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It’s a popular strategy to advance an agenda. It depends on a false equivalency and the high likelihood that most people won’t bother to question it.Rather than using the analogy of a drunk driver, a more apt comparison would be the use of both vehicles and firearms with the intent to commit murder or mayhem.James Fields drove his Dodge Charger into a crowd of demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia. Sayfullo Saipove drove a Ford light-duty truck into a crowd in New York City’s Hudson River Park. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel[1]drove a large truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France. Just the other day, a man known only as Jens R. drove a Volkswagen Van into a tourist square in Muenster, Germany. In the U.S., police officers are killed and injured by people that use their vehicle to assault them.In all of these tragedies, no one ever blamed the vehicle. Even in the movie Christine, no one claimed that there was anything inherently evil about a 1958 Plymouth Fury.In the aftermath of the University of Texas Tower incident in 1966, no one blamed the guns. The gun laws in Texas were not changed and nobody demanded that anyone other than Charles Whitman take “ownership” of the killings. These enlightened Texans in the Johnson Era blamed only the person who committed the crimes.But new gun control measures became popular in the 1960s, following the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. Even Charleton Heston, who later became president of the NRA and famous for the “cold dead hands” quotation, called for gun control on the nationally broadcast Joey Bishop Show.So we got the Gun Control Act of 1968. Then-President Lyndon Johnson felt the new law didn’t go far enough: he wanted universal gun registration and licensing for anyone that carried a gun. But the law did include a NRA-supported ban on mail-order sales of firearms and expanded the class of people prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms.The demonizing of the military-style rifle and high -capacity magazines got its start beginning in the 1980s, with shootings at the 49th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, California and the Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California and the Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. This resulted in the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. When government data showed that the ban had not had a statistically significant impact on crime, it was allowed to expire in 2004. Some claimed that ten years wasn’t enough time to produce results, but ten years was plenty for most people.The demonization of the ‘assault weapon’, a term invented to make military-style firearms appear more threatening, continued apace and picked up steam following the killings at the Century Theater in Aurora, Colorado. When Adam Lanza murdered young children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, it reached a fever pitch, where it remains today.Since they know that the data does not support their agenda, gun-control advocates have stepped up their campaigns. Even in the face of overwhelming data and real-world experience to the contrary, they stick to their claims. Since they enjoy broad support in the media, their claims receive a tremendous amount of exposure and credibility.Even in the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the young people gave the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation what amounts to a free pass while blaming Nikolas Cruz’s killings on the Smith & Wesson M&P-15 rifle that he used. It apparently doesn’t matter that the only reasons that Cruz was able to commit his act involved official face-saving agreements between school administrators and the sheriff and negligence on the part of the FBI.Incidentally, the choice of the M&P-15 was a matter of personal selection. A month before the attack, Cruz had legally purchased an AK-47-style rifle. All told, Cruz had seven legally purchased rifles and shotguns and apparently also had three guns that were acquired illegally. Cruz’s choice may very well have been influenced by other mass shooters in recent history that have used AR-style firearms.So it’s all about advancing an agenda whether or not that agenda will provide a beneficial impact on public safety. It has become a mania and quite unhealthy.Footnotes[1] 2016 Nice attack - Wikipedia

Review and Critique of Randy E. Barnett'sOUR REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION:Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the PeopleREVIEWRandy E. Barnett's Our Republican Constitution (Broadside Books, 2016) is both an informative history of how the United States has been transformed from a republic that secured the liberty and sovereignty of the people to a democracy that threatens that liberty and sovereignty of individual Americans, and a polemic on progressives as the culprits in this hijacking.In his Foreword to Our Republican Constitution, George F. Will states:All American political arguments involve, at bottom, interpretations of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution. . . . The Constitution, which Barnett calls “the law that governs those who govern us,” is, he argues, properly read in the bright light cast by the great document that preceded it, the Declaration of Independence (that is prefaced by) . . . what Barnett calls Jefferson’s “fifty-five compelling words”: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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed (pp. xi-xii).We the PeopleThe Constitution of the United States starts with three words — We the People:We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.Barnett lays out two visions of “We the People” that distinguish his democratic* Constitution from his republican Constitution._______________* Throughout this review and critique, I italicize a lower case republican or democratic Constitution even where Barnett does not since Barnett is inconsistent in his use of italics versus capitalization of these terms. _______________________________________________________________________________________At its core, (the) debate (in American politics) is about the meaning of the first three words of the Constitution: “We the People.” Those who favor the democratic Constitution view We the People as a group, as a body, as a collective entity. Those who favor the republican Constitution view We the People as individuals. . . .Each vision of We the People yields a different conception of what is called “popular sovereignty.” . . . (T)he democratic Constitution:• starts with a collective vision of We the People;• which leads to a conception of popular sovereignty based on the “will of the people” as a group;• which, in practice, can only be the will of the majority.What separates a republican Constitution from a democratic Constitution is its conception of “popular sovereignty.” Where a democratic Constitution views sovereignty as residing in the people collectively or as a group, a republican Constitution views sovereignty as residing in the people as individuals (pp 19-22).Individual rights retained by the peopleBarnett argues that:The idea of individual popular sovereignty helps us to better understand just what rights and powers, privileges and immunities are retained by the sovereign people as individuals. Indeed, under a republican Constitution, the rights and powers retained by the people closely resemble those enjoyed by sovereign monarchs, (jurisdiction over private property; the use of force in defense of themselves and their possessions; the right to freely alter their legal relations with their fellow citizens and joint sovereigns).. . . (A) republican Constitution is established, in part, so that these liberties of the individual may be regulated by law. But the proper purpose of such regulation must be limited to the equal protection of the rights of each and every person. Any law that does not have this as its purpose is beyond the just powers of a republican legislature to impose on the citizenry (pp 24-25).The first seven chapters of Our Republican Constitution provide the details of how this all came about, culminating in a revised republican Constitution improved by a Republican Party that amended the Constitution following the War Between the States, and how those improvements were subsequently undermined by progressives who, eventually, changed it into a democratic Constitution designed to “control the people” by imposing “the will of the people” as a majoritarian mandate, undermining the sovereignty of individuals by redefining We the People from a collection of sovereign individuals to a collective of majorities with power over individuals.In the critique that follows, I will suggest in what ways Barnett's analysis is incomplete and the Founders' intentions of securing life, liberty, and freedom to pursue happiness are better carried out by a combination of the republican and the democratic Constitutions that Barnett wants to abandon.CRITIQUEThe Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are each declarations of liberties and plans to secure and protect them. The Declaration invoked the liberty of one people to separate from another and announced the intention of 13 colonies in America to separate from the British Empire to secure that liberty. The Constitution created a republic of those same, now sovereign, States and a federal government restricted to a specific set of enumerated powers to ensure the sovereignty of the States and of the people.Each document contains explicit statements of its purpose.The Declaration of IndependenceWe 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 Constitution of the United States of AmericaWe the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.The communality between these documents is to protect “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” of We the People and to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” While the Declaration’s emphasis is on “a people” as a collective standing against a henceforth to be a foreign government, the Constitution’s emphasis is on enumerating and restricting the duties and powers of the federal government vis-à-vis the States and individuals residing in them, the first eight Amendments to the Constitution explicating restrictions of the federal government vis-à-vis individuals; the 9th and 10th Amendments emphasizing that rights not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution were reserved to the States and to the people.I have no disagreement with any of the above and appreciate and admire Barnett’s description of the function of each document. What I disagree with is how Barnett distinguishes his republican Constitution as a protector of liberty from his democratic Constitution as a threat to that liberty.A Chronology of Change1789 to 1865. A republican Constitution interpreted and implemented as applying exclusively to free men. Some women and even some enslaved men enjoyed some of the “blessings of liberty (secured) for ourselves and our posterity,” but not all. Barnett’s republican Constitution existed in spirit, even though it was restricted to “free men” by the terms of 1789 and did not apply, yet, to We the People as a whole.1865 to 1948. Abolitionists tried to abolish slavery before 1865, and Republicans succeeded in 1865 through winning the War Between the States and passing the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution before accepting the rebellious states back into the union subject to the acceptance of the amended Constitution.Slavery was gone, but liberty was hardly universal. Post-war, Republicans watched as the KKK organized and re-established white supremacy over blacks throughout the South. Sending troops back south, this time not to defeat the Confederacy but to reconstruct an orderly society of free and recently freed men, all local and state government was suspended for Reconstruction, and federal troops administered and enforced the law. During this period, blacks were at liberty to run for public office, and many were elected.Barnett describes what happened:The reaction of the South to . . . measures to restrict its power over the freed blacks was a campaign of terrorism unwitnessed in this country before or since, from lynchings up to and including mass murders. . . . (T)he Supreme Court used the Due Process Clause to place some limits on the police powers of states. But its efforts were bitterly opposed by progressives (in the north) who favored the rights of states to enact progressive economic legislation, and by their coalition partners, the southern Democrats, who favored the rights of states to enact the economic system of Jim Crow (p 197).By 1876—ironically exactly 100 years after the Declaration—“the (Republican) North grew tired of the occupation (of Reconstruction) and left the Southerners, white and black, to their own devices (and) Democrats in the South got busy reestablishing their old order of racial subordination” (pp 123-124). This became possible when Democrats offered and Republicans accepted the Compromise of 1877 in which Democrats offered to withdraw their Electoral College votes and validate the Electoral College votes Republicans presented from three formerly Confederate states even though Republican Rutherford B. Hays had clearly received fewer popular votes than Democrat Samuel J. Tilden in the three disputed states as well as in the rest of the country Compromise of 1877 Ended Reconstruction, Ushered In Jim Crow Era. The price of Republican Hays becoming president instead of Democrat Tilden? Withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the end of Reconstruction Was President Tilden Robbed? The Great Stolen Election of 1876.The rest, as we say, is history: White Democrats ruled the South for the next 79 years, while Republicans respected the southern states’ rights to deny liberty to blacks throughout the period. The Jim Crow laws established under states’ rights denied human, civil, and voting rights to blacks by both law and custom, enforced by the KKK and other now legitimated terrorist groups, didn’t begin to break down until the north/south coalition of Democrats broke up in 1948 when southern delegates to the Democratic National Convention walked out and ran their own nominee for president—Strom Thurmond of South Carolina—over the civil rights plank in the party platform.Southern Democrats had become increasingly disturbed over President Truman's support of civil rights, particularly following his executive order racially integrating the U.S. armed forces and a civil rights message he sent to Congress in February 1948. At the Southern Governor's Conference in Wakulla Springs, Florida, on February 6, Mississippi Governor Fielding Wright proposed the formation of a new third party to protect racial segregation in the South. On May 10, 1948, the governors of the eleven states of the former Confederacy, along with other high-ranking Southern officials, met in Jackson, Mississippi, to discuss their concerns about the growing civil rights movement within the Democratic Party. At the meeting, South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond criticized President Truman for his civil rights agenda, and the governors discussed ways to oppose it.The Southern Democrats who had walked out of the Democratic National Convention to protest the civil rights platform approved by the convention, and supported by Truman, promptly met at Municipal Auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama, on July 17, 1948, and formed yet another political party, which they named the States' Rights Democratic Party. More commonly known as the "Dixiecrats," the party's main goal was continuing the policy of racial segregation in the South and the Jim Crow laws that sustained it. Governor Thurmond, who had led the walkout, became the party's presidential nominee after the convention's initial favorite, Arkansas Governor Benjamin Laney withdrew his name from consideration. United - Wikipedia States presidential election, 1948.America's Civil Rights Timeline (from America's Civil Rights Timeline)1857MARCH 6, 1857The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision to deny citizenship and constitutional rights to all black people, legally establishing the race as "subordinate, inferior beings -- whether slave or freedmen."1863JAN. 1, 1863Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln freed slaves in the Confederacy.1865DEC. 6, 1865The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery. However, Southern states managed to revive slavery era codes creating unattainable prerequisites for blacks to live, work or participate in society. The following year, the First Civil Rights Act invalidated these "Black Codes," conferring the "rights of citizenship" on all black people.1868JULY 9, 1868The 14th Amendment granted due process and equal protection under the law to African Americans.1870FEB. 3, 1870The 15th Amendment granted blacks the right to vote, including former slaves.1875MARCH 1, 1875Congress passed a third Civil Rights Act in response to many white business owners and merchants who refused to make their facilities and establishments equally available to black people. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited such cases of racial discrimination and guaranteed equal access to public accommodations regardless of race or color. White supremacist groups, however, embarked upon a campaign against blacks and their white supporters.1896MAY 18, 1896The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld an 1890 Louisiana statute mandating racially segregated but equal railroad cars. The ruling stated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution dealt with political and not social equality. Plessy v. Ferguson gave a broad interpretation of "equal but separate" accommodations with reference to "white and colored people" legitimizing "Jim Crow" practices throughout the South.1909FEB. 12, 1909The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded by a multi-racial group of activists in New York, N.Y. Initially, the group called themselves the National Negro Committee. Founders Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard and William English Walling led the call to renew the struggle for civil and political liberty.1954MAY 17, 1954The U.S. Supreme Court's unanimously ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that public school segregation was unconstitutional and paved the way for desegregation. The decision overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that said "separate educational facilities were inherently unequal." It was a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case and later returned to the Supreme Court as the nation's first African-American Supreme Court justice.1955AUG. 27, 1955While visiting family in Mississippi, fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boasted about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case became a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.DEC. 1, 1955Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest, the Montgomery black community launched a bus boycott that lasted over a year until the buses desegregated on Dec. 21, 1956. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), was instrumental in leading the boycott.1957FEB. 14, 1957The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, comprised of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Charles K. Steele and Fred L. Shuttlesworth, was established. King was the organization's first president. The SCLC proved to be a major force in organizing the civil rights movement with a principle base of nonviolence and civil disobedience. King believed it was essential for the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hate mongers who opposed them. "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urged.1957SUMMER 1957NAACP Branch President Robert F. Williams successfully led an armed self-defense of the home of the branch vice president and Monroe, N.C.'s black community from an armed attack by a Ku Klux Klan motorcade. At a time of high racial tension, massive Klan presence and official rampant abuses of the black citizenry, Williams was recognized as a dynamic leader and key figure in the American South where he promoted a combination of nonviolence with armed self-defense, authoring the widely read "Negroes With Guns" in 1962.SEPT. 2, 1957Integration was easier said than done at the formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Nine black students, who became known as the "Little Rock Nine," were blocked from entering the school on the orders of Arkansas Governor Orval Fabus. President Eisenhower sent federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, but a federal judge granted an injunction against the governor's use of National Guard troops to prevent integration. They were withdrawn on Sept. 20, 1957.On Monday, Sept. 23, when school resumed, Little Rock policemen surrounded Central High where more than 1,000 people gathered in front of the school. The police escorted the nine black students to a side door where they quietly entered the building to begin classes. When the mob learned the blacks were inside, they began to challenge the police with shouts and threats. Fearful the police would be unable to control the crowd, the school administration moved the black students out a side door before noon.1960FEB. 1, 1960Four black university students from N.C. A&T University began a sit-in at a segregated F.W. Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. Although they were refused service, they were allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggered similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later, the original four protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter. Student sit-ins would be an effective tactic throughout the South in integrating parks, swimming pools, theaters, libraries and other public facilities.1961MARCH 6, 1961President Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, prohibiting discrimination in federal government hiring on the basis of race, religion or national origin and establishing The President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity , the EEOC. They were immediately directed to scrutinize and study employment practices of the United States government and to consider and recommend additional affirmative steps for executive departments and agencies.APRIL 1961The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., providing young blacks with a more prominent place in the civil rights movement. The SNCC later grew into a more radical organization under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael (1966-1967) and H. Rap Brown (1967-1998). The organization changed its name to the Student National Coordinating Committee.1962OCT. 1, 1962James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy sent 5,000 federal troops to contain the violence and riots surrounding the incident.1963JUNE 12, 1963Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, was murdered outside his home in Jackson, Miss. Byron De La Beckwith was tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries. Thirty years later, he was convicted of murdering Evers.AUG. 28, 1963More than 250,000 people join in the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listened as Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.SEPT. 15, 1963Four young girls, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, attending Sunday school were killed when a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupted in Birmingham, Ala., leading to the deaths of two more black youth.1964JAN. 23, 1964The 24th Amendment abolished the poll tax, which had originally been instituted in 11 southern states. The poll tax made it difficult for blacks to vote.MAY 4, 1964 (FREEDOM SUMMER)The Mississippi Freedom Summer Project was organized in 1964 by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of four civil rights organizations: the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE); the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The project was to carry out a unified voter registration program in the state of Mississippi. Both COFO and the Summer Project were the result of the "Sit-In" and "Freedom Ride" movements of 1960 and 1961, and of SNCC's earlier efforts to organize voter registration drives throughout Mississippi.The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) launched a massive effort to register black voters during what becomes known as the Freedom Summer. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) began sending student volunteers on bus trips to test the implementation of new laws prohibiting segregation in interstate travel facilities. One of the first two groups of "Freedom Riders," as they are called, encountered its first problem two weeks later when a mob in Alabama sets the riders' bus on fire. The program continued and by the end of the summer, more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white, participated.CORE also sent delegates to the Democratic National Convention as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to protest - and attempt to unseat - the official all-white Mississippi contingent.JULY 2, 1964President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion or national origin and transform American society. The law allowed the federal government to enforce desegregation and prohibits discrimination in public facilities, in government and in employment. The "Jim Crow" laws in the South were abolished, and it became illegal to compel segregation of the races in schools, housing or hiring. Enforcement powers were initially weak, but they grew over the years, and later programs, such as affirmative action, were made possible by the Act. Title VII of the Act established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).AUG. 4, 1964The bodies of three civil-rights workers - two white, one black - were found in an earthen dam. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and on June 21, went to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.1965FEB. 21, 1965 - MALCOLM X AssassinatedBorn Malcolm Little in Omaha, Neb., on May 19, 1925, this world-renowned black nationalist leader was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan on the first day of National Brotherhood Week. A Black Muslim Minister, revolutionary black freedom fighter, civil rights activist and for a time the national spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, he famously spoke of the need for black freedom "by any means necessary." Disillusioned with Elijah Muhammad's teachings, Malcolm formed his own organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity and the Muslim Mosque Inc. In 1964, he made a pilgrimage to Islam's holy city, Mecca, and adopted the name El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz.MARCH 1965Selma to Montgomery MarchesThe Selma to Montgomery marches, which included Bloody Sunday, were actually three marches that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement.MARCH 7, 1965Bloody SundayBlacks began a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights, but were stopped at the Edmund Pettus Bridge by a police blockade in Selma, Ala. State troopers and the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, some mounted on horseback, awaited them. In the presence of the news media, the lawmen attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas and bull whips, driving them back into Selma.The incident was dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the national media, with each of the three networks interrupting telecasts to broadcast footage from the horrific incident. The march was considered the catalyst for pushing through the Voting Rights Act five months later.MARCH 9, 1965Ceremonial Action within 48 hours, demonstrations in support of the marchers, were held in 80 cities and thousands of religious and lay leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, flew to Selma. He called for people across the country to join him. Hundreds responded to his call, shocked by what they had seen on television.However, to prevent another outbreak of violence, marchers attempted to gain a court order that would prohibit the police from interfering. Instead of issuing the court order, Federal District Court Judge Frank Minis Johnson issued a restraining order, preventing the march from taking place until he could hold additional hearings later in the week. On March 9, Dr. King led a group again to the Edmund Pettus Bridge where they knelt, prayed and to the consternation of some, returned to Brown Chapel. That night, a Northern minister who was in Selma to march, was killed by white vigilantes.MARCH 21-25 1965 (Selma to Montgomery March)Under protection of a federalized National Guard, voting rights advocates left Selma on March 21, and stood 25,000 strong on March 25 before the state capitol in Montgomery. As a direct consequence of these events, the U.S. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing every American 21 years old and over the right to register to vote.AUG. 10, 1965Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting were made illegal.SEPT. 24, 1965President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 to enforce affirmative action for the first time because he believed asserting civil rights laws were not enough to remedy discrimination. It required government contractors to "take affirmative action" toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment. This represented the first time "affirmative action" entered the federal contracting lexicon and sought to ensure equality of employment. (Presidential Executive Order 11375 extends this language to include women on October 13, 1968.)1967JUNE 12, 1967In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting interracial marriage was unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time were forced to revise their laws.AUG. 30, 1967Senate confirmed President Lyndon Johnson's appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first African American Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court after he served for two years as a Solicitor General of the United States.1968APRIL 4, 1968Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., at age 39, was shot as he was standing on the balcony outside his hotel room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray was convicted of the crime. The networks then broadcast President Johnson's statement in which he called for Americans to "reject the blind violence," yet cities were ignited from coast to coast.APRIL 11, 1968President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing.1969President Nixon's "Philadelphia Order" presented "goals and timetables" for reaching equal employment opportunity in construction trades. It was extended in 1970 to non-construction federal contractors.1971APRIL 20, 1971The Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education upheld busing as a legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools. Although largely unwelcome (and sometimes violently opposed) in local school districts, court-ordered busing plans in cities such as Charlotte, Boston, and Denver continued until the late 1990s.1988MARCH 22, 1988Overriding President Ronald Reagan's veto, Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which expanded the reach of nondiscrimination laws within private institutions receiving federal funds.1992JUNE 23, 1992In the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School's policy, which ruled race could be one of factors colleges consider when selecting students because it furthered "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body."The Involvement of Republicans in the Liberation of Blacks in AmericaAfter a really good start by abolitionists to liberate blacks from slavery, establish the Republican Party, elect Abraham Lincoln president, prosecute the resulting War Between the States, pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, and Reconstruct the Union, Republicans for all practical purposes disappeared from the liberation of blacks from prejudice and discrimination in America. Yet Randy E. Barnett in Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People appears not to have noticed this fact. Instead of following up a quite proper defense of We the People being reference to individuals in the United States’ Constitution and following it to its logical conclusion that it is individuals — “each and every one of them” — that the Constitution is referring to, Barnett takes a distinct turn in his last two chapters to argue that the federalist structure of the American republic, controlled primarily by the “police powers” of the separate states, has been supplanted by an “administrative state” controlled primarily by the federal government, and the culprits who have done this dastardly deed are progressives bent on using the majoritarian “will of the people” of the country as a whole to thwart the interests and intentions of the peoples of the separate states to continue to take liberties with the rights of minority residents of their respective states.Rights verses Liberties — An Important DistinctionPhilosophers, political scientists, and the legal profession make a distinction between negative or liberty rights and positive or claim rights. A positive or claim right is a right that entails responsibilities, duties, or obligations on other parties regarding the right-holder, while a negative or liberty right is a right that does not entail obligations on other parties except to refrain from interfering with the freedom of the right-holder (Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions, As Applied in Judicial Reasoning and Other Legal Essays, 1920).Civil rights are the rights recognized by a government for the protection of its citizens in respect to guaranteeing fairness and checking discrimination. Civil liberties are the basic, broader rights guaranteed in the Constitution to all citizens and legal residents in the country. Unlike civil rights which may oblige specific actions of others, civil liberties are protective, negative rights that oblige only inaction (Civil Rights vs. Civil Liberties - FindLaw.Barnett’s book and this critique are exclusively about negative or liberty rights and civil liberties.The Purposes and Functions of GovernmentBarnett draws directly from John Locke in stating the purposes or functions of government.According to Locke, the social compact establishes a government that addresses the inconveniences in the state of nature, primarily the inconvenience of executing or enforcing the laws of nature that protect one’s natural rights. . . . (T)hough in the state of nature a person has the natural rights to his life, liberty, and possessions, the enjoyment of such rights is “very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others.” Without a government, the enjoyment of one’s property “is very unsafe, very unsecure.” Because the state of nature “is full of fears and continual dangers,” it is reasonable for a person “to join in society with others . . . for the mutual preservations of their lives, liberties, and estates.” (pp. 205-206)Barnett summarizes: “No one of us is strong enough to enforce our rights against everyone else, especially against a group of persons allied against us” (p. 207). Which establishes why Barnett states definitively in his Introduction:Under a republican Constitution, . . . the first duty of government is to equally protect these personal and individual rights from being violated by (either) domestic or foreign transgression (and again later in the his Introduction that) the Declaration stipulates that the ultimate end or purpose of republican governments is “to secure these” . . . preexisting natural rights (which was) the measure against which all government . . . will be judged. This language identifies what is perhaps the central underlying “republican” assumption of the Constitution: that governments are instituted to secure the preexisting natural rights that are retained by the people. In short, that first comes rights and then comes government (pp 23 & 41, respectively).Problems of Factionalism and Majoritarian RuleJames Madison was concerned about factionalism and majoritarian rule.All civilized societies, (Madison) explained, “are divided into different interests and factions, as they happen to be creditors or debtors—Rich or poor—husbandmen, merchants or manufacturers—members of different religious sects—followers of different political leaders—inhabitants of different districts—owners of different kinds of property.”In a democracy, the debtors outnumber the creditors and the poor outnumber the rich. The larger group can simply outvote the smaller. The “majority however composed, ultimately give the law. Whenever therefore an apparent interest or common passion unites a majority what is to restrain them from unjust violation of the rights and interests of the minority, or the individual?” (p 54).(T)he problem Madison identified with “republican Government” as it had been implemented (under the Articles of Confederation) was that it was simply too democratic or majoritarian (p 55).“By a faction,” (Madison) wrote in Federalist 10, “I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. . . .” (p 56, italics in the original).Madison believed that “to secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is the great object to which our inquiries (in the Continental Congress) are directed” (pp 56-57).Federalism as a Solution to the “Problem of Faction” and the “Majoritarian Difficulty”Barnett tells us:Madison observed, where the greatest power resides lies the greatest danger to the rights of the people. In a republic, that power resides in a majority of the electorate. . . .The U.S. Constitution is primarily a structure that was intended to protect the individual sovereignty of the people. . . .The majoritarian difficulty is the problematic claim that a subset of the people, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, gets to rule the others. It is problematic because each and every one of the people has certain fundamental rights, and it is only “to secure these rights that governments are instituted among men.” . . . (T)he republican Constitution is supposed to secure the sovereignty of the people, each and every one.Federalism is the term used to describe the division of powers between the national and state governments. . . . (F)ederalism has yielded some enormous advantages for protecting the rights retained by the people. If the federal government has only power to provide for the common defense as well as to protect the free flow of commerce between states, along with a few other specific tasks, most of the laws affecting the liberties of the people will be made at the state level. This would include the regulation of most economic activity as well as what are today called “social issues” (pp 162-163, 167-168, 170, 172-173).A substantive constraint takes the form of “thou shalt not do X,” and must be enforced by the courts. A structural constraint is “self-enforcing” and therefore potentially more effective (p 170).Federalism is a structural constraint.Why Federalism MattersBarnett argues four reasons federalism matters.Federalism makes diversity possible. When it comes to economic regulation, so long as they remain within the proper scope of their power to protect the rights, health, and safety of the public, fifty states can experiment with different regimes of legal regulation so the results can be witnessed and judged rather than endlessly speculated about. . . .As important, if not more so, businesses small and large can decide to relocate if they deem a particular scheme of regulation to be too onerous (p 175).Foot voting empowers the sovereign individual. Ilya Somin has explained how the competition of federalism empowers the sovereign individual. Because one’s vote in an election is swamped by the ballots of millions of others, it is simply irrational for most persons to invest too heavily the time and resources to learn what it takes to vote wisely. Unless one is voting on a referendum, voters can only choose between candidates from one of two (or three) parties, each of which presents a complex package of economic and social policies that voters are not allowed to disaggregate. You must vote for one of the packages, or not vote at all.In sum, a system of voting does not allow the sovereign people to “rule,” and it is a pernicious myth to claim that they do. . . .By contrast, Somin explains, when voting with one’s feet by moving to another city or state, one has far greater control over the results. Each person can individually control the state in which they live be selecting from among fifty choices . . . (a)nd they can personally experience the economic opportunities that result from different state policies. In a federal system, people are then free to move to another state for a better job, or for a cleaner and safer environment (p 177).It’s important to keep social issues local. When it comes to social policy, the preferences of individuals loom even larger. Not only is it difficult to identify the objectively “correct” social policy; it is not clear that such policies even exist. Different people subjectively prefer to live in different types of communities, not only because of differing opinions about morality, but simply as a matter of taste. . . .A rich diversity of preferred lifestyles can only be achieved at the local level. . . . From the perspective of diversity, it is preferable to have the variety of options provided by fifty state governments than a one-size-fits-all national policy. . . .With fifty states to choose from, it is far more likely that a person can find a state or municipality with a social environment in which he or she is more comfortable than if one social policy is imposed on the United States as a whole. . . .By their nature, communities must have one character or another. Given that communities must be one type or another, it is best to have as many different communities as possible from which to choose to satisfy the range of individual tastes, preferences, and moral commitments. The3refore, these are the sorts of zero-sum, or all-or-nothing, decisions that are best decided as locally as is legally feasible (p 178-179).Federalism avoids a political war of all against all. There is another, and potentially even more powerful way that federalism protects the individual sovereignty of the people. When one issue is moved to the national level, it creates a set of winners and a set of losers. Consequently, the more issues that are elevated to the national level, the more contentious , bitterness, and “gridlock” develops as people fight even harder not to lose. The result is a political version of what Thomas Hobbes called a “war of all against all.” . . .As with religious liberty, we avoid a political, and sometimes physical, Hobbesian war of all against all by ensuring that as many issues as possible are handled at the personal level of individual sovereigns, which is why individual liberty is the ultimate means to the pursuit of happiness for people living in society with others. Because of the competitive processes I have already described, reinforced by federal checks on state power, such individual liberty is far better protected at the more local level than at the national.To repeat . . . it is not that the social and economic policy issues protected by a diversity of state regulations are less important than those handled at the national. To the contrary, the more important the issue, the more likely it will engender a political war of all against all to avoid having another’s social policy imposed on you. So, the more important the issue, the less it is fit to be decided at the national level (p 182-183, italics in the original).In other words, Barnett likes federalism. But is that because federalism helps protect the rights and liberties of all or is it because it protects or at least enables some to be at liberty to take liberties with the liberties of others?• Barnett tells us that federalism makes diversity possible in that businesses and individuals can move among states, cities, towns, and rural areas to where the richer and more powerful can use their money, positions, and powers to dominate and control the less rich with less status, and less powerful.• Barnett tells us that voting with one’s feet empowers the sovereignty of individuals because the “Big Fish in the small pond” don’t need to compete or compromise with the “Little Fish”; they can just devour them.• Barnett tells us that it’s important to keep social issues local where they are zero/sum games where they can be won by those same Big Fish.• Barnett tells us, in other words, that federalism avoids political war, allowing the powerful to win most battles without much of a fightThat sounds to me a lot more like racial segregation in the Jim Crow south and residential covenants and redlining in the north than it does like “liberty and justice for all.” Where is the constitutionally guaranteed “security” and “protection” for all? Where is the “liberation” of the individual from factions as well as governments that liberals talk about when attacking progressives who they claim don’t care about liberty?Letting the Courts Decide, Lacking the Will to Enforce the LawBarnett’s book is a dissertation of legal decisions. He resolves the legal issues by defining We the People as a collection of free individuals when it is convenient to do so before the mid 19th century, switching to a collectives of individuals—i.e., “factions—residing in states governed by majority rule that can win state elections and rewrite the Black Codes of Jim Crow days if they desire. For Barnett, states’ rights prevail by majority rule when it is convenient to do so.I’m certain that Ronald Reagan agreed with the republican Constitution and would have been pleased with Barnett’s book. Throughout the 1980 presidential election and again in his inauguration, Reagan boldly stated: “Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem” when he clearly meant “Government is the problem when it gets in MY way of using MY position, power, and resources to secure and protect MY liberties to take liberties with others’.” MY, MY, MY!Barnett’s (and Wills’) Polemic on Progressives and Why They Are WrongAs Barnett insists, the great divide in America today is between those who do believe, as the founders did, that “first come rights and then comes government,” and those who believe, as progressives do, that “first comes government, then come rights.” The former are adherents of the republican Constitution. The latter have given us the democratic Constitution. (George Will, p xii)Barnett has become a leader of those who are reasserting the natural rights tradition that was overthrown during progressivism’s long success in defining the nature of the democratic Constitution and the judiciaries permissive role in construing the government’s powers under it. (George Will, p xiv)While progressivism is today remembered for its advocacy of economic legislation, it also favored legal coercion to achieve other types of social improvements. (Barnett, p 124)When it became clear that (Theodore Roosevelt) would be denied the Republican nomination, . . . (he) bolted the party to create his own “Progressive Party.” In an address to its national convention in Chicago on August 6, 1912, he congratulated them on forming a new party. “The time is ripe, and overripe, for a genuine Progressive movement,” and the “first essential in the Progressive programme is the right of the people to rule.” With respect to the judiciary, Roosevelt said, “our prime concern is that in dealing with the fundamental law of the land, in assuming finally to interpret it, and therefore finally to make it, the acts of the courts should be subject to and not above the final control of the people as a whole.” He then succinctly summarized the central tenet of the democratic Constitution: “Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people,” which in operation Roosevelt frankly affirmed means the majority of the people, or a majority of legislative bodies. (Barnett, p 134)In other words, progressives were responsible for:• asserting the will of the people as the purpose of government in place of securing the inalienable rights of individuals,• using legal coercion to achieve social improvements,• overthrowing the natural rights tradition, and• instituting the democratic Constitution’s premise that “first comes government, then come rights” for the republican Constitution’s premise “first come rights and then comes government.”I have no disagreement that progressives did all these things. What I disagree with is the pejorative characterization Barnett gives each of these things, especially given that each was likely an essential ingredient in the effort to diminish white supremacy in America after Republicans abandoned the south to the Democrats and, for the most part, did not participate in the Civil Rights Movement that, finally, eliminated de jure racial discrimination and began the process of diminishing de facto discrimination.A recent discussion by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (“Making America Great Again: The Case for the Mixed Economy,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2016, pp 69-90) describes how this came about.FROM THE FOUNDERS TO THE PROGRESSIVES*Government has unique capacities — to enforce compliance, constrain or encourage action, and protect citizens from private predation — that allow it to solve problems that markets can’t solve on their own. These problems are both economic and political; they concern areas in which markets tend to fall short and areas where market actors tend to distort democratic processes in pursuit of private advantage. . . .Because governments have chosen to intervene to . . . counter negative externalities and do some benign nudging, hundreds of millions of lives are now healthier, safer, and better protected. . . . In the United States . . . the majority of regulation involves protection of the public from the operations of unscrupulous private actors. These programs are overwhelmingly popular even though they are also, as a rule, coercive. That is not a paradox; it’s the point — because government is doing things that people need to get done but can’t or won’t do themselves. . . .This trajectory was a reflection of the Constitution’s purpose and design, not (as many charge today) a betrayal of them. The leading statesmen who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were keenly aware of the need for effective government authority. Indeed, they had become convinced that its absence was a mortal threat to the fledgling nation. Perhaps the most influential of them all, James Madison, put the point bluntly at the Virginia ratifying convention: “There never was a government without force. What is the meaning of government? An institution to make people do their duty. A government leaving it to a man to do his duty, or not, as he pleases, would be a new species of government, or rather no government at all.” . . .So long as government sat on the sidelines, the harms (of private predation) just kept multiplying. It was only a matter of time before a reaction set in, and eventually it did, in the form of the Progressive movement. . . .It makes sense to think of the two Roosevelts (Theodore and Franklin) as bookending a long Progressive era. It was progressive because at crucial moments, nearly everyone in a position of high public leadership came to believe that the U.S. social contract needed updating. It was long because challenging entrenched elites proved difficult, and only persistent agitation and huge disruptions to the U.S. political order allowed the translation of these new beliefs into new governing arrangements. (From Making America Great Again.)My Conclusions Regarding Barnett’s Desire to Redeem the Republican ConstitutionContrary to Barnett’s polemic on progressives, the Progressive movement was a necessary adjunct to the efforts of Republicans to gain and then ensure liberty for blacks and other minorities in America. Barnett’s republican Constitution took America only so far. To get over the hump and free blacks from the white supremacy of the Jim Crow south, coercive action, legitimized by a national majority against a minority of individuals and their representatives in Congress, proved necessary in the end to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to end de jure discrimination in America and continue the process of diminishing de facto discrimination.In this respect, Randy Barnett's analysis in Our Republican Constitution is incomplete in that, contrary to Barnett’s advocacy of “Redeeming Our Republican Constitution” in his concluding chapter, the Founders' intentions of securing life, liberty, and freedom to pursue happiness are better carried out by a combination of the republican and the democratic Constitutions than by a redemption of the republican Constitution and the abandonment of the democratic.____________*In this extract from the Hacker and Pierson article I have removed references to the impact of progressives on the economic welfare of the United States to focus on the nature of progressivism that allowed it to enhance the liberty of blacks oppressed under the white supremacist Jim Crow south.

As a matter of fact, it is getting more and more successful. Either most of the US is crazy, or the left-wing writers on Quora are out of touch with reality.The mainstream media’s rationalizations in regards to Trump are a textbook case of how the vast majority of people, including the most intelligent, base their opinions on tradition, wishful thinking, and groupthink. Nothing is more deadly than arrogant ignorance. I’m going to try, with even more new data, to show that any objective analysis points toward a massive win this fall by Donald Trump. I will offer no opinions on the relative merits of either candidate; only data, data, and more data about how the public is leaning.First, Gallup polling shows that American preference for the three parties is roughly: Republicans 30%, Democrats 30%, Independents 40%. This is current preference/affiliation, not registration. (Party Affiliation). The question then is, what are the Independents going to do?The July 28 Wikileaks poll of 117,060 people—right after the Democratic convention—asks: “Who will you vote to become President?” The Wikileaks poll gives Hillary less than half of Trump’s numbers:50% Donald Trump (Republican candidate)22% Hillary Clinton (Democratic)12% Gary Johnson (Libertarian)16% Jill Stein (Greens)A confirming poll on NBC’s left-leaning website got even more startling results as of Aug 13: out of 123,000 votes. Trump got 60%, Jill Stein 18%, Hillary 12% (!), Gary Johnson 10%.Another NBC poll found that 8% trust the media over Trump, while an amazing 92% trust Trump over the media (as of Aug 6). This suggests that any all-out assault on Trump via the media will hardly move the needle of public opinion.Another left-leaning site, ABC, held a live poll of 145,000 during August. ABC was so embarrassed by the results that they took it down, but you can still find it preserved online by others. It used to be at http://abcnewsgo.co/2016/08/abc-live-poll-who-are-you-voting-for/. The results:Donald Trump (70%, 101,215 votes)Gary Johnson (11%, 16,188 votes)Jill Stein (11%, 15,260 votes)Hillary Clinton (8%, 11,783 votes)Total voters: 145,167It seems the Democrats could hardly have chosen a less popular candidate. The argument that Hillary will win based on traditional election history and the electoral college does not count on the millions that never vote—a number roughly equal to those who do vote—who seem to have been energized by Donald Trump. The fact that Hillary’s 2008 primary vote total in California was significantly smaller (25.6% less), and Trump’s Republican vote considerably higher (33% more) than in 2008 must mean something (you can’t compare their primary vote totals directly because the Democrate and Republican process is different).The figures for the whole country were even more telling: Trump got much more primary votes than any previous Republican in history—in spite of the fact that he was running against 17 opponents. Hillary, in contrast, got less total primary votes this year than she did in 2008, when she lost to Barack Obama.And consider the buzz on the social media, according to Breitbart around mid-August:Trump: 10,174,358 Facebook likes vs. Clinton: 5,385,959 likesTrump Live Stream Post — 135,000 likes, 18,167 shares, 1.5 million viewsClinton Live Stream Post —11,000 likes, 0 shares, 321,000 viewsTrump: 197,696 Reddit subscribers (Reddit is left-leaning)Hillary: 24,429 Reddit subscribersHillary for Prison: 55,228 subscribersTrump averages 30,000 live Youtube viewers per stream; Clinton only 500.That’s a 60 to 1 ratio of online viewers of live speeches! And this is confirmed by actual attendance figures. Trump's crowds are typically in the thousands and have to turn people away. Hillary’s crowds are typically in the hundreds—and they sometimes used students or hired actors to fill the seats (as they did at the Democratic convention and elsewhere), or even photoshop the results (Google it), or they bring Hillary to speak at pre-scheduled events that routinely draw a crowd.In Kissimee, Florida, for example, Hillary drew 150 on Aug 8, while Trump drew 8,000 on Aug 11. Consider this online article by Jim Hoft: (August 2016 - The Gateway Pundit...)“It is clear by just looking at Trump and Clinton crowds at their events that Trump has a movement while Clinton has barely a heartbeat.When you look at the number of individuals at both Trump and Hillary speaking events since August 1st, the numbers are very clear. Trump had nearly ten times the number of people that Hillary had since August 1st. At least 100,000 people have shown up for Trump events (many were turned away due to the events reaching capacity) since the beginning of the month. Hillary on the other hand hasn’t even had one tenth of that. . . . Barely 8,000 people showed up to her seven campaign events since August 1st.”The article includes a detailed chart of all appearances.A video comparing Trump crowds to Hillary’s: Rally Crowds - Trump vs HillaryDave Schnipke, University of Phoenix, posted this reaction: “I had a similary experience in Toledo, Ohio. Max capacity 9,500 people in attendance at the Huntington Center. If that can happen in the small liberal town of Toledo, there’s no way I believe the polls.” (Emphasis supplied).Then consider the fact that almost all the polls in the headlines are based on around only 1,000 or so people, and they consistently oversample Democrats and undersample Republicans. Don’t take my word for it, Google it. That’s one way to cook the polls. Another way is to change the polling algorithm until you get the results you want (say, by suddenly removing the “neither” category, as Reuters did).They also drastically oversample home phones and undersample cell phones. So consider a cell phone poll: the Zip Question and Answer App for smartphones, which averages 100,000 daily users, and takes regular polls on all sorts of things. Recently in their presidential poll, 36% are for Hillary, 64% are for Trump. Why are these results so different from the old-style polls? Because people can answer anonymously, “without fear of being bullied or being called a racist. People can express themselves safely, and you get a pure answer,” says the appmaker.(App maker: Trump will win election)Currently (8/26) in the Zip poll Trump is winning Democratic Maryland by 70/30. He even takes California by 55%! I’m skeptical about that, because Republican loyalty registers as 75%, Democratic 25% on Zip, so maybe the users lean Republican. Yet Trump’s national vote is currently 92% versus 8% for Hillary! Notice what this means: even if in the actual election there is a 50/50 split of Republican/Democrat voters—not 75/25—still Trump wins handily because the 25% who identify with Democrats on Zip can only manage 8% for Hillary, suggesting that hordes of Democrats are defecting.This confirms the Wikileaks, NBC, and ABC polls cited earlier. That’s four 100,000+ polls that all point in the same direction, and these organizations are not conservative in the sense that Drudge or Breitbart is. Yes, in these polls the respondents are self-selected. But remember: in the ultimate poll—the actual vote in November—the respondents are also self-selected. Enthusiasm counts. And these polls occurred during Trump’s “dip” period, when he was “collapsing,” and before his trip to devastated Louisiana and his hiring of Steve Bannon.Even in some traditional polls Trump is currently trending more or less even, and as I write this paragraph (on August 22) the USC/LA Times poll puts him at 45% over Hillary at 43%.It’s all happened before. Two weeks before the 1980 General Election a Gallup poll showed Jimmy Carter to be far ahead of Ronald Reagan. On October 26th 1980 Gallup put Jimmy Carter at 47, Ronald Reagan at 39. That election two weeks later ended up in a Reagan landslide that was so big that Carter conceded before California closed.So be very skeptical of polls orchestrated by the media, or even oddsmakers. Oddsmakers are often accurate because they put their money where their mouth is. But remember that, in the days leading up to the Brexit vote, the oddsmaker’s chances against Brexit (and in favor of the “powers that be”) rose to over 90%, leaving less than a ten percent chance of passage. Yet Brexit passed!And—oh yes—Statistician Nate Silver told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in September 2015 that Trump had about a 5% chance of winning the Republican Primary. Hmm. Currently Silver is giving him a 14-29% chance of becoming the President. Now that’s progress!Here’s something else. Helmut Norpoth (the model) has a model which correctly predicted the last five elections and, when extended into the past for elections from 1912 to 2012, correctly picks the winner retroactively every time except in 1960. Even before Trump won the primary, Norpoth’s model predicted that Hillary had an 86% chance of beating Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or most any other Republican candidate. But the model puts Trump’s chances of winning at 87%.Any Democratic advantage in the electoral college is probably not enough. And certainly any argument that merely focuses on how crazy or dishonest Trump or Hillary is, or any model that relies solely on traditional polling, is wishful thinking. Trump has captured the hopes—or hatred—of the entire world with a revolutionary campaign. A tsunami is coming.That is, of course, barring any preposterous event such as WW3, the imposition of martial law, an assassination, or massive cheating.