How America Falls

Our conservative movement needs an overhaul and must be held accountable

A year ago, on May 8, 2024, I authored an X thread, "How America falls," which addressed a question many in the United States and the West were then—and still are—properly asking:

How was it possible for the far-left to seize control of nearly every institution at the core of our civil society?

It remains a vital question.

It is equally important, as we proceed with attempting to reverse these losses, that we answer this question with great accuracy and specificity for the following reason: In answering this important question, we can begin to address the deficiencies that—let's be honest—came dangerously close to collapsing the nation and the West at large.

A year later, of course, the state of affairs looks more promising. The basis for optimism is almost entirely attributable to President Donald Trump’s resilience and persistence throughout the 2024 presidential election cycle, which culminated with his electrifying November 5 victory, in which he won the Electoral College convincingly, 312 to 226, and was the first Republican presidential candidate in two decades to win the popular vote, securing over 77 million votes, over 2 million more than Kamala Harris.

Call this a mandate—and we must act with urgency on it.

But imagine the state of the world and nation had Trump, for whatever reason (lawfare, voter fraud, or simple electoral defeat), fallen short.

Now is an ideal time for us to perform a thorough assessment of how the ascent of the far-left nearly captured this nation and could again if we are not taking responsive and corrective steps in response to these significant losses.

What follows, with a few edits, is what I wrote a year ago about this:

Unlike conservatism, Marxism and Maoism are totalitarian ideologies that place significant emphasis on operational tactics, which is necessary because they rely on a small but highly disciplined minority to impose their alien agenda on a vastly larger majority that they intuitively know rejects it. We must concede the obvious: They have enjoyed great success in doing just this.

Seldom noted, however, is this fact:

As they have gone about successfully advancing their alien ideology, the far-left also has been simultaneously assessing and testing the resolve of this vastly larger centrist and conservative majority they oppose—and the political party (the Republican National Committee) and various well-funded organizations, advocacy groups, and think tanks that purport to represent it.

So, for instance, the far-left has asked:

1. What would the Republican and conservative establishment do if we actually manipulated a presidential election and installed an illegitimate president in their great nation?

Answer: As they saw, not much. In fact, the Republican National Committee and its affiliates, which had the most resources to assess and document fraud and irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, has to this day still not affirmed Biden's illegitimacy, despite the fact that a sizable majority of registered Republicans have acknowledged it. Nor have the lion's share of large conservative institutions or most conservative media documented or acknowledged this fact. It is unsettling, but it is a reality we largely allowed.

2. What would the Republican and conservative establishment do if we fully opened the borders to their great nation and began using every governmental and global resource available to import millions of illegal aliens, including foreign agents, terrorists, cartel and gang leaders, and violent criminals?

Answer: As they saw, not much. Sure, the GOP and conservative organizations predictably used it as a successful fundraising mechanism. Sure, they commented on its outrageousness. But no coherent plan emerged to stop it. It is unsettling, but it is a reality we largely allowed.

3. What would the Republican and conservative establishment do if we handed Afghanistan, where over 2,400 American heroes were killed over the 20-year post-9/11 war on terror, right back to the terrorist Taliban?

Answer: As they saw, nothing. It is unsettling, but it is a reality we largely allowed.

These are just three examples of conservative and centrist inaction and failure on a seemingly unlimited list of such disengaged defeats. The point is this: At every step, the far-left has not just succeeded; they have succeeded with relative ease, which is immensely dangerous for two reasons:

First, obviously, they have made enormous, impressive, and expeditious progress in advancing their ambitious and alien agenda.

But second and less noted, the ease with which they secured these victories has left them increasingly brazen, emboldened, optimistic, energized, and inspired to persist in their grand quest: Taking down the freest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation in world history.

How an ideological minority prevails

How is it possible for such a small number of hardened ideologues with the most alien and unappealing ideals to succeed in imposing their will on the vast majority of Americans who clearly oppose them?

It is not attributable to the far-left's size or their power of persuasion, both of which are unimpressive. Rather, it is because they have assembled and embraced operational discipline and basic leadership traits, including collaboration, strategic planning, unity, unyielding focus, boldness, relentless diligence, and accountability for results. The conservative and centrist movements, conversely, have not.

A history of common denominators

In their most graphic forms, history is filled with examples of how the far-left has secured power over larger centrist and conservative majorities in their respective nations.

It all began with the October Revolution of 1917. It continued with the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, the communist revolution in Cuba in 1959, the communist Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1979, and similar totalitarian communist power grabs.

Importantly, in each of these and others, there are several common denominators employed by the communist left that may appear familiar to those who have watched the rapid and seemingly unchallenged ascent of the far-left in the West in recent years:

1. Each revolutionary force promised the people a better life and represented that they spoke for the downtrodden. Once they obtained power, however, these promises were quickly abandoned, and the plight of the poor universally worsened under their governance;

2. Each sought to persuade citizens to distance themselves from tradition and even feel guilt over such traditions. They viewed the family, churches, education, and other traditional institutions as enemies, and quickly eradicated or replaced them with revolutionary substitutes;

3. Each ultimately obtained power through deception. They concealed their communist, militant, and extremist ideological inclinations, and even disavowed such labels until they assumed power and became glaringly obvious; and

4. Once assuming power, each sought to monopolize power at all levels of society, outlawing, eliminating, or taking control of all aspects of society, including churches, media, non-profit organizations, education, private enterprise, and other institutions that typically operate outside of political or government control.

Chronicling America's demise is not leadership

Conversely, over the past few decades, especially in the post-Reagan era, our nation's conservative movement and Republican establishment have been engaged in almost uniformly performative and reactive undertakings, largely chronicling America's demise—writing books, hosting television shows and podcasts, giving lectures, and the like in which they largely document our defeats. While it has brought a good number of conservatives some degree of wealth and fame, it never represented a serious macro-level plan for halting the advance of this smaller but vastly better disciplined radical movement, which saw these deficiencies and set about swiftly seizing control of nearly every institution at the core of civil society.

Time for assessment and overhaul

One conclusion should be obvious to all: We cannot go forward with the same tactics and leadership deficiencies and expect a different outcome. We are now at a historical crossroads that demands a sustainable conservative and centrist movement that is not designed to narrate our nation's demise, but is accountable for and focused on its comeback.

None of us can accomplish this grand undertaking in isolation. It must be a collaborative undertaking. We also must keep score and hold those responsible to account for incremental and overall outcomes, which to date we have failed to do.

The past few decades have proven that populist movements, including the Tea Party and MAGA movements, can successfully alter the nation's political direction, but these successes need to be institutionalized.

We also should reject the notion that there is anything particularly new about the magnitude of this undertaking. In fact, from the first bullets at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the common theme of the nation's history has been the great challenges and threats we have confronted.

The nation's survival is now on the line, but this has been the case many times before. It is a testament to American greatness that, in their respective eras, each generation before ours has united to successfully ensure the preservation of American freedom and sovereignty.

This generation cannot shrink from this challenge. Saving the nation at this point is an undertaking that should not be underestimated; it is going to be difficult and complex. But reclaiming it once it once it is gone will prove vastly more so.

The Roar of the Forgotten Man and Woman

Why Trump Prevailed—and Deserved To

By Michael Johns

On February 14, 2017, I spoke to the Cornell Political Union at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, on the promise of Donald Trump’s presidency. My lecture, "Trumpism Can Make America Great Again," follows:

Last time I was here was over a year ago when my son Michael was looking at Cornell. He loves this school and this organization—and anything he loves, I do too. So thanks to all of you for the work you do, the discussion you facilitate, and the important contribution you make to this great institution. Cornell is one of the world’s premier universities, and your intellectual curiosity and search for answers to our world's and nation’s problems are a big contribution to that greatness.

On the drive up here tonight, I happened to see how this university describes itself on its Twitter feed. It’s a great description: "Teaching tomorrow’s thought leaders to think otherwise and create knowledge with a public purpose." Tonight I’m going to do exactly that: I’m going to try to get you to think a little differently—to see what over 60 million Americans saw when they voted for Trump, and we’ll do all of this with the spirit that we’ll use this knowledge to serve the higher public purpose of enhancing the greatness of our nation, which requires of each subsequent American generation that they defend and continually improve it for all Americans.

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We have just undergone the closest thing to a revolution in American politics as one can have in our Constitutional Republic, and tonight I will attempt to explain it objectively. I will speak tonight not to the few of you here who may already support Trump, nor those of you who consider yourselves conservatives or Republicans, but to the vast majority here tonight that I’m sure do not. These are the facts and sentiments that led to an electoral outcome you no doubt did not want and did not predict—but I’m convinced need to understand.

I come tonight not to defend Trumpism, even though you will find no more passionate advocate for it. Literally since his announcement on June 16, 2015, I defended him consistently on television, radio and in many forums—and I sought to defend or at least explain him to those prone not to hear or process his important message.

So I come to Cornell tonight not to defend Trumpism but to explain it.

For eight years and maybe longer—the totality of your adult lives in fact, this nation was headed in a decidedly left of center and globalist direction. Under this recent administration, we saw the problems of other countries as inherently ones we were obligated to solve. In many cases, we even wrongly blamed ourselves for these problems. We entered into trade agreements that worked well for other nations but failed the American worker. We opened our nation to legal and illegal immigrants—and bent over backwards to accommodate their needs, desires and cultures but never considered the impact we were having on our citizens.

This created what Trump correctly labeled in his Republican Convention acceptance speech "the forgotten man and woman"—the working American whose economic plight worsened on the watch of Obama and whose country became less identifiable to him and her. And this past November 8, the "forgotten man and woman" had seen enough—and their voice was heard loudly.

What inspired all this passion in these forgotten men and women?

Let me deal tonight with facts:

Employment: All of you have probably heard and followed the employment trends announced each month and quarter by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. You heard, for instance, that unemployment under Obama seemed to be stagnant, or even reduced. And it was always reported in single digits. In the final month of Obama’s presidency—December 2016—it was reportedly 4.9 percent, which seems not unreasonable.

But these numbers excluded the biggest story of American unemployment—the long-term unemployed and those who’d simply given up looking for work. While the short-term unemployment came down, it was only because many of those short-term unemployed Americans moved into the long-term category and ceased being reported in the primary BLS monthly survey number, which is really just a poll subject to all the inaccuracies one might see in any poll.

The employment reality in the country is actually much worse than reported. In fact, there has really been essentially zero job creation for native American citizens since 2000. The total number of Americans holding a job increased 5.7 percent from 2000 to 2014. But if you back out jobs taken by legal and illegal immigrants, the number of Americans holding jobs actually decreased 17 million between 2000 and 2014. When the longer-term unemployed are included, the number of jobless Americans is not 4.9 percent. It’s at least almost twice that—9.5 percent, and some believe considerably higher than even that.

Seldom reported in these routine "official" employment statistics was the fact that, under Obama, the number of Americans not in the labor force kept creeping upward. In December 2016, this number of Americans not in the labor force reached an all-time high: 95,102,000. That's nearly thirty percent of our entire nation. On Obama’s watch, it’s a fact that a bad employment situation got even worse and that the "forgotten man and woman" has been hurt and is hurting.

Economic growth: We first began formally recording the most important economic growth metric—gross domestic product growth—in the early 1930s. In the time since, every President until Obama had at least one year under their leadership where the country’s GDP grew by at least three percent. But in the eight years under his management, Obama was the first president since GDP was first recorded to not muster even one year of three percent growth or higher. On economic growth, as with jobs, Washington has been failing the "forgotten man and woman."

Debt: On Obama’s watch, our national debt doubled from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. This incremental, additional $10 trillion in debt that Obama added literally exceeds the cumulative debt total of every U.S. President from Washington through George W. Bush. In his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama famously said that George W. Bush’s contribution to the public debt was literally "unpatriotic" in his words. But Obama then went on to double it—all without ever retracting his "unpatriotic" comment about Bush or questioning his own patriotism.

Taxes: Under Obama, our corporate tax rate was—and still is--the highest in the developed world, which has made the U.S. an increasingly uncompetitive location to do business—and it showed as company after company left during his and previous administrations. And despite Obama’s campaign promise that he would only raise taxes on the rich, he increased them substantially on working Americans too, including with taxes associated with Obamacare and the penalty for non-enrollment. In fact, despite his campaign pledge, Obama increased over 20 different taxes that specifically penalized and harmed the poor and working class American. On taxes too, the "forgotten man and woman" was both betrayed and forgotten.

Poverty: Obama ran for election in 2008 promising to lift up the nation’s poor, and that’s a goal we conservatives share too. It was a centerpiece of his campaign. Yet here too, he failed by every significant metric. The nation’s poverty rate was higher on Obama’s departure than it was upon his arrival, increasing roughly 3.5 percent on his watch. Real household income decreased 2.3 percent during his presidency. And under Obama, Americans’ dependence on food stamps rose considerably—to an all-time high of 47 million Americans, or 13 million more than before Obama took office. Great lip service was paid to addressing poverty, but here too the "forgotten man and woman" and the country's poor were left worse off.

Regulatory costs: Obama's regulations were no friend to the "forgotten man and woman" either. He imposed over 20,000 new regulations on the American economy—many of them offering negligible value and all of them weighing heavily on working Americans, whose employers were forced to absorb over an astounding $700 billion in costs associated with these regulations, which harmed employment, harmed wages, made America less competitve, and ultimately harmed the “forgotten man and woman” considerably.

Home ownership: Home ownership admittedly might be exaggerated as an indicator of a nation’s economic healthiness but it’s certainly a metric that most want to see increasing. But like just about every other indicator under Obama, it moved in the wrong direction on Obama’s watch, falling 5.6 percent during his eight years in the White House.

Wages: One of the most important metrics to the "forgotten man and woman," wages did not come even close to keeping pace with inflation under Obama, especially in such important sectors such as housing, food, and tuition. In fact, for roughly 35 years, as we ignored the "forgotten man and woman," wages in this nation have been outpaced by inflation, contributing considerably to economic despair and anxieties for the "forgotten man and woman."

Healthcare: When Obama ran for president in 2008, he told us over and over again about the 46 million Americans without health insurance—and also about how he would fix this problem. And don’t worry, he famously and repeatedly promised, "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. And if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance."

But eight years later, there are still tens of millions of Americans without any health insurance—and for those who enrolled in the Obamacare plan, which had to be passed, Nancy Pelosi said, so we could know what was in it, it turned out to be a vast expansion of federal intrusion into Americans’ healthcare and a program that offered little real value to most since both its premiums and deductibles were cost prohibitive.

If Obamacare costs you roughly $5,000 a year in monthly premiums and the deductible is that or even more, can you really say you’re insured? For most Americans, Obamacare has proven a very costly catastrophic care plan that was nothing as advertised. And contrary to what Obama promised, millions lost their health insurance and lost their doctors as the new coverage mandates forced employers to drop plans and physicians left insurance plans that were paying lower allowables or proving unduly bureaucratic and time-consuming from a claim filing perspective. Again, the "forgotten man and woman" was betrayed.

Legal and illegal immigration: This is a sensitive topic because we are all correctly taught that we should be inclusive to people, religions and cultures that are different from our own, and I agree that we should.

But it’s also true that the mass legal and illegal immigration of the past few decades has shaken the fabric of many communities. Where English was once spoken universally, it is now spoken less so. I saw one public high school recently where 22 languages were spoken. Accommodating these students who were not fluent in English had become the preoccupation of the school—and at the expense of basic learning.

And of course we have all read of the other changes that have shaken the foundation of traditional American society. The decorated Christmas tree that once stood every December in the public square and was a source of community pride is now deemed offensive to some immigrants who reject Christianity and want its symbolism removed from communities where it is has long stood. "Christmas break" must now be called "winter break." And the "forgotten man and woman" is deemed "insensitive" if he or she is not welcoming to all aspects of foreign cultures, sometimes up to and including Sharia law that violates the very foundation of the American Constitution.

As millions of immigrants entered the U.S.—both legally and illegally--from seemingly every Third World nation of the world these past few decades, no one paused to ask the "forgotten man and woman" how they felt about it, or whether it was strengthening or dividing their communities and nation. The reality is that this mass immigration has driven up unemployment, driven down wages as the labor pool has expanded but jobs have not, burdened public resources that were already heavily burdened, and been at the core of several brutal terrorist incidents and many, many criminal incidents.

To the "forgotten man and woman," it’s difficult to understand why we need more people in this nation when we have nearly 100 million Americans not in the labor force; our schools, highways, hospitals, welfare programs and other public resources are increasingly overcrowded or stretched thin, and when these many immigrants have arrived in the U.S. wholly unprepared and sometimes even unwilling to integrate into our nation. And there has been a substantial cost to taxpayers from this mass immigration. As of 2010, the cost per illegal immigrant to American taxpayers was nearly $25,000 per illegal immigrant, including child welfare, education, and public infrastructure costs.

Then there’s the issue of all of the associated crime committed by these illegal immigrants. I often hear that "not all illegal immigrants are criminals," which of course is untrue. The first thing they did upon entering our nation was break our federal and state laws. But many have gone on to commit still more crimes, and many very serious felonies.

A few years ago, I was one of the first to write of the case of Josh Wilkerson, an 18-year-old Texan who was beaten to death, strangled and set on fire by an illegal immigrant who had many times before been deported. When Josh’s mother Laura buried her son, the mass immigration and open borders advocates were nowhere to be found. She received no letter or condolences from Obama. She was, in so many ways, the quintessential "forgotten American."

Nor are these one-off cases. In 2014, illegal immigrants were an estimated 3.5 percent of the total U.S. population but comprised 36.7 percent of all federal criminal sentences. That’s an astonishing and alarming statistic—and once again the victim is almost entirely the "forgotten man and woman." The "forgotten man and woman" was victimized by the crime in most cases. And the "forgotten man and woman" is left with the burden of paying to incarcerate an illegal immigrant who never should have been here in the first place.

And then there is the issue of drugs. The porous southern border has become a primary entry point for some of the country’s most harmful drugs, including heroin, Fentanyl and a wide range of opioids. As the children of the "forgotten man and woman" fell victim to addiction and overdoses, not one singular national political leader took action on the obvious first step in solving the crisis: Closing the open southern border through which most of these illegal drugs were entering our nation. In fact, for thirty years at least, both parties in Washington have talked about securing our southern border, but they never did. It took Trump to answer this call from the "forgotten man and woman" to take the hugely reasonable step of securing it. The chant "build that wall" heard at seemingly every Trump campaign rally in the 2016 presidential campaign was the chant of the "forgotten man and woman" who had witnessed first hand the costs to our nation of inaction on securing our southern border.

Trade: In the early 1990s, as a foreign policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., I championed the North American Free Agreement, or NAFTA, as a trade agreement that would prove positive for both Mexico and the United States. We got it at least half right. It clearly benefited Mexico, as our trade deficit with Mexico expanded and whole companies picked up and moved there. But the benefit to Americans was not a net positive. And this has been the case with American trade with just about every one of our largest trading partners the past few decades. We have shipped jobs and cash to nations of the world, and they have shipped us goods somewhat cheaper than we may have produced them ourselves. It’s also true that trade does also create American jobs. But on the whole, because our trading partners manipulate their currencies, fail to meet the regulatory standards and costs incurred in the U.S., and pay their workers substantially less, these trade agreements have largely been rigged from the beginning against the "forgotten man and woman."

Consider the staggering statistics of trade deficits with our largest trading partners:

China: $579 billion trade deficit.

Japan: $69 billion trade deficit.

Mexico: $63 billion trade deficit.

As companies and manufacturers have left communities across this nation—and this is especially true in rust belt states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and others—they left emptiness, hopelessness and desperation in their wake. Laid off by the departure of these companies, the "forgotten man and woman" and their entire communities have never since been quite the same. Drive through these states, and this fact is self-evident—and the "forgotten man and woman" will be more than happy to tell you all about it if you ask.

American strength in world: Most Americans have grown up in a nation where we have been seen globally as the world’s leader. Most saw us win the 45-year-long Cold War without firing a shot. They heard Reagan say "tear down this wall" in 1987 and then watched it fall just a few years later. Most Americans know well of how our engagement in World War II essentially saved the world. It is the view of most Americans that America should not be illogically engaged around the world. Nor can or should we seek to solve every world problem. But American strength to protect itself and address the world’s most serious crises until these past few years has never been much in question.

Over the last eight years, however, the "forgotten man and woman" watched as our military was decimated and dismantled. They saw Obama label ISIS a "JV team," only to see ISIS go on to expand its reach throughout Iraq, Syria and—through terrorist attacks—into the EU and U.S. itself. They saw Obama declare a "red line" in Syria designed to halt the humanitarian suffering in that region only to do nothing after it was violated. They saw several thousand great Americans come home from Iraq in body bags—sometimes only because their military equipment and manpower was deficient for the battlefield. They saw four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, die brutally and needlessly in Benghazi only because saving them would have proven politically inconvenient to Obama's 2012 reelection. And they saw our enemies—Iran, North Korea, and to some extent Russia—move aggressively and uncontested to expand their own military might and global reach.

In fact, on Obama’s watch, the American military fell to its weakest state of readiness at any time in history since World War II. Our fighter aircraft are the oldest and our fleet the smallest in a long period of time. For the first time since World War II, there was a period under Obama when we literally had not one naval carrier at sea anywhere in the world. Our ship strength also fell on his watch. And our ability to confront a major threat to American security from a formidable enemy—much less our ability (should the need arise) to fight two conflicts at once—fell to its weakest point since World War II. These were not oversights by Obama; they were part of a calculated policy of weakening America and thus leaving it more vulnerable than ever to aggression, terrorism and other security threats. Instead of building a military force that was best suited to fight and win wars if necessary to defend American security and interests, the "forgotten man and woman" watched on as the singular focus seemed to be turning the American military into a politically correct social experiment.

Energy: At a time when we could and should have been substantially decreasing our dependence on foreign oil we purchase—much of it from nations that don’t particularly like us—Obama refused to develop the Keystone Pipeline, to expand drilling in the U.S. and its waters, and to substantially increase our development of petroleum, natural gas, clean coal and other energy sources in our nation. In the meantime, Obama crippled the American energy sector with extensive and prohibitive regulations that only deepened our reliance on energy resources from countries not so burdened. The "forgotten man and woman" looked on as American energy workers needlessly lost their jobs from these policies and as the inability to utilize our domestic energy resources contributed to ever higher energy prices.

Infrastructure: And finally, on the issue of our national infrastructure—our airports, train systems, interstate highways—Obama talked a big game about "shovel-ready jobs" and allocated a lot toward these ends. But he has left office with our air, train, highway and other transportation systems in a state of unprecedented disrepair and certainly not competitive with other developed nations of the world. Meanwhile, many American conservatives and Republicans—skeptical of government’s ability to do much of anything well—offered no real solution to the problem. Trump, of course, arose with a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and promised to make our infrastructure cutting edge again and do so in a timely and cost-efficient fashion. It was a promise the "forgotten man and woman" was waiting to hear.

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All of this was the background and environment in which the 2016 presidential election took place. One candidate, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as a third term extension of these negative trends. She refused to acknowledge almost any of these as major problems. In fact, she wanted more of it—more refugees, more illegal immigrants, more regulations in our economy, more government intrusion into health care, even higher taxes, more government, and a continuation of a failed national security and foreign policy agenda that emboldened enemies, alienated allies and timidly refused to even utter the name of "radical Islamic terror."

Additionally, at a moment when Americans were seeking a more harmonious identity, Clinton instead continued the Obama agenda of identity politics. In seemingly every speech, she spoke of the women’s vote. She spoke of the Hispanic vote. She spoke of the African-American vote. And she spoke of the gay vote. But at almost no time did she recognize what the "forgotten man and woman" believe—that the aspirations of Americans really do not vary by gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. We want economic growth, job creation, peace and security, good schools, safe communities. At a moment when the American people wanted a unifying message, Clinton could not bring herself to break with the identity politics on which her Democratic Party increasingly rests.

Trump was much more astute. He saw that the typical American voter had seen enough of business as usual in Washington, D.C. He called out politicians and the dysfunctions they created and offered solutions to the trade, immigration and fiscal policies that were harming the "forgotten man and woman." He promised a rebuilding of American defenses, support for American law enforcement, tax and regulatory cuts to stimulate our economy, the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, renegotiation of trade agreements in terms that would be fairer to American workers, an end to illegal immigration, and a commitment to protecting an American identity that ultimately defines all of us as Americans.

Some final comments on the significance of all of this: I believe Trump’s election is precisely the sort of historic shift that the Republican Party needed if it were to survive as a national political force. If you look at 2008 and 2012, it was clear that neither McCain nor Romney, nor the messages they communicated, spoke to what the "forgotten man and woman" wanted to hear. Their candidacies were doomed to fail.

But with Trumpism, the Republican Party can once again say that it is in fact the party of working Americans.

And this, I believe, ultimately points to the legacy of Obama—not just that he left the nation worse than he found it, but that on his watch the Democratic Party was reduced to a minor, far-left political party with narrow appeal geographically and demographically.

The ultimate metric of Obama’s legacy is not just all of the statistics I have cited tonight. It’s this number: 1,030. That’s the number of state government, gubernatorial and Congressional seats the Democrats lost on Obama’s watch as he ignored and argued with the "forgotten man and woman."

It’s true that Trumpism is shunned and misunderstood by mainstream media and at prestigious universities like the one at which we gather tonight. Ultimately these institutions too need to decide whether they wish to participate in the mainstream of American political discourse, or, as was just the case with the Democratic Party, be reduced to a minor sideshow.

What’s not misunderstood, however, is that the "forgotten man and woman" has been heard loud and clear. And should Trump execute on the promises and commitments he’s made, as I believe he will, the Republican Party and indeed this nation are going to be vastly better for it--and America will be great again.

Michael Johns is a health care executive and conservative author and writer. He served previously as a White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst. This article, which appeared originally in Michael Johns' blog, is reprinted here with permission. The Michael Johns blog can be accessed directly at: http://michaeljohnsonfreedomandprosperity.blogspot.com/

The Legacy of Antonin Scalia

By Michael Johns

When I first became engaged in national public policy and politics in the mid-1980s, the conservative movement had a saying, which I believe originated with former Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner: “People are policy.” In essence, the phrase represented our collective recognition that success (or lack thereof) ultimately rested with the people of our movement. Without capable and committed conservatives, little was possible. But with them, nearly anything was.               

In the years since, we have lost a number of American conservatives who were more than just capable and committed. They were and are conservative icons whose work helped shape and develop American conservatism—and our Tea Party movement—as the major global political and intellectual force it is today.

Who are these icons?

• Austrian school economist Ludwig von Mises, who provided much of the intellectual foundation of today’s free market economic thought, left us in 1973 at age 93.

• Prominent anti-communist Whittaker Chambers, who fled the Communist Party, went on to articulate fundamental truths about communism and ultimately outed State Department employee Alger Hiss as a Soviet agent, died in 1961 at age 60.

• Author and intellectual Russell Kirk, who helped define many of the enduring principles of conservatism, died in 1994 at age 75.

• Ayn Rand, whose individualist fictional writings have proven hugely inspirational to our national Tea Party movement, died in 1992 at age 77.

• William F. Buckley, Jr., who inspired many of today’s most prominent conservative intellectuals and writers, died in 2008 at age 82 (read my 2008 tribute to him here).

• And of course (most prominent of all), our 40th president, Ronald Reagan, who proved that conservatism can win and succeed as a governing political force, died in 2004 at age 93.

This weekend, sadly, we add one more icon to that list: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, whose extensive legal opinions and thinking were rooted in the conservative view that the “original intent” of the U.S. Constitution’s authors must guide modern law, has died at age 79.

Scalia deserves his place among conservative icons that have helped shape modern conservatism. Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1986, Scalia was a reliable conservative presence on the Court for three decades. He defended the rights of the unborn on a Court that largely did not. He opposed affirmative action as antithetical to the principles of equality under law. He defended the death penalty as legally permissible. At the core of these and many other rulings and opinions was a simple yet vastly critical concept: That the U.S. Constitution should be taken for what it says and what its authors intended—and nothing more or less.

Scalia’s written opinions on the Supreme Court rival those of liberal Thurgood Marshall as the most consequential legal opinions of modern times.  In Boumediene v. Bush in 2008, Scalia correctly dissented from the Court’s majority view that terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay were afforded legal rights of due process essentially indistinguishable from those of American citizens. The Court’s ruling, Scalia wrote in his dissent, “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

In the critical Second Amendment case District of Columbia v. Heller also in 2008, Scalia wrote for the majority that the right of Americans to keep and bear arms was to be taken, as it is written in the Constitution, literally. “What is not debatable,” Scalia wrote, “is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

And most recently (and prominently), it was Scalia, in Obergefell v. Hodges last year, whose scathing dissent on this same sex marriage case argued that religious liberty was stomped on in the Court’s ruling. In his dissent, Scalia wrote: “The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create ‘liberties’ that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

In addition to his defense of original intent on the Court, it should be remembered, Scalia never shied away from his Christian faith in a city and Court that increasingly shuns it. When one of his law clerks once refused to attend church with him, Scalia emailed the young clerk: “I shall tell the Creator of the Universe you were too busy to see him.”

As our national Tea Party movement enters its seventh year, our work, values and political positions benefit from being rooted in the thinking of some of the greatest conservative minds this nation has ever produced.

Antonin Scalia, we must remember, was one of them.

Michael Johns is a health care executive and conservative author and writer. He served previously as a White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst. This article, which appeared originally in Michael Johns' blog, is reprinted here with permission. The Michael Johns blog can be accessed directly at: http://michaeljohnsonfreedomandprosperity.blogspot.com/

This November, Remember the Benghazi Four

By Michael Johns

As far as cemeteries go, Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in the Point Loma area of San Diego is likely among the most beautiful and pristine. Its bright green grass extends to the deep-water San Diego Bay on one side and the vast Pacific Ocean on the other. Over 100,000 upright, identical marble headstones lie in meticulous order, marking the final resting places of brave American veterans from the Mexican-American War of 1846-1847 through the present.

One of these graves belongs to an American hero, Tyrone S. Woods, who should still be alive. Woods, who served the United States for over two decades in the U.S. Navy Seals, the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and ultimately as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contract agent, was killed in an attack by Islamic militants in Benghazi, Libya on the evening of September 11, 2012. Three other U.S. officials, U.S. Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, fellow CIA contract agent Glen Doherty, and U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens also were killed.

The story of Benghazi, like many of the Obama administration’s other policy failures, is tragic and angering for many reasons, but especially because it was preventable. Prior to the attacks, the Obama administration, including then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was warned repeatedly that the Benghazi compound was highly vulnerable to such an attack and in urgent need of additional security.  The requests for additional security never came.  Then, on the evening of September 12, the Obama administration was asked repeatedly by U.S. officials in Libya for permission to intervene against the Benghazi terrorists. Like the additional security, that request also was denied. And then, following the attack, the Obama administration lied to the American people about the fact that Benghazi was undeniably a terrorist attack (coming, in fact, on the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks).

On January 15, encouragingly, the true story of Benghazi was unveiled in brilliant detail in the new film 13 Hours, directed by Michael Bay (who directed Transformers, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and other successful films).

Americans should make a point of seeing this extraordinary film—and for many reasons. On the most basic level, 13 Hours tells the story of Benghazi with granular accuracy. On a deeper level, though, it’s really the story of the heroic instincts of five Americans in Libya who compassionately and heroically sought to intervene to save their fellow Americans under siege that day and the Obama administration, which found such an effort a political inconvenience two months prior to the 2012 presidential election and refused their requests.

In the days following the attack of Islamic extremists in Benghazi, the Obama administration misled the American people repeatedly, stating that the Benghazi attack was unrelated to terrorism when they knew undeniably it was terrorism. “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al-Qaeda-like group,” then Secretary of State Clinton emailed her daughter Chelsea at 11:12pm the night of the Benghazi attack. The following day, Clinton told Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Qandil that “the attack had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest.”

These were the lies of Benghazi. But there also were lies about the War on Terror more generally, which the Obama administration sought (for political expediency) to say was being won.  It was a theme (and a lie) central to Obama’s 2012 campaign—and one the administration continues to tell to this day.

As we’ve learned painfully in the years since Benghazi, al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist movements around the world have expanded significantly on the Obama administration’s watch, largely because the administration set arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines for the removal of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and because it failed (and still fails) to have the fortitude necessary to confront radical Islamic terrorism decisively, or even to utter its name.

In recent months, following attacks in Paris and San Bernardino and just a few weeks ago in Philadelphia, the Obama administration has continued to go to great lengths to deny the reality that these and other terrorist incidents are connected, coordinated and conducted in the name of Islam.

The story of 13 Hours tells how they did the same in Benghazi, ordering American officials to stand down in their effort to save fellow Americans under siege and then lying about Benghazi’s etiology, seeking to depict it as some spontaneous outrage against an anti-Islamic film that never happened. The American people were sold these lies by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who promptly took to Sunday talk shows to say Benghazi was not an act of terrorism and ultimately by then U.S. Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who brazenly lied to the families of these four fallen American heroes as their remains were returned to Andrews Air Force Base three days after the attack.

Politically, the Obama administration ultimately succeeded in permitting enough doubt to surround Benghazi that it became largely a non-factor in Obama’s November 6, 2012 reelection. But reality has a way of fighting back, and the reality of Benghazi is now reaching the American people with one of this year’s greatest films, communicating with impeccable accuracy the betrayal of the Benghazi four. 

Michael Johns is a health care executive and conservative author and writer. He served previously as a White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst. This article, which appeared originally in Michael Johns' blog, is reprinted here with permission. The Michael Johns blog can be accessed directly at: http://michaeljohnsonfreedomandprosperity.blogspot.com/

Why Our Tea Party Movement Honors MLK

By Michael Johns

In the early 1980s, as my interest in politics and my now three-decade alignment with American conservatism first began, I distinctly remember one of that time’s prominent public debates: Should a federal holiday be feveloped and named for American civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Like now, issues then often became quickly contentious and polarizing.  Conservatives and liberals saw the world and nation ultimately in very different ways and each held their views with self-righteous adamancy. So it was, at least initially, with the King debate.

Newly elected conservative President Ronald Reagan initially opposed the holiday, not on the basis that King did not hold a special place in United States history but that the cost of a federal holiday in his name would prove prohibitively costly to the nation. But the real opposition, espoused by then U.S. Senator Jesse Helms and others, cut more to the definition of King as a person. In 1983, when legislation that would have authorized the holiday reached the floor of the U.S. Senate, Helms argued that King held views that he then labeled “action-oriented Marxism.”

Nonetheless, it was Reagan who, in November 1983, ultimately signed a bill creating the day as a federal holiday. “Let us not only recall Dr. King, but rededicate ourselves to the Commandments he believed in and sought to live every day,” Reagan said on November 2, 1983 following his signing the bill creating the holiday.

Placed in comparative context, it’s an extraordinary recognition.

Other than King, George Washington is the only person who has a U.S. federal holiday in their honor (and even that holiday, celebrated the third Monday of February, omits his name and is instead labeled more generally as "Presidents' Day").  While we honor Christopher Columbus with a federal holiday the second Monday of every October, several states (Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon and South Dakota) refuse to commemorate it.  There is no federal holiday for Thomas Jefferson, who authored our Declaration of Independence and helped lead our nation’s independence, nor Lewis and Clark, who spearheaded the first American expedition of the American West, or Abraham Lincoln, who preserved the nation amidst civil war and effectively abolished slavery, nor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who guided the U.S. to victory in World War II and ushered the nation through the Great Depression, nor Reagan himself, who most have come to conclude brought an end to the Cold War without firing a shot.

Yet, just as Reagan ultimately came to support and sign legislation supporting the King holiday, the Tea Party movement today has good reason to recognize this great man’s leadership and the holiday named in his honor for at least four significant reasons:

1.)    King’s vision was to end racial identity: While the civil rights issues of the time required King to appropriately lead the crusade for equal representation of African-Americans, close scrutiny of his words and actions reveal his underlying message was that race should never be used to separate Americans.  Despite a modern Democrat party that bases almost its entire political strategy on selfishly dividing the American people by race, religion, gender and sexuality and a liberal political culture that still champions affirmative action on many levels, King never sought special privilege for African-Americans or any race. As King famously said in his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Were he alive today, King almost certainly would reject the tactics and messages of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others who wrongly represent that they are carrying on King’s message and activism.

2.)    King believed that people, even more than laws, defined our nation: While much of the civil rights debate at the time understandably centered around what were and were not federal governmental responsibilities and how to protect the civil liberties of all in rule of law, King equally believed that the character of the American people were just as influential and impactful. King was a devout Christian who was on record at the time advocating many of the traditional values the conservative and Tea Party movements support today. He supported the traditional family and vehemently opposed abortion and saw both positions as vital to the social fabric of African-Americans and the nation as a whole.

3.)    King championed fiscal and personal responsibility: Just as it is seldom recognized today that King almost certainly would have been a vehement opponent of the abortion industry and culture that has developed in our nation, so too are we rarely told that King was a significant champion of personal responsibility. In the last book he authored before his death, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, King praised hard work, thrift and self-reliance. Were he alive today, he likely would see merit in many of the same messages our Tea Party is advocating and communicating about the limits of government’s responsibilities and the self-destructive nature of its punitive policies toward industriousness and productivity.

4.)    Like the Tea Party today, King was targeted by government for peacefully challenging unjust policies: Just as the Internal Revenue Service (almost certainly at the direction of the Obama White House) has illegally monitored and targeted our Tea Party movement because it feels threatened that our common sense message may inhibit their ability to control and mislead the American people, King too was targeted for his peaceful opposition to the country’s then unjust laws. As the Obama administration fears the Tea Party movement’s peaceful organization and message, the Kennedy and Johnson administration feared King. Then Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover famously kept King under surveillance and maintained an active FBI file on the civil rights leader. 

As we close the 30thconsecutive Martin Luther King holiday today, the trepidation to embrace King among many conservatives and Tea Party members, I believe, is not rooted in any lack of recognition for the bravery and ultimate success of his constructive efforts, but that his period of U.S. history is used so frequently by American liberals to challenge our contention that our nation is both exceptional, unique and divinely guided. But how can that be, liberals like to ask, when our government, a mere few decades ago, denied basic civil rights to both African-Americans and women?
The answer is this: Unlike totalitarian nations that crush human and civil rights crusaders who threaten their power structure, or European nations that continue to inhibit individual rights and organize their societies predominantly on familial, hierarchical societal structures, our nation has been one of ongoing progress led by individual and collective crusades to improve our nation and expand liberty with each consecutive generation, to make it more just and successful and to enhance individual opportunity for all Americans.  American exceptionalism lies not just in our nation's unequaled and exceptional founding on a set of extraordinary ideas and ideals, but in our continued commitment to perfecting and promulgating these principles in each subsequent generation.

The Tea Party movement most certainly carries on in this great tradition, just as King did with his civil rights leadership that we properly commemorate today.

Michael Johns is a health care executive and conservative author and writer. He served previously as a White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst. This article, which appeared originally in Michael Johns' blog, is reprinted here with permission. The Michael Johns blog can be accessed directly at: http://michaeljohnsonfreedomandprosperity.blogspot.com/