Political Pistachio
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Remember when Don Lemon and gang invaded a church to protest one of the church’s pastors who worked for ICE? They entered the church, took over the service, refused to leave and shouted, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!” The agitators screamed at crying children, blocked parents from retrieving their children from Sunday School, and one of the activists told a child their parents were Nazis and going to hell.
A federal grand jury indicted 38 of the invaders on two charges: violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (passed for abortion clinics, but protects access to churches as well), and violating the Ku Klux Klan Act which criminalizes efforts to deprive Americans of their fundamental rights – including the free exercise of religion.
The activists are claiming they are not guilty and that their actions are protected by the First Amendment. According to their motion, “The Constitution does not contain any exception to free speech in churches…There is no alleged conduct that crossed the line into violence, threats or anything that went beyond free speech. The protest was limited to pure speech and assembly.”
The defendants also argue that “there are no allegations supporting the conclusion that defendants’ actions were intended to interfere with freedom of worship.”
The argument by the activists is based on a number of flawed assumptions, with two in particular I would like to key in on.
They frame their “right” to free speech and assembly on whether or not the First Amendment contains an “exception to free speech in churches.” The second assumption is based on what their “intentions” were.
When it comes to our Natural Rights, they exist not because of the language in the First Amendment, or anywhere else in the Constitution. We were endowed by our Creator with our Natural Rights. The First Amendment does not grant, define, or guarantee any of the five rights enumerated in the amendment. They belong to us naturally. The right to free speech and assembly, however, also carry another component that the activists don’t seem to understand.
A right stops being a right when it interferes with another’s right. For example, I may have the right to swing my arms, but I don’t have the right to swing my arms into someone’s face. My right to swing my arms stops at the tip of the nose of the other person, and actually even further away because they have the right not to be struck in the face, or feel that they are under the threat of such action.
The agitators cited Snyder v. Phelps to combat that argument, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that protesters carrying offensive signs near a military funeral did not interfere with the funeral. The difference is that the protesters in the Snyder case remained on public property about 1,000 feet away from the church that the funeral was being held at. They did not enter the building or interrupt the service while going down aisles and screaming in the faces of those in attendance.
As for their claim that they had no “intent” to interfere with a religious worship service, try that argument when you get pulled over for speeding. “But officer, I didn’t intend to drive too fast.” Whether they, in their minds, intended to or not (and they obviously did intend to disrupt the service), the fact is that they did. And since the left hates God so much, and don’t understand what “God-given Rights” means, from their point of view what they did was no different than interrupting a city council meeting with their antics. I am not sure they truly understand the severity of their actions. I am not letting them off the hook, here – I am simply pointing out that to them God does not exist so worshipping Him is a silly action that needs not be protected.
The reality is, the hard left hates Christians, hates Christianity, and hated that pastor for daring to have anything to do with ICE because they hate Trump and America. They wanted to frighten people. They wanted to terrorize the worshippers and upset them as they did. They’ve decided in their minds that anyone who disagrees with them is an enemy and the ends justify the means. And, regardless of “intentions,” the fact is the worshippers felt terrorized, they believed it might be an active-shooter situation, they feared for their own safety and the safety of their children, and they were horrified at being screamed at that they were Nazis and going to Hell in their own church which is supposed to be a safe place.
I know people that got into a public argument and with their words threatened to “kill” the person they were arguing with, and were hit with a charge of a “terrorist threat.” But somehow in the minds of the lefties, terrifying families, frightening children, and screaming they are there to “shut this down” isn’t the same kind of offense?
The worst part is that the perpetrators are so out of their mind under the spell of the cult of leftism that they don’t understand how evil what they did truly is. I truly believe they are completely ignorant of the seriousness of their actions, and they truly do not understand how what they were doing was exactly the kind tactic used by the Nazis, Soviets, and other tyrannical horrors in history to instill fear in their opposition as a precursor of the murderous actions that would be committed against their victims.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
While the Democrats stomp around about oligarchs and billionaires, we must realize that the communist push is being funded by billionaires who seek to be oligarchs. It’s the same game of projection that’s been used throughout history. Saul used it against David when he hunted the true king to protect his own power. Alexander Hamilton used it against the true Federalists when he created a “Nationalist” political party and then deceptively named it the Federalist Party. Andrew Jackson did it when he renamed Jefferson’s Republican Party (which had recently changed its name to the Democratic-Republican Party during the political war within) to the Democratic Party as he claimed that pure democracy would save the Constitution though democracy is destructive. Abraham Lincoln did it when claiming he was saving the Union when he was actually bringing the states under greater consolidated and centralized rule by the federal government. The Progressive Era lefties claimed they were saving the Senate by taking it away from the States with the Seventeenth Amendment. The bankers said they were saving our economy by creating the Federal Reserve so that they could actually control it. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society claimed they were saving those in poverty, when in reality his programs were enslaving them into a life of government dependency and destruction of the family. George H.W. Bush did it when he called for a new world order to secure freedom, when it was a call for a global world order to destroy liberty.
“You will own nothing, and be happy,” we have been told.
It is a plan for global communism, and it can’t get launched until America is brought to its knees and forced to participate.
The Cloward-Piven move has been upgraded from overwhelming local welfare systems to overwhelming the entire federal system – and the Democratic Socialists are just the revolutionaries to make it happen.
We are all pretty familiar with George Soros – the self-loathing Jew who joined the Nazis and now is a billionaire with his hands on many levers of power throughout the world. We know he’s been behind much of the funding behind the Democratic Party’s madness during the tail-end of the Twentieth Century, and since the emergence of the New Millennium. We recognize he is dangerous. We recognize his money is flowing through the veins of the opposition of the Constitution like venomous poison.
There is another billionaire out there who is even a greater threat than Soros, and he is not shy about letting everyone know that he is a full-blown Marxist. He works directly with the Chinese Communist Party. He is a master of propaganda campaigns, and his work is specifically designed to destroy the United States from within. The source of money behind many of the groups working to bring down America and launch communism from within the Halls of Government is an individual that most people have probably never heard of, either.
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Neville Singham.
He goes way beyond progressivism. The DSA candidates are mild compared to this guy. He is a staunch communist and he has an organization that flows money into many different anti-American organizations that then flows the money into other organizations that eventually works its way out to 58 different hard-left organizations in 5 different regions. And then, it flows back into 11 more.
He is worse than George Soros. He is another force that works side-by-side with The Open Society Foundations. While on paper Singham is not directly connected to Soros’s leftist funding organization, The Neville Singham Network routes millions of dollars through his own opaque network of nonprofits, donor-advised funds, and charities like The People’s Forum and the People’s Support Foundation. Congress has scrutinized him, and there have been federal investigations into his alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party and funding of domestic protests.
Singham’s network operates in tandem with Soros’s Open Society Foundations, both of them funding and equipping large-scale political protests and civil unrest in the United States, often working together along with the Arabella network and the Tides network as major financial influences behind progressive causes.
They want the average American to believe that the push for socialism is some kind of grassroots movement that is organically rising up from the voice of the people – and it is not. It is a coordinated, highly funded attack against the United States aimed at destroying our constitutional republic and fundamentally transforming America into a socialist cog in a much larger global communist engine.
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Utopianism is nothing new. The Founding Fathers largely constructed the Constitution as they did to not only guard against monarchy and democracy, but also against “utopianism.”
Socialism was not something invented by Karl Marx. The redistribution of wealth was called “The Schemes of Leveling” by Samuel Adams. He said, “The Utopian schemes of levelling, and a community of goods, are as visionary and impracticable, as those which vest all property in the Crown, are arbitrary, despotic, and in our government unconstitutional.”
He was arguing about the forced redistribution of wealth, and the elimination of private property; the schemes in play right now by the Democratic Socialists who are infesting the Democratic Party.
The war to end America’s independence and liberty did not stop with the end of aggression by the British Empire. It is alive and well and being funded by “Americans” who should be tried for treason. It’s coming from the CCP through them, and they are using tax-exempt organizations to fund it – which makes them taxpayer supported entities in a sense.
Like Planned Parenthood, they operate in the name of hope and fairness, and if we were to cut off their funding like we saw with Planned Parenthood which resulted in the abortion industry closing down clinics all over the country, we can stop this attack against America at its source.
Follow the money, and the trail leads directly to George Soros and Neville Singham.
End the money flow, and the revolution against America will die on the vine.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
The socialists are telling everyone that capitalism isn’t working. Then they point to alleged problems in America that they see as failed products of capitalism. The reality is, they are not being totally honest. In today’s political and economic landscape, capitalism itself isn’t even operating as true capitalism. Much of the free market is being manipulated by government’s artificial influences, and all of the alleged problems of affordability that the lefties are screaming about are largely being caused by the very kind of governmental influence they are pushing to increase the level of.
The way to fix the ills of society isn’t by making the same mistakes that we’ve seen in history over and over, and then pretend that collectivism provides all kinds of new ideas. The solution has always been in front of us, and articulated biblically and in the United States Constitution. Remove government’s excessive influence on the market, limit government to only making necessary laws, and let the markets and culture take their own course. I’m not talking the extreme of anarchy, but we definitely need to step away from the extremes of collectivism.
History honestly reveals that the freer the economic market and the more virtuous a society, the more true liberty the system possesses, and the more prosperous the society. And that is why the hard left is working very hard to hide history, or rewrite it, when they can. They know that truth invalidates their claims. So, the only way they can convince voters that their plan is a good plan is to lie about it. Deception, then again, has always been a tool of tyranny.
The Founding Fathers’ primary aim was to limit the scope of government over our lives, the economy, and the levers of power. The reason for the creation of numerous checks and balances and a distribution of power broadly allocated among the people, the states, and the different offices of the federal government was so that our republic would stand the test of time against the wiles of tyranny. The Founding Fathers understood the nature of tyranny, and the battles throughout history by tyrannical schemes against liberty, Natural Rights, and the fundamental truths of how to operate a successful society. They recognized the danger of centralized government power and how those seeking power would do anything to achieve it – including using deception in everything they do and say. This was a key reason behind Benjamin Franklin’s quote, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
Democrat Don Leonard, a hard-left northeast progressive who is running for Congress in Ohio’s Congressional District election, made recent remarks that confirms my argument. On a podcast he said that he’s not a Democratic Socialist, but “even if I were, I’d lie to the people of my district in order to get their votes.”
He said it with a laugh. But his statement was a revealing and perhaps intentional glance into the soul of the Democratic Party.
Leonard, a former professor at Ohio State, published an academic paper that concluded the best outcome for the United States is a socialist “counter movement.” He is not bluffing about being willing to lie to his constituents. The Democrats’ big problem is not the rise of the Democratic Socialists in their political party. It’s that the new, younger, DSA Democrats are exclaiming their aims for America out loud.
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In the 1890s, the Fabian Socialists began a process of a slow incremental strategy of spreading socialism from within. They laid out a plan of slow and gradual implementation and a internal takeover of all of the American institutions. Eventually, without knowing it, the American public would adopt communism and raise the red flag of communism themselves. In a book by W. Cleon Skousen, the plan was laid out in The Naked Communist, and in 1962 the list of 45 goals to destroy America from the book was read and entered into the congressional record. In 1966, a political plan was proposed by American sociologists and activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. The Cloward-Piven strategy sought to overwhelm the welfare system until it bankrupted local governments, collapsing the system, and forcing the federal government to replace welfare programs with a national system of guaranteed minimum income and benefits. The strategy became known as a scheme by the hard-left to sabotage government operations until everything collapsed so that they could raise a new communist system from the rubble like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
In many ways, what today’s progressives and socialists are calling for is a return to the very systems we fought a revolution against two-hundred and fifty years ago. Mercantilism by the British was a system of economic control. Consolidated government regimes ruled the world through a number of different empires. Before that, castles dotted the landscape where a ruling class operated a system of lower-class equality where everyone except the nobles were equally miserable.
Today, the hard-left is working on the same kind of system. They call for tearing down anyone with wealth, except for those in the ruling class. Urban filth, violence in the streets, and resurgent diseases marked the age of castles and lands filled with peasants, and now we have essentially the same thing today. The collectivists seek to divide the world into blameworthy “oppressors” and blameless “oppressed.” The victim is always right and must be believed and championed. Human feces and urine flow through the streets as tents dot any open areas and the sidewalks. Drug needles litter the ground along with used condoms. Storm drains now double as sewage gutters. Babies are being devilishly sacrificed by their own mothers in the name of convenience up to the moment of birth, with the blood of those babies being sacrificed to some unseen demonic force. Science claims biology is not science, and violence has ensued against anyone claiming that a man in a dress should not be able to compete in women’s sports. As fare as the angry enraged lefties are concerned, men are not men and women are not women. Meanwhile, in the name of love and acceptance, children can have their private body parts mutilated, even without parental knowledge. To argue against the practice of chopping up the genitalia of our children, in the hope of saving these children, is called bigotry and hatred. God has been labeled as evil, and politicians argue that the Constitution is unconstitutional.
We teeter between a civilized constitutional republic and the insanity of barbarity and chaos.
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Charlie Kirk stood for truth, debating anyone willing to listen, and was grotesquely murdered for daring to speak out against the rising tide of tyranny and immorality. Lindsay Clancy brutally strangled her three small children and is being deified as a victim. Luigi Mangione assassinated Brian Robert Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and is being deified as some kind of hero because he executed in cold blood a corporate executive. Illegal migrants have invaded the country and many have committed heinous crimes from human trafficking to murder – and some Americans are willing to stand between law enforcement and these criminal aliens in the hopes of stopping their deportation. If you argue against their unlawful activities, you are accused of being racist, and against immigration and fairness. When racism is used as an excuse for any violent event, people flood the streets to riot and burn their own communities – and then blame the alleged oppressors who never lit a match. The blame is then placed on the American System that raised more people out of poverty than any system in history, and has led the world to a prosperous age of innovation and comfort. But, somehow, the greatest country in the history of the world is now the greatest threat to humanity and must be deconstructed and dismantled – in a manner way beyond what Cloward and Piven suggested.
The collectivists tear down statues so that history may be forgotten. Their war against history includes anything they deem offensive, ignoring the warning that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. They claim their removal of Confederate statues is to remove the stain of racism against blacks – but then use racism against whites as their cure. Historical revisionism has become a major strategy of people who used to claim they were against book-burners. They religiously follow a cult of hatred against Jews and Christians in the name of stopping all religion from destroying this country – unless, of course, that religion is Islam whose followers cry out “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” They’ve twisted America’s inspiring story of carving out a new civilization out of untamed wilderness in pursuit of religious freedom and individual liberty into a tale of racism, exploitation, and environmental degradation. Any symbols of America’s history that does not fit their WOKE and Marist narrative must be removed, renamed, or apologized for.
As Barack Obama worked to fundamentally transform America, and Hillary Clinton promised to finish his work, Donald Trump emerged on the scene and changed the trajectory of the leftist revolution. He stuck a stick in their spokes that made the whole thing crash… and crash hard. His popularity rose as his policies made America better, and the only way they could stop him was with a pandemic that strategically appeared during the presidential election season, coupled with immense behind-the-scenes work on rigging the 2020 election. MAGA sniffed out the scam, however, and so to make sure the troublesome Trump and his supporters were made as ineffective as possible, plans were hatched and conspiracies were launched.
President Trump’s claim that the 2020 Election was rigged became the Democratic Party’s target of attack. They claimed he was calling for his supporters to overturn a “safe and secure” election. Two pipe bombs were planted on January 5th, 2021 to try to prove that MAGA was full of violent and dangerous domestic terrorists. Evidence continues to reveal the pipe bombs were planted and designed to create a narrative that Trump was advocating for violence and his followers were just the domestic terrorists to carry it out. The entire cover-up has been imploding, and the whole Deep State is in danger of being exposed in ways that will rattle the political world into chaos if we can every get all of the truth to the surface.
On January 6, 2021, supporters of Donald Trump descended upon The Capitol, and the left argued the whole thing became a violent insurrection – something more deadly and treasonous than anything in American History since the secession of the Southern States during the 1860s. The deception crumbles once one examines the facts. The “violence” began before President Trump was even finished with his speech at the ellipse, he made no remarks calling for such violence (even though the liars of the left say otherwise), and nobody was technically arrested for insurrection (most of them were arrested on charges of trespassing and interrupting official gatherings by Congress and then given excessive and unusual fines and prison time in violation of the Eighth Amendment) – all because they arrived on the scene to exercise their First Amendment rights. The Democrats destroyed the lives of anyone they could sink their teeth into to make sure their grand deception was in place so that they could stop the MAGA movement against them once and for all. Since then, evidence has bubbled up to expose their deception. Testimony associated with Jack Smith’s report reveals they were lying all along. The January 6 Committee destroyed any evidence that might reveal the truth. Antifa telegraphed that the grand deception was on its way long before any MAGA supporters even appeared in Washington D.C. FBI personnel and informants were moving through the crowd agitating the whole scene. Lies were told and star witnesses suddenly vanished. But it didn’t matter. The deception had been launched. The accusations had been placed. From the Democratic Left’s point of view, Trump and his supporters getting in the way of their plan to turn America into a single-party socialist utopia had been stopped.
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Then, Donald Trump and his supporters did something nobody saw coming. He won in 2024.
The establishment Democrats somehow had dropped the ball again. Their incremental plan of gradual socialism was in danger and the younger radicals, activists, and community organizers decided it was time to strike. The plan of an equality of misery, envy, and hatred of America had to leap into a new strategy. It was time for revolution.
So, the Democratic Socialists came out swinging, and they were honest about what they were about.
And their honesty has bit them in the bottom, so they’ve gone back to the leftist establishment’s strategy of deception.
Obama was honest too. He dismissed the free market and American entrepreneurship in 2012 when he said, “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” He also told Joe the Plumber that his plan was all about the communist redistribution of wealth. But, he didn’t say it as clearly as today’s socialists.
The game of deception isn’t just about whether or not they spill the beans completely about their socialism. The media is in on it, polls are in on it, and the fact checkers are in on it. According to Newsbusters, in an analysis of Politifact’s fact checks, Democrats were rated as being mostly false in what they said 37.8 percent of the time. Republicans? 75% of the time. In 2025, Republicans were deemed as mostly false 84.9% of the time. Except, the whole thing is false in its reporting. The facts, I suppose, can be a subjective thing for Democrats and their allies. But, the people believe it because, you know, they were told so by the experts.
During a recent program about the Constitution I hosted, beside me my wife decided to fact-check me using Google’s A.I. She interrupted me with a number of items of information it gave her, and each time it opposed what I was saying, it was giving false information. I pointed out the errors, and provided sources. She asked, “but why would they lie?”
Why would they, indeed.
Because it is all about power and money. The deception game is necessary because without the deception, we would know without a doubt what they are up to. They can’t afford for the truth to get out, and that is why California passed a bill to suppress investigative journalism, New York Magazine’s stance has changed from noncitizen voting being imaginary to it being a good thing, voter fraud is rampant and there are currently probes into voter fraud in 9 states to expose it as we head toward the midterms, Obama and the Democrats actually pushed an agenda that made new home costs skyrocket (you will cry for communist-style government housing if you can’t afford to buy one), CNN’s Wolf Blitzer lied about Trump’s attempt to stop mail-in voting-for-all (falsely claiming it would also disallow deployed military from voting), and why the Democrats claim they are not socialists but overwhelmingly rejected an anti-socialism resolution in Congress. They are all a part of the game of deception, because in the end all they seek is power, and a communist system that places them at the top and everyone else in a chaotic position of requiring dependency upon the government, whether we want it or not.
In history, liberty is the exception, not the rule. The Founding Fathers understood exactly what they were doing. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The whole thing was about individual natural rights. The possession of our rights, and the right to pursue them without government interference. An economic system based on a free market of ideas, entrepreneurism, and the incentive to innovate and invest in America’s industries.
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World history is filled with conquerors, death, and authoritarianism. Empires, monarchies, and Islam has filled history with violence, death, and enslavement. Liberty is a historic anomaly. Our prosperity did not create our system of liberty – it was the result of it. America began as a small fledgling Union of States in a world of empires. The settlers of America only wished for religious freedom, possession of their own property, and economic liberty. The Framers built the constitutional foundation of what would become today’s United States of America on their understanding of rare moments of historical enlightenment by the Saxons, the Holy Bible, Cicero, John Locke and Montesquieu. They found inspiration in the Magna Carta and the English Declaration of Rights. They were encouraged by the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and when that failed they embraced the arguments in the pamphlet “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine. They united under the Declaration of Independence, established their first system of government under the Articles of Confederation, and pulled it all together into a mighty compact with the United States Constitution. The country was built on ideas of liberty and truth, deep Christian roots, and the recognition of how to build a system that would stand the test of time based on biblical and historical research and intense debate. And it was all honest, out front, and provided for We the People to move the country forward. Their aspirations of liberty-for-all eventually became the law of the land through two centuries of debate, war, and struggle. And on the other side we emerged as something very special, despite the insertion of flaws along the way by leftists, ruthless industrialists, and others seeking power. In the end, despite the battles and the partisanship, the Constitution has stood the test of time. It has been a recipe for success and prosperity – and now we have a bunch of socialists using deception to try to convince everyone otherwise as they spark a flint to light the whole thing on fire.
We must not underestimate who and what we are up against. The socialist/communist movement is indeed winning primaries in the Democratic Party. They hold political offices around the country. They infest the bureaucracy, courts, media, entertainment industry and institutions of education. And they no longer use deception in the way they used to. They openly advocate for Marxist governance, unless pressed about it, and then tell everyone that they are being misunderstood. They use moral relativism and pluralism to blur the line between right and wrong, and call immorality the new morality. They have been working on destroying the family and our culture of exceptionalism to the point that even conservative allies are beginning to sound a little like them. The confusion then breeds instability, and threatens the very functioning of our system. That is what they want. Breakdown. Collapse. Cloward-Piven.
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The collapse, for some, seems inevitable.
So, we work on national politics, and we work on local politics. But I must ask you, “How do we get our political house in order if we don’t first get our cultural house in order?” And then we must ask, how do we get our culture back on the right path?
When norms are considered to be optional, and then are labeled as hatred and bigotry, how do we get our hands back on the reins?
Understand, their goal is communism, and communism is godless. So if the foundation of the attack is godlessness, then the answer is simple.
We must return to God.
Psalms 57 and 138 provide powerful biblical guidance for Christians facing opposition in today’s world. Faith and perspective must be maintained as we are surrounded by hostility against God, liberty, and our constitutional republic.
The verses of those Psalms illustrate the importance of standing boldly in opposition to false doctrines that distort God’s Word. Christians must develop an authentic biblical worldview to navigate today’s challenges. Even when surrounded by opposition, we must maintain our confidence in God’s ultimate sovereignty, just as David did while hiding in a cave. We are experiencing a massive spiritual battle that requires believers to be firmly grounded in biblical truth.
We must know our Faith, Scripture, and our Constitution. We must stand firm, but trust in God. We must keep our eyes on God’s faithfulness. We must find strength and hope in Christ as we face persecution and opposition. Our response to opposition should be praise and trust in God, rather than fear or compromise. We must keep an eternal perspective, recognizing that these current struggles are temporary.
Stand for liberty. Stand for Faith. Stand for what we know to be right. Utilize important tools available to us (like petitioning the government for a redress of grievances). Remember, maintaining liberty is not a spectator sport. The Founding Fathers believe they had the Power of God at their disposal. Do we believe the same?
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
The sweeping pardons issued by President Joseph Biden were unconstitutional, meaning individuals like Tony Fauci may not be protected from prosecution as they believe. To understand why, we must dissect the language of the Constitution itself.
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states that the President “…shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The key phrase here is “Offenses against the United States,” which specifically refers to federal criminal offenses. For a pardon to be constitutional, there must be a specific federal offense that has been committed. The Constitution does not grant the President authority to pardon individuals preemptively for potential future actions or past actions that are not clearly defined as federal crimes.
The historical record reveals that the Framers intended this power to be narrow, not unlimited. In Federalist #74, Alexander Hamilton called the pardon power a “benign prerogative” necessary to dispense mercy when strict justice would be too severe, and to offer pardons to rebels and insurgents during crises for the sake of peace and unity in the Union. Hamilton acknowledged that this power was meant to be applied to actual offenses, not hypothetical ones.
There is ongoing debate about whether conviction should be a requirement for a federal criminal offense to be eligible for a pardon. Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza has suggested that accepting a presidential pardon means admitting guilt, establishing a connection between pardons and convictions. Pardons do not “unring the bell of conviction” – they simply pardon the individual from punishment.
The Founding Fathers debated the pardon power extensively during the Constitutional Convention and ratification period. Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #74, while not explicitly using the word “conviction,” strongly argued that the pardoning power should be “as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.” In essence, Hamilton argued there was a need for pre-conviction pardons.
George Mason warned about unlimited pardons. At the Virginia Ratifying Convention, he stated that while pardons should not be limited to convictions, they should only apply to clear federal criminal actions.
While the Founding Generation generally agreed pardons should not be limited to convictions, the pardon power applies only to federal offenses. President Washington set a precedent when pardoning Whiskey Rebellion participants who had not been indicted or convicted. That said, Washington also pardoned those who had been convicted.
The crucial distinction, however, is that Washington’s pardons were for a specific offense. While in many cases they were issued prior to conviction, they addressed actual violations of a specific federal statute that had already occurred. The Founding Fathers viewed the pardon power as a tool of mercy for actual offenses, not as a shield against general potential liability.
This historical understanding raises serious questions about modern preemptive pardons that appear to cover potential future conduct that might not even rise to the level of a federal offense. From an originalist perspective, such pardons would seem to exceed the constitutional limitation of “offenses against the United States” because no specific offense has yet been committed.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
In the battle of Left versus Right, it is important to understand what it all means in the first place. Likeminded individuals naturally tend to gather together when a theater of opinion erupts. Congregating in such a manner, creating political parties, is a part of our human nature. Houses, or chambers, of government are no different. Members of the political assembly who support similar agendas sit together, much in the way social allies tend to hang out together at a dinner party. The classification of “left” and “right” grew out of the tendency of people to group together on one side, or the other.
The early definition of “left” and “right” was different than in today’s American Society. Among the most commonly known split between the left and the right in a political assembly occurred in France before the French Revolution. Members of the National Assembly sat on the right or the left of the hall depending on their level of political support in regards to the ruling monarchy.
Those in support of the monarchy, and the religious elements that came with the reigning government, would sit on the right. The people on the right were defined as being those holding traditional interests in line with the Church and the monarchy, believing the king ruled by divine right, and that Catholicism must continue to be the state religion, and therefore continue to be a strong influence on governance. The people who sat on the right side of the assembly believed that the Church had a vested interest in the political system, and they sought to preserve that system.
Those who sat on the left side of the hall in France during the period preceding the French Revolution did so in support of “enlightenment,” which was considered to be in the interests of rationalism and secularism. The left used secular elements to challenge the Church’s long-held influence over government, fostering nationalism among its allies, and promoting hope in constructing and shaping the political community. The left desired to change government by overthrowing the Church and the aristocracy by promoting secularism and nationalism. The planners of this glorious new “enlightened” government became the leaders of France after the French Revolution, orchestrating a Reign of Terror, which was a period of chaos during which thousands were guillotined for being politically incorrect.
The radicals within this new government saw the Catholic Church as the enemy while promoting its Cult of Reason. Like with the monarchy before them, however, it became clear that to control the political and social upheaval, the government in place must also become tyrannical in their own right. Under the rule of statism, France remained a nation unable to cultivate liberty, and one that remained under the iron fist of a dictatorial government. For many, this was no surprise. Some of the planners of the change of the form of government in France knew that in order to keep order they would need to “treat the people as cattle.”
The French National Assembly established a constitutional monarchy and adopted a new constitution in 1791 that created a Legislative Assembly. The political assembly, as with any other political body, rapidly divided into factions opposing each other. The three factions that formed in the new French Legislative Assembly were the radicals (liberals), moderates (centrists) and conservatives. The radicals (liberals) sat in the left section of the assembly hall, the conservatives sat on the right, and the moderates sat in the center section. Their political identities have some similarities to political movements today in the United States, but had little in common with the pre-revolution arrangement that emphasized itself more on monarchy and religion.
America is much younger than the European nations, and never had a landlord class of titled nobles. In fact, the Constitution specifically prohibits such a system. The Founding Fathers desired to break away from European traditions as much as possible, even abandoning much of British Common Law when defining citizenship. To be a British Subject the rules were weak, and divided loyalties ran rampant throughout the British Empire. The United States as a Union could not tolerate divided loyalties, and placed a stronger standard of natural born citizenship upon the President in order to eliminate the opportunity for the executor of the American Form of Government to harbor divided loyalties between the United States of America, and any other nation. That way, the new American government could break completely free of any European influence, and forge itself into a Republic independent from British influence, and in fact, the authoritarian nature of Europe as a whole. The political landscape of the United States of America, since there never was a class of nobles, was simple in the young country. Either you were a Federalist, an anti-Federalist, or somewhere in between (Nationalists did grow out of the movement, and then deceptively named their political party the Federalist Party).
Those who sought a stronger centralized federal government were followers of Alexander Hamilton. They stood in opposition of those who believed that the federal role in government should be limited greatly. There were others who found themselves somewhere between the two political beliefs.
Unlike the Europeans, royalty and religion played no role in determining the nature of American political philosophies. Nearly all of the early American Politicians were deeply religious men, but the political spectrum did not separate factions along religious lines. God played a major role in the principle foundation of America, but the founding fathers also determined that no religion could ever take an official role in government; hence, the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. The establishment of any religion as the official religion of the United States was forbidden. That said, Congress was also forbidden to make any law that infringed upon the freedom of an individual to practice their religion. Almost all of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were either clergy, or highly involved in their church. 27 of the 56 signers had Christian seminary degrees. The Founding Fathers fervently prayed in Congress.
Benjamin Franklin is widely regarded to be among the least religious of the Founding Fathers. However, his speech given to Congress on June 28, 1787 asking that Congress have a prayer every morning before conducting business was overtly religious in nature. Despite modern assumptions, there was not a political battle between The Church and the secularists during the founding of the United States of America. The battle was between the percentage of power of the government in the lives of the people.
America’s political spectrum evolved differently than the one in France., The American political spectrum became more about the level of control of government over a society, rather than the presence of a monarchy, or established church. From the American point of view, zero percent of government intrusion on the lives of the people inhabits the far right of the current political spectrum, which is a condition known as anarchy. 100% governmental control inhabits the far left extremity of the Political Spectrum (a totalitarian government). The American form of government, or a Constitutional Republic that operates under the rule of law, is at the center of the political spectrum.
Most of the current forms of government present in today’s international political arena reside on the left side of the Political Spectrum, drawing their foundations from socialist principles. Socialism is inherently authoritarian. Socialism, like the radicals from the French Revolution, claims to seek to overthrow the Church and aristocracy by promoting atheism and nationalism, only replacing the government they thought to be a tyranny with a tyranny of their own. In Russia, the rise of socialism held the basic tenet of replacing the individual’s commitment to God with a commitment to love and serve a collective society ruled by an elite few.
When one examines the communist society, which resides on the left side of the Political Spectrum, one finds that if society was ruled over by an equally powerful religious theocracy, the basic governmental elements of the ruling doctrine are the same, and just as tyrannical. Therefore, a controlling government based on religion is no different than an atheistic system of communism. Either way, the form of governance is based on a centralized control over the people, and limits on personal individualism and freedoms.
Economically, leftism encourages increased government involvement with the instruments that regulate the economy. Under a leftist economic system, such as in the communist model, the government seizes control of the industries, eliminating private ownership (control over the means of production). In the fascist model, the authoritarian political entity engages in corporatism, allowing the private enterprises to remain private, yet bundled together in a uniting strength under authoritarian government regulatory rule. Because fascism (from Italian fascismo, Benito Mussolini’s authoritarian political movement in Italy 1922 to 1943) was created to be an adverse reaction to the apparent economic failure of Marxism, and labeled itself as the opposite of communism, fascism is often referred to as being right-wing, and ultra-conservative. If you break down the political structure of fascism, however, it becomes apparent that defining fascism as being on the right side of the political spectrum is dishonest. Like socialism, fascism exalts the group above the individual (in fascist states sometimes the nation or race is exalted above the identity of the individual). Like other leftist systems, fascism also calls for a complete separation of church and state, a national civilian army, and progressive taxation. And, in fascism, as in communism, the state controls the means of production, but through heavy regulation, rather than owning the means of production.
Though fascism, during the early twentieth century, claimed to be anti-communist, the authoritarian National Socialism aspect of the ideology places fascism on the left side of the Political Spectrum.
From a modern point of view, the true definition of the Political Spectrum is dependent upon how government interacts with society. Increased government intrusion moves needle on the spectrum to the left. Increasing limitations on government intrusion moves the needle to the right. In both cases, the extreme of totalitarianism, or anarchy, are equally dangerous. Ultimately, most forms of government, despite the promise of fairness, are often only precursors to another form of government. The Founding Fathers realized this, recognizing that the only form of government that both limits the powers of the federal government, while still giving it adequate authority to secure and preserve Natural Rights, is a Constitutional Republic. They knew that if you pursue leftism too far, an authoritarian government would rise from the movement. If government was limited too much, and the government did not have enough power to enforce law, an authoritarian government would also rise to fill the void.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
Trump’s Lake America
By Douglas V. Gibbs
During the Obama and Biden presidencies, the Democrats renamed over 650 specific geographic natural physical features, human features, public places, and military locations. Most changes targeted alleged ethnic, racial, or sexist slurs, while others eliminated references to Confederate figures, or historical figures that somehow offended somebody. Mountains, peaks, lakes, streams, canyons, islands, schools, streets and valleys all became targets. The cultural renaming extended even beyond geography, with women becoming “birthing persons,” among other games with language.
Now, Democrats rage over Trump’s decision to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” despite the fact that the lake occupies nearly half of American territory. That said, Canada can keep calling it Lake Ontario, for all I care.
Trump’s opponents conveniently forget their own renaming frenzy. When Barack Obama changed the name of Mount McKinley to Mount Denali, they cheered – proclaiming it to be a restoration of its “Native American” name. Never mind that they were simultaneously eliminating “Native American” names elsewhere as “cultural appropriation.”
The hypocrisy is staggering, and it doesn’t just reside in changing the names of things.
They complained when Trump appointed Todd Blanche to attorney general because the two have “too close of a relationship.” He was Trump’s personal lawyer, they screamed. Trump’s giving positions to his friends and family, they cried. They said nothing when Obama appointed his best friend Eric Holder to AG. They still say nothing about the fact that President John F. Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert Kennedy, to AG.
They argue that Trump is waging an illegal war in Iran. Where were their arguments when Obama waged an undeclared war on the Afghan-Pakistan border, took out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and ordered 500 assassination takeouts with drones? A couple of those assassinations, by the way, were Americans – and not all of the targets were terrorists.
Bill Clinton didn’t receive arguments from the media and Democrats when he hit the Serbians in the name of saving Bosnia and Kosovo from “genocide.”
They complain about his White House Ballroom despite the fact that all Presidents have made changes and renovations to the White House in one way or another. They complain about the events he’s held, claiming he’s wasting taxpayer money when, like with the Ballroom, those events were paid for with private money. How many events and restorations to the White House did Democratic Presidents have – which, by the way, were each paid with taxpayer dollars.
The contradictions are not hard to recognize, and the reason is simple. It’s never been about the action. It’s only about who performs it. If Trump is authoritarian for renaming a lake, what does that make Obama and Biden who renamed over 650 places? While I appreciate tradition, the selective outrage reveals a whole lot of truth. They will oppose anything Trump does, even when it mirrors their own actions.
In the end, the only question we should be asking is if President Trump has the constitutional authority to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America. The answer is, he’s head of the executive branch, so he can rename plenty of things inside the federal government’s own paperwork and signage. What he can’t do is force Canada to adopt the new name, rewrite international agreements, or demand the rest of the world’s mapmakers comply. He can call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and change the name of Lake Ontario on government paperwork that comes out of the executive branch to Lake America all he wants – but whether or not everyone else wants to follow his lead… well, that is totally up to them.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary