A Horror Show One Step Removed

It feels like the early scenes of a horror movie.

Dobbs has led to a dramatic rollback of abortion rights in half the country, but not where I live, not where my children or siblings or nieces and nephews live.

Louisiana and Oklahoma are blatantly defying constitutional law on separation of church and state, and might get away with it with the current U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump has been in a narrow lead in the Presidential race for months despite being the most dishonest, idiotic, and chaotic evil Presidential candidate ever, and a convicted felon with three more criminal trial around the corner, although not necessarily before election day. MAGA could just as well be the followers of Voldemort, and yet, 40% of the country doesn't notice, doesn't care, and embraces the evil. President Biden is doing good that is going unnoticed in the face of a gridlocked Congress, and campaigns very poorly as we were reminded after the first Presidential debate of this season.

The U.S. Supreme Court has been consistently pro-corruption in its rulings, and undermined January 6 accountability, and nullified the 14th Amendment insurrection clause contrary to the constitution's clear language. It is, of course, deeply corrupt itself, particular Justices Thomas and Alito.

The high court has also made our national suicide pact of the Second Amendment worse and is trying to gut federal government regulatory power.

Yet, here in Colorado, most of it is one step removed. Our state government is solidly moving in the right direction and isn't wallowing in gridlock. Our ever shrinking GOP is whiny and irrelevant in state politics. Our state supreme court took the lead in interpreting the insurrection clause correctly, and our courts in general, while not perfect are less political and more competent than most. We have meaningful protections against corruption and our scandals arise because they are being enforced. Our electrical grid is getting greener and we are using more and more electric vehicles. We are using our water more wisely. We are reintroducing wolves. We are trying to prevent gun violence. We are expanding access to education. We are making it harder to ban books. We are taking action to make housing more affordable and house the homeless. We have raised the minimum wage. We have strengthened tenants rights. We have created a right to paid sick leave. We have expanded our federal parks. We are treating migrants blown to us decently. We are making it easier to vote. We are curbing some of the worst excesses of the criminal justice system, for example, by abolishing the death penalty, by toning down felony murder, by curtailing solitary confinement, and by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement officers at the state level. We have led the nation in legalizing marijuana and are following that by legalizing some psychedelics. We are so gay friendly that we have a married gay Governor, have had a lesbian speaker of the state house before that, and have same sex common law marriage. We have cast away place names that are derogatory or exalt KKK members. We have done it with less bureaucracy and lower taxes than California. Our economy is mostly thriving.

Another four years of Trump looks, surreally, like a real possibility, with all the ruin that is likely to bring to our nation if it doesn't end democracy entirely, and tip the balance in favor of autocrats on the global stage.

We haven't reached the point where all hope is lost, but we could end up there in a matter of months.

The Trouble With The Ten Commandments

The State of Louisiana has mandated the posting of the Ten Commandments in its schools, which is deeply problematic as a constitutional matter and in substance. It is Dominionism which is something that the U.S. Bill of Rights specifically sought to prohibit.

Court cases have allowed the posting of "In God We Trust", and "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, under the rubric that it is "ceremonial deism". 

The Trouble With The Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments are more problematic (indeed, even the numbering of the Ten Commandments is a matter of sectarian division that any posting of them with numbers takes sides in as an establishment of religion).

This is why the U.S. Supreme Court held 44 years ago that a Kentucky law almost identical to the law just passed by Louisiana was unconstitutional in Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) despite the fact that it differed from the Louisiana law by mandating the the posting be funded without public money. The holding there is summarized at the link as follows:

In a 5-to-4 per curiam decision, the Court ruled that the Kentucky law violated the first part of the test established in Lemon v. Kurtzman, and thus violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. The Court found that the requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted "had no secular legislative purpose" and was "plainly religious in nature." The Court noted that the Commandments did not confine themselves to arguably secular matters (such as murder, stealing, etc.), but rather concerned matters such as the worship of God and the observance of the Sabbath Day.

What are the Ten Commandments? 

According to Exodus 20:2-17 (not the only place that they appear in the Hebrew Bible):

1. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

The 1st Commandment is the establishment of a particular religion in its purest form and un-American.

2. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

The first sentence 2nd Commandment, with its ban on making images of real things, while it survives in Islam to some extent, isn't actually honored in its literal form by ether Jews or Christians. The remainder, again, is the pure establishment of religious and un-American. Promising divine punishment for the great-great grandchildren of pagans (including most South Asians and some leading GOP politicians in Louisiana) isn't a great thing for Louisiana to enshrine in its schools.

3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

The 3rd Commandment is confusing to kids and adults. Is it a ban on false oaths, on false prophets, on saying YHWH outside of religious ceremonies, or on swearing? Do we want to put school teachers in the position of having to explain this fine point of theology to their students?

4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

The 4th Commandment divides Jews, Christians (and denominations within them), and Muslims, each of whom have different holy days, again in an un-American establishment of religion.

5. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

The 5th Commandment isn't just about being nice to your parents. It also adopts Zionism, another un-American establishment of religion, which the children of Louisiana have no reason to be told is a divine mandate.

6. You shall not murder.

The 6th Commandment is often translated "thou shall not kill" which is a poor fit to Louisiana with its death penalty. Otherwise, the 6th and 8th Commandments just go to show that even a broken clock is right twice a day. And, of course, the Ten Commandments were literally broken in the Bible.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

The 7th Amendment isn't the law in Louisiana. Adultery is no longer a crime in 33 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and the several U.S. territories. States which have decriminalized adultery in recent years include West Virginia (2010), Colorado (2013), New Hampshire (2014), Massachusetts (2018), and Utah (2019). Adultery is rarely enforced criminally in the 17 states that still do have adultery laws on the books. In 13 of the states where adultery is still a crime (Arizona, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Virginia), it is a petty offense (the maximum punishment in Maryland is a $10 fine), or is a misdemeanor. It continues to be a felony in four states (Idaho, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Wisconsin) and is punishable most severely among those states in Michigan who someone convicted of adultery faces up to four years in prison. It is a crime that is actively enforced for active duty members of the U.S. military under the U.S. Code of Military Justice. It is, of course, also an act which the presumptive GOP nominee, and more than one other form President have admitted to, and which is one that few school children have any reason to care about.

8. You shall not steal.

See the 6th Commandment. 

9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

Does the 9th Commandment imply that it is O.K. to give false testimony against someone who is not your neighbor? If so, that is a problem and encourage clannish disregard for the law.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

The 10th Commandment translated above as "male or female servant" would have been more accurately translated "male or female slave" which is outright un-American. We fought a war over that. It also implicitly categories wives as property.

More generally

A more subtle point about the Ten Commandments is that Jesus in the Gospels said that the Old Testament Hebrew laws don't apply to Christians who aren't Jews. By presenting the Ten Commandment as authoritative, the State of Louisiana is defying the Christian Gospels to which most residents of the State of Louisiana nominally adhere.

And, let's also say that the Hebrews of the Hebrew Bible, as portrayed in their own sacred account of themselves (probably compiles while in Babylonian exile or under Roman rule as an official statement of what their religion said for use by the non-Jewish governments that ruled them), are by 21st century moral and ethical standards, horrible, awful people.

Jewish law isn't just the Ten Commandments. It is also a deeply morally flawed list of other laws, call for absurdities like the death penalty for wearing wool-cotton blend fabrics or being left handed. And, the Jewish people repeatedly engage in genocide that they themselves account (see, e.g., the Book of Numbers).

There is very, very little about the Hebrew people as described in the Hebrew Bible (a.k.a. the Old Testament) or their laws from that source that is good or honorable or provides a good moral model.

Fortunately, modern rabbinic Judaism has somehow managed to salvage decent messages from this horrible source material with doctrine and wordplay in the Talmud and other commentaries. Judaism at lived in the 21st century is quite decent and indeed better than most Christian denominations. But the Jews of the Hebrew Bible were closer to the worst strained of fundamentalist Muslims today than they are to modern rabbinic Jews.

Reconstruction Revisited

One of the sources of many modern political woes in the United States is that Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War ended before the South was reconstructed.

This could have, and probably should have, been handled differently. Some things that we should have done instead:

* Execute all of the Confederate regime's elected officials, senior political appointees ("officers" of the regime's government), judges, military officers and spies for treason.

* Execute all pro-slavery clergy.

* Permanently remove the right to vote of every Confederate government official, every every Confederate solider who was a volunteer, and everyone who had ever owned a slave as an adult. Make it a crime for any of these persons to bear arms.

* Seize all real property and all other significant property (including all firearms and military equipment) of the families of everyone executed due to these Reconstruction mandates, everyone whose right to vote was lost, everyone who served voluntarily in the Confederate military and died, and every slave owner. Use this seized property for reparations to the freed slaves and exiled Native American tribes. Reparations for former slaves would be in a concept something alone the lines of "40 acres and a mule" affording freed slaves the resources necessary to survive as subsistence freeholder farmers.

* Seize all property of pro-slavery churches and pro-slavery or pro-confederacy political or civic organization. Use this seized property as part of the funding for integrated, universal, free public educational institutions and libraries.

* Convert all states that seceded to unorganized federal territories eligible for readmission to the United States as states only when they we sufficiently reconstructed. These would be under military rule for a decade or two in any given place before territorial self-rule subject to Congressional direction and a federally appointed territorial governor would be permitted.

In this kind of scenario, the South might have actually reconstructed itself.

What Factions Are There In The New Right Coalition?

Executive summary

The author thinks (and I'm not entirely convinced he's right but it is an illuminating oversimplification) that the GOP coalition of religious conservatives, foreign policy hawks and fiscal conservative/libertarians is dead. 

The "New Right" has four factions: 

"Flight 93ers" who believe the end of smashing liberals who don't think that the U.S. has always been awesome and are incensed at efforts to treat women and minorities better, justifies the means;

"Integralists" who are Christian dominionists with a Catholic flavor;

"National Conservatives" with a nationalist anti-immigration, anti-market, and anti-woke agenda who want to break up tech companies, defund the left, impose trade barriers, build a border wall, increase the size of the child tax credit and put God back in schools. They want an English only, white Christian country where everyone else is a second class citizen rather than a cosmopolitan, tolerant, multi-cultural society; and

"Red-Pilled Anarcho Bros" are Social Darwinists who think progressive elites use the language of equality and justice to give special privileges to women and minorities to keep themselves in business while robbing men, especially white men, of even the vocabulary to protest their loss of freedom or the unfairness they are forced to endure, and that . democracy and freedom are inherently at odds because democracy is based on notions of equality—while freedom would lead to the emergence of natural hierarchies based on physical and mental strength and a world where government exists to serve corporate power.

In more depth:

The conservative movement as we knew it pre-Trump arose in the heyday of the Cold War when the threat of Soviet communism loomed large in the American political consciousness. The movement was famously described by Ronald Reagan as a three-legged stool with each leg representing a different faction, to wit: religious/social conservatives, foreign policy hawks and fiscal conservatives/libertarians. . . .

What kept the stool together, however, was the fear of an external leftist enemy that each side feared for its own unique reasons. This is not to deny that there was also some genuine common ground between them. Indeed, to the extent that they all took America’s founding project seriously, none of these factions were fundamentally illiberal—or whatever streak of illiberalism they might have had was kept in check by the competing commitment to this project.

Trump’s arrival changed all that. The new right, which started taking shape even before Trump, is in a different mood altogether. Its unifying force is not the leftist enemy abroad, but the leftist enemy within. And it doesn’t just fear this enemy, it hates it. Indeed, the new right’s dislike of the domestic left is so great that it is rethinking America’s historic foreign policy commitments in light of it. If you have been puzzled by the post-Trump right’s love fest with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin despite his invasion of the liberal democratic and pro-West Ukraine, it is because Putin has declared himself the enemy of the woke left that he claims is destroying Western civilization of which he is now the self-avowed champion.

In contrast to the previous one, this has four identifiable factions. It is, if you like, more a table than a stool. But not, for all that, more stable because the four legs are uneven. In fact, were it not for the various factions’ joint hatred of their common leftist enemy, there would be less to keep the coalition standing than with the previous conservative movement.

I would label the four factions as follows: Flight 93ers, the Integralists, National Conservatives and Red-Pilled Anarcho Bros. . . .

Flight 93ers

This faction is named after the infamous Flight 93 essay that Michael Anton wrote in the Claremont Review of Books under the pseudonym of Publius shortly after Trump landed the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Claremont Review is the premier publication of the Claremont Institute, the flagship of the West Coast Straussian school of political philosophy. In contrast to East Coast Straussians, many of whom broke away from Trump, the Claremonsters, as they had long been called, went the other way. They weren’t without qualms about Trump but still submitted to him enthusiastically. Anton’s Flight 93 essay played an important role in convincing the Claremont Institute and the broader conservative establishment, at a time that it was still in shock over Trump’s primary win, that it needs to abandon its squeamishness and rally around him. Four years later when Trump launched his Big Lie, the Claremonsters supplied him with not just bogus arguments to justify his claims but also the notorious John Eastman, the legal brains behind the scheme to get Vice President Mike Pence to reject Biden state electors so that they could be subsequently switched with Trump state electors.

To understand how odd these machinations were, consider that Claremont Straussians have long regarded the American Constitution as a sacred document. . . . Just like their leader and founder, the late Harry Jaffa, they consider America’s Founding Fathers as gods among men. They also worship Abraham Lincoln whose statesmanship abolished slavery—and fully delivered on the Constitution’s promise of liberty for all—while keeping the Union intact.

So how did Lincoln lovers end up embracing Trump?

It is unclear, actually, if Jaffa, a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater, would have ever gone along with his institution’s pro-Trump turn; his son insists that he would not have. But his Claremont heirs’ annoyance with what they see as the anti-Americanism of the progressive left has grown into a burning rage over the years. They consider the left’s depiction of America as a racist, sexist, and homophobic country—despite the heroic efforts that have been made to abolish slavery and Jim Crow—as intolerable blasphemy. They have always seen the left’s demands for special privileges for minorities and women as a perversion of the constitution’s promise of equal rights. Then, on top of this, when the leftist elites who control the media, academia, the government bureaucracy, Hollywood and other commanding heights of the culture use their power not just to press their anti-American agenda but, in their woke arrogance, silence objectors like them through a regime of censorship, political correctness and cancellation, they are incensed. Denying the left control of the state, arguably the last remaining bastion of power, became a paramount concern for them.

Whatever Trump’s character and other flaws, they paled in comparison to his big virtue, namely, his unapologetic and no-holds-barred willingness to take on the left and obliterate it. . . . 

What distinguishes Claremonsters from the other factions of the new right is that they alone see themselves not as anti-liberals but adherents of the true liberalism. The illiberal subversion of elections to install a strongman like Trump, in their book, is a temporary measure to crush the left and return America to a true, originalist commitment to individual liberty and limited government.

Integralists

Defending any kind of liberalism is emphatically not the integralist project, however. Whereas Claremonsters see progressive leftism—its attacks on institutions of ordered liberty such as the family, churches and schools—as a perversion of liberalism, integralists see it as a natural outgrowth of the political individualism enshrined in the Constitution. . . . If Patrick Deneen, a professor at University of Notre Dame and a leading integralist, is to be believed, the source of America’s current travails, its communal and moral breakdown, lies in the Declaration of Independence itself. . . . Nothing irritates them more than Justice Anthony Kennedy’s famous quote in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992): “At the heart of liberty, is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” As far as they are concerned, one can draw a direct through line between this kind of thinking and the rise of sexual promiscuity, pornography, abortion and radical demands for gender self-authorship of the woke movement. And like the other three factions, integralists hate the progressive elite that advances and defends transgender surgeries and multiple pronouns.

Integralists are all Catholic and integralism is a very old doctrine that authorizes the state to promote the earthly common good as ordained by God. . . . the integralists do aspire to a return to some kind of a pan-Christian confessional state that uses its muscle to ban abortion, gay marriage and other progressive aims and that allows preferential expression of Christianity in the public square. Other religions wouldn’t be prohibited but they would not enjoy state support. Their role model in this is Hungary’s Viktor Orban who is taking affirmative steps to restore Christian domination in his country by barring Muslim immigration and embracing natalist policies to encourage Christians to have more babies and boost their demographic footprint.

If integralists could turn back the clock to some halcyon period in America, it would be 17th and 18th Century Puritan New England where a thick and unified community used a muscular government to impose widely shared religious norms or understanding of the common good. Deneen, along with his fellow integralists Gladen Pappin and Adrian Vermeule, has started a Substack publication called The Postliberal Order to develop their integralist critique of modernity and liberalism. . . . 

(To understand the nuttiness of these Catholic intellectuals using bad boy Trump, the very embodiment of the ruggedly atomistic spirit of Appalachian “backcountry” Scottish-Irish settlers, to return America to a communal New England Puritan Protestant order, read this fascinating account by Tanner Greer, “The Problem of the New Right.”)

National Conservatives

NatCons . . . morphed into something of a MAGA organ, workshopping an anti-immigration, anti-market, and anti-woke agenda. . . . American NatCons want to break up tech companies, defund the left, impose trade barriers, build a border wall, increase the size of the child tax credit and put God back in schools. . . .

Their dream is to elect a contingent of Republicans who are committed to using state power to, as Hillsdale College's David Azerrad, declared, “defund and humiliate the institutional centers of power of the left...and reward friends and punish enemies." . . . .

If one is going to pick one figure and one moment that launched this movement it would be Israeli political theorist Yoram Hazony with his 2018 book The Virtue of Nationalism. . . .

His rap against liberalism is that it is a fundamentally imperialistic ideology because it claims to be founded on universally applicable political doctrines. That, he says, leads to a crusading moral universalism that denies the validity of alternative principles of national self-determination based on local, cultural commitments. Liberalism judges every polity by whether it respects individual rights and allows religious pluralism. That bars the state from using its power to protect indigenous ways and customs. Instead of nurturing citizens of a nation with strong local blood, soil and cultural attachments, liberalism encourages individuals to see themselves as citizens of the world. Cosmopolitanism is a dirty word for him—as it had become for many on the MAGA right. Ironically, Hazony’s critique of liberalism is a warmed over version of the anti-globalization left’s slams against capitalism which, it alleged, obliterated local ways and homogenized every country in the image of the West.

Hazony does not reject liberalism out of hand. He thinks it might be suitable when local conditions warrant—for example in a naturally diverse and multicultural community. But in Hazony’s post-liberal world, liberalism is merely one legitimate possibility among many. When a dominant majority exists, it should be allowed free rein to determine its destiny. It can choose a religious, linguistic, ethnic or cultural principle around which to order itself depending on the self-understanding of the majority. 

So if India’s dominant Hindu population chooses to jettison its liberal commitments and become an explicitly Hindu nation, that is fine. Also kosher is America declaring itself a Christian country with English as its only official language—as is Israel remaining a Jewish nation without pressure to accord equal rights to non-Jews. Hazony says that in such regimes, minorities wouldn’t be persecuted. They would be tolerated—but not awarded equal rights. In other words, they’d have to accept their second-class status. . . . he dismisses as “elitist” liberals who insist that the rights of minorities and immigrants be respected in a polity. His streak of populism is pretty evident.

Red-Pilled Anarcho Bros

If Hazony is the godfather of the NatCon movement, then a long-haired dude called Curtis Guy Yarvin— who wrote under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug—is the godfather of this movement. . . . he started writing a blog called Unqualified Reservations under his pseudonym in 2007 . . . Many of the terms and concepts that gained popularity in the alt-right and then entered the political bloodstream along with Trump were coined by him.

Yarvin believes that a complex of progressive elite institutions—the press, academia and the federal bureaucracy or the Deep State—run the country and exercise control more totalitarian than authoritarian China—a country that he admires precisely because it is so openly authoritarian in contrast to liberal states that mask their true intentions behind mind-numbing pieties. He calls this complex of institutions “The Cathedral” and he believes that their ideology permeates everyone and everything. . . .  progressive elites use the language of equality and justice to give special privileges to women and minorities to keep themselves in business while robbing men, especially white men, of even the vocabulary to protest their loss of freedom or the unfairness they are forced to endure. It’s all an elaborate ruse to keep the truly good subservient to a false progressive ideology. . . . democracy and freedom are inherently at odds because democracy is based on notions of equality—while freedom would lead to the emergence of natural hierarchies based on physical and mental strength. . . . 

Mencius Moldbug, who has made an hour-long appearance on Tucker Carlson, has had a deep influence on Peter Thiel and was even rumored to have a line to Steve Bannon, wants to tear down the whole liberal edifice and replace it with a techno-state in which corporations run the country like their private holding. . . . So if, under fascism, the state directs private industry toward its ends, in the Moldbug world private industry directs the state towards its goals.

Moldbug was deeply influenced by Hans-Herman Hoppe, who subscribes to a perverted version of the libertarian Austrian School of Economics. This would be comical if it were not so dangerous given that key figures of this school like Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek (who has been a deep intellectual influence on me) are among the most eloquent defenders of liberalism—and ardent opponents of authoritarianism . . . 

Damon Linker at Eyes on the Right has written extensively about some of them, but the most prominent perhaps is Yale PhD Bronze Age Pervert (BAP) who has developed a huge following among young, white men of the reactionary bent. Just like Moldbug, BAP’s animus is directed at those whom he calls “bugmen”—reminiscent of Nietzsche’s last men—because they are filled with ressentiment against those who are more beautiful, powerful and stronger than them and therefore want to tear them down. In a calculated bid to provoke fear against the left, BAP has gone so far as to compare the anti-male and anti-white rhetoric of the new left to the “extermination”-level anti-Tutsi propaganda that the shorter, phenotypically African Hutus in Rwanda deployed before massacring the more European-featured, taller Tutsis (never mind that the extermination of the Tutsis was possible only because they were a reviled minority in an illiberal state that did not offer them protections from the depredations of the Hutu majority, precisely the kind of polity that BAP disses.)

If integralists have a problem with liberal secularism, the anarcho bros are upset with liberalism’s democratic egalitarianism. They don’t have a beef with religious pluralism like the intergralists—or even gays (Thiel, their fan and benefactor, is gay, after all!). They have an obsession with biology and natural differences and are far more concerned with feminist—and to a lesser extent, racial—demands for equality. They are at core Neitzcheans who believe that a good society is one that is ruled by the principle of meritocracy in all its forms—not equality, a creed for losers.

From UnPopulist. 

Rick Scott's Conservative Agenda Annotated

U.S. Senator Rick Scott, a conservative Republican, has released "an eleven point plan to rescue America" (with very polished typesetting and graphic design) that is pretty representative of the larger conservative movement, and urges a shift right from Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell. It offers insights into the current Republican mindset in America. 

What does Rick Scott think is wrong with America (in his own words, emphasis and statements in italics are mine)?

• Our government has created the highest debt in human history 

Mostly due to Republican policies to cut taxes with continuing to spend in defense and corporate welfare. 

• Americans are afraid to speak their minds for fear of being silenced and canceled by the woke elitists 

A society where racism and sexism and homophobia and xenophobia are socially unacceptable isn't a bad thing. The First Amendment is vigorously protecting unpopular speech from governmental interference. 

• Our children are being poisoned by a false political agenda in their schools 

Public schools mostly just have a reality based agenda, there isn't a "false political agenda" in schools. 

• Inflation is a tax placed on us by politicians who waste our money

Inflation can be caused by bad policies that politicians indirectly control and is sometimes equivalent to a tax. But it has very little to do with excessive federal government spending. 

• Our inept withdrawal from Afghanistan dishonored the sacrifices of thousands of Americans and encouraged our enemies 

Our withdrawal from Afghanistan was not well executed. But President Biden largely continued policies put in place by President Trump when he did so, and the collapse of the regime we put in place was a result of two decades of bipartisan failure at the task of state building, which the GOP actively opposed devoting resources to.

• Our porous southern border is a national crisis 

Undocumented immigration and the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are near record lows. Most undocumented immigration involves overstaying temporary visas. The claim that undocumented immigration harms native born Americans is mostly false. Undocumented immigration is not associated with higher levels of crime or a greater burden on government resources, and its labor market impact is quite modest.

• Our cities are overrun by theft, violence, and a 30% increase in murder 

While murder rates are up from a thirty-year record low, violent crime continues to fall and burglary is near record lows too. Other property crimes are stable at their near record lows or are up only modestly. 

• Our government is making us less energy independent and killing jobs 

The U.S. is currently a net exporter of petroleum, natural gas, and coal. It is energy independent. Government policies to reduce fossil fuel consumption through greater efficiency in energy use and a shift to renewables and natural gas are a key reason this is true, has created jobs, and has reduced pollution. 

• American war fighters are being indoctrinated with left-wing woke foolishness and kicked out of the military because of the ‘Big Brother’ vax mandate 

A military not full of extremist racists and misogynists is part and parcel of having a disciplined and effective force in a diverse society. The vax mandates are saving many military lives, making the force less prone to breakdown due to disease, and there is no legitimate reason to be opposed to COVID-19 vaccination.

• Our government is eroding our work ethic by paying people not to work

Strong unemployment benefits during a national crisis when people can't find jobs for reasons beyond their control is not bad policy. The work ethic is not being eroded. 

• We are allowing biological males to destroy women’s sports 

Turning transgender women into scapegoats is driven more by hate than it is due legitimate concern.

• Our kids are taught to hate America and divide each other by skin color

Teaching kids real history which includes negative realities is not hating America. Our kids are being taught to embrace diversity. 

• The FBI is spying on concerned parents who speak out at school board meetings 

The FBI is, as it should, investigating threats of violence directed at public school officials. The violent political tactics embraced by the American right are not acceptable in a democracy based on the rule of law. 

• Washington’s economy is growing, America’s economy is shrinking

America's economy is growing. Measured by factors such as federal government employment and government spending as a share of GDP, "Washington's economy" is has gotten smaller. 

• Lethal drugs are pouring into our country from China and our southern border

The war on drugs has been a failure. Demand and lack of effective treatment, and not supply, is the big problem. Countries like France and Portugal focused on treatment to end the opiate overdose crisis  that each of those nations experienced.

How does Rick Scott propose to address these issues (in his own words, with selective quotations below them with additional details about each point, emphasis and statements in italics are mine)?

1. Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them.

» Parents, not government, will choose the best schools for their kids. 

» We will enact equal opportunity in education (school choice) so no child will be sent to a failing school simply because of their zip code. 

» Kids in public schools will say the Pledge of Allegiance, stand for the National Anthem, and honor the American Flag. We must foster national unity. 

 It is settled law that mandating this is unconstitutional.

» We will open our schools to parents. Parents must have the right to know what their children are being taught, who is teaching them, and which organizations are receiving school contracts. 

» The FBI, DOJ, and all government entities will be expressly forbidden from intimidating parents who dare speak their minds at school board meetings. 

There is nothing wrong with investigating threats of violence against public officials from right wing extremists who are the main terrorist risk in the United States.

» Public schools will teach our children to love America because, while not perfect, it is exceptional, it is good, and it is a beacon of freedom in an often-dark world. 

History needs to include the good and the bad. A PRRI poll showed that 83% of Americans agreed, while 13% favored his view. 

» No child will be taught they are inherently racist because of the color of their skin, or that some Americans are oppressors and others are oppressed. 

» Teacher tenure at public schools must be eliminated because it protects inadequate teachers, not good teachers. 

» We will not allow political or social indoctrination in our schools. Teachers who refuse to comply will need to and new jobs. 

» No public school will be allowed to discriminate against voluntary prayer or force children to check their faith at the door. 

» We will close the federal Department of Education. Education is a state function. If Congress wants to spend money on education, they can cut out the middleman and send it directly to schools and parents. 

» It will be America’s goal to be number one in the world

Great. But your policies won't get us there. 

2. Government will never again ask American citizens to disclose their race, ethnicity, or skin color on any government forms.

» We will stop dividing people by race, skin color, ethnicity, or country of origin, which is an immoral and corrosive habit of the woke crowd. 

» We will be a nation where people will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. 

» Ban the Box. Government will not ask American citizens to disclose their race, ethnicity, or skin color on any government form. 

» No government policy can be based on race or ethnicity. 

» Our military will engage in ZERO diversity training, teachings on critical race theory, or any woke ideological indoctrination that divides our troops. Our ghting force must be completely united and completely colorblind. 

» Military leadership that prioritizes racial politics over the security of our country must be relieved of their duties. 

» Colleges and universities that favor or discriminate against students based on race or ethnicity in the application process will be ineligible for federal funding and will lose their tax-exempt status. 

» Government will base hiring decisions on qualications, not quotas of any kind. 

» America will strive to provide equal opportunity for everyone but will not guarantee equal outcomes. 

» We simply do not give a damn what color anyone’s skin is. at’s the colorblind future America deserves 

3. The soft-on-crime days of coddling criminal behavior will end. We will refund and respect the police because they, not the criminals, are the good guys.

» We will fund the police and stop all eorts to defund or “re-imagine” policing. 

» We will bring back respect for people who put their lives on the line to keep us safe. 

» We will support mandatory strict minimum sentences for all assaults involving serious injury to law enforcement officers. 

» We will strengthen qualified immunity and legal protections for law enforcement officers to protect them from frivolous lawsuits. 

» We will demand a nationwide crackdown on the and violent crime by imposing stiffer penalties so we can restore law and order to our city streets. 

» We will force prosecutors to prosecute. At present, many prosecutors in big cities are allowing criminals to go free with no justice, and they are doing it on purpose. 

» We will make it a federal crime for any prosecutor, including the US Department of Justice, to pursue prosecution based on political ideology. 

» We will eliminate no-knock warrants in any case that does not involve violent crime. 

» We will increase penalties for spousal abuse and failure to pay child support. 

» We will enact Marsy’s law which ensures victims of crimes have rights and constitutional protections equal to those who commit crimes. 

» We will oppose every attempt to deny our 2nd Amendment freedoms and will defend our gun rights always, at all costs. 

4. We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.

» Countries have borders. We will control ours and secure it, once and for all. 

» No one will enter without our permission. We lock our doors at night, not because we hate the people on the outside, but because we love the people on the inside and want to keep them safe. 

» Many potential immigrants love America. Those who don’t will not be allowed to come here. is is our country, and no one has a “right” to come to America. 

» We will employ military assets on our borders as needed. Border security is not simply a matter of domestic policy, it’s also a matter of national security. 

» Immigrants will not be eligible to collect unemployment benefits or welfare for the first 7 years after arriving in the US. 

» We will stop incentivizing people to come to America to receive government benefits. We have plenty of welfare recipients – we need productive citizens instead. 

» We will strip all federal funding from “sanctuary cities” and prosecute any elected officials who flout our immigration laws. 

» We will oppose all “comprehensive” immigration reform measures until we stop the lawlessness on our border, and our border is secured. 

» We oppose cultural segregation. We believe in the ‘melting pot’, where people from many backgrounds go all-in on becoming Americans, “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” 

5. We will grow America’s economy, starve Washington’s economy, and stop Socialism.

» Socialism will be treated as a foreign combatant which aims to destroy our prosperity and freedom.

Democratic socialist economies are the most prosperous and most free in the world.

» Other than essential core functions, government should not be doing anything that the private sector can do better and cheaper. 

Rick Scott needs to read more Dilbert cartoons. The private sector does many things poorly, including prisons, health care, and education. 

» We will apply the “Do It Better” Test: If American businesses can serve the American people better and cheaper than government, the work goes to them. 

» No government assistance unless you are disabled or aggressively seeking work. If you can work, but refuse to work, you cannot live off of the hard work and sweat of your fellow Americans. 

» We will require “truth in governing."

The GOP doesn't have a good track record in the "truth" department. 

” If government passes a law that does not achieve what it promised, the program will be shut down. 

» We will balance the federal budget. It can be done. States do it all the time. 

» If Congress does not pass a budget, the members of Congress do not get paid. Full stop. 

No problem with this one. 

» Other than disaster relief, the federal government must stop spending money on non-essential state and local projects until the budget is balanced. 

» Eliminate truly non-essential government employee positions, because they are non-essential. 

» Implement the line-item veto. It works in state capitols. It will work in Washington. 

» Expedite all federal permit applications to be granted or denied within 30 days. 

» All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax. 

Tax the poor is not a winning political agenda and doesn't make economic sense either. 

» Prohibit debt ceiling increases absent a declaration of war. 

Debt ceiling increases are a natural consequence of appropriations bills already passed by Congress and tax cuts passed by Congress. 

6. We will eliminate all federal programs that can be done locally, and enact term limits for federal bureaucrats and Congress.

» Enact term limits for the Washington ruling class – 12-year limits for Congress and government bureaucrats. (Exceptions for national security reasons only.) 

» Begin paying down debt. Debt = politicians stealing from our future and stealing from all of us right now with inflation.

The government is not the sole beneficiary of inflation which isn't primarily caused by government spending. The main causes of the deficit are GOP tax cuts, excessive defense spending, and COVID-19 related emergency measures.

» Forbid politicians from becoming lobbyists and “cashing-in” on their public service. 

Definitely. Good idea. 

» Eliminate federal programs that can be done locally. Any government function that can be handled locally should be.

How about regulation of cannabis and illegal drugs? 

» Move most Government agencies out of Washington and into the real world. 

» Sell off all non-essential government assets, buildings, and land, and use the proceeds to pay down our national debt. 

» All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again. 

» All government bids and contracts should be publicly available on the internet. 

» If government fails to comply with the law, citizens must have the right to sue to force them to comply. 

This is already possible in most areas, but law enforcement is allowed to flout the law too often. 

» No government employee can make more than 5 times the national median individual income. 

» We will bar the federal government from using your tax dollars for advertising campaigns. 

» We will drastically simplify the tax code, and eliminate the advantages of those who can afford tax lawyers and lobbyists. 

» We will immediately cut the IRS funding and workforce by 50%. 

Gutting tax collection resources will make the government's debt larger and will benefit only rich people who violate the law. 

» We will allow Veterans to choose how they access health care, either through the VA or private providers, whichever they prefer. 

» Force Congress to issue a report every year telling the public what they plan to do when Social Security and Medicare go bankrupt. 

The Executive branch already does this every single year. The Congressional Budget Office does something similar already too. Your inability to locate resources already available to everyone on the Internet is not evidence that we need new laws. 

7. We will protect the integrity of American Democracy and stop left-wing efforts to rig elections.

 » We will fight for maximum voter participation and zero percent voter fraud. 

We already have zero percent voter fraud. Time to increase voter participation which almost all of the other proposals are calculated to reduce in constituencies that don't vote for Republicans. 

 » Voter ID, requiring a voter to validate their identity, must be the law. Democrats support requiring ID to get a COVID test, vaccination card, or enter a restaurant. All arguments against Voter ID are in favor of fraud. 

There is no fraud. 

» ‘Ballot harvesting’, which the Democrats favor, and which allows political operatives and activists to collect and clone ballots from voters, must be banned. 

» Ballots can only be submitted to a polling location by a voter or the post office. No ballots that show up after election day will be counted, ever. 

» Many Democrats now advocate allowing non-citizens to vote in American elections. New York City now does this. is is too insane for words and must be stopped. 

Why shouldn't people who live in the U.S. have a say in making its laws? 

» The Democrats favor using your taxpayer money to finance political campaigns. No serious person would ever favor this. It must never happen.

In what way is private funding of political campaigns which leads to corruption better? 

» Counting of ballots must be done in full public view, expeditiously, and continue without pause until all votes have been tabulated. 

» There must be no same-day registration, as this does not allow election officials to verify the validity and accuracy of voter information. 

» No one should be automatically registered without their consent or knowledge, as this opens the way for multiple registrations by the same individual and registration of ineligible voters.

It doesn't actually do any of these things. 

» Unmanned or unmonitored ballot boxes in public areas to collect unlimited ballots must be prohibited. 

» No American citizen can be denied their sacred right to vote or be given special voting privileges based on race, religion, zip code, or ethnic origins. 

Wouldn't it be nice if Republicans acted like they believed this? 

8. We will protect, defend, and promote the American Family at all costs.

» No federal program or tax laws will reward people for being unmarried or discriminate against marriage. 

• Even though many single moms heroically do the job of raising a family (as my mom often had to) children need and deserve both parents – and government should not be shy about saying so. 

• Families are crucial in raising young men and women of character and responsible members of society. The best form of governing our society is not government, it is family. 

» Abortions are a tragedy. We must make adoption accessible and affordable. 

• We currently make it very expensive for prospective parents to adopt, even though many kids desperately need families. is is insane and we will change it. 

• We will help low income single women who are considering abortion choose life instead, by paying all costs associated with carrying the child to term and placing the child for adoption.

You are correct that abortion is a woman's choice. Making adoption cheaper would be great. 

• We will STOP Democrat Party efforts to discriminate against faith-based adoption agencies. We will do just the opposite. Most faith-based groups provide far superior service than government agencies do. We will utilize and empower them. 

» School administrators and teachers will work for parents. 

• Parents, not government, will choose which schools their kids attend. 

• We will end the Biden Administration policy of using the FBI to intimidate parents who speak up at school board meetings. 

» We must defend the American family from societal elements that erode it. 

Pornography is not an important source of our nation's woes. Rape has become less common, and legal action to fight sexual abuse by people in positions of trust have increased, at the same time that pornography has become more easily available. 

• We must enforce existing federal obscenity laws. Our society has almost given up on demanding decency, we must aim higher. 

• We must protect our children from the explosion of pornography and cyber predators. The FCC must hold online platforms and broadband providers accountable for not adequately providing tools for parents to keep this trash out of their homes.  

» We will make it impossible for deadbeat dads to avoid paying child support – beginning with paternity. They will either pay up or go to jail, with no other options. 

Lots of dads don't pay child support because they lack the income to do so, and wouldn't be able to pay meaningful amounts if paternity was established. Women who fail to name fathers aren't doing so to undermine their own economic well being. Sending people to jail is not a good way to improve debt collection - we learned this back in the 19th century when debtor's prisoners were abolished. 

9. Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies. We believe in science

Believing in science would be great. 

» Abortion kills human children. To deny that is to deny science.

This is not what science says. 

» Whether you believe in God or not, as a civilized people who accept science, we must protect babies, born and unborn, from all acts of violence.

Science says nothing of the sort. Protecting babies would be nice.  The GOP usually opposes protecting people who are actually born from violence. 

» All government policies will favor having more babies adopted, not aborted. 

The GOP consistently supports policies that do no such thing. 

» Humans are born male and female, there are two genders, and to deny that is to deny science. 

Science says that homosexuality and transgender identity are real. 

» No government forms will include questions about “gender identity” or “sexual preference.”

Ignorance doesn't change reality. 

» No doctor will be allowed to perform irreversible surgical or gender-altering procedures on any minor child. Once they become adults, they can do what they wish. 

Transgender identity is real and surgery is more effective when performed pre-puberty. 

» We will protect women’s sports by banning biological males from competing. It is hugely unfair and would erase many of the gains women have made in athletics over the last 50 years.

Admit that you hate trans people and don't think that they exist and want to persecute them despite the fact that they have done nothing to hurt you. Also transgender tolerance is not a national crisis.

10. Americans will be free to welcome God into all aspects of our lives

The First Amendment strikes a good balance as it is. 

» Americans will not be required to go against their core values and beliefs in order to conform to culture or government. 

» We will reject both the roots and the adherents of cancel culture in America. 

» Every American will be free to live out their religious convictions in the public square, not only in the home or a place of worship. 

» We will forbid government programs from discriminating against the 350,000 religious entities which operate schools, pregnancy resource centers, soup kitchens, drug addiction programs, homeless shelters, and adoption agencies. 

» All social media platforms that censor speech and cancel people will be treated like publishers and subject to legal action. 

» We will require big tech platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, to receive express consent (not as a condition of use) before using Americans’ personal information in any manner, and make it simple for users to opt out. 

» Big Tech platforms will also be required to obtain user consent to sell, share, or convey user data to a third-party entity. 

» No tax dollars will be used to pay for any diversity training or other woke indoctrination that is hostile to faith. 

» Churches and faith-based groups will not be forced to hire employees who disagree with their tenets and convictions. 

» We will stop investing federal retirement dollars with ‘woke’ fund managers and companies that put left-wing politics ahead of profits. 

» Remember – the Second Amendment was established in order to protect the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. 

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with God and is a uniquely American suicide pact that should be repealed. 

11. We are Americans, not globalists.

» We will unapologetically lead the world by example. A world without American leadership would be a very dark world. 

In what way is this not globalist? 

» Adhere to the New Monroe Doctrine – America will not allow any global enemy, such as China, Russia, or Radical Islam, to grow their presence in our hemisphere. 

In what way is this not globalist? 

» No foreign aid to any country that habitually opposes us at the UN. 

There is exceedingly little foreign aid that this describes. 

» We will not pay any dues to the United Nations or any international organization that undermines the national interests of the USA.

My way or the highway isn't an effective foreign policy. 

» We will make our international allies pay their fair share for their own defense. We will not send our kids to do what their kids will not do. 

So, how about you even the scales by spending less on defense? 

» Our military will not be used as a peace-keeping force, it exists to protect us by intimidating or killing our enemies.

Examples please. 

» Nation-building does not work, we will not waste our treasure or troops doing it. 

The Afghanistan departure debacle was a direct result of failing to engage in nation-building. 

» We will always defend our allies, starting with Israel. 

In what way is this not globalist? 

» We will treat our enemies like enemies. 

» No adversarial foreign government or corporation controlled by an adversarial foreign government can purchase American land. 

» The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs. 

Apparently you don't really believe in science. 

» We will gradually end all imports from Communist China until a new regime honors basic human rights and freedoms. 

This is a good way to harm the American economy. 

» We will build supply chains that rely solely on American workers and allies. We will not be at the mercy of our enemies for medications or any essential commodities. 

Ending international trade is not good for the economy. 

» We will terminate any trade deal that takes away American jobs.

Every trade deal both creates and destroys jobs. The goal is to maximize net economic benefit from trade deals, not to prevent all jobs from being lost. Jobs are not a fixed resource.

» America will be energy independent. 

America is energy independent already.