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Independence Day – and a new war
July 04, 2024
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248 years ago today, the Second Continental Congress published the most radical document the world had then seen. This was, of course, the Declaration of Independence – which is why we celebrate Independence Day on that particular anniversary. 198 years ago today, the author of that document, and one of his most staunch allies in that old Congress, died within hours – perhaps minutes – of one another. These men were, respectively, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Ironically, those two became bitter enemies at a crucial juncture in their careers, and the history of the country. But perhaps they never lost their high mutual respect. Sadly, too many have lost respect today – for those two men, for the country they helped found, and for the principles for which it once stood. Now America might have to fight another war for independence – hot or cold, will be the people’s choice.

Independence Day began in the middle of war

The Signers of the Declaration knew that they would have to pay a price, in blood and treasure, to make their declaration real.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Not until 1783 could America observe Independence Day without war on its own soil. Over the next centuries, America would have to observe Independence Day in the middle of war on its soil over two intervals: the War of 1812 and the War Between the States. (The other wars almost don’t count, for America fought those abroad. But World War II must have carried more urgency than most, given its beginning with a sneak attack on soil over which America did have a territorial claim.)

In 1996, a Hollywood filmmaker offered one other vision of Independence Day observed during war on American soil. This war had a salient difference (beyond being a war against an extraterrestrial nomadic fleet). This time, America would fight and win the final battle on Independence Day itself. (Viewers also saw a President of the United States leading the counterattack. That would have been the first time a President did this since President Washington led troops against the Whiskey Rebellion.)

Today America faces its first actual invasion since the War of 1812 (not counting Pearl Harbor, which was a raid). But this invasion does not come with mass armies. It is ideological, with the goal of subsuming the United States into a single government for all the world. And it would not be a government under which freedom lovers would care to live.

Nature of this ideology

The ostensible premises of this ideology are as many and varied as the proponents on any given day. (That is to day, those at whom any controlled-media “reporter” cares to wave a microphone.) Some blame the idea of independent polities for every war that has ever broken out. Abolish the independence of nation-states, and you will abolish war. So said the late Walter Cronkite, who spoke of the “bitter pill” he would have Americans swallow of surrendering independence.

Others specifically criticize the moral values, and some of the moral practices, of Americans. These values and practices have the goal of ensuring the continued propagation of humanity. Some opponents of these practices say they want the “moralists” to leave them alone. That would have been valid – had those same opponents left the rest of us alone. But at least some have avowed the real purpose: they think this Earth has too many people on it.

Elon Musk is running his own space program to expand the reach of human settlement beyond the Earth. He wants more room, and to make sure even a planetary-scale disaster could never wipe out humanity. Jeff Bezos says he wants to move dirty, smelly, carbon-emitting industry into high Earth orbit. He might also move significant portions of the population off Earth, to turn Earth into a nature park. But Larry (The) Fink of BlackRock, one of the Big Three Institutional Investors, told the truth. He wants Earth for himself and his chosen few relatives and associates.

Should America blame herself?

Not if one distinguishes the real America – people who just want others to leave them alone – from the legions of private bankers and armorers who pulled the levers of political power long before anyone heard of trading in such instruments as common or preferred stock, bonds, debentures, and so on. Alexander Hamilton famously tried to raise a Provisional Army during the 1798 crisis, when relations with Revolutionary France turned nasty. A financier by trade, he would have invented debt-based currency even earlier than the conspirators at Jekyll Island eventually did. And he would have marched his Provisional Army on the new Federal City, had not President Adams made peace.

Peace arguably cost John Adams the Presidency in 1800. We say arguably because this salient fact cannot escape notice: Thomas Jefferson did not go to war with France. Instead he bided his time, while the French Directoire fell to Napoleon’s coup. Eventually Jefferson bought the vast tract known as Louisiana. It cost America dearly in treasure – but not a drop of blood.

Eighteen years later, John Quincy Adams articulated America’s position: respectful of the independence of others.

She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that . . . European world, will be contests of inveterate power and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even banners of foreign independence, would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. America’s glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been Her Declaration: this has been . . . her practice.

If that sounds familiar to those who lived in the Sixties, it should. Executive Producer Gene Roddenberry incorporated that maxim into his first iteration of the franchise for which the world remembers him:

No officer or enlisted member of the Starfleet Armed Forces of the United Federation of Planets, shall interfere with the social, cultural, or technological development of any world that has not achieved at least a passing understanding of the concepts “space,” “other worlds,” or “advanced civilization,” or, on any world that does understand such concepts, violate local law or custom, or in any other manner interfere with social development on that world.

General Order Number One, a/k/a the Prime Directive, paraphrase

Violation of this stricture

But of course that kind of stricture interferes with the profits of war. Or else it stops someone’s misguided ideas of social reform. In any event, the banker-armorer alliance surely knew they could never expect the American people to support overseas adventures. That is, unless they could convince the people that the rest of the world no longer respected American independence.

And so began a series of false-flag pseudo-operations – misrepresenting as enemy action, things they did themselves (if they weren’t accidents). The list of known or suspected false-flag pseudo-operations that have gotten Americans into wars abroad goes back to 1898. USS Maine ACR-1 blew up in Havana Harbor – the incident that provoked the Spanish-American War. Joseph Pulitzer, the “Prize-maker” and one of the two fathers of “yellow journalism” (the other was William Randolph Hearst, the inspiration for Orson Welles’ most famous character, Charles Foster “Citizen” Kane), published, in his New York World, a drawing of the Maine riding at anchor in Havana Harbor – with a tethered mine beneath her.

In fact, a fire in a paint locker spread to the Maine’s powder magazines and ignited them. Everyone in official Washington knew it was an accident. But Hearst and Pulitzer – perhaps the first two Useful Idiots of the Media – beat the war drums. Hearst’s angle was the Cuban War for Independence – which speaks directly to John Quincy Adams’ non-interference address! In any event, Congress declared war – and so ended the John Quincy Adams Doctrine.

World War One

But the Bankster-Armorer Alliance wouldn’t stop there. Of course, in 1910, the Banksters convened at Jekyll Island and drafted plans for the Federal Reserve System. Four years later came their next opportunity: the assassination of Archduke Franz Fernand. Within months all of Europe was at war – but America was still out of it. So how to drag her in?

First, by loading illicit cargoes of munitions on passenger ocean liners. Then came the sinking of RMS Lusitania in 1915. 128 of her ill-fated passengers were Americans – so surely that would raise enough outcry! It didn’t – so the Bankster-Armorer Alliance had to try something else. (Repeated dives to the wreck of Lusitania have so far not recovered any munitions. But in 1982 Her Majesty’s Government warned salvage divers to watch out for explosives in the wreck. They found none. But other ships probably did carry munitions.)

Next came the Zimmermann Note. Arthur Zimmermann, Germany’s equivalent to our Secretary of State, proposed a German-Mexican military alliance in the event of America joining the Alliance of Britain, France and Russia. Germany even proposed helping Mexico reclaim Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. British intelligence intercepted the Note (and apparently Zimmermann owned up to sending it). President Woodrow Wilson, letting his anger get the better of him, asked for – and got – a declaration of war. The rest is history. Perhaps no one bothered to read the intercept – that Germany would ally with Mexico if America got involved first.

World War Two, the Cold War, Korea, and Vietnam

American entry into World War Two could have been the result of statesmen’s blunders of relations with the Empire of Japan. And what delayed the Japanese Ambassador and Japanese Special Envoy in delivering their “ultimatum” to the American Secretary of State? No one knows (or will admit) – but Secretary of State Cordell Hull didn’t even receive those two until after Pearl Harbor had been under attack for an hour. He made his seething “no government on this planet” speech and curtly dismissed them. After that, the United States declared war on Japan. Adolf Hitler then declared war on the United States – and the United States declared war on Germany retroactively.

However that War began for America, it ended with Americans thoroughly determined to be the world’s policemen. One can imagine John Quincy Adams shouting, “NO! NO! NO!” to an unheeding public. The official position of something called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – that they would not respect the independence of nations who did not adopt Communism – didn’t help. (It would help even less when Nikita S. Khrushchev took over after Stalin died.)

The new United Nations saw to the establishment of the State of Israel – and then to intervention in Korea. About ten years after that intervention began, French Indo-China revolted against their French overlords. But the victors promptly split into two countries called Vietnam – North (Communist) and South (Anti-communist). American involvement began with “advisers,” and escalated after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

Defeat – and the beginnings of an Independence Day spiritual renewal

That was the first war Americans lost – but not really Americans, but the Bankster-Armorer Alliance. The spectacle of U.S. forces tucking tail between their legs – and pulling out with frightened Vietnamese clinging to their helicopter skids (with some of them falling off) – thoroughly disenchanted the American public with any more thought of overseas adventure for several years. Jimmy Carter won the election, and America’s only reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was to sit out the Moscow Olympics. Under the circumstances, that was the only philosophically proper response. That was also the year that some Americans began to question a few pre-war narratives of the past.

But Carter’s mismanagement of the American economy – plus the humiliation of the first occupied U.S. Embassy – cost him reelection. Ronald Reagan, taking command, was determined to “win” the Cold War between America and Soviet Russia. But not entirely by force of arms, except for the Grenada Incident. Rather, he waged an economic war, that America won because the Soviet command economy could never sustain an arms race. The Soviet Union would collapse in 1991.

But by then Reagan’s successor, the globalist “Bush Senior,” was in command. A succession of globalist Presidents – Clinton, Bush Junior, and Obama – continued to look for adventures abroad. The collapse of the Soviet Union should have removed any remaining excuses for that. But ill-natured people will always find an excuse.

The real Independence Day President: Donald J. Trump

Donald Trump is the exception, and everyone knows it. He ran on a platform promising an end to “endless wars.” From the day he took office to the day he hurried out with all the documentary evidence he could spirit out of the White House on a January morning, the United States of America did not enter into any new war. He made two grand gestures for genuine peace in the Middle East:

  • Ordering the American Ambassador to move from Tel Aviv to the Jerusalem consulate, thereby transforming it into an Embassy, and

  • The Abraham Accords.

Trump was well on his way to winning a second term. Then the new Globalist Alliance raised the stakes chillingly. They engineered the release of a virus with a reportedly high case-fatality rate. Perhaps they took advantage of the stories coming out of Wuhan, China, after the virus’ release. Those stories almost included meat wagons rolling down the streets with bullhorns blaring “Bring out your dead!” in Chinese. But that could have been reflective of relative lack of sanitation and overall baseline ill-health among the Chinese.

No matter. “If you don’t want to see the meat wagons rolling down YOUR street,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci told Trump and the American public, “you’ll do as I say!” And what he said was to mask up and lock down. It gave the perfect excuse to tailor-make American elections for Democrats to win the only way they can: by fraud.

How they did it

And how did the Democrats do it? Democrats do not try to persuade. Aside from their constituencies, they cannot possibly shame enough voters to vote for a regime that will take everything they own, for the unearned, unpaid benefit of others. So they persuade – perhaps bribe – people to apply for absentee ballots through the mail. Then they hassle those people to turn them in – to them, signed but unvoted. Then they mark the ballots, and they seal them up and bring them to drop boxes. They also request absentee ballots in the names of the dead and the move-outs.

Or so they did in 2020. But in 2021 Steve Bannon popularized the Precinct Strategy to persuade more rank-and-file to join local Party committees, and to sign up to become accredited Party polling-place challengers, and Officers of Election. It worked in Virginia, which famously elected a Republican Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General. That Governor has ordered General Registrars in all units (counties and independent cities) to sanitize their voter rolls. (The sudden retirement of half the OOE workforce in 2023 due to increasing age has opened up a fresh opportunity to repopulate those ranks with honest, diligent, and alert OOEs.)

This Independence Day, prepare to reclaim independence from globalists

So on this Independence Day, remember John Quincy Adams, who popularized the equivalent of a Prime Directive over a century before Gene Roddenberry would be more than a glimmer in someone else’s imagination. He, even more than George Washington, warned against overseas military adventure – exactly 203 years ago today. And remember Alexander Hamilton, who almost wrecked everything twenty-three years earlier. Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey should have written Seven Months in Seventeen Ninety-eight to cover that drama. Perhaps history should thank Aaron Burr for removing Hamilton from the planet, however ignoble his own motive might have been. (And Hamilton had no business accepting Burr’s challenge to a duel! He did it anyway, the more fool he.)

A manifesto for rediscovered American independence needs to set policy goals. Here are a few:

  • End the Federal Reserve, and fractional reserve banking.

  • Forbid Members of Congress to trade stocks – the one thing Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) agree on!

  • End whatever advantage private armorers (“defense contractors”) seem to have over more peaceful manufacturers, in maintaining large factories in various Congressional districts.

  • Reinstate voting on paper – and counting them by hand at the precinct. And replace absentee voting with proxy voting.

  • Above all, withdraw from the United Nations, NATO, and other “treaty organizations.”

The only overseas action any Americans should think of taking, is testifying against globalist leaders – in national courts of competent jurisdiction. No more International Courts of Justice, or whatever!

Conclusion

Americans want to be left alone – and to leave others alone. Almost three centuries ago a group of Frenchmen calling themselves the Physiocrats expressed the idea pithily:

Laissez faire et laissez passer! Que le monde va de lui-même!

Or in English: “Let do and let pass! Let the world go on by itself!” That maxim applies equally to statecraft as to macro-economics, and is just as wise. Only power-mad tyrants could oppose it with any semblance of moral consistency. This Independence Day, let Americans stand as Virginians like to pretend they stand: Thus always to tyrants!

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SpaceX, Starship, and what might have been

Earlier this week, the Space Exploration Company conducted yet another test-to-failure of its current signature development project, Starship. SpaceX expected to lose both stages of this two-stage rocket ship, but not so fast, and not this way. Specifically, the booster blew up, and the “ship” (second stage) burned up. Does that spell doom for Starship? Sorry to disappoint Elon Musk’s detractors, but no. Tests-to-failure are the only way to find out for certain what can go wrong, especially with a new rocket ship. But had SpaceX run its development project differently, they would be in a much better financial position. They would also be further along in overall development than they are today. They could even be helping the official American space program in ways they never gave themselves a chance to imagine.

What is Starship, and what does SpaceX want to accomplish?

Starship is, or SpaceX wants it to be, the heaviest space liner and space freighter ever built. Indeed it would be the first rocket ship to carry passengers or freight on a scale comparable to commercial aviation. Or military airlift, for that matter – because the U.S. military wants to use it to move troops and equipment halfway around the globe, before an enemy would even know what’s happening.

There’s just one catch: Starship isn’t ready, and won’t be ready for years yet. The reason it’s not ready is that SpaceX, under the obsessive-compulsive leadership of founder Elon Musk, is following a single track. That company wants a fully reusable rocket that its shipyards (now incorporated as an independent city!) can turn out orders of magnitude faster than Boeing or Airbus can turn out airliners and air freighters. But first they must make their rocket reusable. The booster they lost in the last test was on its second flight. But they haven’t achieved that with the second stage.

Why is SpaceX so obsessed and compelled with reuse, mass production, and rapid “cadence” (how often they launch their rockets)? Because Elon Musk has one dream above all, and is impatient to realize it. He wants to build a self-sustaining city on the planet Mars – not as a mining colony but as a second home for humanity. That project will require thousands of Starships carrying crew, equipment – and rocket fuel, for he wants to refuel in space.

The problem with the Starship program

SpaceX has a fundamental problem it didn’t always have. When they developed their current “workhorse” rockets – Falcon Nine and Falcon Heavy – they did offer “intermediate” services as soon as they could. Falcon Nine reuses its booster but not its second stage; Falcon Heavy has three boosters and can reuse at least two, if not all three. Falcon Nine especially has taken “market share” from nearly ever other rocket ship built. Its reusable booster lets it launch payloads at less than half the cost of its competitors.

Falcon Heavy was supposed to be retired by now; Musk hoped that Starship would take its place. But Musk knows he cannot even entrust his own payloads – Starlink® satellites – to Starship. In racing to make Starship re-usable, he has left it un-usable for any useful work! The perfect, in short, has become the enemy of the good.

The YouTube influencer “Everyday Astronaut,” in covering Integrated Flight Test Nine (the latest), pointed this out. Why, he asked, didn’t SpaceX develop an intermediate version of Starship that would reuse the booster but not the ship? They could have been putting his new, heavier Starlink® satellites into orbit by now, on a grand scale. They could also be lifting other, more ambitious payloads – modules for the VAST company’s new Haven space station. (Starship is more than twice as wide as a Haven module, even today.)

But even “Everyday Astronaut” didn’t think of everything.

What SpaceX should have done with the concept

SpaceX is, of course, running its own space program. Advantage: the company has its own goals and can pursue them, independently of often fickle government agencies. (Any organization whose headship changes hands once every eight years – or even four – is necessarily fickle.) Disadvantage: SpaceX takes on the onus of making a long-range plan, and making that plan adaptable. This they haven’t done. A vague vision of a city on Mars is not a long-term plan.

They have the bare outlines of a mission profile: lift a ship into orbit, refuel it, and send it to Mars. But even SpaceX admits that refueling a single ship for a Mars transit and landing will require ten launches of orbital “tankers.” They need “tankers” because they never thought to build a refueling station in orbit.

But consider an intermediate version of Starship with a second stage designed to carry payload but not return to Earth. Why not equip that stage with fuel and thrusters to steer it once it’s in orbit? Then the first such stage enters orbit, drops its payload, and stays in orbit. The next such stage will catch up to it and latch onto it, forming another, larger object. Other second stages do the same – creating a cluster of shells, already in orbit, waiting for the next step.

What next?

If experience with Falcon Nine and Heavy are any guide, SpaceX could launch over 200 of these second stages into orbit within five years. In that time, they would perfect the booster, which is much more valuable, with all its 33 rocket engines. More importantly, among the payloads would be the modules for a first-generation Haven space station. (VAST might even have made it larger, to fit more snugly inside a Starship second stage.)

Now the value of cooperation and collaboration becomes apparent. That new space station – or a second like it – would be the ideal construction shack for turning those 200 second stages into several much larger stations. Shipfitters could unfasten the engines and fit out those massive shells with new, interconnecting interiors. Then, after a few more heavy-lift missions, they could mount a number of ships on a giant wheel, which would spin for gravity. The wheel’s hub would provide docking, loading, and unloading services – or microgravity laboratories or factories.

Now SpaceX would have a complex, or a fleet, of stations providing Earth-normal gravity and workspace. At least one would become a scrapyard to turn millions of “space junk” objects into ballast, counterweights, or reusable metal. The rest would become a shipyard in space, to offer repair of existing satellites, or support further development of a reusable second stage.

Looking further ahead

The best immediate use of Starship with a reusable second stage would be as a suborbital space liner or freighter. Almost as important would be ferrying of passengers and freight – including fuels – into low Earth orbit. A proper space program needs permanent stations in low (or medium) Earth orbit and geostationary or geosynchronous orbit (GEO). Dedicated ships, deriving their design from the Starship second stage, would ferry passengers and freight to and from GEO, and deploy satellites at various orbital levels. Equally dedicated ships would clean up the “space junk” in a big operation to remove an ever-present hazard. An LEO or MEO station would be the perfect base for “orbital traffic control.” This function would protect cargo – and lives – in addition to keeping “space junk” to a minimum.

The next important program would be one for asteroid deflection and capture. Already NASA is tracking an asteroid longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall – Apophis. This rock will pass very close to Earth in 2029. Worse, Apophis will disappear in the Sun’s glare – and might come out of it to hit New York, or London! Had SpaceX followed this proposed program, President Trump’s vaunted Space Force would already have a base ready to divert Apophis.

Obviously the first reusable second stages could bring back those spare engines, removed from the original second stages, for refurbishment and reuse in new “ships.” Thus, out of sheer practicality, almost nothing need be lost.

The real Mars colony wagon

If SpaceX, or NASA, or a NASA/ESA/JAXA coalition, still wants to build a city on Mars, then it needs a better plan than anything anyone has suggested thus far. Sending thousands of Starships on Hohmann minimum-energy orbital transits to Mars will not accomplish the goal. Even as large a heavy lifter as Starship is not and can never be a space-borne Conestoga wagon. True, the late Wernher von Braun proposed a “wagon train to Mars” (and famously couched his proposal as a novel). But the correct metaphor for colonizing Mars is not the settlement of the American West, but the first Voyages of Discovery by Erik the Red, his son Leif, Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus), Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), Amerigo Vespucci, and the incomparable Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan).

So SpaceX should be collaborating with NASA to design a space-to-space colony wagon with nuclear thermal engines. Then they should build not only one, but a fleet of three, or preferably five. (Magellan started with five ships, of which one survived to return to Spain.) These ships would carry nuclear power plants, to power not only the new engines but also electromagnetic radiation shields. A space-to-space ship never lands, so those ships would carry Starships to serve as landing craft.

That Martian city would serve the new asteroid mining industry, plus a metallurgy industry to rival Pittsburgh. So Elon Musk’s dream would take shape – but the colonists would be there to work.

What can SpaceX do now?

SpaceX might seem to have wasted a prodigious amount of time, by not developing a heavy-lift capability along these lines. But if it starts now, then better late than never. Apophis is still on its way, and even if it doesn’t hit Earth in 2029, it could set up a collision for 2068. Nor is Apophis the only “near Earth asteroid” on record, by any means.

The Starship second stage is already at a point where it can achieve orbit and stay in orbit. Even if it can’t return to Earth, it could start carrying true payloads any time SpaceX wishes. The development program outlined here probably can’t divert Apophis by 2029 but could almost certainly divert it by 2032. Beyond that, it could lead to replacement space stations far sooner than currently envisioned – and cleaning up the “space junk” before it brings down every satellite in a cascade of collisions called the Kessler Syndrome. Along the way, the project could yield enough revenue to make it self-financing.

But without this kind of project, the perfect remains the enemy of the good. Now that Elon Musk has left his “Department of Government Efficiency” in other hands, and resumed full-time leadership of his companies, he has time to think about improving the image of SpaceX, while enabling it to do many more useful things.

Link to:

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https://cnav.news/2025/06/01/editorial/talk/spacex-starship-what-might/

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VAST Company Home:

https://www.vastspace.com/



Article on Apophis by NASA:

https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/apophis/



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Tariffs, trade, and hard truth

Last week, a libertarian, constitutionalist, and apparent Christian preterist submitted to CNAV one of the more thoughtful objections to President Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs and trade. Objections from Democrats and their allies don’t count. After all, Democrats favored tariffs back when the Bush Dynasty controlled the Republican Party. That in itself is ironic, because Woodrow Wilson, who began decades of Democratic rule over America, eliminated all tariffs. (His replacement: the graduated income tax.) So anything Democrats have to say on trade policy is self-serving and hypocritical. But libertarians offer consistent and sincere arguments – which does not make them correct. Herewith the rebuttal to that submitted argument, which CNAV promised.

Who is Robert W. Peck?

Robert W. Peck is the chairman of the Constitution Party of Washington State and a member of the Constitution Party National Committee. He also keeps his own web site, Perspectives, and occasionally submits articles to CNAV.

He professes to be a Christian, and in his writings has left no doubt on that score. But the only thing Christians reliably agree upon is the need for, and assurance of, spiritual salvation. On how to interpret the Revelation to St. John of Jerusalem, Christians of good heart have their sharpest divide. Mr. Peck believes that John of Jerusalem was foretelling the Sack of Jerusalem and Destruction of Herod’s Temple in 70 A.D. by Titus, son of, and successor to, Emperor Vespasian. Never mind that John wrote his Revelation on the Island of Patmos in 96 A.D., twenty-six years after the Second Roman-Jerusalem War started. (Pompey the Great fought the First one as part of his campaign against Mithridates of Pontus and Tigranes of Armenia.)

Or perhaps John was prophesying the Third Roman-Jerusalem War of 135 A.D., by order of Emperor Hadrian. That War resulted in the Great Scattering (Diaspora) of the Jews.

All of which to say that Peck is a preterist, who does not accept a time of worsening moral decay. John of Jerusalem predicted this, as did Paul of Tarsus. Peck denies this, and this explains his adherence to the central flawed tenet of libertarianism: universal goodwill.

What is universal goodwill?

Universal goodwill tells us that human beings have no good reason to fight. An individual especially has no enemies but what he makes. People make enemies, says Peck, because they engage (he would say indulge) in zero-sum thinking. A zero-sum game has a winner and a loser. Or in a multi-player game, net victories exactly balance net defeats.

To which he raises two objections. First, men of goodwill should be able to arrive at an equitable distribution of scarce resources between them. Second, no such things as limited or scarce resources need exist. His idealized story of economics (literally, Laws of the Household) features infinite increase. Are we running out of land? Venture off-world and find or create more! Columbus did it, and John Cabot; why can’t we? Is someone foolish (by his lights) to reach out for land to conquer, plunder and pillage? Pull up stakes and get out of his reach! (And never, never, never lend credence to the notion of literal, geographical Promised Land! That explains why he and his friend Darrell L. Castle consistently discount the Biblical territorial claims of something called Israel.)

Libertarian foreign and trade policy assumes universal goodwill, and either infinite resources or ever more dense resource utilization. Sadly, the real world does not conform to these comfortable nostrums. That is why his recommendations on tariffs and trade must necessarily fail.

Primer on tariffs

Peck begins with some definitions, and shows a competent – but incomplete – understanding of the issues behind them. Tariffs, he says, are taxes on imports. Specifically, governments lay and collect tariffs from the importer, who must recoup them, and the costs of goods he imports. But Peck understands only one purpose of tariffs:

The idea is to tax imported goods at a rate calculated to make them as expensive to consumers, or more so, than their domestically produced counterparts. When that happens, American-made products can “compete” with imports. Consumers will then purchase U.S. products, creating a demand for production and thus preserving, or even creating, jobs.

True, but incomplete. Tariffs also are a source of revenue. Before Wilson, tariffs were the source of revenue for the federal government. Every country imposed them; that is how their governments ran. But tariffs never amounted to more than perhaps ten percent of the importer’s purchase prices. The U.S. government understood the Laffer Rule long before Arthur Laffer was born. When tariffs are too high, imports, and the revenue from tariffs, will cease.

Woodrow Wilson destroyed that understanding completely. Ostensibly he said he would build upon universal goodwill of all nations. In fact he laid the trap for the graduated income tax, and gained the confidence of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the State legislaturres to amend the Constitution to permit this kind of tax. (The confidence trick might have been more profound if someone can invalidate Ohio’s ratification of Amendment XVI.) By no accident, President Trump has proposed to replace income-tax revenues by tariff revenues. Let no one imagine that this would be unprecedented. It has more than a century of precedent behind it, that century being the pre-Wilson century.

Trade barriers other than tariffs

Peck goes on to detail other barriers to international market entry. Subsidies are direct cash payments to domestic manufacturers, or guaranteed purchase agreements. Farm Bills always feature subsidies: the government buys food in quantity, and ostensibly hands this out to needy citizens. These are the food stamps of popular political lore.

Regulation works the opposite way. Peck regards most regulations as facilitating entry of foreign goods into the U.S. market. Farmers or manufacturers in other countries don’t need to comply with American environmental, labor, or other regulations. Their goods, therefore, cost less. Correct as far as it goes – but surprisingly, Peck doesn’t carry his research any further. Robert C. O’Brien of American Global Strategies recommends the obvious adjustment: a specific tariff to recoup the costs of pollution. Or, call it a compensation for the regulations with which Americans must comply. CNAV would carry O’Brien’s idea further. Why not a tariff to cover compliance costs for all other forms of regulation?

When Peck discusses trade deficits, he blames them entirely on the removal of the gold standard. But he ignores what prompted President Richard M. Nixon to move off that standard. This is not to excuse Nixon; he should have re-instituted the pre-Wilson tariff regime. It is to remind people that trade deficits remain, even with a gold standard.

The sum of the game

Peck’s worst failing is his assumption that the sum of the Game of Life is not zero – and is never zero. For some games, the sum is zero. Land is finite. Minerals are finite. Even air and water are finite, though at least they each have a cycle of renewal. But the water cycle has a few choke points – limits on sources of water humans can tap for their use.

Must war, then, be the lot of humankind forever? Not necessarily. A civilizational state strives to acquire and defend enough land and resources for its people. But of necessarily, the aggregate of territory is finite. The Age of Discovery and Exploration is over. That of competition for scarce livable land has succeeded. (The only unsettled land now available for any kind of human settlement is Antarctica. Apart from its limited size, no one is going to try to scratch out a living on that cold, snow-blown, wind-swept continent any time soon.)

Under the circumstances, universal goodwill fails. Contrary to his glowing summation, humanity does live in a closed system of limited land, water (or at least fresh water), and minerals. And when he chastises his fellow human beings for consuming more than they produce, he contradicts himself. In an open system of unlimited resources, over-consumption would be impossible, would it not?

What the tariffs debate is not about

Finally, the debate on tariffs is not about Presidential versus Congressional power. Anything a President does, that might extend further than the law, Congress can easily codify. Peck doesn’t much want the tariff code that prevailed before Wilson, anyway. So anything he says about “not following procedure” becomes incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.

To reply also to one other canard:

The continuation of what has been the economic status quo for decades does not constitute an emergency (“a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence”).

Oh, yes, it does. It certainly does when “the economic status quo,” for however long, is the equivalent of starvation or slow poisoning. Re-feeding and/or detoxifying a patient in that condition, on an exigent basis, is not only appropriate but imperative. That applies with greater force to a society that has suffered from a thoroughly wrongheaded fiscal policy.

The tariffs debate is about an America that is squandering its wealth, while pretending, ironically enough, to exploit other’s labor! Indeed, Democrats consistently made the same complaints Trump is now making about “free” trade. Republicans ignored them, to their detriment. But now Democrats have thrown those arguments away – and did it even before Donald Trump ran for President. Hint: Barack H. Obama is Woodrow Wilson 2.0.

A proper America first trade policy

So Donald Trump should continue his policy of aiming at tariffs that will replace income-tax revenues. Only recently he scored victories in the other purposes of tariffs: to force renegotiations of a lopsided trade regime. And apparently these tariffs have yielded significant revenues – and without a moment to lose, either.

At the same time, he must continue his campaign of territorial acquisition – where it makes sense. Greenland would serve a dual purpose: rare-earth mineral deposits, and shoreline to establish a Naval base or two, to supplement the present Space Force base. (Even Mr. Peck shouldn’t want Citizen Putin to start renaming the Arctic Nash Okean or Russkiy Okean. Arguably, Trump inadvertently tempted the Russian leader with a comparable precedent.) Trump shouldn’t try to acquire all of Canada. But Alberta Province would provide mineral resources, and the former Northwest Territories would secure the Northwest Passage.

More to the point, tariffs are a legitimate part of any civilizational, as opposed to a globalistic, policy. Globalism – even the soft globalism which libertarianism inevitably advocates – has worked against America and Americans. High time, therefore, that America abandon such policy.

Link to:

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/05/17/foundation/constitution/tariffs-trade-hard-truth/

Video:

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Declarations of Truth:

https://x.com/DecTruth



Declarations of Truth Locals Community:

https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/



Conservative News and Views:

https://cnav.news/



Clixnet Media

https://clixnet.com/

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Courts exceeding jurisdiction?

Yesterday a federal appellate court handed down an extraordinary order – extraordinary for two reasons. First, the court acted on a Saturday, not normally a working day. Second, the court said the lower, or trial, court made an elementary, indeed a rookie, mistake. The appeals court held that the trial judge exceeded his jurisdiction in the matter before him – yet another matter involving the Trump administration. The reasoning behind their ruling could well apply to many more cases involving President Donald Trump’s authority to act.

The matter at hand in the jurisdiction dispute

Actually the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on four appeals before it. All these cases arise out of decisions by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, in response to an executive order by President Trump. That order called for eliminating, “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law,” any non-statutory components and functions of certain agencies. It also called for reducing the statutory functions to “the minimum presence and function required by law.” Executive Order 14238, “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” This order affected seven named agencies, among them: the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Kari Lake, former gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, serves as Senior Adviser to the Acting CEO of USAGM.

USAGM controls six different media organs, including

  • Voice of America (VOA),

  • Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MEBN),

  • Reporters Without Borders (abbreviated RSF for the French form Rapporteurs sans frontières),

  • Radio Free Asia (RFA),

  • Open Technology Fund (OTF), and

  • Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), two networks in tandem addressing former members of the Warsaw Pact.

VOA is strictly a government agency, but the other five are private agencies that operate on grants from USAGM.

In response to EO 14238, USAGM:

  1. Placed over 1000 employees on administrative leave,

  2. Terminated 600 “personal service” contracts,

  3. Terminated the grant agreements for MEBN and RFA, and

  4. Shut down VOA completely.

USAGM took similar action against RFE/RL and OTF, but their lawsuits are at different stages.

What the various courts have done

On March 21, Reporter Patsy Widakuswara, six other reporters, RSF, and four unions sued to get their jobs back. Widakuswara v. Lake, case 1:25-cv-01015-RCL. They at first filed in the Southern District of New York. On April 4, on the government’s motion, the case was transferred to the District of Columbia court. On April 22, Judge Royce C. Lamberth of that court issued a preliminary injunction ordering the government to:

  1. Re-hire all employees on administrative leave and reinstate all personal-service contracts,

  2. Restore the RFA and MEBN grants, and

  3. Switch VOA back on.

In his Memorandum Opinion, Judge Lamberth asserted that he had jurisdiction and that the plaintiffs had standing. Specifically Judge Lamberth rejected an argument that the Trump administration advanced, that the court lacked jurisdiction according to an “intervening” case on point. Department of Education v. California, 145 S. Ct. 966 (2025).

The government appealed the injunction almost immediately to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Patsy Widakuswara v. Kari Lake, 25-5144. Specifically they appealed the first two parts of the injunction, disputing Judge Lamberth’s assertion of jurisdiction.

As is almost routine, the appellate court issued an administrative stay on Thursday (May 1). Two days later they followed that up with a stay pending appeal – meaning a stay until further notice. The panel, consisting of Judges Gregory Katsas, Neomi Rao, and Cornelia Pillard, voted 2-1 to issue the stay. Judges Katsas and Rao are Trump appointees; Judge Pillard is an Obama appointee.

Lack of subject matter jurisdiction

The panel issued their order per curiam, meaning without signatures, and attached a statement under that same condition. Judge Cornelia Pillard dissented from the unsigned statement in nearly every particular.

In their statement, Judges Katsas and Rao thumped Judge Lamberth for asserting a jurisdiction that, they say, he lacks. Article III District Courts have no jurisdiction over:

  1. Personnel actions – hiring, firing, and entering into or terminating contracts, nor:

  2. Grants and grant revocations.

Judge Lamberth asserted jurisdiction over the personnel actions because he accepted plaintiffs’ arguments that the Trump administration was engaging in “wholesale dismantling” of VOA and USAGM, and that such dismantling was in violation of statute. The panel reminded him that the Administrative Procedure Act does not grant jurisdiction in such cases. As to the grants, the Tucker Act provides that the Court of Federal Claims is the only forum for handling of grant disputes.

Furthermore, contrary to Judge Lamberth’s assertions, the panel found that Department of Education v. California does indeed apply.

Judge Padilla bases her entire dissent on the avowal by Lake that VOA is “irretrievably broken” and produces “radical propaganda.” Apparently the judge feels that VOA has an absolute right to produce whatever content it wishes, and that Presidents may not gainsay it. Given that VOA is a direct agency of the government itself, that assertion strains credulity.

An outside expert

Margot Cleveland, senior legal correspondent for The Federalist and counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, also weighed in. She dropped a fourteen-post thread on X in full support of the appellate court’s stay and supporting statement.

🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: HUGE win from Trump Administration and D.C. Circuit enters stay of lower court injunction. Lower court barred Trump Administration from managing Voice of America. D.C. Circuit stayed decision allowing Trump to move forward w/ firings/grant terminations.
Full order. Thoughts follow.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726388271423522

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726517896425725

Court of Appeals decision is based on fundamental issue of "jurisdiction." This conclusion should have wide-spread ramifications because many of challenges to Trump Administration are about employment decisions which CONGRESS said are NOT for district courts to decide.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726946822803638

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918727511464104404

The Court of Appeals decision is also significant because it addresses the "wholesale" "dismantling" argument being presented in several cases (such as USAID cases). The Administrative Procedures Act is NOT for such claims either & Congress did not waive such immunity! Additionally, Court of Appeals held that district court lacked jurisdiction to restore grants because Congress gave that authority to Court of Claims.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728045579391038

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728443170115984

Court of Appeals also notes how SCOTUS decision compels that result...which it DOES and yet district court ignored SCOTUS. Decision stressed why claims about grants must got to Court of Claims.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728737392038258

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918729207523193043

Court of Appeals adds that Plaintiffs can't avoid Court of Claims by framing as non-APA claims. Court of Appeals again highlights that with no bond the harm to government is irreparable. Also noted that Voice of America isn't being shuttered.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918729730225824112

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730062452433101

Court of Appeals also notes Judiciary Branch must follow the law too!
In sum, this opinion is a HUGE win for Trump because it establishes 3 key principles that apply to many of the other cases being brought against Trump Administration: a) no jurisdiction over firings; b) no jurisdiction over grant terminations;…

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730276907155522

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730625579622660

… and c) you can't get around Congress limiting district court jurisdiction by creative pleading of claims under other theories; d) with no bond harm to government will outweigh other harm; e) public has interest in Article III obey Article I.
Final thought: It is next to impossible to reconcile opinion here with same panels refusal to clarify stay in other case involving USAID and grants from legal perspective. Practically: Judge Katsas in other case figured decision on merits would be soon enough so no harm.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730900256240038

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918731234437394472

With regard to that last thought: part of winning an injunction, or a stay, is a showing of irreparable harm absent either injunction or stay. In the USAID case, Judge Katsas thought a decision on the merits would be forthcoming soon enough to avoid harm.

Kari Lake was understandably pleased with the appeals court decision.

BIG WIN in our legal cases at USAGM & Voice of America. Huge victory for President Trump and Article II. Turns out the District Court judge will not be able to manage the agency as he seemed to want to.

https://x.com/KariLake/status/1918745448640057454

Specifically, USAGM need not rehire the same people Kari Lake fired from VOA, nor restore the RFA and MEBN grants. If VOA must continue, then it will continue with a different cadre running it.

In general, this is the first time in history that courts have tried to tell a President with what voice he and his subordinates must speak. It is also the first time that trial courts have made such elementary reversible errors. “Lack of subject matter jurisdiction” is the quickest way to get a court to throw out a case. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure make that abundantly clear. Any judge who tries to set that aside is not fit to sit as a judge. Whether by reason of incompetence or bias, the conclusion is the same.

Prof. Cleveland is right about another thing: this case will affect other such cases. After all, Article III gives Congress full authority to decide jurisdiction.

Link to:

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/05/04/news/jurisdiction-courts-exceeding/

Video:

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EO 14238:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/20/2025-04868/continuing-the-reduction-of-the-federal-bureaucracy



Court dockets and documents:

Trial level:

Docket:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69846584/widakuswara-v-lake/

Complaint:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211.1.0.pdf

Memorandum Opinion:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211.98.0_1.pdf

Preliminary Injunction:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211.99.0.pdf

Dept. of Ed. v. California order:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a910_f2bh.pdf

Appellate level:

Docket:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69940505/patsy-widakuswara-v-kari-lake/

Administrative Stay:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211.107.0.pdf

Stay pending appeal:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.41991/gov.uscourts.cadc.41991.01208736131.0.pdf



Margot Cleveland’s thread:

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726388271423522

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726517896425725

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726946822803638

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918727511464104404

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728045579391038

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728443170115984

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728737392038258

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918729207523193043

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918729730225824112

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730062452433101

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730276907155522

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730625579622660

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730900256240038



Kari Lake’s reaction:

https://x.com/KariLake/status/1918745448640057454



Declarations of Truth:

https://x.com/DecTruth



Declarations of Truth Locals Community:

https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/



Conservative News and Views:

https://cnav.news/



Clixnet Media

https://clixnet.com/

Read full Article
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