An Appeal To Everyone Considering Voting For The Socialists In America

Well, the last post brought several comments & good discussions about our elections, especially highlighting the dissatisfaction, breakdown, & perceived decline in the quality of both our candidates & incumbents as well as the two party system itself.  It has once again become obvious that the two parties just take turns being in power @ the expense of the voters who let it happen.

One comment representative of the discussions - "Doug, I always appreciate your insightful posts. Our country is in such trouble. There has to be some new alternative to the two party system. I have become an independent myself" expressed the frustrations I heard.

It is easy for members of both the Republican & Democrat parties to be disgusted with both parties' terrible records especially since 2019.  Mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic caused by the Wuhan coronavirus including throwing thousands of dollars @ roughly 165 million to over 200 million people that led to the highest inflation in 40 years that produced the affordability crisis, where prices still regularly increase faster than wages resulting in unaffordable healthcare & high home prices with steep mortgages in a job market where the prospect of gainful employment that allows for self sufficiency remains elusive for both experienced people & recent college graduates with thousands of dollars of student loan debt outstanding; an attack on the Capitol after false claims of a stolen presidential election in which Trump tried to turn the Constitution on its head asking Pence to throw out electoral votes from states that had certified their votes for Biden; the election of Biden, a doddering old man whose ineptitude & incapacity were attempted to be hidden by the hostile anti-American media until revealed by Biden's nonsensical performance during the June, 2024 presidential debate & whose accomplishments in public office for half a century are nonexistent; a presidential election in 2024 where neither candidate deserved to be president & both had more people vote against them than for them; & the last two years of unconstitutional tariffs, a six month war with Iran that is being waged with no input from Congress or the tax paying public that has resulted in national average gasoline prices over $4 per gallon, & an anti-weaponization fund Trump plans to use to compensate people who assaulted police officers & marched to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to harm Mike Pence are all examples that display voter disgust. 

Some of the above examples of problems, complaints, & grievances against the two party system speak for themselves.  Below is a further drill down of others:

The median price of a previously owned house was $434,100 on July 31 - a 161% price increase since 2011.  To comfortably afford this median priced  house, a buyer generally needs an annual household income between $90,000 & $130,000 depending on location.  To appreciate the high home price problem in America consider that the median household income is $87,600.  Even considering regional variations in median household income of $94,650 in the West & $92,000 in the Northeast, a would-be median household income buyer barely makes it into the low end of the house affordability range.  And saving for the 20% down payment of over $86,000 in the low real interest rate environment is also very difficult if not discouraging.

I have found more & more people are becoming aware of the Social Security & Medicare insolvency problems that I have written about for decades.  These pending funding shortfalls currently scheduled for 2032 are still not recognized by enough people or any of our elected representatives.

Instead of working on shoring up the entitlement programs, Trumps' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is more concerned with making the next two years look good for Trump by trying to manipulate interest rates lower by two separate schemes.

The first scheme involves the Fed helping Japan strengthen the yen, following a 40 year low against the dollar, through Repurchase Agreements (RePos) where the Fed prints dollars to lend to Japan to buy yen with Japan's large stock of Treasury securities put up as collateral.  This arrangement expands the Fed's balance sheet, sending billions of dollars produced out of thin air into the economy, until Japan repurchases the securities with dollars per the terms of the RePo.  Coupling the higher global supply of weakening dollars with a stronger yen inevitably will lead to higher prices of Japanese exports to America - representing two thirds of the American-Japanese total merchandise trade while American exports to Japan representing one third of the  American-Japanese total merchandise trade are helped by these currency swings.  Bessent prefers the RePo intervention method rather than having Japan sell billions of dollars worth of Treasury securities on the open secondary bond market which would spike interest rates immediately @ a time, as usual, that Trump wants rates to drop.  Under Bessent's preferred approach he is betting that Professor Friedman is right when he taught that changes in the growth rate of the money supply, like under Bessent's RePo arrangement, take about two years to correlate with changes in inflation, & that the timing is "long and variable."  In short Bessent is counting on inflation not showing up under his RePo gambit until he & Trump are just about out of office when the inflation from the RePos can be blamed on the next president.  And to top it off after the RePo arrangement concludes everything is right back where it started - meaning Japan still has to solve their currency problem since nothing meaningful was accomplished toward meeting Japan's goal in the interim.  The advantage for Bessent & Trump is that the RePo intervention buys some time keeping interest rates lower than the Japanese dump of Treasury securities on the bond market alternative would - until after the midterm election.

The second scheme involves Bessent's plans to double the rate of buybacks of long term treasury securities (10 to 30 years) financed through the issuance of short term bills (weeks in duration).  Since this manipulation will reduce the supply of long term treasuries & increase the supply of short term bills, Bessent is counting on long term interest rates declining & new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh lowering the Fed's policy interest rate target range thereby lowering the government's interest payments - having his cake & eating it too in both the long & short term bond markets.  The idea is to please Trump, who would like to see interest rates near zero.  But the gross national debt exceeding $40 trillion, heavy AI data center corporate borrowing, & inflation persistently above the Fed's 2% target has helped the bond market see through Bessent's trickery & realize that we need real fiscal & monetary reform especially with the looming Social Security & Medicare insolvencies - Treasury debt has become harder to fund, sending the yields of both long term & short term debt higher.  And to his credit Warsh has not indicated that he will function as Bessent's banker, saying @ the recent Jackson Hole Wyoming symposium of central bankers that he didn't find financial conditions restrictive & that he hadn't been convinced that the underlying trend of inflation was improving.  Bessent's plan is nothing of substance - it runs from September 10 through November 4.  If the plan was a serious inflation remedy & not just a ploy to please Trump, why would it end the day after the midterm election?

So it's been a tiresome & costly seven years of the two parties taking turns being in power & with the above list of grievances it is no wonder that so many people are asking each other "How's that working out for you?"

The problem & solution really starts with the primaries.  Some of the 45% of voters who now identify as Independents may have precluded themselves from participating in the primary process.  If you are not registered as a Republican or Democrat in your state, check to see if you can vote in your state's next primary.  If your state has a closed primary (17 Democrat & 23 Republican) you will need to choose one party or the other in order to vote in the primary.  In an open primary state (18 Democrat & 14 Republican) a voter of any affiliation can vote in either primary & some states don't require voters to identify with any party affiliation when they register to vote.  In a semi-closed primary state (12 Democrat & 10 Republican) a voter registered as an Independent may choose to vote in either a Democrat or Republican primary.

Ballotpedia gives a good explanation of primary election types by state including an excellent interactive map that provides details for each state.

But dropping your registry with your previous party of choice is not the answer.  More than thirty million Independent voters have been excluded from the primary process across the country in recent years.  Far left & far right candidates thrive (i.e., get elected) in low turnout primary elections.  AOC won her primary by 1.9% after receiving 7.4% of the total registered vote in an election with 12.9% turnout in the summer of 2018.  And this past June voter turnout in NYC was between 18% to 25% of registered Democrats in each of the closed primaries for the three contested House nominations meaning less than 15% of the party electorate, no where near a majority, chose avowed socialists to represent the Democrat Party in the House midterms - source Mark Penn & Andrew Stein.

Not participating in the primary process leaves you with the choices of others & for @ least since the Covid-19 pandemic it is a choose your poison exercise.  Do you prefer strychnine, arsenic, anthrax powder, phosgene, or Tylenol made by McNeil Laboratories in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania in July 1982 that was laced with potassium cyanide?

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The other concern people expressed was DSA members &/or avowed socialists winning elections & turning the country socialist.  One person told me he has explained the problems with socialism & the benefits of capitalism to the point that he may be on the verge of losing lifelong friends.

I don't think you have to challenge the road to serfdom the way that Friedrich Hayek did in 1944 mostly because people today falling for DSA planks would not know what you are talking about quoting Hayek - since many of them don't know what socialism is.  They just know they are hurting.

A much better approach than arguing & losing friends is to review the DSA website & ask specific questions  to people considering voting for socialists based on the content of that website.

For instance:

1) Healthcare For All - "Guarantee universal healthcare @ no cost to individuals, including complete access to reproductive & gender affirming care.  Expand healthcare access & quality by investing (a capitalist word) in new public hospitals & clinics.  Make all medical education & training public & free."

Since the doctors in the new socialist system will not be going into private practice, where is the incentive for them to spend all of those years in medical school preparing to help people medically?  As the number of doctors dries up, where will the medical school professors come from to teach new medical school students, if any?  Can you see this plank leading to doctor shortages?

BTW - The word "investing" is primarily a capitalist term because it describes putting money or resources into private assets to make a financial profit.  Socialists generally avoid the word "investing" because it is tied to private financial gain. They prefer terms like "public funding," "social development," or "collective production."

2)  Prosecute U.S. & Israeli leaders responsibe for the genocide in Gaza.  

But another plank defunded the police & ended incarceration so what is the purpose of prosecution?

3)  Defund the Department of War.  End all foreign wars & close overseas military bases.  End economic warfare against countries whose governments act independently of the United States, such as Cuba, Venezuela, & Iran.

But how do we survive if they attack us?

4)  Grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status, provide a path to citizenship for all permanent residents, & end visa caps & quotas.

Do you do your part by filling your house with immigrants to live with you & your family?

5)  Housing For All - "Housing is a human right.  Build new, publicly-owned social housing, strictly regulate investment (capitalist term) properties, establish universal rent control, & guarantee the right to counsel for all tenants."

Strictly regulating investment properties & establishing universal rent controls gives the owners of these properties no incentive to maintain the properties thereby resulting in a deteriorating quality of existing housing leading to severe housing shortages that the proposed "new publicly-owned"  entity will have to address.  Can you see the problem taking human incentive out of the reason for owning property & people's need for shelter?  Can you see how this leads to underdevelopment?  And where will the counsellor come from since it will take years of going to law school for a lawyer to represent the person's rights as a tenant - same incentive problem as finding doctors in point #1 above.

These five examples give you an idea of how to go through the DSA website & point out some impracticalities with this brand of socialism.  You can also point out Shannon Bream's enlightening rapid-fire "true or false" list of platform positions to DSA national co-chairwoman Megan Romer on July 26 on FNC.

Do you think Romer's answers confirming or defending the following organizational positions during the segment is the answer to your personal dissatisfaction with the two party system - or is there something else in play?

Abolish the U.S. Senate: Confirmed as true. 
Replace the Presidency and Supreme Court: Confirmed as a goal to alter them from how they are currently known/structured.
Abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement): Confirmed with an "absolutely".
Abolish National Borders and Grant Amnesty: Confirmed as a long-term plan (including amnesty for individuals currently in the U.S. illegally).
Defund the Pentagon: Confirmed with an "absolutely". 
Abolish Prisons: Confirmed as part of a long-term program. 
Government/Public Ownership of Large Corporations: Confirmed the stance to end private ownership of major companies and transition control to the public.

In short, don't discuss socialism as a general idea but rather point out the specific real things it means to change people's lives, standard of living, & freedom.  Do Americans want public ownership of corporations where they work & have 401(k)s with significant company matches, wealth taxes where there never is enough money so the tax filters down to people in the middle income level, the Department of War defunded, publicly owned social housing, abolishing police, border patrol, & prisons, abolishing the Senate, expanding the number of Justices on the Supreme Court & making both the Supreme Court & president subordinate to Congress?

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Just like Hayek's dedication in The Road To Serfdom "to the socialists of all parties," I offer the following appeal for consideration to people dissatisfied with the goings on in America & are considering voting Democrat including for avowed socialists or DSA candidates.  The appeal does not go against the above advice in this post but can be used in conjunction with it as you think appropriate.

Dear Potential Voter Of Socialists:

Please meet me halfway in that I acknowledge you have a problem but it is not with capitalism & socialism is not the answer.  What you are frustrated with is not capitalism.  America is a mixed economy that is over 50% socialist - this is the country Millennials & Gen Zers know, have lived in all their lives, & were told was capitalism.

A free enterprise capitalist economy requires an educated & well trained workforce who create things of value for their employers to sell & wealth for themselves, &/or people who start new businesses who have common sense & the energy to make that business successful using the workforce as needed.  Over half of our adult  population reads @ an elementary school level & far too many Americans are dependent on several parts of the the 126 welfare programs identified by the Cato Institute. The Pew Research Center reports that more than 65% of millenials (people born between 1981 & 2005) support reducing military spending in order to preserve spending on these welfare programs.  This describes a socialist country whose candidates you are considering voting for far more than a capitalist country that you have never lived in. 

Just since the Covid-19 era (February 2020 to the present) the dollar has lost 22.5% of its value to inflation meaning prices have increased 29%.  One of the tenets of a capitalist country is sound money defined as something that is used as a medium of exchange, something that measures the value comparisons of the goods & services to be exchanged, & something that is an asset to hold that serves as a store of value & unit of account in contracts, investments, & savings.

Please consider the following graphic that shows the United States as a capitalist country using sound money based on gold & silver that produced steady price levels from 1800 until 1946 - the year that the U.S. declared federal policy & responsibility to promote purchasing power.  From that point on inflation debased the dollar 94.6% of its value meaning it takes over $18 today to buy what one dollar did in 1946, an increase of 1,735%.

Click on graphic to enlarge

Inflation makes it hard for a young entrepreneur to save $5,000 so that he can turn it into $10,000 & then $50,000 constant dollars.  A debased currency does not provide a steady unit of account for the growth described.  Instead the real growth to $50,000 is swimming in a sea of inflation that requires a constant calculation to determine the real after-inflation values of contracts, salaries, currencies, & investments.

The other problem a person starting a new business faces today in America is finding qualified help.  This brings us back to the need for an educated & well trained workforce.  Employers are addressing the shortage of qualified people by replacing poorly educated people with robots.  Have you been remiss in your own development of job skills & consequently AI is the reason for your dissatisfaction with life in America?  Socialism is not the answer to this either.

The last point I ask you to consider is the growth of the gross national debt to over $40 trillion that was reached on August 18, 2026.  Growth of this debt is a way of life for millennials & Gen Zers as evidenced by the following graphic.

Click on graphic to enlarge

You will note that $35 trillion of the $40 trillion was accumulated in the 21st century - virtually doubling under Bush, then again under BO, & then again under the combined nine & a half years under Trump & Biden.

Throughout America's free enterprise capitalist economy whenever debt was used to move production forward, like during wartime, that debt was paid off so that we would have the ability to call on borrowing again when needed,  See graphic below - note I have marked the five debt paydown periods: Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI, WWII, & the Cold War arms race that led to the financial exhaustion & collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  Emphasis on the word Socialist.

Click on graphic to enlarge

There has been no attempt or even a mention to pay down the $40 trillion national debt which equals 125% of GDP - a figure well over what economists have shown makes for a less robust economy.  The five periods shown above paid down debt resulting from national defense expenditures.  The current $40 trillion debt represents money spent on the 126 welfare programs identified by the Cato Institute, which is more in line with a socialist country than a capitalist country.

In summary, you & I are really looking for the same thing but you are trying to find it in socialism.  I hope you see from my presentation that the America Millennials & Gen Zers have lived in all their lives is not the free enterprise capitalist country they were told it was.  It is a country eroded more & more every year by people making it more & more socialist.  You will have a much brighter future working to get America back to the pre 1930s mindset of limited government, personal responsibility, & free enterprise.  It won't be easy as Mary O'Grady wrote twenty years ago this past August  "... what seems to be tempering the hope of even positive thinkers these days is the growing, sobering realization that the burden of socialism is exceedingly hard to throw off, even when patently obvious that it is the chief culprit producing underdevelopment, poverty, & misery." 

What you should be looking for is not socialism but a return to excellence.

Three New Alternatives To The Two Party System

The Democrat-Republican two party system has let us down for decades & it has never been more evident than the last two years.  In 2025 we had avowed socialists elected mayors in NYC & Seattle & in 2026 more avowed socialists have won Democrat primaries in congressional districts in NY, Colorado, & Pennsylvania.  All of them are expected to win in November - Raab in Philadelphia is even running unopposed.  Most of these winners are members of or associated with the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) which is not a political party but an activist organization with over 120,000 members & chapters in all 50 states, making it the largest socialist organization in U.S. history.  Even @ that the DSA only has a 21% favorable rating among registered voters (Marquette poll) so their candidates are punching way above their weight.

In addition, far left Democrat candidates, whether they self-identify as progressives or DSA members, but definitely not centrist candidates, have won statewide primary elections - something many strategists thought they couldn't do.  Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's Democrat Senate primary by 1% espousing all the DSA views, but says he is a capitalist so Michiganders have to be careful not to fall for double talk.  Minnesota Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan won the Minnesota Democrat Senate primary handily by 19.6% after espousing progressive & DSA views although she never identified as a Democrat Socialist - what's worse is that Flanagan is Tim Walz's lieutenant, which is not an honor with all the meal, housing, & Medicaid fraud that took place right under their noses this past year in Minnesota, & yet she won.  And although she didn't win the Wisconsin Democrat Gubernatorial primary DSA member Francesca Hong certainly made her presence felt losing by only 3,796 votes out of 792,009 ballots cast - Hong a Wisconsin state representative & part time bartender who earlier had called for defunding & abolishing the police & canceling Thanksgiving came within 0.5% of winning the nomination.

Centrist Democrat political pundits are minimizing the DSA results by just considering El-Sayed's narrow victory & Hong's narrow loss as a wash proving that centrist Democrats still hold sway in the party.  But if you combine the more extreme Flanigan blow out victory in Minnesota & count the three states as a region, which they pretty much actually are, the DSA espousing candidates won 52.7% of the head to head vote over the centrist Democrat's 47.3% thereby showing that DSA candidates can hold their own in a region not just a particular state.  And both the losing candidates in Michigan (Stevens) & Wisconsin (Hong) joined the victorious candidates in their states for a unity breakfast just hours after the elections were called showing the Democrats are focused on winning & that there's not a dime's worth of difference between a DSA candidate supported by Gen Zers & a centrist Democrat supported by older life-long Democrats when you get down to it.  Meanwhile Republicans are focused on asking who won the 2020 Presidential election.  See table below for Democrat primary election results.

Political Race	Candidate	Votes	%	Vote Difference
MI Senate	El-Sayed	743,455	48.5	15,697
	Stevens	727,758	47.5
	Other	61,407	4.0
		1,532,620	100.0
WI Governor	Crowley	315,308	38.8	3,796
	Hong	311,512	38.3
	Oher	165,189	20.9
		792,009	100.0
MN Senate	Flanagan	411,541	59.0	136,900
	Craig	274,641	39.4
	Oher	11,145	1.5
		697,327	99.9
DSA Aligned Candidates	El-Sayed, Hong, Flanagan	1,466,508	52.7	152597
More Centrist Candidates	Stevens, Crowley, Craig	1,313,911	47.3
		2,780,419	100.0

I used to long for a hypothetical choice - something like Ronald Reagan versus Steve Lonegan where the citizenry couldn't lose.  Instead we had the nightmare reality of Trump versus Kamala Harris where we could not win.  And the voters in Texas will have a similar no-win Senate election in November between James Talarico & Ken Paxton.

Now there is real discontent in the country & primary results show no incumbent is safe - 15 term incumbent Colorado Congresswoman Diana Degette was first elected to the seat in 1996 - four months before the victorious DSA candidate Melat Kiros was born.

It is not hard to see why the electorate has awakened.  Crossing the red line of affordability provided a sudden awareness that it was a loser to have paid tens of thousands of dollars per year for a college education that is now valueless to an employer who prefers robots.  The problem compounds in that grade inflation masks whether or not the student is prepared to go into the world @ all or if he can think.  This leads to the attraction of young people to socialism especially if they were never taught the dangers of socialism, or even what it is, & that freedom & capitalism are the basis of prosperity.

The problem begins in K-12 where Neal Boortz told us over twenty years ago that the teachers unions & government schools are more dangerous to America's future than al Qaeda.  We may be just beginning to fully understand Neal's point.

Professor Friedman put it this way, writing in the Cato Policy Report, March/April, 1999 - "Any institution will tend to express its own values & its own ideas.  Our public education system is a socialist institution.  A socialist institution will teach socialist values, not principles of private enterprise."

What should we expect from adults when over 50% of them read @ an elementary school level.  These adults are the people who 35 years ago were eighth graders reading @ a fourth grade level & now they are the parents of the young socialists.  This degradation of parenting has gone on for decades & the power of the teachers unions throughout the country is the result to our detriment.  When their children also learned @ an unsatisfactory level the poorly educated parents blamed the teachers who defended themselves through their unions.

That voters don't like the deal they are getting from the two party system is confirmed by Gallup's finding that 27% of voters self-identify as Republicans, 27% as Democrats, but 45% as Independents.  In breaking away from the two major parties these voters are looking for a certain degree of normalcy, but would still like to see something positive get done.  This is true because many primaries produce extreme candidates from both parties in very low turnout elections, partly the result of Independents being precluded from voting in closed primaries.  (As of February 2026 Independents are afforded some primary participation in 10 states, where state law requires semi-closed primaries for congressional or state-level offices & in 12 states, at least one major political party conducts semi-closed primaries for congressional or state-level offices.)

And voters aren't finding that normalcy in older progressive candidates or younger DSA candidates both of whom campaign for universal single payer healthcare, free child care, free buses, state owned grocery stores, abolishing ICE & the Border Patrol, a four day work week, rent control, wealth confiscation of the rich & corporations, ending U.S. aid to Israel, solidarity with Palestinians, & any other purpose that does not create things of value.  This list makes it easy to see why "socialists eventually run out of other people's money."

And they're also not finding that normalcy in the chaos that Nikki Haley warned us follows Trump & the MAGA movement - such as 1) the bad feelings of allies over tariffs arbitrarily imposed plus the added cost Americans are paying for the imported goods & services subject to the tariffs, 2) the loss of stature & cost of the war with Iran that Trump started, with Israel, or the humiliation that the theocratic terrorist regime not only withstood the American military might but has actually increased its influence in the Middle East as a result of the war that has now produced sailor exhaustion & declining morale including reports of suicidal thoughts on the USS Abraham Lincoln (& probably other ships as well) - deteriorating living conditions (food rationing & lack of personal supplies like toothpaste & soap, & water contamination) & a worsening mental health environment during the ship’s 200+ record-breaking consecutive days @ sea without making a port call that has experienced @ least one man trying, but prevented, from jumping overboard with one man succeeding & being rescued, 3) the $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund Trump plans to use to compensate people who assaulted police officers & marched to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to harm Mike Pence & many of the Members of Congress  who are still in office but are also still too spineless to vote to stop this self-dealing outrage of Trump suing the government that he runs & then dropping the case when his DOJ agreed to the creation of the fund & providing Trump et al. income tax audit immunity for past tax returns, or 4) Trump's preoccupation with the construction of a ballroom, a 250 feet tall "triumphal arch" located between the Lincoln Memorial & Arlington National Cemetery, & algae growing in a reflecting pool on the mall all demonstrate how tone-deaf Trump is to Americans' troubles.  Note - with regard to point 3: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, in order to secure the votes of Senators Tillis & Cornyn to move his nomination for Attorney General forward, signed a piece of paper supposedly providing assurances regarding concerns of Trump's self-dealing income tax audit immunity & the anti-weaponization fund being dead is not worth the paper it is written on since Trump has never agreed to any such arrangement.

Recognizing how lousy the 156 million Americans who are entirely out of the stock market feel about their paychecks not stretching to always cover the essentials of life, several groups have been formed to try to meet both this economic need to get something positive done & the need for normalcy, summarized as follows: 

1.  Our Republican Legacy (ORL)

ORL was founded in 2024 by former Republican senators Danforth (MO), Cohen (ME), & the late Simpson (WY) to function as a "shadow RNC" focusing on unity, fiscal responsibility & discipline, the free market, constitutional due process, & strong foreign alliances (such as NATO).  This active national organization is dedicated to restoring traditional conservative values & challenging & providing an alternative to the current GOP's populist & MAGA aligned direction.

2.  The Forward Party

Forward recognizes that almost half the voters are not affiliated with either major party & in the spirit of getting things done says "It's time to move Not Left, Not Right, but Forward."  The Party points out there are 520,000+ elected positions in the U.S., but under the current system, 70+% are uncontested.  They ask "How’s that working out for us?"  One of Forward's main points is that the two party system excludes more than thirty million Independent voters from the primary process across the country – this in & of itself has given rise to the success of candidates representing the DSA, most famously AOC in 2018, who won her primary by 1.9% after receiving 7.4% of the total registered vote in an election with 12.9% turnout.

Forward's website includes a list of candidates for some of the 520,000+ positions mentioned above - Independents, Forward Party, & unaffiliated.  I was interested to see that Ken Block was listed as an unaffiliated candidate for Governor of Rhode Island.  Readers of RTE may remember that Ken was the data professional hired by Trump's lawyers to provide technical evidence that Trump won the 2020 election, which of course he didn't because he couldn't.  Click on A Data Professional's Analysis Of The 2020 Presidential Election to refresh your memory.  The title of Ken's book on the subject, which I read before making the post, tells the story:

click on image to enlarge

Ken seems like a square shooter & the voters in RI should give him a good look before casting their ballots for Governor.

3. Promise To America

Not meaning it to be a left handed compliment, this is the best presentation I have seen Democrats make in decades.  Led by Representatives Tom Suozzi (NY) & Adam Gray (CA), "A Promise to America" refers to a centrist political pledge signed by 13 House Democrats & candidates.  It is an obvious challenge to progressive DSA candidates, so good for them for fighting back.  The pledge explicitly rejects socialism, endorses secure borders, champions capitalism, promotes confident patriotism as an alternative to extreme partisan divides, & honors America's exceptional character & extraordinary achievement.

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All three of the above groups seem sincere & I hope people will check out candidates aligned with them in both the 2026 midterms & the 2028 presidential election.  I have posted for years that we really have one big government party with two wings who take turns in power with a constant incremental movement to the left - a slow burn losing proposition.  In a narrow majority Congress (i.e., nearly evenly divided), a small handful of people can control a lot of what happens or equally as important a lot of what doesn't happen if neither of the two major parties can muster enough votes to move their agenda forward.  The Freedom Caucus recently protected us from bad legislation by holding significant influence while numbering just two & a half dozen members.  As I researched the above three groups I thought of a similar arrangement if they live up to their mission statements - but they give us a chance to look @ something other than candidates from the Democrat & Republican parties where we waste our votes choosing somebody we don't believe in.

Over the years I have supported, worked for, &/or voted for people I thought would make a difference such as Dave Corsi, Stan Serafin, Steve Lonegan, Mike Agosta, Anna Little, Jim Gawron, Jim Poesl, Murray Sabrin, Tod Theise, Alan Keyes, Ben Carson, Richard Luzzi, Steve King, Larry Elder, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Chase Oliver, Mike Huckabee, & Steve Forbes.

Some of these people are still friends.  But all of them are people I believed in so I never cast a wasted vote.

The Story Of America - Hillsdale College Videos

Sixty-one percent of Gen Z (18 to 29 year olds) did not know what America's 250th anniversary commemorated.  That number is 46% for all adults.   Those are a small sliver of responses from a Cato Institute poll conducted in collaboration with Morning Consult of 2,253 Americans ahead of July 4th & America's 250th anniversary.  The poll was released on July 2.  

I have never seen clearer statistics that show how perilous our future is - since young people know nothing about the country they can be told anything & they very well may believe it. 

More knowledgeable respondents (57%) to the poll questions believe the U.S. has moved away from its founding principles (you think) & 56% worry the country could lose its freedom in the next 50 years.  

For the rest of us who want to continue the semiquincentennial celebration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 click on this series of Hillsdale College videos that tells the story of America starting with how a rag-tag army defeated the British Empire.  Episodes include "The Shot Heard Round The World," "The Battle Of Bunker Hill," "Crossing The Delaware," "The Second Continental Congress," & "George Washington."  There are 19 videos in all, organized so you can watch them in any order or selectively.

The most important point in bringing the results of the Cato poll & the Hillsdale videos together is that a great number of Americans need to learn from the videos so that the worry about America losing its freedom before the tricentennial doesn't occur.

Hillsdale College encourages passing the videos on.  And so do I.

Pledge Allegiance To The American Republic This Independence Day

Academic research has shown that special days like birthdays or New Year's are the best time for people to review their plans or make new goals.  For people who have strayed from America's founding principles of limited government, personal responsibility, & free enterprise, what more special day will we ever have in our lifetimes than the nation's 250th birthday to rebuild & refresh the vitality of our patriotism & appreciation for our country?  

As we mark the nation's semiquincentennial anniversary this Independence Day, the first point to celebrate is that our Founding Fathers in the Second Continental Congress by unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America had in mind creating a limited government of enumerated powers, such a government deriving its just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.  

In so doing our Founders most definitely did not create a democracy - they created a constitutional representative republic.  Every time you hear a Democrat talk about "saving our democracy" or some similar statement they are trying to brainwash people into thinking the United States is a democracy where citizens vote on every issue & therefore the mob-majority always rules.  Democrats know they will always be in the majority just by the sheer numbers of poor & downtrodden people they play for, who they never want to help lift up, but rather want to keep poor & down trodden to use as pawns to reach their goal of political power thereby stifling the rest of us. 

So when you hear a Democrat, like Schumer or Jeffries, talk about "saving our democracy" substitute to yourself the words "saving our republic" & then disregard whatever else he says because you know he has already tried to mislead you.

In fact, the word democracy does not appear anywhere in the Declaration Of Independence or the Constitution.  The Founders were against a pure democracy because they feared the tyranny of the majority, where the rights of minority groups & property owners could easily be trampled.  A democracy will not exist beyond the point that the voters realize they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury via the candidates who promise the most benefits.  This process has always resulted in collapse due to loose fiscal policy ending in the tyranny of a dictator.

On April 15, 1814 in his letter to Virginia politician & writer John Taylor of Careline (county), John Adams confirmed the Founders' skepticism of a pure democracy when he wrote  "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, & murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy.  It is not true, in fact, & nowhere appears in history."

An important safeguard the Founders provided against democracies' mob-rule-tyranny was the Guarantee Clause, Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, that guarantees to every State of the Union a Republican form of Government.  The Founders knew this clause was necessary to protect the nation from internal tyranny that could result from direct democracies in a state.

At one point I was going to call this blog "Death of Democracy" but Carol thought it was too depressing so I settled on the subheading "A Libertarian Web Log Dedicated To Stopping The Death Of Democracy Of The American Republic."  She thought that summed it up nicely.

The Declaration holds that all Men are created equal & that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights - specifically Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness.  At this point the document acknowledges that Governments are instituted among Men to secure these rights - not to confer them.  Rights are secured through the rule of law after Men leave the state of nature.

Progressive Democrat Socialists Bernie Sanders & AOC intentionally mislead by conflating securing God given rights described in the Declaration of Independence to mean conferring rights by government, like claiming healthcare is a right that can be signed into law by politicians.

Healthcare is not a right, it is a good like food, shelter, & clothing.  Click here to hear Judge Napolitano explain that a right is a gift from God that extends from our humanity, natural rights that we were born with - the government does not give them to us, the government does not pay for them, & the government cannot take them away unless a jury finds we have violated someone else's rights.  The judge goes on to explain that a good is something we want or need starting with our parents buying us goods & then in adulthood we buy for ourselves for existence.  In summary, a right stems from our humanity; a good is something you buy or someone else buys for you.

Thomas Sowell asks "why would you expect someone else to provide for you what you do not provide for yourself?"

There are many strong indications that Gen Z & Millennials have increasingly favorable views of socialism including the elections of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of NYC & Katie Wilson as mayor of Seattle, both taking office on January 1, 2026.

In an interview with Jacobin, Wilson said "I was a socialist when I moved to Seattle back in 2004. ... as a socialist, I believe that the profound changes that need to happen in our society & our economy can only be accomplished through the organized power of working people."

Now that is about as socialist as you get comrade - right in line with AOC's similar thoughts:  "There's a certain level of wealth & accumulation that is unearned.  Right?  You can't earn a billion dollars.  You just can't earn that.  You can get market power.  You can break rules.  You can do all sorts of things.  You can abuse labor laws.  You can pay people less than what they are worth, but you can't earn that.  Right?  And so you have to create a myth that since you didn't earn that - you have to create a myth of earning it." 

There is a term for what Wilson & AOC are talking about.  And that term is the central concept of Karl Marx's critique of capitalism written in 1867 in Das Kapital, the foundation work of communist theory - it is called surplus value.

Surplus value is the cornerstone of Marxist economics.  Marx asserts that workers are the true source of all wealth.  However, under capitalism, they are paid a subsistence wage while factory owners (capitalists) extract "surplus value" - the extra worth generated by workers' labor that is kept as profit.  Accordingly, surplus value is the difference between the wealth workers generate through their labor & the actual wages they are paid.   Everything in the national income that doesn't go to the worker constitutes surplus value.  This uncompensated value is taken by business owners as profit, forming the engine of capitalist accumulation.

In September, 2011 Elizabeth Warren gave BO a similar socialist lesson in her "you didn't build that" speech - "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces & fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come & seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory & it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God Bless!  Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that & pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

And BO learned his lesson well before reversing himself because he didn't think the country was ready.

But boy do we seem more than ready now.  

Not only do we have the two avowed socialist mayors mentioned above elected by the votes of thousands of people, we have a Democrat Senate candidate in Texas, James Talarico, saying "There are many more than two biological sexes, in fact there are six."  Also consider former congresswoman & current incumbent mayor of LA Karen Bass's support for Fidel Castro - after receiving heavy criticism for her statements in sympathy for Fidel Castro, following his death in 2016, that caused her to be dropped from consideration for Biden's VP selection in 2020, Bass has since walked back her praise for Castro for obvious reasons.  Bass's November opponent, Democrat Socialist of America candidate Nithya Raman, is even further to the left than Bass.  And Mamdani, in a blatant display of not representing all his constituents, did not attend the Israel Day parade in NYC on May 31 preferring to concentrate on the Nakba, an Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is used to describe the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.  Mamdani has also endorsed three socialist candidates for congressional seats (seventh, tenth, & thirteenth districts of NY) - two of the three won in landslides in NY's June 23rd Democrat primary & the third was a closer victory over a five term incumbent who was the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.  And in a ranked choice voting system DSA candidate Janeese Lewis George won the Washington DC primary on June 16.   

Now the above words & actions of AOC, Katie Wilson, Elizabeth Warren, BO, James Talarico, Karen Bass, & Zohran Mamdani when coupled with critical race theory, the 1619 Project, preferred personal pronouns, the woke ideology & Democrats' intolerance for dissent for anything unwoke, free healthcare for illegal immigrants, abolishing ICE, defunding the police, free government childcare, free college, packing the Supreme Court, a national wealth tax, & Democrats having a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism not only adds up to an unhappy & disunited country celebrating its 250th birthday but it shows clear examples of the nonsense that Democrat socialists speak - but it is a dangerous nonsense that makes imbeciles out of their followers.

Republicans do no better in their practice of idolatry of Trump.   We will pay a tremendous price for Trump's selfish, narcissistic, vindictive, delusional presidency for a long time to come.  

Whether it's 1) the bad feelings of allies over tariffs arbitrarily imposed plus the added cost Americans are paying for the imported goods & services subject to the tariffs, 2) the loss of stature & cost of the war with Iran that Trump unilaterally started or the humiliation that the theocratic terrorist regime not only withstood the American military might but has actually increased its influence in the Middle East as a result of the war, 3) the $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund Trump plans to use to compensate people who assaulted police officers & marched to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to harm Mike Pence & many of the Members of Congress  who are still in office but are also still too spineless to vote to stop this self-dealing outrage of Trump suing the government that he runs & then dropping the case when his DOJ agreed to the creation of the fund, or 4) Trump's preoccupation with the construction of a ballroom & a 250 feet tall "triumphal arch" located between the Lincoln Memorial & Arlington National Cemetery all demonstrate how tone-deaf Trump is to Americans' troubles.

Trump has abandoned America on the affordability issue satisfied that the stock market's record highs - the NASDAQ, S&P 500, & DJIA simultaneously hit record highs on the last trading day of May - equate to outstanding 401(k) performances that he claims credit for without presenting one thing he specifically did to propel these indices that were really the result of the AI mania that also propelled these indices to new highs during the woeful Biden years as well.

There are approximately 70 million people who have 401(k), 403(b), or IRAs with median balances of $30,000 to $87,000 depending on the specific age demographic considered - i.e., a small amount in the overall swing of things for millions of Americans meaning Trump's bragging about 401(k) increases is not being experienced in a meaningful way by the great majority of people.

People are interested in affordability - not ballrooms & arches.  For over 75% of owners of 401(k)s there is no immediate impact for the stock market's positive performance.  The immediate impact of wages not keeping up with inflation is the problem.  For both April & May inflation outpaced wage growth, inflation was higher in March, April, & May than when Trump took office, & labor's share of gross domestic income in the first quarter sank to 51%, the lowest level since records began in 1947.  Source Greg Ip, WSJ, May 29, 2026.

When the Founding Fathers in the Second Continental Congress mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes, & their sacred Honor in forming the new republic they had no idea how long the republic would last.  And neither do we.

Our situation is the opposite of the Founding Fathers' who were declaring the causes which impelled them to seek Separation from Great Britain, abolishing & throwing off a long Train of Abuses & Usurpations from an absolute Despotism form of government while we are facing the onslaught of deceptive, manipulative propaganda campaigns designed to bring about dissatisfaction & influence public opinion against America.  Examples of these propaganda campaigns have been documented hereinbefore by Democrat Socialists, Marxists, progressives, &/or populists, in order of mention - Schumer, Jeffries, Bernie, AOC, Katie Wilson, Warren, BO, Talarico, Bass, Mamdani, & Trump.  All of these people have great admiration for dictators & @ one point in their careers, including now for some, aspired to be tyrants, despots, caliphs, or otherwise people who rule the world themselves. 

From the beginning of civilization up to July 3, 1776, over six thousand years of human history, slavery had been the norm - places like Babylon, Athens, & Rome all had massive enslaved populations.  As did Native American tribes.

But all of this entrenched slavery had a chance to end – a beginning, a start to being able to change with the signing of the Declaration Of Independence & the founding of the United States Of America on July 4, 1776.

During the Jefferson administration Congress prohibited the importation of slaves effective 1808 – but there was smuggling thereafter.  The process of obtaining freedom for all men continued with the Missouri Compromise of 1820 in which Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state but slavery was prohibited in all the western territories.  And of course the fighting of the Civil War resulted in the ratification of the thirteenth Amendment which banned slavery in the entire country.

 

Although Lincoln certainly wanted to preserve the Union, the Civil War was fought for more than just the secession of eleven slave-holding states from the Union.  Lincoln believed  that free men should not be free to choose slavery for others.  Lincoln knew that the United States Republic was the only noteworthy free country in the world in the early 1860s & he believed that a significant portion of the young country could not abandon its founding principles & survive for long. 

JCo, a long time subscriber to this blog commented on July 4, 2020 to that year's Indepence Day post, "Human trafficking and sex trafficking are the concerns that should be focused on, not in the slavery that was abolished 155 years ago.  Because Thomas Jefferson or other historical figures owned slaves simply states a fact that slave ownership was common in that era. But as one of my history professors said, '"Judge history on its own terms, not by today's standards."'  JCo went on to write "It's curious why if we live in such a racist, sexist, and oppressive country, why people want to get in, not out."

The common sense of this statement goes a long way to undo the propaganda espoused by the socialist agitators cited above.  If you are among the 39% of adults who have a favorable opinion of socialism (or 67% of college students who do) be sure to take into account the freedom you are throwing away.  You won't have that freedom when the central government directs the economy by controlling the means of production that it owns.

When F. A. Hayek dedicated "The Road To Serfdom" to "The Socialists of All Parties" he was not talking about today's agitators presented hereinbefore because they all know better than the nonsense they speak.  AOC, Bernie & the lot all broke their oaths of allegiance to the Constitution & want to change the country from one of personal responsibility to one of dependence on government with them being the government.

No better proof of this than to hear it in AOC's own words - "They assume that my ambition is positional.  They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat.  My ambition is way bigger than that.  My ambition is to change this country.  Presidents come & go.  Senate, House seats, elected officials  come & go.  But single-payer healthcare is forever." 

And just how qualified is AOC to change this country?  When asked "Would or should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move" AOC haltingly responded - "Um, you know, I think that, uh, this is such a a you know, I think that this is a um, this is of course a very long standing, um policy of the United States, a, & I think that what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure we never get to that point.  And we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic, research, & our global positions to avoid any such confrontation & for that question to even arise."

In writing this Independence Day post I call on the actual type of socialists that Hayek dedicated his book to in 1944 - well-intentioned individuals who were unwittingly building the infrastructure for the very tyrannies they despised by not realizing that the loss of economic freedom inevitably leads to the loss of political freedom.  Hayek's dedication was not meant for socialists like AOC, Bernie & the rest who know communism, fascism, and state-socialism all stem from the exact same root: collectivism & state control over the individual, which is their ultimate plan.

Look over the propaganda documented above & be sure you understand where it breaks down so that when you pledge allegiance to the American republic this Independence Day it will be stronger than ever because other snake oil salesmen will surely follow to try to once again turn people against America.

"As a city, Babylon exists no more.  When those energizing human forces that built & maintained the city for thousands of years were withdrawn, it soon became a deserted ruin."  - George S. Clason, The Richest Man In Babylon, page 138 – first published in 1926.  Mr. Clason's description of Babylon is one that every one of us has a vested interest in preventing happening to the United States.

How long do you think the republic will last  if it is up to you alone,  if it is up to only you?