Beto O’Rourke may in fact be the most honest of the Presidential candidates. He may have gone full Swalwell in an attempt to revive a disastrous campaign; however in recognizing his present shortcomings, Beto O’Rourke has gone the AOC route of revealing the poorly hidden secrets of the Democrat Party. For years, the right was (falsely) accused of using a straw man fallacy with gun confiscation, but Beto O’Rourke has now been unabashed in championing the policy. O’Rourke merely confirmed what we already knew: the socialists want to confiscate our guns. They want the monopoly on force, so they can upend our way of life.

But this upheaval, revolution, is not about redistributing the wealth, fixing the climate, or reducing violence. Beto O’Rourke’s latest Freudian slip is all the more telling. At the gay town hall hosted by CNN, Beto O’Rourke said that the government should strip away tax exemption from churches that refused to partake in the gay agenda, which includes but is not limited to the performing of marriages, removal of ministry standards that prohibit (blatant) non-Christians, and permitting men to pee with little girls. Put more concisely, Beto O’Rourke wants to use the government to coerce the doctrine of the church.

Blatant unconstitutionality aside, if the socialists have their way, we will be at the mercy of the courts, legally speaking, who have an entrenched precedent of conjuring their own law. There have long been talks by atheist about taxing churches, a less unconstitutional means of persecuting the church. The atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation erroneously claims that we pay more in taxes because churches pay nothing, ignoring the history of the income tax in America. The Supreme Court touched on this issue in 1970, ironically close to Roe v Wade. The Supreme Court maintained in Walz v Tax Commission of the City of New York that:

Even a Supreme Court devoid of Christians would have agreed that the Establishment Clause is best maintained through the financial insulation of church and state, that history showed that when the church supporting the state was as threatening to freedom as the reverse. But what Beto is suggesting is a next level takeover. He wants to use government to manipulate the doctrine. So after he has taken your guns, he will use “civil rights” law to target the church. But remember, nothing about Beto O’Rourke is original. He’s just trying to be AOC while also trying to be Eric Swalwell. The Equality Act that Taylor Swift loves to promote would also place churches in the cross hairs of the law, should they remain faithful.

This isn’t a new ambition. Socialism is atheist by its nature and has never existed with a thriving church. In similar fashion, socialism has corresponded with the direct persecution of the church, often with genocidal purposes. An ideology that lumps people in with the collective dismisses the individual pursuit of a relationship with God.

The Second Amendment is a defense mechanism against various forms of government tyranny, among them the aforementioned scenario. Pacifying civilians is never an end but always a means to an end. A disarmed people are neither safer nor freer. In this case, Beto O’Rourke, by the progression of his rhetoric, wants to disarm the populace and coerce doctrine. This is the exact reason to refuse disarming. The socialists want to control our doctrine, by extension, what we think. They ultimately, as Beto O’Rourke’s policy suggestion explicitly demands, want to command us to disobey God, to rewrite doctrine to appease the latest whims of society.

The socialists aren’t floating confiscation just for the sake of confiscation. Institutions that have historically rejected collectivism and adhere to an objective morality standard are natural adversaries to the modern socialist movement. Therefore socialists would see strategic gains in undermining these institutions. This logic is not new or surprising, but is becoming increasingly obvious and less conspiratorial. The words of Beto O’Rourke corroborate the suspicion that gun confiscation is a means to enact religious persecution among other tyrannies.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

The NBA strife over Hong Kong has laid bare the left’s socialist national agenda and their hatred of liberty.

It’s never more gratifying than when prominent leftists prove several assertions about themselves all at once. Such was the case recently when left-wing Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr asserted a false complexity when defending authoritarianism over the cause of liberty.

As reported in the Daily Wire, the prominent NBA coach made the following comments defending the authoritarianism of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’:

As is usually the case with leftists, he deflected the deliberate oppression and mass murder of the socialist-left side of the rational political spectrum model in the guise of the Communist Party of China (CPC) with the red herring of the actions of criminals in the states. He then asserted:

In actuality, those words of deflection are only meant to confuse the issue and hide that the socialist-left favours control over liberty, authoritarianism over freedom.

Most complex systems are based on elegant formulations.

While the world is a complex place, most of it’s workings can be explained by relatively simple but elegant formulations such as Maxwell’s equations or the laws of motion of Newtonian mechanics. While there are vast differences between the physical and political sciences given that the latter deal with very complex and changing phenomena and the actions of people in large populations. Both have certain basic precepts that can be used to generally model the political spectrum. In the case of modelling the political spectrum, it’s imagined complexity can be broken down into several basic assertions that correctly explain the situation.

The key difference between the development of the formulations in the field of engineering and those of politics is that there are no groups [perhaps aside from ‘flat-earthers’] that argue over the parameters of Maxwell’s equations or the laws of motion of Newtonian mechanics. No one really has a reason to argue over the law of gravity in non-relativistic sphere.

Unfortunately, this is not the case when trying to model the political spectrum, primarily because the groups that make up the various factions have a vested interest in obscuring the true situation.

The right prefers liberty, the left prefers control.

In general terms there are just two sides of politics – left and right. Despite attempts by the left to muddy the waters and confuse the situation, that is the generic formulation. These two terms were born out of the historical events surrounding the French revolution, but have gained different meanings along the way. Howbeit this was the source of the terms, it is incorrect to use the context in which they were coined. As is the case with analyzing most complex systems, it’s best to start with first principles. In the case of any political spectrum model we begin with a statement that sets forth the primary difference between left and right, as engineer and author, Robert A. Heinlein so eloquently termed it:

“Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire”. Robert A. Heinlein

Stating it in as basic terms as possible the right favors liberty over control while the left favors control over liberty. In other words, the right favors minimal government and maximum liberty, while the left favors maximum government and minimal liberty.

The left will of course object to this kind of generalization simply because it casts them in a bad light as authoritarians at heart. One only needs to look at their socialist national agenda to confirm this assertion, in that they prioritize control over the cause of liberty.

The right favors individualism, the left favors collectivism.

We can also consider the two sides in terms of the two basic political philosophies of individualism and collectivism. This also affirms the precepts of rational political spectrum model.

The Oxford English dictionary defines individualism:

The Oxford English dictionary defines collectivism:

Please note that these principles are of giving a group priority over individuals. The problem is that since groups or collectives happen to be arbitrary constructs, the rights imbued to them are also arbitrary, or non-existent. It logically follows that only individuals can have rights.

Individual rights, liberals and liberty.

Consider how the Oxford English dictionary defines liberal:

While the definition refers to ‘moderate political and social reform’, it clearly shows that true liberals favour individual liberty, free trade, placing them on the pro-liberty side of the rational political spectrum model.

This in essence ties everything together, clearly placing liberals in the camp of favouring individual rights and freedoms. While also demonstrating that liberty and liberalism are tied together, having the root word from Latin: liberalis.

Thus, we have set out the basic parameters of the rational political spectrum model:

• The right favors minimal government and maximum liberty.
• The left favors maximum government and minimal liberty.

The actions and policy agendas of the left confirm these general assertions, despite the false protestations of complexity by that side of the political spectrum as exemplified by the words of Left-wing Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr.

In part II we will examine in greater detail why it’s important to properly identify and cut through the confusion propagated by the authoritarian left. As well as distinguish their precepts with those of the pro-liberty right.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

A common refrain among NeverTrump Republicans is that Donald Trump is unfit for office by both temperament and ideology, the former being foremost in their vociferous opposition to his presidency.  On the latter point I don’t entirely disagree:  Trump was—and is—not particularly conservative, although his instincts lean in that direction, as does his governance.  Put another way, for a guy who spent most of his life as a New York Democrat, he’s been far more effective at advancing a conservative agenda than George W. Bush ever was—and with the historic number of judges confirmed by Mitch McConnell, Trump’s legacy will live on long after he leaves office.

As to NeverTrump’s supposedly principled opposition to the President’s character—well, that’s another matter.  I don’t doubt that there are a few among their number who have been consistent in that regard, but when it comes to the leadership of that movement it becomes obvious that their arguments have less to do with actual conservatism and more to do with lamenting their diminished status within a Trumpified GOP.  How else to explain the likes of Tom Nichols voicing his support for whomever the Democrats nominate in 2020, no matter how radical or socialist?  Or Bill Kristol embracing his own “inner socialist,” and declaring that he would rather be ruled by an unelected deep state than a duly-elected Donald Trump?  These are not conservative positions, any way you look at them—and they make you realize just how content Conservatism, Inc. was with the relentless leftward drift of the country and the culture, so long as they got to keep their cozy little gigs arguing over the details.

More than that, however, NeverTrump seems to have a real problem with the truth—quite ironic, considering that one of their main criticisms of Donald Trump is what they see as his serial dishonesty.  Take this tweet from Mona Charen, for example:

With everything that's happening in the world, it's a good thing that our Attorney General is globe-trotting to find out what happened to Hillary Clinton's server.

— Mona Charen (@monacharenEPPC) October 13, 2019

In case Ms. Charen needs a reminder, Bill Barr is investigating the origins of the Russia collusion hoax—an episode in which the former Secretary of State illegally ran a private email server in order to thwart federal records laws so that she could escape scrutiny for her activities with the Clinton Foundation.  It’s also beyond question that Clinton compromised national security with her actions, exposing state secrets to bad actors—including the Russians and the Chinese.  Now it has become apparent that the FBI, under the leadership of James Comey, may have coordinated with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to give Clinton a pass.  This represents an astonishing amount of corruption at the highest levels of the federal government, which is a direct threat to the rule of law.

Yet Ms. Charen seems uninterested in finding out the truth—probably because it would vindicate President Trump’s assertion that a deep state has been working to undermine his administration from the start.  This is indefensible from anything resembling a conservative point of view.  The only explanation is that Charen doesn’t care, because the truth conflicts with her political preferences.

I ran into the same issue personally with National Review’s Jay Nordlinger.  I’ve read him for years, and have always respected his writing and his dedication to conservative principle.  And even though I largely disagreed with his views on Trump, I always believed him to be arguing in good faith.  Last week, he posted this on Twitter:

An old line says, "Death, be not proud." I would say to Republicans and conservatives — to all the boosters and enablers of Donald Trump — be not proud of Trump's decision to stand aside and allow Erdogan's troops to murder our Kurdish allies in Syria.

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) October 9, 2019

To which I replied that George H.W. Bush did much the same to the Kurds in northern Iraq during the first Gulf War, after publicly admonishing them to rise up and overthrow Saddam.  The Kurds did just that, assuming they would have the military support of the United States.  Bush didn’t give that support—and American troops stood by while Saddam engaged in a wholesale slaughter.

Nordlinger, disappointingly, reacted by blocking me.

Understand that I wasn’t defending Trump’s decision to withdraw troops in Syria—I merely pointed out that one of his own personal heroes had made a similar decision, believing it to be in the best interests of the United States at the time.  That, in retrospect, it turned out to be a huge mistake that didn’t stabilize the Middle East and directly led to the rise of al Qaeda doesn’t seem to matter.  History has been subverted to politics.  Truth is now secondary.

This, more than anything, is the greatest weakness of NeverTrump.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.