November 6, 2018—A Republic if you can keep it!

Following the secret deliberations of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall to learn what had been produced. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Without hesitation, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Franklin’s challenge should be pondered, especially today as Americans will elect every member of the House of Representatives, a third of our Senators and over two thirds of our state governors. Practically everyone on both sides of the political aisle considers today to be the most important election of our generation…

I certainly do, especially in view of the vitriol so evident in the deteriorating political discourse that has led over 35-million to vote before the polls open this morning …

Democrats have emphasized the alleged benefits of President Obama’s so-called Affordable Health Care Act (that received not a single Republican vote), even after associated health care costs have greatly increased. And while Obama hypocritically chants about Republican lies, recall his repeated false claim that “If you like your health care, you can keep your health case; if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

And don’t forget the campaign to destroy a model judge in attempting to prevent his well deserved appointment to the Supreme Court, not to mention to subject Justice Kavanaugh’s family to undue public pain. And now, thanks to Senator Grassley’s investigations, we know that key charges were known at the time to be blatantly false.

And the “main stream” media remains quiet on this recent outrageous revelation that does not fit the Democrat narrative.

And Republicans (led by President Trump) still emphasize the all too real need to block illegal immigration. But their chants ring a bit hollow given that the Republican-led White House, Senate and House failed to fulfill the same promises made repeatedly during the 2016 campaign.

Disgusting . . . but maybe better delivery on this 2018 set of promises? You think? It is still an urgently important objective, but today’s elections may limit such efforts in the future. If so, the past performance will haunt Republicans for years to come.

Perhaps surprisingly, less emphasis has been placed on the undisputable promises kept by President Trump that, in less than two years, have improved our economy to historic levels; reduced taxes, regulations, unemployment and bloated government institutions; and advanced our foreign/defense policy goals.

Perhaps the American people don’t appreciate these achievements??? They certainly should. And reports from the coming Christmas season will probably show the benefits that many Americans have from more money in their pockets.

Click here for my message with the same title two years ago, shortly after the election of President Trump. Now after two years of President Trump’s administration and the recent midterm campaign in which he has played an unprecedented role, he and former President Obama both have seemed to replay some of the same issues in the public debate.

In effect, that debate still seems to be about whether socialism, with the public dependent on government led initiatives, or individual initiatives and free markets, under minimum government regulation, should be our primary objective.

In my opinion, this choice is at the heart of Benjamin Franklin’s challenge: “A Republic if you can keep it.”

He and our Founders were steeped in World History (unlike many voting today) and were concerned that, as Plato wrote in his Republic, tyranny can arise from democracy. Dr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a European scholar, linguist, world traveler, and lecturer, wrote in 1988 about “Democracy’s Road to Tyranny.” Click here for his description of three “organic” pathways for this unwelcome evolution to occur. It is worth a few minutes of your time to read.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is often memorably quoted as saying: “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Click here for a Snopes report that a more accurate quote (February 5, 1976—a year after Mrs. Thatcher won the leadership of the opposition Conservative Party and three years before she became Prime Minister) is:

“I would much prefer to bring them [the Labor Party] down as soon as possible. I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalize everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalization, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.”

Prime Minister Thatcher’s approach to governing changed Great Britain for the better and she became Ronald Reagan’s most trusted partner in his “revolution” that reversed these same tendencies in 1980 and brought us the “Morning in American.” Click here for my discussion a couple of years ago of his “Morning in America” message.

Two years ago, the United States was approaching the same “tipping point” that Maggie Thatcher warned Britain about — and which our founders sought to avoid by structuring the Constitution to give the states’ authorities to hedge against too much power being centralized in the Federal Government and urban areas.

Growing numbers of recipients from government programs were threatening to exceed the ability of the American taxpayer to support — and we are not yet out of this “swamp.” But now, recent trends in reduced jobless claims provide hope that significant improvements are in sight, provided today’s election does not reverse that course.

Two years ago, the tendency described by Maggie Thatcher’s above quote was rapidly advancing in America. President Trump’s leadership has reversed that trend and sought to return to our Founders’ intent as represented by the Constitution: A Republic in which government serves the people and not a Democracy on which the people are dependent.

All while restoring a sound economy, improving our national security interests and responding to the social issues of great concern of those in most of our states.

Our Founders sought to keep major political powers at the state and local level. They assigned each state a number of members in the House of Representatives reflecting the number of the citizens in that state but gave terms of three times the length of House members who must run for re-election every two years to two Senators from each state regardless of the number of its citizens — and only a third of the Senate can be replaced every two years to provide an assured element of continuity.

Initially in 1788, senators were selected by each state’s legislature rather than by the citizens of each state, as became the practice 125 years later with the Seventeenth Amendment on April 8, 1913.

Another important initiative by the Founders, reflecting their emphasis on assuring broad representation from the states, was the process of electing the president by what we today refer to as the Electoral College, rather than by popular vote of the citizenry. This is how Donald Trump became President.

I am no expert on these matters, but what I have found is that the function and details of how the Electoral College meets and how they vote was changed in the 12th Amendment. In Article 2, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3.

Originally, I understand that each state chose a number of electors equal to the number of its congress people — at least three electors (two Senators and at least one Representative) who were neither employees nor elected representatives of the Federal Government. That has evolved further but the details are unimportant to my main message today.

My main point is that the Electoral College was, and is, intended to assure that a key role for the states is preserved in reflecting the voice of the people. A move to have the election decided entirely by a national popular vote, as some have suggested, would, in my opinion, subvert this key intent of the founders to preserve the key interests of each state, whatever its attributes among the diverse interests across the nation.

Just consider below the returns from the 2016 election of Donald Trump by the count of electoral votes — even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote. Ms. Clinton’s majority is heavily biased by the major metropolitan areas, especially in the Northeast and the West Coast.

Urban areas tend to be more liberal, for whatever reason; and rural areas tend to be more conservative. These considerations are also important in considering the implications of today’s elections results.

Other pertinent interests can also be discerned by studying such information — e.g., areas along the southern border might be influenced by recent immigrants seeking more political power. Later today, it will be interesting to see whether the rust belt in the Midwest continues to switch from its past tendency to vote Republican — or whether it returns to its previous ways.

It will also be interesting to see the trends for governors in 36 states — over 70-percent of our 50 states.

Thus, considering the distribution of “grass root” state interests reflected by the outcome of today’s important election will reflect America’s interest in remaining a republic and not becoming a democracy, and thereby remaining responsive to the Founders’ intention, and Benjamin Franklin’s challenge following the signing of the Constitution.

Indeed, one more time: “A Republic if we can keep it!”

The Way Ahead for EMP?

While pondering the election returns, I keep hoping for a different direction on our efforts to deal with the existential threats to our electric power grid—especially from electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Hopefully, the Trump administration will soon be taking a very different much more constructive approach. And hopefully, leadership will come from the top because of the oft-demonstrated lethargy of the federal bureaucracy.

President Trump long ago highlighted his interest in countering the electromagnetic threat…hopefully his administration will follow through, beginning in the White House. Again, click here for my October 9, 2018 message discussing these issues, and urging that an Executive Order establish that leadership because of the failures of the federal establishment.

One more time: Former EMP Commission Chairman Wiliam R. Graham’s criticized the DoD that has:

Failed to transfer much of its technical capabilities and accomplishments to other agencies of the federal government;
Failed to use its knowledge to assist and critique activities of other federal agencies, including the intelligence community;
Failed to declassify EMP environment and effects data and predictions that, while known to U.S. adversaries, are not available to the U.S. public, U.S. infrastructure organizations, and U.S. professional societies that develop specifications and standards for protecting critical national infrastructure;
Failed to obtain the complete archive of Russian nuclear weapons effects data when offered for sale to the U.S. at modest cost in 1996;
Failed to inform the Congress and the public of the present and continuing existential EMP threat to the nation; and
Failed to develop and pursue plans to protect the U.S. from EMP threats.

As he stated, “Overall, for more than a decade, the DoD has been derelict in its duties to lead the country in providing for national defense and security from EMP attack. This dereliction of duty should not be allowed by the leadership of the Administration and the Congress to continue. “

Because of such failures, I argue against giving DoD responsibility to lead future efforts to deal with the existential EMP threat, as was directed by the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 (NDAA 2019).

I would next skip to Dr. Graham’s very important conclusion and recommendation on his personal report’s final page:

“That the 2014 Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) report on EMP is factually erroneous and analytically unsound;” [emphasis added] and

That “the Director of National Intelligence [should] withdraw the JAEIC EMP Report and direct that the [last] EMP Commission critique of the JAEIC EMP Report be circulated to all the recipients of the 2014 JAEIC EMP Report, which is a threat to national security by impeding progress on EMP understanding and protection.”

Since the JAEIC is strongly influenced by the Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Laboratories, I would argue they have demonstrated by their irresponsible failure that they at a minimum do not understand the threat; and therefore the DOE should not be trusted to lead future government efforts to deal with the EMP threat to our critical civil infrastructure.

And I agree with Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, that such a task should not be given to the Department of Homeland Security because it has far too much on its plate already and is only beginning to address the congressional directives to deal with the EMP threat.

Thus, I believe this situation demands that the needed “Executive Agent” should be in the White House “with the “authority, accountability, and resources to manage U.S. national infrastructure protection and defense against the existential threat. . .” as Dr. Graham also recommended.

My personal recommendation is that the President should follow the “Marsh Commission” model embodied in a 1996 Presidential Executive Order to recommend an integrated approach to counter the Cyber threat. Click here for several of my previous messages that elaborated on this recommendation. Click here for the complete 1996 Executive Order, which led to the so-called Marsh Commission, after Retired USAF General Robert T. Marsh who chaired the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection — as a salaried position in the White House.

Bottom Lines:

Let’s remain a Republic…and teach our young people why!

While taking a timeout to consider the outcome of today’s election, we should redouble our efforts to counter the existential EMP threat with new leadership, beginning in the White House.

Also, the future of the President Trump’s Space Force initiative remains a very important matter — that should become more apparent soon.

Stay tuned.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

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