The View From Olympus: Greece Saves Europe (Again)

Lt. Col. "Willy" Theodoracopulos of the Hellenic Air Force knew the hardest part was over. He had successfully nursed the one flyable Greek F-16 over the Alps. Most of the aircrat's fancy systems were down from lack of maintenance, but the engine and controls still worked. It sounded as if they would continue to do so until he reached the Netherlands. That was all he needed; his was a one-way mission.Greece had put up as long as it could with being used as Europe's chamber pot. Germany's second-worst Chancellor ever, Hausfrau Merkel, had said to all the wretched of the Earth, "Come to Europe! Come and enjoy! Come one and all, the more the merrier," and come they did, by the millions. Europe found itself awash in human sewage, people from radically defective societies and cultures who brought all the defects with them.Orderly northern European societies found their order disappearing. Germans, Danes, and Swedes had to worry about the safety of their persons and property. Women now thought twice about going out after dark. In Malmo, young Islamic immigrants called it "hunting Swedes". It was easy, because Swedes had little sense of personal insecurity. Up until now, they had not needed it.Europe's elites, cultural Marxists all, demanded the gates stay open for millions more. To them, Islamic immigrants were just one more weapon in the fight to destroy Western civilization. The fact that the jihadis would cut the secularists' throats even before they cut the throats of Europe's remaining Christians did not bother them. Their hate for the West, inherited from Lukacs, Gramsci, and the Frankfurt School, was so vast it submerged everything else, even their own survival instinct.But northern Europeans who were not members of the elite saw it otherwise. Strangely, they wanted to survive. They resisted the elite's calls to commit social and cultural suicide. They demanded the doors be closed, and with new political parties that promised to close them rising fast, the politicians had to put on the brakes. They did not like doing it, but they liked even less the prospect of being out of office.The Hapsburg Empire, long the guardian of Europe's Balkan flank against the savage hordes of the Prophet, led the way. Technically Austria was now just a grubby little republic, but most Austrians knew that in the divine economy, an Austrian republic was an impossibility. Austria was the House of Hapsburg and the House of Hapsburg was Austria. Recalling who it really was, Vienna organized the Balkan states to close the door at the Greek-Macedonian border. Rumor has it there may soon be a referendum in Austria to resotre the monarchy, and that all the Danubian states are quitely talking about the need for some sort of federation.That left the immigrants piling up in Greece. Greece quickly realized it was being used as Europe's toilet, without a flushing mechanism. The rest of Europe shook its head and said, "Ja, sorry about that. We'll schedule some meetings to talk about it."So Greece did what it had to do. First, it set up machine guns on the beaches of the Greek islands off the Turkish coast, and when boats full of immigrants came in range, they hosed them. It only required shooting a few hundred people before the boats stopped coming. At least as many had been dying every month anyway in vessels that didn't make it.Second, Greece teamed up with Italy to round up the migrants on both countries' soil. They were put on ships, and the Greek and Italian navies escorted those ships to the coast of Libya where the immigrants were dropped off. Libya, having no state, could do nothing about it. It seemed it wasn't just Islam that could take advantage of stateless disorder.All the world's cultural Marxists screamed in unison, "Mass murder! Inhumanity! Fascism! Violation of international law!" Greece's leaders were indicted before the International Court of Justice at the Hague for "crimes against humanity". Who did these Greeks think they were, not willing their country should be crapped on?The Court promptly opened proceedings against the Greek leadership, in absentia. There was no question about the verdict.But Greeks remembered the last time the Persians had come. They got ready to fight. In the halls of the Greek Defense Ministry a plan was born. The Greek government, all facing spending the rest of their lives in a Dutch prison, gave the plan their blessing.And Lt. Col. Theodoracopulos's F-16 had crossed the Dutch border. The International Court's Chief Justice was once again solemnly condemning the "inhumane, vile, unallowable" actions of Greece in defending itself from invasion when Willy's F-16, carrying a full load of ordnance, did a kamikaze dive into the Court.All over Europe, the public cheered. The politicans ran for cover, literally as well as figuratively. Prominent cultural Marxists were hanged from lampposts. Greece had again saved Europe. If doing so required a Greek Air Force pilot's life, well, all Greeks knew the man who brought the news of Marathon also died. Sometimes, that's what it takes.

Scalia, the Court, and the Last Straw

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is far more important politically than most commentators have perceived. It opens the door to an action that could break up the country.At present, the Court has a four-vote block of hard-line cultural Marxists. When Scalia was alive, that block was balanced by four other Justices who were moderately to very conservative. The Chief Justice mediated between the two blocks, sometimes voting with one, sometimes the other, but almost always voting in favor of moderation.With Scalia gone, the Left can prevail but the Right cannot. Even if the Chief Justice votes with the conservatives, they fail on a tie. If he votes with the Left, they win.If Hillary Clinton is the next president, Scalia's seat will undoubtedly be filled by someone who votes with the Left. The Republican Senate will not have the guts to leave the seat open for four years--four years in which, again, the Left can win but the Right cannot. The same outcome is possible with a Republican in the White House: both Earl Warren and Souter were Republican picks.Should the Left get a five-vote block, the Supreme Court will become a "Revolutionary Tribunal" which will stop at nothing to force cultural Marxism down the throat of the rest of the country. It is easy to think of issues where that would be disastrous. Outlawing home schooling comes to mind. But there is one issue where a ruling by the Court could destroy the American state itself. That issue is "reparations".One of the top causes for American cultural Marxists is paying every American black a large sum of tax money as reparations for slavery. The notion is absurd. Those blacks were first enslaved in Africa, by Arabs or other blacks. Those who were sent to the American South were lucky compared to others who were sold to places like Haiti, where one-third of the black population was worked to death annually. Black Americans today benefit greatly from the fact that their ancestors were sent here rather than remaining in west Africa, which is one of the worst hellholes on Earth.Life in west Africa, most of it anyway, is so bad I am willing to make a bet. If someone sailed the replica of the Amistad, a slave ship, to almost any west African port and asked for volunteers to go to America, chained up just like their ancestors, and be sold as slaves once they got there, the line to get on board would be miles long. The draw of leaving Africa and getting to America would be so strong people would agree to anything in order to do it.As I have noted before in my columns, the whole slavery issue is cant. There are very few people on Earth who did not have slaves among their ancestors. In almost all the world throughout almost all of history, if you were captured in war, your alternatives were slavery or death. Most captives presumably preferred slavery.Before the Civil War, the South had black slave owners as well as white. The 1830 census shows about 1,700 black slave owners, who owned between them about 7,500 other blacks. In Louisiana, you could find black plantation owners who had black overseers over their black slaves. When the war broke out, those black plantation owners equipped a company of Confederate infantry as their contribution to the war effort. A non-trivial number of blacks fought for the Confederacy. Are all those blacks' descendants to get reparations for slavery?The whole notion of reparations is so absurd only cultural Marxists could believe in it. But it would not be difficult for someone to craft a case demanding reparations that would wend its way to a hard-Left Supreme Court. How would the rest of the country react to a ruling that said we must double the income tax to pay for, say, $10 trillion in reparations?If would rebel. That would be the final straw where Americans who are not black would say, "This isn't my country anymore." The rebellion would probably start with a Constitutional crisis as Congress refused to vote both the funds and the taxes. If the Court, and, perhaps, a sympathetic White House found a way around Congress, you would see the rise of a serious secession movement. Donald Trump's poll numbers show a good third of Americans might want out, with solid majorities in some states. Who would go first, South Carolina or Idaho?The rest of America will not pay reparations to blacks. Are the Chinese to get reparations for laws that tried to keep them out? Are the Irish to get reparations from Britain for the potato famine? Am I to get reparations for the killing of Hannah Dustin's baby by the Indians on the Massachusetts frontier in the 1690s (I am a Dustin descendant)? Are dogs to be given reparations for being tied up?These arguments would count for nothing to a Supreme Court with a five-vote culturally Marxist block. All that matters to ideologues is their ideology. If their actions caused the country to break up, well, what would that be to them? That's someone else's problem.But that is what is at stake in the fight to fill Justice Scalia's seat on the court. And avoiding hard-Left judicial dictatorship depends on the very weak reed that is the Republican Party.

You Can't Have a Constitution Without a Nation to Go With It

You can tell it’s an election year, because the Republicans are all of a sudden talking about the Constitution again.  Not that I mind, of course, but it seems that they only start paying attention to it when the generally more conservative and constitutionalist Republican primary voters start paying attention to them.  So suddenly, the political realm is filled with talk about what the Constitution says about every issue, from abortion to xylophone maintenance.

The problem that I see with this, however, is that at the same time as they are claiming their love and devotion to our founding document, most of these same politicians are pursuing policies relating to demographics and national sovereignty which are completely at odds with the perpetuation of the diluted remains of constitutional government.  Put simply, the mainstream Republican pursuit of amnesty, open borders, and massive immigration (both legal and illegal) works to destroy the very Constitution they profess to be so concerned about.

We must consider the following as a truism: There is no such thing as magic soil.  What I mean is that a person’s culture and upbringing do not change simply because that person occupies a new geographical location.  An immigrant (regardless of their legality) will not automatically possess a new set of fundamental political, social, cultural, and moral attitudes, simply because they occupy a place on American soil, or even have gone through the extended process of formally attaining American citizenship.  To see them acquire an American outlook to go along with their American residency requires time-consuming, extensive, and (in an ideal world) mandatory acculturation to our society and mores.  In days gone by, our society and government both worked to try to make that happen (with a fairly good success rate).  Unfortunately, our government has completely absconded (and is, in fact, hostile to) its responsibility to assimilate immigrants, and political correctness is increasingly tying the hands of anyone else who would seek to encourage immigrants to become genuine Americans in more than just a formal sense.  Diversity--the death-knell of any advanced civilization--is becoming the norm, rather than just an unfortunate but temporary exception.

That, of course, greatly affects our political climate, which in turn affects the reverence for (and consequent adherence to) our Constitution.  I believe that we can look at American history and see a steady erosion of our founding principles and constitutional government that goes hand in hand with our absorption of more and more immigrants from abroad.

Broadly speaking, there are three general “peak periods” of immigration to the United States.  The first occurred roughly between 1830-1860, and was primarily made up of British and Irish workers and German political refugees, most of them fleeing the crackdowns after the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848.  The second wave occurred between approximately 1880 and 1920, and was made up of large number of workers from southern and eastern Europe, though its early years also had a large Scandinavian component as well.  This is the immigration that most people have in mind when they fetishize Ellis Island and “coming from the old country”.  The third wave began with the liberalization of our laws in the early 1960s, and continues to this day.  This wave is characterized by a much greater proportion of immigrants coming from non-European nations, primarily south and east Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and especially Mexico and Central America. 

The first two waves of immigration were markedly different from the third.  In those waves, the immigrants were largely from Europe, and came from cultures that were at least distantly related to America’s prevailing Anglo-Saxon culture.  At the same time, there was pronounced encouragement of these immigrants to become Americans.  From official government entry policy down to the social assumptions of the man on the street, our attitude towards immigrants was guardedly welcoming, but on the supposition that they would make the effort to fit into our culture, rather than expecting us to cater to theirs.  There were no ballots printed in 75 different languages in those days.  Immigrants learned English (if they didn’t know it already) or they starved.  They were expected to be patriotic and to operate within our political and social norms.  No “honor killings” or shari’a law would have been tolerated back then.   

Despite this, we still see that these waves of immigration had a profound (and negative) impact on our political culture and constitutional fidelity.  In the decades closely following each wave of immigration, massive changes were made to our government and political realm as the immigrants began to take their places in the pool of available voters.

The first wave brought with it a combination of unprecedented political corruption combined with German radicalism.  It was on the heels of this wave that Tammany Hall really broke wide open as a political machine cultivating and controlling the votes of Irish immigrants in New York.  It was also in this time period that the newly-formed Republican party adopted its radical turn at the behest of the many Germans in America, during whose dominance America essentially was changed from the federal representative Republic she was founded to be to the sort of increasingly majoritarian and unitary democratic state that bodes so poorly for individual liberties and states’ rights.

The second wave saw large numbers of immigrants come in from countries with authoritarian traditions--especially those from various areas in the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires.    Almost none of them came from countries with genuine traditions of individual liberty or some form of constitutional rule of law.  As a result, these immigrants brought in with them the cultural preconception that government should both be obsequiously deferred to and looked to as a paternalistic provider.  It was this wave of immigrants who provided fertile grounds for advancing and then cementing the so-called “progressive” movement that looked to technocratic government for all the answers to our problems, and which eventually culminated in Roosevelt’s New Deal. 

In spite of the damage done by these waves, America still retained some of its original pristine constitutional purity in the 1950s and into the 1960s.  Free speech, freedom of religion, and the rest of the Bill of Rights were still largely in place.  Notwithstanding the rampant abuses of that document, the average citizen was still largely free to live as they pleased.

And then came the third wave of immigration to America. 

This wave has featured, and continues to feature, huge numbers of immigrants who have absolutely no connection to limited government, no understanding of constitutional restrains on government, and no concern for natural rights and individual liberties.  Indeed, in many cases, these immigrants come from places completely outside of any definition of Western civilization, and cannot be expected in any way, shape, or form to understand what American culture and society are really all about.

What’s worse, there is now (official or unofficially) no effort to assimilate these immigrants to American culture and civilization.  In many cases, there is not even the expectation that these immigrants will contribute positively to American society even in a purely economic sense. Witness the many who come to America solely to partake of our “entitlements” largesse.  Because no effort is made to assimilate them, the American polity continues to balkanize, the “melting pot” model giving way rapidly to the “rocky road ice cream” model where in the underlying substrate must make room for increasingly large and undissolved chunks of foreign objects. 

It is coincident with this third wave that we have really seen the rise of undiluted, raw socialism in America.  “Progressive” politicians have realized that it is advantageous to themselves to discourage the Americanization of immigrants, since this makes them less likely to reject the politicians’ offer of “free” goodies in exchange for votes.  Because these immigrants largely have no understanding of or care for things like individual liberties or constitutional government, they are not in the least concerned that the giving of these goodies will require the loss of liberty and the destruction of constitutionalism.  In other words, when you bring in millions of foreigners from socialistic countries with no real tradition of limited, constitutional government, you’ll eventually end up with a socialistic country with no more limited, constitutional government.  When that happens, the government is free to take away every liberty you have, regardless of what that dusty ol’ Constitution has to say about the matter.

And that’s what the Democrats (as well as the establishment Republicans) want – a government that they can use to milk the hard-working people of this country for money and power. 

This is why it is vitally important that the flow of immigrants into this country be halted, and those who are here be required to Americanize and assimilate, or else be asked to return to where they came from.  America is not simply a geographical or political entity.  It is a nation with its own unique culture, traditions, mores, and history.  Like every other nation on Earth, America deserves to be able to defend and preserve her own traditions--one of which was limited constitutional government designed to safeguard liberty and prevent the rise of tyranny.  If immigration presents a threat to that, then that immigration needs to be stopped until such a time as the “indigestible nugget” can be absorbed. 

In other words, if you want to preserve (and maybe even restore) the Constitution, you need to make sure that you have a population that understands and believes in its principles to go along with it.

The View From Olympus: Closing the Toy Store

A friend of mine recently sent me some back issues of a prominent defense magazine, IHS Jane's International Defence Review, which I enjoyed going through. Jane's Fighting Ships was one of my favorite books when I was young, though I find warships have become less interesting as they have grown more hi-tech. If only Germany would complete the Mackensen-class battle cruisers...But as I looked through the magazines, two thoughts came irrepressibly to mind. The first was that virtually none of the systems discussed or advertised have anything to do with real war, which is to say Fourth Generation war. They are useful only against other state armed forces, which is to say for jousts.The second thought was that these weapons, sensors, etc. represent enormous amounts of money. Just as the knights' armor became most elaborate and expensive when the knight was passing out of war, so the equipment of state armed forces has reached its highest prices just as those forces themselves become militarily irrelevant.Here we see two serious threats to the state itself and to a world made up of states. On the one hand, the state's armed forces cannot defend the state against Fourth Generation entities, which leaves states defenseless against their most dangerous threats. On the other hand, maintaining those armed forces has become so expensive that doing so is a major contributor to the bankruptcy of states.The world economy is now a bubble of bubbles, public and private debt piled to the sky as politicians seek to give clients something for nothing, ordinary people try to hold on to shreds of a middle-class existence as real wages fall and central banks create ever more liquidity. We have seennthis pattern before, and it always ends up in the same place: a major, long-lasting debt crisis, a great fall in both public and private resources, and, in the end, hyper-inflation.Soon, very soon I expect, no state will be able to go to the toy store anymore. The hyper-priced military systems we read about in Jane's will be unaffordable. Governments will simultaneously face two facts they can no longer ignore: defense budgets must be cut drastically (along with the rest of the state's budget) and their armed forces cannot win the wars that count.Wise governments, and wise leaders of state armed forces, would not wait until the full crisis is upon them. They would begin now the reforms that must come later. Institutions do better when they can follow a plan rather than having to respond to panic.What would such a reform program contain? First, it would move the state's armed forces away from planning for war with other states and focus on the real 4GW threat. That means, among other things, pushing Second Generation militaries into the Third Generation as a necessary precondition for facing the Fourth. That at root requires a change in institutional culture. Second Generation military culture is inward focused on processes, procedures, orders, etc., it is highly centralized, it prefers obedience to initiative, and it depends on imposed discipline. Third Generation culture is focused outwardly on the situation, the enemy, and getting the result the situation requires. Decision-making is decentralized, initiative is prized over obedience, and it all depends on self-, not imposed, discipline.Few state armed services will be able to make this transition. Their failure, ironically, will open the door to solving the budget problem. Simply defund, entirely, any service that cannot move beyond the Second Generation. As Mark Twain said of the male teat, they are neither useful or ornamental.In their place build new armed services suitable for 4GW. Because the main 4GW threat is on home soil, most of these will be National Guards. Ground forces will be light infantry. Most personnel will be fighting men, who also have skills, drawn from their civilian lives, that are vital in restoring order and functionality to communities disrupted by 4GW (cops are especially useful). Almost all equipment will be off-the-shelf civilian goods modified as needed. Nuclear forces will remain hi-tech, but once built they don't cost much and their bang for the buck is unrivaled.Poor Jane's will be reduced to writing about ultra-light aircraft, modified trawlers, and duel-use bulldozers. But perhaps someone here or there will use a bit of the money saved to build something interesting. Wasn't there supposed to be a fourth Yamato?

The View From Olympus: Can the Russians Do What We Cannot?

At the moment, the joint Russian-Syrian-Iranian offensive in Syria appears to be succeeding. That may change. But if Russian intervention does succeed in doing something at which the U.S. has consistently failed--returning an area lost to 4GW to state control--why might that be the case?The most important reason is strategic. Russia is supporting an established state, not trying to create a state. The Syrian state retains substantial legitimacy. It is strongly supported by virtually all non-Sunni Moslems in Syria and all non-Moslems. Why? Because if the Syrian state disappears, their choices will be conversion, flight, or death. A "democratic, inclusive, pluralistic" Syria can exist only in the minds of the fools who make America's foreign policy.I suspect a growing number of Syrian Sunnis would also at least accept, and perhaps welcome, the return of the Syrian sate, even under its current government. Tyranny is preferable to anarchy, and the Assad family's tyranny is mild compared to that of ISIS. To enable Sunnis who have rebelled to again accept the state, the Syrian government will need to offer them generous terms, i.e., forgive and forget. I suspect Moscow, run by realists, knows this.Operationally, the Russians have shown they can still design a campaign. By 1943/44, they were as competent at the operational level as the Germans. The U.S. remains as operationally incompetent as it always has been. Its campaign plans in Iraq and Syria were hopelessly warped by Washington's insistence on democracy. As one Marine battalion commander, recently returned from Afghanistan, said at a Boyd Conference, "Talking to a 14th century Afghan villager about the government in Kabul is like talking to your cat about the back side of the moon. You don't know what it's like and he doesn't care."But even with the politics removed, the U.S. military does operational art at the kindergarten level. After the First Gulf War, the U.S. Army preened and said it had shown the Russians it could now do operational art. It looked that way for a couple years, until it came out that the Republican Guard had gotten out of the Kessel largely unscathed. Frank's "left hook" attack was classic French methodical battle, meaning it was too slow. Schwarzkopf had just one operational decision to make during the whole campaign, to switch the Schwerpunkt to McCaffrey after Frank's fatal slowness was evident. He failed to make it. In the end, the Iraqis carried out their operational retreat better than the U.S. carried out its operational advance.Tactically, Russian tactics are easier to learn and more effective than American tactics. We know that from the Army's National Training Center; the Soviet-model OPFOR was quite open about it when I visited there.At this remove it is difficult to determine, but Russian tactical air power may also be more effective than American. The main reason is, again, that Russia is supporting an existing state, which offers an effective (by local standards) army with which Russian aircraft can work. The U.S. lacks that in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, except for the Kurds.There may be another factor at work: Russia doesn't care much about civilian casualties. In 4GW that is usually disastrous, but the Russian/Syrian offensives we are now witnessing look largely conventional. Strategically, they may be part of a Hama model approach to 4GW, which can work if it is over fast (and Russian tactics are based on speed). Tactically, Russia traditionally uses firepower massively, without regard for collateral damage, which is what they seem to be doing around Aleppo. U.S. airpower, in contrast, is used "surgically", which means in a war of pinpricks that goes on forever. At the moral level, that may be more disadvantageous than the Hama model, which is brutal but fast.International opinion, of course, is howling about Russian aircraft pouring it on. Washington would be paralyzed by such howls. Moscow, run by realists, doesn't give two kopeks for them. How many divisions has "international opinion"?If, in the end, Russia does succeed where we have failed, what will be the lessons? The main lesson is an old one. The Russian military, devastated by the dissolution of the Russian Empire (the USSR was merely an overlay), started thinking creatively. They have learned quite a bit. The senior levels of the U.S. military think only about money, not war.

Ted Cruz, Constitutional Conservative?

In the past few years I have noticed an increase in the use of the term "constitutional conservative", usually to describe a candidate or politician who is associated with the Tea Party or is otherwise generally considered more conservative by some degree. I have seen this term used a lot lately to describe Senator Ted Cruz, the recent winner of the Iowa caucus. Perhaps I am wrong, but I don’t recall this term being used much prior to a few years ago, which is why I noted it with some curiosity as it began to appear more frequently. Jack Hunter also notes the newness of the term in this article from 2012.

Presumably, a constitutional conservative is one who believes the U.S. Constitution should be strictly interpreted and abided by as originally intended by the Framers. Quaint notion, I know, but what confuses me about the sudden appearance of this term, is that there already exists a perfectly workable term to describe this political position. Such people have previously been called Constitutionalists.Now it must be conceded that there is some room for confusion here, because almost every pundit and politician believes or at least pretends to believe that the policies he promotes are within the bounds of the Constitution. Few American politicians announce their intentions to willfully ignore the Constitution or articulate any qualms with the Constitution. Both opponents and advocates of gun control, for example, generally believe the Constitution is on their side. The same is true of the abortion issue and on and on, but issues-activists don’t usually describe themselves as Constitutionalists either. Even people and organizations who place a particular emphasis on the Constitution, such as the ACLU, are not commonly called and don’t self-describe as constitutionalists. ACLU types might call themselves civil libertarians, for example, and they come to conclusions regarding the Constitution that are quite at odds with people who identify as Constitutionalists.

Despite some opportunity for confusion, "Constitutionalist" has over time come to mean a pretty specific set of beliefs, especially among people who identify themselves as such and use it to favorably describe others. Constitutionalists believe that the Constitution should be interpreted and followed as originally intended by those who wrote and ratified it. They reject the idea that the Constitution is a “living and breathing” document. Unless it has been specifically amended otherwise, they believe, the Constitution means now exactly what it meant in 1787 – 1789.

For the Constitutionalist, the Constitution is not primarily a document that outlines what the federal government can’t do, but is rather a document strictly describing what the federal government is authorized to do. The sine qua non of Constitutionalism is the belief in “enumerated powers” which flows from the determination that this was the intent of the Framers and state ratifying conventions. Along with this belief in enumerated powers, there are other beliefs that generally travel together, some to a greater or lesser degree. Constitutionalists reject the broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause. They reject judicial supremacy with regard to who has the “final say” in interpreting the Constitution, and some reject the practice of judicial review outright. (This is a bit of an intra-constitutionalist feud.) Constitutionalists do not automatically defer to the most recent Supreme Court decision to settle the constitutionality of a matter because they believe many such decisions are in error since they were not reached by originalist methods. Rather, they appeal to the original intent of the Framers each time a Constitutional question arises. They reject “incorporation”, meaning they don’t believe the Bill of Rights was originally intended to be applied to the states, and most reject that this was the original intent of the 14^th Amendment as well. Constitutionalists also tend to be open to the idea of state nullification and interposition and even secession as remedies for an overreaching federal government.

These beliefs can be, especially when taken as a whole, rather jarring to the modern consciousness which has come to accept the conventional wisdom on such matters. Nevertheless, they represent a consensus that serious Constitutional thinkers arrive at by the consistent application of the originalist methodology.

So how do so-called "Constitutional conservatives" differ from Constitutionalists proper? My hunch from the start has been that its original popularizers wanted a term that invokes the good feelings most people and especially conservatives have for the Constitution without all the baggage associated with "Constitutionalist", which has truly radical implications by modern standards, and this appears to be how the word is generally used. I searched “define constitutional conservative” and what I found were a lot of vague invocations of Constitutional “principles” and other general principles (fiscal responsibility for example) with very little explanation of how the Constitution was any more than a totem in this formulation. One article revealed by my search introduced the concept and then proceeded to define it by quoting...the Declaration of Independence? (The article did, however, confirm my impression that this is a term of relatively recent origin.) 

Constitutional conservatives seem to cherry-pick their application of strict constructionist principles to suit their needs. They invoke the Constitution to oppose the Obamacare mandate, for example, but are seemingly untroubled by the fact that a similar argument could be made against Medicare and Medicaid, the FDA, etc.  I don’t require that every candidate I support fall on his sword by inveighing against Medicare and the FDA or whatever on enumerated powers grounds. Dismantling the 80 – 90% +/- of the federal government that isn’t actually constitutionally authorized isn’t politically or logistically feasible at this time, but I do ask that if the Constitution is invoked to describe your politics, you not rhetorically concede the Constitutional legitimacy of such programs.

The aforementioned Ted Cruz and his supporters demonstrate well this disconnect between Constitutional conservative and Constitutionalist. For example, if you want me to take seriously your claim to the title "Constitutional conservative", you have to at least attempt to address the eligibility question from an originalist perspective. You can’t cite current law or a recent court case or conventional wisdom and pronounce the matter settled. While I think there is a growing consensus among serious originalists that Cruz is not eligible, an originalist case can arguably be made that he is, but you at least have to attempt to make that case. The original intent of the Framers with regard to the “natural born citizen” requirement seems not to have even occurred to many Cruz supporters I have interacted with, and they often seem perturbed by the mere suggestion that they need to address it. Perhaps if you want me to accept your professed devotion to the Constitution, maybe you shouldn’t swear your fidelity to a far off foreign country in your rather ungracious Iowa victory speech. Where the heck is standing with Israel in the United States Constitution?

So far as I can tell, Ted Cruz isn't even trying to represent the original intent of the Constitution or the spirit of the American Founders.

The View From Olympus: How Not to Do It

The protestors who took over the aptly-named Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon have garnered a fair amount of conservative empathy. Their issue, the Federal government's ownership of vast tracts of western land, is a legitimate one. As a story in the January 29 New York Times, "And Then There Were Five, or Four, Occupiers", put it, "the standoff did put into sharp relief a question raised time and again in American politics: Is the government us, or is it them?" Most conservatives know the answer is "them".None of that changes the fact that the occupiers offer a wonderful example of how not to fight the federal government. They blew it on every level: physical, mental, and moral.Physically, the idea of taking on the federal government with a handful of hunting rifles is beyond absurd. Such an effort can have only one result: defeat. Any armed challenge to the government must and will end in failure. Since early World War I, the battlefield has been dominated by crew-served weapons: machine guns, artillery, tanks, aircraft, etc. In theory, a movement could launch a guerrilla war against the U.S. government, but the result would be the destruction of the country, as we see in places like Syria. Armed resistance is not the way to go.When the current political establishment falls, it will fall of its own weight. No outside force can bring it down, much as I would like to see Trump, or even Cruz or Sanders, do so. It is already on the skids, although it doesn't know it. A combination of serial policy failures and adherance to an ideology, cultural Marxism, which seeks to destroy the common culture is undermining its legitimacy.If the Establishment takes the state itself with it--a possibility no conservative welcomes--then armed citizens may have to take over the job of establishing and preserving order. That is the scenario in Thomas Hobbes' book Victoria. But the goal of those armed citizens should be to restore a state, or states, as soon as possible. As Hobbes warned us in his earlier book Leviathan, life without the state is nasty, brutish, and short.On the mental level, the Oregon protestors failed to connect their somewhat obscure cause to broader themes lots of Americans could relate to. They appeared to represent merely a parochial interest. That appearance resulted in their own isolation. Any cause that isolates itself, or allows itself to be isolated, loses. Success requires building connections to as many other power centers as possible.The protestors also failed on the mental level in their planning. Their plan did not go beyond their initial action. Once they established their occupation, they had blown their wad; they had no further plan.Morally, the occupiers made the fatal error of alienating much of the surrounding community. A commemoration of LaVoy Finicum, the protestor who was killed (a blunder by both the protestors and the Oregon State Police), in Burns drew only about 20 people. Protests (which should not be armed, much less violent) can only succeed if they rally an ever-broader circle of support. That circle must normally begin with the local community. Alienating the community again means isolation and defeat.It is evident that the feds have learnd from past failures to handle armed protestors. At Waco and Ruby Ridge, the federal government won physically but suffered huge moral defeats. This time, they wisely expended time rather than ammunition. With the protestors having no plan beyond the first move and progressively isolating themselves, time was on the Feds' side. Inaction, if deliberately chose, is also a form of action.In the end, the Oregon protestors offer an almost perfect model of what not to do and how not to do it. The moral level is decisive, and to win morally a protest must almost always be unarmed. We may sympathize with the Oregon occupiers' cause, but no conservative should follow their example.

The View From Olympus: How to Defeat ISIS

With Washington and European capitals wrapped tightly around the ISIS axle, which is a larger victory for ISIS than any massacre, I thought and Olympian perspective might prove useful. Here's how the whole mess looks from on high.The inevitable American response to anything from mass murder to hangnails, airstrikes, are again failing. They do inhibit ISIS's movements of large numbers of men on roads, something air power has historically done well. They may stiffen the backbones of whatever allies we have on the ground. But they have little chance of achieving a decision, at least as presently employed.In such cases of frustration, it can be helpful to turn to the work of Colonel John Boyd. Boyd advised that in any conflict, you want to pull your enemy apart, not help him cohere. How might we pull ISIS apart?I previously made one suggestion, namely to offer an alliance with the former Baathists who enable ISIS to function. The Baathists and the religious fanatics are uncomfortable bedfellows. If not pushed toward coherence by our policies, they would be likely to cut each others' throats. The throats we would like cut are the fanatics', which should make the Baathists (most of whom were in Saddam's security services) our natural allies. We could offer them money, plus what is likely anyway, a new Sunni state made from eastern Syria and western Iraq. Our determination to uphold the borders of 1919 has no strategic basis.Another way to pull ISIS apart is by encouraging all civilians to flee any area occupied by ISIS. Many are doing so; encouraging more should not be too difficult. ISIS cannot function without civilians, who represent its tax base and logistics train. Again, money is the best weapon; offer, say, $1000 to any Iraqi or Syrian who leaves ISIS territory for those portions of Iraq and Syria still in government hands.Here, air power might play a useful role. After the next ISIS-inspired massacre in Europe or the U.S., give 72 hours warning to all civilians to leave ISIS-controlled areas. Then, bomb Raqqa flat. No "precision" strikes: good old fashioned carpet bombing, where the objective is to leave not one stone upon another. If we don't have the guts, the Russians do. Then start hitting other ISIS-held towns the same way. The civilians will flee.I'm sure others may come up with more ways to disaggregate ISIS. But here is where the view from Olympus changes the picture. Our main mistake is obsessing over ISIS.Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, all will come and go. When one Fourth Generation entity fails, others will arise to replace it. The problem is not any one or several of these organizations. The problem is Fourth Generation war itself and the threat it poses to the state system.Meeting that threat requires an alliance of all states against non-state forces. War between states is obsolete. Its outcome will usually be the creation of one or more failed states, each of which represents a victory for the Fourth Generation.That alliance of all states, in turn, should usually seek to isolate, not engage, 4GW opponents. Isolation means stopping refugee flows into First World countries, blockades, financial measures both positive and negative (paying civilans to flee; cutting the 4GW entities off from outside finance), and doing our best to encourage 4GW forces in a given area to fight each other, something they are prone to do. If we think of 4GW just as states vs. non-state entities, we see only part of the picture. As Libya illustrates, 4GW elements also fight each other. This is especially valuable to states in place such as the Middle East where demographics make war a certainty (what I call supply-side war). Far from seeking peace, we want to stoke the fires of such wars until they consume all the available fuel. Only then is peace a real possibility in any case.Let me re-emphasize one point. It is essential for the survival of the West that refugees from other cultures fleeing 4GW not be let in. If they come, they will bring 4GW with them, turning our countries into hell-holes like the ones they have fled.So, the view from Olympus suggests we fight ISIS very differently from the way we are fighting it now. It also suggests we stop our obsession with this or that bogeyman and focus instead on the bigger picture, namely 4GW. If Washington ever gets to the point where it can do that, it will find President Putin already there.

The View From Olympus: His Majesty's Birthday

The time of year again is here when I telephone Germany's last legitimate ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who also happens to be my liege lord and reporting senior. Were he still in charge, the Fatherland would not be drowning itself in a sea of racial and religious sewage. Unlike Hausfrau Merkel, Kaiser Wilhelm could tell the difference between Shinola and that other stuff.His Majesty picked up the phone promptly. Regrettably, it was hard to hear over the roar of the drinking songs, crashing tankards, shattering crockery, and general bedlam that rang out from whatever shindig he was attending. It sounded more like a place for the Great Elector than for Kaiser Bill.After offering His Majesty my congratulations, I asked what the revelry was all about."Well, I suppose it's in part about my birthday. But that's just an excuse. These 17th century guys really know how to party. I don't come here often, but whenever I do it's what you hear. Cannon should be going off soon.""May I ask Your Majesty who else is in attendance?""Everybody who matters, or did. Gustavus Adolphus, Tilly, Wallenstein, the Emperor, the Count-Duke of Olivares, endless Electors, Margraves, Freiherrs, the whole bunch.""And is this great feast perhaps connected to the Thirty Years' War?" I enquired."You're as spot-on as U-9's torpedoes," His Majesty replied. "It's all coming back again, this time in the Middle East. The clock is running backward. What vanished when the state arose is returning as the state declines. The old gang is singing 'Happy Days are Here Again', in Latin of course.""Well, I hope the food is as good as the drink seems to be," I ventured."Depends on how you like the Diet of Worms," His Majesty said."Might it be possible amidst all the revelry for me to ask those who fought Europe's Thirty Years' War what they would advise us for Islam's Thirty Years' War?" I asked."I think I can manage that," the Kaiser replied. "Let me ask Kaiser Karl to fire off one of his 30.5 cm Skoda guns."Luckily, I was holding the telephone's receiver at some distance. Even so, I was stunned by the sound. It did get everyone's attention.The Kaiser said in the silence, "I've got a Herr Hofkriegsrat from the 21st century on the line. What would you advise Europe, Russia, and America do in the new Thirty Years' War among the Saracens?"After a brief pause, all the assembled worthies shouted with one voice, "Keep it local!"Olivares explained. "If you want to understand America today, look to the Spain I knew. Spain went from the greatest power in the world to a defeated, bankrupt wreck in 50 years. America is on the same course, and about the same timetable. When Spain and the other Catholic powers won at Nördlingen, I proclaimed it 'The greatest victory of the age!' That was rephrased in your time as 'Mission Accomplised.' In both cases, it was the beginning of disaster. If you would learn from us, stay out! Let the worshippers of Mohammed kill each other. It need be none of your affair."Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden chimed in. "I agree with the distinguished Count-Duke. But I would add, if outside powers insist on getting involved, as they are doing, make sure the clashes between them occur on someone else's soil. That is something we did fairly well. It wrecked Germany, but it did not wreck all of Europe, except of course financially. Confine your duels to the lists. For outside powers, it is all a joust anyway.""If I may add something"--the voice was Wallenstein's--"what you are seeing in your time is the return of Real War. Real War is what we knew; your pretty little armies know it not. Real War comes riding with Plague, Famine, and Death. Populations sink to a fraction of their pre-war size. Civilians are targets as much or more than soldiers. You will discover reasons for the cry, 'Magdeburg quarter!' You will have its equivalents--'ISIS quarter!' is a start."Kaiser Wilhelm said to me sotto voce, "The Holy Roman Emperor is about to speak!""Fellow Christians," he began. "Let us set our revels aside for a moment, if we may. What faces Christendom now is grave. Our Thirty Years' War began as a war of religion and ended up a war among states. That was a very good thing. States, motivated solely, as they should be, by raison d'etat, can act rationally. They can compromise. They can limit war. They can count the cost of war, in thalers or dollars, and keep the peace because war does not pay.""In the 21st century, the movement is in the other direction. What begins as wars between states, as in President George W. Bush's war with Iraq--America, your presidents are a powerful argument for monarchy!--turns into wars of religion. Men believe their eternal salvation is at stake. In such a matter there can be no reason, no compromise, no counting of costs. Wars of belief are by their nature unlimited. As my servant General Wallenstein said--remember, Wally old chap, you are my servant--such wars are Real War. God help those peoples upon whom Real War descends."Through Kaiser Wilhelm, I offered my sincere thanks to his distinguished company. I asked him whether he had anything to add."In Heaven, I have learned when not to talk," His majesty replied. "Europe's Thirty Years' War tells your time all it needs to know."

Is Donald Trump a Conservative?

One of the raps against Donald Trump frequently trotted out by some of his conservative critics, often supporters of one of the more traditional conservative candidates, is that he is not really a conservative. Some even call him a liberal. Yet despite this charge, Trump continues to gain the support of prominent conservatives whose conservative credentials it is difficult to impugn.

For example, Trump recently garnered the support of former congressman Virgil Goode, who was the 2012 Presidential nominee of the Constitution Party. It’s hard to question the conservative credentials of a Constitution Party Presidential nominee. He has also landed the endorsement (or virtual endorsement) of prominent conservative scholar William Lind. Lind is a leading theorist of the concept of Fourth Generation warfare, and is arguably the primary person responsible for the increased recognition of the phenomenon of cultural Marxism that besets our modern discourse. Trump has also been endorsed by longtime conservative movement stalwart, Phyllis Schlafly, whose conservative credentials need no elaboration.  I could go on, but this should suffice to illustrate my contention. 

So is Trump a conservative, and if not, why is he racking up support from notable conservatives and continuing to dominate polls of potential Republican Party voters? Well, the answer is both yes and no. It depends on what you mean by conservative, but I believe Trump is a conservative in the most meaningful sense.

I attempted to explain Trump’s politics in a couple of past essays. His politics are really not as inscrutable as some believe. They just don’t fit tidily into our current Red and Blue boxes. Briefly, the key to understanding Trump’s politics is to focus on his economic nationalism. This has been a part of his rhetoric since he first became a public figure in the 1980s and is undoubtedly authentic. But Trump appears to view this as a common sense, tough minded position, not an ideological one. It is important to recognize that Trump is not an ideologue. His focus is on getting things done, and he is results-oriented. While he has long flirted with politics, he has not historically immersed himself in the conservative milieu, nor the liberal milieu for that matter. He has clearly tailored some of his current positions to fit the base of the party whose nomination he is seeking, such as gun control and abortion, but he has never donned the mantle of purist crusader for laissez-faire economics or government-slashing spending hawk because those positions would conflict with his economic nationalism and his focus on outcomes rather than pure principle.

Consider, for example, Trump’s past support of universal health care, a position often raised by his conservative critics. This was not likely a position he arrived at based on an ideological commitment to liberalism because that wouldn’t fit the known pattern. Rather it likely was an extension of his patriotic economic nationalism, something along the lines of “A great country like America can have a great health care system that takes care of all its citizens.” Remember that before the Affordable Care Act, universal coverage per se polled well. People just don’t seem to like the details when you attach a name to it, like HillaryCare or ObamaCare. The point being that Trump’s position on universal health care was likely not evidence of an ideological liberal disposition, but rather a roll-up-our-sleeves-and-get-it-done outcome based approach. What the conservative box checkers need to understand is that a lot of the electorate is similarly non-ideological. They may lean one way or the other and viscerally identify with the Blue Team or the Red Team, but they are not dogmatic ideologues.

Trump’s positions and rhetoric place him firmly in the category of Middle American Radical (MAR), as are many of his supporters. He just happens to also be a billionaire. MARs are a well described and relatively large demographic. It’s curious that so many journalist and pundits have missed this relationship and are still struggling to characterize Trump. Liberal columnist Ezra Klein was one of the first to pick up on Trump’s particular policy mix in this article he wrote for Vox, about which I thought at the time, “In other words, what (late conservative columnist) Sam Francis was saying 20 years ago.” Liberal John Judis expanded on the idea in this essay for the National Journal. Judis cannot resist a little PC finger wagging, but beyond that it is an insightful piece. Of interest, I was informed by someone who was familiar with the relationship that John Judis and Sam Francis were friends despite their political differences, so this may be a reason for Judis’ insights.

As a MAR, his conservative critics are correct that Trump is not your typical cookie cutter “three-legs-of-the-stool” modern conservative ideologue, but the problem for them is that what modern conservatism has become is generally a mishmash of policy positions that are often internally contradictory and as a whole have very little to do with actually conserving anything. The MAR position of opposition to mass immigration and opposition to international “free” trade deals, for example, both of which Trump has seized upon with great success, are more conservative in actual effect, in the most basic sense of the word, than is any amount of babbling about the “invisible hand” of the marketplace and cutting marginal tax rates. Trump’s supporters sense this. “Make America Great Again,” is an inherently conservative, reactionary really, sentiment. It speaks of loss for the worse and a need to restore.

As Russell Kirk reminded us, conservatism is not an ideology or hodgepodge of policy issues. Rather, it is a disposition, the desire to conserve what is or else restore something that has been lost. The angry masses in Flyover Country who are supporting Trump look around and see middle class manufacturing jobs going south of the border or overseas and their neighborhoods changing from mass immigration, more people they and their children and their children’s children will have to compete with for jobs, and they want it to stop. Contrast this to Rep. Paul Ryan’s foolish statement that Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration “is not conservatism.” Well, actually, yes it is. What is not conservatism is throwing open the doors of your country to masses of new dissimilar immigrants, including groups that are known to be hostile to us. Only a muddle-headed modern conservative ideologue could miss which one of these positions expresses a truly conservative sentiment.

With the rise of Trump, this election has taken on a meta dimension that it otherwise wouldn’t have had. Partisan stakeholders always attempt to cast every Presidential election as a crossroads, perhaps the starkest in history, but in truth we only really have a choice between Elitist Globalist Neoliberal A and Elitist Globalist Neoliberal B. Trump represents something truly unique in recent elections. He offers a real choice between the elitist post-national consensus embraced by the Establishment of both parties, and a patriotic economic nationalism that truly challenges this elite consensus.

So yes, Trump is a conservative in the sense that really matters. He wants to conserve and restore the nation state of America and not stand by as it turns into just another post-national administrative unit ruled by a globalist power elite. Virgil Goode, William Lind, and Phyllis Schlafly and many other conservative luminaries clearly get this. The conservative box checkers who are ticking off Trump’s fidelity to some laundry list of policy positions are missing the forest for the trees. They are on the verge of losing their country while they hand-wring about eminent domain.

The View From Olympus: My List for Santa

The real Saint Nicholas was less famous for giving gifts than he was for coming back from the dead to beat somebody up. That's my kind of saint. It is to that St. Nicholas I sent my Christmas list, viz.

• All American military officers will read the canon, the list of seven books which, if read in the correct order, will take the reader from the first to fourth generation of modern war. Without the roadmap the canon provides, our officer corps will continue to stumble around in the dark, losing one fourth generation war after another.
• The Marine Corps will face the fact that it remains a second generation military. Its formal, written doctrine is third generation, i.e., maneuver warfare. But what the Marine Corps says and what it does are two different things. Its culture remains second generation: inward-focused, centralized, preferring obedience to initiative, and relying on imposed discipline. Such a military can talk about maneuver warfare but it can't do it. The Corps is the only American armed service with the potential to join the third generation. It's time to turn potential into reality.
• The foreign policy establishment will realize that war between states has become obsolete because the losing state will often disintegrate and become another stateless region, a petri dish for 4GW elements. That is more of a threat to us than is any other state. What we and all other states need is an alliance of all states against 4GW forces. At stake in the 21st century is nothing less than the state system itself.
• All women seeking to join the combat arms will insist on serving as comfort women, the one useful role they can play.
• The F-35 program will crash and burn, saving the taxpayer around a trillion dollars and freeing our fighter pilots from having to fly a real dog. The aircraft already ordered can be sold to the Chinese, thereby wrecking their fighter force for a generation.
• The CNO will realize a real littoral combat ship is a converted trawler and start buying some. Shallow waters are the important waters when facing 4GW enemies. We can safely leave blue water warfare to dreadnoughts and zeppelins (I'd like the movie rights, please.).
• Congress will order the Air Force to reopen the production line and buy more A-10s, the only combat aircraft we have that can do something useful.
• The Army will dry up and blow away. It is beyond reforming. All it can do for the country is offer up more defeats. Put the money into the National Guard, which is our land force of the future, useful in peace and in war.
• All police departments will start using the grid. The grid (available in the FMFM-1A here or in The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook) allows police to understand the likely effects of their actions at the mental and moral levels, not just the physical. At a Boyd conference a couple years ago, some cops from Massachusetts told me their department now uses it for all operations. If other police departments were to do so, it would take away much of the ammunition the Left uses in its war on cops.

That's probably enough to keep Santa busy for a while. Since by politically correct standards I have been very naughty this year, I expect to get everything on my list. Anyone who comes back from the dead to beat the crap out of somebody likes political correctness about as much as I do. Merry Christmas!

The View From Olympus: Donald Trump and Fourth Generation War

Donald Trump's recent proposals to register Islamics living in the United States and to bar more Islamics from entering this country until we can determine how to separate the dangerous ones from those who are not dangerous show that he is the only candidate who understands what a Fourth Generation world will be like. The hysterical denunciations from all other candidates except Senator Cruz demonstrate they don't get it. While that alone may not be enough to indicate Trump would be a good president, it strongly suggests none of his opponents are fit to hold the office. Whether they like it or not, or understand it or not, Fourth Generation war is what they and this country are facing.In 4GW, primary loyalties shift away from the state--someone's native state or one to whch they have immigrated--to a wide variety of other things, including religions, races and ethnic groups, and cultures. Immigrants who do not acculturate are especially likely to become Fourth Generation threats, because they probably will not give their loyalty to a state whose culture is not their own (and to which they may be hostile).Measures such as those Trump proposed vis-a-vis Islamics will be routine in a world of Fourth Generation war. Any state that wants to survive will have to take them, and stronger actions as well. If a population becomes a base for 4GW on a state's soil, that state may have to expel them. There may be no other way for the state to perform its primary duty, maintaining order. Any state that cannot maintain order--safety of persons and property--will disappear.Cultural Marxism forbids us to acknowlege any of these realities, which is why culturally Marxist politicians (Democrats actually believe the stuff; Republicans are too cowardly to challenge it) and institutions such as the New York Times editorial page have frothed at the mouth over Mr. Trump's entirely reasonable proposals. Cultural Marxism says all cultures are wonderful, peaceful, "vibrant" sources of enlightenment, except our own culture, Western culture, which is evil and oppressive. Defend ourselves against another culture? The very notion horrifies the cultural Marxists; we are instead to embrace it even as it cuts our throats. Cultural Marxism's goal, after all, from Gramsci and Lukacs onward, has been the destruction of Western culture and the religion from which it grew, Christianity.Mr. Trump's proposals do not indicate he has studied 4GW. I would guess he has probably never heard the term. His reactions are instinctive. But they are sound. They reflect reality. If elected, he can leave the theory to the leaders of his Defense Department (we can hope he chooses leaders who do know the theory). He would need only to keep the same instincts under the barrage of conemnation they will bring from the establishment. So far, he seems pretty good at that.The degree to which the establishment has abandoned all grasp of reality was shown last week in Time magazine's choice of Angela Merkel as Person of the Year. Merkel will go down in history as Germany's poisoner, the person who flooded what was a safe, orderly country with carriers of the 4GW bacillus. That, of course, is exactly what cultural Marxism demands, so she is a hero to Time and the rest of the establishment.Meanwhile, the more Trump insists on confronting cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness, and urges us to face reality, the more his poll numbers go up. The  public, it seems, both here and in Europe, want leaders whose feet are planted in the real world. No wonder the shrieks and cries of the cultural Marxists sound ever more shrill. Ideology has no deadlier enemy than reality.

The View From Olympus: The SECDEF Lied

In announcing that all positions in the U.S. armed forces would be opened to women, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter lied. According to the December 4 New York Times, he said,

They'll [women] be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers, and everything else that was previously open only to men.

That statement is false. Women will not be able to do those things. Their bodies are not designed to do many of the tasks those positions entail. So long as realistic standards are maintained for those specialties, women will not be able even to qualify for them much less perform adequately in them. Men and women are different, physically and mentally, and their traditional social roles reflect their inherent differences.Had the Truth Fairy landed on the SECDEF's tongue as he was about to make his announcement, he would have said,

We are opening all positions in the armed forces to women. Women will not be able to do many of the duties entailed especially in the combat arms. We--the Obama administration--don't care about that. Our ideology of cultural Marxism demands we pretend men and women are interchangeable. We will do whatever is necessary to maintain that illusion. In this case, if women cannot meet the standards, we will change the standards. If not enough women make it into the combat arms, we will establish quotas.If, in combat, women cannot perform the mission, that's not our problem. If it means lost engagements and unnecessary American casualties, what is that to us? Our ideology comes first. Get with the party's program--or else.

Here again we see the slide of state armed forces into history's wastebasket. Playthings of a political establishment that knows nothing of war, they exist for every purpose except fighting. Many of those inside them have figured this out. An Army study done at least ten years ago found that two-thirds of the Army's women and one-third of its men disagreed with the statement, "The Army's main purpose is to fight." Most state armed forces produce so few fighters from their total manpower that they could not fight if they wanted to, not against any serious opponent.So why do we keep them around, at immese cost? Mostly from habit. Few politicians know enough to see their obsolescence, and fewer still would take the political risks involved in pruning them back to budgets that reflect their military utility. The public, wallowing in the usual "Support the troops" rhetoric, cannot see their uselessness, and the air shows are fun to watch.For the establishment, state militaries remain highly useful. They provide jobs and money that can be steered to political allies. Defense companies are big political donors. If you vote right, when you leave office many will offer you paid seats on their boards, plus lobbying contracts.Senior officers feed from the same troughs, not to mention pensions that most people can only dream about (paid for by those dreamers). Once you make it to lieutenant colonel, the pay is great and the duties are easy, so long as you don't object to working on vast staffs that produce nothing but contentless briefings which you must pretend to take seriously. If you hope to keep moving on up the career ladder, don't forget the knee pads and the vaseline.So to this dysfunctional and militarily impotent stew let's now add women. Why not? Can anything make it worse than it already is? Actually, in this case yes, because putting women in combat units undermines the basic reason why they fight, unit cohesion. Instead of forming a band of brothers, the men fight each other over the women. When I asked the captain of an amphib with a male/female crew the fraternization rate, he replied, "100% of course. I have male sailors in knife fights over women officers."But in the end, it doesn't matter much. These institutions are finished. Every time they take on non-state, Fourth Generation opponents they get their butts kicked.4GW forces are about fighting. They don't have much gear and their technical skills often aren't great. But they and the men in them want to fight. Most of their personnel are fighters. Senior officers regularly get killed. Some of them seriously study war, a practice virtually unknown among our officers.So the wheel of fortune turns. The fat, dumb, and happy careerists in their pressed camis are on the way down, and the lean and hungry believers with their AKs and IEDs are on the way up. Unserious, womanized state armed forces will vanish with the states they cannot protect and their ideologies not worth defending.

The View From Olympus: Register Moslems? Good Idea.

Donald Trump apparently was misquoted when he reportedly called for registering all Moslems in the U.S., but the idea is a good one. We are going to have to do it eventually, so we might as well get started now.Moslems will not be the only non-state element fighting Fourth Generation war on American soil. Other entities, such as gangs, are already doing so. But the spread of puritanism within the world of Islam, which continues to gather strength, means Moslems will increasingly be a source of 4GW, here and abroad. At some point politically correct Washington will be forced by events to acknowledge reality and act.A registry of all Moslems in America, if properly done, could benefit both the state and American Islamics. How? It would allow the sate to focus on those Moslems most likely to be violent, leaving others alone. For example, any Moslems registered as Sufis could and should be left undisturbed. Why? Because alone among major Islamic sects, the Sufis present no threat of violence. For that sin (the Koran commands violence against "unbelievers"), the Sufis are persecuted by both Sunnis and Shiites.As is the case with violent crime, most Islamic Fourth Generation fighters are young men. A registry would allow security efforts to focus on them, assuming it asked for both age and sex. Children, women, and older men could be ignored, although many young Islamic women are now acting as suicide bombers.A registry should indicate what mosque an American Moslem regularly attends. Presumably, the FBI is keeping watch on mosques where Islamic 4GW "jihad" is preached. People who attend such mosques should be prime suspects. On first thought, such mosques should be closed and their imams deported. But second thought suggest we might want to leave them open to serve as candle flames to draw the jihadis so they can be identified.While political correctness gasps in horror at the idea of registering all American Islamics, the spread of Islamic puritanism suggests that may not be sufficient. The reason the state came into existence was to provide order--safety of persons and property--and if it is to retain legitimacy, it must do whatever is required to that end. If a registry and other security measures are not sufficient to prevent Islamic 4GW on American soil--from the state's perspective prevention is everything; all first response is too late, because the peace has been broken and the state has therefore failed--stronger measures will be needed, including the option of exile.Consider this scenario: A suitcase nuke goes off in, say, Seattle. It was brought in on an ordinary sailboat that came up from Mexico, where some of the drug gangs may have a relationship with Islamic 4GW entities. One of those entities--al Qaeda, ISIS, take your pick--credibly takes responsibility for the strike. An American city lies destroyed and casualties are in the tens or hundreds of thousands.The little stage play that routinely accompanies Islamic massacres on Western soil--empty bluster from politicians, a few more useless airstrikes, blaming guns, women weeping and lighting candles--will not satisfy public anger. Across the country, mosques are being burned and Moslems strung up from lampposts.At that point a Moslem registry might save Moslems' lives, because it would allow the government to move quickly to send them into exile. For good reason, the age-old punishment of exile has been considered less severe than its alternative, death. Given the choice, American Moslems would probably rather leave than die. With Seattle still glowing, the public would probably not accept any lesser action.Islam wants to have it both ways: at the same time it condemns civil society, demanding Sharia replace it, it seeks all the benefits civil society provides. The public, both here and in Europe, is beginning to perceive the contradiction. Each new incident of Islamic violence on Western soil will make that contradiction more clear. At some point, the state will have to resolve it or lose its legitimacy. A registry is a good, and rather moderate, place to start.

The Turkish-ISIS Alliance

Why did Turkey shoot down a Russian fighter-bomber? Tactically, the Russian Su-24 may have crossed briefly into what they Turks consider their airspace. That area, now controlled by Turkey, used to be part of Syria and is still claimed by Syria. If the Russian pilots were using Syrian maps, they thought they were still in Syrian airspace. But to the Turks, they were flying over Turkish territory.Operationally, the Turks may have shot the plane down in Syrian airspace because it was attacking Turkmen rebels in Syria. Turkmen are ethnic Turks who live outside Turkey. They are found in an arc that runs from the Mediterranean to China. Turkey claims a special right to protect Turkmen wherever they are found.That claim ties into the real reason Turkey shot the Russian jet down. Following the islamic bombings in Paris, French President Hollande set out to form an American-French-Russian alliance against ISIS. Russia is eager for such a grand coalition. Turkey did not want it to happen. Why not? Because at the strategic level, Turkey is allied to ISIS.The shoot-down pulled NATO and the U.S. away from Russia, because both felt they had to line up with a fellow NATO member, Turkey. Behind closed doors, they read Turkey the riot act, but in public they had to blame the Russians. Just at a point where, thanks to the French, the U.S. and Russia might have come together against ISIS, the Turks pulled them apart.Turkey's de facto alliance with ISIS has been visible for some time. ISIS's supply lines run through Turkey, which they can only do with the approval of the Turkish government of President Recep Erdogan. Recent ISIS bombings in Turkey have been directed against Erdogan's political opponents and the Kurds. Turkey regularly carries out bombing missions in Syria aginst the Kurds, America's only effective ally on the ground and ISIS's most dangerous opponent. ISIS in turn fights the Kurds, Turkey's most hated enemy.Note that Russia now has an opportunity to put an end to those Turkish airstrikes on the Pesh Merga. It can declare any Turkish warplane found in Syrian airspace a target on the grounds that what goes for (claimed) Turkish airspace also goes for Syrian airspace. Russia is openly Syria's ally; why shouldn't it help Syria assert its sovereignty in the air?Why has Mr. Erdogan's Turkey allied with ISIS? His goal is nothing less than re-establishing the regional place and role Turkey had when it was the core of the Ottoman Empire. At home, he has overthrown Ataturk's secular state and is re-Islamicizing Turkey. In so doing, he has had strong (and idiotic) support from the U.S. and the E.U. The guardian of Ataturk's secularism was the Turkish military. The U.S. and the E.U. demanded it surrender that role because it was not "democratic". Both did nothing when Erdogan arrested hundreds of Turkish officers on trumped-up charges of planning a coup. That broke the power of the military domestically. Once again, the West screwed itself by its worship of its totem, "democracy".Abroad, Erdogan seeks to re-establish Turkey as the leader of the region's Sunnis. That is why Turkey is so bitterly opposed to Assad's governemt in Syria: it is Alawite, a Shiite off-shoot. Turkey's support of Turkmen throughout the region is also an element of its strategy to regain its Ottoman role. Protection of Christian minorities was a reason often used by European Powers in the 19th century to justify intervention in Ottoman internal affairs. The Turks now play the same game using the Turkmen.ISIS is useful to Turkey as a tool to re-establish Sunni dominance over large parts of what used to be Syria and Iraq. The more territory it can take from the Shiites, the better. Again, ISIS is dependent on Turkey; it dare not threaten Turkey, other than Turkish Kurds and Erdogan's political opponents. Erdogan may well have calculated--rightly, in my view--that the puritanism ISIS and al Qaeda represent will burn itself out, leaving Turkey to pick up the pieces. Those pieces, once parts of the Ottoman Empire, come home to mama. Perhaps Erdogan even sees himself becoming caliph, a title the Ottoman sultan used to hold (it still rightly belongs to the House of Osman).Is our foreign service too bloody dumb to see all this? Yes. So we continue to act as Turkey's ally, which is ISIS's ally, which makes us...? That's what happens when you intervene in someone else's Thirty Years War. It gets complicated. Wise men stay home and tend their own fire. Don't miss William S. Lind's latest book, co-authored with Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele USMC, the Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook. A follow-on to Mr. Lind's well-known Maneuver Warfare Handbook, the new Handbook is a practical, action-oriented guide for all soldiers and Marines facing 4GW opponents. Now available as an e-book (the paperback will come out in early 2016).You haven't yet read Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes, the famous author of Leviathan? Not just entertainment, Victoria offers a series of 4GW tactical decision games as Americans confront the break-up of their country later in the 21st century. It also points the way toward the recovery of our traditional culture and the defeat of political correctness. Start reading here and order a copy from Amazon today!

What's Behind Murray Vs. Trump?

Prominent conservative scholar Charles Murray has caused quite a bit of consternation on social media with his seemingly highly personal Facebook and Twitter crusade against Donald Trump. I suspect many people are not taking Murray’s opposition to Trump well because they don’t view Murray, who got in PC hot water for his book The Bell Curve, as your typical PC signaling think tank denizen and therefore, expect different from him.

Angry people make angry accusations, so many were quick to accuse Murray of signaling to his fellow AEI scholars and the rest of the respectable set, that, while capable of wrongthink, he is not far enough off the ranch to support Trump. I don’t know for certain that Murray is not signaling this, but I think his opposition to Trump can be understood based on another dimension. I believe this because I have observed the same tendency in others who policy wise seemingly have reasons to be sympathetic to the Trump campaign.

Certain political commentators, of which Murray is an example, undertake their commentary in a very high minded and serious manner, and they likewise take the political process very seriously. For these folks, Trump, who does not play by the normal rules of decorum, is an affront to the process and should be opposed on those grounds alone. Opposition to Trump seems to be to them a defense of the very system, and if it signals anything it is this seriousness and respect for the process aspect as much as anything else.

This sort of visceral opposition to Trump could come from the left, the right or the center. I believe it reflects to some extent the old money vs. new money distinction, both actually and metaphorically. While Trump did not come from a poor family, his family wasn’t that rich, so Trump behaves like new money - the brashness, the ostentatiousness, the conspicuous consumption, etc. As I mentioned in another article, I think a lot of Trump’s presentation and appeal is that he is in essence just a guy from Queens who made good for himself, and who may still have a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Trump’s Flyover Country supporters see a kindred spirit who happens to be a billionaire, but for those significantly concerned with propriety, they see an intolerably boorish lout. 

While this opposition could come from all points on the political spectrum, it presents a particular dilemma for high minded sorts of a traditionalist and conservative bent. Traditionalists and conservatives have always placed great emphasis on manners and codes of behavior, for good reason. Such things foster good order and are inherently conservative in the most basic sense of the word.

From this view, comments about your female opponent’s appearance or alleged references to your female antagonist’s bodily functions are ungentlemanly. Repeatedly calling people stupid or engaging in back and forth with your critics on Twitter is pedestrian and below the dignity of the process and the office he seeks.

Charles Murray’s opposition to Trump strikes me as primarily coming from this perspective. John Derbyshire attributed it to Murray’s “Midwestern niceness,” but herein lies the disconnect between Murray and many of his usual fans.

Many of Trump’s supporters support him precisely because they no longer respect the process. They see the process as rigged and inherently hostile to them and their interests. For this reason, Trump’s brashness and willingness to say things the typical politician would not is not a liability, but an asset. While they don’t necessarily value rudeness, they’ll tolerate it or even consider it a necessary evil, in light of the current state of affairs, and they positively value his combativeness and willingness to engage the enemy.  When Trump supporters are questioned, they consistently cite this aspect of his presentation as a major reason for their support. Trump’s previous celebrity and sheer force of personality allow him to get away with saying things that ordinary political candidates cannot.

Contained in this disconnect, is another related dimension. Trump’s supporters tend to view the current situation as dire and near the point of no return. For them, opposing a candidate because he engages in Twitter battles is akin to fretting about the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. For many Trump supporters, our dire situation requires extraordinary measures, not appeals to the sanctity of the system that got us here in the first place.

While I appreciate Murray’s and others’ support for traditional norms of behavior, as a Trump supporter, albeit a somewhat nuanced one, I agree with my cohorts that it is much too late in the game to allow his at times less than decorous behavior to disqualify him. I would suggest that the process Murray et al are attempting to protect is no longer the sacrosanct process they suppose, but is in fact a largely rigged game of political theater. Perhaps what we need at this time is not a statesman but a performance artist who can engage the system on its own terms and maybe just beat the Powers That Be at their own game.

The View From Olympus: Learning Russians

There is an old saying that Russia is never as strong as it appears to be, and Russia is never as weak as it appears to be. According to the lead story in the October 15  New York Times, "Russian Military Uses Syria as Proving Ground, and West Takes Notice," the pendulum is swinging from focusing on Russia's weakness to seeing her again as strong and threatening. Much of the latter is threat inflation, an old Pentagon practice during the Cold War. (After lecturing on military reform many years ago at the Air Force's Squadron Officers' School, an Air Force intel captain came up to me and asked, "Does military reform mean we can stop inflating the threat?")But it does seem the Russians have learned. The Times story notes that Russian jets in Syria are now conducting as many airstrikes in a day as the U.S. and its allies have been carrying out in a month. Sortie rate is an important measure of an air force's effectiveness, and ours has long been abysmal, except for the A-10. The newer our equipment, the worse the picture, because each new aircraft we buy requires more maintenance hours per flight hour than the one it replaced.But the real importance of President Putin's military reform program lies not in equipment but in ideas. As American military reformers used to say, quoting Col. John Boyd, "For winning wars, people are most important, ideas come second, and hardware is only third." The Times noted that Russian reforms have included tactics and strategy, not just equipment. And they included the all-important "people" category:

Mr. Putin . . . began a military modernization program that focused not only on high-profile procurement of new weapons . . . but also on a less-noticed overhaul of training and organization that included reduction in the bloated officer corps and the development of a professional corps of noncommissioned officers.

As any visitor to an American headquarters quickly sees, Russia was not alone in having a bloated officer corps. But ours keeps growing.We here witness an old military phenomenon: the loser learns while the victor goes to sleep on his pile of trophies. Russia was one of the twentieth century's big losers, along with Austria and Germany. The defeat in World War I, the Red Revolution, Stalin, Communism's murder of 60 million Russians, the immense destruction inflicted by World War II, and, with the fall of Communism, Russia's retreat to roughly the borders she had when Peter the Great came to the throne, add up to a catastrophe Americans cannot grasp.But Russia is now recovering under President Putin, and her defeats and failures have taught her some things. Among those learning are the Russian military. Several decades ago, the Soviet Army historian John Erickson said to me, "Do you want to understand the Russian army today? Ask yourself what it was like under Nicholas I." I think that is no longer true.The laggard now is the U.S. military, happily vegetating in the Second  Generation of modern war, content to lose wars so long as the money keeps flowing, led largely by generals and admirals who are interchangeable in their skills and attitudes with Soviet industrial managers. The quality of the product is not important; what matters is acquiring and justifying resources.That self-satisfied (at senior levels) and sleepy military is in turn employed by a foreign policy elite that lives in Disneyland, a place where the whole world is to be reduced to a nursery run by themselves and their European counterparts. All the children will play nice because they tell them to.Among the consequences of this departure from reality is a failure to ally with both Russia and China in defense of the state system against Fourth Generation war. In Syria, while a reality-based Kremlin acts in support of the remnants of the Syrian state, we bleat about Russian air attacks on our "democratic allies" who do not exist.As I said, this is an old, old story. It always has the same ending: yesterday's winner is tomorrow's loser. Regrettably, that's us.

The View From Olympus: The Enablers

At the same time that Islam has brought terror and death to the city of Paris, France's new Jeanne d'Arc, Marine le Pen, is on trial. Her supposed crime? "Hate speech". If you tell the truth about Islam in France, i.e., that it is and always has been a religion of war, you will be arrested.Nowhere else do we see so clearly the relationship between Islam and cultural Marxism as in France. Cultural Marxism gives cover to Islam while Moslems kill Frenchmen. As French blood flows in the streets of Paris, French cultural Marxists stand guard, ready to bring "hate speech" charges against anyone who dares answer the question, "why?" Why, because the Koran explicitly calls for violence against unbelievers and Islam considers forced conversions legitimate. Anyone who converts under duress and later says "I didn't mean it" is under automatic sentence of death as an apostate. Islam's war against French men on French soil will continue until France submits to Islam. Moslems do the killing, but cultural Marxism is their enabler.Meanwhile, next door in Germany, that country--the anti-German Germany that is the Federal Republic--is importing more of what just happened in Paris. Frau Merkel says her "vision" is at stake. What is that vision? A deracinated world where an Afghan or an Arab has just as much right to enjoy the benefits of life in Germany as does a German. Hausfrau Merkel isn't deep enough to be a cultural Marxist. She's just their dupe. That's okay with them, so long as she continues to import Islamic Fourth Generation war into Germany.Why does cultural Marxism welcome people who will kill cultural Marxists as enthusiastically as they kill Christians? Because, as the members of the Frankfurt School make plain in their writings, cultural Marxism has no positive vision to offer. It is about "negation", i.e., bringing everything down. It will ally with any force that aids its struggle to destroy Western culture and the Christian religion. Islam has been doing that since it first emerged out of the Arabian desert. What could be a better tool for the cultural Marxists?Because of the rate at which Islamics are pouring into Germany and murder in the name of Allah is occurring in France, Frenchmen and Germans are beginning to see beyond the conditioning cultural Marxism has used to entrap them. More and more, as they face the truth about Islam, instead of seeing "Hitler" when they look in the mirror they see Charles Martel and Friedrich Barbarossa.In France, Frenchmen have an option denied Germans. They can vote for a party, the National Front, that will compel Islamics either to acculturate and become French or to leave. If the culturally Marxist French Establishment keeps the National Front from power, well, French men then have another option, one for which they are famous: riot in the streets and hang every Moslem they can lay hands on from the nearest lamppost ("a la lanterne!").The good news in all this is that Europeans' revolt against Islam and its inherent violence endangers the rule of the cultural Marxists. European publics know that something is wrong with thier traditional political parties. They don't know exactly what--few have heard of the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School--but they know those parties insist on leaving the door to Islam open and denounce anyone trying to close it as "fascists" and "racists". Once Europeans turn forcefully against Islam--and they are moving that way--they may also turn against those who invited the murderers in. So we may hope. If it happens, the victims of the Paris massacres will not have died in vain.

The View From Olympus: The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook

The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook, co-authored by Lt. Col. Greg Thiele and myself, is now available on Amazon. At present, it is only an e-book; the real book should be available early next year. The publisher is Castalia House Press.The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook is a follow-on to my Maneuver Warfare Handbook, which was published in 1985 and is still in print. The new book's origins lie in the Fourth Generation Warfare seminar Lt. Col. Thiele and I taught for some years at the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Warfare School. That seminar wrote a number of field manuals for 4GW, published as manuals of the K.u.K. Austro-Hungarian Marine Corps. Greg and I distilled the content of those manuals, added a good bit of material of our own (especially on true light infantry, normally the most effective force against 4GW opponents) and have published it in a form we think will reach more readers than have the field manuals.The new book presumes the reader is familiar with the framework of the Four Generations of Modern War, although it does offer a summary of the first three generations in an appendix. After a discussion of the theory of 4GW which focuses on the dilemmas it poses to state armed forces, dilemmas which usually lead state militaries to defeat themselves, it turns to the practical problems 4GW presents. This is consistent with its nature as a handbook: its purpose is not academic discussion but providing useful ideas to those serving in state forces.One of the potentially most useful tools it offers is the grid: a nine-box square with the three traditional levels of war, tactical, operational, and strategic, on the vertical axis and Col. John Boyd's three new levels, physical, mental, and moral, on the horizontal axis. State armed forces (including police) can use the grid to evaluate planned missions by asking what results the mission is likely to bring in each of the nine boxes.At present, most missions are evaluated in only one box, the tactical/physical. These are the two weakest levels of war. The blowback the mission brings at more powerful levels, especially the most powerful box, strategic/moral, helps explain why state militaries usually lose Fourth Generation wars. By using the grid to anticipate negative results at higher and more powerful levels, it may be possible to avoid those negative effects by changing what is done tactically and physically.European readers of The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook may wonder why much of the latter part of the book is devoted to true light (or Jaeger) infantry. The reason is that the U.S. armed forces mis-define light infantry as line infantry with less equipment. This false definition leads the Americans to think they have light infantry when in fact they do not. Because true light infantry are usually 4GW forces' most dangerous opponents, this leaves the U.S. largely disarmed in this kind of war. Its fall-back of massive firepower literally blows up in its face at the moral level, ensuring its defeat. (The closest thing the U.S. has to true light infantry is probably the Marine Scout/Snipers. According to one report from Afghanistan, the Taliban refer to the Scout/Snipers as "The Marines who are well-trained." The Pashtun are, and long have been, some of the world's best light infantry.)For Americans, the Handbook's chapter on how to convert line to light infantry may be its most important. Many infantry battalion, company, and platoon commanders would like to make the switch, but don't know how. Now they will.My hope is that the The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook will prove as useful to members of sate armed forces a has the Maneuver Warfare Handbook. 4GW is a more difficult challenge than 3GW, maneuver warfare. Because only those state armed forces that have made it into the Third Generation have any chance of winning in 4GW, both books are likely to be around for a long time.

The Stupid Party Elevates Paul Ryan

The late conservative columnist, Sam Francis, once quipped that the Democrat Party is the Evil Party and the Republican Party is the Stupid Party. This cannot be repeated often enough. The Republican Party has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no idea what is best for its continued viability and the people who actually vote for it.The persistent problem with the Republican Party is that every election cycle it pitches to the besieged middle class in Middle America and then goes to Washington and does the bidding of donor class fat cats. The flyover country middle class has continued to go along with this game because in our alleged “two party” system at least the Republican Party pretends to like them. The Democrat Party on the other hand, which is historically supposed to be the party of the working man, long ago gave up the pretense of actually caring about the economic interests of or even liking flyover country yokels. Instead Democrats by and large see such yokels as a major part of the problem due to their Bible-clinging and gun-toting ways and status as bearers of some mystical privilege. But the masses can only be expected to put up with this dynamic for so long before they’ve had enough and demand change. This appears to be happening, yet the Republican Establishment scratches its collective head in befuddlement. “Why are the plebs so angry?”What the success of the Donald Trump campaign should clearly demonstrate to the GOP leadership and its elected representatives if they are paying attention or care is that average Republican voters are not really motivated by the prospect of cuts in the marginal income tax rates of the rich. They believe the middle class is under siege from well-connected corporatists above and a permanent underclass below, and that the federal government works for the interests of both of these and against their own, and about this they are manifestly correct.So how does the Republican Party respond to this disconnect? It elevates to the House Speakership a man, Paul Ryan, who is a virtual caricature of all that is wrong with the GOP, and I might add, it does so with the acquiescence of a lot of the “Freedom Caucus.” What? Was the Monopoly Man not available?Donald Trump is resonating with the flyover base, much to the chagrin of the Establishment and their lackeys in the “conservative” punditocracy, on two issues in particular, immigration and trade. Both are near and dear to the heart of the base because both address two of the main things that have caused middle class fortunes to stagnate, economic globalization and the mass importation of cheap labor, both illegal and legal.In the midst of this rebellion in the heartland, the Republican Party keepers of the flame insisted on anointing Paul Ryan as Speaker, after their original choice crashed and burned, but Ryan could not be more wrong on these two issues at the heart of the base’s uprising.Ryan is a hard core amnesty supporter. By Republican standards he is an “extremist” on the issue. He also supports virtual open borders with regard to legal immigration, a policy that not only would perpetuate the problems of unemployment, underemployment and stagnant wages that already plague us, but would guarantee that the Republican Party will become a permanent minority party, virtually irrelevant on the national stage, within a few election cycles. Talk about the Stupid Party. Many of them appear to not be able to do basic math.On globalist managed trade deals (To call them free trade deals is a scandalous misuse of language.), Ryan is again the worst of the worst. Ryan is not just a casual supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the legislative gimmickry of fast track that enabled it. He co-authored (along with faux populist Sen. Ted Cruz, I might add) a blatant piece of apologia for fast track and the TPP in the Power Elite … err I mean … Wall Street Journal before said power elite ramrodded the fast track abomination through Congress. Way to represent the peeps there, GOP.What this shameful Ryan spectacle once again demonstrates is that the Republican Party is worse than worthless when it comes to representing the interests of the majority of people who actually vote for it. It’s recent history (since the '60s +/-) has been to serve as a sort of safety valve to diffuse periodic fits of anger from the masses when they wake up and realize they are getting screwed. People of good will may differ on whether this means the Republican Party needs to be reformed or scrapped and replaced, but what should be obvious to all who are not beholden to the donor class is that the current situation is intolerable. I suspect that for now the one most helped by the Ryan debacle is Donald Trump.