According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, the U.S. has a prison population of 2.2 million, 481 inmates per 100,000 of the population.
The U.S. prison system has attracted headlines for overcrowding with 18 states reporting they were operating at over 100 percent capacity at the end of 2014. According to the World Prison Brief, the U.S. has an an occupancy level of 103.9 percent and only comes 113th worldwide when it comes to overcrowding in prisons.
The Caribbean nation has the most overcrowded prisons of any country worldwide and its institutions are operating at 454 percent capacity. That has resulted in 80 to 100 men being crammed into a single cell at once, malnutrition and the spread of disease. Many of Haiti’s inmates have not been convicted of a crime and the UN has condemned the situtation, saying inmates are subject to daily violations of their human rights.
The situation in the Philippines is similar and conditions in its prisons have deteriorated steadily since President Rodrigo Duterte launched his war on drugs. That has seen the number of arrests skyrocket with thousands of people thrown into prison. That has seen occupancy rates stretched to 436 percent of capacity and Quezon City Jail is a good example. An ABC News report claims the facility was built to house 262 prisoners and it now hosts over 3,000.
El Salvador comes third for prison overcrowding with its institutions operating at 348.2 percent of their capacity.
Bad policy and paranoid parenting are making kids too safe to succeed
One day last year, a citizen on a prairie path in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst came upon a teen boy chopping wood. Not a body. Just some already-fallen branches. Nonetheless, the onlooker called the cops.
Officers interrogated the boy, who said he was trying to build a fort for himself and his friends. A local news site reports the police then “took the tools for safekeeping to be returned to the boy’s parents.”
Elsewhere in America, preschoolers at the Learning Collaborative in Charlotte, North Carolina, were thrilled to receive a set of gently used playground equipment. But the kids soon found out they would not be allowed to use it, because it was resting on grass, not wood chips. “It’s a safety issue,” explained a day care spokeswoman. Playing on grass is against local regulations.
And then there was the query that ran in Parents magazine a few years back: “Your child’s old enough to stay home briefly, and often does. But is it okay to leave her and her playmate home while you dash to the dry cleaner?” Absolutely not, the magazine averred: “Take the kids with you, or save your errand for another time.” After all, “you want to make sure that no one’s feelings get too hurt if there’s a squabble.”
The principle here is simple: This generation of kids must be protected like none other. They can’t use tools, they can’t play on grass, and they certainly can’t be expected to work through a spat with a friend.
And this, it could be argued, is why we have “safe spaces” on college campuses and millennials missing adult milestones today. We told a generation of kids that they can never be too safe—and they believed us.
Safety First
We’ve had the best of intentions, of course. But efforts to protect our children may be backfiring. When we raise kids unaccustomed to facing anything on their own, including risk, failure, and hurt feelings, our society and even our economy are threatened. Yet modern child-rearing practices and laws seem all but designed to cultivate this lack of preparedness. There’s the fear that everything children see, do, eat, hear, and lick could hurt them. And there’s a newer belief that has been spreading through higher education that words and ideas themselves can be traumatizing.
How did we come to think a generation of kids can’t handle the basic challenges of growing up?
Beginning in the 1980s, American childhood changed. For a variety of reasons—including shifts in parenting norms, new academic expectations, increased regulation, technological advances, and especially a heightened fear of abduction (missing kids on milk cartons made it feel as if this exceedingly rare crime was rampant)—children largely lost the experience of having large swaths of unsupervised time to play, explore, and resolve conflicts on their own. This has left them more fragile, more easily offended, and more reliant on others. They have been taught to seek authority figures to solve their problems and shield them from discomfort, a condition sociologists call “moral dependency.”
This poses a threat to the kind of open-mindedness and flexibility young people need to thrive at college and beyond. If they arrive at school or start careers unaccustomed to frustration and misunderstandings, we can expect them to be hypersensitive. And if they don’t develop the resources to work through obstacles, molehills come to look like mountains.
This magnification of danger and hurt is prevalent on campus today. It no longer matters what a person intended to say, or how a reasonable listener would interpret a statement—what matters is whether any individual feels offended by it. If so, the speaker has committed a “microaggression,” and the offended party’s purely subjective reaction is a sufficient basis for emailing a dean or filing a complaint with the university’s “bias response team.” The net effect is that both professors and students today report that they are walking on eggshells. This interferes with the process of free inquiry and open debate—the active ingredients in a college education.
And if that’s the case already, what of the kids still in grammar school, constantly reminded they might accidentally hurt each other with the wrong words? When today’s 8-year-olds become the 18-year-olds starting college, will they still view free speech as worthy of protecting? As Daniel Shuchman, chairman of the free speech-promoting Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), puts it, “How likely are they to consider the First Amendment essential if they start learning in fifth grade that you’re forbidden to say—or even think—certain things, especially at school?”
Parents, teachers, and professors are talking about the growing fragility they see. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the overprotection of children and the hypersensitivity of college students could be two sides of the same coin. By trying so hard to protect our kids, we’re making them too safe to succeed.
Children on a Leash
If you’re over 40, chances are good that you had scads of free time as a child—after school, on weekends, over the summer. And chances are also good that, if you were asked about it now, you’d go on and on about playing in the woods and riding your bike until the streetlights came on.
Today many kids are raised like veal. Only 13 percent of them even walk to school. Many who take the bus wait at the stop with parents beside them like bodyguards. For a while, Rhode Island was considering a bill that would prohibit children from getting off the bus in the afternoon if there wasn’t an adult waiting to walk them home. This would have applied until seventh grade.
As for summer frolicking, campers don’t just have to take a buddy with them wherever they go, including the bathroom. Some are now required to take two—one to stay with whoever gets hurt, the other to run and get a grown-up. Walking to the john is treated like climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.
After school, kids no longer come home with a latchkey and roam the neighborhood. Instead, they’re locked into organized, supervised activities. Youth sports are a $15 billion business that has grown by 55 percent since just 2010. Children as young as third grade are joining traveling teams—which means their parents spend a lot of time in the car, too. Or they’re at tutoring. Or they’re at music lessons. And if all else fails, they are in their rooms, online.
Even if parents want to shoo their kids outside—and don’t come home till dinner!—it’s not as easy as it once was. Often, there are no other children around to play with. Even more dishearteningly, adults who believe it’s good for young people to run some errands or play kickball down the street have to think twice about letting them, because busybodies, cops, and social workers are primed to equate “unsupervised” with “neglected and in danger.”
You may remember the story of the Meitivs in Maryland, investigated twice for letting their kids, 10 and 6, walk home together from the park. Or the Debra Harrell case in South Carolina, where a mom was thrown in jail for allowing her 9-year-old to play at the sprinkler playground while she worked at McDonald’s. Or the 8-year-old Ohio boy who was supposed to get on the bus to Sunday school, but snuck off to the Family Dollar store instead. His dad was arrested for child endangerment.
These examples represent a new outlook: the belief that anytime kids are doing anything on their own, they are automatically under threat. But that outlook is wrong. The crime rate in America is back down to what it was in 1963, which means that most of today’s parents grew up playing outside when it was more dangerous than it is today. And it hasn’t gotten safer because we’re hovering over our kids. All violent crime is down, including against adults.
Danger Things
And yet it doesn’t feel safer. A 2010 study found “kidnapping” to be the top parental fear, despite the fact that merely being a passenger in a car is far more dangerous. Nine kids were kidnapped and murdered by strangers in 2011, while 1,140 died in vehicles that same year. While Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker writes in 2011’s The Better Angels of Our Nature that life in most countries is safer today than at any time in human history, the press keeps pushing paranoia. This makes stepping back feel doubly risky: There’s the fear of child kidnappers and the fear of Child Protective Services.
At times, it seems like our culture is conjuring dangers out of thin air, just to have something new to worry about. Thus, the Boulder Public Library in Colorado recently forbade anyone under 12 to enter without an adult, because “children may encounter hazards such as stairs, elevators, doors, furniture, electrical equipment, or other library patrons.” Ah, yes, kids and library furniture. Always a lethal combo.
Happily, the library backed off that rule, perhaps thanks to merciless mocking in the media. But saner minds don’t always prevail. At Mesa Elementary School, which also happens to be in Boulder, students got a list of the items they could not bring to the science fair. These included “chemicals,” “plants in soil,” and “organisms (living or dead).” And we wonder why American children score so low on international tests.
But perhaps the single best example of how fantastically fearful we’ve become occurred when the city of Richland, Washington, got rid of all the swings on its school playgrounds. The love of swinging is probably older than humanity itself, given our arboreal origins. But as a school district spokesman explained, “Swings have been determined to be the most unsafe of all the playground equipment on a playground.”
You may think your town has avoided such overkill, but is there a merry-go-round at your local park, or a see-saw? Most likely they, too, have gone the way of lawn darts. The Consumer Product Safety Commission even warns parks of “tripping hazards, like…tree stumps and rocks,” a fact unearthed (so to speak) by Philip Howard, author of 2010’s Life Without Lawyers.
The problem is that kids learn by doing. Trip over a tree stump and you learn to look down. There’s an old saying: Prepare your child for the path, not the path for your child. We’re doing the opposite.
Ironically, there are real health dangers in not walking, or biking, or hopping over that stump. A Johns Hopkins study this summer found that the typical 19-year-old is as sedentary as a 65-year-old. The Army is worried that its recruits don’t know how to skip or do somersaults.
But the cost of shielding kids from risks goes well beyond the physical, as a robust body of research has shown.
Of Trophies and Traumas
A few years ago, Boston College psychology professor emeritus Peter Gray was invited by the head of counseling services at a major university to a conference on “the decline in resilience among students.” The organizer said that emergency counseling calls had doubled in the last five years. What’s more, callers were seeking help coping with everyday problems, such as arguments with a roommate. Two students had dialed in because they’d found a mouse in their apartment. They also called the police, who came and set a mousetrap. And that’s not to mention the sensitivity around grades. To some students, a B is the end of the world. (To some parents, too.)
Free play has little in common with the “play” we give children today. In organized activities, adults run the show. It’s only when the grown-ups aren’t around that the kids get to take over. Play is training for adulthood.
Part of the rise in calls could be attributed to the fact that admitting mental health issues no longer carries the stigma it once did, an undeniably positive development. But it could also be a sign, Gray realized, that failing at basic “adulting” no longer carries the stigma it once did. And that is far more troubling.
Is this outcome the apotheosis of participation-trophy culture? It’s easy to scoff at a society that teaches kids that everything they do deserves applause. But more disturbing is the possibility that those trophies taught kids the opposite lesson: that they’re so easily hurt, they can’t handle the sad truth that they’re not the best at something.
Not letting your kid climb a tree because he might fall robs him of a classic childhood experience. But being emotionally overprotective takes away something else. “We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to…experience failure and realize they can survive it,” Gray has said. When Lenore’s son came in eighth out of nine teams in a summer camp bowling league, he got an eighth-place trophy. The moral was clear: We don’t think you can cope with the negative emotions of finishing second-to-last.
Of course, it’s natural to want to see kids happy. But the real secret to happiness isn’t more high fives; it’s developing emotional resilience. In our mania for physical safety, coupled with our recent tendency to talk about “emotional safety,” we have systematically deprived our children of the thousands of challenging—and sometimes upsetting—experiences that they need in order to learn that resiliency. And in our quest to protect them, we have stolen from children the best resilience training known to man: free play.
Play’s the Thing
All mammals play. It is a drive installed by Mother Nature. Hippos do backflips in the water. Dogs fetch sticks. And gazelles run around, engaging in a game that looks an awful lot like tag.
Why would they do that? They’re wasting valuable calories and exposing themselves to predators. Shouldn’t they just sit quietly next to their mama gazelles, exploring the world through the magic of PBS Kids?
It must be because play is even more important to their long-term survival than simply being “safe.” Gray’s main body of research is on the importance of free play, and he stresses that it has little in common with the “play” we give kids today. In organized activities—Little League, for example—adults run the show. It’s only when the grown-ups aren’t around that the kids get to take over. Play is training for adulthood.
In free play, ideally with kids of mixed ages, the children decide what to do and how to do it. That’s teamwork, literally. The little kids desperately want to be like the bigger kids, so instead of bawling when they strike out during a sandlot baseball game, they work hard to hold themselves together. This is the foundation of maturity.
The older kids, meanwhile, throw the ball more softly to the younger ones. They’re learning empathy. And if someone yells, “Let’s play on just one leg!”—something they couldn’t do at Little League, with championships (and trophies!) on the line—the kids discover what it means to come up with and try out a different way of doing things. In Silicon Valley terms, they “pivot” and adopt a “new business model.” They also learn that they, not just grown-ups, can collectively remake the rules to suit their needs. That’s called participatory democracy.
Best of all, without adults intervening, the kids have to do all the problem solving for themselves, from deciding what game to play to making sure the teams are roughly equal. Then, when there’s an argument, they have to resolve it themselves. That’s a tough skill to learn, but the drive to continue playing motivates them to work things out. To get back to having fun, they first have to come up with a solution, so they do. This teaches them that they can disagree, hash it out, and—perhaps with some grumbling—move on.
These are the very skills that are suddenly in short supply on college campuses.
“Free play is the means by which children learn to make friends, overcome their fears, solve their own problems and generally take control of their own lives,” Gray writes in 2013’s Free to Learn (Basic Books). “Nothing we do, no amount of toys we buy or ‘quality time’ or special training we give our children, can compensate for the freedom we take away. The things that children learn through their own initiatives, in free play, cannot be taught in other ways.”
Unstructured, unsupervised time for play is one of the most important things we have to give back to kids if we want them to be strong and happy and resilient.
Where Have All the Paperboys Gone?
It’s not just that kids aren’t playing much on their own. These days, they’re not doing much of anything on their own. In an article in The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin admits that “when my daughter was 10, my husband and I suddenly realized that in her whole life, she had probably not spent more than 10 minutes unsupervised by an adult.”
In earlier generations, this would have seemed a bizarre and wildly overprotective upbringing. Society had certain age-related milestones that most people agreed on. Kids might be trusted to walk to school by first grade. They might get a latchkey at 8, take on a newspaper route around 10, start babysitting at 12. But over the past generation or so, those milestones disappeared—buried by fears of kidnapping, the rise of supervised activities, and the pre-eminence of homework. Parents today know all about the academic milestones their kids are supposed to reach, but not about the moments when kids used to start joining the world.
It’s not necessarily their fault. Calls to eight newspapers in North Carolina found none that would take anyone under the age of 18 to deliver papers. A police chief in New Albany, Ohio, went on record saying kids shouldn’t be outside on their own till age 16, “the threshold where you see children getting a little bit more freedom.” A study in Britain found that while just under half of all 16- to 17-year-olds had jobs as recently as 1992, today that number is 20 percent.
The responsibility expected of kids not so long ago has become almost inconceivable. Published in 1979, the book Your 6-Year-old: Loving and Defiant includes a simple checklist for what a child entering first grade should be able to do: Can he draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored? Can he ride a small two-wheeled bicycle without helper wheels? Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to a store, school, playground, or friend’s home?
Hang on. Walk to the store at 6—alone?
It’s tempting to blame “helicopter parents” for today’s less resilient kids. But when all the first-graders are walking themselves to school, it’s easy to add yours to the mix. When your child is the only one, it’s harder. And that’s where we are today. Norms have dramatically changed. The kind of freedom that seemed unremarkable a generation ago has become taboo, and in some cases even illegal.
A Very Hampered Halloween
In Waynesboro, Georgia, “trick or treaters” must be 12 or younger; they must be in a costume; and they must be accompanied by an adult at least 21 years of age. So if you have kids who are 15, 10, and 8, you can’t send them out together. The 15-year-old is not allowed to dress up, yet she won’t be considered old enough to supervise her siblings for another six years. And this is on the one night of the entire year we traditionally let children pretend to be adults.
Other schools and community centers now send letters home asking parents not to let their children wear scary costumes. Some even organize “trunk or treats”—cars parked in a circle, trunks open and filled with candy, thus saving the kids from having to walk around the neighborhood or knock on doors. (That would be tiring and terrifying.) If this is childhood, is it any wonder college kids also expect to be micromanaged on Halloween?
At Yale in 2015, after 13 college administrators signed a letter outlining appropriate vs. inappropriate costume choices for students, the childhood development expert and campus lecturer Erika Christakis suggested that it would be better to allow kids to think for themselves. After all, Halloween is supposed to be about pushing boundaries. “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little obnoxious…or, yes, offensive?” she wrote. “Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity—your capacity—to ignore or reject things that trouble you?”
Apparently, yes. Angry students mobbed her husband, the professor Nicholas Christakis, surrounding him in the courtyard of the residential college where he served as master. They screamed obscenities and demanded he apologize for believing, along with his wife, that college students are in fact capable of handling offensive costumes on Halloween. “Be quiet!” a student shouted at him at one point. “As master, it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students!” She did not take kindly to his response that, to the contrary, he sees it as his job to create a space where students can grow intellectually.
As it turns out, Halloween is the perfect Petri dish for observing what we have done to childhood. We didn’t think anything was safe enough for young people. And now we are witnessing the results.
No Fun and No Joy
When parents curtail their kids’ independence, they’re not just depriving the younglings of childhood fun. They are denying themselves the grown-up joy of seeing their kids do something smart, brave, or kind without parental guidance.
It’s the kind of joy described by a Washington Post columnist who answered the phone one day and was shocked to find her 8-year-old son on the other end. He’d accidentally gone home when he was supposed to stay after school. Realizing she wasn’t there, he decided to walk to the store a few blocks away—his first time. The mom raced over, fearing God knows what, and rushed in only to find her son happily helping the shopkeeper stock the shelves with meat. He’d had a snack and done his homework, too. It was an afternoon he’d never forget, and neither would his very proud mother.
When we don’t let our kids do anything on their own, we don’t get to see just how competent they can be—and isn’t that, ultimately, the greatest reward of parenting? We need to make it easier for grown-ups to let go while living in a society that keeps warning them not to. And we need to make sure they won’t get arrested for it.
What Is To Be Done?
By trying to keep children safe from all risks, obstacles, hurt feelings, and fears, our culture has taken away the opportunities they need to become successful adults. In treating them as fragile—emotionally, socially, and physically—society actually makes them so.
To combat this problem, we have established a new nonpartisan nonprofit, the Let Grow Foundation. Our goal is to restore resilience by overthrowing the culture of overprotection. We teamed up with Gray, the professor whose research we highlighted above, and FIRE’s Shuchman, a New York investment fund manager who is now our chairman.
We are building an organization that seeks to change the social norms, policies, and laws that pressure and intimidate parents, schools, and towns into coddling their kids. We will research the effects of excessive caution, study the link between independence and success, and launch projects to give kids back some free time and free play. Most of all, the Let Grow Foundation will reject the assumption of fragility and promote intellectual, physical, and emotional resilience.
Children know that their parents had more freedom to roam than they do, and more unscheduled time to read or tinker or explore. They also realize that older generations were trusted to roll with some punches, at school and beyond. We hope kids today will start demanding that same independence and respect for themselves. It’s their freedom that has been chiseled away, after all.
We want them to insist on their right to engage not just with the physical world, but also with the world of ideas. We want them to hear, read, and voice opinions that go against the grain. We want them to be insulted by the assumption that they and their classmates are so easily hurt that arguments must stop before they start. To this end, we hope to encourage their skepticism about the programs and policies that are ostensibly there to “protect” them from discomfort.
If this effort is successful, we’ll soon see kids outside again. Common setbacks will be considered “resilience moments” rather than traumas. Children will read widely, express themselves freely, and work through disagreements without automatically calling on authority figures to solve their problems for them. The more adults step back, the more we believe kids will step up, growing brave in the face of risk and just plain happy in their independence.
Children today are safer and smarter than this culture gives them credit for. They deserve the freedom we had. The country’s future prosperity and freedom depend on it.
Following the release of a four-page memo detailing rampant FISA warrant abuse by the FBI and DOJ, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) announced that he will seek the criminal prosecution of FBI and DOJ officials for the “full throated adoption of this illegal misconduct and abuse of FISA by James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein” who Gosar called “traitors to our nation.”
Gosar focuses on the memo’s claim that the FBI and DOJ did not mention that Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 spy who compiled the dossier, was partially funded by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
“This is third world politics where the official government agencies are used as campaign attack dogs,” Gosar said.
The letter reads in part:
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence memorandum on the FBI abuse of FISA warrants and targeting a sitting President is not just evidence of incompetence but clear and convincing evidence of treason….
I will be leading a letter to the Attorney General seeking criminal prosecution against these traitors to our nation.”
Meanwhile, Georgia GOP Gubernatorial candidate Sen. Michael Williams is calling for the prosecution of Comey – saying he should be “sent to prison for his crimes“:
“The leadership of the FBI and DOJ behaved in a way we would expect of the former Soviet Union, not the United States of America. I applaud Representative Nunes and other Republican members of the House Intel Committee for fighting and exposing corruption. Americans are tired of corrupt bureaucrats and their career politician enablers. If powerful leaders are not held accountable, the American people will never regain faith in the institutions meant to protect us. Former FBI Director James Comey was entrusted with one of the most powerful positions in the world. Sadly, he intentionally abused his power in an effort to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency. He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and sent to prison for his crimes. No one is above the law. No one.”
We’re sure Attorney General Jeff Sessions – who resisted calls for a second special counsel to investigate FBI misconduct – will take Gosar’s request seriously, despite praising Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein earlier today for representing “the kind of quality and leadership that we want in the department” – right after the FISA memo detailing his conduct was released.
As the memo showing Rosenstein’s role in signing FISA applications based on faulty evidence was released this morning, Jeff Sessions said that he represents “the kind of quality and leadership that we want in the department.”
In the early summer of 1914, Albert Einstein was about to start a prestigious new job as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.
The position was a big deal for the 35-year old Einstein– confirmation that he was one of the leading scientific minds in the world. And he was excited about what he would be able to achieve there.
But within weeks of Einstein’s arrival, the German government canceled plans for the Institute; World War I had broken out, and all of Europe was gearing up for one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.
The impact of the Great War was immeasurable.
It cost the lives of 10 million people. It bankrupted entire nations.
The war ripped two major European powers off the map– the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire– and deposited them in the garbage can of history.
Austria-Hungary in particular boasted the second largest land mass in Europe, the third highest population, and one of the biggest economies. Plus it was a leading manufacturer of high-tech machinery.
Yet by the end of the war it would no longer exist.
World War I also played a major role in the emergence of communism in Russia through the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
Plus it was also a critical factor in the astonishing rise of the Nazi party in Germany.
Without the Great War, Adolf Hitler would have been an obscure Austrian vagabond, and our world would be an entirely different place.
One of the most bizarre things about World War I was how predictable it was.
Tensions had been building in Europe for years, and the threat of war was deemed so likely that most major governments invested heavily in detailed war plans.
The most famous was Germany’s “Schlieffen Plan”, a military offensive strategy named after its architect, Count Alfred von Schlieffen.
To describe the Schlieffen Plan as “comprehensive” is a massive understatement.
As AJP describes in his book War by Timetable, the Schlieffen Plan called for rapidly moving hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the front lines, plus food, equipment, horses, munitions, and other critical supplies, all in a matter of DAYS.
Tens of thousands of trains were criss-crossing Europe during the mobilization, and as you can imagine, all the trains had to run precisely on time.
A train that was even a minute early or a minute late would cause a chain reaction to the rest of the plan, affecting the time tables of other trains and other troop movements.
In short, there was no room for error.
In many respects the Schlieffen Plan is still with us to this day– not with regards to war, but for monetary policy.
Like the German General Staff more than a century ago, modern central bankers concoct the most complicated, elaborate plans to engineer economic victory.
Their success depends on being able to precisely control the [sometimes irrational] behavior of hundreds of millions of consumers, millions of businesses, dozens of foreign nations, and trillions of dollars of capital.
And just like the obtusely complex war plans from 1914, central bank policy requires that all the trains run on time. There is no room for error.
This is nuts. Economies are comprised of billions of moving pieces that are beyond anyone’s control and often have competing interests.
A government that’s $21 trillion in debt requires cheap money (i.e. low interest rates) to stay afloat.
Yet low interest rates are severely punishing for savers, retirees, and pension funds (including Social Security) because they’re unable to generate a sufficient rate of return to meet their needs.
Low interest rates are great for capital intensive businesses that need to borrow money. But they also create dangerous asset bubbles and can eventually cause a painful rise in inflation.
Raise interest rates too high, however, and it could bankrupt debtors and throw the economy into a tailspin.
Like I said, there’s no room for error– they have to find the perfect balance between growth and inflation.
Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio summed it up perfectly last month when he said,
“It becomes more and more difficult to balance those things as time goes on. . . It may not be a problem in the next year or two, but the risk of not getting it right increases with time.”
Today there’s a changing of the guard at the Federal Reserve– Janet Yellen is leaving her post as chair, and she’s being succeeded by Jerome Powell.
Yellen leaves her post having brought down the unemployment rate in the United States to 4.2%, which certainly sounds nice.
Yet at the same time, workers’ wages (when adjusted for inflation) have hardly budged under her tenure.
Americans’ savings rate has been cut in half. Consumer debt and student loans are at all-time highs.
And dangerous asset bubbles have expanded, from stocks to bonds to property.
The risk of them getting it wrong is clearly growing.
It’s a simple concept: don’t keep all of your eggs in one basket, especially when the people who control the basket have such a tiny margin of error.
The right Plan B makes sense no matter what happens, or doesn’t happen, next. If they get it right, you won’t be worse off. But if they get it wrong, you’ll still prosper.
I truly hope they don’t get it wrong.
But if they ever do, people may finally look back and wonder how we could have been so foolish to hand total control of our economy over to an unelected committee of bureaucrats with a mediocre track record… and then expect them to get it right forever.
It’s pretty insane when you think about it.
As Einstein quipped at the height of World War I in 1917, “What a pity we don’t live on Mars so that we could observe the futile activities of human beings only through a telescope. . .”
Mattis Threatens Military Action Over Syria Gas Attack Claims, Then Admits “No Evidence”
“I don’t have the evidence,” Mattis said. “What I am saying is that other groups on the ground – NGOs, fighters on the ground – have said that sarin has been used, so we are looking for evidence.”
This week the American public was once again bombarded by fresh headlines alleging the Syrian government under President Bashar al-Assad gassed its own people. And in predictable fashion the usual threat of US military force soon followed.
Except of course rather than “alleging” a chemical incident, all the usual suspects from CNN pundits to State Department bureaucrats to Pentagon officials in typical fashion are opting for the simpler “Assad did it” narrative. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert stated Thursday, “Russia is making the wrong choice by not exercising its unique influence. To allow the Syria regime to use chemical weapons against its own people is unconscionable. We will pursue accountability.”
The White Helmets published this photo on Thursday, claiming that its “volunteer was suffocated by the chlorine gas attack”. It appears that this is the “NGO” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis referenced on Friday to say “open sources” say Assad is using chemical weapons.
Nauert’s statement was a repeat of talking points from last week’s chemical attack claims, wherein both she and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ultimately blamed Russia. But like with other recent chemical attack allegations, the claims couldn’t be more vague or poorly sourced, yet was still enough for U.S. officials to issue more direct threats of US military action against Assad.
While addressing the prior East Ghouta incident during a talk on January 23rd, Tillerson let slip that he didn’t actually know much about the supposed earlier January attack at all while still putting blame squarely on Syria and Russia, saying at the time, “Whoever conducted the attacksRussia ultimately bears responsibility for the victims in eastern Ghouta and countless other Syrians targeted with chemical weapons since Russia became involved in Syria.”
This week the “evidence” doesn’t appear to be any clearer or narrowed.
On Friday Defense Secretary Jim Mattis addressed the latest claims, confidently asserting the Syrian government had as a matter of routine used chlorine as a weapon against the remaining pockets of opposition areas of the country – specifically in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta, but it appears at this point that even Reuters has suddenly found its journalistic skepticism… Yes, actual knowledge on whether or not there was even a chemical attack to begin with is indeed thin enough for Reuters to headline its own report with “Mattis says has no evidence of sarin gas used in Syria, but concerned”.
Mattis, in line with the rest of the administration – especially the State Department – did his best to paint a scenario of the case being all but certain that the Syrian Army has been using chlorine gas to attack civilians, while also suggesting Sarin may have been deployed as well, which could serve as a “red line” triggering US military attack on the Syrian government.
Mattis, speaking with reporters, said the Syrian government had repeatedly used chlorine as a weapon. He stressed that the United States did not have evidence of sarin gas use.
“We are even more concerned about the possibility of sarin use, (but) I don’t have the evidence,” Mattis said. “What I am saying is that other groups on the ground – NGOs, fighters on the ground – have said that sarin has been used, so we are looking for evidence.”
And according to CNN, Mattis is now merely going on “open source” information, which essentially means anything from media reports to YouTube to Twitter to mere “opposition sources say…”. CNN reports the following:
“You have all seen how we reacted to that [referencing the April 2017 US airstrike], so they’d be ill advised to go back to violating the chemical convention”… Mattis acknowledged that the US has not seen direct evidence of the use of Sarin gas but pointed to open source reports. “I don’t have the evidence… We are looking for evidence. I don’t have evidence credible or uncredible.”
Like with previous allegations, US government officials are issuing threats of military action based on NGO’s and fighters on the ground.
Mattis acknowledged that the U.S. HAS NOT SEEN DIRECT EVIDENCE of the use of Sarin gas but pointed to open source reports”
Open source? Seriously?
Indeed the group only operates in areas controlled by al-Qaeda (HTS) and other anti-government insurgents, especially in the locations of recent alleged attacks – Idlib and East Ghouta.
That General Mattis would admit opposition fighters (dominated by #Nusra#AlQaeda#HTS ) & NGO’S (since when do such organizations have such expertise) plus open source (self-proclaimed experts) is what Washington has based its policies/charges on is both regrettable & worrisome
Now that unverified claims of chemical attack incidents in Syria (and their subsequent uncritical amplification by media and politicians) have become routine, the following somewhat obvious observations need to be recalled:
The Assad government has long been winning the war, what incentive does it have to do the one thing (use CW) that would hasten its demise?
The US is a party to the conflict, so its claims must be evaluated accordingly.
The “NGOs and fighters on the ground” (in Mattis’ own words) are an even more direct party to the conflict.
The only way anti-Assad fighters can survive at this point is by triggering massive US military intervention (by claiming “Assad is gassing his own people!”).
The greater the momentum of Syria/Russia/Iran forces in defeating jihadists on Syrian territory, the more frequent the claims of chemical attacks become – issued from those very jihadists suffering near certain defeat.
In the midst of a grinding 7-year long “fog of war” conflict involving constant claims and counterclaims, mere “open source” information means nothing in terms of proof or hard evidence.
Al-Qaeda administers the locations from which chemical attack allegations are being made.
US officials stand ready to make use of “chemical attack” claims with or without “evidence credible or uncredible” (in Mattis’ words) anytime further pressure needs to be applied toward Russia or Syria.
Sitting at my desk in Boston I have absolutely no direct insight into who used what weapon in Syria, so I don’t pretend to know. What I will say is Assad has strong incentives not to use chemical weapons again whereas regime change supporters have every incentive to say he did.
For its part, Russia alongside the Syrian government and other regional allies have long accused the US of blindly trusting opposition sources inside Syria concerning claims of chemical weapons attacks, including the April 2017 incident in al-Qaeda controlled (HTS) Idlib, which resulted in the US attacking an airbase in central Syria.
Last October, the US State Department admitted that anti-Assad militant groups operating in Syria, especially in Idlib, possess and have used chemical weapons throughout the war – something which the US government previously said was impossible, as it consistently held the position that only the Assad government could be to blame.
“There are two bubbles: We have a stock market bubble, and we have a bond market bubble” – Alan Greenspan January 31, 2018
This may not come as a surprise, but: I agree with him. Oh I know, every time Alan Greenspan says something related to “irrational exuberance” immediately the comments come that he said it in 1996 and stocks didn’t blow-up until 2000. While that may have been true then it didn’t invalidate his premise nor is the timing relevant to now. Back then people ignored him and went full bubble mode until it popped.
Indeed this one may still go on for a while and 2018 upside risk targets remain despite this week’s first pullback action of 2018. However this week’s corrective move coincided with a sustained technical breakout in the 10 year yield above its 30 year trend lines. Stock clearly reacted and not favorably.
Which brings me precisely to the relationship between stocks and bonds. If Alan Greenspan is correct then a chart I have been watching and musing about for a while may be the ultimate bear chart.
I’ve shown this chart before, but let me walk you through the theory of it.
This is a ratio chart of $TNX (10 year yield) vs the $SPX and yields a stunning picture:
The correlation is stunning to me from a technical perspective. Why? Because it is so incredibly precise.
Indeed, if Alan Greenspan is right, this chart could have enormous implications for the next few years. This chart could suggests a massive multi year bear market to emerge.
Let me explain why and how.
The ratio bottomed right near the 2008/2009 lows and, as you can see, we’ve seen a continued rise until the middle of 2016. In the years in between a trend line established itself that acted as precise support until the US election. That’s when everything went pear shaped.
Since then the trend line became resistance and the renewed effort to break above it rejected precisely at the trend line again in 2017. Given this history it seems hardly a coincidence, but rather suggests a technical relationship of importance.
Currently we see the ratio dropping hard this week. Why? Because stocks are falling and yields are rising. Which means that for this to move back higher yields must drop and stocks rise. Or at least yields need to stop rising.
But if yields continue to rise and stocks continue to fall the actual pattern of the ratio could be even more alarming:
That’s a massive multi-year heads and shoulders pattern. It’s not confirmed until it breaks its neckline, but consider the possibilities in context of the recent price action and in correlation to stocks and bonds on their own:
Basically what this implies is that the entire rally since the early 2016 lows will turn out to have been a blow-off top. Recall what I said at the outset: The high in ratio was made in mid 2016. The action since has placed 2 bear patterns: 1. The trend line break 2. The heads and shoulders pattern.
Now let me clear: I’m not calling for an immediate collapse here, but I’m, pointing to a possibly huge structural relationship between bonds and stocks, one that will likely take years to play out. But the signs of trouble are already in this chart. Bottom line: Bulls need yields to drop sooner rather than later or this market party may come to an abrupt end with deep reaching consequences.
There may hope in the short term as the ratio is about to reach critical support:
But if the ratio breaks below its neckline, then this chart may indeed prove to be the ultimate bear chart.
The Trump administration will continue much of the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons policy – with the addition of a much more aggressive stance towards Russia, according to the results of a year-long, 74-page “Nuclear Posture Review” (NPR) conducted by the Department of Defense.
The administration’s view is that Russian policies and actions are fraught with potential for miscalculation leading to an uncontrolled escalation of conflict in Europe. It specifically points to a Russian doctrine known as “escalate to de-escalate,” in which Moscow would use or threaten to use smaller-yield nuclear weapons in a limited, conventional conflict in Europe in the belief that doing so would compel the U.S. and NATO to back down, according to AP.
“Recent Russian statements on this evolving nuclear weapons doctrine appear to lower the threshold for Moscow’s first-use of nuclear weapons,” reads the report. Of note, “Russia” is mentioned 14 times in the document.
The United States and Russia have in the past maintained strategic dialogues to manage nuclear competition and nuclear risks. Given Russian actions, including its occupation of Crimea, this constructive engagement has declined substantially. We look forward to conditions that would once again allow for transparent and constructive engagement with Russia.
…this review candidly addresses the challenges posed by Russian, Chinese, and other states strategic policies, programs, and capabilities, particularly nuclear.
In order to address Moscow’s more liberal policy on the use of nukes, the Trump administration has two solutions; 1) modify a “small number” of existing ICBMs carried by Trident strategic submarines with smaller-yield nuclear warheads, and 2) “in the longer term,” develop a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile – a weapon that existed during the Cold War but was retired in 2011 by the Obama administration.
The rest of the Nuclear Posture Review falls mostly in line with the previous administration’s stance, and does not call for any net increase in strategic nuclear weapons.
The Trump administration concluded that the U.S. should largely follow its predecessor’s blueprint for modernizing the nuclear arsenal, including new bomber aircraft, submarines and land-based missiles. It also endorsed adhering to existing arms control agreements, including the New START treaty that limits the United States and Russia each to 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads on a maximum of 700 deployed launchers. -NY Daily News
Under Secretary Tom Shannon: The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review highlights the Trump administrations commitment to both the long-term goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and the requirement that the United States have modern, flexible, and resilient nuclear capabilities. pic.twitter.com/enQGDSYtmJ
We can’t wait to hear how Democrats spin this. Perhaps they’ll say Putin is so sneaky that he got his “puppet” Trump to beef up US nuclear defenses against Moscow!
*****
Statement by President Donald J. Trump on the Nuclear Posture Review:
On January 27, 2017, in one of my first acts in office, I directed Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to conduct a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). After a year of thorough analysis and careful deliberations across our government, today, my Administration is announcing the conclusions of this review. These conclusions are grounded in a realistic assessment of the global security environment, the need to deter the use of the most destructive weapons on earth, and our Nations long-standing commitment to nuclear non-proliferation.
Over the past decade, despite United States efforts to reduce the roles and numbers of nuclear weapons, other nuclear nations grew their stockpiles, increased the prominence of nuclear weapons in their security strategies, and – in some cases – pursued the development of new nuclear capabilities to threaten other nations. Meanwhile, successive United States administrations deferred much-needed modernization of our nuclear weapons, infrastructure, and delivery systems.
The 2018 NPR addresses these challenges. It describes the roles nuclear weapons play in our national security strategy. The strategy is tailored and flexible to address the wide array of threats in the 21st century. It pursues modernization of our nuclear command, control, and communications, all three legs of our triad, our dual capable aircraft, and our nuclear infrastructure. The strategy develops capabilities aimed at making use of nuclear weapons less likely. It enhances deterrence of strategic attacks against our Nation, and our allies and partners, that may not come in the form of nuclear weapons. And, importantly, it reaffirms our commitment to arms control and nuclear non-proliferation, maintains the moratorium on nuclear testing, and commits to improving efforts to prevent, detect, and respond to nuclear terrorism.
This Sunday the New England Patriots will look to defend their title against the Philadelphia Eagles in one of the world’s largest sporting events: the Superbowl. A large part of what fuels football’s incredible popularity is the excitement and brutality of the on-field contact. Yet this contact is not without cost. Widespread concern regarding player health has plagued the NFL for many years. The recurring head-on collisions between players have been linked to brain injuries, degenerative diseases such as CTE, and in some cases even suicide. Parents are becoming reluctant to allow their children to play football, and the multi-billion dollar professional football industry is in danger of suffering significant losses if things continue to deteriorate.
Not surprisingly, there have been many attempts to improve player safety.
One of the most promising of these has been to imitate some of the techniques of football’s estranged older brother, rugby.
Popular throughout much of the rest of the world, and growing fast in America, the game of rugby has much in common with football.
For fans accustomed to football though, there is one striking difference — rugby players don’t wear helmets. With the level of contact just as high in rugby, and the players wearing no protective gear, you would expect the concussion problem to be much worse. Yet the prevalence of brain injuries in rugby is much lower. Many experts believe this is because with no helmets for protection rugby players use tackling techniques designed to protect their heads. Seahawks coach Pete Carroll even detailed the rugby approach to tackling in an instructional video in an attempt to promote player safety. This approach has caught on, especially with younger players; many high school coaches now teach the safer rugby tackle.
The above example of helmets causing players to act in a way that may actually reduce their safety is a great example of what is known as the Peltzman Effect, named for University of Chicago professor Sam Peltzman, and his research into auto safety regulation. He found that the moderate gains in saving auto-occupant lives through safety requirements were more than offset by increased pedestrian deaths and a higher overall accident rate. The theory behind his findings was that safety devices tended to make drivers feel safer and actually drive more dangerously, therefore making them mandatory may actually reduce not improve safety. Seatbelts were a prime example; Peltzman found that even though seatbelts reduced the fatality rate of auto accidents for the people in the car, the total number of accidents increased, causing more pedestrians to die and more non-fatal accidents. This theory has many interesting implications; one economist even suggested the roads might be safer if we replaced airbags with a six-inch dagger, wouldn’t most people react by driving much more cautiously?
But additional safety is obviously not always a bad thing; I’m quite fond of my anti-lock brakes, and Tom Brady is probably better off wearing his helmet this weekend. The key is that the Peltzman Effect is a mechanism that demonstrates how increased perception of safety can increase our willingness to engage in risky behavior, whether or not the increased safety is offset by the new behavior will vary. It isn’t even all that clear whether rugby is really that much safer than football. There may be less head injuries, but spinal injuries are more common. Plus, the comparison itself isn’t exactly fair, with rugby only reluctantly becoming a professional sport in 1995, and significantly less top-level game time preceding this period for injuries to develop.
This is essentially what makes safety regulation so problematic. No government regulator can ever be sure that the new device or rule they are trying to impose will have a positive effect on safety. This means the gross benefit of any proposed safety regulation is questionable even before considerations of cost and calculating a net benefit.
Is rugby safer than football? Do seatbelts make the roads more or less dangerous? To answer these questions you have to look beyond the obvious and find the unseen consequences. Of course helmets protect your head, but they may encourage you to place it in harms way. People are far from predictable, and every new safety measure may have multiple unpredictable consequences. Ultimately, the Peltzman Effect is just another striking example of Henry Hazlitt’s One Lesson:
The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the intermediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
Actress Rose McGowan helped kick off the #MeToo movement when she went on the record as one of the sources for the New York Times and New Yorker’s stories about disgraced studio head Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long history of sexual predation – she even foreshadowed the movement in a series of tweets sent in October 2016 insinuating that she had been assaulted by a powerful Hollywood executive.
And now she’s hinting about another bombshell revelation that might soon appear in the pages of the New Yorker. During a live discussion with Ronan Farrow – for whom McGowan served as a source – she hinted that a different Hollywood figure coerced her into having sex with him when she was just 15.
She declined to disclose his identity, but said he’s “very famous.”
Then Farrow brought up a new statutory rape claim, informing the audience that McGowan has also told him that she was assaulted by a “prominent” man in Hollywood long before Weinstein and when she was 15. Farrow says he knows the man’s identity and asked McGowan if she was ready to come forward.
“In general? Sure,” she said. “Right now at this moment? I’ve had a big day.”
Adding that it’s a “timing thing” in regards to being ready to identity the “very famous” man, McGowan explained that she actually hadn’t realized that she had been molested until two weeks after Farrow’s story first broke about Weinstein.
“This man picked me up when I was 15 years old,” she said. “He took me home after he met me and he showed me a soft porn movie he had made for Showtime, under a different name. And then he had sex with me.”
She said he left her standing on a street corner. “In my mind, playing it back, I had been attracted to him, so I always filed it away as a sexual experience.” She then said to Farrow, “I don’t have a normal trajectory, I don’t know if you do either.” The son of Woody Allen related to her, saying, “I do not.”
McGowan said that until she started processing what had happened last fall, she always thought of the situation as, “That creep did this to a 15-year-old.” Adding, “It was not until two weeks after your story broke — our story, our world’s story — that I was in bed and I started saying, ‘Oh my god. I think that’s molestation.'”
McGowan, who recently published a book about her experiences being victimized by Weinstein and Hollywood more generally, said Weinstein is still going after her even though he’s been stripped of his industry cache – not to mention that many expect he will be left bankrupt by a fusillade of lawsuits. She’s also appearing in a docu-series called Citizen Rose.
As has now been reported by Farrow, and discussed by McGowan in Citizen Rose, Weinstein had hired private investigators to discredit his accusers and journalists attempting to report the story. Now, months after McGowan broke her silence to go public about Weinstein, the actress claims Weinstein is still “going after her.” She said someone was recently offered a significant sum to tell the press what hotel room she was staying in, and that an altercation during her New York City book signing the night before was due to a “paid plant” in the audience sent there to engage in a screaming match.
“Who else cares? Who else is going to stalk me?” she asked. In response, Farrow said he could not comment about “ongoing” reporting.
Given the details about Weinstein’s efforts to silence women who’ve threatened to speak out about their abuse at his hands – efforts that included hiring a private security firm staffed with ex-Mossad agents to harass her – no claim is too strange to be believed.
There are two stories of America. One is the American story and the other the un-American story.
On one side there are pilgrims settling a new land and on the other colonists ethnically cleansing the native population. One side sees war heroes and the other sees killers. One sees brave police officers and the other genocidal bigots in uniform. One sees America. And the other hates it.
At the State of the Union, we saw those two halves divide up the House Chamber. We saw American elected officials stand for the flag, for the anthem, for veterans, for Jerusalem and for In God We Trust. And we saw the un-American officials selected by corrupt urban machine politics stay seated.
The leaders of America and un-America were there in one room while America’s story was told.
We saw heroes rise in the House Chamber and we saw the Congressional Black Caucus members in kente cloth scowling through the good news about African-American unemployment. Rep. Pelosi grimaced and Senator Schumer glared through President Trump’s appeal for bipartisanship. Senator Booker stared hatefully and Elizabeth Warren ranted hysterically on Twitter.
The Democrats and the media called the speech divisive. And it was. But not in the way they meant.
There was little in the way of partisanship in President Trump’s remarks. They were meant to unite the men and women in the House Chamber “not as Republicans or Democrats, but as representatives of the people.” Even his tough talk on immigration came with offers of a negotiated compromise.
The New American Moment laid out a “clear vision and a righteous mission — to make America great again for all Americans.” But not everyone who happens to live in America wants it to be great.
President Trump’s speech wasn’t divisive. But it did divide. It divided those in the House Chamber who love this country from those who don’t. It divided those who honor our troops, our anthem and our flag from those who take a knee. It divided those who want to make America great again from the left.
The State of the Union vision exposed the divisions between America and un-America.
We saw a child honoring veterans, the grieving parents of children murdered by illegal aliens and a true refugee who had fled the Socialist tyranny that un-American leftists want to bring to this country. We saw small businessmen, hard workers, soldiers, police officers and an elected official shot by a Bernie Sanders supporter who wouldn’t let a murderous Socialist stop him from fighting Socialism.
We were reminded what we are capable of. And we were reminded of how much the left hates that.
President Trump’s State of the Union address was more than a great speech. It was our story. It was a reminder of who we are and what makes us great. It was the living soul of America soaring once again.
Americans, on the left and the right, are told every day who we are by an un-American media and its entertainment industry. We’ve been told it so often that it’s easy to forget who we really are.
A great speech doesn’t just score political points. It does more than move us. It wakes us up.
And President Trump’s State of the Union speech wasn’t just the greatest political address of his career. It’s the greatest American speech of the century. There have been significant un-American speeches that told us the traditions we believed in were dead, that the country we knew would never return and that we must become compliant citizens of un-America or be left behind on the wrong side of history.
President Trump succeeded by echoing the anger, the pain, the outrage and the common sense of a frustrated America. Some pundits found the echoes of this insurgency abrasive, disconcerting or vulgar. But this was not an insurgent speech. It wasn’t a call to arms. Instead it was a celebration of the changes wrought by the people’s revolution in Washington D.C. and of the growing power of a restored America.
It was a story told through the people who were living it. Through the ordinary heroes who rush into the great catastrophes of floods and firestorms, and the ordinary catastrophes of homelessness and misery.
The heroes of President Trump’s New American Moment, in his words, “live not only in the past, but all around us — defending hope, pride, and the American way.” American exceptionalism isn’t in the past. It’s in the present and it’s all around us. History didn’t end a hundred years ago or in the last generation.
“The people built this country. And it is the people who are making America great again.”
It’s been a tremendous year for America. The media keeps focusing on the drama in D.C. But the real changes haven’t been happening in the marble, steel and stone of Washington D.C., but in the lives of ordinary people who have been freed to “dream anything” and “together… achieve anything.”
The 2.4 million jobs, the 200,000 manufacturing jobs, the $8 trillion in stock market gains, the new bonuses and investments weren’t ordered by the government. They’re the bonuses of freedom. When the government cuts taxes, slashes regulations and frees us from the burden of bureaucracy, we prosper.
“Together, we are rediscovering the American way,” President Trump declared. “In America, we know that faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, are the center of the American life. Our motto is ‘in God we trust.'” But the left’s motto is, “In Government we trust.” And only when they’re in charge.
The left thinks that the ultimate power lies in government. That is why they’re scrambling to take over. It’s why the 2020 primaries are already looking like a clown car of senile senators and affirmative action wonder boys and girls. It’s why their judges are trying to block everything that President Trump does.
But the real power in this country lies with the people.
“We are appointing judges who will interpret the Constitution as written,” President Trump declared. He spoke of protecting the “Second Amendment” and “religious liberty.” “We have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history,” he informed Americans.
He called for holding Federal employees accountable and freeing Americans to make their own decisions. He celebrated the death of the ObamaCare mandate and the growth of individual initiative. Huge tax cuts are being met with incredible job growth in business across the country.
The New American Moment is built on empowering Americans by recognizing that the people of this country are not an interchangeable mass of social problems, but an exceptional nation.
In the State of the Union, President Trump committed to securing jobs and opportunities by protecting our physical and economic borders. “The era of economic surrender is over,” he declared. Bad trade deals will be renegotiated and open borders that allow “millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans” will be made safe and secure.
The government of this nation will work for its people instead of for the special interests of the left.
“The United States is a compassionate nation. We are proud that we do more than any other country to help the needy, the struggling, and the underprivileged all over the world. But as President of the United States, my highest loyalty, my greatest compassion, and my constant concern is for America’s children, America’s struggling workers, and America’s forgotten communities… My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber, is to defend Americans — to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American Dream. Because Americans are dreamers too.”
Americans are dreamers too.
The un-American left plies us with the dreams of others. It prods us about their suffering. It tells us their stories. And it insists that we are to blame for their pain. But it doesn’t care about our pain.
The Democrats who sat through the stories of suffering and courage showed that they didn’t care. The forgotten American men and women whom the President of the United States led out of the shadows never mattered to them. But in the State of the Union, President Trump showed us their dreams.
The American Dream was here long before the dream of illegal migration. It will be here long after the wall is built and Islamic terrorism is defeated. And yet so many of us have come close to forgetting it.
The un-American left has filled our heads with its dreams and at times we can no longer dream our own.
In the State of the Union, President Trump reminded us of our dreams and of the American Dream.
Americans “forever remind us of what we should never forget: The people dreamed this country. The people built this country. And it is the people who are making America great again. As long as we are proud of who we are, and what we are fighting for, there is nothing we cannot achieve.”
