Friday, September 11, 2026
America's Bismarck: How Lincoln Created Industrial America - The Globalist
This website has a more negative take on Lincoln than I like. However, I didn't know how strongly Lincoln supported industrialization and economic development, and how he pushed policies that encouraged industrialization. This is in stark contrast to Thomas Jefferson, who thought that we should be a nation of farmers. Initially, we were.
I am watching the movie Lincoln for the third time. This film gave me a more favorable impression of Lincoln.
The most common criticism of Lincoln that I tend to agree with is that he was President during one of the bloodiest wars in our history. Although the exact number is not clear, somewhere between 650,000 and 750,000 people died as a result of the war.
Although the South fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, Lincoln's cabinet had discussed evacuating the garrison to avoid war with the South. Instead, Lincoln decided to provision the garrison rather than evacuate it. He sent supplies but initially no additional troops or weapons. The Confederates chose to attack the fort before the supply expedition arrived, beginning the armed conflict.
Many people have argued that Lincoln could have avoided war by accepting Southern secession temporarily and attempting to negotiate reunification later. Although slavery was a just cause, Lincoln said that if he could restore the Union without freeing a single slave, he would do so.
Lincoln made it clear in his inaugural speech that he would not allow the South to peacefully secede from the Union. He compared the Union to a contract that all parties were bound to.
So it is easy to view Lincoln as a man who was prepared to risk a bloody war rather than negotiate.
Lincoln said that people think that he controlled events, but that, in fact, events controlled him.
He also made statements indicating that he believed Blacks and Whites were not equal, and at one point explicitly said that he favored Whites occupying a superior position.
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
Thoughts on the Election
If you ask people what they are for, they are more likely to tell you what they are against. People are much less united about what they want, but they will unite in lockstep against something they oppose. However, there is a danger that, in their opposition, people will vote for something just as bad or worse.
This is why politics is so negative. There are distortions where politicians describe the other side as evil, far beyond any actual reality, because that is how they unite voters behind them. It might not matter that their side is also flawed, just as long as the other side appears worse.
So politics is primarily reactionary.
I repeatedly think to myself that nobody will believe the rhetoric that is being thrown around, but apparently they do. The roughly 10 to 20% of voters in the middle can be persuaded to one side or the other, mostly by things that they don't like about the current government. This middle group has the power to decide elections because everyone else is already committed to their side.
Of course, turnout is vital to an election. Often, a flawed candidate will simply not motivate their voters to show up at the polls.
I think that the political left is more united in its goals. If you ask 20 people on the right what they are for, you might get 10 different answers. However, even though the left doesn't always admit it, they seem more united in their goal of establishing some kind of socialism. They have kept their eye on the prize, and everything they say they want is just another incremental step in that direction.
Individual voters have no power to decide elections. Whether or not you show up to the polls will have zero effect on the election. For this reason, I feel that politics has become a spectator sport, where both sides hope their team wins and the other team loses.
It seems to me that maybe the incentives are all wrong. The federal government has become so powerful that I hardly care about or pay attention to local and state elections. For this reason, I like the idea I saw recently that we should go back to having senators appointed by the states. Although it is less "democratic," it would counterbalance having two branches of Congress elected by popular vote by having state interests also considered. It would also incentivize people to pay more attention to local and state elections.
The incentives are wrong because the system rewards people for voting for government spending. However, we are going bankrupt so fast that I see little hope for the future of this country. We are headed toward a situation where fiscal reality is going to hit us upside the head very soon, and we are going to have to contend with the fact that we have run out of money.
I consider it my birthright to live in a free country. I feel that I was promised a government that had constitutional limits to its power, as dictated by Section 1, Article 8 of the Constitution. However, constitutional limits disappeared before I was born, mostly bolstered by liberal Supreme Courts that ruled that the Interstate Commerce Clause gave the federal government nearly unlimited power. As a result, I have no right to freedom beyond what mob rule will allow.
Sunday, September 6, 2026
Allie Stuckey Shows How Left WEAPONIZES "Toxic Empathy"
Saturday, September 5, 2026
Lindsay Clancy
One lady called into the Clay and Buck show and said that they don't understand psychosis. She said that she had wanted to kill her children, but got medical help and now takes antipsychotic medication. The lady said that she is afraid to stop taking her medication.
I find it easy to believe that people can go crazy. I already have that opinion about a few people. It appears that mental illness is fairly common.
I think that for a woman to kill her children is a crazy act by definition. There might be a few rare psychopaths who don't care and think that they can get away with the crime, but I doubt that they would try to kill themselves afterward. However, even psychopathy is a form of mental illness, although it is not the kind of crazy delusion where they don't know what they are doing.
Trying to kill oneself by simply jumping out of a second-story window is illogical, if not crazy, or it could be a carefully planned manipulation.
EVERYTHING You Need to Know About the Lindsay Clancy Case
I expressed my opinion in a previous post. I think that either side could be right and that it might be impossible to know for sure. I only hope that the jury makes a well-informed and wise decision.
I served on a jury once. It was a borderline DUI case in which the woman was barely under the legal alcohol limit, but she failed every part of the Field Sobriety Test, which the state claimed showed that she was impaired. Under Utah law, if she was impaired, she could still be convicted even if she was under the legal limit.
The Field Sobriety Test involves tests that I know I would fail. The testing officer looks for nystagmus in your eyes, which I have naturally, and makes you perform physical tasks that I could not reproduce when I tried them in the jury room. I lost my balance. By the way, you are under no legal obligation to take this test, although, as a result, they may want to draw your blood at the police station.
The arresting officer offered his opinion that the woman was impaired and quoted an unnamed scientific study to support it. They never showed us any studies or called any experts.
As a juror, I didn't think that the state had proven its case—not in any scientific or logically consistent way. Although I was ready to vote not guilty, the other three people on the jury, all women, were vehement that the woman was guilty. After arguing for hours, the other jurors browbeat me into voting guilty. I felt that this was a close enough case that I could vote guilty, but I was never happy with the result.