Principles, Personalities, and Platform

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After disappointing midterm election results and the precipitous (self)-immolation of former President Donald Trump, where do the right and the Republican Party go from here?

First, it is a minor miracle that Republicans have won some recent elections and have proven that they can still win elections in the United Soviet States of America. It is a miracle because almost every major legacy media outlet, every major social media platform, and Google—the company with near absolute control over information—is a leftist, authoritarian organ of the state run by the Democratic Party. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and the subsequent revelations about its manipulation of public opinion, have merely verified what we already knew—that the social-media giant has been an adjunct of the Democratic Party and the State the Party has been running unilaterally.

We have learned that both current and past employees of the FBI have been busy policing opinion and information, directing its corporate cohorts to ban what the agency deemed “disinformation,” including the infamous and unsavory Hunter Biden laptop story.

We know from the “Russian collusion” investigation and the crimes committed to launch and execute it that the upper echelon of the FBI and the Department of Justice consists of Democratic Party operatives. In other words, the Democratic Party has seized control of the DOJ and politicized the rule of law.

Separately from the Twitter files and Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s own admissions, we have learned that under the Biden regime, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is also a Democratic Party organ. The DHS established back channel access to Facebook and Instagram, with the ability to flag and remove content deemed injurious to the people’s “trust in government”—that is, trust in uniparty rule.

We know that Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell undermined conservative candidates in Alaska, Arizona, and Pennsylvania by denying them funding and other support. We know that Georgia’s (now-former) Republican Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan announced, before the run-off election, that he could not vote for Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate. With friends like these …

We know that the ongoing legal and political harassment of Donald Trump and the smearing of Republican candidates endorsed by him contributed to the uniparty narrative and weakened the Republican electoral bids.

We know that we have been under a globalist assault, with a ruling establishment bent on national destruction.

We know that globalist NGOs like the World Economic Forum (WEF) have driven a stake into the heart of the free market with “stakeholder capitalism,” overtaken the world economy with the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) index, and circumvented the will of the people, ushering in the Great Reset.

The list could go on and on. In short, we know that the cultural, economic, and political institutions—including election systems, academia, the school system, the media, the Internet, “corporate America,” the military, the departments of state, the churches, the common language, as well as every other major cultural, state, social, and economic edifice—have been infiltrated and overcome by subversive elites.

We know that the Gramscian cultural revolution is complete; the sought-after hegemony has been attained. The “culture wars” are long over. Only the body count remains.

And yet, Republicans managed to flip at least 16 seats to take control of the House (although the Senate remains in Democratic hands). This mostly pyrrhic victory nevertheless suggests that despite the conditions outlined above, a significant contingent of the American electorate and the public at large has managed to elude the onslaught of non-stop propaganda and to act independently of the subversive elites’ maniacal desiderata to undermine the nation.

The key, then, is to build on this minor victory and to continue the rescue mission, salvaging what remains of the constitutional republic. This mission supersedes the resurrecting of the Republican Party. Support for the Republican Party, after all, has resolved itself into the possibility, however remote, of saving the country. “Any port in a storm,” as they say, and the Republican Party represents the only viable port, although not a secure one.

To continue this rescue mission, we must place principles above personalities. By this I mean that the Republican Party must get its own house in order, suppress the influence of its establishment members, and offer a coherent, principled, and politically viable program to the American electorate—whoever they may be—even if that electorate includes illegal voters. Fitness for office should be considered in terms of putting principles before personal, political squabbles. Trump—who has been lambasted for supposedly calling for the suspension of the Constitution—must offer a principled, disciplined campaign and platform. Otherwise, he should be left behind. The cause for concern is not so much his ill-advised associations (the meeting with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes) but his rhetoric, given that he must know the wolves lie in wait, pouncing on his every utterance and keystroke.

What are the principles that Republicans must proclaim and promote? Individual liberty, the free market, national sovereignty (including border integrity), and constitutionalism.

I will not re-adjudicate the benefits of the free market. Suffice it to say, and it should be stated by the Republican Party, that the market economy has done better for humanity than any other economic system in human history. And further, the free market is necessary for ensuring individual liberty. Without property in oneself, one becomes a slave. All other property extends from self-ownership. And without private ownership of “the means of production,” wealth production is impossible. Private enterprise is the sine qua non of social welfare.

Under globalist assault, individual liberty and the free-market system require national sovereignty to protect them. And national sovereignty depends on the Constitution.

Yet, it is necessary to address corporatism, otherwise known as economic fascism, and the red herring of “economic inequality.” While the former contributes to the latter, it is not the sole determinant thereof. But these problems can be legitimately addressed through legislative means. The collusion of the state with corporate favorites, often by means of regulation, or the model that the WEF’s “stakeholder capitalism” advances, is the main reason for the popular attack on the market economy—Marxists and their unwitting dupes notwithstanding. Statists promote such collusion, then blame “capitalism” for its prevalence and effects. Economic inequality is otherwise a baseless charge against the market. The share of wage income in proportion to profit has been stable since the early 20^th century, and the market has increased the wealth and living standards of the majority to unprecedented degrees—despite not delivering a utopia that it never promised. The apparent weaknesses of the free market are almost all the result of statist interference.

The Republicans must assert the rights enshrined in the first ten amendments of the Constitution as absolute, although the rights themselves embed responsibilities and limitations. For example, the First Amendment does not permit direct incitement of violence against persons.

But the Biden regime has violated the First Amendment by involving the federal government in the suppression of speech in collusion with its Big Tech proxies. No longer does the refrain “but it’s a private company” apply. Despite officially canceling the “Disinformation Governance Board,” the DHS had already operated a disinformation campaign behind the scenes, and it continued to do so after the dissolution of the so-called Ministry of Truth. The FBI held regular meetings with Big Tech executives in the run-up to the 2020 election, with the express intent of censoring speech and information. This ongoing abrogation of rights must end immediately.

Globalism will be on the ballot in 2024. National sovereignty is at stake given a globalist agenda that aims to dissolve the barriers provided by the nation-state. The Democratic Party and their Republican enablers are the gateway to global control over the American citizenry. With its plans to sign the “Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response Accord,” for example, the Biden regime would cede national sovereignty to the World Health Organization. And with the climate-change regime, the nation cedes authority to the United Nations and the WEF.

The foregoing principles must find their way into a presidential platform. The Biden politburo has largely governed by executive fiat. The slew of executive orders has been overwhelming. They have undermined energy independence, thrown open the Southern border, exacerbated inflation, and accelerated national decline. Thus, part of the platform that Republican presidential candidates put forward should include executive orders that stem the bleeding caused by the Biden administration’s direct actions.

At least 12 of Biden’s executive orders have involved climate-change mitigation measures. As I have argued elsewhere, climate change catastrophism is based on flimsy premises. I’m afraid that Republican presidential candidates must address “the science” of climate change directly, just as Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo, with the backing of Governor Ron DeSantis, has challenged “the science” of COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccines. Otherwise, this pretext for behavioral control and economic suicide will go unchallenged.

Other executive orders involve the incursion of globalist economic policies premised, at least in part, on climate change catastrophism, including the implementation of ESG indexing in federal spending. In addition to reversing these orders, other measures can be taken to restore economic viability, individual rights, national security, and confidence in public health measures.

Following is a partial list of actions that a Republican president could take by executive order to begin reversing the damage:

It may appear that there is no getting rid of the unitary party dictatorship headed by Democrats and supported by their establishment allies in the Republican Party. There is a belief among many, if not most, Republican constituents—along with many independents—that the electoral system has been rigged and that the democratic system has failed. The despondence of those who seek to preserve the constitutional Republic is palpable. I have no more empirical evidence for this sentiment than Marx and Engels had for their claim (in The Communist Manifesto) that the specter of Communism haunted the world. I sense it.

But facing this specter, we must resist the temptation to resort to extra-constitutional means. The impulse to do to our opponents what they have done to us must be resisted; unless they are guilty of crimes, we should not endeavor to rescind their rights. The message must carry the day, and it must be pronounced more clearly, more emphatically, and more urgently than ever.