Americans Struggle Today with how Openly our Leaders Should Express Their Faith

I had a buddy growing up. His name was Emmett.

He wasn’t a classmate. He was much older than I was. One of those men from the Greatest Generation who made time for a kid who asked too many questions.

Few of us really know the stories of most of the people in our lives. And until I interviewed him for a Junior High grammar class assignment for Mrs. Adams, all I knew about Emmett was that he greeted me every Sunday in my small country church with a smile on his face.

I knew some details before the interview. Emmett Donovan. Born in Monroe County, Missouri. Carpenter by trade. Long-time deacon at the First Baptist Church. He had a second refrigerator in his garage where his lifelong bride, Hazel, let him keep his fishing worms.

I learned a lot about Emmett in that interview.

He was the only kid from Monroe County to board a boat in England on June 4th, 1944, bound for Normandy to fight Nazi Germany.

The weather across the channel was dicey. The operation delayed a day because of it, but there were too many soldiers to unload the boats. It would have taken too long. They had to stay an extra day on the boats, waiting. They played cards. Wrote letters. Tried to keep their spirits high. Emmett had married Hazel in 1937. She was on his mind, and he on hers.

The weather cleared up enough to try the assault on June 6.

At 2300 hours on June 5, paratroopers started taking off from their bases in England.

At midnight, June 6, the Allied Fleet pushed off. Five hours later, dawn bled into gray.

In the darkness just before dawn, the men had spent almost a full two days aboard the ships. The rough English Channel tossed the vessels to and fro. Many men were ill from seasickness and nerves. They knew they would not all survive and return home to America.

Sunrise in Normandy, France, came at 5:46 AM local time that day. From the boats, the men could see a faint outline of where they were going, but no clear view of what awaited them.

Landing craft carrying the first wave launched from the larger vessels about seven to 12 miles offshore. From aboard these landing craft, the faint outline of the coast was visible in the near dawn light.

But by 0530, the Germans absolutely knew something big was happening. Just after midnight, over 13,000 US and British paratroopers had dropped behind enemy lines. German units in Normandy were engaging paratroopers. German radios reported landings and firefights throughout the night.

Allied bombers, fighters, and gliders filled the night sky, lit by the flicker of explosions below.

Now, in the early morning, German radar and lookouts tracked an armada of ships. German defenses saw glimpses of the landing craft through the rough sea chop and the fog.

Not every landing craft made it to shore.

The sea was violent that morning. The swells were high. Beach obstacles and mines sank some boats. Artillery hit others before they ever touched sand. Engines failed. Men jumped into water over their heads and drowned under the weight of their packs. All under heavy German fire.

The obstacles and fires damaged, misguided, or destroyed hundreds of landing craft before they could reach their designated beaches. Omaha was the worst of the five landing zones. Nearly half the tanks sank before firing a shot. Some landing craft circled for too long, disoriented in smoke and chaos, and ran aground.

Emmett’s boat made it. But that didn’t mean it went well.

He jumped into the water, rifle held high, and slowly waded in heavy water toward the beach. On his way toward his objective, Emmett stopped to provide first aid to a fallen soldier on the beach. It was bad. He told me he tried to help the soldier put himself back together. But with bullets cracking around him, there wasn’t much he could do.

Allied forces paid a high price. Two-thirds of some initial landing units suffered casualties. Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment, part of the 29th Division, hit Omaha Beach first. In just the first hour, 96% became casualties, a grim testament to the brutality of that morning.

Emmett would achieve his objective. Behind him, wave after wave of Allied troops poured onto the beaches, clawing out a foothold, marking the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.

As a reward, Emmett had the pleasure of going on to fight at the Battle of the Bulge.

To the credit of many, America would help defeat fascism and liberate Europe from Nazi Germany.

After the war, Emmett returned home to his small country town. He and Hazel would stay married for 61 years. They had two sons and three grandchildren. She passed away when he was 85. He would survive her for 12 more years.

Many years later, as a young boy, I only saw him act with grace and dignity. He was always quick with a smile and a handshake.

He didn’t talk about politics or pride. Had you not known and asked about his experience, he would not have told you. You would have assumed he had lived his entire life in a little Missouri town.

He had a quiet faith. He was a proud member of his congregation, but he didn’t talk much about it.

I’ve never forgotten that interview. I was just a Junior High student. And like most kids, I didn’t ask enough of the right questions. He remembered the beach vividly. The chaos. The noise. The man he tried to help.

But if I could sit with Emmett again today, I’d ask about the hours before that.

What was he thinking about on the boat? Did he write a letter to Hazel? Did he stare out at the gray horizon, wondering if he would see her again?

I’ll never know. But knowing him later in life, I believe he carried something more than fear. Duty, maybe. The quiet strength of his generation.

I believe a strong component of his grace and dignity came from his faith.

Emmett and Hazel weren’t the only Americans praying that day.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s June 6th Address

1944 was a time of hand-wringing across the country. We worried about our nation’s sons and daughters fighting in Europe and the Pacific. When people worry, they turn to the Almighty. When they turn to the Almighty, they pray.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s calendar on June 6, 1944, detailed only one appointment. Invasion Day.

The FDR Library says that “During the tense early hours of the invasion, FDR monitored reports from the front. That evening, he delivered a statement to the American people. It took the form of a prayer, which he read on national radio.”

FDR sought to offer the nation strength with a heartfelt address.

“My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas -- whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them--help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.”

Now we are ready for our question.

If a national leader leads a prayer event, is that a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause? Specifically, the part that says the government can’t establish a religion?

Thomas Jefferson: A Case Study in the Tension Between Personal Faith and Public Office

Thomas Jefferson was a deist. A deist believes in a single creator who made the universe, set natural laws in motion, and then does not interfere with those laws through miracles or revelations.

He saw a providential Creator behind human rights but viewed organized religion and government-issued prayer as matters best kept separate.

Jefferson believed Biblical miracles were myths. He doubted the power of prayer. At the same time, he recognized humans are obliged to worship God, and he prayed publicly.

He helped draft a 1774 “day of fasting and prayer” to protest the British Intolerable Acts, then later dismissed the event and claimed that the resolution had been cooked up for political effect.

As governor of Virginia, he passed along Congress’s request for another prayer day. But as president, he flat-out refused to issue one. In an 1808 letter to Rev. Samuel Miller, he said any “recommendation” from the chief executive would still carry pressure and that “it is not for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises.”

Then, in his Second Inaugural address, President Jefferson said…

“I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are … and to whose goodness I ask you to join with me in supplications.”

No contradiction there, in his eyes. A president may pray aloud as a private believer, and at the same time refuse to command government power to stage a national fast.

Jefferson’s view became the foundation for religion in America. Freedom of religion and freedom from religion.

First, freedom of religion. A president, or any other American, may kneel in a church, chant in a temple, light a menorah, face Mecca, or follow any creed they choose.

Second, freedom from religion. We may skip worship altogether. No tax supports a church. A courthouse may never force a prayer. Citizenship never hinges on belief.

That distinction, personal expression versus official endorsement, became the core of our modern Establishment Clause test. It is why FDR’s D-Day prayer passed muster, and why a leader may still pray in public. The invitation must be voluntary.

At the same time, FDR’s address offended some Americans who believed we had no role in World War II. Isolationists urged that we ought to stay out of the war and continued to resent US intervention even after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Pacifists lamented the tragedy of humanity and urged prayer for deliverance instead of military action. Activists objected to the prayer. When Congress later tried to add the D-Day prayer to the WWII Memorial, the ACLU and an interfaith/atheist coalition wrote that the plaque demonstrated a lack of respect for religious diversity that would detract from national unity.

So…what’s it going to be?

Lead with Grace and Dignity

Emmett understood better than most of us ever will that grace and dignity must lead us.

The separation of church and state isn’t about eliminating faith from public life. Faith cannot be government coercion. It is personal conviction.

Emmett, like Jefferson and Roosevelt, demonstrated that strength doesn’t impose itself. It reveals itself quietly, in dignity, humility, and quiet confidence.

When a national leader prays voluntarily in public, rather than immediately claiming a First Amendment violation, we should respond as Emmett would, with grace and dignity.

In truth, Emmett’s quiet faith, Roosevelt’s prayer, and Jefferson’s wall aren’t about religion at all.

Our greatest responsibility isn’t to defend what we believe or correct what we think is wrong in others. Greatness never comes from insisting others share our beliefs. Greatness comes from humility, courageously living our beliefs ourselves.

May God bless the United States of America.

Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/simon-folwar/almost-thereLicense code: SUCWYITYH7YCVIYU

June 21, 1788.

New Hampshire becomes the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, activating the new government and binding America to a single compact.

Our Republic is dedicated to the premise that we are created equal. We fought a war to escape a king. We ratified a Constitution to rule ourselves. The Constitution is a contract between states. We can sum up the foundational basis of that contract in one word…

Trust.

Each sovereign state pledges to certify its vote and accept the certifications of every other. If that handshake fails, the Union fails.

Trust demands proof. How do we make every voter, every state official, and every member of Congress accept the tally as fact?

January 6, 2021

Tear gas. Pepper spray. Flashbang grenades.

The cameras didn’t miss a moment. Two thousand protesters from nearly every state turned into rioters. The floor of the House emptied. Staff members grabbed the mahogany boxes that, since 1877, have held the certified electoral votes of each state. They ran.

The count stopped.

Photojournalist and Marine veteran Chris Jones at the Capitol Building that day observed that “The looks in people’s eyes seemed religious to me, not political. So it was important for me to use that iconography in my pictures, to talk about how people do things for their faith that they wouldn’t do for their politics.”

For most Americans, the counting of votes had always been a formality. It wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t dramatic. It was supposed to be boring. That’s the point of a stable system.

But not on January 6.

The nation watched in horror as the institution of the American democratic Republic lost trust in itself.

That day, the count became the crisis. Some stormed the Capitol because they believed the tally was rigged. Others defended the building because they believed the tally was sacred. While the crisis was unfolding, a precious few, but enough, stood firm and did their duty to preserve the Republic. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

No matter our opinion of the facts of the legitimacy of the vote or the cause for the distrust. Either way, something broke. The numbers no longer spoke with authority. Many Americans believed they no longer trusted the count.

And the problem persists. In 2024, the FBI warned that foreign actors continue trying to undermine Americans’ trust in elections through disinformation. The fracture isn’t healing. It’s spreading.

Somewhere along the way, the foundation of the institution cracked.

January 6 wasn’t just an isolated moment of chaos. It revealed something deeper. Something dangerous. Trust in the vote itself fractured. That fracture didn’t heal when the building cleared. It’s a live threat today. Without trust, our elections lose their meaning. Without trust, our Republic crumbles from the inside.

Trust demands proof.

We Are One Nation Because We Are a Union of States

The Constitution isn’t a rulebook. It’s a contract between states that each state agreed to sign. As a part of the contract, New York agreed it would accept a certified count from Alabama. Wyoming agreed to trust the vote in California. Ohio agreed they can’t override Georgia’s tally just because it doesn’t like the outcome.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of this Constitutional contract outlines that each state decides how to choose its electors, based on whatever method its legislature sets. Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 identifies that states and not a federal authority govern the times, places, and manner of their elections.

In short, states decide their vote. Not the federal government.

Congress does retain some authority to intervene and standardize practices to ensure consistency and protect voting rights, but only because the states amended the contract to give Congress this authority. Every state later agreed voting rights could not be denied by race (15th Amendment), sex (19th), failure to pay poll taxes (24th), or age over eighteen (26th).

Bottom line. Each state runs its own election. That’s not a flaw. That’s the design. When we ratified the Constitution, we had just fought with everything we had to win a war against a king, and we weren’t about to give the keys to another one.

We decided that no one person in Washington, or even a group of people, would manage elections. We gave that power to the states. But inherent in that power is responsibility. States agreed that once a result was certified, the rest of the country would accept it.

We didn’t personally sign the Constitution, but every Election Day, we delegate our voice to whoever wins, and we live with their choices. That’s representative governance. Institutions endure because each generation inherits them unless it chooses to dismantle them. Without that carry-forward consent, fifty states would drift apart and the Union would fracture. Trust in the contract, then, is necessary for national survival.

When one state casts doubt on another’s election, or when Congress or the President threaten to reject results a state has already decided, the entire structure starts to crack.

The states don’t all have to agree. We never could anyway. But we have to trust each other and accept the vote from other states. Without trust, the contract collapses.

Trust demands proof. How would we prove the results of elections?

The Technology Test

With mass elections, we face two different vulnerabilities. Both are technology-based. There is paper, and there are machines.

Some call to rely on paper ballots. But paper ballots, counted by hand or scanned, carry a human burden. Humans make lots of mistakes. We are slow. We scale poorly. We are prone to fatigue, bias, and clerical error.

The weakness of paper ballots isn’t in the vote itself; it’s in the count. Large-scale studies show hand counts differ half a percent to two percent from audited totals. Some one-off experiments collapse entirely. Nye County, Nevada’s 2022 “full hand count” logged a discrepancy of nearly twenty-five percent between manual and machine tallies before the state shut it down. Even the low end, half a percent, would swing 25,000 votes in a five-million-ballot state. That gap alone can decide a close race. In the 2020 election, President Biden won the vote in the state of Georgia by 12,000 votes. Arizona, 10,000. Wisconsin, 20,000. Trust demands proof.

The more complex the recount, the more faith we have to place in people. Humans perform poorly on repetitive, tedious tasks.

So, if we want to maintain trust, a human count isn’t proof.

Digital machines offer a different problem. They are fast. They scale beautifully. But their weakness is perception. They aren’t transparent.

If they’re connected to the internet even once, they open the door to doubt. A single confirmed breach, or even a plausible story of one, is enough to rupture confidence. If people believe the machines can be tampered with, they no longer trust the count. A machine count where we can’t see behind the curtain isn’t proof.

So we have a tradeoff. Paper risks accuracy and timeliness. Machines risk legitimacy.

Both fail the test because they can’t answer the central question.

Can they prove the result?

Maybe there’s another way. Trust demands proof. To fix trust, we need a new standard. One that we already apply when the stakes are life or death.

I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds

Few systems achieve the high standard of societal trust. These systems have zero‑failure tolerance because the stakes are civilization‑level.

Let’s think about how we certify weapons platforms that carry nuclear warheads. Each platform must achieve nuclear certification before it becomes active.

Nuclear certification isn’t a casual process. We subject those systems to a standard of review that assumes one tiny mistake could end civilization. When the cost of failure is existential, that system must meet a no-failure bar. Every bolt, every microchip, every software patch.

The standard is a transparent reliability rate of fewer than one error in one billion events. The 1-in-1-billion benchmark is not a metaphor; it comes straight from official federal nuclear safety guidelines. DOE Order 452.1F and DOD guidance require that the probability of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation remain below this threshold.

If our election system counted 160 million votes with the same reliability, it would permit fewer than one single miscounted ballot. Practically zero. “Good-enough” paper or opaque machines fall short. That is the cost of keeping legitimacy non-negotiable.

The nuclear certification process is slow, rigorous, and unforgiving. Why? Because when the stakes are existential, “good enough” isn’t enough.

An election collapse threatens the Republic with equal finality. Once voters stop trusting the count, they stop trusting the system. At that point, we’re not debating the process. Just like we did on January 6, 2021, we watch in horror as some challenge the continuity of the Republic itself.

In short, instead of choosing between paper ballots and machines that count behind a curtain, we should hold vote-counting systems to the same standard we use for nuclear weapons platforms.

A nuclear weapons-grade election system means air-gapped hardware that’s never connected to the internet. No remote access, ever. Open-source, frozen code base. An immutable paper backup for every ballot. A public, mathematically verifiable audit trail. Continuous independent surveillance and testing. Tamper detection alerts. A public record briefing to each state’s election body detailing every abnormal event. Full transparency.

Engineers test, states see the data, and voters can download the report. A continuous loop from opaque process to transparent, verifiable record.

No more challenging the legitimacy of elections.

No more threatening the legitimacy of the Republic.

Results everyone can see and prove. Trust demands proof. If we already use this zero-failure standard to protect lives, shouldn’t we use it to protect our democratic Republic itself?

If the Republic lives on trust, shouldn’t trust deserve our decisive effort?

Yes, a zero-failure system is expensive. But the question is bigger than price.

We already spend fortunes to protect the Republic’s borders. We should spend what it takes to protect the Republic’s integrity.

Preserving the Union is our first national goal. That Union lives or dies on public faith in the count. Lose that faith, and no army can save us.

Union is not the absence of conflict; it is the shared burden of conflict. We win and lose together, and we accept the result together.

Union depends on trust. Without trust, we risk permanent fracture.

Trust demands proof.

May God bless the United States of America.

Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/simon-folwar/morningsLicense code: OFHOYTZTU6ZNPVES

We live in an age where the oath of office often feels like a formality. But President George Washington didn’t see it that way.

Why not?

He was an honorable man. He led decisive action that saved a ragtag set of colonies and their fledgling fighters. He helped forge an America born at war, and then spent his life, with others, shaping it into a lasting union.

We asked him to be king. He refused. Instead of seizing power, he handed it back to the people. He is one of only four presidents honored with a monument on the National Mall.

Washington saw the presidency not as an achievement, but as a duty. The office wasn’t his. It was the nation’s. He was only a temporary occupant.

His first term was a dry run of an experimental system. At his second inauguration, he delivered the shortest speech in presidential history: 135 words. Four sentences. In it, he asked to be judged not by success or failure, but by fidelity to the Constitution.

He never saw the oath as ceremony. He saw it as a public binding. An act of submission to law, to philosophy, to something greater than himself. He swore to uphold that ideal above riches, safety, or power. He made himself small beneath the American ideal.

The oath directs the president to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Then it adds a quiet line: to the best of my Ability.

That phrase carries humility. In the hands of someone like Washington, it becomes a unifying voice. But not everyone is like Washington.

In lesser hands, “to the best of my ability” promises nothing. It demands no wisdom. No courage. No character. The Constitution doesn’t define “Ability.” It sets no standard, offers no test. It doesn’t ask whether a president understands liberty, grasps law, or even knows the six goals of the preamble. It only asks that he act according to his ability.

So what happens when a man with no moral compass takes the oath?

What if his ability begins and ends with self-interest? What if we choose someone whose ability is shaped not by humility, but by ambition, ignorance, or vanity?

He can still raise his hand. He can still say the words. He can still claim he did his best.

And the Constitution won’t stop him.

It gives the people the power to choose. And once we choose, it assumes we chose well. It assumes we chose someone who understands what it means to defend a republic.

Which brings us back to the same words every president has spoken since Washington.

A Constitutional Clause Built on Subjectivity

Found in Article II, Section 1, Clause 8, the Constitution outlines that before they enter the office, the President shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:

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.

The oath is a mirror. It reflects back the character of the person who takes it.

Most constitutional clauses set standards. Common verbiage includes “shall,” “must,” and “only with advice and consent.” Not the oath. It doesn’t bind the office to a standard of excellence; it binds it to the standard of the person. It says the president will act to the best of their ability, which turns the focus inward. It’s not a promise of outcome. The oath is filtered through the person’s internal fidelity. It limits the obligation by what the individual president is capable of and not what the Constitution demands.

We could ask why the framers didn’t just say the president must uphold the Constitution or shall ensure its defense. Perhaps they feared the tyranny of perfection just as much as the tyranny of incompetence.

The framers wrote before modern party systems, before mass media, and before the idea that one person might use the presidency as a personal brand empire. They assumed men of honor, or at least men with a reputation to protect. For the framers, “ability” was a nod to human limits, not human depravity.

They assumed, wrongly, that the people would never elect someone without basic ability and a high ethical standard. Of course, there is the law, and the law is measurable. Not all ethical violations break the law.

But having a high ethical standard is not a requirement to be president. We have several examples of presidents with an ethical standard many would consider deficient.

Let’s look at three moments where the oath bent under pressure.

James Buchanan – The Man Who Watched the Union Burn

Imagine this. It’s 1857. The country is fracturing. A sharp economic downturn, the Panic of 1857, has shaken public confidence and threatens the livelihoods of thousands. Slavery has already turned Congress into a battlefield. The Kansas–Nebraska Act has opened the door to “popular sovereignty,” allowing settlers in new territories to vote on whether to allow slavery.

Pro-slavery and anti-slavery protestors flood into Kansas. Violence breaks out; the territory earns a new name: Bleeding Kansas.

Then, the Supreme Court delivers the Dred Scott decision. The Court declares that Black Americans can never be citizens. That the federal government has no power to prohibit slavery in the territories. That the Constitution itself offers no protection to the enslaved.

In the middle of this firestorm, James Buchanan takes the oath of office. The country needed leadership more than ever.

He swears to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. And then he proceeds to do ... almost nothing.

Buchanan personally believed slavery was immoral. But he believed even more deeply that the Constitution gave him no power to act. He saw himself not as a leader, but as a caretaker of a document, and the document, he claimed, left no room for federal intervention.

He was a staunch states’ rights advocate. When Southern states began seceding, South Carolina first in December 1860, Buchanan declared secession illegal ... but also claimed the federal government had no authority to stop it.

His cabinet fell into chaos. Several members were Southern sympathizers. One of them, Secretary of War John Floyd, secretly funneled arms to the South. Buchanan, weak and indecisive, let it happen.

So the Union dissolved while the President, bound by his narrow reading of the Constitution, stood aside.

He felt he had done his duty. He said,

“I feel that my duty has been faithfully, though it may be imperfectly, performed, and, whatever the result may be, I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for my country.”

He also recognized his leadership had failed. In a moment of despair, as the nation cracked beneath his inaction, Buchanan reportedly declared,

“I am the last President of the United States!”

It’s one of the most devastating examples of a president interpreting “to the best of my Ability” as a command to do nothing at all.

And it left Lincoln to inherit a war that may have been prevented if the man before him had seen the oath not just as a legal clause, but as a moral charge.

Andrew Johnson – The President Who Fought Reconstruction

In April 1865, the war was ending. The Union had held. And then, at Ford’s Theatre, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

Into that moment stepped Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee, loyal to the Union but hostile to the idea of racial equality.

He took the same oath Lincoln had taken: to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.

But Johnson didn’t use that oath to finish Lincoln’s work. He abused his veto power to preserve white supremacy.

He vetoed civil rights legislation. He openly opposed the Fourteenth Amendment. He told white Southerners they could regain power quickly and face few consequences. As if the war had changed nothing, as if emancipation had never happened.

He said,

“It is the province of the Executive to see that the will of the people is carried out in the rehabilitation of the rebellious States, once more under the authority as well as the protection of the Union.”

And when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the first law to declare all persons born in the United States as citizens, he vetoed that, too.

Congress overrode him. Twice. It was the first time major legislation passed despite a presidential veto.

Johnson argued he was defending the Constitution. That federal enforcement of civil rights was an overreach. That states had the right to decide, even if they used that right to deny freedom.

He didn’t see Reconstruction as a duty. He saw it as an intrusion.

And so, under the cover of “to the best of my ability,” Johnson tried to undo the meaning of Union victory.

He became the first president in American history to be impeached. He survived conviction by one vote. But his legacy was clear: he used the oath not to heal the country, but to hold it back.

Richard Nixon – The President Who Tried to Redefine the Law

Richard Nixon took the oath in 1969. Then again in 1973. He swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.

What followed was one of the most profound breaches of public trust in American history.

Nixon authorized illegal wiretaps. He used the CIA to block FBI investigations. He compiled enemy lists, with the goal to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” He used the IRS to target his political opponents. And then, when the Watergate break-in exposed the rot, he tried to cover it all up.

He didn’t deny that he broke ethical norms. He didn’t even deny the facts. What he denied was that he could be held accountable.

He told interviewer David Frost in 1977:

“When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

President Richard Nixon’s name has an asterisk next to it in history books as the biggest crook to ever hold the office. The man who took an oath to defend the Constitution believed he was functionally above it.

He saw the office not as a duty to the people, but as a shield against them. He interpreted “to the best of my ability” not as an internal check, but as a blank check. Nixon wasn’t after money or fame; he hungered for power, control, and a place among history’s greats.

Nixon resigned before the House could impeach him. In his farewell speech, Nixon said plainly,

“To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body.”

But he left. In the end, even Nixon understood that while the oath might be vague, the consequences of breaking it could still find you.

Fast Forward to Last Week

In an NBC News interview, Kristen Welker asked President Trump if he’s duty-bound to uphold the Constitution.

He answered,

“I don’t know… I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

That answer says a lot. The oath doesn’t bind the lawyers. It binds the President. And yet, instead of owning that responsibility, he passed it off.

Some lawmakers responded with outrage. But while they bicker, real people are out here hurting.

We should be focused on our purpose. The Constitution gives us one: to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.

Justice is the first obligation. America doesn’t exist to serve the strong. It exists to protect the weak. That means every family has heat in the house and food on the table. No new burden on taxpayers. No ballooning bureaucracy. Just results. And that takes consensus. Political theater kills consensus.

To any president who says they “don’t know” if they’re bound to defend the Constitution, we shouldn’t pretend. You don’t need to lie. We can just say it plainly. The office exists to serve the Constitution. And you are serving it to the best of your ability.

But when you fail to meet even the most basic obligations, that reveals your ability.

The Fifth Amendment protects all persons, including citizens, immigrants, and anyone under US jurisdiction, from being deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. If we use taxpayer dollars to process, detain, or deport someone, they are under our jurisdiction. They are owed due process.

History gives us examples of presidents who fell short. They have names that include Buchanan, Johnson, and Nixon. We remember none as great.

Washington made himself small beneath the Constitution. We ask no less from anyone who follows.

This isn’t a constitutional crisis. The system the framers built is strong. The Constitution gives the structure. But the oath still matters. The success of the presidency still depends on the person who takes the oath, and how they choose to fulfill it.

May God bless the United States of America.

Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/studiokolomna/chamber-timeLicense code: IC3A9HDXIT3FAWUV

Tariffs will certainly raise prices at home. That’s their purpose. Tariffs are taxes. When a product crosses the border, a tariff adds a fee. The item is the same, the seller worked no harder, but government tilted the scale to favor domestic goods.

So here’s the real question. If the state forces you to pay more than the market demands, and the extra money flows to a private pocket and not to a public good, is that a government theft of your property? It’s not as black and white as saying yes.

Trade Walls and the Great Collapse

(Background: somber string swell. An overture to a tragedy.)

In 1929 America walked to the cliff’s edge. On the day historians now call Black Monday, October 28, the stock market plunged 13 percent. The next day, it fell another 12. And the slide continued.

By mid‑November the market had surrendered half its value. But this was no abstract loss for wealthy speculators. Credit froze. Banks failed. Capital vanished.

The drop tore through real people’s lives. Factories emptied, foreclosures surged, crime climbed. City tax bases collapsed; boarded windows lined dark streets.

In manufacturing-heavy cities like Detroit and Chicago, unemployment reached 40 percent. On the plains, farmers who had expanded acreage during World War I and loaded themselves with debt to feed Allied armies now could not sell grain for the cost of planting it. Some burned corn for heat because coal was more expensive. Families lived in makeshift shacks made from scrap wood and tar paper.

The shock ran so deep it took twenty-five years and twenty-five days, an entire generation, to recover. Only on November 23, 1954, did the Dow Jones Industrial Average climb back to its 1929 peak.

It took the Second World War, an immense post‑war industrial boom, and the rise of a broad middle class to erase the wounds opened in those brutal weeks of 1929.

…

But in 1929, the nation was still reeling.

Into that chaos stepped two well-meaning legislators: Senator Reed Smoot of Utah and Congressman Willis Hawley of Oregon. Smoot chaired the Senate Finance Committee. Hawley led the House Ways and Means Committee. Both were Republicans. Their fix looked simple on paper. They intended to raise tariffs and shield American jobs, especially in struggling farms and factories.

Tariffs were nothing new. All through the nineteenth century they filled the federal treasury and sheltered northern mills before an income tax even existed. 

But by 1930, the economy was global. Exports mattered. War‑debtor Europe owed the United States billions, and America needed foreign buyers to keep those payments flowing. The system was fragile, stretched by World War I debts and sliding prices.

This fragile system was about to get kicked in the teeth.

Smoot and Hawley introduced their bill in 1929 as a narrow farm measure. Washington lobbyists smelled opportunity. Amendments poured in. Every senator, every representative, tacked on protection for home‑state industries. The schedule exploded.

Tariffs climbed on more than twenty thousand imports, including shoes, lumber, eggs, cement, even musical instruments.

[Sound cue: typewriters clacking rapidly, fading into thunder]

Over a thousand economists signed a letter urging President Hoover to veto it. They warned it would spark retaliation and crush trade.

Hoover, boxed in by party pressure and a panicked electorate, signed the Smoot‑Hawley Tariff Act into law on June 17, 1930.

…

That’s when the backlash began.

Canada struck first, taxing American wheat and produce. Europe followed. Germany, France, Britain. The global economy was already fragile. Retaliation sent it into a spiral. Within a few years world trade fell more than sixty percent. American exports were cut in half. Factories shut their gates. Jobs vanished. Farms that hoped for relief found only isolation.

[Background: wind blowing through an empty field]

Unemployment soared past 20 percent. Dust storms rolled across the heartland.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act didn’t cause the Great Depression. But it poured gasoline on the fire. It bruised American credibility and hardened global resentment.

The lesson came fast and harsh: Economic nationalism backfires in a global crisis. Economists still cite the Smoot-Hawley Act as proof that fear-driven policy can deepen disaster .

Voters felt the pain. In the 1930 midterms, Republicans lost both chambers of Congress by huge margins. Smoot and Hawley were “shown the door.”

Even progressive Republicans who had campaigned for Hoover switched sides and backed Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. By his inauguration on March 4, 1933, banks were closing, unemployment hovered near twenty-five percent, and prices and productivity had fallen to one-third of their 1929 level .

We now know FDR would lead the country through the Great Depression and to victory in World War II. He would go on to win four consecutive presidential campaigns. It would take 20 years and a war hero named Dwight Eisenhower for the Republicans to win the presidency again.

Decades later, economists point to the Smoot-Hawley Act as the moment protectionism went too far.

What are Tariffs?

A tariff is a border tax. Each time a shipment enters the United States, from raw materials to cars, the US importer pays the tariff before the goods clear customs. That cost travels through the supply chain until it lands in the shopper’s cart.

The Constitution calls such a fee an impost and grants only Congress the power to levy it.

In the early Republic, tariffs kept the government running. We only had to pay for a small army, a handful of diplomats, and debt payments. Customs duties and land sales covered it all. No income tax. No redistribution. In that setting, tariffs were neutral revenue.

Today, they play a different role. Lawmakers use them to shield selected industries. The higher price never builds a road or pays the debt. It settles in the profit line of the firm that now faces less competition.

As a buyer, you pay more, without consent, to subsidize a private interest. The protected company can hold prices high and still move product. That extra margin is private gain created by government design.

So the question stands.

If the state makes you pay more than the market asks and the surplus flows to a private pocket, are tariffs a government theft of your property?

Are Tariffs a Government Theft of Your Property?

Let’s look first through the lens of the individual and their natural rights.

The decisive purpose of governance is to preserve your life, liberty, and estate.

Life is your own being. It includes every decision that keeps you alive and whole. By nature, you own yourself.

Liberty is the right to choose a path that leads to fulfillment. When we chart our own course, we observe, plan, and act. Our choices bring results, good or bad, and from those results we develop skill, talent, and personal responsibility. What we do matters, but who we become by doing it matters more.

Estate is the concrete result of that pursuit of happiness. It is your paycheck, the land you work, your tools, the food on your table, the heat in your house. It is everything earned by your labor and freely exchanged with others.

We consent to governance so our representatives can preserve those rights.

When government collects taxes to keep the peace, enforce contracts, and build institutions that enable Americans born in trailers and penthouses alike to be great, it strengthens the pillars. When it shifts wealth from many citizens to a favored few, it weakens them.

The Constitution reflects that balance. Article I empowers Congress to collect tariffs to promote the general welfare. But that power has limits. The spending must serve everyone, not private lobbies. When public money settles in private hands, it no longer serves the people. It serves the powerful.

America was built to protect the weak, not exalt the well‑connected. We owe allegiance to no king, no oligarch.

And there is a second lens: not just citizen, but creator, builder, innovator, entrepreneur; anyone who brings something new into the world through mind and labor.

The Creator’s Rights

Now let’s switch lenses and see tariffs through the eyes of the creator, the builder, the entrepreneur.

Creators share the same trinity of rights every person holds: life to think and act, liberty to choose a path, and estate to keep the value they earn. A competitive market is simply those rights at work.

This market sets conditions supporting freedom from coercion, not shelter from stronger rivals. Every creator is an end in themselves. A business must win customers by persuasion, never by force. The moment a company runs to government for a tariff that inflates a rival’s cost, competition ends and confiscation begins, without the buyer’s consent.

A tariff used in this way becomes legal plunder. It lifts money from many pockets and drops it into one. Real competition is buyers and sellers meeting on equal terms, each free to walk away. The state’s duty is to protect that freedom, not tilt it.

The Constitution backs this logic. The Commerce Clause lets Congress regulate trade “to promote the general welfare.” That mandate directs open, dependable markets. Congress may clear barriers, chase fraud, and keep trade lanes clear. It may not enrich one faction by taxing all others. When tariffs privilege a lobby, they break the spirit of fair play.

A competitive market environment rests on three conditions: First, rule of law that protects contracts and property. Second, a neutral government that blocks entry to no one and grants no special favors. Third, open information that lets every buyer and seller judge value for themselves.

When we establish and maintain this business environment, the rights of the producer and the rights of the consumer align, because every exchange is voluntary. Businesses have a right to a fair and competitive arena. This means an arena free of special privilege, not free of challenge.

Viewed this way, broad tariffs distort consent, misalign incentives, and reward political access over earned value.

But that’s not the end of the debate.

There are serious arguments in favor of tariffs. They can defend national security, answer foreign coercion, or shelter a fragile industry long enough to stand on its own. Those claims deserve a closer look.

The Strategic Case For Tariffs

Tariffs are strategically compelling in three areas.

First, tariffs are needed for national security. Some items are too important to depend on other countries. America needs to be able to build each and every piece of an Abrams tank or a Strike Eagle fighter inside the country. We need the inherent capability to make every part, from computer chips for fighter jets to rare earth magnets for guided missiles. If we can’t build these items in-house, and a war or embargo cuts the supply, we won’t be able to achieve national objectives. A tariff can push factories to build those parts here at home. Yes, it adds cost, but it pays for itself in risk.

Second, trade only works when both countries play by the rules. If another country blocks our products, forces us to hand over technology, or pays heavy subsidies to its own firms, our businesses can’t compete. A targeted tariff can be a bargaining chip.

Third, young industries. Some businesses start with big upfront costs and need time to grow strong. Early American steel, Japanese cars in the 1950s, and South Korean shipyards in the 1970s all asked for short-duration tariffs while they scaled up. The need to protect these infant capabilities was clear, so they could compete on their own later.

But all three of these examples share a commonality. Tariffs must serve everyone, not just one company. Except for national security, they must be temporary and end once the goal is reached. And they must pass scrutiny. Tariffs must end if industry prices stay artificially high or innovation stalls.

In short, strategic tariffs can be justified if they are narrow, temporary, and transparent. Broad tariffs rarely meet that test.

So, are tariffs a government theft of your property?

Tariffs lift prices at home. That is their purpose. They are taxes paid each time an import crosses the border.

If Congress paired those duties with equal tax cuts for ordinary families, tariffs might serve American families. That rarely happens. Relief flows upward instead. Right now, Congress looks to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which “skews in favor of wealthy Americans, who would see more tax relief not only in the dollar amount but as a percentage of income.”

Without offset, a tariff is simply a hidden tax. Working families, not wealthy ones, pay the price.

Broad, permanent duties threaten your estate. They drain wealth from many and deliver it to a privileged few. Prices climb, choice shrinks, competition thins, all without consumer consent.

Still, not every tariff is unjust. A measure that truly guards national security or corrects foreign coercion can be justified, if it stays targeted, temporary, and transparent. It must protect the whole country, not just favored producers.

The real question is motive. Does a tariff serve the nation or the wealthy lobby?

In the end, every tariff faces a single test. The Constitution outlines six national goals: union, justice, tranquility, defense, welfare, and liberty.

Do these tariffs move us closer to even one?

If a tariff is targeted, temporary, and transparent, the answer can be yes. Tariffs that genuinely protect national security, level the playing field against foreign coercion, or briefly shelter critical new industries can enhance our union, strengthen justice, and provide for the common welfare.

But broad, permanent tariffs that enrich a handful of companies at everyone else’s expense do the opposite. They weaken economic justice, disrupt domestic tranquility, and erode personal liberty. They tilt America away from fairness and toward privilege. They distort incentives, drive up costs, and quietly confiscate property.

So, the answer to our question depends entirely on intent and design. Good tariffs serve clear national goals that benefit everyone, while bad tariffs serve only private interests.

If we can’t clearly explain how a tariff moves America closer to at least one of our goals, then we already have our answer.

May God bless the United States of America.

Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/hele/the-wolf-the-bearLicense code: MZQHKZONYCHE3JS3

From the Kalka River to Lake Peipus: Russia Turns East

(Begin with ambient medieval Eastern European music, fading under narration)

After the Rus’ catastrophic defeat at the Kalka River in 1223, and especially following the full-scale Mongol conquest in the campaigns of the late 1230s, Mongol dominance reshaped the eastern and western reaches of the Russian world.

In the 13th century, Kyiv, now the capital of Ukraine, was still the spiritual and cultural heart of a region known as Kievan Rus. It wasn’t Russian in the modern sense. Its roots were Viking. The Norsemen who arrived in Eastern Europe, mostly of Swedish origin, were Varangians, also referred to as the Rus. They settled among the Slavic tribes, built river trade routes, and founded ruling dynasties. Over the generations, their Norse identity blended into the local Slavic world.

Kievan Rus was a loose federation of Slavic principalities spanning what we now know as Ukraine, Belarus, and the western edge of Russia. Rivers made its borders. Trade flowed south along the Dnieper to the Black Sea and north along the Volkhov and Northern Dvina toward the Baltic and the White Sea. The Dnieper linked Kyiv to Byzantium and the wider Mediterranean, while the collective waterways connected the forest to the steppe and bound distant peoples into a shared political and spiritual world.

(A quick note: If you’re listening to the audio-only version, the written piece available on Substack includes a detailed map. Kievan Rus stretched from the White Sea, above the Arctic Circle, to the Black Sea, just north of present-day Turkey.)

By this point, Kyiv’s political power had faded from its earlier role as the capital of Kievan Rus, but the city still carried immense symbolic weight.

That changed in December 1240. Batu Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, led the Mongol army that laid siege to the city. After a brutal assault, they slaughtered its people and left the city in ruins. Many towns across Rus met the same fate. Some never fully recovered. Others vanished entirely.

In the years that followed, the world of Viking Rus, once shaped by Norse leadership and open trade, gave way to something new. In the northeast, Muscovy rose, its name the root of what we now call Moscow. The people were still Slavic, but operated under a different system. Under Mongol rule, governance became centralized, hierarchical, and dominated by Eastern thought.

Western thought emphasized law, feudal contracts, and the rights of lords and cities. Eastern philosophy favored absolute authority, obedience, and control. Power flowed from the top, not from mutual obligation. In the West, oaths bound lords and vassals. In the East, obedience flowed downward from an unquestioned ruler.

Russia turned its back on the Latin West and aligned itself with systems of power born from the East, imperial and unyielding.

That pivotal shift came into sharp focus with Alexander Nevsky’s decisive choice in 1242.

…

Alexander Nevsky, a prince of Novgorod, faced invasions from two directions. From the West, Catholic crusaders from the Teutonic Order pushed aggressively, determined to impose Western religious and political order. From the East, Mongol overlords watched closely, prepared to assert their brutal authority should Nevsky waver in his allegiance.

On April 5, 1242, on the frozen surface of Lake Peipus, Nevsky met the heavily armored Teutonic knights in a legendary clash known as the Battle of the Ice. His lightly equipped Russian troops were agile and intimately familiar with the terrain. They employed tactics blending patience, deception, and carefully calculated retreat. These tactics distinctly reflected Eastern strategic thinking, including principles of manipulation and timing.

The heavy crusader knights were ill-equipped for the battle. The ice cracked beneath their weight, plunging many into the freezing water. Nevsky’s victory became symbolic of Russia’s decisive choice to turn away from Western European dominance and instead accept the Eastern yoke of Mongol power.

Nevsky’s choice entrenched Russia in Eastern political philosophy, characterized by pragmatism, indirect manipulation, and power calculation.

So, the Battle of the Ice wasn’t so much a military victory as a decisive statement that Russia’s future would unfold under the Eastern logic of calculated statecraft. Russia would be shaped by the pragmatic wisdom echoed centuries earlier by Eastern philosopher Kautilya.

The Philosopher Kautilya

Long before the Mongols or the Rus, one philosopher wrote the handbook for survival in a ruthless world.

Kautilya, also known as Chanakya or Vishnugupta, was the chief adviser to Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of India’s Mauryan Empire in the fourth century BC.

Educated at the ancient university of Takshashila, he wrote the Arthashastra, a sweeping manual on statecraft, intelligence, and war. It describes how politics works, not how it ought to work.

Kautilya was a ruthless realist. Even the philosopher himself was born in legend.

Picture a dusty village in fourth-century BC India. A newborn boy arrives to a humble household. His father is Chanin. His mother is Chaneshvari. Both are followers of the Jain faith. Jainism is one of the world’s oldest religions. Jains believe in the existence of souls and strive to minimize harm to all living beings, including plants and animals.

In the newborn parent’s tiny courtyard, the village elders gather. They are curious for signs that foretell the child’s fate.

The baby startles everyone. He is born with a full set of teeth, a sign in local belief that marks a future king.

The boy’s father worries. Kings collect enemies, and enemies bring suffering. To blunt the omen, he breaks one of the infant’s teeth.

The monks study the infant again and shake their heads. The prophecy shifts. He will never sit on a throne; he will stand behind it, guiding its power.

Kautilya guided Chandragupta Maurya to dismantle the Nanda dynasty, unify the Indian subcontinent, and lay the foundation for the Mauryan Empire, one of the most powerful and administratively sophisticated empires of the ancient world. At its height, it controlled almost the entire Indian subcontinent, from the Himalayas in the north to the Deccan Plateau in the south, and from the Indus Valley in the west to the borders of present-day Bangladesh in the east.

The Mauryan Empire ruled about sixty million people, nearly a quarter of humanity at the time. No one matched that scale for more than a thousand years, until the rise of the Mongols.

When he wasn’t training an emperor or shaping a dynasty, Kautilya wrote. His words, etched in Sanskrit, became a manual for survival in a ruthless world.

In the Arthashastra, survival rests on four tools.

First, ‘Sama.’ Sama is persuasion, but not for the sake of harmony. Sama is influence without resistance. It is calm words, flattery, charm, even seduction, if the moment demands it. The aim is not agreement, it is control. Power exercised without force, where the opponent believes it was their own choice.

Next, ‘Dana.’ Dana is inducement. A reward, but not a gesture of goodwill. It is a calculated investment. Gold, land, favors, each given not for kindness, but for leverage. In the East, generosity is often strategy in disguise.

Third, ‘Bheda.’ Bheda is the use of logic or trickery to influence others. It plants suspicion, quietly unravelling unity from within. The most efficient way to defeat an enemy is to make them defeat themselves.

Last, ‘Danda.’ Danda means the open use of force. Not unleashed in anger, but in certainty. When all other tools have served their purpose, Danda completes what the others began.

Eastern thought is vast, but Kautilya’s four-tool schema offers its sharpest lesson in political realism. Kautilya serves as a diagnostic lens, not as evidence that medieval Russia consulted the Arthashastra; the parallels emerge from convergent strategic logic. That blueprint echoes through Sun Tzu, the Mongol khans, and the rulers of Muscovy.

Eastern philosophy does not ask a ruler to be noble; it asks the ruler to be effective. A wise leader puts self-interest first and moves between persuasion, reward, division, and force when the moment demands.

When Muscovy absorbed Mongol methods, it closely echoed Kautilya’s ideas, whether consciously or simply through historical resonance. Two centuries after Nevsky, on the banks of the Ugra River, a grand prince would embody these Eastern lessons.

Ivan III and the Great Stand on the Ugra

Picture Muscovy in 1480.

Two centuries have passed since Nevsky. The grand princes of Moscow now rule a realm knit together by tribute, surveillance, and a network of loyal boyars. Over those two centuries, Muscovy gathered taxes for the khan, slowly turning that machinery to its own ends.

Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow, born in 1440, hidden from murderers as a child, who started leading armies at the age of 12, has stopped sending silver to the steppe.

Akhmat Khan of the Great Horde leads his army west to punish Ivan’s defiance.

Summer turns to autumn. The two armies meet on opposite banks of the Ugra River, a quiet tributary of the Oka about one hundred fifty miles southwest of Moscow. It is a tense, prolonged standoff. Ivan blocks every ford, posts archers in the reeds, and waits. No arrows fly. No charges thunder. Day after day, the river lies between them like a mirror.

Ivan is not idle. He enters negotiations with the khan to delay. He uses persuasion and trickery to buy time.

Meanwhile, he sends envoys to Lithuania, urging them to stay neutral. He releases gifts to minor Tatar princes who resent Akhmat. He spreads whispers that Muscovy’s allies had already raided the Horde’s rear camp.

Persuasion, reward, and division work together silently while the army shows strength only in reserve.

Weeks pass. The Horde’s supplies run low. Winter fog settles over the water.

Hidden from Akhmat, Ivan’s allies struck, or seemed to strike, at the Horde’s base. Whether real or whispered, the threat broke the Khan’s nerve.

On a cold November night, Akhmat breaks camp and retreats to the steppe. Ivan’s host watches the torches fade, then marches home without a battle. Russians will remember it as the Great Stand on the Ugra River, the moment the Mongol yoke snapped without a sword stroke.

Ivan returns to Moscow and orders the double-headed eagle of Byzantium carved above the Kremlin gate. He claims the title Sovereign of All Rus, collects tribute for himself, and binds the boyars under a single, autocratic will.

The lesson is pure Kautilyan philosophy: persuade, reward if useful, divide when necessary, and strike only when certainty is absolute.

Ivan’s stand at the Ugra wasn’t a single moment in history. It became a blueprint. From Ivan, through the tsars and into the Soviet era, Russia’s leaders have consistently drawn from that Eastern playbook, refining persuasion, division, and deception into an art.

Today, we continue to miss the obvious.

Russia still plays from the Eastern playbook. They don’t play with obvious brute strength. The Eastern playbook necessitates Kautilyan precision.

Sama - to persuade us with lies, false narratives about NATO aggression (Putin’s 2007 Munich speech), historical grievances, red lines, and misunderstood borders. Their aim isn’t agreement. It’s control.

Dana - to induce us to enter into prolonged negotiations, knowing some in the West will see a path to glory in a quick diplomatic win. But this generosity is leverage in disguise. It results in delay.

Bheda - to divide us, whispering into the cracks between NATO allies (2016 Brexit disinformation), feeding fatigue, exploiting dissent, and making us question each other’s allegiance long before we question them.

Danda - to strike. Yes, with missiles raining down on Kyiv and Kharkiv, but also in quieter, equally destructive ways. Think of the Sandworm Team cyberattacks crippling Estonia and Ukraine’s power grids, or the carefully planted disinformation campaigns that fracture the West from within.

We, the democratic republics, NATO nations, the transatlantic West…still haven’t learned how to play the game. Many days, we don’t even remember our purpose.

And yes, sometimes we compromise our ideals, trading principles for short-term security or convenience. Iraq in 2003 showed the West can trade procedure for speed, too, and we paid the strategic price for that haste. But we still believe those ideals matter.

The war in Ukraine isn’t just about Ukraine. It’s not even just about NATO or security guarantees.

It’s about the deepest division between West and East. In the West, power answers to the people. Governance is a messy, slow contract built on consent. Liberal systems aim (imperfectly) to make power answer upward.

In the East, people answer to power. In Russia’s strategic culture, rooted in centuries of centralized rule, power tends to flow downward.

We reject Eastern philosophy because it relies on influence built on lies and division to control the people.

Instead, we believe the Almighty grants us all the inherent right to life, liberty, and self-determination. We believe that no government can endow individuals with those rights. That governance is for the people, not the oligarchs.

In the long arc of history, governance for the people promotes strong, resilient societies.

How long will we appease Russia, hoping for peace on their terms, while the war in Ukraine grinds on?

May God bless the United States of America.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/arnito/le-quarter-du-samedi-soir

License code: ITDHTFNPJJJMUH0X

Before we get started, a personal note. Last week, “I Believe” broke into Apple Podcasts’ Top 10 in philosophy.

The show would go on out of conviction alone, but your encouragement makes the work lighter. Thank you for listening, thinking, and being here.

And in the words of Bill Belichick, “We're on to Cincinnati.”

Part 1. The Broken Oath and How the Mongols Deceived the Rus’ Princes

(Sound of galloping horses fades slightly into the background, replaced by a more narrative, almost hushed tone)

Imagine the vast, open grassland steppe. For centuries, the scattered principalities of Rus’ fought their own small wars. But a new threat was emerging from the East, a storm on horseback: the Mongols.

At first, these nomadic warriors were a distant rumor. But in 1223, they arrived in force. The Rus’ princes, for once united by a common enemy, gathered their armies. Among them were Mstislav the Bold and other proud princes with their own ambitions.

After initial skirmishes, as the Rus’ and their Cuman allies faced the seemingly relentless Mongol advance, a message arrived. It was from the Mongol generals, a promise of safe passage if the princes would lay down their arms. They swore on their honor that no harm would come to those who surrendered.

(A slight pause for dramatic effect)

Mstislav the Bold, trusting in this oath, perhaps foolishly, perhaps desperately seeking to avoid further bloodshed, convinced some of the other princes. They agreed. They laid down their swords, believing the conflict was over, that a truce had been secured.

But the Mongol word, it turned out, was as brittle as dry steppe grass in winter.

(Sound of a sudden, sharp, metallic clang)

The moment the Rus’ princes and their men were vulnerable, disarmed and unsuspecting, the Mongols fell upon them. It became a slaughter, not a battle. The ground ran red with the blood of the betrayed. Some princes were brutally executed; legend says the Mongols crushed the remaining princes under a platform where the victors celebrated their gruesome triumph.

(Tone becomes slightly lower, more somber)

This wasn’t just a military defeat; it was a betrayal that echoed through Rus’ for generations, deepening distrust and revealing the invaders’ ruthlessness. Though Rus’ stayed connected to Europe, Mongol rule pushed trade and politics eastward. Harsh penalties, executions, and torture grew common. Scholars still debate the human cost: estimates run from single‑digit population losses to claims approaching one‑half.

Kalka became a stark warning that promises can vanish like steppe wind. This initial, devastating betrayal paved the way for the Mongol Yoke, centuries of subjugation that forever shaped Russian history.

…

The betrayal at the Kalka River is the first key piece to understand when negotiating with Russians. For Russia, betrayal isn’t theory; it’s memory.

Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I of Russia signed the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, forging an alliance. Napoleon then invaded Russia in 1812.

In 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact. Two years later, Nazi tanks crossed the Russian border.

Russia claims that Western leaders gave informal assurances in the early 1990s that NATO wouldn’t expand eastward. Declassified memcons show James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would move ‘not one inch eastward.’ When NATO expanded anyway, Russians logged it as another broken promise.

Put plainly, Russians assume promises are conditional and alliances are temporary. America views international relations through the lens of the Rational Actor Model, or the idea that leaders make decisions like rational calculators. We view logical entities as pursuing self-interest. We assume to generally uphold agreements because they serve our long-term interests.

As the first key piece to understand, this truth is also the biggest limitation. Russia assumes we will double-cross them.

That assumption changes how we should orient ourselves. Negotiation, to Moscow, is zero‑sum. Anything they concede feels like a loss they’ll pay for later.

This is a legacy of Kalka, Napoleon, Hitler, and NATO.

Should we be Russian apologists? No. But we should treat our adversary with dignity and respect.

When negotiating with Russians, understanding this environment of deep-seated suspicion is critical. And it’s important to recognize its self-fulfilling potential. Russia’s expectation of betrayal provokes actions that make trust impossible.

This isn’t to say that negotiation is impossible. But it does fundamentally alter the landscape. We need strategies that accept mistrust as the starting point.

Next, let’s think about why orienting talks solely from a Western lens falls short. When we think about negotiations, we need to consider how the Russians approach negotiating. We fast-forward to 1962 and a moment when misunderstanding nearly ended civilization, the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Part 2. The Cuban Missile Crisis

(Sound of a ticking clock begins—steady, deliberate—fades slightly under narration)

October 1962. The Cold War reached its most dangerous peak.

American U-2 reconnaissance flights over Cuba captured photographic evidence that the Soviets were emplacing medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles just ninety miles from the coast of Florida.

An American early warning radar designed to watch for incoming missile strikes became operational in Thule, Greenland, in 1959. Another in Clear, Alaska, came online in 1961. Both looked north, towards the North Pole and the direction of ballistic missiles from the Soviet Union.

We were blind to the south.

To President John F. Kennedy, the missiles in Cuba were an intolerable threat. With missiles only minutes away, our radars would give no advance notice, leaving the United States no time to respond.

For Soviet leadership, particularly Nikita Khrushchev, the move was not sudden. It was strategic and rooted in a long-standing perception: that the United States had already encircled the Soviets.

In 1961, the US had Jupiter nuclear missiles in Turkey, a NATO ally and direct neighbor to the Soviet Union. These missiles could strike major Soviet cities with very little warning. To Moscow, they were a daily reminder that the US held a gun to their head. The US refused to remove them.

Until Cuba.

In early 1962, Khrushchev approved Operation Anadyr, the secret plan to deploy Soviet nuclear missiles, troops, and equipment to Cuba. Officially, this was framed as a defensive act, meant to protect a fellow socialist state from US aggression. Unofficially, it intended to correct a strategic imbalance. If the United States could threaten the USSR from Turkey, the USSR would threaten the United States from Cuba.

Simply put, Khrushchev matched threat for threat because he believed it was the only way the US would listen. To negotiate on equal footing, the Soviets needed a threat of equal measure.

And so, Soviet missile forces began shipping warheads and launch equipment to Cuba. When the U‑2s spotted them, most sites were nearly ready.

What followed was thirteen days of unprecedented tension. The Kennedy administration weighed air strikes, invasion, and ultimately settled on a naval blockade. American military forces were placed on DEFCON 2, meaning war was imminent.

Meanwhile, Soviet field commanders in Cuba continued to complete missile deployment, unaware of the full extent of the geopolitical negotiations underway. And both sides knew how close they were to catastrophic escalation.

Then, backchannel diplomacy broke the deadlock.

On October 26, a Soviet message proposed to remove the missiles from Cuba in exchange for a US guarantee not to invade the island. American intelligence questioned the authenticity of the message. On October 27, a more formal message insisted any deal include removing US Jupiters from Turkey.

(Sound of a ticking clock grows slightly louder, then recedes)

The Kennedy administration was divided. Publicly agreeing to remove the missiles could make the US appear weak. But ignoring the second message threatened progress in negotiations.

So they did both.

Publicly, the US accepted the first offer: the Soviets would remove their missiles, and the US would pledge not to invade Cuba.

Privately, through Robert Kennedy’s backchannel meeting with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, the US agreed to dismantle the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, and we would do so within a few months, quietly, without any public linkage to the crisis.

…

Russians win concessions by making America lose something tangible.

Understanding Russian logic means recognizing negotiation is zero‑sum. Leverage and pressure, not goodwill, drive results, though Moscow accepts deals when symmetry and verification are airtight.

As an interim summary, let’s remember:

First, Russia expects betrayal.

Second, negotiation is pressure, not compromise.

There’s at least a third piece that demonstrates Russia’s approach to negotiation. Russia negotiates to, and beyond, the brink of conflict. Brinkmanship means the US must back diplomacy with credible, non‑symbolic military power.

There are many ways to exert military influence. A great example of military influence that potentially averted conflict was the Berlin Airlift.

Part 3. The Berlin Airlift

June 24, 1948 to May 12, 1949

By the summer of 1948, the postwar alliance between the Soviet Union and the Western powers had unraveled. Germany, divided among the victors, became the front line of a new kind of war. The Soviet Union controlled East Germany and the eastern half of Berlin, while the US, Britain, and France administered the west. West Berlin was 100 miles deep in the Soviet zone of Germany.

When the Western allies announced plans to introduce a new currency, the Deutsche Mark, in their zones, including West Berlin, Stalin saw it as a direct threat to Soviet influence. The day after the Western Allies announced the Deutsche Mark, the Soviets cut off all ground access to West Berlin. No roads, no trains, no barges. Nothing and no one could enter the city by land or water. The aim was to starve West Berlin into submission and force the Allies out without a shot fired.

Roughly two million Berliners depended on outside supplies for survival. The city had food for just over a month.

The Soviet calculation was that the US and its allies wouldn’t risk war over a remote, encircled city. They expected we would withdraw quietly and allow East Germany and the Soviets to take over. But Washington and our allies chose a different path.

On June 26, just two days after the blockade began, the Western Allies launched the Berlin Airlift. US Air Force C-47s and C-54s began flying continuous missions into the city’s airports, landing supplies around the clock. The British joined almost immediately, followed by other allies.

At the height of the airlift, a plane landed every 45 seconds. Over the course of 11 months, Allied aircraft made 277,000 flights, delivering more than 2.3 million tons of supplies, including food, medicine, fuel, clothing, and coal. Crews even dropped candy with miniature parachutes to the children of Berlin, an effort led by US pilot Gail Halvorsen that became known as Operation Little Vittles.

These weren’t just missions of mercy. They were statements of resolve. The Soviets disputed the Western Allies’ currency and opened negotiations, intending for us to change our position. They had used military influence to exert pressure, and we would need to use ours to overcome that pressure.

The operation required incredible coordination. Crews flew through narrow air corridors set in post‑war agreements that the Soviets could not legally block. Any accidental deviation could have been used as a pretext for military escalation. US and British crews flew in all conditions, including fog, snow, and darkness, risking mechanical failure, Soviet harassment, or fatal crashes.

And yet, they kept flying.

Meanwhile, the Soviets intensified pressure. East German newspapers mocked the airlift, calling it doomed. Soviet planes buzzed Allied aircraft. Propaganda tried to portray the West as abandoning the people of Berlin.

The Soviets pushed Berlin to the brink because they expected America to back down diplomatically rather than risk conflict.

The effort continued, and the gamble failed. Public opinion in West Berlin solidified around the Allies, not the Soviets. The West had not only refused to back down, it had demonstrated both logistical superiority and moral clarity.

On May 12, 1949, after 322 days, the Soviets lifted the blockade. They had lost the battle for Berlin without firing a shot. In the months that followed, West Germany became a democratic state, and the NATO alliance soon took shape.

The Berlin Airlift remains one of the clearest examples of what works when confronting Russian brinkmanship.

Knowing we prefer to avoid conflict, the Russians provoke it, hoping we’ll back down.

To clarify, the Berlin Airlift wasn’t an act of war. It was an act of resolve. Military influence can be forceful without being aggressive.

In sum, we must respond to Russian brinkmanship by combining diplomacy with direct action.

When negotiating with Russia on the world stage, credible willingness to act militarily is essential to successful outcomes.

So…What Have We Learned?

First: Russia expects betrayal. That mindset is centuries deep.

Second: They negotiate through pressure, not compromise. To them, negotiation is zero-sum.

Third: They push to the brink and expect us to pull back.

So negotiating with Russia means pairing diplomatic finesse with credible resolve, an approach grounded in their centuries‑deep suspicion, zero‑sum mindset, and brinkmanship.

To achieve our goals, the US must fully understand how Russia plays the game and be ready to respond to Russian brinkmanship by combining diplomacy with direct action.

May God bless the United States of America.

Further Reading / Source Material

* Airbridge to Berlin by D.M. Giangreco

* CIA Declassified Document: Soviet Harassment of Allied Aircraft during the Berlin Airlift

* The Berlin Candy Bomber by Gail Halvorsen

* Essence of Decision by Graham Allison (for theoretical backdrop)

☘️ Joel (00:00:00):

Today, I'm pleased to host Crom Carmichael. Crom is an entrepreneur, investor, and business leader. He has served as the CEO and board member of Nishai Biotech, and if I said that wrong, I apologize, since 2002.

🎤 Crom (00:00:16):

Nope, that's exactly right.

☘️ Joel (00:00:19):

He's a native of South Bend, Indiana, graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1971. Crom has extensive leadership experience and a demonstrated strong commitment to innovation and growth, especially in biotech.

Key aspects of your career include you're a founding investor in Serif Group, who provides seed and early stage funding to startups.

You sit on the board of multiple companies, and those are all going to be in the written version (including Consensus Point, TrackPoint Systems, Confirmation.com, BancVue, 3SAE Technologies, and The Gardner School).

You own an audio program that covers history's most influential thinkers called Giants of Political Thought. And the series fascinatingly outlines the philosophy of governance, including thinking of giants such as Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Adam Smith, and others.

And you and Mike Hassell now just started to host a podcast From Our Generation To Yours, where you offer lessons on business, politics, and life for the next generation.

Crom, it's great to talk to you today.

🎤 Crom (00:01:22):

Well, Joel, thanks for having me. I appreciate it very much.

☘️ Joel (00:01:26):

I really appreciate that you focus so much on philosophy in governance because philosophy informs how and why we think about things.

We establish goals based on some hopefully philosophical logic. And we need to orient ourself toward those goals because when we take our eyes or focus off of the goal, we get to start doing things that don't really make sense.

I bet we can find common ground with the question, well, I bet we would both answer yes to the question of whether individuals have a duty to prepare for an uncertain future so they aren't a burden on others.

I'm fascinated to hear your take on:

Do we have a mandate for individuals to prepare for an uncertain future?

As in, like a government requirement mandate. Essentially, should we have social security?

Do we have a mandate for individuals to prepare for their future? And you have to make the assumption that me paying into Social Security is me funding my own Social Security in the future. I know that is not the way the system works.

I know that it's not me paying in because I pay in for someone who's older than me and then somebody younger than me would theoretically pay in for me. But if I don't pay into the system, then I don't get the benefit.

🎤 Crom (00:03:02):

Right.

So Social Security, when it was founded, it was promised to be like an insurance program where the money that you put in would go into your own social security account.

And every year people get in the, I get, now I'm on social security and I get a piece in the mail that tells me how much I'm going to get. And I believe that even when you're younger, I believe that you can request and find out what the Social Security system, quote, promises, unquote, to pay you.

But the Social Security system, as it actually works today, and you hit it right on the head. You're right on target. The Social Security tax is just simply a tax.

The Social Security benefit is a promise that the government makes so long as it's able to keep it.

But the money that you pay in, it does not go into an account in your name.

It just goes into a Social Security fund that then is used to pay for Social Security and any other general expenses that the government might need the money for.

And so the right word for it is, unfortunately, it's a Ponzi scheme.

☘️ Joel (00:04:29):

So I was going to ask, so some people call it a Ponzi scheme instead of an insurance program or, or however you want to describe it.

Um, so you and I agree that it is not, that you put money into a bucket that money grows like the stock market or like a bond or whatever. And then at the retirement age of your life, you have access to that money.

You don't ever theoretically own that money.

And because you don't own it, some people call it a Ponzi scheme.

I don't, I think that institutionally, there's a reason that we created the program and that came out of the Great Depression and people not having enough.

So if that is still true, if we eliminated the program, then don't we have an obligation to maintain our commitment to it?

🎤 Crom (00:05:34):

Well, I mean, you know, Social Security from a political standpoint, I mean, people who have worked all their lives and now everybody who is retired today worked their entire life and paid into the Social Security system.

So it is an obligation that the government has based on the promise that the government has made to every American citizen.

And the government will keep that promise as long as it can. But the point that you make is that somebody's ability to receive or the government's ability to pay the benefit is what will depend on whether or not the benefit always gets paid.

And so what age, I'm 76. And so I've been collecting Social Security for about, let's say seven or eight years. I paid into Social Security for about 45 years. And most people who are collecting Social Security feel that they have earned the money that they are receiving.

And the reason that they do is that the people who started receiving Social Security in the 40s and 50s and even in the 60s paid very little into the system compared to the benefits that they were receiving.

And so therein lies the Ponzi scheme.

☘️ Joel (00:07:04):

Sure, yeah.

🎤 Crom (00:07:05):

It's a little bit like, when I was in college many years ago, if I needed, I may be telling on myself here a bit, but if I needed a few bottles of alcohol I would send out a chain letter. Do you know what a chain letter is?

☘️ Joel (00:07:21):

Yeah.

🎤 Crom (00:07:23):

And I would put my name at the top. I'd put three of my friends under me and I'd send out the chain letter to about 100 people that I didn't know and tell them to send a bottle of such and such to the top person on the list and then remove that person, move the second person to the top and put their name on the bottom.

And I'd send out 100 of those things, and I would inevitably get three or four bottles of whiskey. And so that's how Social Security worked from the beginning.

Now, there was a senator named Senator Clark who offered an amendment to make it so that when people put money into Social Security, that it would actually go into an account in their name in the same way that an IRA works today.

And that amendment, it was voted down.

☘️ Joel (00:08:19):

I wrote a previous idea back in, I think, May of last year. Why doesn't the government give every baby born in America a $100,000 loan when they're born?

And over the lifetime of that child, and I understand the math doesn't perfectly work out because there's inflation and the reality of things,

but...

That individual repays their $100,000 to the government over their lifetime.

And then the investment of that grows at some government promised kind of low rate, like 3%.

And then at their retirement age, then they get, depending on what year they retire, then they get a benefit of that divided into 30 years.

And so then if you don't live long enough, which most people won't because if you retired 65 and your benefits are planned to last till you're 95, then most people just statistically don't live to be 95. Then whatever you didn't earn in that, you still don't own. The government seizes it.

And then that funds people who through not necessarily any fault of their own were injured or for whatever reason couldn't work.

And so then the program always has full funding because of that.

But I understand that there's political consensus that would have to take place for Congress to pass that and change Social Security.

But to me, that makes sense that FDR could have when he created the Social Security program. He could have created it to benefit retirees at the time, but then somehow morphed it into a self-funded thing.

Because we're going to have generations that are smaller than than previous generations. And like Gen X is smaller than the baby boomers. And so we have a problem now that social security is running out of funding because the baby boomers are a bigger generation than those that follow.

And so then there are not enough people in the way that FDR set up, there's not enough people paying into the program.

🎤 Crom (00:10:26):

Well, yeah, and, you know, your ideas make a great deal of sense as a practical matter.

I mean, they make a great deal of sense from a mathematical matter, but as a practical matter, getting Congress to agree to do something like that, I think would probably be giving $100,000 to every baby.

I'm not quite sure how that $100,000 would be invested on behalf of that person.

And then the problem becomes the politicians as that amount of money, if you even could establish it to begin with.

Politicians would see that pool of money and want to do something, do something with it.

And that's always been the problem because when Social Security was originally passed, I went back and did a little bit of preparation for this conversation.

And the original Social Security tax for the individual was 1% on their first $3,000. So it was $30 a year. And the employer matched that. So the employer also put up $30 a year. And Roosevelt promised that those two numbers would never change. And, of course, that was not true. But he said that in order to get the bill passed.

And then the media then reported what Roosevelt said, and the bill got – the Social Security bill got passed.

And then as politicians started to see, well, gee, there are a lot of people who are now, and by the way, when Roosevelt passed that bill, average life expectancy was 62 and you didn't start collecting Social Security until you were 65.

Well, then over the next 25 years, life expectancy increased to approximately 75 and they actually lowered the year that you could collect Social Security down to 62.

And they increased the benefits.

And that's because politicians found that if they ran on a platform back in those days of increasing Social Security benefits by 5%, people who were collecting Social Security benefits would vote for them.

And so it's unfortunate that we could have an interesting conversation sometime on what the founding fathers, what some of their discussions were, and it's all in the Federalist Papers, by the way, what their discussions were when they were devising the Constitution, what were the principles that they tried to take into account in writing a constitution that they hoped would last for hundreds of years.

Please, go ahead.

☘️ Joel (00:13:26):

It is really interesting to me, the John Locke piece that got lost in the translation between John Locke's philosophy and the Declaration of Independence that Life, liberty, and property, because it was one of John Locke's big things.

The role of government is to protect your property. And then Jefferson changed that to Pursuit of Happiness.

So I understand the challenge of saying that the government's role is to protect your property, because some people might hear that and say, oh, I don't own a house. I don't own 10 acres or whatever, so I don't have property, and the government promised me property, and so now you are obliged to give me a yard or whatever.

That's not what that means.

But it does mean that for your body, as an example, you can make decisions about your body.

But if your dollars are your property because you work and generate funds from that work, and those funds become your property, then does the government have a responsibility to protect your property?

And then that actually ties in with the insurance piece, because if the government does have a responsibility to protect your property, but you're facing an uncertain future, then do you buy an insurance plan to make it so you still have some money at the end of your life or in the instance that you can't work and that insurance would become Social Security?

That's an interesting premise that I thought about.

🎤 Crom (00:15:04):

Back in the 20s, before the Great Depression, back in the 20s, more than half of the American people bought insurance policies in the form of annuities. And that was buying insurance privately that would provide for their retirement.

☘️ Joel (00:15:27):

So do you think we should still commit to Social Security?

Essentially, you and I agree you have a mandate to prepare for an uncertain future.

There are different ways that you can do that.

How do you think we should get that done? Because we need to probably reform the program so that it's healthy again.

🎤 Crom (00:15:52):

Well, the government does have. A number of years ago, he federal government passed legislation they passed.

And I'm going to I may get this, Joel, slightly wrong, but they provided for people if people wanted to set up IRAs, individual retirement accounts, they could do that if they worked for a company that offered a 401k. Then they could contribute to the 401 , and oftentimes the company matched that amount.

And then there's this other thing called Roth IRAs. And I'm not that familiar with any of those in very, very specific detail other than there's lots of tax deferring that goes on in those plans so that they can build.

And so for the average, for the regular person, if they work in a company that has a 401k, and the company contributes to that 401k with a matching grant, matching amount of money, I encourage people to put as much as they possibly can in those IRAs if they're matched by the company because that automatically gives them 100% return on that investment.

And there's nothing that comes close to that in any other way of investing.

☘️ Joel (00:17:22):

But I agree, totally agree with the investment vehicles that are there.

If it's going to take the place of social security, though, they can't be an elective thing. They have to be mandated, right?

Because there will always be people that choose not to invest because they don't have the money, because we talked about low wages a minute ago.

And because they don't have the money, they're not going to do it.

And then they're going to get to the end of their life. And what do you do?

Do you just leave them to die?

And the answer is no, you can't. And so if you're going to have people be able to use their 401k as their retirement money, then it can't be optional.

🎤 Crom (00:18:10):

Well, in the society that we're in today, Social Security is going to exist until it can't. And that would be if you had an economic collapse and the value of money would have to be redefined. That's a possibility.

That type of thing has happened throughout history.

But for our discussion, for practical purposes, Social Security benefits are going to continue to be paid out because it would be political suicide to call for the elimination of Social Security benefits and exchange it for some other program.

And so as long as Social Security benefits are going to be paid out, there would need to be some form of Social Security tax that really forces people who are working and earning money to pay money toward, as you say, the Social Security for the people who are currently retired.

So I don't think there's a way out of the Social Security trap, if that's the way that you and I want to describe it, only because it's been around now for close to 90 years.

☘️ Joel (00:19:35):

Yeah, I don't know that I would call it a trap. I don't know that I would use that term. I would probably say it's a very inefficient vehicle to prepare for your retirement.

And anytime we choose to funnel money through the government, you're just going to waste at a minimum 40% of it by people working government jobs.

They're going to kind of siphon off that money.

And so then by wasting 40% of it, you would have less money than you would if you had invested that money instead.

But I don't know that the only way I think that we could change it, and that's an interesting point, if you elected to invest your own money and could prove that through your taxes every year, whether or not you could elect to not pay Social Security.

That'd be an interesting point.

🎤 Crom (00:20:34):

Well, that's why I called it. That's why I referred to it as the Social Security trap.

Because if you work and receive a paycheck, your employer is required to take your Social Security tax out of your pay.

So it's not a choice that you as a worker, you don't have that choice.

You can't say, well, I think I'd rather do this rather than pay the tax. You don't have a choice.

☘️ Joel (00:21:01):

Yeah, then it gets back to the Edmund Burke thing that institutionally we chose as a nation to do X at this time.

And Burke would say we have a commitment to the institution to maintain the viability for people who don't have resources.

So...

🎤 Crom (00:21:23):

Yeah, but it's also just there's a philosophical point, and then there's the practical political point, and that is that if anybody, if any politician ran saying that we're going to take away people's Social Security benefits who don't need the money, I will promise you that that politician will not win the next election.

☘️ Joel (00:21:45):

Yeah, yeah.

🎤 Crom (00:21:47):

So the tax will always be there as long as the social security system is viable enough to pay out the benefits.

☘️ Joel (00:21:58):

Yeah.

And I actually, I personally think that we have to have social security or some form of social insurance so that elderly people aren't freezing to death in their apartments.

I think that Social security, as it is shaped right now, probably needs reformed so that it better benefits those people.

Because, for instance, if you consider the $100,000 loan when you're a baby thing, and then the worker pays that back through their lifetime earnings, you would pay less in social security taxes because you could even make poverty level wages and pay that $100,000 back.

And you would almost double your entitlement benefit or your benefit at your retirement age is, I don't want to call it an entitlement at that point because that's an investment that the government made on your behalf when you were born.

But I think that it's just something that we need to, we can't get rid of because too many elderly people and people who can't work depend on it.

🎤 Crom (00:23:05):

Yeah, I would suggest that the biggest area of federal savings is not going to be in Social Security because I would disagree with you just a bit on the cost of administering Social Security is actually relatively low compared to the cost of managing our healthcare system because with Social Security, it's just a formula and they pay it out.

☘️ Joel (00:23:38):

I really appreciate your time. And thanks for sharing the phone call with me.

🎤 Crom (00:23:43):

Joel, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

May God bless the United States of America.

Jennifer worked for more than forty years. She spent just a few years at home when the baby was born, then went right back to it.

She didn’t ask for handouts.Never made a scene.She went to church on Sunday and to work every day during the week.She paid her taxes, saved a little, and kept going.

She wasn’t rich.Didn’t have a pension.But she had her 401K and maybe some Social Security waiting if the government didn’t take that away.She thought she was doing it right.

Then, her son got sick.

He was in his twenties. Just getting started. No real savings. Barely enough insurance.The money he had didn’t come close to what he needed.

He was the kind of sick that throws everything into chaos.The kind that doesn’t care how old you are or how prepared your mother thought she was.

Jennifer fought the denials.Sat through the waiting lists.She watched the out-of-pocket bills pile up. The bills didn’t care about her budget or her plans.

She wasn’t going to watch her son die sitting on any money, so she drained her savings.Sold her car.Skipped her own treatments to stretch the money.

She never complained.She just did what any mother would do. She tried to save her child.

So now, she’s 60.

Her son’s alive.The savings are gone.She hopes to get a small Social Security check. She knows that because of the choice she made and would make again, she will have to work longer to cover rent. She doesn’t regret her decision.

…

Jennifer’s situation begs a question: what do we owe those struck by misfortune?

To answer that, we have to ask something deeper…

Why does this system exist in the first place?

We consent to governance in order for those we elect to protect our property.

Individuals possess inherent rights. These include the right to life, liberty, and the ability to strive toward purpose. These rights are your property. No one can own you but you. So, you are your own property, and only you have the right to make decisions about yourself.

These rights exist independently of government. Even if government didn’t exist, we would still have the inherent right to live, make choices, grow from the result of those choices, and strive for a fulfilling life.

By choosing to submit to governance, we assign a duty to those we elect to protect these rights and the property that comes from us exercising those rights.

Beyond protecting the property that is our natural rights, government also resolves disputes over property. These might involve employers and workers, neighbors, families, or other rub points in society.

This duty is not optional, and it applies to both the strong and the weak. Elected officials are charged with protecting the life and property of every individual, including those who cannot defend their rights on their own.

We give up some control through laws, regulations, and taxes. Sometimes, we pool our resources to build things that multiply our individual capability, like roads, power grids, or schools. Other times, we give up control because we know we can’t always protect our own rights alone.

This is where the tension in funding Social Security begins.

Some succeed and come to see it as a kind of fraudulent Ponzi scheme. They feel that if they can’t access the money their government took from them in taxes when they want it, then those officials failed to protect their property.

But that’s the view from the top of the hill. It’s not wrong, just incomplete. It’s the view of the world from the folly of wealth.

Because eventually, time and chance happen to us all.

The fastest runner doesn’t always win the race. The strongest doesn’t always win the fight. Wisdom, intelligence, and skill don’t always lead to wealth, health, or success.

Sooner or later, misfortune visits everyone. We get injured. Or sick. Or old. Or maybe our child is the one who suffers.

Because we don’t know when misfortune will strike, we hedge our bets. As a nation of individuals, we buy insurance in case we, as individuals, can no longer work due to age or injury.

So…

Our property begins with our ability to choose and pursue our life’s purpose. That includes our labor, our time, and what we create with them. But we live in a world that’s unpredictable and sometimes violent. We know that no amount of planning can fully protect us from injury, illness, or age.

So, in our individual self-interest, we agree to pool some of what we earn. We buy insurance together so that if misfortune strikes before we’ve saved enough, we’re not left with nothing.

This insurance is called Social Security. It’s not built to be flexible. It’s built to be there for when we can no longer work.

But we still haven’t directly answered our question about Jennifer’s situation:

What do we owe those struck by misfortune?

What do we owe those struck by misfortune?

We don’t owe those struck by misfortune sympathy. Nor do we owe them charity. We may have personal beliefs that direct us to love and serve others through our churches and nonprofits, but we cannot force others to share our personal beliefs.

What we owe those struck by misfortune is commitment to stable institutions that protect the life and property of individuals, including those who cannot defend these rights on their own.

Institutions like Social Security don’t spring up by accident. They develop organically over generations and embody the collective wisdom of society. They are built over time in response to painful lessons and misfortune. They reflect the accumulated judgment of generations who saw what happened when nothing was there to catch the falling. They are not the product of a single generation’s will. They are the accumulated wisdom of America refined by need and time.

These institutions carry memory. They remember the cost of doing nothing, the pain of the Great Depression, and the reason we built a floor for those struck by misfortune to stand on.

For those blinded by the folly of wealth and comfort, it’s easy to call for reform. They make claims of fraud without showing evidence. They bought in like everyone else, but now they want to walk away with their share as if the deal was only about them.

We do need to reform the institution to better serve the needs of those struck by misfortune while still maintaining our commitment to it. Not to eliminate it or make it more difficult to use but to better serve those who depend on it.

But reform should come from people who understand the purpose and history of the institution, not from oligarchs in power trying to tear it down.

So, what does America owe Jennifer and others struck by misfortune?

We owe Jennifer commitment to institutions that protect the rights and property of every American, including the weak who cannot defend those rights on their own.

May God bless the United States of America.

Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/eversafe/eversafeLicense code: STFNDGAT8W2XKNIF

We want real prosperity for working Americans without piling debt on future generations.

So, we’ve got to be open to new ideas. Some of those ideas might sound like they’ll never work. That’s fine. What matters is that we consider the options, build consensus, and stay focused on the results, not just the method.

Consensus makes lasting change possible. If we build real consensus across parties and regions, then we open the door to a rarity in American policy: a permanent solution. Not a temporary fix. Not a patch for the next election cycle. We need a system that works because enough people agree on the goal and not the method for achieving that goal.

Achieving the goal matters. How we get there is secondary.

There’s another angle we need to consider. When we’re looking at solutions, we have to be willing to think all the way to the edges. On one end of the spectrum is the “do nothing” option. This option is something we should consider even when everyone’s yelling that we have to act. On the other end is the option that delivers overwhelming, decisive results.

At both ends, we have to ask: Why wouldn’t that work? And if we can’t find a good answer, then maybe that so-called extreme isn’t extreme at all. Maybe it’s the best option we’ve got.

So, with that in mind, here’s a question worth asking:

If our goal is food on the table and heat in the house for all American workers, why do we tax businesses at all?

If that made you pause or even angry, that means we’re asking the right question.

Goals Matter More Than Methods

During World War II, America faced a nearly impossible problem. The country needed tanks, planes, and ships. We needed millions of them. We needed them fast. But at the time, the factories that could build them were busy making cars, stoves, and washing machines.

The problem was so dire that adversary global leaders assessed there was no way we could achieve our goals and win the war. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, one of Adolf Hitler’s top lieutenants, said that Americans could only make refrigerators and razor blades. He assessed we would never be able to produce the military equipment and supplies necessary to defeat Nazi Germany.

At the time, Göring was right.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew it, too. So, Roosevelt started building consensus in order to create permanent effects to win the war.

And he had a tough row to hoe. Many thought FDR was anti-business. He had expanded government oversight of banking, labor, and markets. He raised income taxes on the wealthy and introduced new corporate taxes many saw as hostile to business investment. He supported unions and workers’ rights that businesses viewed as empowering strikes and weakening employer control. He framed the wealthy elite as obstacles to recovery.

But FDR wasn’t anti-business. He was pro-American worker. He opposed exploitation. He knew he needed a strong business culture. In his annual Budget Message to Congress on January 5, 1942, FDR said…

“We cannot outfight our enemies unless, at the same time, we outproduce our enemies. It is not enough to turn out just a few more planes, a few more tanks, a few more guns, a few more ships, than can be turned out by our enemies. We must outproduce them overwhelmingly, so that there can be no question of our ability to provide a crushing superiority of equipment in any theater of the world war.”

FDR’s administration couldn’t mandate patriotism or force companies to comply. It had to make the pivot profitable. The administration partnered with industry and offered massive contracts, tax incentives, and full-throttle support to retool factories for war production.

The government offered something called cost-plus contracts. For every dollar a company spent retooling its factory, it got that dollar back, plus a guaranteed profit. There were advance payments, tax incentives, and full reimbursement for production costs. That meant zero financial risk for the companies. If they stepped up, they didn’t just help the country. They came out ahead.

The results were fantastic.

Ford built a mile-long assembly line just for B-24 bombers. Chrysler stopped making cars and started producing tanks. General Motors converted its plants to churn out machine guns and aircraft engines. These weren’t small measures. They were full-scale industrial makeovers. Entire factories partnered with FDR’s administration and reimagined themselves for the singular purpose of achieving the national goal. The method for achieving that goal was secondary.

And it worked. Not because everyone agreed on the politics but because everyone agreed on the goal. And the government made it profitable to help achieve that goal. The system rewarded those who helped achieve it.

America became the Arsenal of Democracy not just through sacrifice but through consensus. The right incentives produced the right results in the timeframe we needed.

Fast forward to today. If we want prosperity for American workers, if we want families to thrive without leaning on public assistance, maybe the answer isn’t another patch or another tax. Maybe it’s the same principle. Let’s reward the businesses that help us achieve our national goals.

If a business pays livable wages, covers worker healthcare, and doesn’t push its costs onto taxpayers, what are we taxing them for?

In the end, it’s not about the method. It’s about the national goal of any worker being able to work for and achieve food on the table and heat in the house, all without taxpayer support. If we can achieve our goal, the method is irrelevant.

If Low Wages Are a Business Model, the IRS Should Send a Bill

Business taxes bring in less revenue than the cost of low wages. So, maybe we’re taxing the wrong thing.

Let’s take a closer look at the numbers.

In 2024, the federal government brought in about $4.9 trillion in revenue. Out of that, corporate income taxes made up just 10 percent or around half a trillion dollars of that five trillion.

At the same time, low wages cost the American taxpayer far more than half a trillion dollars a year. They cost about a quarter of the entire federal budget or 1.25 trillion dollars.

When companies pay poverty wages, workers still need to survive. No matter what, people need food on the table and heat in the house. We have all agreed to this principle. Both parties have expanded social programs to help people meet these necessities.

Because we all agreed that people need to be able to work for and achieve food on the table and heat in the house, these programs become mandatory funding. Mandatory means we must pay them. So, mandatory taxpayer-funded social programs kick in. These programs, including Medicaid, SNAP, housing aid, and refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, are automatic payments written into law. If someone qualifies, the American taxpayer pays.

In 2024, nearly 25 percent of all federal spending went to these kinds of programs. Much of this deficit is wage-related. Medicaid alone serves millions of low-income workers, especially in food service, retail, and care work. The EITC is specifically designed to supplement low wages with taxpayer dollars. In short, the federal government spends far more cleaning up after low wages than it ever collects from taxing business profits.

But rather than be angry at the state of the world, we need to figure out a healthy path forward.

So here’s the question. If a business pays its people enough to live, doesn’t push its labor costs onto taxpayers, and supports self-sufficiency, should we tax that business at all?

Because right now, we’re taxing good businesses and subsidizing the bad ones. And that makes no sense.

But … we also can’t raise the minimum wage to mandate the change. Just like FDR couldn’t compel businesses to get on board to achieve national goals, we can’t compel businesses to eliminate the need for taxpayer-funded social programs by asking nicely. When we needed Ford Motor Company to build B-24 bombers, we had to incentivize the change.

If businesses don’t increase revenue, they can’t raise wages. Mandating higher wages leads to job losses, not higher wages.

Two Studies Arguing Past the Point

It’s been a year since California raised its minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour. And, of course, some sources claim the wage increase mandate is killing businesses, and others claim it had no negative effect.

First, a study conducted by the Berkeley Research Group, dated February 18, 2025, found that nearly 9 in 10 restaurant operators cut employee hours in the first few months. A third reduced benefits. Most said they planned to cut even more over the coming year.

Jobs declined. According to federal data, California’s fast food sector saw its first December job loss in over two decades outside of a recession or pandemic. That’s not a small dip. That’s a reversal of a long-term trend.

And prices jumped. Fast food menu prices in California rose almost 15% in one year, nearly double the national average. In April 2024 alone, the month the new wage took effect, prices in California spiked by nearly 3%, the biggest one-month jump in the country.

…

But before we jump to conclusions, let’s look at the second viewpoint.

A study by the University of California at Berkeley from February 24, 2025, found something very different.

According to their analysis, the $20 fast-food minimum wage in California did what it was supposed to do. It raised pay by about 8 to 9 percent for covered workers. It did not reduce jobs, it did not cause mass closures, and the price of a typical fast-food meal went up by only about 6 cents on a four-dollar burger.

The University of California study used government data, private payroll sources, and job posting platforms. It compared covered restaurants to valid control groups and adjusted for seasonality and economic trends. Again, they found no significant job losses. In fact, the number of fast-food restaurants in California actually grew faster than in the rest of the country.

University of California economists pushed back on the BRG study. They said BRG cherry-picked data, failed to separate correlation from causation, and relied on sources that weren’t central to the wage policy itself. For example, job losses had already begun before the law took effect, and the price spike BRG cited didn’t account for restaurant type or broader inflation. So who’s right?

Both are likely correct.

Businesses act in their self-interest to maximize profits. This statement does not intend to demonize businesses. If a business can invest in automation in such a way that results in higher profits, it will do so, as it is a means to reduce labor costs.

But let’s get away from the contradiction. It only muddies our view.

The decisive point is not whether the government should mandate a wage increase. Any mandate the government makes to the business pool has ripple effects, and there are winners and losers.

The decisive point is that the government mandating a wage increase does not build consensus.

We will not achieve long-term consensus with a wage mandate. Just like FDR couldn’t compel businesses to get on board to achieve national goals, we will not achieve our goals in a lasting manner with mandates. We have to incentivize change.

We Won’t Agree on the Method. Let’s Agree on the Goal

The first step to building consensus is agreeing on the goal.

And we can agree on the goal: food on the table and heat in the house for working Americans. We can build from there.

Here’s a fact: any business that pays poverty wages costs the American taxpayer more than it pays in taxes.

Here’s another: if we’re against raising wages to a livable standard for every worker, then we are for continued dependence on social programs. You can’t be against both livable wages and social programs. No matter how much we argue for market freedom, if wages stay low, taxpayers pick up the tab.

So, we need to build consensus to get through our gridlock.

Let’s throw out a proposal.

If a business can prove it pays every worker a livable wage, including the dishwasher, the pipefitter, the burger cook, the philosophy major, the ranch hand … then how about they pay no federal taxes?

It doesn’t matter if a business thinks those are low-skill jobs that don’t justify higher wages. If they don’t pay their workers enough, the taxpayer fills the gap, and that costs America a trillion dollars a year.

But when workers earn livable wages, they don’t need food stamps. They can afford private healthcare, so they don’t need Medicaid. They no longer need the Earned Income Tax Credit. Higher wages reduce the taxpayer’s mandatory funding commitment.

As a bonus, this approach reduces the burden on the federal budget and raises revenue because higher wages mean more income taxes paid by workers.

Some will say that we can’t eliminate business taxes because we should mandate businesses pay both livable wages and taxes.

And they have a valid point. But that stance has blocked progress towards our goal for more than 40 years. We will likely never gain the political consensus to make lasting progress with mandates.

Whether a business pays taxes or how large its tax bill is isn’t the point.

The decisive point is whether Americans can work for and achieve food on the table and heat in the house without piling debt on future generations.

That’s the goal. That’s the consensus.

If we reward the right behavior, we don’t need mandates. We build a system that works, even if not everyone agrees with how we got there.

How we achieve our goal matters less than achieving it.

May God bless the United States of America.

Some say we fight for democracy. But what if that fight is misplaced?

Some Hills are Worth Dying On

July 2, 1863, outside of Gettysburg. It’s the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The air is thick with smoke, the smell of gunpowder, sweat, and blood. Cannon fire rumbles in the distance, and the screams of wounded men echo through the Pennsylvania hills.

The Confederate Army, under General Robert E. Lee, is pressing hard against the Union lines. After a brutal first day of fighting, Lee has ordered an all-out assault on the Union flanks. He intended to break their defenses, separate the Union Army from Washington, and win the war right here and now.

Up on the far left of the Union line was a rocky little hill called Little Round Top. There, a professor-turned-soldier named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain stood with his men, the 20th Maine Regiment.

Chamberlain wasn’t a career military officer. Just two years ago, he stood in front of a classroom at Bowdoin College in Maine. He taught students theology, philosophy, and the great ideas that shape nations.

He pursued truth. He was a man of character and conviction and believed in the union of states. He studied the moral arguments against slavery, knowing that America could not truly be free while slavery existed. He believed in liberty and justice.

After the war broke out, Chamberlain volunteered for the Union Army. In his letter to Maine Governor Israel Washburn, Chamberlain stated he had much to learn about military service, but continued that…

“I fear, this war, so costly of blood and treasure, will not cease until the men of the North are willing to leave good positions, and sacrifice the dearest personal interests, to rescue our Country from Desolation, and defend the National Existence against treachery at home and jeopardy abroad.”

So, volunteer he did. But in all his reading and studying, nothing had prepared him for this moment at Gettysburg.

He stood on this hill, gripped his sword, and stared down at the tree line below. The Confederate army was coming. If they broke through and took the hill, the Union line would collapse. And if that happened, Gettysburg could be lost. Maybe even the war.

The first wave hit them hard. The men of the 15th and 47th Alabama came crashing up the rocky slope, firing, shouting, bayonets flashing in the sunlight. The 20th Maine fired down into them, holding the line. The Confederates fell back, regrouped, and came again. Then again. Then again.

Chamberlain’s men fell exhausted, running low on ammunition, some down to their last few rounds.

Chamberlain looked down at his men. They were bloody, battered, barely standing. The logical thing to do would be to fall back. But there was nowhere to fall back to. If they broke, the enemy would sweep through them like a flood.

In war, everything is simple. But achieving even the simplest task is daunting. Fog, friction, risk, and the unknown close in on you. Exhausted, outnumbered, and wounded in the leg, Chamberlain could barely stand. His men had no more bullets. He did not know if help would arrive, and whether his unit would survive the day. He took a breath, steadied himself against the pain, and gave the order.

He shouted, “Bayonet!”

The 20th Maine roared to life. They charge.

Down the slope, straight into the enemy. The Confederates, themselves tired, expecting another volley of bullets, not cold steel, panic. The Union men slam into them, driving them back, pushing them down the hill. Other Union soldiers arriving at that moment on Little Round Top fire volleys behind the Confederates. The Confederate line buckles. Then it shatters. They turn and run.

And just like that, Little Round Top, Gettysburg, the Union Army, and the United States of America, held. Had Chamberlain’s men lost the hill, the Confederates may well have won the war. There would be no America.

Chamberlain had spent his life studying ideas, philosophies, great speeches. He had left a good position in Maine and sacrificed his dearest personal interests for the union of states.

He believed in liberty and justice.

For him, that hill was worth dying on.

And Some Hills Are Not Worth Dying On

It’s 1953, the final months of the Korean War. The war is dragging on. Behind closed doors, diplomats are hammering out the details of a ceasefire. The fighting, at least in theory, should be winding down. But on a barren, rocky outpost known as Pork Chop Hill, men are still killing and dying.

The hill itself is meaningless. It’s a craggy mound of earth, scarred by months of shelling, roughly shaped like a pork chop. No major roads lead to it. No towns depend on it. It has no real strategic value. And yet, it has become a battlefield. Two sides fight not to win the war but to influence the negotiations.

The first battle erupts in April 1953. US forces, led by Lieutenant Colonel William Kern, first hold the hill when the Chinese launch a massive assault. The fighting is brutal. Soldiers fight hand-to-hand, clawing for control of bunkers, trenches, and high ground. The Americans barely hold. Casualties pile up. When the shooting stops, the hill is still ours, but we’ve gained nothing.

Three months later, in July 1953, the Chinese come again. Thousands of soldiers charge up the slopes in waves. The battle turns into a meat grinder. The US high command debates whether we should keep defending this worthless hill, or we should let it go.

(The low rumble of retreating trucks.)

The decision comes down. We abandon the hill. The Chinese take it, planting their flag in the same dirt that had swallowed hundreds of lives over the past few months. And then, just a few weeks later, the war ends.

After the bloodshed and sacrifice, the final armistice line was drawn north of the hill. The Chinese didn’t even keep it. The battle, in the end, meant nothing.

This fact makes the battle even more tragic. Real breathing men fought and died over a worthless position. It was abandoned by the US, taken by the Chinese, and then given up anyway as part of the armistice agreement.

Pork Chop Hill is one of the clearest examples of fighting for the sake of fighting, with no real strategic or territorial gain for either side.

Some hills are worth dying on.

This wasn’t one of them.

History has made clear that some fights are necessary, and some are senseless. Today, we hear calls to ‘save democracy.’ We have to ask: What are we fighting for?

Save American Democracy!

Today, some call for Americans to “Save our Democracy.” This call has echoed for several years.

To be clear, this rallying cry is futile.

The word democracy appears in the US Constitution exactly zero times. That wasn’t an oversight. The founders didn’t build America on majority rule. They built it on structure, balance, and law. American government was designed to restrain power, not distribute it. The father of the Constitution, James Madison, even wrote a series of documents identifying why America is not a democracy.

In Federalist Paper No. 51, Madison identified the purpose of government. He stated…

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

Justice is the purpose of government. Not power or control. Not democracy. Justice. It is the purpose of civil society. It’s the reason we create laws, elect leaders, and build nations. Only when we start to threaten liberty should we stop pursuing justice.

The American founding fathers outlined a dogma that a just government exists to protect the weak, not to serve the strong. America owes allegiance to no king, and no aristocracy. America owes allegiance to the American people.

The best way to safeguard justice is with many voices, many factions, and competing interests. No single group should be able to seize control and oppress the others. Justice requires checks and balances that divide, limit, and restrain power and influence. No branch of government should dominate. No leader should rule unchecked. No law or executive order should go unchallenged.

Justice and liberty are inseparable. One cannot exist without the other. A government that fails to uphold justice will eventually destroy liberty, and a society that loses liberty will never know justice.

This is a rallying cry.

Our goals are simple. But achieving even the simplest goal is daunting.

Until government servants establish conditions of justice that enable every American family to work for and achieve heat in the house and food on the table without taxpayer support, we will fight for liberty and justice.

Until women have the liberty to make their own healthcare decisions without the government knowing what they decided, we will fight for liberty and justice.

Until American institutions again support checks and balances and no longer threaten the due process and structure of the nation itself, we will fight for liberty and justice.

The list goes on. Sure seems like we have plenty to keep us busy fighting for liberty and justice. We need not die on the hill of democracy.

Those Who Cry for Democracy Have Lost Their Way

Yes, we are a democratic republic. But the point of American governance is not democracy.

The foundation of America has never been majority rule. We are built on the higher purpose of liberty and justice.

Justice for the oppressed.Provision for those in need.Liberty for those whose rights are threatened by the majority or the ruling class.

Some say we must fight for democracy, but democracy is just a process. It means nothing without justice, and it is worthless without liberty. If we fight, let it be for the only things that matter.

America was never meant to serve the will of the strongest, even if the strongest is the majority. It was meant to defend the rights of the weakest.

That is the hill worth dying on.

May we seek justice. May we defend liberty.

May God bless the United States of America.