Introduction To American Government Mid-Term Review A: Fill & Download for Free

Two important questions were never asked by supporters of the kneeling protesters. Had they been asked, just asked, it would have started a conversation that spelled out one obvious conclusion — that the protests were doomed to failure.Those questions were:What if millions of people upset about the protests aren’t motivated by ignorance or racism, but have good, informed reasons for their positions?What if the protesters themselves, and myself for supporting them, are basing my beliefs on bad information and incorrect assumptions?You can boil that down further. Many people failed to ask the crucial question any critical thinker must always ask:Do the people I disagree with have a point?To begin, we aren’t just talking about one protest. We’re talking about two.The first is the one most of you are aware of, #takeaknee and all things related. That had numerous motivations and messages which I will address in turn, but there was another.It was not patently anti-whatever the players were protesting. It wasn’t, “we’re protesting against racism, therefore you must be for racism.” Conservatives aren’t anti-black or pro-racism; they aren’t for the killing of blacks, or championing the cause of police brutality, whatever that means. They may disagree with specific points with what the protesters believe, but at no point would any reasonable person believe that anyone was pro-hate.However, many unreasonable people; those motivated by spurious political agendas, pundits doing favors for bigger interviews with more ratings, and your everyday ideologues, were serviced by declaring exactly that: that the only explanation for anyone to disagree with the protesters is that America is simply a deeply racist nation. It should be obvious that no one was protesting for racism or the repression of anyone. The counter-protest was saying something completely different.The message of the counter-protest was simple:“No matter what your problem is, you don’t disrespect the United States, it’s flag, or its sacred traditions.”It’s also important to understand that while the motivations of the counter-protesters may have been obscured and vague to those who supported the kneeling, those protesting in support of the flag and the nation weren’t ignorant to what the kneelers were advocating. Those who kneeled had the support of the news media, Hollywood celebrities, the Democratic party, the universities, and even social media outlets. Their point of view was inescapable. It was practically the default. Yet having full access to this information, they still counter-protested in defense of respecting the flag.When people you disagree with know all your arguments and you know none of theirs… you should take pause.So what we really need to do is outline the context of how the #takeaknee protest started, and by whom, as well as what else was going on at the time, and then we’re going to need to talk about the actual protest itself from a conservative standpoint.The context:To provide context, I feel that many on the left need to understand what the flag means to the Americans who stood against #takeaknee. That’s such a massive question with so many layers to it, that I needed to write two separate answers to unpack America’s seemingly irrational commitment to a brightly woven piece of cloth.Jon Davis's answer to Why do Americans feel so passionately about the national flag?Jon Davis's answer to Why are some Americans so offended by NFL players kneeling for the national anthem when they aren't doing it to disrespect positive and treasured aspects of the US like the veterans?I’ve copied some of the relevant information here, but to understand the emotional gravity of the symbolism of the flag, something that is fairly necessary to understand this post, I highly recommend reading at least the first.Beyond that, we need to talk about the specific context of what was going on just before Kaepernick began the protest.Timing was a serious issue.Colin Kaepernick’s protest began with the third preseason game of the 2016 season against Green Bay on August 26. On July 7th of that year, a Dallas, TX Black Lives Matter protest ended when Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed and assassinated five Dallas police officers. Following that, on July 17th in Baton Rouge, LA, 6 more police officers were ambushed, and three killed by Gavin Eugene Long. In the months leading up to those killings, Black Lives Matter’s rhetoric had become stronger and more violent. Crowds of protesters were recorded chanting “What do we want? Dead Cops!” and “Pigs in a blanket. Fry’em like bacon.” While the official Black Lives Matter organization put out a tweet saying they don’t condone violence, the movement they started had grown out of control. As many Americans saw it, that’s what led to the assassination deaths of over 11 police officers in two years, eight in the month of July 2016 alone.I’m not holding Kaepernick responsible for that. Not in the slightest. I’m not saying he in any way supported the police officer’s slayings or approved of the shootings of those police officers in any way. But the timing of his protest was incredibly poor.Following July’s events, the general view of Black Lives Matter as a movement had shifted. This wasn’t the view given a microphone, but the view on the streets, over dinner with friends, in the churches, the school parking lots between moms waiting on their kids, and the post office lines, the view of average people. Millions of Americans viewed that whatever its original aims may have been, their stated goals of bringing attention to police brutality towards black men had taken a backseat to a culture that virally spread misinformation among their liberal supporters for political gain, and the atmosphere they created, whether intentionally or not, fomenting murderous hatred for police officers everywhere.Then, after one of the worst months for police officers in recent US history, an NFL protester sits through the National Anthem repeating similar rhetoric. For those many Americans rejecting BLM after the bloody events of July 2016, Kaepernick’s original protest was a resurrection of the BLM movement rebranded after the two police shootings that took the lives of eight American police officers. They were raw and angry from July before Kaepernick’s sit down protest in August.But they weren’t allowed to voice that anger. No one from the mainstream media to Main Street were allowed to bring up Dallas or Baton Rouge because that was supposedly irrelevant and to do so probably meant that you were a racist.Then there was the way in which the kneeling started.The context in which his protest began wasn’t kneeling. It was Colin Kaepernick sitting through the anthem. In the United States, sitting through the National Anthem is not something unprecedented. The act has a specific and well-understood meaning which you can’t re-contextualize or put your own meaning to it. It’s like spitting on someone or dancing on someone’s grave. We all know that it is an explicit sign of disrespect towards the nation. By sitting, not kneeling, through the anthem, he made a very loud statement demonstrating his view of what America is. He established a deeply anti-American context to the protest that has followed it ever since and which is now inseparable from it.I’ll be honest, I don’t think he is a person who understood the majority of football fans or at least their patriotic fervor, and how massive is the gulf between their definition of America and his own. I don’t think he possibly understood what the flag and the anthem meant to so many of his own fanbase and how divisive of a move it was. For that matter, I don’t think many of his non-football fan supporters understand either, or respect how egregious it was for so many people, or how much it deeply hurt and angered millions of people.Having said that, we need to talk about Kaepernick, in particular.Since beginning the protest, the question of Kaepernick’s patriotism has been in question. If we look at the evidence, what Kaepernick has specifically said and done, he does have specifically anti-American biases. I don’t think I’m generalizing because this is based on his, “I’ll never stand for a flag that oppresses black people and people of color,” statement as well as other messages he intentionally put out, most notably through his choice in apparel.His clothing choices have not helped him shed the appearance of anti-American sentiment, namely by choosing clothes for high profile events and press conferences that communicate specifically anti-American causes, beliefs, and figures. If I wore a Ronald Reagan T-Shirt, you’d probably be pretty wise to assume I was a Republican and what many of my political beliefs were. You’d probably even be pretty correct in assuming I’m trying to make a statement with the shirt. That said, Kaepernick is now famous for the “Cop Pig” socks, which the media tried to play defense that it wasn’t directed at all police. They’ve had less success with his other choices, such as shirts that glorify the communist dictator Fidel Castro, the Black Panther Party that committed numerous acts of violence against the police in their advocacy for black power, and even one with Huey P. Newton (the Black Panther Party’s founder) made to emulate the famous visage of Che Guevara.It’s obvious that Kaepernick has an appreciation for an extreme left-wing neo-Marxist revolutionary attitude that is, frankly, distilled anti-American sentiment. What’s less obvious is how such a person espousing far-left communist figures and protesting against the oppression of people of color ended up being paid millions to represent one of the world’s most powerful international corporations and specifically the one that charges blacks $300 for a pair of sneakers made exclusively through the underpaid labor of third-world Asian sweatshops. But that’s probably a conversation best left for another day.If we take the views of the people Kaepernick is directly honoring as probably representative of his own, the flag represents the oppression of blacks and people of color, the embodiment of institutionalized racism, and a memorial to a history overcome with hatred, racism, and oppression.And nothing more.Liberals need to understand this because at no point was anyone allowed to say that this protest was started in the wrong way, at the wrong time, and by the wrong person without some very powerful force in the media shaming them for being a racist. That’s why America couldn’t ever be brought to supporting #takeaknee and why it would always, always have an anti-American message attached to it.That entire teams stayed in the locker-room, in effect, boycotting the National Anthem itself…I don’t know how the players protesting could possibly recover a sense that this protest didn’t have an overwhelming anti-American air to it.Don’t get me wrong, they tried everything and even had the media backing them every step of the way, but the context had been set for millions of Americans and nothing was going to change that perspective. If anything, in the minds of conservative Americans, it only carried an anti-American message over into a non-objectionable act of kneeling.From then, their outrage was directed at the treatment towards the flag and towards the nation in the name of getting attention to a particular cause. Whether the protest was rebranded in some other form by way of kneeling, standing with crossed arms, or whatever else may have been attempted, before, after, or during the National Anthem, these new displays immediately absorbed the anti-American context of Kaepernick’s original protest… and America was having none of it.Now that all that is said, now that there is a reasonable case for why conservatives have to be angry, we need to actually talk about the merits of the counter protesters’ arguments directly.Just because you protest doesn’t mean the debate is over. You have a point of view, and that point of view is still something that needs to be critiqued. How outraged a person is is not the test we use for determining policy. It’s answering the questions of if the facts support the point of view, and if we have a solution that will fix it. We don’t just “take action” because people demand it. We take action because it is clear to a majority of people specifically what actions will cause the most benefit and do the least harm. You don’t get there by celebrating any and all protests, you eventually have to listen to people they disagree with, come to terms with the idea both of you are probably wrong on some things, but you could be wrong on a lot. But that isn’t what is happening. Instead, what is happening is the goalposts are being moved.What angers conservatives is what happens next. When an argument is debated and disproved by conservatives, the intelligentsia, those in academia and the media don’t perform their actual roles in society and report that to better inform the public. Instead, three things happen:The facts are ignored while the sources are discredited on ideological lines. In this case, any criticism to the protest was a denial of the axiom that racism explains all suffering endured by blacks, and therefore rejected patently because the only people who would raise criticisms must be motivated by their own racism.Instead of holding accountable liberal claims provably false, the intelligentsia plays defense. They make excuses to explain false or even hateful statements made by key figures (such as defending Kaepernick’s pig cop socks.) Then, at the point where the academic criticism to their claims becomes too much, rather than admitting some level of a fault, they change the narrative to something related, but very distant to the original points of the protest. Most people in support of “the protest” and plugged into mainstream media channels aren’t made aware of this transition, are never informed of good arguments by conservatives … or worse, intentionally frame them to be “racist dog whistling”… such as by Thomas Sowell.This reframing the narrative is what Conservatives are most angry about because it creates a perpetual cycle where they feel, rightly so, like a national conversation can’t possibly happen, because a left-leaning intelligentsia has already decided that whatever they say is racist (Thomas Sowell, people) and will only mask times their arguments fail by changing the subject without informing their own liberal viewers. Meanwhile, those liberal viewers become more outraged by what they can only perceive as overwhelming hate on the right because they never get the message that, “yeah, what we said three weeks ago was actually wrong.” Bad narratives built upon themselves, leading to ever increasing hate and resentment closing them off to the actual views of conservatives. All this while the right is getting outraged about people not listening to what they actually believe.But the conservatives had one thing the left doesn’t. New media channels allow conservatives access to many different points of view and arguments that go against the mainstream media narratives, but since they also have access to a now obviously biased media, they also know the opposing views. Given that fact, and that so much of the media seems to support the protest, but far more Americans don’t, it should concern many people what information they’re missing.That said, the narrative has been changed, by my count, at least 6 times. So let’s run through them. Since we are talking about conservative views on #takeaknee, we need to also have a conversation about the positions themselves. That not just the question of if players should have knelt or not and why many conservatives disagreed with why Kaepernick was protesting in the first place. We’re going to talk about that starting with the first thing he said once the protests started and where the protests evolved from there. You can agree or disagree with my take on any of these arguments, but it should bother people that when all the arguments I’m bringing up, that so few people actually saw, but were instead directed somewhere else.Most people reading this right now do not remember the first thing that Kaepernick said he was protesting. As I write, most of you will come to some idea, probably, you’re drawing from one of the later evolutions of the protest, not realizing how much variance there is between one person’s answer and another.According to Kaepernick’s own statements, he did it because he refused to stand for the flag of a racist nation. To quote him:"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."[1]So that’s the first reason given for the protest. Note I said first, because there will be others.America is a racist nation.The first argument is that America is a racist nation. This specific statement has been echoed again and again not just by Kaepernick, but also media pundits, celebrities, and even high ranking politicians. The problems with this argument were immediately apparent.First, it makes the claim that because there exists racism in America, that America is racist. This definition of racism doesn’t just include when races are specifically and intentionally treated differently, but whether there exists any statistical disparity between groups. This takes a bird’s eye view of race in America and attributes every source of inequality between whites and blacks, or whites and any other race, to white racism. Statisticians know that when comparing only the group averages in any test, there will always be disparities which are usually caused by many factors; so racism shouldn’t be the first and only explanation for why there exists disparity.It also ignores the reality that across many studies and personal accounts of world travelers, America ranks among the least racist countries in the world. While not a deeply scientific study, this map created by the Washington Post, an outlet which has anything but conservative biases, gives a snapshot of how Americans honestly rank among the world. The survey asked respondents to answer the question, “what groups of people would you not want as neighbors” and see who said “people of another race.”This isn’t even accounting for the size of population and actual ethnic diversity in the United States, which dwarfs most other blue nations on the map.So again, if America is a racist nation… what is the standard on which we’re basing that on? Exactly who isn’t a racist nation which we are to compare ourselves to? Is there some real-world example to point to, or is America a “racist” nation until we meet some unrecognizable perfection.This isn’t saying that racism has never been a problem.Traditionally, this was the story in the United States. No one is denying that slavery was an important driver of our nation’s development, as it was for most the rest of the world up to that point since the beginning of recorded history. And no one is saying that slavery didn’t also create a legacy in America, requiring at least one century to put those prejudices behind us. The United States wasn’t unique in this regard. Also, no one is denying that racism wasn’t also a part of our history through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and into the Civil Rights era.But the Civil Rights era was rather special in US history because it did something few other nations have. Its victories weren’t about radical redistribution to formerly oppressed people groups. History outside of the United States has proved that to be detrimental and counterproductive more often than not. What it provided was a legal framework in the law that allowed minorities to challenge a law or corporate practice that intentionally targeted people based on racial identity. Through this process, it allowed blacks to challenge powerful institutions, including the government itself, on all levels on specific policies and have those policies removed, leaving the institution as a whole to continue serving society in some meaningful way, but now unable to selectively ignore or oppress ethnic groups. It was a process for gradual, but perpetual reforms across society.Note that I said process. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end racism. It didn’t come close to it. But it created a process to chip away the power racist mentalities had without smashing the structure as a whole. It’s as if you had a statue, a masterpiece like a David or even The Statue of Liberty. But say they are living things, and say there is a wart or a tumor. It doesn’t make sense to smash the statue for an imperfect growth. You want to chip it away, leaving that which is beautiful and useful, while removing that which is wrong. That’s how our legal process works, and now works for blacks and other groups. It requires a problem to exist, and the way we determine that is for a victim of an injustice to come forward with a case that they experienced it. Then, when that injustice is investigated and uncovered, the problem isn’t just solved for that individual; the law requires that all similar injustices no longer occur for everyone else. This times many years and many cases, each time chipping away the imperfections a little more. And the bigger the problem, the longer the process will take. With something like racism in America, it would be no wave of a magic wand.But by the 1980s, we started to see this process working. At the same time, we also started to see something else coming to play. Inequality remained in the black neighborhoods. Why?Alongside the legal reforms of the 1960s came social reforms in the way of those redistribution policies being created to lift blacks, and other American poor, up out of poverty.The theory was that with numerous layers of safety nets, it would be easier for blacks to escape poverty, or impossible to fall into it. The problem was that many of these programs instead made concrete patterns of decisions that keep people trapped in poverty. This was true of all people, and not just blacks, but compounded especially hard for urban black communities. Here are three examples:Breakdown of the family - Because many of the Great Society programs of the time provided benefits for single mothers, a sizeable minority of these women never sought fathers to help in the raising of their children. Children raised by both their biological mother and biological father are the single greatest predictor of long-term success for a child. Fathers are important for imparting values children will need for adulthood. Around 20 years later, towards the end of the 1980s, there was an explosion in the crime rate among black neighborhoods that wasn’t present in earlier decades, save for much of the violence due to the Civil Rights movement itself.Many black conservative historians, including economist Thomas Sowell, argue that the 1980s crime rate was due to the number of now fatherless young boys entering the age of their lives when they are most apt to commit violent crimes, between 15 and 30, only put under control by the tough-on-crime policies of the late mid to late 1990s. This did stem the tide of crime, but also kept more fathers out their homes and creating generational patterns.Welfare dependence - Because the Great Society programs also were built off improving various New Deal ideals, it also included generous welfare payouts to those unable to work for various reasons. Another sizeable minority again used these programs as a means to make bad life choices, this time to avoid work, instead opting for a subsistence lifestyle off government aid. In so doing, this population did not attain the entry-level employment where many get their start in an industry, develop skills and begin the climb up to higher pay and a higher standard of living.Just as much, there were many honorably working poor caught in the welfare gap, or rather welfare trap, a point where a moderate increase in earned income meant a greater decrease in government aid, meaning a net loss on regular income that many living on the margins couldn’t afford. Because the temporary hurdle was so great, many working poor denied themselves advancement through promotion or better jobs which would have eventually led them out of poverty.3) It’s important to note that these last two programs also affected many whites, but I’ll get to that in a moment. The third seems to have affected blacks specifically.3) a) Poor Housing Practices — Included in this era of progressive economic reforms was the creation of the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. One of the goals of these departments was home ownership for all Americans. This being the 1960s, however, they did it very differently for whites than for blacks. For whites, development was directed towards moving in large numbers of migrants from the rural farmlands to the outskirts of major cities. This later evolved into the suburbs we all know today. For blacks, the plan was instead to create high rise low-income apartments which they could own to serve as an introduction to home-ownership. These would later become known as the Projects.3) b) Collapse of Industrial Labor Markets — The Projects made reasonable sense for a time. It placed many, many low skilled workers near factories which they could work. That it was specifically designed for blacks is obviously dubious, but for a while, regardless of that fact, it worked.However, once a rise in crime began and once a globalized economy made it more profitable to move factories overseas or to automate processes requiring less workers, piling on thousands upon thousands of low-skill, low education working class people into just a few small city blocks became a powder keg waiting to explode. Quickly, the areas devolved as jobs became scarce and the inner city was no longer a place where investors were willing to start new ventures.Given what I’ve already outlined, one should have expected crime in black neighborhoods to be worse than other parts of the country, as by the 1980s, they have every socioeconomic predictor for high crime, regardless of race.The high crime rates necessitated increasingly high incarcerations, and worse yet, harsher police tactics to deal with the increased violence. While you can show studies that demonstrate an all-white jury is harsher on blacks than a mixed jury, this native effect is true of all populations and all demographics, so how much white racism explains the overall justice system is questionable. Better explanations for the justice system’s apparent mistreatment of blacks are as follows:While racism historically caused black inequality, since the 1960s, compounding the effects of these other factors produced the outcome where blacks, in particular, suffered since Civil Rights. Since that point, the inequalities were due more to bad governance than white racism. Though there is a good argument that actual racism in programs like HUD created generational poverty, the majority of the disparity between blacks and whites was owed more to misaligned altruism and poor oversight into whether the programs were actually achieving their goals at the Federal level. We also have the problem that you can’t undo HUD, where the effects we see today were caused by decisions made 60 years ago.Next, and this is something liberals get right, is that local income inequality leads to yet more increases in violence.While we don’t know exactly why this happens, places with high Gini-coefficients, a measurement used to test income inequality, usually also have high crime. Perhaps the reason is that even in places where a poor person has a reasonably high standard of living by world standards, seeing people far better off near them creates resentment. In places like New York City, which remains one of the most racially segregated areas in the countries (each color of the map below representing a different racial group) being face-to-face with radical inequalities would be unavoidable.Move out to rural areas and the story is different. We have less crime, but here, generally, most people are collected on the lower end of the income strata. Given what we know about the clustering of blacks thanks to various housing policies in the past, it should make sense that crime rates are higher in urban black neighborhoods if, in fact, high local income inequality leads to more violence.Of course, once the crime existed, no matter how it came about, it had to be dealt with.The “strong on crime” stances first came from local leaders. Locally elected black representatives, mayors, councilmen, police chiefs, judges, all campaigned to end the crime in their neighborhoods and on that promise, they were elected by a population wanting it. But if there is that kind of policy variance, where black communities are policing their own neighborhoods more strictly than the rest of the country, would that not appear as a racial inequality when measured against the rest of the nation?Various other inequalities in the treatment of blacks and whites by the justice system are explained on a case-by-case basis. For example, the fact that blacks on average receive harsher sentences for the same crimes as whites is explained by blacks having a higher rate of repeat offenses. Repeat offenses still falling in the same category, but with much greater punishments. Why blacks commit more repeat felony crimes is explained by the same reason there is more crime from black areas in the first place, being due mostly to the economics of black neighborhoods more than anything wrong with blacks per se, or even black culture, and certainly more than white racism.Others are more difficult to explain, such as a Harvard study [2]which showed police are more likely to escalate force against blacks than whites in similar circumstances, but to the surprise of even the researchers, less likely to shoot a black person than a white person, all else equal.What we see from these numbers is that the police are treating blacks differently on the streets than whites, but not with the extremes that the common narrative seems to assume. But the real surprise of the study was that the evidence showed that blacks were less likely to be killed than whites as a result of police intervention.This answers Kaepernick’s second half of his “bodies in the streets” argument which is built on the argument that blacks are more likely to be targeted for police killing than whites. According to the same Harvard study, a school not known for its conservative biases, that is demonstrably false. While the assumption is those police killings are out of control, the truth is that they are at all time lows.(Harvard Public Health Review)The last point focuses on a group that is usually ignored in this discussion, poor whites. This is the roughly 20 million whites who live below the poverty line, enthralled in welfare traps, and lacking the economic opportunities to attain the American dream. By most accounts, these poor whites have no more privilege than any other race. It’s hard to see this, again, if you live in the very cloistered cities where inequality is obvious, but most of America’s poor aren’t people of color.Because the white population on average is richer than other races, and because reaching the rural areas for academic surveys and media reports involves more work than visiting nearby recessed urban areas, these whites are ignored, but the fact remains that they outnumber poor blacks by more than 2:1.This isn’t a pissing contest. It’s saying that as bad as blacks have it, for every one of them there are at least two more whites who have it bad, too. Furthermore, once these facts are accounted for we realize that the history of blacks in America since the Civil Rights era is due less to racism and oppression than to other factors, and most importantly, that most of the problems that actually hold blacks back are the same as those of a much bigger population of poor whites, meaning that solving one will solve the other. [3]These arguments to the narrative that America is simply a racist nation oppressing people of color are not new, and a majority of these arguments come from one man, economist and historian Thomas Sowell.Yep.And he’s been saying these things since the 1980s. Conservatives quickly cited these arguments — all of which were still applicable in 2016 — to counter much of Kaepernick’s very vague original blanket criticism of the United States. After Kaepernick’s original argument was given at least credible evidence that it wasn’t factually supported, the narrative changed to one that past racism informs current racism, by way of memorializing a racist anthem.The anthem is racist.This argument blew my mind when I heard it, but the argument shifted not long after the original “racist nation” statement began being dissected. The new mainstream narrative was that what Kaepernick really meant was that the anthem itself was racist and singing it was celebrating a racist time in American history. How this was possible took a lot of jumping through hoops to pull off.The Root, a media company well known for… well, it has a reputation… wrote a hit piece on the anthem and Francis Scott Key which sums up the arguments for “Star-Spangled Bigotry.” That’s really the name of the article. Star-Spangled Bigotry: The Hidden Racist History of the National AnthemThe author argues that the National Anthem is racist because its writer, Francis Scott Key, was a racist. As evidence, he cites that Key was “a white guy,” but also a son of a slave-owning family of aristocrats in Washington, D.C. As a prosecutor, he also took a case against an abolitionist, and a slave accused of attempted murder of his owner (which history has since shown was probably not the case) during an 1835 riot called the “Snow-Storm.[4]” He also opposed the abolitionist movement and supported shipping black freedmen back to Africa.The author also points to what he views as the Star-Spangled Banner’s racist third stanza.And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusionA home and a Country should leave us no more?Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.No refuge could save the hireling and slaveFrom the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth waveO’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.“No refuge could save the hireling and slave.”Well, that’s all there is to say, right?Sorry, not so fast.Looking to the statements of the anthem itself, there are numerous arguments to be made. First of all, no good historian would apply the common meaning of a word in 2016 without first consulting the meaning in 1814 when the anthem was inspired. There, “hireling” most likely referred to mercenaries working for the British army, but more importantly, “slaves” could have meant one of a number of things, as well. There isn’t much logic in saying that the line simply meant that slaves, meaning the common modern understanding of chattel slavery, should beware an American victory. The British weren’t fighting to free them, as they wouldn’t end slavery in the UK until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.What was more likely was that “slave” was a derogatory term for the British themselves. The United States prided itself for its independence, a novel concept at the time, both nationally and as individuals. Citizens of the UK and primarily the British Army, were viewed as subjects of a tyrannical monarch, no more free than slaves themselves. In some ways, even less, since they couldn’t even buy their way out of such a relationship like many American slaves.It’s my belief, however, that the “slaves” reference was owed to a group the Root article also references, the Colonial Marines. Being that the only people who would call the United States “colonial” were the British, the Colonial Marines were units composed of runaway slaves promised freedom if they served the crown. From the perspective of the Americans, the Colonial Marines were traitors. Key witnessed a defeat of American forces, in part due to the Colonial Marines, so it was likely he held no small grain of resentment against those he viewed as turncoats. That being the case, their inclusion in the anthem likely referenced vengeance on slaves who rebelled against their nation.That it was glorifying chattel slavery for the purpose of white supremacy seems the least likely interpretation of the line.Next is understanding Key himself.Early in his career, Key prided himself as a humanitarian who happily defended individual blacks to the point that he earned a reputation as “the Blacks’ lawyer.” While he supported slavery during most of his career, most people of the time did too, as had always been the case everywhere. It wasn’t until the 1820s that emancipation became a noteworthy movement in the United States and it wasn’t until the 1830s that wide scale support of it had taken hold in the North. From Key’s thinking of the time, support for slavery was support for law and order in the United States more than the celebration of the institution of forced servitude based on skin color, or otherwise. We can see this in the “Snow-Storm” of 1835. While prosecuting a slave who historians now believe to be innocent, he also prosecuted the rioters who set out to kill him in jail and who also accosted a free black businessman. Later, he prosecuted the abolitionist on the same grounds of disrupting the law and order he attempted to ensure for the city. Key also wasn’t the only white man to support establishing a colony of freedmen in Africa. Most notably, Abraham Lincoln also at one time supported the idea. It was viewed as an outlet to avoid civil strife by allowing freedmen to go return to Africa if they wished, while also promoting American interests abroad by competing directly with the European empires at their own game. This is actually how the nation of Liberia was founded.So the arguments with the Star-Spangled Banner and Francis Scott Key were valid to have a discussion, but so are the defenses that center around two key premises:You can’t judge people of the past based on contemporary viewsandContext mattersThe example illustrated an important criticism of the progressive view of history, which seeks to rebrand American history as deeply flawed and uniquely hateful, disregarding the norms of any of the rest of the world at the same time. Moreover, by applying the context of today’s beliefs to persons of the past, it paints every person who ever lived prior to 1960 as an unredeemable bigot unworthy of appreciation or respect, and certainly not admiration or to be emulated by future generations as role models.How conservatives feel about this is that it’s patently an attack on American history and American culture. By applying an impossible standard to people, events, and institutions, where if they acted in any way normal for the time in which they existed or where they began, they must have encoded in them a bigotry that can’t be unwritten without the complete removal of the institution. This is to say that say that nothing they did within their lives had any value unless they can be proved absolutely perfect by today’s standards.The most extreme example being the case where the joke was made that they want to take down statues of George Washington and destroy Mount Rushmore because he too owned slaves. Viewed as ridiculous at the time, but only a few months later that is exactly what happened. Activist pressure forced the removal of plaques dedicated to George Washington in the very church he helped to establish.“The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome. Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques,” the church leaders said in a letter to the congregation that went out last week.This sense that people now feel “unsafe” because a church which had the most prominent member of our founding fathers as a founding a member and that they honor that is patently absurd… but it happened.Many took the attacks against Key and The Star Spangled Banner as an attack on far more, which it was. Justifying the idea that Key is now unworthy of admiration or to take value from the lessons of his life because he also held common ideas of his era sets a dangerous precedent. If that argument is allowed to become a cultural norm it applies to literally everyone who has ever lived, and if that is the case, no history, no role models, no traditions, and no acts of heroism or character can ever be used to inform our thinking today. Even worse, it justifies arguments against modern institutions which have roots anywhere in the past, such as banks which existed in some distant form during the Civil War, or state governments even older. By making an argument that Key is to be rejudged and punished, you make a case that these institutions which we need to live also are responsible today for things that happened before anyone alive today was born.When this modern judgment is applied to major institutions, such as the government, corporations, or even social institutions like the Church or the family, this is what is meant by “institutional bias” that it is institutionalized in a way that is almost impossible to even define, let alone reform.So why conservatives protested this new argument coming from Kaepernick’s supporters attacking the National Anthem itself and its writer was that it changed the nature of Kaepernick’s protest. What was originally a protest about something currently happening in America became a proclamation of historical bigotry and that this history is the cause of current bigotry. This is not the way things work.Our institutions such as the Constitution of the United States were specifically written to be amended when reforms were necessary. At times, they were necessary. Because of that, we have a system which allows people of any color to challenge racially prejudicial practices. That power is now written into the Constitution itself and protected by the Supreme Court. So it does not make sense to purge American culture of anything which had some history existing prior to those reforms.Further, arguments that past bigotry informs current bigotry are non-falsifiable accusations holding all future generations in a status of guilty until proven innocent for crimes they didn’t do. As the flag protest shows, the only way to resolve that is to sacrifice something viewed as sacred to many for symbolizing exactly what is good about America because a very small minority within a minority view it differently — a racist anthem of a racist nation.Finally, any argument that past bigotry informs present bigotry leads to a very obvious point — what will future generations say about us?This was a point brought to the table on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience. Joe, a voracious meat eater and hunter, brought up the point of a future society where all meat might be grown in a lab, where future meat is cheaper, healthier, and doesn’t come with the ethical burden of raising animals for slaughter. Would that all the good work most of us do today in all the areas of our lives that have nothing to do with our food, were wiped away by our descendants because we enjoyed a good bacon cheeseburger. This isn’t making a moral equivalency between the owning of human beings and eating meat. It’s simply making the point that values change, but people who have been dead for two hundred years don’t. So protests geared around deleting history to signal your own virtue doesn’t hold well with Conservatives.But then the narrative changed…“It was never about the flag. It was about racism.”That was the entire point of the article that inspired this question: #TakeAKnee Isn't About The Flag. It's About America's Racism.As the name states, the writer of this Huffington Post article is trying to reframe the narrative again that what Kaepernick’s protest was really protesting was racism in America, namely by the Police because he believed they were unjustly killing blacks and getting away with it.From the article:Racism is why oppression in America continues to function, creating a societal hierarchy that places black people at the bottom. Racism is why discrimination exists and why “black lives matter” must be said. … This is bigger than Trump and the flag. Yet it’s still easy for the narrative around the protests to derail into a debate about free speech, the right to protest and respect for the flag. … Calling out racism by name is important; it’s what Kaepernick’s protest intended to do. If we lose sight of this, we stand the risk of losing the momentum and power the movement has built so far.The article follows the line of the last two points. One, it restates that America is a racist nation because police disproportionately kill blacks and that racism is deeply embedded in our American institutions. This is a stance based on things which can be proven, and the facts do not support the narrative of racist white cops disproportionately killing blacks. There is too much evidence disproving that notion, or at least providing enough information that people should question the axiomatic belief that it is so true we no longer have an obligation to test it.The article continues to say that “it was never about the flag”.To many conservatives, it’s impossible to say that. Kaepernick’s original protest was sitting through the National Anthem, a deeply symbolic act which is explicitly an act of disrespect. This was followed by his words "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color."It was exactly about the flag.People need to understand why so many Americans care so deeply about the flag and its symbolism. To understand the gravity of that emotion, I had to write a whole other piece dedicated to exactly answer that question, so those supporting the protesters could fully fathom why counter-protesters were so offended by what Kaepernick did.Jon Davis's answer to Why are some Americans so offended by NFL players kneeling for the national anthem when they aren't doing it to disrespect positive and treasured aspects of the US like the veterans?The key take away for our purposes is that to millions of Americans who honor the flag, it is symbolic of a massive framework of ideas, memories, values, emotions, and history, informing their entire view of the United States and which they psychically share with all other patriotic Americas. This construct of ideas is so massive and so complex that is difficult to communicate as simple “patriotism”, but borders on the sacred. Humans are deeply symbolic so they project that idea onto objectively meaningless artifacts, creating meaning in them where there was none. This is why honoring “the flag” is really something far more. It’s honoring literally everything good about America, it’s people, and the emotions of people who love it.People act as if this is not a serious notion, that it’s irrational to attach so much meaning to a piece of cloth, but I bet you that the same people who argue the point are also people who would be offended by this flag.It’s just cloth, right? There’s no objective meaning to it at all, yes?Kaepernick knowingly made a protest by sitting through the anthem. That communicated profound disrespect towards the flag, which is the totem symbol of everything good in America.As I said, it was always about the flag.Alright, fine, but then he knelt. Doesn’t that count for anything?You might be saying that it was an American veteran who came up with the idea of kneeling in the first place because that’s what they do to show respect for their fallen and that this fact alone exonerates any argument of anti-Americanism. It doesn’t. It really doesn’t change anything.The real story wasn’t what most people. The popular narrative is that a friend of Kaepernick’s who was in the military and who supports all his views wanted to give his friend a better way to reach people. That’s not the case.Nate Boyer, an Army Green Beret with combat experience in Africa and deployments to Afghanistan, originally came on the scene disappointed in Kaepernick’s original protest; the 49ers being his favorite team. He also had a history of playing in the NFL, first playing in college and then suiting up for the Seahawks in an exhibition game. He’s even tried out for the 49ers. He didn’t make the final cut for the season, but he had a unique perspective on both sides of the issue. Because he had that experience, the Army Times approached him for his take on Kaepernick.He expressed that he was angered at first by what Kaepernick did.The only time I got to stand on the sideline for the anthem was during my one and only NFL preseason game, against the Denver Broncos. As I ran out of the tunnel with the American flag I could feel myself swelling with pride, and as I stood on the sideline with my hand on my heart as the anthem began, that swelling burst into tears.I thought about how far I’d come and the men I’d fought alongside who didn’t make it back. I thought about those overseas who were risking their lives at that very moment. I selfishly thought about what I had sacrificed to get to where I was, and while I knew I had little to no chance of making the Seahawks’ roster as a 34-year-old rookie, I was trying.That moment meant so much more to me than even playing in the game did, and to be honest, if I had noticed my teammate sitting on the bench, it would have really hurt me.In his August 2016 letter, he also made many compromises with Kaepernick showing that at least he was listening. Boyer hinted at a very liberal upbringing, though he said he wasn’t political. This is probably why Boyer was extremely charitable from the view of most veterans, as few in the military and veteran community were as kind.After that, he was summoned by Kaepernick to meet at a hotel lobby where he asked the veteran how to better communicate his message after it became obvious that America was becoming outraged at the sitting.Boyer suggested kneeling.From the perspective of many, it appeared to be little more than a publicity stunt, bringing in one honorably serving Army Veteran who agrees with enough of Kaepernick’s message for photo-ops and interviews. The military is one of the most functionally diverse organizations in the world, mixing not only ethnic and cultural diversity, but also diversity of ideas to produce powerful outcomes. That said, all types come in, and all types come out. It’s easy to find the “right” veteran to communicate whatever message you want. But Boyer’s inclusion in the story appeared to suggest that the veteran community as a whole are okay with the protest and that there isn’t disrespect in the act. That isn’t the case.Had the advice of kneeling been sought before the protest, it would have established a very different context, but instead, Kaepernick sat through it which did show profound disrespect to the flag, to the troops, to the country, and established that context to all other acts of protest following it.Yes, it was fine to bring up an argument about racism in America, but at the point that Kaepernick began his original protest, the sitting, Americans voiced a counter-protest that no matter what your problem is, you don’t disrespect all of America, all of its people, and all of its sacred symbols.But then the narrative changed…It’s about police brutalityInterestingly enough, this narrative of the police unfairly targeting blacks also subtly changed. Did you notice it? That was when the narrative shifted from “racist cops killing blacks” to “police brutality.”Remember there was evidence that showed that cops weren’t killing blacks disproportionately, and it wasn’t bad science. It was done by a Harvard team, led by a black researcher, who expected to find the opposite result. So objectively, blacks weren’t being specifically being murdered.But police brutality is a subjective term because two people may view the exact same incident where one person would call it brutal and the other would call it unfortunate but justified. Usually, when all we see is an iPhone video (and a highly edited one at that) with none of the supporting details of what happened leading up to the moment, we see something that is horrifying and unsettling. In the Marines, we were trained to have many limits on what we could and couldn’t do. These were the Rules of Engagement. Understanding that gave me an appreciation that there are lines that are crossed and officers must take action. Many of the high profile cases classified as “police brutality” don’t meet my personal definition of brutality once you account for the specific details, as was the case for most of the juries in these cases.Again, that’s the problem. It’s my personal opinion. The public had a very different opinion. That’s because “brutality” is not an objective term. I could look at many cases and view them as justifiable where social media might see the edited video and call it murder. Neither of us would be right because we’re arguing about a subjective term.Objectively speaking, most police officers are very well trained to handle situations appropriately. When all information is taken into account, very few of the high profile cases actually resulted in an objective failure on the part of the police officer.Yet people do become outraged and demand actions corresponding to how they subjectively feel about the case. They viewed most of these cases as brutal because the sources they were presented with said they were brutal. Most civilians have no personal experience gauging what is and isn’t an appropriate use of force. Most never account for how fast and how chaotic deadly force encounters with the police are, how little time there is to weigh options or to react. Instead, they watch videos from the comfort of their homes and think about the outcomes without a hint of stress or worry in their minds. Millions declare how they would have done things differently, never really considering the fact that wrong answers leave you dead. And the sources where these stories become popularized are usually surfaced by a feed algorithmically created to confirm whatever biases you already have. So if you believe that police brutality is a problem, or follow any left-leaning issues, you’re probably going to be presented with posts that show “another case of police murder.”The “insanity of the crowd,” as put by one of Facebook’s own board members Peter Theil, has a way of obscuring vital truths and amplifying passions. If you’re on the wrong end of one of the internet bubbles, you’ll probably never be presented with the details around the case unless you go looking for it, or in some cases, wait months for the details to surface through a thorough investigation. By then, you’ll have moved on, but your outrage will remain. When that case returns with a “not guilty” instead of an indictment against the police officer, that case which you remember from months ago as being one of obvious police brutality, you’ll think it was unjust too, just confirming the bias you began with, that injustices by our police is common, the police are unnecessarily brutal, and corruption in the criminal justice system are widespread.In most high profile cases, the facts did not support the popular belief of wrongdoing on the part of the police. Once one case fell apart with specific details, another would immediately be brought back up. Eventually, you can’t know every case and volume serves as the evidence. That’s why tweets like this started to appear, the same one that appears in the article.MURDERED BY POLICE = NO CONVICTIONS #TakeTheKneeTake A Knee has NOTHING to do with the FLAG or the TROOPS, That's a GOP False Narrative pic.twitter.com/Df97uwHIN6— MICHAEL DOLLAR (@MICHAELDOLLAR) September 24, 2017I want to be clear, some of the names have no good explanation that justifies the police officers. When you have an institution consisting of some 760,000 people, a few will do terrible things. It’s a statistical absolute.But then there are other names. Case in point, Michael Brown.Michael Brown was the subject of an August 2014 shooting in Ferguson, Missouri by police officer Darren Wilson. Not long after the shooting, video of Brown’s body by a bystander’s cellphone went viral. Dorian Johnson, a friend of Brown with him during the shooting, described the scene as Brown with his back to the officer, on his knees and with his hands in the air. Brown screamed, “Hands up! Don’t Shoot!” He was then violently murdered, gunned down by a hate-filled police officer abusing the power entrusted to him by the people. According to the Johnson, Wilson “gunned him down like an animal,” to quote a piece by the Huffington Post.Less than a day after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, a story began circulating about how he was trying to surrender peacefully to the police officer who shot him. This story incited the nation at the injustice of what people called the murder of Michael Brown. “Hands up; Don’t Shoot” became a national protest. The story went viral and could be seen everywhere, from protests and student groups, football players in pregame, the floor of Congress and the desk of CNN.Months later, the Department of Justice under then President Barrack Obama completed an investigation which proved conclusively that the whole “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” story, was actually a lie. Michael Brown was not the victim of a police execution, but the culprit of a strong arm robbery an hour prior to the shooting, and attempted to assault a police officer, which led to his death. The story was fabricated by Johnson, who took part in the robbery immediately before the shooting. It was an attempt by one of the guilty to redirect attention from himself and cast the wrath of a nation on a police officer completely justified in his actions. A meme that affected the way the entire nation viewed BLM was based on a lie. Few responsible for popularizing it have done anything to amend or acknowledge and no one was held accountable for the failure of many news agencies to report the truth of what happened, or to better inform the population once the error was discovered.You know how we know this? Check the dates.The tweet above, which is featured in the article sourced as the inspiration of this question, happened in September 2017. The Department of Justice reporting making clear that officer Wilson, the police officer who shot Brown, did so under completely justified circumstances, was released in March of 2015, a full two and a half years before. Yet the population was still unaware of the facts of the Michael Brown case and they still didn’t know that “Hands up; Don’t Shoot” was a lie told by the accomplice in an attempt to avoid punishment for his part in the crime.How many of you reading right now, who remember “Hands up; Don’t shoot” are just hearing this information for the first time?That “#MikeBrown = No Conviction” still appears both in a tweet shared by thousands and in the article informing this question speaks volumes about the credibility leading the outrage toward police brutality.Again, I’m not saying some of the names aren’t legitimate cases of bad cops acting badly. With nearly 800,000 police officers in the United States, I would expect some. For example, the cases of Oscar Grant, Ramarley Graham, Corey Jones, Walter Scott, were all cases of police officers who acted poorly, but also, where the cops were fired or investigated for murder. Kathryn Johnston appears to be reprehensible behavior by the police, but here’s the thing… those cops went to prison.All this to say that the idea of the widespread brutality of the police against a defenseless population simply didn’t have the evidence to back it up. Repeating provably false cases of police abuse to add volume is actively causing whatever protests continue to become more divisive and further polarize the nation. Furthermore, as more people make arguments showing the context behind the shootings which shows how often the police were justified, but when those arguments are ignored, it makes it less likely that people will be willing to believe the cases where bad cops were wrong.This is a problem, as I said before, because when numerous exaggerated accounts of police murdering black men for things like “selling CDs, stealing cigarillos, or going to a party,” when the facts of the cases prove much more damning for the victim than the police officer, it justifies the desire for retribution. When the police’s side of the story is not taken before an internet mob forms comes to own conclusions, it dehumanizes all police. The next step in this is for many to make the logical conclusion that because the police are without accountability and murdering people, they should themselves be murdered. This led directly to the events of July 2016 where eight police officers were assassinated.Following Dallas and Baton Rouge, there was a major push to support causes like Blue Lives Matter. The cases where police officers were justified became widely known, at least within conservative circles, but instead of acknowledging this and saying, okay there were good and bad on both sides, we should really cool it for a while and collectively get our facts straight…Then the narrative changed…It’s about unityAfter numerous narratives supporting the protest become less justifiable upon closer inspection the narrative shifted to one simply of “unity.”As I’ve shown, many of the supporters of the protest could not give a good explanation of what exactly the protest was about. Most people gave differing answers that fell along the lines of the previous points I’ve outlined already, that it was about a racist America, racism in America, the racist anthem, police targeting blacks, or police brutality in general. When a protest expands to the point that it means many things to many people, it must adopt a new mantra to keep it from unraveling or getting confused. At that point, whatever movement exists will not only suffer criticism from without, but also within, and it will eventually crumble.Calls for “unity”, “solidarity”, “togetherness” usually happen when numerous narratives begin to unravel or become confused. It binds those protesting or their supporters in the idea that, “We have to stand together.”But stand together for what, exactly? As I said, the protests already had no clear message of what they were about, so supporters were filling in the gaps with conflicting messages.What #unity stood for was a unifying ideology combining any parts of these various previous stances, and to create the appearance of a single stance, the stance of the “good” or moral, and that all opposed are the “evil”.You’re either with us, or you’re against us.Case in point, Alejandro Villanueva.This is a former Army Ranger and veteran of the Afghanistan War, Alejandro Villanueva, Offensive Tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers. After the kneeling began to outrage many Americans and picked up steam, whole teams boycotted the anthem entirely by sitting it out in the locker room. The Pittsburgh Steelers were one of those teams.What the picture shows is one man, a veteran no less, defying his team’s call to boycott the national anthem and stand proudly for his nation. He remarked that being a Soldier Field, a stadium named as such as a memorial to U.S. soldiers who died in combat following the First World War, he was receiving texts and messages from veterans and wounded veterans that he had to stand. So he did.After the picture became famous, his jersey became one of the most popular that month immediately following what appeared to be his counter-protest.But from the other side, Villanueva was viewed as a traitor to the cause. In a press conference later, it was clear that Villanueva had been shamed and forced into a public apology for his “selfish act” of supporting his country. By not standing with his team, he “threw them under the bus…”Jonathan Haidt, a noted social psychologist, states that morality binds and blinds, meaning that a common definition of right and wrong will solidify a group into a common ideology and blind them to any other points of view which might contradict the accepted axioms and narrative. What we saw with Villanueva is that anyone who goes against the movement will face harsh criticism from players and the media even if the fan base and most Americans support it.It also discredits the numerous displays of unity, where we saw players, coaches, and owners with arms interlocked. When someone knows the story of Villanueva, they really have to ask what consequences a player who sides with the fans would face, if there is any debate in the locker rooms, or if they are all just making a choice of least resistance to avoid being the next one publically shamed for expressing their views.The second part of Haidt’s morality statement is that once a group crosses over into ideology, it blinds itself to other points of view. In the aftermath of #takeaknee, anyone who sided with the counter-protestors was immediately labeled as racist.According to Haidt, this is a mental trick people play on themselves to explain behaviors which they find emotionally or cognitively unexplainable. It may just be that they lack certain information, views, or values; but because they are ignorant to the actual motivations of people who disagree with them, they presume some evil. This is a mental trick we play on ourselves when dealing with the possibility that it might be us who are wrong. According to their worldview and their morality, there should be no good reason to be against the protestors. So the only way to explain this failure to process based on views they lack of the other side is to erect defensive cognitive walls around their own viewpoints by saying that someone who disagrees is either stupid and uninformed, or evil.When this is intentionally done, when someone purposefully tries to show someone’s view to be something other than what they mean, it’s called framing. This comic demonstrates what it feels like to be on the wrong side of it.With #takeaknee, the question would be asked if you support the protestors. Any of the arguments I’ve presented could be brought up, but by simply being on the “wrong side of history”… well, there you have it, folks. All my arguments aren’t arguments in and of themselves. They are really “dog whistles”, phrases that are non-offensive on the face, that code words to signal to all my racist friends that I’m really one of them.Yes. I’ve literally been accused of using racist code words to rally support for a white nationalist agenda.Black Lives Matter was even more problematic in this regard. There, many people experienced the trap of being asked if they supported Black Lives Matter.“Well, honestly there seems to be a lot of incorrect information coming out of the protests. I’ve also seen some troubling chants that BLM protesters are making.”“So what you’re saying is, you don’t think black lives matter?”Because America in 2018 isn’t America in 1965 or 1865, no one wants to be labeled a racist… because they aren’t. So most people shut up when accused of a moral evil. But they felt resentful. They had real grievances that were unaddressed, but instead, their character was attacked. And it happened again, and again, and again, and again.This didn’t just happen to conservatives, but to liberals as well. Anyone who didn’t follow the “unity” stance, be it with issues like #takeaknee or #Imwithher, was castigated by the rest of the “team” until they got back in line.At some point, it didn’t feel like the good guys anymore, but a mob. The mob mentality created a great deal of simmering outrage. That outrage was something one man knew how to use. He didn’t need the media’s influence because he had a direct line to the public, could hear their fears, concerns, and knew how to make an issue that most Americans were upset about a history-making event.So this time, he changed the narrative.It was about TrumpEarly on in the protests, even before Donald Trump made his famous, “Sons of b******” line or called for the firing of NFL players, the protests became conflated with anti-Trumpism. I remember trying to find somewhere where one of the players explained why they were protesting.His words floored me.“It’s because of Trump’s tyranny.”Again, this was before Trump made much of a stance on the anthem. I was dumbfounded that someone could be making such an absurd claim. To accuse any US president of tyranny, Trump or not, shows a profound lack of understanding in how the US government works.But besides that, since when was this about Trump? The protests began in August of 2016. When did they metamorphose into something anti-Trump? I honestly don’t know how that happened unless it was bleed over from the last point, where the assumed position of Trump was always racism, because he was the result of America’s “white-lash” from President Obama.In keeping with the general tone of a media pundits fundamentally disconnected from the American population and completely unable to understand the majority of American views, the only possible explanation for why people would support him must have been that America was a deeply racist nation. So of course, a protest around African American issues must also become a protest against a “racist” president.That was a mistake.Most Americans were already against the protests from the beginning for all the reasons I’ve listed already. And most of those who supported the counter-protest were also people sympathetic to Trump’s message. The very anti-American context established in the beginning of the protests only made the new “unity” message seem to do little more than galvanize liberals around the protest.The protest, which already had an anti-American shadow hanging over it, had now started to align itself against President Trump. That only validated the notion that this wasn’t about equality in America as much as yet another politicized battlefield of intolerant liberals bashing conservatives. I doubt anyone would disagree that Trump is nothing if not able to spot an opportunity.So what did Trump do? He exploited that fact and told Americans that it was okay to be upset about the protests and to hitch his wagon to America’s outrage, and to give it a voice.Love him or hate him, this was a major win for Donald Trump. In one move, he made it clear to millions of Americans that Trump was pro-America where the other guys weren’t.How did the Left respond?By just making it easier for him.Take statements many are now making, such as Democrats like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, that “America was never that great,” which only solidify this view that the idea of America is something unworthy of praise. My view on Kaepernick was opinion, but when you add the many on the left now saying it, especially people of power and authority like Cuomo, it makes it very hard to say that they aren’t distinctly anti-American from the conservative perspective.Many Democrats and left-wing figures are now getting behind the kneeling in intentional bids to signal their virtue to a base that is now fanatically supportive of it. This is true even if they are more supportive of the idea of the kneeling than able to clearly articulate what the points of the kneeling are. It’s a ticket to instant fame and moral authority, but what many aren’t yet realizing is that most Americans view the kneeling as an inappropriate way to bring attention to a cause and un-American. By aligning themselves with such a protest, they’re validating every argument that Democrats and the left are themselves un-American in the eyes of millions, while making the opposition — Trump — the only choice for people who support the “real” America, as they see it.What this means is that many people on the left are losing touch with mainstream America simply because they are so obsessed with resisting Trump and appealing to a fanatical base, that they will make him look like the good guy if it means taking an opportunity to oppose him and be seen doing it.I’m not judging here. This is just communicating popular support moving the President’s direction because Democrats are backing a protest that long ago became wildly unpopular. Trump may be divisive, but he simply doesn’t have the power to control what people do or what comes out of their mouths.As it became clear that people who opposed Trump were for kneeling and all that it had come to mean, all those who supported the President took to protesting what they viewed as disrespect to the flag, it became a waiting game. With football, one side obviously knew their demographic better, and that became clear once stadiums were filled with nothing but empty seats and ESPN lost 600,000 subscribers in a single month.As it quickly became clear the narrative behind the protest was not only losing steam, but that the owners of the teams were going into full panic mode to respond to fan outrage…The narrative changed once again…It was about the right to protestThis is the current narrative.Following the show that Americans cared more about the flag than the NFL, enough that the NFL had to react and that the owners had to silence the protests, the clearest sign that the protest lost, the narrative changed again.“The players should have the right to protest.”This is another example of framing. Now, if you disagree with any of the previous narratives and motivations for the protest, or if you simply feel that it is inappropriate and un-American to protest during the National Anthem, then you are really against Free Speech. It’s now being said that by having a counter-protest, conservatives are “silencing” the kneelers.Part of this is because President Trump called for them to be fired for the act, which many are saying equates to an official demand by the President on private companies to take a specific action.In either case, this has now become a Free Speech debate.But it has holes, too.The first is that people are upset that the protest was silenced by owners, and that a platform was deprived of people trying to make a legitimate protest. First of all, being that it is now two years later and I only feel safe enough saying this now, who was really silenced?Second, “legitimate” is the keyword. In America, we take Free Speech very seriously. It’s literally the first thing we say in our Bill of Rights. What it means is that the government won’t legally intervene to silence any lawful protest. That means that no men with guns from the government were going to ever haul off Kaepernick or the other protesters. But, that’s it.What the Freedom of Speech outlined in our Constitution doesn’t do is require someone else to provide you the resources to exercise your rights.This is a conflict of rights versus duties.Duties are created when someone’s right requires some forfeiture of time, property, or resources of someone else to fulfill them. For the person who is making the forfeiture, or put another way, when someone’s rights take away the rights of another, we would call that a duty.In the case of the NFL protests, the rights of the players to make a protest conflicted with the rights of the owners and the NFL, in that it dramatically drove down fan support toward the teams and damaged their brand value, and it required the NFL to host a protest by way of providing the stage. Both of these are business entities that are obligated to do what is best by their customers, their shareholders, and their employees before taking sides in a political matter.I put it this way in Is NFL players' ability to take a knee at games a constitutionally protected right?If a UPS driver walked up to your house wearing a MAGA hat, does he have that right?The military solved this long ago. You can protest anything you want, but you can’t do it in uniform and you can’t do it on official time or with government resources. While in uniform, you are a representative of the organization you belong, being the US military, which tries very hard not to take political stances that don’t directly involve it.Now apply that rule to MAGA and UPS. Would you be okay with someone walking into your home wearing such a hat? Most people wouldn’t care that much, or at the most be annoyed. Now, look to the way that some people have treated all things Trump since 2015. Do you think everybody would be okay with it?No. There would be many, many people who would take to Twitter, a twitter mob really, who would attack UPS for supporting him, and if we’re being honest, it would probably work. I think most of us know he would probably be fired or face some sort of punishment for the choice of supporting the currently elected president of the United States. In fact, most people reading would probably agree that some of the loudest supporters of #Takeaknee would also be some of the loudest voices calling for the UPS driver’s job.“But it’s different. #Takeaknee was about…”It’s not different. We’re talking about people having constitutional rights to express themselves. Whether you agree with a particular issue and disagree with this hypothetical example isn’t the point. It’s about Free Speech, which was the core of the question. If it applies to views you champion, then it also applies to something you find repugnant, and absolutely everything between that spectrum.But UPS would still be in their right to fire him. My hypothetical protester used the company’s resources to inject his views into the faces of people who didn’t want a political statement with their packages. Sure, it was the way he could personally magnify his own message the greatest by causing the most agitation (an excuse proclaimed as the best kind of a protest) and starting a much larger conversation than if he protested in a “nicer” way. But in so doing, he greatly damaged the value of the company and hurt his employer, which will hurt others when enough money is lost that people have to be let go. To ensure that the company doesn’t suffer more losses because of his actions, they would probably bend to the protesters.This applies to the NFL and the individual teams, as well. They suffered greatly for allowing and even encouraging the protests because the people who disagreed with Kaepernick’s original message cared more about the symbolic value of the flag and the anthem than they did about their NFL teams. Those are private organizations and they have a responsibility to do whatever is right for their companies, their shareholders, and most of all, the employees who rely on them to make wise decisions so that they have a job tomorrow.That’s why Kaepernick and other protesters should have exercised their constitutional rights in a way that didn’t put others at risk. It so damaged the companies that made them multimillionaires that other people, the people at the bottom of the organizations which the media doesn’t care about, could have lost their jobs. And at the very least, the brands were damaged for it. He could have said anything he wanted to, but on his time, and with his resources. But he didn’t. He used borrowed time and borrowed resources and because of that, the people he borrowed those resources from had to answer for him.So does he have a right to say whatever he wants? Yeah. The Constitution allows people to say generally anything they want. No men with guns from the government will ever drag off an NFL protester for what they’re saying. But the Constitution does not provide a platform and demand others to aid you in your protest. Kaepernick’s boss and the companies he works for do not have a constitutional duty to provide him the specific podium he wishes.Many people had problems with that argument, redirecting it to be about uniform policy. So I brought up one more, the very real case of James Damour.James Damore was a manager at Google. He was asked to give a mandatory review of mandatory bias training. He responded with an inter-office email to the few people he worked with and the people who did the training. His response was a series of arguments against specific claims made during the training, and against the training itself as being more likely to cause prejudice than prevent it. His arguments were scientifically informed, but more importantly, he was required to give them honestly.One coworker leaked the email to the press because they were offended as it did not follow a politically correct narrative. His words were then taken out of context, and used to make an argument for claims the Google employee didn’t make. Once the full document was released, any objective reader would agree that his views may be correct or incorrect, but they weren’t bigoted and were scientifically informed. However, in the weeks after the “Google Memo” started circulating, he was fired from Google for the negative attention his private memo brought the company, the same one which was publicly shared against his wishes and which he was required to give.My answer basically says that Google was arguably within their rights. It was completely immoral since they put him in the situation. It was also stupid because it basically said that no Google employee from that point on better ever have a dissenting opinion again, but the company does have the right to fire whoever they want. I don’t like that they fired him because I think it was wrong to put him in that situation and then punish him for doing exactly what he was told to, but that’s just how it goes.Now here’s the uncomfortable reality, so many of the people saying that Kaepernick and the NFL protesters were silenced either supported or said nothing when a much worse (by their own standards) event happened to James Damore. And that’s not even the worst of it. When liberal groups tried to hold Free Speech protests last Summer, the left took the term “Free Speech” as a dog whistle for hate groups and the Alt-Right, so tens of thousands of people showed up to protest that. By the thousands, counter-protesters silenced liberals arguing for free speech, all on the assumption that they were actually fighting the Alt-Right and signaling what virtuous people they were.That told a lot of conservatives that what the left is willing to fight for isn’t about rights to protest, but whether you protested the right things.Closing: We need to have a discussionThroughout the eight years of the Obama administration, one phrase was repeated endlessly:“America needs to have an honest discussion.”Any time a social issue came up, we would need to have a conversation. Okay, that’s fine. We’ll have a conversation. That doesn’t bother conservatives. We have some of the best minds out there who would love to have a respectful, honest, discussion, where their facts are presented alongside yours. We can look at whose vision most closely aligns with reality, or if we’re both wrong. Then we get to decide what to do, or even if doing nothing is the best option.But that’s never what happened.What happened was that some social justice identity debate would flare up, usually from so far out of left field… so to speak… that most of America was left with its head spinning. Then what do we hear? This was due to America’s deep-seated racism, sexism, transphobia, Islamaphobia, hatred of the poor, hatred of disabled people, hatred of the different, wanting kids to die in school shootings… hatred of clean air and water. How deep does the pathology go for someone to accuse half of America of hating water, let along believing, honestly believing there are people in this world who want children to die? It was absurd. But this was the norm. The news media, Hollywood, academia, the President of the United States… all saying the same thing:“America is a hateful place. Now do these things to fix it, and fix yourself because we definitely can’t be the problem. And that’s all there is to say.”That’s not all there was to say. America is the freest country in the world to say whatever it is you have to say, but sometimes you’re going to say things that are wrong. If you discover a problem, one we all agree exists, but misdiagnose how that problem happened, then your solutions won’t work either. They’ll probably just make things worse. If you’re making sweeping calls to change the nation to suit a belief you have that isn’t supported by evidence, you better expect people to disagree. Big changes cause huge problems down the road that people zealous for progress for the sake of progress never see coming.So people disagree. If we lived in a polite society that cares about actually solving problems that can be solved, those people who were critical would have been listened to. But were they?Nope. Not once. Instead, they were branded with dirty names attacking their character. And when their facts started surfacing that dismantled the current narrative, well… the narrative changed. It was complete chaos. The information was out there but never presented to the broader public. Instead, the opposition was evil and the goal posts were moved.There’s a graph that I want people to really think about the implications of it. It’s a graph done by Pew Research. It asks survey takers if racism is a ‘big problem’ in the US.If you go back to the start of the Obama administration, less than half of blacks thought it was. By the end of it, over 80% thought racism was a major problem. How did that happen? With Democrats, that increase was even greater. Even whites and Republicans viewed racism as more of ‘big problem’ by 2017. So what changed? How is that under the first black President, every demographic unilaterally agreed that somehow racism was now much worse than at any time since the 1990s?We can assume a lot of possibilities, but many of those possibilities, such as those that argue that it got objectively worse for blacks in any measurable way, can’t be supported with facts. Blacks, like everyone else in America, had lives that measurably improved with regard to crime, poverty, education, opportunity. But… there was something that happened. Something very important that we can’t forget about.Remember the sub-prime crisis? Yeah, we’re going to need to explain something about that really quickly. That was a cluster and everyone remembers what a failure it was, but what most don’t remember was who sub-prime loans targeted. It wasn’t blacks specifically, but the poor in general. Best practices for many banks which turned away risky loan seekers were told just to go ahead by the US government. When the banks said, “But what about if they default?” the government replied, “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.” Yes, that’s a gross oversimplification, but most economists won’t tell you a story much different.Part of this was due to the suggestion that the banks were acting in a racist manner because they were turning away a higher percentage of blacks than whites. But as it turns out the banks were turning away blacks and whites who didn’t meet the qualifications for a quality loan. That policy was pulled back, and something very dangerous happened… people who couldn’t afford loans were given them.Then the foreclosures began, and they kept going, and going, and going. Then look at the recession and one of the slowest recoveries in our history. In part because of many policies that came out during the Obama administration, the Affordable Care Act in particular, and because of new technologies that replaced many workers, it became harder to get good jobs, but easier to get trapped in numerous crappy part-time jobs for the working poor. Because of the phenomenon of the welfare trap, many on welfare who could get better jobs made the short term priority choice to avoid getting better jobs or promotions so as not to suffer a net loss. It’s important to understand that this affected everyone, but because black poverty in urban areas is more visible to wealthy and connected liberal whites, that’s who they noticed, not seeing that this was a truly universal problem of the entire working class in America.So what’s the point? Bad things were happening in black neighborhoods. That much was undeniable, but they were also happening to others who weren’t black. So they weren’t specifically due to racism. That’s a much bigger problem because if racism wasn’t what was causing modern inequality, but we were obsessed with fixing racism (to the point that correcting for racism actually led to the crisis in the first place) then we are solving the wrong problem, and as the 2008 Housing Crisis shows, creating new ones.So why was it that everyone thought this entire time that the problems happening to blacks, which were also happening to a very large minority of whites, was due to racism? Had we suddenly regressed back to being more racist in 2008, when we collectively elected the first black president in our history, then we were in 1985 when I was born? Then we were in 1965 when my mother was a small girl? Then we were in 1865 when my Great-Great Grandfather fought in the Civil War?No.Anyone who suggests that we are more racist than any of those times is completely delusional. Are there problems? Yes, but are they getting continually better? Also yes.So what is the problem?It’s the conversation, or rather the lack of one. In the Marines, there was a saying, “Perception is reality.” If people perceive something to be true, then that truth is what dictates the reality everyone else must deal with. It’s actually a really terrifying idea for anyone who places men into dangerous positions based on objective facts, but it’s also terrifying if you’re trying to hold an entire population responsible for problems that are difficult to even articulate, let along prove. Yet the completely one-direction lecture never stopped, and that was the problem because it would never have got this bad if people like Thomas Sowell had just been listened to in the beginning.Again, this guy. Not me. That man.I believe that if people had listened to him, then people would not be this overwhelmed with the belief that hatred and racism are the leading cause of all bad things in America. There would be no reason for the outrage we see today. They would have been confronted with the reality that there are too many facts that disrupt the theory that racism explains why America is the way it is today. Am I saying racism doesn’t happen? No. Thomas Sowell wouldn’t say that either. It’s just that there are better explanations for why blacks face disproportionate suffering in America than racism.And honestly, wouldn’t you want that to be true?If someone could prove to you that the problems in your life weren’t the result of people you’ve never met wanting to oppress you, but instead due to well-meaning programs from the 1960’s that didn’t actually do what their designers thought they would, wouldn’t that be better? It’s extremely liberating to find out that your situation is not the cause of some distant evil pulling the strings to keep you oppressed. You don’t have to be angry at anyone. You just look at the programs that don’t work and fix them. Those are problems you can solve. You can’t solve some anonymous hate with the power to ruin your life. That’s hopeless, but when you find out that there is a real path available to you, that’s empowering. And when you find out that there are good arguments that the facts support the empowered view, rather than the one of victimization, isn’t that an argument you would want to hear?“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”I feel like if people would honestly listen, or if their sources of information would honestly describe the other side of the story, people would hurt less.So why don’t you hear it? It’s a good question. Perhaps it would be fair to blame the media. They never tell both sides of the story. They tell the one that doesn’t anger their base. That’s true. Or to be more clear, they direct outrage specifically intended for their base. When caught in a lie, they never say, “Yeah, we botched that one,” and they’ll never admit, “Yeah, most of us are Democrats, and we’re trying to earn more Democratic viewership… so, you know. It’s just how it is.”Instead, the moment that the good arguments surface that there is more to this story, the story changes … moving the goalposts, as it were. No one is more informed than they were before, and all their loyal viewers are now angrier, more bitter, and even less aware of the truth than before.And then we get Kaepernick. Colin Kaepernick is this entire process distilled down to one person and one event.Kaepernick had typical views that many American blacks did in 2016, that the police across America targeted blacks especially and that the practice of cops killing blacks without impunity was common and widespread. It would have been easy to ease the burden of these fears that many blacks faced, but that information, the proof that was easily researched, was never made the leading headline. Instead of calming fears with information, the media played on those fears to get more views.Then Kaepernick protested. His views were extreme, even for the time, but his personal extremism was covered up or not discussed, he was defended when he gaffed or intentionally did outrageous things, and never was it mentioned that maybe, just maybe he was the wrong person, protesting the wrong things, at the wrong time, in a completely inappropriate way.No, and when good arguments came out that what he was doing was wrong, either that the facts on which he built his views needed to be questioned or that sitting through the national anthem, and later kneeling by extension, the subject just changed. And it changed. And it changed. And then it changed again, and again.So Kaepernick is a really good lesson. The outrage many people are facing right now is because they’ve been trapped in a one-sided conversation where they assumed nothing they said could ever be wrong, that disagreeing with them was tantamount to a hate-crime. If more people had listened to us in the beginning, if more people had said, “You know… they have a point,” many people on the left wouldn’t be so outraged right now. They wouldn’t have a reason to be outraged. They’d find out that racism and prejudice are not the primary drivers of why people disagree with them. They’d find out that racism and prejudice aren’t our drivers at all.So now we need to have another conversation. Except this conversation needs to be different. It won’t be about racism, or football, or kneeling, or free speech. It’s just going to be a conversation about conversations, and how we need to get back to having real ones again.Liked this? You might also like my YouTube Channel. You can also connect with The War Elephant on Facebook. If you want to help me make more content like this, please visit my Patreon Page to find out more.Footnotes[1] Colin Kaepernick explains why he sat during national anthem[2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf[3] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?dataView=1&currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D[4] Francis Scott Key and the Slavery Question - The Globalist

1 introductionThe Chinese Government have developed one of the best-ever systems for consistently producing a high-growth low-inflation economy based on MMT Shimomuran-Wernerian understandings but it was not always thus.After the general adoption of an intermediate Shimomuran-insight driven economy in 1975/6, the general systems which had worked well in Japan were shown to be bit more difficult to apply in the much more populous, larger and more complex economy of China. See The Origin and Spread of Investment Credit Economics part 3 which says:“3 Japanese Economists and the Theory of Investment Credit Economics1961: Dr Shimomura presented his Model of the Japanese Economy and its equations to the joint meeting of the Japanese Economic Association and the Japanese Econometric Society. His presentation was then published under the title “Seicho Seisaku No Kihon Mondai” (Basic Problems of Growth Policy) in Riron Keizaigaku, March 1961.1961: Dr Shinohara published “The Secret of Accelerated Growth,” Tokyo, 1961.1961: Professor S. Tsuru, writing in the American Economic Review in May 1961, on Growth and Stability in the Post War Japanese Economy, referred to the long-term credit granted by Japanese Banks by mentioning the Japanese government’s “gigantic industry-funding program … aimed at specific industries and investment programs (sic)”. [See K. K. Kurihara, The Growth Potential of the Japanese Economy, p137.] “The Chinese Government found out about that when many Chinese delegations visited Tokyo in the October 1972–75 period, to “learn the secrets of high economic growth.”China then went through several phases of economic stimulation polices and while none of these were completely successful, nearly all of these were partly successful, and the learning government of China through four decades became increasingly more competent at achieving its economic growth objectives. That learning process still continues.The current policies of the Chinese government demonstrate a kind of geological economic development, as layer upon layer is piled upon pre-existing policies. It is inaccurate but perhaps may be helpful approximately to list some of these phases or changes in emphasis in economic policy through the last 44 years (1975–2018), and up to 2025, but the identification of the era of these different phases is potentially misleading, because new emphases were usually a new overlay on many previous developments, and these new policies do not always have a clear date of origin.And my knowledge of China is that of a Scot who can only see things from the outside. I cannot read Chinese but I have a deep third-hand knowledge of observed Chinese history, mainly economic, partly cultural and/or otherwise. I have avidly read the great Western academic books about China such as these written by the great sinologist Professor C P Fitzgerald and, for example, the informative and objective book about the Mongols written by John Man.Some other books about the Mongol Empire, and any which deny the murderous destruction of tens of millions of Chinese by the Mongols and their city-elimination and cultural destruction of Chinese and Islamic libraries, are best relocated into the fiction section of any library. See my view about this atA Brief Guide To Early Chinese History: The Mongol Conquest Of China And Its Consequences1.1 Caveat I must depend on third-hand sources but I have a deep knowledge of the inadequacy and prejudices of the western media and know enough to disregard most of the opinionated nonsenses which fill that media. It is easier to do that than you might think. If you disregard opinions not based upon an objective attitude or accurate numerical data then nearly all of the western media collapses into the trashcan. Media opinions have no validity if they are not based on accurate historical observation arising from competent politically neutral academics and ideally founded upon numerical data.2 Preamble: The 1971 US Abandonment of the Bretton Woods AgreementThe rise of the great exporting nations of the Tokyo Consensus nations (of Japan and China and South Korea and Taiwan) was made possible by the 1971 “open-door” to imports created by the American Government. That policy created the great consumer society of the USA along with the close-to-insoluble American balance of payments problem.See George Tait Edwards's answer to How can the U.S. dollar become stronger?The consumers of America became able cheaply to import the best available goods from anywhere in the world. Some economists have seen this historical decision as an amazingly generous American assistance to the development of the rest of the world. Others have argued it was economically inept. Still others have evaluated that change in a complex web of interesting information about how this decision helped the rest of the world but crippled US industry, which had continually to adapt to keep up with the best-in-the-world products, but (as they did not usually observe) could not invest due to the absence of effective industry-financing policies in the USA.Whatever viewpoint is adopted, the historical reality is undeneniable. It was this decision, for the US to abandon the Bretton Woods Agreement, that formed the foundation of the creation of the US as the world’s greatest importing nation, a situation which continues until today.President Trump’s “blaming” of the rest of the world for the unsustainable US balance of payments is completely uninformed. It was, to use the words of the gutter press, “America wot done it.” The Americans created the circumstances of their own economic decline. I would ask that US media commentators should please note this, with no very likely hope of success.2 The Japanese Actions To Match Higher Output with Higher DemandIn 1960s Japan, the application of Shimomuran economics was a difficult system to manage, even for Dr Osamu Shimomura. That great economist was head of the Price Control Section of Japan’s Ministry of Finance when the inflation-limiting masterstroke of the partial payment of wage awards in two tranches - one paid in about April or May after the “labour/wage offensive” and the other later in the year in November or early December - took its full effect.After Dr Osamu Shimomura calculated and understood that the growth of Japanese industry was outstripping demand and there was a need to introduce a demand management budget in the form of higher wage increases, both these and a policy of higher wage increases with increased demand from government expenditure was implemented. That event is recorded in the Springer book which partly records but does not explain Shimomuran macroeconomics. See Dr. Osamu Shimomura's Legacy and the Postwar Japanese Economy | Kozo Horiuchi | Springer for a description of the Shimomura legacy without any insightful economic explanations.Japan’s post war government took the view that inflation did not matter much in the post war economy because without the growth of the major keystone industries of food (mainly rice) to feed Japan’s population and of the electricity, steel and cement industries, as the foundation inputs of rapid future growth, that growth could have not have occurred. That idea was summarised in the post-war slogan “Economic Growth First.”The SMEs of Japan initially had a high proportion (c80%) of BoJ credit creation funding in order to re-establish these companies as the inventive and innovative basis of Japan’s future. That percentage fell to about 45% by 1960. Time and again Shimomura stressed his belief in the outstanding abilities of the Japanese people as the key quality which enabled Japanese economic growth and the clusters of thousands of supporting small parts manufacture around the Japanese car factories (most thoroughly investigated by Dr and Professor Shinohara).3 The Problem StatedEven in a high-growth high-investment economy it is not easy to assess and produce the “right” level of domestic demand to arrive at the best available mix for meeting domestic supply with low inflation. In a high growth economy like China a central setting of the appropriate mix which maximises output and consumption while limiting inflation is never easy. That mismatch often caused some inflation in China during the 1980s and 1990s.3.1 The Phases of Chinese Economic DevelopmentThe great growth of China was largely based upon the transfer of the economic insights of the great investment credit economist, Dr Osamu Shimomura (1910–1989) from Japan to China. See The Origin and Spread of Investment Credit Economics where in Section 6 it is stated:“6 The Rise of Chinese Economic UnderstandingSeptember 29, 1972: Normal diplomatic arrangements established between China and Japan.1972-75: Chinese delegation visits Japan to study how Japan has developed so rapidly. Some Chinese economists plead with their Japanese counterparts to share with them the secrets of rapid economic development.1976: China adopts investment Credit Economics.February 1978: Chinese-Japanese Long-Term Private Trade Agreement concluded.1979: Thatcher comes to power in Britain on the promise her government would reverse the UK’s relative economic decline.1980: The Japanese foreign ministry on 31 August 1980 releases a press statement that “China will emerge as a tremendous economic and military power in the 21st century.”1980: Chinese economic growth, accelerating from the mid 1970s, rose to an average rate of about 10% pa from 1980 to 2010. “During the late 1970s and early 1980s I had several, often not constructive, discussions with several British and American economists. Most of these took the view that the pre-1975 China which they had visited was not capable of growing rapidly and that any source which said it could was mistaken. Some western economists had produced books and reports arguing that both post-war Japan and the China of the 1975–85 period would remain forever as starving peasant economies. They could hardly have been more wrong.1975–85: The Growth of The Foundation Industries of ChinaAt first China took another leaf out of the Japanese experience and developed the major industries which were to form the foundation of the great manufacturing industries of the future as well as the basis for feeding the Chinese population. The funds made available for farm modernisation and food (mainly rice terrace) cultivation had a considerable leap forward during this era. The establishment and growth of the electricity generation industry, the metals-foundries and the many cement factories, all key industries of the future, were laid during this first two-five-year plans period.The Chinese learned the fundamentals and many of the nuances of Shimomuran macroeconomics with such effect that the Japanese Ministry of Finance was moved to comment on 31 August 1980 as shown above.In parallel with economic growth, social welfare policies in China increased considerably. As Social welfare in China - Wikipedia reports“Social welfare in China has undergone various changes throughout history. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security is responsible for the social welfare system.“Welfare in China is linked to the hukou system. Those holding non-agricultural hukou status have access to a number of programs provided by the government, such as healthcare, employment, retirement pensions, housing, and education. Meanwhile, rural residents are generally expected to provide for themselves.[1]“In pre-1980s reform, China, the socialist state fulfilled the needs of society from cradle to grave. Child care, education, job placement, housing, subsistence, health care, and elder care were largely the responsibility of the work unit as administered through state-owned enterprises and agricultural communes and collectives. As those systems disappeared or were reformed, the "iron rice bowl" approach to welfare changed. Article 14 of the constitution stipulates that the state "builds and improves a welfare system that corresponds with the level of economic development." The government has expressed desire to encourage NGO participation in tandem with local state efforts to improve social assistance to low-income households.[2] Such measures have been a central part of the Chinese state's decentralization efforts and its retreat from delivery of welfare and social provisions.[3] In this regard, the Shanghai government has "increasingly encouraged the contracting of social services to NGOs,"[4]while local governments are also entrusted with a wide range of decision-making and responsibilities on the delivery of social welfare needs.[5].”1986–95: Consumer Goods GrowthDuring this era the Chinese economy started to provide for the many consumer needs of its vast population. Exports partly based upon the foreign supply of US domestic demand soared due to the low tariffs and the increasingly varied outputs of Chinese factories.1996–2005: Inward Technological TransferDue to the high funds available for investment in company growth, many western companies (including most of the major US high-technology producers) established offices in China and some set up manufacturing arms in China. This produced a great deal of technology transfer to China from the West. The best analogy may be that inward technology transfer provided the spark plug but Chinese investment funds provided the engine for rapid economic development.The western illusion that Chinese development is due to western funding is another of the western media myths about China. The annual investment credit creation in China was historically about 25% of GDP - equivalent to trillions of USD annually - and the western inward funds are never more than in the USD billions. The great growth of China is somewhere between hundreds and sometimes even thousands of times more funded by Chinese PBoC credit creation rather than by any western inward funds.In 2003 China implemented a law to advantage the establishment and growth of SMEs. That worked and Chinese SMES became the foundation of a vast level of Chinese exports to the USA and to the rest of the world.2006- 2015: China becomes the Greatest Industrial Economy in the WorldThe great real economic growth of China inevitably resulted in the Chinese economy at PPP becoming the greatest industrial power in the world in about 2014. American industry now has less than 40% of the industrial size of Chinese industry. In fact China’s industry is greater in PPP output terms than that of the next five largest nations in the world. See the table inGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to Why is Russia's GDP per Capita behind even the poorest US states, despite having lots of natural resources, fertile land and a well educated, youthful population?The Chinese Govenment adopted a social policy to address the left-behind rural population of China. Again see Social welfare in China - Wikipediawhich points out that“In 2004 China experienced the greatest decrease in its poorest population since 1999. People with a per capita income of less than 668 renminbi (RMB; US$80.71) decreased 2.9 million or 10 percent; those with a per capita income of no more than 924 RMB (US$111.64) decreased by 6.4 million or 11.4 percent, according to statistics from the State Council’s Poverty Reduction Office.Welfare reforms since the late 1990s have included unemployment insurance, medical insurance, workers’ compensation insurance, maternity benefits, communal pension funds, individual pension accounts, universal health care,[9] and a carbon tax.[10] Social welfare schemes introduced by the Hu Jintao regime (2003-2013) and the Xi Jinping regime (2013-present) encompass several urban programmes and aim to "revolutionize the urban safety net and social insurance contract in China."[11]”and“A law approved February 2013 will mandate a nationwide minimum wage at 40% average urban salaries to be phased in fully by 2015.[13] “So China continues to make social as well as economic progress.2016–2025: The MadeinChina2025 developmentChina, using its immense R&D investment, has stepped beyond the technological capabilities of the west in several directions.The development of all aspects of the G5 internet-accelerating system, with a latency of about a millisecond, and the potential G6 development now started for one-terabyte per second latency, both indicate that China will have the best-in-the-world internet capabilities.China has set out explicit plans to become the greatest manufacturing economy in the world based upon a Chinese upscaling of Germany’s inspiring Industrie04 policy. The implications of that policy are economically monumental. SeeGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to What Advances Are Happening "Only In China?"4 Conclusions4.1 The inflation in China during the 1980s and 1990s were minor side effects of temporary imbalances between inadequate supply and too-high demand in the economy. Other indices of these imbalances were the high levels of spare capacity often created in several industries where production temporarily ran ahead of demand. Both of these situations were comparatively minor events on the road to rapid economic development.4.2 I agree entirely with the Japanese post-war assessment that inflation is sometimes the natural result of rapid economic growth and that higher economic growth is much more important as a government policy objective than the control of inflation.4.3 The western obsession with inflation is a product of a misdirected system of independent central banks. The more effective objective of a central bank is not to pretend it can control inflation (when it generally can’t) and not to generate asset bubbles which are always disastrous, but to assist in the process of credit creation for productive purposes. No western Washington Consensus Central bank does that.4.4 China has a fascinating system of setting local wages and salaries in its major cities by reference to local costs of living. That system seems to reduce inflation levels by providing often appropriate local levels of demand. The Chinese ”blindflow” - the large movement by HSTs of tens or hundreds of millions of Chinese workers from western and central China to the coastal provinces to access higher-wages&salaries through a vast temporary relocation - is a interesting response to that policy.I apologise that this Answer is not fully adequate, but given the scope of the subject I suspect no Answer could be. I have not mentioned the OBOR/B&RI/ Other-Chinese-Funded-Projects although these are included inGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to What Advances Are Happening "Only In China?"

Unlike most answers, I do think we have some “good gun laws”. The problem is twofold; those laws don’t (can’t) go far enough in scope, and they’re not enforced until after much more heinous crimes have occurred as a result. And not even then; the Parkland shooter violated the Gun Free School Zones Act, but he’s not being charged with that offense, because the 17 counts of premeditated murder he racked up in the next few minutes afterward are being treated quite rightly with much higher priority by prosecutors. You’re typically only charged with these kinds of malum prohibitum crimes when the investigators and prosecutors can’t find anything else to charge you with, which literally makes the law a way to turn people with no intention of committing a violent crime into felons anyway.On the other hand, the great majority of the laws we have, Federal and State, are either so anachronistic they no longer make sense, or are feel-good measures that never made any sense to begin with. Case in point, the aforementioned GFSZA; who in their right mind ever thought that a sign would have deterred the Stockton shooter? Or the Columbine shooters? Sandy Hook? Parkland? Santa Fe? They all walked right past one of these:And nothing happened until they started shooting.So, this list is gonna piss everybody off at some point or another, in that it will, in one single argument, call for more and less gun laws than our current status quo. You have been warned:Universalize and streamline background checks using updated technology. When NICS was conceptualized in the early 90s, the Internet as a public resource was still very young, and most people and businesses didn’t have access to it. 20-ish years later in 2015, 77% of Americans live in a home with broadband, 75% have a smartphone or other Internet enabled mobile device, and Internet access is a practical must-have for any retail businesses to run credit/debit cards, so even if you happen to not have Internet access, your local gun store will.As such, there’s really very little reason for NICS to still be a call center, at least not one of its current size. We can do the same job with a secure web application handling the overwhelming majority of the traffic. That would additionally allow that app to be accessible to people besides FFLs, and would be the most convenient option available for universalizing background checks.That also creates other possibilities, such as streamlining the 4473. This is actually a virtual necessity if you’re going to universalize background checks without requiring an FFL to run the check; the information on a 4473 is identity theft on a silver platter, and you’re going to be expecting the average Joe to not only not misuse that data, but to safeguard it for however long you want the provenance chain to be traceable. The REAL ID Act gives us some possibilities for uniquely verifying identity without traditional identifying information; name, address and “document discriminator” aka audit number off of an RIA-compliant ID would be enough to get any other information needed as of time of sale, and when actually running the background check, all you’d actually need to input is the DD code and state of issue and the app could retrieve anything else needed.The questionnaire is little more than a trap, and we can get rid of it; the idea is that if you are a prohibited person and filled the questionnaire out such that the FFL actually bothered to call it in, and NICS denied you, you have just made a materially false statement on a Federal government form. However, the Brady Act itself makes trying to buy a firearm while knowingly prohibited a crime in itself, so either way the Feds have to prove the offence was committed knowledgeably. All we really need to give background checks “teeth” is a very obvious “click-wrap” disclosure in the app that states unambiguously that if you fall into one of the listed prohibited categories and submit the form, you are committing a crime. We can capture a signature image if you really want, but no handwriting analyst will ever swear on oath that your signature drawn on a tablet with a stylus would match a signature sample written on paper.Once the check comes back clean, you have to give the seller the ability to prove beyond any doubt that he ran the check. Since centralization of records of gun sales is an extremely touchy issue, not to mention illegal under the 1986 FOPA, the proof has to be self-contained in the paper record of sale. You can do that by encoding a “digital signature” on the paper document, such as in a QR code (it’d be a large one, but the spec allows for up to 4K of data to be encoded in one QR which would be enough). NICS basically receives all the information on the form, makes sure the background check on the listed individual passed, then strings it together in a known order, hashes it with a secure hash function, then encrypts that hash using an “asymmetric key” algorithm like RSA or ECC. You don’t have to know the technical details, just that this “hash and encrypt” signature system is the backbone of secure communications on the Internet that most major websites now use for all their traffic, and it’s worked for a couple decades now, failing only when the human side of information security does.So, to prove you ran the background check, you produce a copy of the record of sale, the QR code can be scanned into a mobile version of the NICS app along with the plain text data of the form, and the plain text data is hashed the same way as the signature originally was. Then, the app decrypts the signature with the public key of the keypair that initially encrypted it, and if the hashes match, whoever’s asking knows the record is authentic, and the guy on the form is the next guy they need to talk to about why that gun ended up at a crime scene. They know it’s authentic because only the information on that form, encrypted using a key known only within the NICS system as of the date of sale (they have a lifespan; NICS could generate a new keypair every couple years, and the app would know all public keys and the date range each one was valid for), could have produced the digital signature in the QR code, which means NICS vetted the exact data on the printed form. If you don’t have a record of sale or other proof of dispossession (i.e. police record of theft, loss or destruction) and your gun shows up at a crime scene, you’re now a POI and guilty of a crime in itself (failure to maintain required records).A system like this would allow UBCs to be performed by anyone with a laptop or smartphone, and it would even allow buyers to avoid the three-day delay on an in-person private meetup by vetting themselves and obtaining a “pre-authorization”. And it would do so without requiring an FFL (though you could still use one and they’d become the custodian of the record of sale), and without centralizing these records in government hands (a de facto registry of gun owners).Increase the Federal minimum age to purchase semi-automatic long guns to 21, alongside the minimum for handguns. Psychologists are pretty clear that puberty, and the host of chemical, physical and mental changes that occur during it, really doesn’t wind down until the mid-20s for the average man; maybe a year or two earlier for women. Auto insurance companies know this; you can be totally accident free your entire driving career since the age of 16, and they don’t consider you “low-risk” until you’re 25. On that note, we as society grant the rights and privileges (and responsibilities) associated with adulthood to young adults gradually; most religions have an informal age of majority (such as the Age of Reason in Christianity, around 12 or 13), then from a more legal standpoint you can drive at 16, you’re criminally and civilly liable for your actions at 17 (though this varies by state), you can vote and own most guns at 18, and drink at 21. So, the “eighteen means eighteen” argument that when you’re legally an adult, you’re a full adult, just doesn’t fly. Any SDI in boot camp will tell you their 18-year-olds are just as immature as any other, the main difference is that along with their service rifle (and long before they touch one), they get a no-nonsense introduction to following orders as given without argument or discussion, designed to condition them to do exactly that when lives are on the line.So no, I do not think that an 18 year old, simply by virtue of managing to not piss off their parents or teachers long enough to attain said age, should be able to walk up to the firearms counter of a sporting goods store and buy absolutely anything under the glass or on the back wall. There’s legal adulthood and there’s physical adulthood, and the medical consensus is that those are currently separated by about 8 years. At least give them the three extra that we already do for alcohol and handguns, for them to realize that life actually does get better in many ways after high school, before we allow them to purchase a rifle that can end a life for each wiggle of their pointer finger with no other action required. At 18, you can buy and own break-action and repeating-action long guns; for semi-automatics and revolvers, it should be 21.Temporary firearm restraining orders. Oh yeah, we’re going here too. “Red Flag laws” have been the subject of serious debate in the U.S., with arguments against ranging from “the police can already do this if there’s a credible threat to someone’s safety” to “this is just an end run around the rights of the accused allowing vindictive individuals to use the government to indefinitely suspend a person’s RKBA without the burden of proof required for a criminal conviction“.Personally, I think it’s a good idea that needs very careful attention paid to its implementation. Whether or not society needs an actual law detailing a new process, we shouldn’t have to wait for a potential, specific threat to public safety to become an actual specific threat to public safety before action can be taken. At the same time, I recognize the very serious potential for evil, and it simply cannot be dismissed. Protective orders don’t require a unanimous jury verdict based on there being no reasonable doubt that one is needed. All the petitioner needs is to convince a judge it’s a good idea, and judges run the gamut on the topic, with most of the ones in New Jersey chomping at the bit to sign anything that comes across their desk that takes a gun away from a civilian.So, if we’re gonna use court orders to remove guns from a person who has not been convicted of any crime, we need to strike a very fine and specific balance between the law being too easily abused for government or personal gain, and the law being just as ineffective as waiting for a crime to be committed. There must be controls in place regarding who can “wave the red flag”, what criteria is valued in determining to grant the initial order, and a guaranteed maximum time for hearing the subject’s challenge to said order. In addition, a common criticism of the laws is that is that the restraining orders target the guns based on a need for mental health care, but don’t provide mental health care. If we’re really worried about someone’s mental state, that sounds like the obvious place to start. We can talk about these orders as an exception to being “involuntarily committed to a mental health institution”; if the care was the result of a temporary restraining order it doesn’t trigger the permanent Federal prohibition, provided the care has some measure of success (or doesn’t find a problem).I’ve also floated the idea of a “yellow flag”, an indication that someone is in need of a refresher on firearms safety due to demonstrated complacency or ignorance of basic safety rules, but is unwilling to get the training themselves. A court order to force the training based on a description of the unsafe behavior, in lieu of any possible criminal charges for said behavior, might have a significant effect on reducing negligent discharges and unintended access by children while protecting gun owners from rabid prosecution for first-time offenses. Similar safeguards would be needed to avoid this being used as a nuisance or a backdoor to indefinite loss of gun rights with no criminal conviction.Now, having agreed in a very big way to a few major recent demands of the myriad gun control groups, I must in all seriousness ask, what do gun owners get in return for being limited to single-shots and repeating-actions for three years, having to defend against repeated aspersions on our mental health from a vindictive ex-spouse or your in-laws, plus being required to Federally vet anyone they pass a gun to, and then maintain proof of that check for years or even indefinitely?While I think the conclusion of the “cake analogy” - “I want my whole damn cake back now” - is unhelpful and even counterproductive, the position is sound; gun owners have been agreeing to allow their right to keep and bear arms to be restricted in the name of public safety for over 80 years, and all that’s happened is that those who are against gun ownership in the first place come back wanting more restrictions.This is in fact the stated goal of gun control activists like Josh Sugarmann; to restrict, piece by piece, the RKBA in the U.S., like boiling a frog, until the 2A is effectively dead because those still willing to jump through the regulatory hoops are a superminority, and/or because the only weapons still available for civilian purchase have little practical use for self-defense (which is what 60% of gun owners give as a major reason they are gun owners, compared to just 36% for hunting). They get impatient from time to time and make big pushes, but after most of the major players favoring gun control “outed” themselves as to their end goal in the early 90s, resulting in the Republican Party’s first bicameral Congressional majority in 40 years, most have walked back their public positions. Can those new stated end goals for gun control be trusted? Only the GCAs really know for sure, but history is not on their side.So, if we’re going to call UBCs and an increased minimum age a “compromise”, it should fit the definition; both sides should leave the table angry with the agreement they reached. To that end, gun control advocates do not get it all their own way; policies proven to be counterproductive or ineffective since their passage need to be rolled back, along with additional measures that become possible once it’s that much more obvious that the guys who legally own guns are not the problem in our country:Repeal the Federal Gun-Free School Zones Act, and all government-level policies restricting the possession of guns on any publicly-owned or managed land or building where entry is not contingent on passing through an armed security checkpoint where all entrants are searched for weapons. If the government and/or property owner is serious about people not having guns in a particular place, you know it before you get five feet inside. We have the technology and the process. The question is whether it’s worthwhile to implement these in any given place. If it’s not, hanging up a sign forcing those breaking no other law to disarm not only doesn’t solve the problem, it makes it worse.I will, in this discussion, give private property owners the benefit of the doubt; its your property, you’re a legal entity just like I am, it’s your prerogative to restrict entry as you wish based on any fact not explicitly protected under Federal law. I personally like to at least know someone else in my home besides me has a gun, and I won’t begrudge you the same. But had you caught me on any other day I’d be insisting on landowner liability for owners/controllers of “places of public accomodation” posted as “no guns allowed” for victims of violent crime in such venues. You are imposing a restriction on my entry into your otherwise publicly-accessible place, which places me and everyone else there at any give time at greater risk of harm, and you take no additional steps to mitigate that risk; that makes your policy a contributing factor to any criminal violence I might become a victim of while on your property.Repeal the Hughes Amendment, and allow purchase and registration of new automatic firearms in the United States. Yeah, you heard me right. The NFA, in itself, was sufficient to virtually end the violence committed with legally-owned automatic weapons; it gave the precursor organizations to the BATFE and FBI the legal tools they needed to dismantle the Mafia gangs of the 1920s, and since it passed, not one violent crime was committed with a legally-owned, NFA-registered machine gun. The only two crimes committed with any legally-owned machine gun involved police-issue machine pistols, and the crimes that actually prompted the Hughes Amendment, mainly in the Miami area among rival drug gangs, were committed with illegal weapons smuggled into the country alongside the drugs. The most notable shootout involving automatic weapons since the passage of the NFA, the North Hollywood Shootout, happened 10 years after the passage of the Hughes Amendment, and involved illegally-modified AKMs that would have landed the robbers in prison for 20 years each even without the Hughes Amendment in effect.Once again, the law is only a restriction on those inclined to follow it in the first place. The Hughes Amendment was passed in response to a spate of crimes in Miami, representing less than 3% of the total homicide count in Miami-Dade County, committed with weapons the ATF didn’t even know about in the first place. The ability of people to legally buy machine guns didn’t figure into it in the slightest. The Hughes Amendment also gave us the current political climate regarding guns and any registration thereof; in 1986, the Feds proved that they were willing to use registration as a first step to an outright ban. It had been done at lower levels before (DC’s handgun ban dated to 1976 and was legislated a similar way; you had to register all firearms to possess them in DC, and beginning in 1976 you couldn’t register handguns unless they were already there), but the Hughes Amendment brought the tactic to national attention, poisoning any attempt at actual compromise ever since. If gun control advocates want gun rights advocates to ever sit down at a negotiating table and assume good faith ever again, this strategy needs to be demonstrably off the table as a gun control tactic.Deregulate suppressors and short-barreled firearms. The NFA was passed 80 years ago, and was originally intended to restrict access to “concealable” firearms by union labor protesters, while not being an insurmountable hurdle to the labor bosses putting down the strikes, nor the police who are specifically exempted by the law and for whom the factory or mine was the primary taxpayer in the locale. In the works for most of the Roaring 20s, the NFA finally passed early in FDR’s term, due to a combination of the increasing publicity of mafia violence in the media involving fully-automatic weapons, and an attempted assassination of then-President-elect Roosevelt making gun control an early personal priority of FDR’s.That was 84 years ago. In more recent times, we wear less clothing in general, making these same types of weapons harder to conceal, meanwhile even illegal use of weapons and devices subject to NFA restrictions (registered or otherwise) is very low. Hunters and homeowners want to use suppressors to save their hearing and reduce the disturbance inherent in a rifle shot to those nearby, and for proof they’re not dangerous in themselves, one only has to look at the UK, where they’re sold off the shelf in any sporting goods store, and hunters are encouraged by police to use one. Homeowners also want access to short-barreled rifles as home defense weapons, easier to aim than a handgun while easier to maneuver through a home than a 16″ barreled rifle. For both SBRs and SBSes, workarounds to the law have been found and vetted by the ATF, and have become very popular, making the additional NFA restriction of short-barreled weapons useless in practice.National carry permit reciprocity, and a Federal pre-emption of “may-issue” permitting policies among State governments. Totally within the Feds’ purview under provisions of the Full Faith and Credit Clause (giving Congress the power to legislate the manner in which legal instruments of one state are to be recognized and honored by any other), Federally-enforced national reciprocity would force all 50 states, D.C. and all Federal territories to recognize a valid concealed-carry permit issued by any state - or the government-issued resident ID card of any state that does not require a permit - as if it were a valid concealed carry permit in their jurisdiction, subject to the laws of the state in which the person is currently located. So if it’s illegal to enter a bar in Texas with a concealed weapon (and it is, a felony in fact), it’s just as illegal to do so with a Tennessee permit as a Texas one. But, if it’s legal to walk around Central Park while strapped if you have an NYC carry permit, it’s just as legal to do it with a Texas permit, or a Tennessee permit, or a driver’s license from the State of Vermont.Now, national reciprocity, especially when it includes nonresident licenses, will accomplish an effective end to “may-issue” policies anyway, but I wanted to be explicit about this. The majority of the states in this country recognize a right to carry, typically subject to state regulation on the manner of the wearing of arms. As of 2018, the remaining few states that exercise subjective discretion in permitting, typically along the lines of requiring “good cause”, do so for the sole and express reason of limiting permits to a privileged few. It’s codified in Maryland’s version of the good cause requirement; applicants must have a reason to carry that “distinguishes the applicant from the general gun-owning public”; a desire to defend oneself is not distinguishing, as 60% of gun owners have their guns for that reason.This is unconstitutional, and to date the only credible reason SCOTUS has not heard a case on this topic is that the Court, and Roberts as Chief Justice, is unwilling to be seen as a tool to overturn state gun laws in a series of lock-step ideologically-polarized 5–4 decisions. They want the existing decisions in Heller and McDonald to be digested and mixed into lower court case law, and once that settles to a backwash of a few notable disagreements among Circuit Courts and State Supreme Courts, they’ll entertain the question. It’s well-known in legal circles that Gorsuch and Thomas are already chomping at the bit for another 2A case, but as of when Peruta was denied cert in 2016, the popular theory was that Alito and Roberts were unsure of Kennedy’s vote (on top of the whole “tool to overturn state laws 5–4” thing), and so took the out that with Moore v. Madigan not having been appealed by Illinois, there was no active Circuit Court split pending SCOTUS review.That’s compromise. I give you, you give me. Gun owners began the 20th Century with zero Federal restrictions on gun purchase or ownership, and many fewer State restrictions than most of the more problematic states for gun owners currently impose. The original position of this debate is that Americans have free and easy access to whatever firearms were available, and therefore “keeping some of my gun rights for now” is not a “compromise position”. That’s like me telling you “give me all the money you have now and all your future earnings”, you refusing, and then me saying “let’s compromise; you give me half of your money and 75% of your future earnings”.Would you agree to that “deal”? Yeah, didn’t think so.