Anthony Galli

The Republican Party officially supports Puerto Rican statehood: "We support the right of American citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign state. We also recognize the historical significance of the local referendum in 2012 in which… 61% chose statehood. Once the 2012 local vote for statehood is ratified, Congress should approve an enabling act with terms for Puerto Rico's future admission as the 51st state of the Union." And then as the Speaker of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives concluded, With a Republican majority and a Republican president, armed with the party’s platform, there shouldn’t be any more excuses or delays. The American citizens in Puerto Rico are entitled to the same rights and protection as their counterparts living on the other fifty states. The people have spoken. So if the Republican Party supports Puerto Rico statehood then why didn’t they put it up for a vote? They didn’t vote for it because they were lying. You don’t understand American politics if you actually thought Republicans would’ve admitted Puerto Rico as the 51st State. The truth is that Republicans were pretending to support it to avoid being called racist and therefore losing even more of the Hispanic vote. As an unabashed conservative, I’ll give you the low-down: we don’t support Puerto Rico statehood because it comes down to patriotism, power, and money. PATRIOTISM The fact is that the 2012 and the 2020 referendums were far from a mandate for statehood. In 2012 eligible voters were presented with two choices: (1) continue with Puerto Rico's territorial status, or (2) indicate the political status they preferred from three possibilities: statehood, independence, or a sovereign nation in free association with the United States. Only 54% voted for (2) and of that slim majority only 61% voted for statehood. In other words, only 44% of all voters chose statehood. And then in 2020, for the first time in the territory's history, only one direct question was asked: "Should Puerto Rico be admitted immediately into the Union as a State?” With a turnout of just 55%, only 52% voted for statehood. Now would you want someone joining your lifetime membership club who was only about 50% sure they want to join? And where they primarily want to join NOT because they like your club, but because they want to get more money out of it? If you look at the campaign for Puerto Rico statehood it wasn’t about how great America is and what an honor it would be to join the ranks of the other 50 states, but it was all about how they could get more federal aid and then be able to declare bankruptcy, i.e. not pay people back who they took money from. And the fact is statehood remains a highly polarizing issue on the island where there’s a large vocal minority who actually wish to move in the opposite direction by declaring independence from America altogether, which to be honest, I find absurd given how much the American federal government has done for them. The United States help free Puerto Rico from Spanish colonial rule, provided American citizenship to Puerto Ricans, and then gave them all sorts of subsidies and tax loopholes. But unfortunately, American kids are miseducated by the TV and the Teachers Union into an obsessive focus on America’s imperfections rather than how much good America has done for the world relative to every other nation on Earth. The greatest transgression the United States has perhaps made against Puerto Rico is that we’ve been too generous because by giving them so much money it made it easier for their island government to hide its incompetence and corruption behind the money and businesses paddling in. In the name of being helpful, we also imposed a high federal minimum wage on the island, which undoubtedly destroyed a lot of their jobs, therefore, forcing more of their population onto welfare. READ MORE @ https://www.quora.com/profile/Anthony-Galli-5

The U.S. Senate should pass the “Read the Bills Act.” This Act was written in 2006 by Downsize DC, which is a non-profit focused on decreasing the size of the federal government. This Act has since been sponsored and proposed in the U.S. Senate by Senator Rand Paul. This Act would require legislators who want to vote YES on a bill to sign an affidavit swearing to have read or heard read the entire bill. Every bill would also be required to be read aloud before a quorum in both chambers. This Act would also require legislation to be publicly posted at least 7 days before it can be voted on in order to give legislators and the American public more time to read and discuss it. This Act is NEEDED now more than ever because every year the size of bills are getting longer and longer while our legislators are given less and less time to read them. For example, The Dodd-Frank bill was 1,800 pages. The Affordable Care Act was 2,500 pages. And the 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act was 2,232 pages. And this has all culminated into the most outrageous example where on December 21st 2020, the 5,593 page Cornibus bill, the longest bill ever passed by Congress, was introduced just hours before Representatives and Senators were to vote on it. Now you'd think the fact none of our elected representatives read a bill that costs more than two Iraq Wars would’ve doomed it to failure, but nope! The exact opposite happened! In our hyper-partisan era, it was able to get broad bipartisan support! It got broad bipartisan support because it was negotiated and agreed to by the Democratic Leadership via Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schemer and the Republican Leadership via Mitch McConnell and the Trump Administration. But unlike Nancy Pelosi who was able to make time from the hair salon to be directly involved in negotiations, the Author of the Art of the Deal wasn’t able to make time from the golf course to negotiate the most consequential piece of legislation of his administration. He appointed his Treasury Secretary to be his lead negotiator. It’s a well-known fact that Trump was often kept away from serious negotiations because he was liable to give away major concessions in an attempt to get his name on something. Anything! It was then only AFTER the bill was passed in the House and Senate that Donald Trump decided to complain on Twitter before taking off to Mar-A-Lago for a nice Christmas vacation. From afar, at the behest of his base, Trump begged McConnell to remove the pork and increase the stimulus check from $600 to $2,000, but McConnell used Trump’s ADHD tweets to package Trump’s requests in such a way that would doom the $2,000 stimulus check to failure by simply tying it to other measures that Democrats would never vote for, i.e. poison pills. Unsurprisingly, despite Trump’s tough tweeting, he capitulated to Mitch McConnell by signing the bill. The only senators to vote against the Cornibus were 6 Republicans: Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Rick Scott, and Rand Paul. But ultimately what party was or is in power isn’t as important to the larger point here, which is that under Republican and Democratic administrations bills have been getting longer and longer with a shorter and shorter time frame to read them. The trend is accelerating because it’s easier to pass BIG unread bills and here's why… 1. Pork. Legislators are okay with voting for a behemoth bill so long as they get some of the bacon, i.e. it contains some money for their state, district, and/or donors. They’re also okay with voting for it if their party leadership is voting for it, i.e. the ol’ if your friend jumped off a bridge would you? U.S. Senators wouldn’t just jump off the bridge, but they’d finance it. On a personal level, when I was studying political science at university I was in a Model Congress class where each student was given a politician to play for the semester. I was given Justin Amash. I did two smart things (if I can say so myself). First, based on the extent of Justin Amash’s independent views and the fact our Model Congress was controlled by Democrats I was the only person in the class of 100 students to leave my party by declaring myself an independent (this was about 6 years before the real Justin Amash would make national news by declaring himself an independent). Secondly, in exchange for leaving the Republican party, the Democratic leadership promised to bring one of my bipartisan bills to a vote. I gave my bill to the Speaker of the House a few hours before class hoping that he wouldn’t read it, which he didn’t. And so the infrastructure bill that virtually all the Democrats and Republicans voted for also contained a hidden tax cut. Is our real congress any different? Unfortunately, no. The older I get the more I realize there are no adults in the room. YOUTUBE LIMITS DESCRIPTION TO 5000 CHARACTERS. READ FULL @ https://medium.com/@anthonygalli

To determine if we're in a computer simulation we should consider the Simulation Trilema where humanity will either... CONTINUE INNOVATING where it's only a matter of time before we make a computer simulation indistinguishable from reality, i.e. The Sims 1000. STOP INNOVATING before #1 can happen. This could happen, in my opinion, via the rise of a global totalitarian state and/or because humanity becomes more content with what it already has in some Buddhist-like technoparadise. DESTROY OURSELVES before #1 can happen. Is there a breaking point for all advanced civilizations, hence why we may not have discovered any in the known universe because as soon as any advanced civilization develops the capability of mass space travel they soon implode due to nuclear or biological warfare? What scenario do you think is most likely? When you look at just the rate of innovation over the last 50 years then it’s not hard to imagine we could make The Sims 1000 if we just had another 100 or 1000 years! 1,000 years is a drop in the bucket compared to the 200,000 years Homo Sapiens have existed! You see, despite the media’s constant fearmongering, humanity has never enjoyed more peace, longevity, and innovation. The trend is on the side of progress! But don’t get me wrong! The future is not written! There are disturbing trends in the opposite direction that should give us all pause such as the rise of authoritarian China where the U.S. and China are locked in a war for the future of freedom. This war could end by ending us all or it could end with China winning, but I think the most likely scenario is that America wins, in which case I believe America’s success is humanity’s best chance at proving the existence of God. I believe ANYONE who's on the side of innovation and science is on the side of God. You see, the dogmatic believer tends to be more anti-science as to avoid readjusting their views based upon new scientific evidence whereas the rational believer sees scientific endeavors as God’s work. After all, science is about replicating results. And what is the best way to determine where we came from then to replicate everything we know about the origins of the universe, Earth, life, and humanity? And then once humans are capable of staring down into a universe we created then we’d have to be irrational and arrogant to believe we were the first! So in other words, science doesn’t take us from God, but brings us closer to him! In this sense, I believe God is a more advanced version of ourselves. As a whole, each successive human generation seems to be a bit more altruistic and knowledgable and so I imagine God is the personification of who we will be, i.e. hyper altruistic, knowledgable, and creative. I believe God’s purpose is also our own: creation. I believe God created us for the same reasons we create: curiosity, flow, and love. God is a scientist trying to uncover how he got here. God is an artist who enjoys getting lost in his work. God is a mistress who created the universe to match the size of his love because the best way to love is to have someone to channel your love towards. With that said, I don’t know if “simulation” is the best word because I think it gives the impression we are somehow less real, bur I believe we are as real as a child is to his parents. Now I’m obviously not sure how we were created. We could be organic material in a Petrie dish, or we could be in a super-advanced computer, or we could be in some completely different technology that has not been invented yet which goes beyond the organic and inorganic. Finally, I’m not sure if God intervenes in human affairs because like a scientist I think he largely made the rules at the start of his experiment, and then he lets our universe play out from there. With that said, there may be “cheat codes” built into the laws where praying, visualization, psychedelic drugs, and downright action give the user some metaphysical advantages. This leads me to my next rational reason why I believe in God… 2. The Power of Faith It’s undeniable that faith, or as I’ll define it, “a belief that your future will be better,” makes you happier, healthier, and more successful. “A growing number of scientific studies suggest optimistic people tend to live longer and have better physical and mental health than pessimistic people.” Can an atheist have faith? Yes. But it’s a bit irrational for an atheist to be too optimistic because he believes the universe is fundamentally indifferent to him. Life is random. There’s no guarantee his future will be better, in fact, an atheist could argue it’s likely to get worse as his body slowly deteriorates. Without a belief in some divine creator, it’s also much easier, in my opinion, to feel overwhelmed and like a victim because life is so complex where our minds are constantly looking for a tiger in the bushes.

I don’t think America should go to war just to save people from oppression. I think there needs to be additional parameters, such as America being attacked first. But nonetheless, I wonder... where are the idealists? Where are the people who say, “We are all human!” “I want to make the world a better place!” If that’s your philosophy and objective then why aren’t you supportive of fighting to protect human rights — regardless of nationality? There’s a justifiable distrust of our military-industrial complex, but that doesn’t mean our might hasn’t and can’t be used for good. Where are the idealists who say, “Never again!” in reference to today’s genocides — Rohingya in Myanmar, Nuer in South Sudan, Yazidis in Syria, Christians in the Central African Republic, Darfuris in Sudan, Uyghur in China? I hear your silence. Are you the type of person who stands up to bullies? Do you do what’s fair even if it goes against your self-interest? If a husband hits his wife would you say, “Oh, that’s none of my business! She chose to be with him.” And yet when a government abuses its people so many people say, “Oh, but who are we to judge? We got our own problems!” If “we’re all human” as the slogan indicates then imagine being an Iraqi boy who witnessed his family gassed to death for simply being the wrong type of Muslim. Wouldn’t you wish for someone, anyone, even an American, to swoop in and save you from the genocidal maniac Saddam Hussein? Where are the idealists? I think they’ve been squashed into an ever polarizing political spectrum. On the right, we have a mix of non-interventionists, neoconservatives, and an “America First” approach to trade. A more idealistic approach to foreign policy would have traditionally fallen on the left as exemplified by President Woodrow Wilson’s entrance into WW1 and fight for the League of Nations… But today there’s virtually no young leftists arguing for foreign intervention because by extension they’d have to view America as a potential source of good, which of course, is a no, no. They’d have to point out the multitude of times America used its might for what’s right, which is blasphemy to the followers of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. There’s a lot we could do that doesn’t require all-out war, such as increasing sanctions on totalitarian states and providing oppressed people with information via pamphlet drops and breaking down censorship. Let freedom ring, ring, ring! Hello? This is a Public Service Announcement from the U.S. Government informing you that you can get free food and water at our nearby military facility. Joe Biden’s foreign policy platform doesn’t even mention the word “genocide” and is likely to be similar to the Obama doctrine of "moral multilateralism,” which emphasized “negotiation and collaboration,” or as it was put by former National Security Advisor John Bolton, “appeasement,” i.e. handing over billions of dollars to totalitarian regimes in exchange for promises of good behavior. Here’s our lunch money! But if negotiations fail, where are the moral unilateralists? Where are the people who don’t look for consensus in order to do what’s right? Where are the people who put protecting human life over maintaining good relations with those willing to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses? Where are the idealists? According to the Moral Foundations Theory, Democrats put much more weight on the values of “kindness” and “fairness” (Republicans give more equal weight to kindness, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty) and so if you are so kind and fair, instead of kind of fair, then consider extending your kindness beyond the 1%, which is America, and to the other 99% of the world who have to make do with less. You don’t have to be an idealist, but you do have to leave utopia.

CIVICS QUIZ: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/quiz/what-do-you-know-about-the-u-s-government/ Hi, I'm Anthony Galli and in my opinion, a high-information electorate is one where the vast majority of voters can answer at least 5-of-7 questions from the Pew Research Civics Quiz. What’s the benefit of a high-information electorate? Well, a voter's the boss of his public servants so how effective would an institution be if a boss hired his employees based on how they looked or sounded or made him feel or what their favorite color was or where they stood on a single issue? (Free lunch must always be provided!) Imagine if the boss wasn’t even sure what his employees do?! A smart employee would therefore spend less time working and more time pontificating about sandwiches. If the boss was however more rational and knowledgeable then his employees would have to be more effective if they want to keep their job or get promoted. The more voters understand and care about a problem then the more their politicians will understand and care about a problem. Public servants would be less actor and more statesman. So how can we create a high-information electorate, or what I like to call a smartocracy? The easy way is to add voting requirements, such as before stepping into the ballot box a voter must answer some civics questions correctly. Or if that’s too much of a hassle then the government could just disenfranchise demographics that have a disproportionate number of low-information voters such as by re-raising the voting age to 21 years old, or requiring voters be above-average-IQ, or below-obesity, or white, or male, or a property-owner. If any of those measures were taken we’d have a higher information electorate. Don’t hate the fact-checker, hate the facts. So in order for us to create a smartocracy am I recommending that we only let old rich white skinny college-educated high-IQ men capable of passing a civics quiz vote? Yes. Just kidding! Of course not. By removing people from the electorate it doesn’t remove them from our society. There are many problems associated with disenfranchising a huge portion of a population, which is why America, and the world for that matter, rightly moved away from such requirements in the 19th and 20th century. The best way to create a high-information electorate is, in my opinion, to take the counterintuitive approach by making voting easier so we can consistently have high-turnout elections such as we see in other democratic countries... A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny. I believe a high-turnout electorate OVER TIME will create a high-information electorate. So here are five reasons why I believe high-turnout will eventually lead to a smartocracy… More Consistent: Studies show that the more consistent a person votes (not in the same election boys and girls!) the more political knowledge they acquire over time. Practice makes perfect! When your voting every year (and yes, there is an election every year) you’ll increase your political knowledge just by osmosis. At every polling place, there’s knowledge in the air! Breathe deep! No mask! More Rational: In a way, the days of low-turnout may very well be gone because Big Tech is the greatest GOTV tool. So if people are going to vote anyway then isn’t it better if they vote because it’s easy to do instead of because they were made angry enough to do so? If it was easier to vote campaigns would be designed less around revving up the extremes and more toward appealing to the boring middle again, which would not only serve to appeal to the middle, but also draw people toward the middle. Many people are tribalistic in their politics. If you tell me your a Republican or Democrat I probably already know 95%+ of your views. Rational people are not so easy to pin down. Trump or Biden could do the exact same thing and depending who did it would create the opposite reaction from the other team. Touchdown! YEAHHH! BOOOO! High-turnout elections will cause more undecided people in the middle to vote, which their lack of partisanship would enable politicians to be less partisan too. READ FULL @ https://www.quora.com/profile/Anthony-Galli-5 or https://medium.com/@anthonygalli

Free Speech Doctrine: Stop China from World Supremacy Hi, I'm Anthony Galli and RBG said, “The right to speak my mind out, that’s America!” Her frenemy Anton Scalia agreed, “If you had to pick one freedom that is the most essential to the functioning of a democracy it has to be freedom of speech.” You are fat, stup*d, and lazy. You are too handsome, smart, and humble. You see WE MUST protect each other’s right to call each other names, but globalization could strip us of this first amendment right because free speech threatened anywhere is threatened everywhere. This is because corporations are competing with each other to make money. For example, if Apple can make their smartphones in China for 50% less money and then more importantly sell those smartphones to China’s massive consumer market without having to pay a tariff then what choice will Google have but to relocate there too in order to stay price competitive with Apple? This gives enormous power to the Chinese government. The Chinese Communist Party can then tell these big tech giants that if they want to continue to have access to their consumer workers then they need to play by their totalitarian rules. Free speech lovers should find this graph horrifying… Most sources, however, point to the U.S. as having a bigger economy, but no matter how we slice it, the U.S. and China are neck-in-neck… As China’s market continues to grow in size, its ability to pressure global corporations to relocate within their borders will also grow. Once these tech giants are within arms reach of the Chinese Communist Party then how much freedom will the rest of us have on these platforms? What influencers and stories will they ban for spreading Anti-Chinese conspiracy theories and “hate speech” while boosting content that puts China in the most positive light? The mechanisms are already in place to make this a reality. To prevent this global dystopia the President of the United States should commit to what I call: The Free Speech Doctrine. How it works is we’d categorize countries based on three tiers of free speech: free, restricted, suppressed. We could use the 2020 World Press Freedom Index as a guide… Tier 1 (yellow) countries would face a 0% tariff. Tier 2 (orange-red) countries would face a 5% tariff. Tier 3 (black) countries would face a 10% tariff. This free speech tariff would be in addition to existing tariffs. We would also work closely with other free speech countries to encourage them to implement the Free Speech Doctrine so we can leverage our combined economies for maximum pressure. Once it becomes more profitable to be free then these totalitarian states will be in a conundrum: watch their economy shrink or expand free speech rights. Some nations as evidenced by North Korea will double-down on their censorship as they’re slowly forced out of the global economy and some nations will expand free speech rights as evidenced by the Soviet Union when General Secretary Gorbachev implemented Glasnot (“openness”). Free speech is the ultimate despotic wrecking ball. You see tyrants and elitists believe “the masses” are too stupid to tell fact from fiction or reach correct conclusions after weighing all the evidence, which admittedly isn’t always easy to tell or do, so therefore they take it upon themselves to suppress information that may lead us to what they deem is the wrong conclusion. Now even if these tyrants’ and elitists’ logic was well-supported because, after all, some populations are less educated and therefore more prone to conspiracy theories then these elites would now be in control of an information system where they hold all the keys. How long is it before suppressing information isn’t so much about guiding the herd to greener pastures and its instead about guiding them to the slaughterhouse, especially when the latter could make the shepherd more money? Always remember the proverb, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Democracy and free speech are messy. Evolution and innovation are messy. Just because they’re messy doesn’t mean they need to be cleaned up. It’s because of their messiness that humanity has progressed from “the swamp to the stars.” Free speech permits people to complain. By complaining, we pressure those in power to fix it. Take any community, protect their speech, and overtime the community will improve. After all, we've seen this in our global community where as free speech has expanded so has the global economy via unprecedented rises in global wealth, human longevity, and peace. Suppressed speech rewards obedient citizens therefore slowing progress WHEREAS free speech rewards smart, hard-working, problem-solving citizens therefore speeding progress. Each type of speech has its pros and cons, but what type of world would you rather live in?

Politics used to be boring. When we listen to our former presidents their words were more measured and their message more centrist in its attempt to try and appeal to the left and the right. There was a decorum that came with being president because one misplaced word or an incorrect syllable or ill-advised banner could distract from their agenda indefinitely. One of the most important powers of a president is his ability to frame the narrative. Pick a popular issue. Use the bully pulpit to focus the media’s attention on it. If the president, however, has ADHD then it will be virtually impossible to build consensus on any issue because the president would have already moved on to creating the next headline. Entertaining? Perhaps. Effective? No. It’s this lack of focus and decorum that so many American’s found appealing in Donald J. Trump. He reflects our ADHD society. He speaks his mind! Caution to the wind! Trump has tweeted more controversial statements in a day than George Washington did during his entire presidency. It’s this reality show aspect of his presidency that has caused many of my friends who have little interest in public policy to then take strong positions against Trump as if voting for a president was like voting for America’s Next Top Model, “Have you heard what Trump said today?!” Oh boy, what is it now? Unfortunately, what 2020 has demonstrated is that name-calling, tribalism, negativity, and fear-mongering is capable of churning out a massive amount of views and votes. It definitely wasn’t the appeal of either of these candidates that got people to tune-in and turnout, but it was the circus show itself. If it wasn’t already clear before, in 2020 and beyond, the way to get attention and win elections is by out-insulting and outshouting your opponents. ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK! How do we turn away from this impending idiocracy? Things won’t change as some hope by electing Joe Biden because the incentives in the system are still there. In fact, the incentives are even stronger on the House and Senate level where it’s much harder for candidates to break through the noise to get the attention they need to win their primary and general. Both sides will continue to demonize the other to the point of irrationality. When they go low — go lower! How can make politics boring again? EASY VOTING: I’m a conservative, but I recognize we need to make voting easier. It’s hard to convince people with logic why they should wait 2 hours on a Tuesday morning to vote for mediocre candidate A or B in a state that’s virtually guaranteed to go for A. If appeals to patriotism don’t work then a campaign can increase turnout by making people feel that if they don’t vote for candidate A then they’ll be complicit in electing Hitler. And also if they don’t vote all their friends and family will find out, drag them out of their bed, and give them 54 Hell Mary’s as they choke them out until they say, ”I can’t breath!” Exactly! Go vote! But if we made voting easier (more polling places, same-day registration, effective mail-in ballot system like in Oregon) then Americans’ wouldn’t need to be level-10 angry to feel inspired/pressured to vote. They’ll vote because it’s as easy and essential as brushing your teeth. And guess what will happen to our politics? Politicians will spend less time screaming at you to vote (VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!) and more time persuading you on why you should vote for them. Both sides will appeal less to the extremes (smaller portion of the electorate and less necessary to drive it) and more toward the boring middle again. You can read this full (video) essay @ https://qr.ae/pNWnm3

It’s a well-known secret that Republicans generally want to suppress turnout (let’s force people to wait 2 hours to vote) while Democrats generally want to boost it (Twerk the vote!). (Woman twerking to the polls in order to raise voting awareness. ‘Merica!) This isn’t because one party is evil and the other is angelic. They’re both acting in their perceived self-interest. There’s also countless cases where Democrats suppress turnout by closing poll places in Republican strongholds while Republicans boost turnout by sending buses to pick up seniors from nursing homes. Call your Grandma! But historically Republicans have won more during low-turnout elections and Democrats have won more during high-turnout elections hence their overall difference in approaching turnout. In other words, it comes down to power. I will also add, and to my surprise, that the turnout differential is much smaller than how the always honest mainstream media may have led you on to believe… The unprecedented turnout in 2020 led to a virtual tie where the winner of the white house and senate will come down to less than 1% of the vote. 2020 should help settle the argument more than ever that high or low turnout in of itself doesn’t necessarily benefit one party. So who does benefit from high-turnout? Centrists. To get voters to drive to a poll station 20 minutes from their house and wait 2 hours in a line to vote for a “meh” candidate where one’s vote will have an infinitesimal impact, which in most states is a foregone conclusion, the campaigns/media have to get voters very, very angry to be so — objectively speaking — irrational. Every election NEEDS to be the most important in our lifetime. Vote for me because it’s life or death, freedom or slavery! We are watching you. Vote or die! We’ve created a political system where the best campaign strategy is to scare voters to the polls with a charismatic populist strongman at the top of the ticket. The candidate who can best build a “cult of personality” around himself is most likely to win because his supporters will happily twerk in line for hours. Now imagine a political system where it was easy to vote (many methods to do this that wouldn’t lead to widespread fraud if we just had the political will) then a polarizing campaign would be a disadvantage. The love/hate candidate is more likely to turn off the murky middle who often prefer the status quo hence why presidents are usually reelected. I believe high-turnout elections make tyranny less likely. Most tyrants come to power via coups. Coups only become necessary when the democratic process fails. Hitler is the most famous elected leader turned tyrant, but he didn’t even win a majority of the vote despite his predecessor’s incompetence and his party’s use of violence and voter intimidation. One of the potential downsides of high-turnout is we’ll have more low-information voters. Data seems to suggest both parties have about an equal amount of low-information voters. In 2020 both parties improved their ability to get low-information voters to the polls via eliciting strong emotions (mostly negative ones) and via social media pressure. Moving forward, expect more low-information Americans to vote so how about instead of pulling them into the process via their heartstrings we do so via making voting easier? And then by becoming more consistent voters they’ll be more invested in the political process, which over time will increase their political knowledge. As FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Let’s not let fear drive our politics. By making it easier to vote campaigns will be designed around persuading voters again instead of twerking at them.

We had the largest turnout in American history — 145 million votes  — where Donald J. Trump got more votes than any presidential candidate in American history, except for Joe Biden. In my opinion, this election broke another record by being the most negative since the American Civil War where red states got redder and blue states got bluer. So did this polarization lead to the higher turnout? TIME columnist Olivia B. Waxman and USA Today columnist Michael P. McDonald think so, but political scientists Shanto Iyengar of Stanford and Stephen Ansolabehere of Harvard have long believed negative ads,“shrink and polarize the electorate.”Political science schools such as the one I graduated from argue that when campaigns “go negative” it’s more about reducing turnout for your opponent than increasing turnout for yourself. The bottom line is it’s hard to explain away such a massive uptick in turnout to America’s ongoing trend of greater political polarization because after all, there was a higher turnout in 2008 vs. 2012/2016 even though the latter two elections had a more polarized electorate. Many experts accurately predicted we’d see a massive increase in turnout in 2020 based on how campaigns were broadening their net to target more voters, and although I had agreed with their prediction I disagreed with their rationale because I thought we’d see an increase notbecauseof the campaigns, but despite them. In 2020, many Republicans and Democrats held their nose for their preferred candidate whereas in 2008 both sides proudly proclaimed their vote for either Obama or McCain. So I believe the real reason for this unprecedented turnoutwas because of GOTV advancements. You see take a close look at the most effectiveGOTV strategies… Four-of-the-top-five strategies have to do with telling you and your neighbors if you have voted(a not-so-subtle threat, “We are watching you!”), targeted advertising, and election day reminders. It’s costly, but it works. So now let’s imaginethe perfect GOTV toolwhere you could remind and pressure your supporters on a daily basis for little to no money. Introducing… social media. After Google, Apple, and Facebook banned Alex Jones at virtually the same time, I wrote abouthow as the 2018 and 2020 elections approached that we could expect Big Tech’s political activism to ramp up by sending us all sorts of alerts before the election. I didn’t expect just how far they’d go in 2020 whereby any post about the election would cause A.I. to add a link directing people where and when to vote. I’m not saying social media encouraging voting is a bad thing, but this tactic alone exerted a massive influence on our election not to mention all the other tactics they used to drive up turnout from the stories & accounts they boosted to the stories & accounts they suppressed & banned. The bottomline is people who would have otherwise not voted because they aren’t knowledgeable in politics or aren’t happy with either of the candidates felt that in 2020 they had to vote. VOTE OR DIE. Please note that a lot of the people pounding their chest about how it’s your “civic duty” to vote probably won’t vote in 2021, 2022, or 2023, but I digress. Americans more than ever felt the need to publicize the fact they voted becausedid you even vote if you didn’t share your “I voted” sticker to Instagram?Because this time if they didn’t vote then they’d be told by their Aunt Linda that they were complicit in electing a fascist or by their Uncle Larry that they were complicit in electing a communist. Many people voted just to get the base off their back and not feel “left out.” That’s the power of social media.And that’s why the biggest winner of the 2020 election is Big Tech. After election day Big Tech’s stocks went up. Why did their stocks go up? For one, this election demonstrated to investors yet again just how powerful and influential these digital monopolies are. And two, Big Tech arguably benefits the most from a divided government because if Republicans or Democrats were in control of a unified government then they would’ve likely gone after Big Tech for different reasons, i.e. Republicans over free speech and Democrats over inequality. But now that the government will probably remain divided the parties will most likely continue to yell at each other from across the aisle as Big Tech grows unimpeded by profiting off our anger and insecurities.

Kyle Kulinski is perhaps the most famous millennial leftist in the world whose top five issues are… In a previous answer I explained the wisdom of his “fight for at least one” voting standard, but in this answer I’ll dive deeper into each of those issues to shed light on what people like me from the other side of the political spectrum think of them… 1. Medicare for All Before we implement Medicare-for-All on the federal-level, we should first implement it on the state-level, i.e. Medicare-for-All-Vermonters or Medicare-for-All-Californians. If Kyle Kulinski is right that single-payer will reduce costs and increase quality then why not prove it on the state-level first? The thing with most policies whether they be in life or politics is that they sound good on paper, i.e. going to the gym after work. Great idea, right? But most people don’t do it. This is because there are tradeoffs to even the best ideas. Despite good intentions and high hopes, the vast majority of ideas in business, life, and politics fail. How many business ideas have you had in your life that you thought would make you rich? How many relationships have you thought were “the one” to only end in broken glass and broken hearts? The fact we’re so often wrong about things we’re so certain about in our personal life should humble our political views, especially because the failures of our political views will have much greater consequences than a slashed tire. We should therefore make sure to ground even the best sounding political policies in more localized success before having our way with all of America. The beauty of the American system is we have 50 states where each state has its own government to test out the best ideas, i.e. laboratories of innovation! This is after all a similar path our more progressive neighbors to the north took whereby they past single-payer on the provincial level first and then overtime they grew it out with broad bipartisan support. Kyle Kulinski falsely claims “Medicare-for-All” is a centrist position because a couple of European countries offer single-payer, but America is a much bigger country in terms of population size and economy. If Medicare-for-All was imposed on the entire United States the closest equivalent would be if the entire European Union imposed a single version of single-payer, which even progressive Europeans would adamantly oppose. The bottomline is despite what Kyle says about his position being “centrist” it’s not in American, European, global, or historical terms. It’s a radical position. Own it! There’s nothing like it in size or scope anywhere in the world and so because of this fact we should first implement it successfully on the state-level and then we can talk about passing it at the federal level on a purely partisan basis (polls show majority of Americans support “Medicare-for-All” but that support dips as soon as they learn more about it. A more effective and official gauge of what Americans think of something is the almighty vote. The only time single-payer was put up for a vote was in the Democrat-majority state of Colorado where it then proceeded to lose on a direct ballot proposition by a resounding 79%. Before the vote, many Coloradans adamantly argued, much like Kyle, that the majority of Coloradans supported it! They were wrong.) 2. UBI 3. Free College 4. Living Wage 5. Ending the Wars

Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued Roe v. Wade set the pro-choice movement back by turning abortion into a lightning rod issue by having an unelected court of men making such a sweeping anti-democratic decision… Ginsburg’s argument is supported by the experience of Europe where abortion was legalized via legislation and referenda rather than court action. She believed that had the Supreme Court’s decision been more limited in scope instead of sweeping in its affect then overtime, as was evidenced in her time, their would have been an even bigger bipartisan progressive movement for sweeping abortion reform, such as she saw for women’s workplace rights and no-fault divorce. Now we may disagree on if democratically-elected state legislatures would have gone far enough on their own, but we can all agree that at the very least every liberal state would have become pro-choice. The simple fact is that deciding when life begins, and therefore entitled to the protections of the American government, is not a legal question. It’s a socio-political-philosophical question: does life begin at conception, or 8 weeks when their are the first signs of heartbeat and brain function, or second trimester, or third trimester? Should legal protections be added as the baby develops?After all, the idea that "Women have a right to their own body,”isn’t a right that exists by law because so long as the government can prohibit your ability to consume whatever you want or do whatever you want with your body, i.e. drugs, prostitution, organs, nudity, suicide, cloning, human testing, social distancing, etc, then you do not have nor do you even believe you should have,“have a right to your own body.”The only time people say this talking point is to moralize their position in order to end debate on this complicated issue. It’s never used in reference to anything other than abortion so effectively what is actually being said is,“Women have a right to an abortion,”but stating your thesis is simply the beginning of a conversation and not the end. The truth is that abortion is a matter of convenience, which isn’t to say its wrong because convenience drives most of human behavior, butconvenience doesn’t hold the same moral weightiness as the idea of a god-given right.Again, I’m not saying abortion is wrong, but I’m just pointing out that the issue is complicated and thereforeI agree with Ruth Bader Ginsberg that Roe v. Wade went too far in taking choice away from our elected bodies. And I’m sure many of you are wondering,“But what about men’s rights in regards to abortion?”Okay, probably not, but attorney Melanie McCulley coined the term “male abortion” and Karen DeCrow, former president of the feminist organization, "The National Organization for Women" supports the above concept whereby early in the pregnancy men should be able to“relinquish all future parental rights and financial responsibility”in the name of gender equality. In other words, if a woman has a right to her body then shouldn’t a man at least have a right to his wallet? If a woman has a choice to keep the child or not then shouldn’t the man at least have the choice to pay or not? If you think the father shouldn’t have a choice then we are raising our boys wrong because we need to turn into an uber-conservative society where we only tell men to sleep with women who they’d be willing/ready to have a kid with because there’s always a chance the condom breaks, i.e. there's a 1% chance that“Netflix and chill”becomes“Netflix and child.” Pro-choice advocates also argue,“History is on our side”as if history is always morally right, but nonetheless, history could be on the side of the pro-life movement because of the advancement of technology. What is convenient today may be inconvenient tomorrow.

The greatest frustration for me as a fiscal conservative is that Republicans only seem to care about fiscal responsibility when a Democrat is in the White House. The last time a Republican president balanced the federal budget was… [Pause. Take a second to guess.] George W. Bush: Wrong George H.W. Bush: Wrong Ronald Reagan: Wrong Gerald Ford: Wrong Richard Nixon: Wrong Dwight D. Eisenhower: Correct Overall, every Republican president since Calvin Coolidge has added to the national debt. According to Daniel Patrick Moynihan from the NYT, the Reagan Administration purposely ran up the national debt to justify cutting government programs… “The Reagan Administration came to office with, at most, a marginal interest in balancing the budget — contrary to rhetoric, there was no great budget problem at the time — but with a very real interest in dismantling a fair amount of the social legislation of the preceding 50 years. The strategy was to induce a deficit and use that as grounds for the dismantling.” The article continued by quoting President Reagan’s first televised address… “There were always those who told us that taxes couldn’t be cut until spending was reduced. Well, you know, we can lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of voice and breath. Or we can cure their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance.” Ultimately though “their extravagance” wasn’t cured and instead, the federal government has continued to grow in size and with it — the national debt, which currently sits at $26.70 trillion. In the time it takes you to say $100,000 dollars — $100,000 has been added to the debt. During the 1980s we also saw the rise of supply-side economics where many Republicans bought into the myth, “tax cuts will pay for themselves.” Using American history as our guide though we can say this has never happened. Never! But I suppose it could work next time? A more rational Republican base would require their politicians to cut government spending before cutting taxes in order to not have a budgetary deficit and then if Republican politicians are correct by some miracle of history that “tax cuts will pay for themselves” then in the following year they could use that newfound surplus to increase government spending on something they like such as defense, or cut taxes for the wealthy, or pay down the national debt so America can have enough of a rainy day fund to weather the next big recession or national catastrophe. Economists say the only way a tax cut could pay for itself is if the effective income tax rate was above 60%, but according to the Tax Foundation the highest effective income tax rate in American history the 1% paid was about 45% in 1943. In 2009, Obama said, “I’m pledging to cut the deficit by half by the end of my first term in office,” which he didn’t achieve. He tried again in 2013 whereby Obama offered to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare and a host of other government programs in exchange for tax increases on the 1%, but Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider any bill that would include closing tax loopholes for millionaires and billionaires. No joke. Moral of the story: the modern Republican party cares more about tax cuts for the rich (Trump’s first legislative priority) and massive spending on the military-industrial-complex over fiscal responsibility. Mitch McConnell justified his position by saying that tax increases will not reduce the debt; he believes only reforming the three major entitlements that take up 70% of the federal budget will be able to so in any meaningful way: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Mitch McConnell has said multiple times though that he doesn’t think entitlement reform could be solved with one party controlling the federal government. In 2016, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan wanted to reform entitlements, but Mitch McConnell refused, preferring to wait until their was “divided government” again so both parties could take responsibility for doing something unpopular… “Divided government is actually the best government. It’s the best time to tackle really difficult things, because it requires both sides to buy into it to make progress.” — Mitch McConnell, 2016 But here’s the deal: if Mitch McConnell believes divided government is the only way to bring down the national debt, but then he refuses to raise taxes a single cent on the 1% then how does he expect to make a deal with Democrats? Democrats will inevitably demand some tax increases in exchange for some spending cuts, but Mitch McConnell wants to have it 100% his way in a divided government. Since that’s impossible we’ll continue to have a ballooning national debt so long as Mitch McConnell is Senate Majority Leader.

I'm a conservative, but I tried to look at this as non-partisan as possible since he has a good chance of winning. I don't imagine this video being particularly popular today, but in 2 years we may look back and see this as the most accurate prediction of what happened... According to the Economist, Joe Biden has an 86% chance of winning. If you are a small-government conservative like me then how can we look at the bright side of a Joe Biden victory? For one, I’d argue that even more important than the U.S. Presidency is the U.S. Senate. The Presidency switches party hands almost every 8 years so even if Trump can hold onto the White House it’ll be much harder for Republicans to win again in 2024 at which point the leftist wing of the Democratic party would be so loud that they could be unstoppable. Also according to the Economist, Democrats have a good, but smaller chance of flipping the Senate — 67%. The bright side of a Joe Biden victory for Republicans is if Republicans can hold onto the Senate then Joe Biden would be drastically limited in his ability to do anything too progressive, which in effect may pull the country closer to the center as the mainstream media would grasp at strings to explain how nothing is a lot. I’d also argue after doing a ton of research on the subject that the only way we will balance the federal budget someday is with a divided government where the President is a Democrat and the Congress is Republican. We had an opportunity to at least cut the federal deficit in 2015 when Obama/Biden offered to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for closing tax loopholes on billionaires and millionaires, but Mitch McConnell refused to negotiate. In 2020, Mitch McConnell is starting to pretend like he cares about the national debt again so I guess we’ll see what happens in the 2020′s, but one of the reasons I say it needs to be a divided government is because, for one, Mitch McConnell himself said it needs to be a divided government, and two, that is the only time it has happened in modern American history. Joe Biden was also the guy who introduced the Federal Spending Control Act and who voted several times for a Balanced Budget Amendment. If 2020 Joe Biden wakes up as 2001 Joe Biden then we’d have the most fiscally conservative president in decades. But what if Democrats win both the Presidency and the Senate then what can we expect from a Biden administration? Obama/Biden administration spent more on defense than the Bush administration. Joe Biden has also said on the campaign trail that he wants to increase defense spending on “unmanned capacity, cyber and IT” so he may in effect keep the defense budget around where it is. Obama/Biden also had more drone strikes than the Bush administration and Joe Biden has historically been more hawkish than Obama so who knows what wars the Pentagon may pressure a politically flexible Joe Biden to get us into. Now using history as our guide, the two best historical markers for what happened during a unified government (one party controls the House, Senate, and Presidency) are 2008 when Obama was elected and in 2016 when Trump was elected. Both parties ended up losing control of the House in the upcoming midterm election so if history repeats itself Joe Biden’s unified government would only last 2 years. How much could a Biden-led unified government do in 2 years? First, the answer depends on if Joe Biden will repeal the Senate filibuster. As of yet, he has not fully committed to doing so, and the Washington Post currently has him marked as a “no,” therefore with just a one-to-three vote majority in the Senate (some of those senators being moderators from red states) and a passionate conservative Republican minority it could be hard for him to do much even then. There are other Senate procedures Joe Biden could invoke to get around the filibuster, but nonetheless, without the filibuster’s removal, his agenda will be slowed down. In the first 2 years, Joe Biden will have to spend a lot of time nominating officials, reentering treaties, readjusting the regulatory apparatus with executive orders, and perhaps passing additional COVID relief. This leaves little time before the 2022 midterm election for Joe Biden to dive into his heftier campaign promises. The first legislative priority for a new president is often cutting taxes: Trump, Obama, and Bush. Interestingly, Bill Clinton’s first legislative priority was to raise taxes and cut spending in order to pursue deficit reduction. I therefore believe Biden’s first legislative priority would be repealing the Trump tax cuts and replacing it with a tax increase on wealth and a tax cut for workers, which is how Joe Biden describes his plan on his website: “A TALE OF TWO TAX POLICIES: TRUMP REWARDS WEALTH, BIDEN REWARDS WORK.” Genuine fiscal conservatives may find this proposal appealing because factually speaking, the Trump tax cuts did not “pay for themselves.” Factually speaking.

Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump Stimulus Checks Gridlock Delay on Payments. Will a Second Round of Checks Happen Before Election Day? What's stopping it? Or should I say who?! I was flabbergasted when I read Trump’s tweet where he said he wouldn’t negotiate with Democrats on COVID until after the election. It reminded me of when he said he wouldn’t negotiate with Democrats on infrastructure until after impeachment. In both respects, it makes him look unreasonable and it makes Democrats more likely to drag their feet in the future in the hope that he walks away again because in Washington D.C. optics trump policy, i.e. making an opponent look unreasonable trumps doing something reasonable together. And then less than 24 hours later the president at least in part redeemed himself… Now if Nancy Pelosi is playing politics it makes sense for her to wait until after Election Day or even until after Inauguration Day to pass any additional COVID relief. But walking away or refusing to negotiate would make Democrats look bad as evidenced by the backlash Trump received so she has to at least look like she’s trying until November or January. The way to do this is by proposing, as the Senate’s second highest-ranked Republican Senator John Thune described as a, “$3 trillion laundry list of agenda items that have nothing to do with the coronavirus,” which includes protections for undocumented workers and a disproportionate amount of the money going to Democrat-run states and universities. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has stipulated the Senate will not consider any legislation that costs more than $2 trillion, deriding the House bill’s price tag as “outlandish” and “too high.” Intelligent Democrats reluctantly recognize we have a Republican-run presidency and senate therefore any genuine attempt at passing COVID relief would forgo leftist grandstanding. As I said in a previous video, Democrat politicians frequently grandstand on progressive issues when Republicans have the power to block it, such as Medicare-for-All on the state-level, but then when Democratic politicians take back control of every level of their state government and are therefore able to pass Medicare-for-All, such as currently in California and New York, they don’t even put it up for a vote and instead pivot to the center by announcing a commission to “look into it.” If Nancy Pelosi was putting Americans first, which to her credit she did with the CARES Act, she would just agree to those things she agrees with and leave the rest for November or January. For example, if she wants to eat all the ice cream, but Mommy will only let her have one scoop then it doesn't make logical sense to refuse that scoop until she gets all the ice cream unless, of course, she is waiting to see if Mommy will eventually leave the room. Ice cream is one thing though. COVID relief may be the difference between whether people get to eat at all. Nancy Pelosi says she supports giving $1,200 check to all Americans, which is already a difficult pill for many Republicans to swallow, so then what is Nancy Pelosi’s excuse for refusing to pass the standalone stimulus check bill? In a press briefing on Thursday, Pelosi said, “There ain’t going to be no standalone bill unless there is a bigger bill and it can be part of that or it can be in addition to.” But a standalone bill, by definition, is not part of a “bigger bill” so in effect she is saying she does not support a standalone bill unless Republicans give her what she wants on at least some things, but Republicans will not give her what she wants on some things unless she gives them what they want on some things too and then we end up back at square one where Pelosi can use the complexity of a big bill to avoid doing anything until after the election. Joe Biden has over a 10 point lead in the polls so it’s extremely politically cautious for Nancy Pelosi to hold an overwhelmingly popular standalone bill hostage in order to score political points. Democrats who cheerlead this sort of behavior should think twice by asking themselves will encouraging political cautiousness also cause her in a Biden administration to put political safeness over doing whats right for the American people? If our political system is going to work for We the People then we can’t let Republicans nor Democrats get away with blocking the overwhelming will of the American people on a specific bipartisan issue where time is of the essence. So if you guys want the money then I recommend, especially if your a Democrat, to tweet at Nancy Pelosi telling her to send us the money.

Hi, I’m Anthony Galli and as I wrote previously the true “winner” of a debate is whichever side sees a bump in their poll numbers after the debate. Since it’s too early to tell what the polls will say we are therefore left with political analysis. I accurately predicted Joe Biden had won the first debate so which side do I think will see a bump from this debate? First, let me use pollster Frank Luntz as my guide because I believe his live focus group with undecided voters is our best yet imperfect guide for gauging the views of undecideds. Here is how his focus group ranked each of the candidate’s performance in one word… Frank Luntz concluded based on the overall response from his focus group… Now before I continue, because this is often lost in our “just vote” culture, no, you shouldn’t vote based on personality. You should vote based on policy. This isn’t a pageant contest, but a job interview to decide who should run the most complicated and powerful political institution in human history. If you don’t want to take the time to learn what that job entails or learn basic facts about our government such as, what the 3 branches of government are, or cut through the political theater to understand what the pros and cons of each of the candidate’s policy positions are then, no, you shouldn’t vote because by doing so you are directly responsible for dumbing down our civic discourse and retarding our public institutions. Get informed and then vote! Returning to reality, though, changes in poll numbers are often decided by persuading undecideds so based on that fact Mike Pence won. I wouldn’t say Vice President Pence, “wiped the floor with Harris,” but I do believe polls will move a bit in swing states like Michigan and Florida. Betting odds have already moved slightly in the Trump/Pence direction. Mike Pence did what he needed to do whereby some of his “negatives” such as coming across to undecideds as “robotic, bland, typical politician” is arguably a net asset to counteract Trump’s unorthodoxy. For traditional evangelical conservatives or Bush Republicans sitting on the fence in Michigan and Florida, Mike Pence spoke their language and gave them a reason to hold their nose and vote Trump/Pence because if you could make your stereotypical 1980s Republican politician in a lab it would be Mike Pence. You can also tell Pence won by the fact that the headlines aren't saying "first black female VP nominee successfully prosecuted the case against white nationalism." Republicans also benefit more from “bland and boring” debates where the most commented aspect of the debate is something trivial like a fly in the room because this isn’t the sort of content that inspires high voter turnout, which traditionally benefits Democrats. Finally, some say this debate doesn’t matter, but each debate matters at least a little on the outcome of the race because of the massive media attention it receives, but a little may not matter much if there is a landslide victory, or it could matter a lot if death comes early for either of the oldest presidential candidates in American history. Let’s hope everyone survives, but in 2020 nothing is a surprise.

The only legitimate reason to cancel the second presidential debate due to Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis is if the 25th Amendment is invoked, which provides for situations where the president is temporarily unable to lead, such as if the president “has a surgical procedure, becomes seriously ill or injured, or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers or duties of the presidency.” If the president, however, can continue to lead the free world and a $3.8 trillion dollar federal budget then he can partake in an hour and a half debate. Of course, though, additional precautions will have to be taken. One way to do the second debate is via teleconferencing. Both Trump and Biden have had their fair share of on-air debates from a remote location with some FoxNews or CNN anchor. To make this type of debate as fair as possible the Commission on Presidential Debates would need to set up their rooms to make them virtually identical because it would be a major advantage to Trump if he could debate from the lawn of the White House whereas Joe Biden would do so from his basement. In the 1980s it was discovered that “negative attack” ads against Ronald Reagan actually led to him having higher approval ratings because although the words were negative the imagery made Reagan look good. Moral of the story: images are extremely powerful on our subconscious. There would also need to be a moderator present in the room to make sure neither candidate is cheating, i.e. getting information from assistants, technology, or intravenous drugs (seriously lol). But I think America can do better than a zoom-like debate. Let’s apply the same innovative American spirit we bring to “dropping democracy” or spacetravel to the next presidential debate. We can put the candidates in their own respective bubbles. A fiction writer couldn’t write such symbolism to better describe 2020 where both sides live more and more in their own bubbles (Although if we are being honest, Democrats generally live more in a bubble where 90%+ of entertainment, social media, education is controlled by Democrats. Facts. Republicans just need to change the channel away from FoxNews, go to the cinema, or scroll through YouTube to leave their bubble whereas it’s much harder for my Democratic friends to hear the conservative side, especially when many of them are being told that they shouldn’t listen to the other side without a liberal fact-checker present). I digress though. Of course, the bubble shouldn’t be as silly as the above image, but they could be surrounded by a glass chamber. Not to be confused with a WWE Elimination Chamber, but perhaps similar in spirit, nor a gas chamber although I’m sure some of you would prefer it to be so. Ultimately, there’s no reason to cancel a presidential debate simply on the basis of one of the candidates having a virus if that candidate is capable of governing and therefore debating. This isn’t little league. Debate is the bedrock of our democracy. Most of us won’t change our vote based on a single debate, but when done right, these debates can help improve our thinking by building more empathy and understanding for each side’s perspective by seeing where they agree (candidates often agree a lot more than how they let on because that’s how they inspire/scare their base to the polls), disagree, and what their priorities would be if elected. Debates more than any other event in our American democracy let us peek into our leaders’ thinking by forcing them to take positions relative to the other, and sometimes over the course of doing so, consensus can form around some new government action, but for the next debate, in order to let down the curtain, we may need to build a glass wall.

A smart campaign tactic would be if Trump went to California to proclaim,“Medicare for All Californians!”The media would probably follow-up,“But why don't you support Medicare for All Americans?” He could explain that Texans don’t want it so why should he force it on them? Democracy! He could also explain that according to the U.S. Constitution this sort of thing is supposed to be done at the state level. Tenth Amendment! Republicans believe in states-rights and so if 70% Califorianians want it, as polls indicate, then let them have it! This could be just one more way Donald Trump benefits from the populist wave Bernie Sanders helped build. Depending on the poll question and sample size, Medicare-for-All has about 30% — 60% support across America, but over the yearssupport has become more polarized where Republicans support it less and less and Democrats support it more and more. The silver lining for single-payer advocates is it’ll be easier to pass single-payer in Democrat-majority states like New York, Vermont, and California. In a previous answer, I discussed why it hasn’t happened yet, but in this article, I will discusswhy it should be done at the state-level first. Fundamentally it comes down to, “Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.” — Scott Adams In 2010, the Affordable Care Act’s poor execution helped Republicans take back control of the House of Representatives. In 2016, Republicans came within one vote from repealing it. With the elimination of private insurance and bigger tax increases, single-payer would be a much bigger change and so even in a best-case scenario: Republicans don’t push back too hard in the various branches/levels of government, corporate media largely gets on board, and there isn’t“a death by a thousand lawsuits,”there still will be a lot of disagreement over the details, which will openly be aired out in the Twittersphere for Republicans to then galvanize support to take back control of the government.It’s also almost as inevitable as a rising tide that the minority party will take back control of at least one branch of government in at least 4 years.The longest period of unified American government (House, Senate, Presidency) in modern American history was 1993–1997. After single-payer is implemented and Republicans take back control then they will bring a sledgehammer or a scalpel to sabotage any success single-payer might have achieved if given enough time. Once single-payer is dismantled it will be much harder to expand or reimplement. As a comparison, Medicare was passed in 1960 with bipartisan support, which meant neither party could crusade against it and it was expanded over time so that people who were directly affected by it, i.e. seniors and the disabled, overwhelmingly supported its evolution. The bottom line here is if Medicare-for-All is implemented then there are so many moving parts and entrenched opposing forces(political party, businesses, organizations, insurance companies)that it will be a steep uphill battle with the very real possibility that single-payer could be such a heavy change that it could slide backward and crash and burn to the point where no American politician would want to touch it again for decades. How can Medicare-for-All supporters reduce some of the hill’s steepness and the bill’s weightiness?By supporting a state-based single-payer. Most Republicans won’t support Medicare-for-All in their state, although some will as evidenced by the fact some Republicans supported Obamacare at the state-level, i.e. Romneycare. Most Republicans however will support(or at least not oppose)Californianians, New Yorkers, Vermonters right to govern themselves and so if single-payer is what they want then let them“eat cake.” In terms of ensuring maximum effectiveness, it also makes sense to implement single-payer in at least one U.S. state where there is broad support than to impose it on the entire U.S. where at least 25 states would strongly oppose it. After all, this is a similar path our progressive neighbors to the north followed, which if it was good enough for their smaller population and economy to follow then it seems even more sensible for our larger population and economy to do the same. In 1947, Canada’s single-payer healthcare system started as an experiment in one province, Saskatchewan. Alberta followed suit. By the 1960s, single-payer was adopted by all the Canadian provinces and since then legislation like the Medical Care Act and the Canada Healthcare Act has centralized more and more of the funding and power...

This video I take a more non-partisan look at why no U.S. states currently have a single-payer system, especially in populations where the majority of residents support it. Depending on the poll question and sample size, single-payer has received on average about 30% — 60% U.S. support… Kaiser Family Foundation (5/13–5/18): 57% favor Business Insider (3/13–3/14): 49% favor Quinnipiac (11/21–11/25): 36% favor The Economist/YouGov (9/14–9/17): 45% favor CBS News (8/28–9/4): 57% favor RealClearOpinion (4/30–5/5): 55% favor And according to the Washington Post, a majority of House Democrats now support Medicare for All. No matter how we slice it there’s a sizable chunk of the American electorate, especially among Democrats, who support single-payer healthcare. And so if this policy is so popular among Democrats then why hasn’t it been implemented by at least one Democrat-majority state, such as California, New York, Massachusetts, or Vermont? For one, the problem with state-based single-payer healthcare is the federal government already plays a major role in providing and regulating the industry. About 17% of Americans are on Medicare, which is a federal health insurance program, but a state can work around that by filling the gap, i.e. people under 65 who aren’t disabled would be put into the state-based version. We also know a state-based single-payer can be done because it has already been done! In 2011, Vermont signed into law the first state-based single-payer healthcare system. The signing of H. 202 led to the creation of Green Mountain Care, which was described by Kaiser Health News as “a state-funded-and-managed insurance pool that would provide near-universal coverage to residents with the expectation that it would reduce health care spending.” Vermont Governor Shumlin described the plan as “a single-payer system” that he believed “will control health care costs, not just by cutting fees to doctors and hospitals, but by fundamentally changing the state’s health care system.” Vermont Representative Larson described Green Mountain Care’s provisions as “as close as we can get [to single-payer] at the state level.” But in 2014 with all the roadwork laid, the governor saw what was up ahead and decided to turn back… “Calling it the biggest disappointment of his career, Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday he was abandoning plans to make Vermont the first state in the country with a universal, publicly funded health care system. Going forward with a project four years in the making would require tax increases too big for the state to absorb, Shumlin said. The measure had been the centerpiece of the Democratic governor’s agenda and was watched and rooted for by single-payer health care supporters around the country.” — Star Tribune According to Shumlin, the plan would have required an 11.5% payroll tax and a 9.5% income tax increase. Shumlin was particularly concerned about Vermont’s small businesses going bankrupt. Putting economics aside, it’s also understandable from a political perspective why governor Shumlin threw in the surgical mask because, despite the fact Vermont consistently ranks in the top 10 most-Democratic states, Shumlin almost lost reelection to a Republican mainly on the basis of his support for single-payer in what turned out to be the closest gubernatorial election in modern Vermont history with Shumlin getting 46.4% to Milne’s 45.1%. Governor Shumlin abandoned single-payer a month later. Other states have also come close to single-payer. California passed “The California Universal Healthcare Act” in 2006 and in 2008. Both times, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill (or should I say terminated ;). In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed a commission to study the feasibility of adopting a single-payer system in the state. Colorado through a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment proposal put a state-based single-payer proposal directly on the ballot, but it was rejected by 79% of voters. Hawaii got close to a state-based single-payer healthcare system. In 2009, its legislature passed a single-payer bill, which was vetoed by Republican Governor Linda Lingle. Lawmakers overrode the veto, but Lindle refused to appoint members or release funds. She was succeeded by a Democrat who then appointed members, but ultimately decided to abandon single-payer when talks turned toward dumping private insurance. The New York State Assembly passed a state-based single-payer health plan four times: 1992, 2015, 2016, and 2017, but it has never advanced through the New York State Senate.

Here’s my honest, fair assessment on why some Bernie supporters will not vote for Joe Biden… First, let’s start with Kyle Kulinski’s rationale because he’s arguably the most influential Bernie supporter with millions of followers between Twitter and YouTube. When it comes to current events, many leftist arguments originate with him. He said he will not vote for Joe Biden because Joe Biden doesn’t support at least one-of-his-top-five-positions: “Medicare for All, free college, living wage, ending the wars, and UBI.” If Joe Biden supported one of those positions then Kyle Kulinski said he’d vote for him in 2020. Kyle Kulinski’s view is that he doesn’t want to keep rewarding the Democratic party with his vote because it signals to the party that they can continue to ignore leftist demands while taking leftist support for granted. But what is better? If Joe Biden gave 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 100% on each of those positions, or if he gave 50%, 50%, 50%, 50%, 50%? With the latter, leftists are getting more of their agenda through even though Joe Biden fails their ideological purity test on each issue. The truth is that Joe Biden is overall the most leftist Democratic nominee in American history with a running mate who has a Senate voting record further left than Bernie Sanders therefore many centrist Democrats believe they have moved far enough left to satisfy the leftist wing of the party. After all, some of the things Biden/Harris are running on are a $15 minimum wage, free public college for families making under $125,000, a universal housing voucher program, a public option, a $2 trillion dollar green energy plan, a $775 billion plan for caregiving, and a $700 billion “made in America” plan. Biden’s plans come to at least $10 trillion, which is three times the cost of what Hillary Clinton proposed in 2016. “You know what, Joe Biden will become the most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And that, in this moment, is what we need.” — Bernie Sanders But a lot of leftists who are persuaded by that platform still won’t vote for Joe Biden, somewhat paradoxically to Kyle Kulinski’s desire, because they feel he compromises too much! It’s not good enough he holds those positions today he should have held them 10 years ago! This is why even if Joe Biden did support Medicare-for-All there are still many on the left who wouldn’t vote for him because they don’t think he’d actually fight for it. I think this is a fair critique given that in Joe Biden’s previous presidential runs and throughout his long Senatorial career he was known more of as a centrist bipartisan backslapper by supporting such policies as a federal spending freeze and a balanced budget amendment. Ultimately, many leftists believe time is on their side. If Joe Biden wins in 2020 he’ll either seek reelection or have VP Kamala Harris take the ball from there, which could arguably stall the leftist agenda, but if Joe Biden loses then not only will it be easier for democratic socialists to get the nomination in 2024, but it’ll also be easier for them to win the presidency as it is the political norm for the country to change parties in the White House after 8 years. And not only that, but after 8 years of Trump and a more diverse electorate, leftists could be set for a landslide victory in 2024 and be able to push much more of their agenda through in a way that could be difficult with a non-democratic-socialist in the White House and a more evenly divided Senate. From a leftist perspective wouldn’t it, therefore, be better to wait until 2024 instead of Joe Biden making marginal gains now? During radical times, moderate success can be a liability. If Joe Biden wins, Republicans will be in a better position in 2024 to run the “change” candidate, i.e. somebody whose younger, more charismatic, more ideologically-pure, more ethnic, and more anti-establishment, such as the increasingly popular 2016 Republican runner-up Ted Cruz who currently has the #1 podcast in the country. Of course, it’s a big gamble to bet on 2024 (even for disillusioned conservatives in the reverse case) because if 2016 has taught us anything it’s that a lot can happen from now till then. And so although many leftists are not actively cheerleading for Trump to win in order to create their dream 2024 scenario because there are so many ways that Machiavellian strategy could backfire, it’s enough of a hope for many leftists to keep their pom-poms at home.

We should murder the death penalty! The death penalty used to have broader support because it was believed to be a deterrent, but the evidence is clear it is not... "Scientists agree, by an overwhelming majority, that the death penalty has no deterrent effect. They felt the same way over ten years ago, and nothing has changed since then. States without the death penalty continue to have significantly lower murder rates than those that retain capital punishment." — Amnesty International In fact, some experts believe the death penalty leads to a higher rate of murders in the states where it exists, which they call the “brutalization hypothesis.” Death penalty supporters often fall back on the argument, “At least it saves money!” But in reality, it doesn’t… “Studies of the California death penalty system, the largest in the US, have revealed that a death sentence costs at least 18 times as much as a sentence of life without parole would cost.” — DeathPenalty.org Death penalty supporters then say “it [could] save money if the state didn’t allow for so many appeals,” but then you must compare an ideal to an ideal! Ideally, we could also bring down the cost of imprisonment, in fact, we could make it a financial net-positive by giving those locked up the opportunity to contribute to society. When given the option, a lot of people behind bars choose to work because it gives them a sense of worth. You also have to consider that in the Age of Abundance, the cost of food, water, energy, construction, surveillance has been dropping exponentially. I will also add that the people who commit 1st-degree murder often have deranged minds and if we were to look at the glass-half-full then we could see that these minds are so unique that perhaps they can see and do things the rest of us can’t. As Steve Jobs said, “It’s the crazy ones” that change the world. In one their minds may be the next great song or poem or book or invention or painting… (Pogo the Clown painted the above image. He was the inspiration for Stephen King’s “It” where he murdered more than 30 young men and boys while luring them as a children’s entertainer.) Or at least they could help the police in stopping people like them from committing a similar crime in the future… And sure, the state could save money by just hanging people from the tallest tree in order to reduce the costs of capital punishment, but then that would inevitably lead to more innocent Americans dying at the hands of We the People… "Since 1992, DNA has exonerated more than 20 death row inmates, but DNA has only been available in a fraction of capital cases." Supporters then say, “Since DNA is making it easier to convict beyond a reasonable doubt then we can kill with even more self-righteous certainty.” But technology is constantly evolving. Maybe today it’s easier to discern who committed murder (although DNA doesn’t prove premeditation, which is required for the death penalty), but who is to say that in 30 years with crisper, face/finger-print surgeries, deep fake technology, etc, that it couldn’t end up being more difficult to discern who is guilty of a crime, especially for those who have the money to employ such advanced forms of deception? Is it so hard to imagine a rich serial killer employing these technologies to pin the blame on some innocent person? The death penalty is also used as a bargaining chip, which in my opinion, is antithetical to a “fair trial”. Imagine if you were falsely accused of murder and your lawyer sits you down and says, “We can take your case to trial where if found guilty you will get the death penalty or you can plead guilty and get life without parole. I recommend you take the plea.” An emotionally-stable person would probably say, “No, thanks.” But an emotionally-distraught easily-suggestible individual could very well say yes. Finally, there’s the emotional aspect where people want revenge on behalf of the victim! Blood for blood! But perhaps we as a country can leave final judgment to God? Blind rage justice is not blind justice. Instead of playing God, the state should be limited in its role as executioner by only being allowed to kill people out of national self-defense. Someone whose locked up behind bars presents zero threat to our national security (and in fact, through their knowledge (as I mentioned before) or their connections could help prevent a future murder or attack. And if you think its smart to keep terrorists/mafia/cartel alive for the information they can provide then how is it fair to kill someone else simply because they lack those murderous connections?). Gandhi said it best, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

The three main reasons I’ve heard in the media for Joe Kennedy III’s defeat: not a clear enough campaign message, didn’t go negative soon enough, didn’t go far enough left. But those three reasons are weak because Kennedy started with a 10-point lead in the polls so the onus was on Markey to differentiate himself whereas Kennedy used the same message that his relatives John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy successfully used to win their senate seats, i.e. he would do “more for Massachusetts.” And then as to the other reasons, Joe Kennedy’s negativity most likely hurt him with progressives, which I’ll get into in a second, and then finally there was little ideological difference between Joe Kennedy and Edward Markey as they were both campaigning for “racial justice,” Medicare-for-All, and the Green New Deal. The real reason for Joe Kennedy III’s defeat can best be encapsulated by a moment. 43 minutes into the last Massachusetts U.S. Senate Democratic Debate: Senator Markey: All I want him to do is tell his father to stop spending money on negative commercials in Massachuettes in the era of Trump. We should all be positive with a big vision for where this country is going. Instead the Congressman is running a relentlessly negative campaign which I do not think is good for Massachuettes and he should tell his brother and his father to stop it. Congressman Kennedy: Senator, if we’re going to… {pauses to collect thoughts}… Your campaign supporters have put out tweets, and bullied my supporters, and have put out tweets saying, ‘Lee Harvey got the wrong Kennedy.’ That, ‘Where is Lee Harvey Oswald?’ And not a word coming from you. Not a word! So cut the complaining about negative attacks! Of course, Senator Markey quickly denounced those tweets and proceeded to point out the inconvenient fact that whoever said those mean things isn’t affiliated with his campaign, i.e. a staffer/volunteer/family. Congressman Kennedy never named the user who sent those tweets so we can only conclude it was somebody with a stock icon and a username like JaneDoe53 or IAmNotARussianBot2342. But by invoking his great uncle’s assassination to try and score political points, it showed just how far Congressman Kennedy was willing to go to win. Congressman Kennedy’s attack line was an unfair complaint because how could he reasonably expect Senator Markey to apologize every time one of 262 million Twitter users says something mean about him or his family? It’s also a poor excuse to say that so long as people say mean things on Twitter then Senator Markey can’t complain about his father and brother spending millions of dollars on negative attack ads via a Super PAC. It’s difficult to imagine Congressman Kennedy genuinely being angry at Senator Markey for something presumably IAmTotallyAMasschuettesDemocraticVoter300 said, and if he was distraught over it then perhaps he could have brought that up in a private conversation first. For this reason, it seems far more likely that he and his staffers thought the attack line was something that would play well with the mainstream media and the “emotional masses.” It was calculating over sincere, but it wasn’t even a good calculation because the very people Joe Kennedy was trying to win over in the campaign, i.e. progressives, had been upset by that same line of logic being used against Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primary to somehow blame Senator Sanders for every mean thing someone who supposedly supports him had said on the internet. Ultimately, despite Joe Kennedy III starting the campaign with more media-support, money, name-recognition, and a 10-point lead in the polls, he lost to Senator Markey 55%/44%. This massive swing in support doesn’t occur because your political messaging is fuzzy or you aren’t sufficiently left enough when both candidates were running as progressives. This swing in support can best be explained by Joe Kennedy III’s insincerity on the campaign trail and in the debates. And to support my claim I’ll take a page out of Joe Kennedy’s book and quote random people on the internet. These were some of the top YouTube comments of their debate, which YouTube swings toward a younger demographic who Kennedy was expected to do well with. About three hours after the polls closed, Congressman Kennedy conceded. Concession speeches are usually an opportunity for a candidate to bow out gracefully and earn some respect and sympathy from even their sharpest critics. I did a quick YouTube search of various concession speeches: Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Elizabeth Warren. Every concession speech I saw had more likes than dislikes, except one — Joe Kennedy III’s.

One of my key political beliefs is that cheap is better than free! You see we hear politicians promise “free” stuff, but what they’re really promising is a government monopoly, but monopolies are never good, whether they be public or private because they lead to rising costs and diminishing quality. This is why I not only differ with the socialist-left, but also the libertarian-right because the free market can lead to the consolidation of power too, but instead of being in a few government officials hands it’ll be in a few private individuals hands, which is preferable to the former because they won't have a trillion-dollar military behind them, but it’s still far from ideal because once these corporate monopolies become entrenched they can be very difficult to break up. To break up a corporate monopoly, you either need to embrace your inner Teddy Roosevelt, increase taxes on them to level the playing field, or hope some new technology that could be 10, 50, 100 years away will be capable of dislodging them. So I believe rather than the government trying to make things “free” by taking over the market it should make things “cheap” by growing the market. Using this chart, we can see Americans spend the most amount of money on housing, transportation, food, healthcare, and education… So I think the central question we should be asking ourselves is, “How can we reduce costs in these areas so Americans can have more disposable income?” And don't get it twisted... making things cheaper is not an ideological purity test. There are proposals on the left and on the right that can help reduce costs. For example, a “public option” in housing, transportation, food, healthcare, and education could help spur competition and therefore reduce costs and increase quality. Most conservatives support a “public option” for K - 12 education, aka vouchers. Most conservatives support a “public option” for transportation, i.e. trains, buses, and sidewalks. But the problem with a “public option” is that the government is not operating on the same market based incentives as the rest of the competition, which means a “public option” can be sabotaged by conservatives who want to make sure it’s underfunded so they can say, “See! I told you it would be bad!” or conversely it could be so well-funded that private companies couldn’t compete to the point where the “public option” overtime would turn into a government monopoly, which is what a lot of Democrats openly hope for and believe will happen when it comes to healthcare, i.e. Pete Buttigieg saying in the debates that his “public option” would eventually become medicare-for-all because everyone would want it. But personally, I believe if there is to be a “public option” then it should be done at the state level, i.e. Romneycare in Massachusetts. Overall though, and this is what makes me more conservative in political philosophy, the evidence seems clear that the way to make things cheaper is by creating a largely free market. When you look at the least regulated parts of our economy you see the most amount of competition, higher innovation, lower costs, and higher quality… Industries in red have some level of regulatory control, while industries in blue have the least. According to Mark J. Perry, who serves as a scholar at AEI and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan's Flint campus, this chart demonstrates the negatives of government controlled industries. Just imagine if we treated healthcare like electronics! There would be so much more innovation in the industry! Billions of lives would be saved as there’d be so many more vaccines, cures, and doctors. Prices would dramatically come down as consumers would be much more price conscious. Quality would go up as consumers would have much more choice and look at their doctors Yelp reviews with the same critical eye they bring to buying a hamburger. No more paying $1,000 for a CT scan. After all guys, socialists love capitalist doctors… for themselves! And imagine if the government stopped giving 18-year-olds $200,000 in unforgivable loans! Colleges would have to drop their tuition since no one would be able to afford it anymore. The price of colleges would drop down to 1980s levels when there was less government intrusion and perhaps even lower as there are many more colleges and online options today. And you know what, the vast majority of Democrats agree with me! They acknowledge that if we made these markets freer then prices would come down (again, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that this would be the case), but then here is what Democrats say to me, “But what about the poor? Even if prices come down they still couldn’t afford it. That’s not fair! College and healthcare are a human right!" (should we guarantee jobs, what is a jobs guarantee, do republicans support guaranteed jobs, will republicans pass a jobs guarantee)

Throughout the 2020 DNC Convention we may have heard this word 100 times. It serves as the "backbone" of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign. That word is... empathy!!! Be empathetic! Be compassionate! We apparently need politicians to "restore the soul of America." Pathos! Pathos! Pathos! (2020 dnc convention breakdown, ) We heard "empathy" thrown around a lot at the DNC Convention, but I don’t want a self-appointed Uncle Joe or Auntie Michelle Obama to take care of me. I got my own family and I can take care of myself, thank you very much! I don’t want “empathetic” leaders, which I do find odd that the way to empathy and love is through dehumanizing and hating your opposition, but nonetheless even if they did “go high” by raising the intellectual discourse instead of constantly playing to voter’s heartstrings then I still wouldn’t want the median American voter to have too much control over my — education, healthcare, housing, work, consumption, life. “H*ll is paved with good intentions.” — John Jay I don’t want politicians who think with their hearts. I want a more Calvin Coolidge-esque president… “We must have no carelessness in our dealings with public property or the expenditure of public money. Such a condition is characteristic either of an undeveloped people, or of a decadent civilization. America is neither. It stands out strong and vigorous and mature. We must have an administration which is marked, not by the inexperience of youth, or the futility of age, but by the character and ability of maturity. We have had the self control to put into effect the Budget system, to live under it and in accordance with it. It is an accomplishment in the art of self government of the very highest importance. It means that the American Government is not a spendthrift, and that it is not lacking in the force or disposition to organize and administer its finances in a scientific way.” — Calvin Coolidge If you want to be empathetic then go into a non-profit (or business). Non-profits and for-profits have more pressure to deliver positive results whereas politicians just need to deliver a good speech. We need less “empaths” in government who take pleasure from the applause of “the masses” and we need more engineers in government who take pleasure in creating more efficient well-oiled systems with very little fluff and glitter. The federal government should be a solid, sturdy, cold, dispassionate structure. And then it’s for local governments, charities, businesses, and individuals to inject more of their hearts into their own respective domains because freedom is about giving people more creative control over their lives. And this way, if these more localized units make a mistake then not only would it affect less people, but it’d also be easier to undo whereas mistakes on the federal level often get lost behind its complexity and a warm smile.

I see the American flag being burned… I see people posting about how America “stole the land” with no regard for historical context… I see young people’s solution to all America’s problems is some form of a government monopoly… This flawed thinking has in large part been created by our education system, which has indoctrinated America’s youth to hate America. I say, Enough is enough! High schools should teach U.S. Constitution 101. This should be a mandatory class students should have to pass before graduating high school. The U.S. Constitution is only 4 pages or 4,543 words. With amendments, the U.S. Constitution is 7,591 words. The question I'd like you to ask yourselves is how is this not already required reading?! Can you think of you any other piece of American literature that has been so relevant for so long? In high school, I spent months reading the Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Romeo and Juliet, The Odyssey, which I’m not passing any judgement, but perhaps we could spend as much time on the concerns of the Founding Fathers as we did on the complaints of Holden Caulfield? And U.S. Constitution 101 could take the place of another history class because the problem with covering a large swath of history in such a short period of time is that the textbook writers have an enormous amount of power to cherrypick what people and events to cover and for how many pages. For example, U.S. history classes today put a lot of emphasis on victimized “groups” and “movements”, but there is less emphasis on the individuals who have done the most to shape the way the world is today, i.e. history classes put more emphasis on political actors over businesspeople and innovators. Just a few days ago, I watched John Oliver’s take on U.S. History classes where he equates the historical significance of Tulsa to the Dinosaurs. Now should Tulsa be taught in our high schools? Maybe, but John Oliver feigns shock at the idea high school students haven’t heard of the 21 black individuals who died in 1921 due to racially driven violence meanwhile most high school students can’t name a single WW1 battle from 1914 - 1918 where millions of people died due to ethnically and nationally driven violence, which the U.S. arguably did more than any other nation to stop. So if you want to paint America as particularly evil… focus on Tulsa. If you want to paint America as particularly heroic and progressive… focus on a WW1 battle. Generally speaking, U.S. history classes today act as if humanity’s pitfalls are unique to America (mistreating conquered peoples, slavery, poverty, racism) but then U.S. history classes ignore what actually makes America unique: treated conquered peoples better than virtually every other nation on Earth, America is the 1% of the world, America is the most diverse nation in the world, oldest democracy, #1 in innovation, saved world multiple times, could conquer the world with most powerful weapon ever devised but chose to provide aid instead, American dream, only majority white country to elect a black president, etc (I’m happy to respectfully engage with you on any of these facts in the comments if you’d like). So on Day 1 the teacher should begin the class with a simple question: “What makes us American?” And after getting some feedback, the teacher could then pull out of his pocket the U.S. Constitution, “This.” And then hand it out, “Welcome to Constitution 101!” Day 1 would be about how unique the document is in human history and how progressive it was for its time. After Day 1, students should be walking out of the classroom with a greater patriotism and reverence for our constitution... READ: https://www.quora.com/profile/Anthony-Galli-5

Did the United States of America steal its land from the Native Americans?Yes, if you define “stolen” as “take without permission.” But then in that case, all land is stolen! (Did America steal its land from the Native Americans?, America Steal the Land, America Stolen Land, did america steal this land, did america steal mount rushmore, did america take the land from the indians, did the us steal native land, america conquered native americans, why america didnt steal the land from native americans, who does america belong to, americans and native americans fought for land)