Is democracy "majority rule"? Or something much more complex and effective?

I'll append a few current politics comments at-bottom, especially about the just-culminated and hilariously shameful beginning of the latest U.S. Congress and the Kevin McCarthy Speakership. But overall, this post is about an aspect of Democracy that (alas) is far too misunderstood, even by the myriad citizens who benefit from it.

== What actually is modern ‘democracy’? ==

Knowing that their aging and ill-educated cult is in demographic collapse, the Foxites are now frantically railing against Democracy itself (along with science and every fact-using profession), equating Democratic government with Mob Rule. 

"We are a republic, not a democracy!" they shout, while defending gerrymandering and other cheats to rob voting power from 'easily-manipulated' urban populations in favor of 'Real America.' (Meaning rural/red counties, of course.*)

The latest meme in support of this agitprop campaign is a purported quote from Thomas Jefferson:

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

As Snopes reveals, not only is this 'quotation' nowhere remotely attributable to Jefferson, it runs diametrically opposite to the philosophy of the 3rd president, who called for Athenian styles of democracy, rather than a Federalist style Republic.  

(Elsewhere I go into several other supposed quote-aphorisms that are flat-out lies, used to diss our Enlightenment Experiment. On the other hand, in emocracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville appraised the versions of active democratic assembly that he saw and pproved mightily.) 

Of course, those pressing this purportedly Jeffersonian meme against democracy are also ignoramus-ingrates, yowling at the very same experiment that gave them everything. Moreover, even if Jefferson had said that, it would have nothing to do with us! 

Because we do NOT have 'majority rule,' in the USA! 

== Not Majority Rule ==

Rather, by design, we have a somewhat more grownup and subtle form of democracy called Minority Veto. 

Find me a time in recent US history when any proposal or opinion held by 51% of the population got saddled on an intensely angry 49%! Generally, depending on its size and intensity - and in the absence of flagrant cheating - large minorities of voters can prevent any "51 percent" from imposing actions that deeply offend them. 

Indeed, the art of politics is all about negotiation and compromise, so that a 51% majority can grow sufficiently larger, while the objecting minority's crucial product of size times vehemence lessens considerably. Only then does any measure generally pass to become law.

This can happen through removal of objectionable features, or else with tradeoffs... you get something in return for getting out of the way and allowing the majority's endeavor to pass. Or else by pushing reforms incrementally  forward, until factors like public opinion can get used to a new idea.

Yes, this often means that progress is slowed, until this kind of negotiated consensus can take form incrementally. Take a famous example - LBJ's Civil Rights Bill of 1964. (Watch the great Bryan Cranston film "All The Way"!) 

In 1964, with the JFK assassination still resonating, Johnson finally had the coalition he needed in order to pass a bill... but just barely! In order to get something before the mood passed, squeaking through an immediate banning of segregation in services and accommodations and public places - by itself the greatest advance of American freedom since the Civil War - LBJ had to strip out the provisions dealing with Voting Rights. 

Naturally and understandably, activists howled over the omission! MLK himself had to step up and calm them down, just enough to keep the coalition together. Whereupon, with a subsequent landslide in the general election, in their pockets, LBJ/Humphrey et. al. were then able to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act! (A law that Republican judges and fanatics are now subjecting to full-pressed assault.) 

That maneuver was a classic example of what I described above. A one-year delay that was morally indefensible was also essential, in order to get what a majority of the public by then wanted: incremental progress to fight a century of far worse betrayals.

Likewise, LBJ was able to get NASA fully funded, winning over southern senators by putting most NASA centers in southern states.

Likewise, folks nowadays seem to forget that Bill Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy re gays in the military was a huge step forward from the situation that preceded it. An incremental step that quickly accustomed military folk and reduced objector vehemence, setting the stage (very soon, in fact) for later complete abolition of another horrific injustice.

It's a list that could go on and on, including the vital Pelosi bills of 2021 and 2022, that entailed so many compromises to keep aboard both Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders... though the results were inarguably great for a nation whose decision making and problem-solving processes (called "politics") had been deliberately sabotaged by the other party, for 20+ years.

== Our enemies notice this, even if you don't ==

Is Minority Veto actually functioning, right now?

 OF COURSE NOT! 

At present, the Mad Right that has hijacked U.S. conservatism uses their "49%" minorities - sometimes 51% majorities but far more often 40% or less - to prevent absolutely anything from happening in the public interest. Not without herculean feats, like those Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden achieved in 2021 and 2022, over the tightly disciplined uniform resistance of a GOP schooled under the Hastert Rule to never negotiate. Never compromise. 

(Think I am exaggerating? Subtract the Supply Side tax grifts for oligarchy and howls of negativity toward Obamacare and the IRS, and what actual assertive legislation can you recall being on the GOP agenda, in this century? While you are at it, look up Dennis Hastert, whom the GOP made head of their party and House Speaker, sealing the never negotiate rule. Look up his bio all the way to the end.)

The destruction of politics as an art of consensus building in the USA is the core objective of the oligarchic worldwide putsch. Having lost the popular vote in all but two national elections across the last 35 years, and with Democratic policies vastly more popular among citizens, the Republican tactic under Minority Veto is to emphasize the second factor in that crucial calculus of Minority Veto -- size times vehemence -- in order to block any action by the majority, indeed, any assertive political action at all.  

Vehemence has been stoked to a degree that amounts to Phase 8 of the American Civil War.  

The key point to take away from all of this is that the enemies of constitutional democracy - one that is about constantly adjusting and negotiating improvements - are inveighing against the last best hope of humankind, compared to 99.9% of grinding human history. 

When Peter Thiel says "I no longer believe democracy is compatible with freedom," what he means is that neither are compatible with the oligarchy's planned return to 6000 years of feudalism.

== And the relentless return of traitors ==

Amid the roil of modern politics, someone has to point at the unusual perspective. For example, I am less fixated on clowns like Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are surface shills for deeper sicknesses.

Want a more worrisome symptom? Here's more utter hypocrisy from the Very Worst American. George Will often blathers some things that are obviously good/true, in order to build sly credibility for his endlessly creative and brilliantly parsed incantations in support of treason.

Meanwhile... wasn't that 15 ballot torment of Kevin McCarthy fun? Pundits discuss McCarthy's long list of concessions-to-radicals, in order to squeak into Speaker with a minority of members' votes. Concessions like theatrical Hunter Biden 'investigations' and putting jibberers on the Rules Committee. Plus at least 5 'contract' promises to slash spending and balance budgets. 

One problem. Despite blowhard spews, Republicans have never - across 40 years - been as fiscally responsible as Democrats. Ever, even once. They do have one huge budget cut in mind. (Well more, if they succeed in cutting aid to beleaguered Ukraine.) No, it's not repealing Obamacare; that goal is never mentioned now that the ACA is hugely popular and effective. 

No, the aim is to eviscerate the IRS which got full funding last year, after decades sabotaged by the GOP on behalf of oligarchs, whose Cayman Island grift accounts will now get scrutiny.

So, if the IRS finds scandalous crimes that include GOP pols, might that shred McCarthy's coalition? Get some nutters jettisoned? Get others to finally find their nerve to make that Goldwater Party of decent conservatism?

Hey, I am a science fiction author. But clearly, I also do fantasy.

Breaking the "Great Wall of NDAs" and Republican defectors - and more

Below I'll offer on-blog a riff about the "real Kremlin plan" that blew up likes and shares on FB. Plus a suggestion for Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg and other "good billionaires." But first a reminder!

My e-book about our current political/social crises - Polemical Judo -  offers perspectives on our crisis - many that you’ve never seen. Over 100+ tactics to help defend our Great Experiment. Now in both e-book and paperback.  More ideas, meme-weapons and  perspectives than you could shake a stick at. See the intro and Table of Contents plus Chapters One and Two as well as Chapter 16 posted online.

Verifying what you already know about my ego, I believe we’re more likely to win this fight for the heart, mind and (yes) soul of civilization, moving forward with sapience and sense, if any of the 100+ now-unused tactics in this book get picked up by someone with position and sagacity to wield them well. Tell someone! Thanks and good luck to us all. 

== Electoral Updates ==

A federal appeals court has held that members of the Electoral College have a constitutional right to vote for a different presidential candidate than the one they swore to support — and whom the voting public in their states actually chose.

“Inventing a right to be a faithless elector invites chaos, elevates formalism over democracy, and shows how indefensible originalism is when applied to evolving norms of democracy.”

Meanwhile voting machines in Texas and Mississippi, where there are no paper audits possible (as in many red states) dry runs for next year's tsunami of cheating are already underway, with machines made by notorious right-and-russia-connected companies blatantly switching votes before the voter's eyes. See videos of it happening - in Missisippi and in Texas! But don't worry. They'll fix the "blatantly" part and hide it from the voter in the booth. Problem solved.  

Better yet, watch John Oliver's excellent exposé on voting machines.

Spread the word. ONE RICH DUDE could fix this! By offering a $5million whistleblower prize - plus guaranteed protection and hero status - for the employee of any company who brings forth proof of cheating. If proof doesn't appear, you don't pay! (But you'll still instill fear in those bastards.) If you do wind up paying, you become a hero for saving the nation.

See my Henchman posting about how this could work. Or the chapter in Polemical Judo.

== the Bloomberg example ==

If Michael Bloomberg truly wants to fight Trump - and be viewed as a hero, not an egotist - there’s an approach that’s cheaper, more dignified and likely far more effective than running for president. Let him - or any other civilization-loving zillionaire - offer to pay the legal expenses of anyone who’s thinking about breaking a Trump Non Disclosure Agreement. Trump has openly bragged about his Great Wall of NDAs.

Better yet, offer to pay the NDA's disclosure penalty. Yes, many rich dudes have NDAs and might fear the resulting releases aimed at them.  So? Make that a feature, not a bug, by openly embracing transparency and being seen as a hero.

Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal are just the crust we see. Breaking through Trump’s mythology of vengefully-enforced coerced silence just a couple of times might shatter the whole edifice, unleashing a tsunami of revelation.

Or see elsewhere my much broader proposals for subsidies for whistleblowers and or repentant henchmen!

== International tensions ==

Regarding the recent attack on Saudi oil: If this is what some tribesmen can do (possibly with help from Iran and Saudi shiite rebels) can you imagine what will happen when the worldwide oligarchic putsch finally awakens a hundred million "boffins" to the war being waged against them? The one common thread across the Fox-Putin-Trumpist-Saudi right and the Maduro-Kim-Putin left is not racism... it is all out suppression of fact professions, from science, journalism and medicine to the "deep state" civil servants and intel/fbi/military officers, the ones most vested in our Great Enlightenment Experiment.

Yes, those are the ones standing in the way of a return to 10,000 years of inheritance feudalism. But you aristos are doing what your predecessors all did, surrounding yourself with flatterers instead of advisors who can warn you -- that the "boffins" are waking up. And when they do, those who know genetics, electronics, nuclear, bio and cyber won't be limited to tumbrels and guillotines. And they will know where to find those mansion holes in the desert or mountains or under the sea.

The smart rich know better. And if you don't then you should wake up and get better advisors. Here's a hint. If they flatter you, then they are your guides to the guillotine.

== Moscow Mitch “defends minority party rights! ==

Sorry but it just keeps on coming. Now "Moscow Mitch" defends the filibuster... which is great news because it suggests he foresees a collapse in GOP Senate ownership coming! While his op-ed overflows with lies and hypocrisy, I have a special take on one aspect, one of 100+ "agile moves" you'll find in Polemical Judo.

Simple: grant every *individual* member of Congress one compulsory subpoena per term -- the ability to summon testimony from any person before one of the member's sub-committees, for three hours. Think about it. Pelosi and Schumer can afford that. It would not block legislation. Some mad-rightists would use it to annoy. BFD. Most Republicans would hoard theirs for use in some way that impresses the home district.

Above all, if gopper reps used theirs, it could establish a firm precedent for when -- not if -- dems are back in the minority! Think how valuable that would have been, during the 24 out of 26 years the GOP owned Congress. Especially 2017-2019, when that rule would have peeled away Trumpian travesties.

Pelosi could do that now! and demolish forever any accusations that "Democrats run roughshod over minority party rights." (Indeed, has she read my blogs? Because the new impeachment hearings have been generous with minority subpoenas.)

== Where are the GOP defectors? ==

I've been (as you know) tracking signs of an underground movement by retired or retiring GOP figures, simmering and trying to scheme for the "salvation of US conservatism." I doubt Gov. Weld (the only one with guts to step up, so far) is part of it. Nor would be the stand-up Schindler-figure, Justin Amash (resembling Oskar Schindler, a creep who refuses to sink alongside his comrades into outright evil.) Certainly Romney is scheming - that's a given, no matter what else! But the flood of recent Texas retirees? Who knows?

The figure we aren't seeing, who is doubtless talking to desperate zillionaires is - of course - Paul Ryan. (Remember him? You will, soon.)

Deterring all of this, of course, is the 88% approval rating of Trump among Republican voters. Left out of those polls? The plummet in self-identified Republicans, nationwide, threatening the zombie implement that has served Murdoch and Putin so well. (And yes, I deeply worry what will happen when Two Scoops is seen by them as more a liability than asset: Don't eat anything fed to you by your commie pals, Don, lest you be more valuable to them as a martyr.) (God bless the U.S. Secret Service!)

Also, just how *brittle* is that 88% gopper support? I recall Watergate, when Nixon's devoted backing collapsed, like sediment raining from a supersaturated solution, or like sentiment draining from tens of millions of Republican women.

Final thought: the GOP masters should ponder deeply the fate of the Junkers-caste 1930s Prussian oligarchs, who thought they could control a populist beast they helped stir into hydrophobic frenzy. Surprise, surprise! In its froth, the beast threw its riders and a gifted svengali leaped aboard, grabbing the reins. (Remember the line from Cabaret: "Do you still think you can control them?")

The beast is not to be blamed as much as the beastmasters who crafted this outbreak. You who thought you could control this weren't as smart as you thought you were. And the smartaleck "fact-people" you've waged war against are not as stupid as you envisioned.

History would have predicted this. If you bothered to learn any.

The U.S. election: a sea-change for the GOP? Or swan song?

A notion has spread -- foisted not just by cable news, but all media -- that the recent U.S. mid-term elections manifested some kind of tidal surge favoring Republican Party policies. Alas, the most disturbing thing about that meme is how pathetically easy it is to refute.

1) Democrats in 2014 had to defend 13 Senate seats in red or purple states. Mostly, the GOP reclaimed a number of naturally-red seats that had swung out of their grasp in a wave of revulsion toward the Bush era, amid Barack Obama’s first landslide. Here's your GOP "wave" - Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alaska, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina.  (In fact, the dems held on to Virginia, boding poorly for the GOP. See below)

Nothing makes more clear the dismal state of journalism than its inability to show this on a map.

Things will be different in 2016, when Republicans will defend 24 Senate seats, of which18 are likely to be competitive based on geography and demographics. Democrats will be in peril of losing just one seat that could be competitive. And it could get worse for the GOP. There is chatter about potential Republican retirements in Arizona and Iowa. If either John McCain or Chuck Grassley decided to call it a career, each of those races would be major Democratic targets. 

Further, says Chris Ladd, one of the few openly Republican commentators to lift his head and reject the connivers who’ve hijacked his party: 

“Almost half of the Republican Congressional delegation now comes from the former Confederacy.” Illustrating my point that this is no longer about “parties or “left-vs-right” anymore. It is a re-ignited phase of the American Civil War.

2) Moreover, this election was just about the worst in U.S. history, for voter involvement. In 43 states, less than half the eligible population bothered to vote, and no state broke 60 percent. A first to be proud of. 

As Chris Ladd put it: “Republicans in 2014 were the most popular girl at a party no one attended.” Why? “Vote suppression is working remarkably well, but that won’t last. Eventually, Democrats will help people get the documentation they need."

(Elsewhere I describe how failure to provide compliance assistance is the smoking gun, proving that voter ID laws had only one intent, all along.)

Indeed, some factors that depress turnout during midterms have the opposite effect in presidential years. For example, good feelings. A sense that things are improving. Take the steadily improving US economy.  U.S. consumer spending rebounded last month, but confidence among consumers is surging at a faster pace. 

Deficits are declining steeply, as always happens in Democratic administrations. Throw in lower gas prices, engendered partly by U.S. shale but equally – say experts – by the 2009 CAFÉ increases in car mileage standards that sent fuel efficiency rocketing skyward, saving consumers billions… and which the GOP has sworn to repeal.

Midterms tend to say “relax” to folks who see times improving. But presidential elections bring such voters out, in force.

(Regarding budget deficits, any US citizen who sincerely cares about fiscal responsibility would have to be crazy ever to go anywhere near the GOP, ever again. The second derivative rate of rate of change of debt is always negative under democrats and always positive under republicans. Period. Always. A grownup faces facts that veer from expectation – and adapts. See: Do Outcomes Matter More than Rhetoric?)

3) Policy-wise, voter decisions were very different than this purported “landslide” would have you believe.  For example:

- Every major Democratic ballot initiative was successful, including every minimum wage increase, even in the red states.

- Every “personhood amendment” failed.

- Libertarian minded voters are starting to take note that the archaic-insane Drug War is being deregulated away only in Blue States. Hence, the current libertarian cant (fostered at great expense by the Koch Brothers and Steve Forbes) that “Republicans are less anti-freedom than statist democrats” is starting to shred.

Further, word is getting out that only democrats deregulate onerous government over-reach. Who abolished the ICC? The CAB? Or broke up Ma Bell? Or unleashed an unregulated Internet? Democrats. The GOP – for all its ranting about bad bureaucracy – has only ever deregulated one industry… Finance/Wall Street. And we saw how that went.

- But the biggest reason to doubt that this election reflected preference for GOP policies is simple.  What policies? 

Other than the Keystone Pipeline, there are no positive things on their agenda, only negatives -- explaining why this U.S. House of Representatives has been the laziest in the history of the republic. (See below.) And sure, Fox uses negative motivation effectively.  But it has driven away people who want to move ahead. (Also below, see stats on US scientists.)

5) The hypocrisy of those who now proclaim a “mandate” from the American people, based on a margin of 3% in actual votes, in the lowest-attended national election ever… after they shrugged off two landslide elections of Barack Obama as “meaningless,” is stunning proof of selective insanity.

6) All of the voting machine manufacturers are now owned by radical republican factotums, some of them with criminal records. This does not matter much in most blue states, where laws require that the process include a paper receipt that the voter can peruse and verify herself, and that can be hand-counted in random audits of precincts.  This means any large scale reprogramming of the voting machine results will eventually send the machine makers to prison.

In red states, there are often no such laws. No one knows how to audit the machines’ output and that is just fine by the party running those states. In other words, many tens of thousands of votes may be electronically altered without repercussions. No single fact more clearly portrays the fundamental difference in basic citizenship, between the Olde Confederacy and its blue opponents, in our ongoing struggle over American destiny.

7) As for future GOP prospects?  They are very dim in any election wherein women, minorities or the young actually vote. The map of “safe” states for a democratic presidential candidate is spectacularly good.  Mr. Ladd again:

 “…at the outset of any Presidential campaign, a minimally effective Democratic candidate can expect to win 257 electoral votes without even trying. That’s 257 out of the 270 needed to win.”

If one includes Virginia… and Ladd argues one should… then the total number of “safe” democratic presidential electors is 270, all that’s needed to win.

== So what will the GOP Congress actually do? ==

Almost certainly nothing. Or nearly so. Again, to be clear, under Speaker John Boehner the United States House of Representatives became the laziest, least productive and most corrupt in the history of theRepublic, with fewer bills passed or even introduced, fewer hearings held or subpoenas issued, and fewer days in session, than any Congress since congresses began. Oh, but the most days spent away from the Hill, raising mountains of money.

Sure, the pace of legislative deliberation may pick up, now that the GOP controls the Senate. One can hope. Take this headline. “Mitch McConnell's Mission: Making The Senate Work Again.” We’ve seen a week of hype that Senator McConnell sincerely wants to get down to business! Or this from The Washington Post: “Republican leaders, too, are inclined to clear the legislative decks of must-pass bills so they can start fresh in January, when they will have control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in eight years.”

Indeed we can hope! And that they negotiate with the President and their colleagues on the Hill.

But given six years of filibustering obstructionism and laziness, one can be excused some cynicism. Recall that the GOP controlled Congress for TWELVE years, from 1995 to 2007 and for the last six of those, they controlled every branch and lever of the US government, from presidency to courts to Congress and so on. 

What did they do with that perfect and complete lock on power?  Did they take control of our borders?  Solve the "entitlements crisis?" Balance budgets? Deregulate reviled agencies? Offer a plan for health care reform? Can you recall anything they actually did, during those years? Other than deregulate banks and Wall Street? 

No. If liberals are the manic side of our national bipolar disease, conservatives are the depressive side. In an era when we need agility while charging into an uncertain future, their reflex is to growl: “No! Let’s do nothing. And get off my lawn.”

(Also on this topic, but detailed: Election 2014: Getting to No – And Staying There: After so many years of the GOP holding the government hostage, what happens when the party whose job is stopping change takes control?) 

== But 'NO" is a magic word ==

Take the accompanying graphic… it is obsolete. By now a vast majority of blockages – across all of US history - have targeted this administration alone, depriving the American people of a functioning government. But to the GOP's owners that is a feature! 

The deliberate destruction of politics as a pragmatic system for negotiating solutions to problems has been the great achievement of the Koch-Murdoch-Saudi axis. Earlier phases of the confederacy never accomplished such a thing. But this version has an openly stated goal that “government of the people, by the people, for the people SHALL perish from the Earth.”

Is all of this about to change? On the one hand, McConnell and his colleagues know the math for 2016. They can see they need to craft a better image or else go extinct. Perhaps there will be a few White House lunch meetings and one or two mentions of compromise.

But in fact, there truly is no chance of a détente. Across the last 60 years, democratic congresses have generally deferred to or negotiated with republican presidents, allowing them (with some big exceptions) to get their nominees passed. This has never been true in reverse. Not once, ever. Especially since the GOP openly declared its Hastert (“never negotiate”) Rule.

Indeed, few issues did more to divide the Senate over the past several years than the vetting of Mr. Obama’s judicial and executive-branch nominees.  

And now note: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg is 81 years old.   You can be certain of a firestorm, when Obama appoints her replacement. (She of course should have retired a year ago.) 

No, the turtle does not change his scales.

== A Genuine paladin for reviving a sane GOP ==

I’ve mentioned before that there are glimmers, here and there, of what America must do, in order to end this deliberately re-ignited phase of our self-destructive Civil War.  

What is needed is for fifty million “ostrich republicans” – basically sane, pro-science, and pro-markets, but right now burying their heads in utter denial, staring at Sean Hannity and pleading with him to keep them hypnotized – what’s needed is for fifty million of them to finally wake up. To see and admit and get angry over the fact that their movement has been hijacked by (at best) crazies and (at-worst) outright traitors.

What will it take for ostriches to take notice and rebel, to save their movement? To return it to being about competitive enterprise, community empowerment and Adam Smith?

Signs of sharp divergence from those things have been visible for years.  For example, the American right, which used to admire knowledge and expertise, is now in full tilt war against science. (See The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney.) Thirty years ago, 40% of U.S. scientists called themselves Republican, now it is 5%. They are voting with their feet, the smartest, wisest, most logical and by far the most competitive humans our species ever produced. 

And not just science! Can you name for me one profession of high knowledge and skill that is not under attack by Fox and its cohorts?  Teachers, medical doctors, journalists, civil servants, law professionals, economists, skilled labor, professors… oh, yes and science. Should this brain drain matter?

Not according to Fox, which touts the notion that brains automatically correlate with stupidity and lack of wisdom. What a meme! But some of you believe it. Indeed, that noxious meme is shared in some quarters of the left.

Is anyone out there trying to ease the pain of Barry Goldwater’s ghost, or to stop the spinning in William F. Buckley’s grave? 

George Will – almost by his witty self -- could have done this thing and helped to save the country, if he weren’t a rationalizing coward. There are glimmers of an uprising over on the pages of The American Conservative… but that rebellion and re-evaluation is tepid, glacial, timid.

Still, one seeks hope.  Indeed, at last, we may have found a hero who has the intellect and courage to condemn the Koch-Murdoch-Ailes-Saudi hijacking of U.S. Conservatism.  I quoted from Mr. Chris Ladd, above. I know very little about the fellow, but his postings show that he is no shill for the statist left. His opposition to the Murdochian madness is based on a wish for the United States to have a party dedicated to enterprise and finding competitive, non-state solutions to real problems, in a flat-open-fair marketplace of products, services and ideas…

…as Adam Smith prescribed -- and as every generation of Americans has had to redefine and refresh. It is not leftism that today’s oligarch-owned GOP opposes, but the very principles and practical miracles that it is supposed to defend.  Which is why conservatism today never mentions Adam Smith.

I hope Mr. Ladd gets some scrutiny and attention.  It will be interesting to see if his “GOPlifer” column maintains quality and gains traction.

== Continue to Part II