After 250 good years, now is not the time for major changes

September 22, 2026

We are living in a time of rage. The outlook of so many people is one of anger, and impatience with things they disagree with, instead of understanding and accepting that it is okay that not everyone thinks alike. It’s been a long time since we have seen this level of anger.

It is quite disturbing to observe so many Americans being so adamant about changing our system of government and amending or destroying the U.S. Constitution. 

Maybe they just dislike some aspects of the system. Or, maybe they do not understand how this unique and wonderful system of government came to be, and why it has worked so well for 250 years. 

Today, the left has a long list of radical changes they want to make and things to eliminate. 

One thing on their list is the United States Supreme Court, which they want to pack with “friendly” justices that will vote their way on legal or constitutional matters. Some of them would rather eliminate it completely.

There is a very sensible reason for our Constitution and our body of laws. The Constitution controls how the government operates, and the laws protect its citizens. But the left does not want a system of government and a body of laws designed to be followed as created.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder thinks packing the Court should be a priority. Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren says the Court is illegitimate because it does not follow “widely held public opinion,” It doesn’t. And it shouldn’t.

And, former Rep. Eric Swalwell agreed with Warren, saying the Court “defies the will of the people.” And that is correct, because that is not its purpose.

The popular New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wonders why we have a Supreme Court, asking, “How much does the current structure benefit us? … I don’t think it does.”

And, if those perspectives are not enough, the court-packing faction thinks it will make the Court “less partisan.” Seriously? And, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg wants the Court to have 15 justices consisting of five from each party, who will then select the remaining five.

Law Professor Jonathan Turley explains that a “non-partisan, independent judiciary,” such as what we have, “serves two essential purposes: it plays a vital role in preserving the separation of powers, which prevents all government power from being concentrated in one place, and it stands as a bulwark in defense of minority rights against a majority faction. To ensure its ability to perform these essential roles without being threatened by the political branches — the Congress and the executive branch — the Constitution gives federal jurists life tenure and salary protections.”

Another of the changes they want to make is to abolish the Electoral College.

The United States of America is by design not a pure democracy, where the majority always rules. A good example of why a pure democracy isn’t a good idea is this: In a pure democracy, in a group of twenty people, eleven can rule that the nine must go to jail.

Under such a design, a few large states would decide every presidential election, easily dominating the smaller states. 

Different states and areas of the country have different ideas about things, like what is good for them, and what is not good. But what is better for giant states like New York and California, may be very bad for others, like Vermont and Wyoming.

The Federalist Papers noted that there are 43 states with a smaller population than Los Angeles County, CA, meaning that the votes of each of those 43 states is less than one county in another state. If Los Angeles County was a state, it would be the 11th largest in the nation.

That’s why we have the Electoral College: so that the largest states do not always dominate and choose the president, based on the candidate that will do the most for them.

After much debate, the Founders settled on a compromise of ideas where instead of the raw vote totals of each state being added together to decide who will be president, the decision would be made by state-appointed electoral intermediaries — one for each senator and representative of each state — who would cast the actual ballots for the presidency. This tends to help balance the smaller states against the larger ones.

A lot of Americans do not like the Electoral College, and want to do away with it, because they feel it unfairly and improperly elects the president. However, in 250 years, in the 60 elections of our 47 presidents since 1789, only five times have presidential candidates won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College vote. That’s about 8 percent of the time. It doesn’t seem to be the problem they want everyone to believe it is.

You do not have to have a PhD. in The Art of Deception to realize that following the left’s plan will create a situation where the left will forever dominate elections, and will rule the country until it surpasses Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea, and dies.

Our system has worked well for 250 years. We need to keep it.

Is our 250-year-old constitutional republic going to survive?

August 4, 2026

Remember when Democrats and Republicans were much closer in their ideas about how to move the country forward than they are today? If so, you are probably a seasoned citizen. If not that seasoned, and you happen to remember this, you are not from Gen Z, but you may be an early Gen X.

That more productive atmosphere is not what we have today.

Many on the left — mostly the younger ones, but also some of the older ones — do not understand the nation’s system that they so eagerly aim to sabotage, turning the country into one more famously inept socialist/communist mess.

Those in the Gen Z crowd were born from 1997 to 2012. By then, we already had high-speed internet, social media, smartphones, and a society that had existed and prospered for more than 200 years. And, while the older generations — like the Silent Generation, the Boomers, etc. — had many things that even older ones didn’t have, they were able to see how things came to be, appreciate their arrival, and enjoy these steps of progress.

Watching media evolve from just radio to the black and white television, and then to color television. Impressed with the development of stereo sound. Cars with automatic transmission, and then air conditioning. Jet aircraft. The space programs. The list goes on and on.

They also learned a lot from their parents about how to behave, and in school they learned real history, and civics, teaching them how the country was developed and supposed to work.

That experience helped them appreciate the great country into which they were so fortunate to have been born.

That element is missing from the environment of these younger folks. They entered a world that was so much better than it was when the older folks were born. Having such a full and special atmosphere from birth, taking it for granted, rather than watching how those great things developed and improved along the way may be why they do not adequately appreciate their wonderful country.

Whatever the reasons for these leftists to fail to understand present-day America and properly appreciate it, they also have no idea how foolish it is to think that socialism/communism will be better, or even tolerable, once it gets fully established.

Businessman David Rubenstein offered this perspective on America: “I would say that the United States is one of roughly 220 countries in the world. And of all these countries, we’re the one where the most people want to immigrate to. We’re the one who’s built the biggest economy in the world, the greatest technology base in the world,” and “we have the greatest entrepreneurial instincts of any country in the world. And that combination of things enables this country to achieve what we’ve achieved.”

Continuing with his praise for our country, he said, “To go through your life, you have used a lot of American technology. You probably can’t get through your day without using a Google, Facebook, or Meta product, or Netflix or one of our American-made automobiles. What European company do you need to use their products to get through the day? Virtually none. And except for TikTok, Americans can get through the day without using anything invented really outside the United States. The world is very dependent on the products we’ve created.”

A major problem today is that so many of the young were denied the fundamental education of what America is, and how it was formed. Our strong, sensible values have deteriorated dramatically over recent decades, because they ceased being taught and encouraged.

How can we strengthen those values? On that topic, another prominent American, radio talk show host, attorney, and author, Hugh Hewitt, suggests that we start teaching civics again to middle school students. He thinks using a book by Wilford McClay, titled “Land of Hope” will help. Hewitt believes it “is the best single book on American history,” and thinks it should be the core curriculum.

Describing McClay’s book: “It’s warts and all, as he says. He’s objective. He’s not neutral, but he’s objective about what we’ve gotten wrong and what we’ve gotten right in the country. Let’s pour ourselves into civics as opposed to ideology. I’d like to get back to some basics about how much we have in common, not what we have to fight over.”

Our constitutional republic has survived and thrived for 250 years. The country is not perfect. No country is. But this one has set records that none other has in those 250 years. And yet, thousands, perhaps millions, of our fellow Americans are dead-set on imposing socialism/communism on us, unable to recognize our great worth, or understand the disasters that their preferred system has brought to Cuba, Venezuela and other countries.

A noteworthy incident occurred during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Outside Independence Hall, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin a question about the Convention’s conclusion: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a Republic or a Monarchy?" Franklin replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

Our republic has survived a civil war, two world wars, and many other challenges. Will it be able to survive this one? 

Bizarre ideas on the left do nothing to straighten out the country

Harry Belafonte is an African-American entertainer best known for the 1956 Calypso hit "The Banana Boat Song"; who in more recent years has been known for his civil rights activism, left-wing activism and his admiration of Third World dictators; and who has now voiced his opinion on gun control, claiming that “white Americans” who support the 2nd Amendment's protection of gun rights are ignoring the black “river of blood that washes the streets of our nation.”

"America has the largest prison population in the world," he noted. "And of the over 2 million men, women and children who make up the incarcerated, the overwhelming majority is black. We are the most unemployed, the most caught in the unjust systems of justice, and in the gun game, we are the most hunted.”

He continued: “The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children. Yet, as the great debate emerges on the question of the gun, white America discusses the constitutional issue of ownership, while no one speaks of the consequences of our racial carnage.”

Columnist Walter Williams notes that, "though blacks are 13 percent of the nation’s population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it’s 22 times that of whites. Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person."

Mr. Belafonte tries to hang the responsibility for black-on-black murder around the necks of white America because they want to honor the U.S. Constitution, an argument that wildly misses the mark. Black youths dying in the streets is indeed a tragedy, but it is not because white people defend the Constitution.

Mr. Belafonte is also confused about the results of the 2012 election, believing that President Obama's thin victory in the popular vote constitutes a mandate from the people to do whatever he wants. But the margin of victory was only 3.84 percent. That constitutes a win, but it’s far from a mandate. This win was just over half the margin in 2008, which means that American voters are less in love with Mr. Obama and his agenda after seeing it in action for four years.

He also does not understand the American system of government, which in his mind enables President Obama to jail those that disagree with him. “The only thing left for Barack Obama to do is to work like a Third World dictator and just put all of these [white] guys in jail. You’re violating the American desire,” he said on the Al Sharpton TV program.

Perhaps Mr. Belafonte should review the founding principles of the country that was so good to him before he fell into the irrelevance that mediocrity brings. Maybe a better idea is for him to move on from what he believes is a horrible country to one of the paradises he so admires, like Cuba or Venezuela.

Harry Belafonte's racist and communist ideas are grossly un-American and are blessedly shared by only a small minority.  Others on the left, however, are also confused about what is going on.

Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader from California, also harbors some nutty ideas. Despite consistent budget deficits exceeding a trillion dollars a year throughout Barack Obama's tenure and a $16 trillion national debt that has increased by about 50 percent over that same period, Ms. Pelosi not only says with a straight face that we don't have a spending problem, but she is miffed that the pay raise proposed for all federal employees seems destined for the trash heap.

"I think we should respect the work we do,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters. “I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job....” Just because the nation is drowning in red ink is no reason to fail to show due deference to our employees in the Congress, right?

Congressional Democrats twist themselves into knots trying to convince us that it's okay to spend 40 percent more than the revenue we collect every year. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin commented that “We are now the richest nation in the world. We have the highest per capita income of any major nation. That kind of begs the question, doesn’t it? If we’re so rich, why are we so broke? Is it a spending problem? No.”

Sen. Harkin and Congresswoman Pelosi, and a whole gaggle of others see salvation in taking even more hard-earned money from the citizens, or at least some of them. However, a new poll shows 83 percent of Americans disagree. They have had it with fiscal irresponsibility and piling debt on future generations.

Here's a lesson in good government for public servants from someone who actually understood the concept: “A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” — Thomas Jefferson

Tax-and-spend policies have not and cannot solve America’s problems

British millionaires are looking for greener pastures. As reported in The Telegraph of London, “In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs,” but that “number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50 [percent] top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election.” The story goes on to say that it “is believed that rich Britons moved abroad or took steps to avoid paying the new levy by reducing their taxable incomes.” Consequently, the increase in tax revenues Prime Minister Brown had anticipated turned into a nearly £7 billion loss.

This should serve as a cautionary tale for America’s tax-and-spenders in the White House and Congress, who want to raise taxes on “the wealthy,” but it likely will float past them un-heeded. When you consider the details of the first post-election offer from the White House, it is clear that the administration does not comprehend such economic realities. The proposal: $1.6 trillion in higher taxes over 10 years, $180 billion in new spending and vague promises to cut only the growth of entitlement spending at an indeterminate future date, all while giving the president the power to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling.

The proposal calls for double the pre-election tax amount, additional spending and no specific amount of spending cuts or dates certain for them to take effect. And, there’s that last item, which gets immediately crossed-off: it’s unconstitutional.

As idiotic as that proposal is, understand that President Barack Obama appears serious about it.

Big government liberals live on entitlement spending, and many would die without it. The president’s proposal includes allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for those making $250,000 a year or more, raising the top rate to nearly 40 percent, which he supposes will raise $80 billion annually. That’s enough to run the federal government for only 8.5 days. If America’s high earners follow the lead of the Brits and reduce taxable income or shift it into 2012, it will be even less than that relatively small amount.

But what is worse, when you understand that half of those affected by this rate increase are small businesses, it makes no sense to raise taxes on them with unemployment still more than 50 percent above normal levels nearly 42 months after the recession ended.

The tax-and-spenders need to get past their resentment of high earners and their appetite for their earnings, and get serious about fiscal reform. Out-of-control spending for entitlements, a bloated and inefficient government, a tax code that plays favorites, and other factors combine to produce huge annual deficits and 16 trillion in crushing debt, and it’s time to fix that.

Americans for Tax Reform has focused for years on getting newly elected U.S. Representatives and Senators to take a pledge against raising taxes, understanding that our problem is that we spend far too much, not that anyone needs higher tax rates. Grover Norquist, its president, is now a target of the tax-and-spenders for his organization’s efforts at controlling taxation. However, those Senators and Representatives didn’t make the pledge to Mr. Norquist, they pledged to their constituents they would vote against tax increases.

The problem we have today is not a new one. A Cary Orr political cartoon from 1934, in the midst of The Great Depression, shows a wagon filled with drunken people drinking from a “Power” bottle and shoveling bags of money out onto the road. On the back of the wagon is a sign reading, “Depleting the resources of the soundest government in the world.” And there’s a man on the side of the road painting a sign which says:

Plan of Action for U.S.

Spend! Spend! Spend!

Under the guise of recovery

Bust the government

Blame the capitalists for the failure

Junk the Constitution and declare a dictatorship

Other comments jotted around the scene say, “How red the sunrise is getting” near an ominous looking man labeled “Stalin,” and, “It worked in Russia.”

That is how Cary Orr saw what the government was doing then. And what is unsettling about this cartoon is the striking similarity to what is happening now.

He believed government’s actions were communistic. What our government is doing today may not be socialistic or communistic under the strict definition of those terms But an interesting coincidence is that the Communist Party USA is now organizing teleconferences and rallies supporting the plans to raise taxes and encouraging continued over-spending on entitlement programs.

We should recognize that no nation on Earth has ever achieved success that even approaches the level of success the United States of America achieved before it began changing from the capitalistic model that built it to a model that has produced mediocrity and fiscal peril worldwide.

We should heed the lessons of wrong-headed government policies that extended the Great Depression for years longer than it should have lasted, and try something different, like the economic principles of capitalism that built America.

What’s Up in Russia?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to retaliate against a proposed missile defense system the U.S. wants to install by aiming Russian missiles at Europe.

It seems the Russians have returned to their Cold War mentality, when they objected to nearly everything enemy nations wanted to do, however innocuous it may have been. What threat, after all, does a system to destroy missiles that have been launched at the U.S. and/or European nations pose to Russia?

Here’s what the United States wants to build: a system that will knock out incoming ballistic missiles potentially coming from North Korea and Iran by stationing radars in Alaska and California in the U.S., one in the U.K., and one in Greenland, and a series of interceptor missiles based in Alaska (40 of them) and California (4), and 10 of them in Poland with a radar facility to fire them located in the Czech Republic. There would also be 130 interceptors based on ships. The interceptors would physically hit the ballistic missile in mid-flight. There would also be missiles to try to destroy incoming rockets in the final stages.

So, this plan generates threats from Russia? One wonders exactly what the Russians are planning that they are so adamantly opposed to a system designed to protect us and our friends from potential nuclear attack from North Korea or Iran? The Russian threat is somewhat like saying “If I take a swing at your nose, you had better not try to block it.”

Weird? Uh-huh. Suspicious? You betcha.

Technorati Tags: Common Sense, Communism, National Security, America

Sharing the Wealth

I came across an interesting theory the other day in a passage quoted from a column by Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Harris Green, who wrote:

“Whatever the rich receive, it is not due entirely to their own talent and effort, as many would have us believe. They owe their parents. They owe the teachers and counselors and clergy who taught them and civilized them. They owe the farmers and truckers and grocery store workers who put food on their tables, and the firefighters and police officers and emergency medical technicians who protected them from harm and further harm. The list of people they owe is endless. Therefore, whatever success they achieve in life is due mostly to the talents and efforts of a legion of people.”

There is a long list of reactions to that passage, among which are:

• All of us—not just the rich—owe “who we are” to some degree to the people who influenced us along the way, and that includes parents, teachers, counselors, clergy and others who motivated us.
• Some of the “legion” of people Mr. Green cites have had nothing whatsoever, or very little, to do with whether or not people succeed, including farmers, truckers, grocery store workers, police, fire fighters, and EMTs.
• If we aren’t rich, some of the responsibility for that is ours.
• Mr. Green appears to have a broad streak of envy/jealousy for people who have money.
• Mr. Green is pushing a communist/socialist agenda that proposes to take from wealthy people and give to less wealthy people.

What Mr. Green is suggesting is that despite to whatever degree Jane Doe took advantage of the opportunities to learn, used her brain and worked hard, she really isn’t entitled to the wealth she has, and because some farmer grew the vegetables she ate, and some grocery store employees sold that to her family, and because the town her family lived in had police and fire departments, all those people and their families are entitled to her wealth.

There is a sizeable faction on the Left in this country that would do exactly what Mr. Green implies ought to be done, if they could. They haven’t learned the lesson from the economic and social failure of, China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and the former Soviet Union: Socialism and communism just don’t work, and history bears that out. Americans ought to understand that lesson implicitly.

Technorati Tags: Capitalism, Socialism, Liberalism, Communism, The Rich