the original version of the statutory bill of rights, ‘an Act concerning the rights of the citizens of this State,’ in January 1787.” Id. at 368. There was no mention of a right of the people to keep and bear arms in the first rendition of the New York Constitution, nor would there be any future version of the State Constitution. There certainly was no serious consideration for that.“New York has adopted four constitutions (1777, 1821, 1846, and 1894) and held eight constitutional conventions (1801, 1821, 1846, 1867, 1894, 1915, 1938, and 1967). The Constitution of 1894, revised in 1938 and amended over 200 times, remains in place today. As provided in this document, the state legislature can propose a constitutional convention at any time, subject to approval by the electorate.  However, the state constitution also mandates that the question of whether to hold a convention be submitted to the electorate every twenty years.” In a climate openly hostile to the very thought of relaxation of New York’s Gun Law—having placed more and more restrictions on the exercise of the right to armed self-defense through 112 years of the Sullivan Act—it stands to reason the Hochul Government wouldn’t be dissuaded from continuing its concerted, single-minded march toward achieving the goal of Dissolution of the right to armed self-defense in New York or, if not able to that, grudgingly, at least, getting damned close to attaining it.Notwithstanding the State had recognized the right of the people to keep and bear arms at the National level, having ratified the Nation’sBill of Rights in 1790, it felt no compunction to do so at the State level, believing, apparently, that, whatever negative impact the Second Amendment on the Federal Government, its application would pose no hardship on the States and would not limit the State’s ability to do away with the entirety of it if it wished. Was the State Government being disingenuous? Was it holding disparate, inconsistent beliefs that defy rational explanation? Who can say what the State Government's motivations were at the time?Prior to the McDonald decision, and for those theorists who mistakenly held to a “collective rights-only” notion of the Second Amendment, (and many still do), the early New York Government felt it need not worry about the Second Amendment. The State would have its Police Powers and could deny all residents of the State and those who work there the keeping and bearing of arms. And, for a time, it would seem the State could get away with its perfunctory dismissal of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms.And, even with the McDonald decision in 2010 (McDonald vs. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S. Ct. 3020 (2010)), New York would continue to evince schizophrenia toward the Second Amendment, as would a few other jurisdictions around the Country. They would all pretend that, whatever McDonald happened to say about a State’s obligation to adhere to and respect the citizenry's exercise of the right codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, through the application of the Fourteenth Amendment, those States could regulate the exercise of the right to an effective nullity. That is what such State Governments presumed to think and that is how they acted.State licensing is the vehicle that drives the impetus for State arrogance toward the natural law right to armed self-defense.Prior to Bruen, Federal and State Courts in New York held an incongruous position, when rubber-stamping what is clearly illegal New York Government action.These Courts acknowledged that, while a person has a fundamental, unalienable right to keep and bear arms, that person must still obtain a valid State handgun license to exercise his fundamental right.The New York Courts had heretofore preposterously argued that, since having a license to exercise one’s Second Amendment right is, one, a condition precedent to the exercise of one’s fundamental right, and that, two, since the issuance of a handgun license is a prerogative of the State, a completely discretionary act and that, further, since the acquisition of a State issued handgun license is a privilege, not a right, be that right fundamental or not, the State can lawfully deny a person exercise of his fundamental, unalienable right to keep and bear arms. New York Courts’ ruling considered this reasoning as valid and sound law, “black letter law” in New York, and, as expected, especially for those who sought to obtain a New York concealed handgun carry license, the acquisition of those coveted licenses to exercise a fundamental right was very few in number. Such was true before Bruen. And now, after? Will there be many more issuances of concealed handgun carry licenses? And of those that are issued, will they truly work as intended by Bruen, to enable the licensee to truly exercise armed self-defense? This all remains to be seen.The Hochul Government did not assert—it felt it wouldn’t have to—that 225 years of refusal to countenance a citizen’s natural law right to armed self-defense as it saw fit was argument enough to continue to constrain the exercise of the right and to require much from those individuals who had the fortitude to demand what they should not have had to demand: an exercise of their unrestrained right to armed self-defense. Long-standing State tradition would circumvent any argument about the purported supremacy of the natural law right to armed self-defense over the State's authority to deny a citizen's exercise of that right.New York’s negative attitude toward the Second Amendment, coupled with a firm belief, taken as self-evident true for well over two hundred years—that New York Government police regulatory authority supersedes an American citizen’s exercise of his fundamental, illimitable, immutable, eternal natural law rights and would always remain so and hold sway over a U.S. Supreme Court decision to rule or hold otherwise, is soon to be tested. It must be tested.Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, together, apparently do not operate, in the mind of the New York Government, as a formidable force, powerful enough to overcome the New York Government’s belief in its own legal and moral invincibility. New York continues to go its own way.How many U.S. Supreme Court decisions must, then, come down the pike before jurisdictions like New York accept the Article III authority of the Third Branch of Government—the authority of the High Court to say what the Law Is? But is it just New York that is rebelling against the authority of the High Court?Clearly, there are dangerous, ominous stirrings afoot, suggesting the actions of shadowy, ruthless forces both here and abroad that have set wheels in motion to destroy a free Constitutional Republic and a sovereign American citizenry. It all bespeaks tyranny at the highest levels of Federal and many State Governments. What we are doing here is looking at the manifestation of those wheels set in motion, as pertaining to the incremental, continuous, devastating erosion of the Bill of Rights, and the blatant misuse of authority by Federal and State Governments to control the life, safety, well-being, and personal autonomy of the American citizen.One need only reflect carefully and honestly on the manner in which Governments are shredding the Bill of Rights slowly, methodically, and inexorably to understand the mortal danger facing our free Constitutional RepublicLooking at the New York Government’s actions despicable actions toward the U.S. Supreme Court is explanation enough that something more is afoot than imbecilic behavior by Governor Hochul and the Democrat-Party-controlled Legislature in Albany.The New York Government would not have dared to contend against the High Court unless they knew that powerful interests and forces stood behind them to protect them. The New York Government's insolent maneuverings are not emanating solely from the Government. The masterminds of the treachery against our Nation stand well above Government agent toadies. They are merely the faces the public sees; that the public is permitted to see. All we can do here is try to convey to our kind readers the legal, logical, and Constitutional weaknesses of New York’s actions. And we must remain content with accomplishing that. It is more than enough work for us, a small voice supporting our Constitution as the founders of our Republic intended.With this groundwork laid as an explanation for New York’s recalcitrance in obeying a direct High Court ruling, we will, in the next few articles of this series draw our attention to the deceitfulness at work through the operation of the “Good Moral Character” provision of the CCIA the Hochul Government has repurposed to operate like the past “Proper Cause” Requirement, to frustrate the applicant. The New York Government continues on the path it had first set for itself centuries ago, at the dawn of New York's statehood. Hochul and her Government intend to restrict the issuance of New York concealed handgun carry licenses, now, as then, and to constrain the use of those licenses for those individuals who happen to be among the few to acquire them.________________________________________*A decade after this article came out, Iowa amended its Constitution to include “a right to bear arms.” In a news article posted November 8, 2022, The Des Moine Iowa Register reported that,“Iowa voters have adopted an amendment to the Iowa Constitution to add the right ‘to keep and bear arms,’ adding language that goes beyond the protections contained in the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment, according to unofficial results.Iowa will become the fourth state with ‘strict scrutiny’ language to protect gun rights in its state constitution, achieving a longtime goal of Republicans in the Iowa Legislature. . . .The language of the amendment states: ‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.’The amendment described the right to keep and bear arms as ‘a fundamental individual right,’ requiring any restrictions on gun rights to survive ‘strict scrutiny.’Strict scrutiny is the highest legal hurdle for legislation to clear. It requires any restrictions on gun rights to be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest.”Two weeks after Iowans voted to amend their Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court held oral argument in Bruen, and the Court published its decision seven months later. Much of the Majority Opinion clarified the test that Courts must follow in deciding whether State Government action conforms with or offends the core of the Second Amendment when a Government action is challenged.But twelve years before Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down means-test scrutiny, in favor of a historical test. Although the late eminent Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia, writing for the Majority, in Heller, had specifically mentioned defects in the lowest standard of means-test scrutiny, “Rational Basis,” it was clear from the decision that the Court had scrapped the entirety of means-test analysis in Second Amendment cases, including, then, “Intermediate” and “Strict” Scrutiny, in favor of historical analysis. The vast majority of Courts failed to get the message or otherwise chose to ignore it. Although many Courts, prior to Bruen may have utilized a historical analysis, in analyzing the constitutionality of State action impinging on the Second Amendment right, they went impermissibly further, unable or unwilling to disavow means-test scrutiny altogether. But nothing in Heller suggests the High Court retained so much as an iota of means-test scrutiny. Moreover, the Majority in Bruen explicitly states that the Court wasn’t creating a new methodology. Bruen merely clarifies what Heller asserts. Associate Justice Thomas, writing for the Majority in Bruen, said this:“Since Heller and McDonald, the Courts of Appeals have developed a ‘two-step’ framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny. The Court rejects that two-part approach as having one step too many. Step one is broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history. But Heller and McDonald do not support a second step that applies means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context. Heller’s methodology centered on constitutional text and history. It did not invoke any means-end test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny, and it expressly rejected any interest-balancing inquiry akin to intermediate scrutiny.”This brings us back to Iowa’s amendment to its State Constitution. Since the Amendment refers explicitly to the use of “strict scrutiny,” the Amendment is unconstitutional. The irony is that supporters of the Amendment sought not only to cast in stone the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms for Iowans but to preclude the State Legislature and the State Federal and Appellate Courts from employing any test that might henceforth weaken the exercise of the natural law right to armed self-defense. The supporters of the Iowan Amendment thought that strict scrutiny in Second Amendment cases would prevent unconstitutional State action from infringing the core of the right. The U.S. Supreme Court had no such illusion, as a Strict Scrutiny means-test methodology suffers from the same defect as all means-test (weight analysis) methodology. There exists a tendency of Courts to find, almost invariably, in favor of a Government’s action, denying a challenge of unconstitutional infringement. This is one reason, and probably the salient one, why the Court struck down means-test scrutiny altogether, in Heller.Can the Iowa Legislature amend the verbiage of the Constitutional amendment to cohere with Heller and Bruen? Probably not since that would involve statutory reconstruction of a Constitutional amendment, which in the action would defeat, even if the intention were honest, the force and efficacy of the State Constitution, either subordinating the State Constitution to State Statute or placing the State’s Constitution on the same footing as State Statute. Neither possibility is acceptable.It appears Iowans will have to undertake another round of voting, first to repeal the unconstitutional amendment, and second to vote on a redraft of the amendment first voted on, that omits the “strict scrutiny” language.The Des Moines Register article, supra, also refers to four other States that have employed the language of strict scrutiny in their own constitutions:“Iowa will become the fourth state with ‘strict scrutiny, language to protect gun rights in its state constitution, achieving a longtime goal of Republicans in the Iowa Legislature.”If true, those States as well must amend their constitutions to cohere to the rulings and reasoning of Heller (District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008)) and Bruen, (N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022)).___________________________________Copyright © 2023 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.