The Disgruntled American

Yesterday at a townhall event, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) decided to let the audience know that the Veteran’s Administration gives “the highest quality [health]care” to veterans.

HA!

Then she proceeded to say “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, see the problem here is, is that it is broke and I’m not quite sure how to fix it. The problem isn’t that she doesn’t think it’s broken, as she’s the farthest thing from a veteran as possible, the problem is that she wants everyone to think the VA is great. Why? She wants the same level of healthcare for everyone.

Let’s look at the numbers, shall we? In 2018, the VA inspector general released a report saying one third of the vets waiting to receive eligibility for benefits were dead. They were waiting so long that they DIED. This is definitely the highest quality of healthcare available, definitely.

For those of you reading this that may want medicare for all, you have to realize that the government is not able to give high quality healthcare to anyone. It will give the cheapest healthcare available for the price. This is not the best, as you get what you pay for.

Socialists of all stripes want you to be duped into thinking that the same level of healthcare that you pay out of pocket for now is going to be the same,. Remember “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? It’s the same idea. If she can’t shove down the audience’s throats that the VA is good, then how can she possibly get anyone, besides her frothing fanboys, to buy into the fact that government run healthcare is a good thing.

If we can’t take care of our vets correctly, myself included, how in the hell are we going to take care of 300 million + people?

Live Free // Die Free,

The Disgruntled American

Rep. Eric Swalwell spoke with Jake Tapper on CNN a few nights ago. He proposed his plan for a national “gun buyback” program with some obvious teeth, more like dentures, but teeth. He stated on National Television that those that did not comply to his buy back program would be thrown into jail. There’s a few flaws with this, even if they went to every gun owners house, there is no way to know how many or what type of weapons are in that house.

So you’re telling me, that they will go door to door and search every house to find a “military style assault weapon”, if one exists in that house? That’s problem number 1. Problem number 2 is, is this is private property purchased by a private citizen. Not only would this be violating the 2nd and 4th amendments, due to the government forcing citizens to sell a private piece of property, it would also violate the 9th and 10th amendments. See, what the left, socialists and communists tend to forget is the Bill of Rights doesn’t grant us our rights, it restricts the government from infringing on those rights.

Rep. Swalwell’s reasoning for this forced buyback is really idiotic, his idea is that “these weapons are so devastating” and that their only purpose is “to kill another human being”. I have to ask the question. Why is this a problem?

You all may think I’m insane since I asked this, but to bring this article full circle to the title, we need weapons to kill people. Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics report in 2008 (with an ever increasing population and an increase in crime in most large cities I’m sure it’s gotten worse) we see that it takes anywhere from 11 minutes – an hour for police to respond to a violent incident. We have extracted an average of about an 18 minute response time out of it, while an active shooter scenario takes roughly only 5 minutes to proceed.

You better believe I want a weapon where it’s only purpose is to kill someone. Sorry Rep. Swalwell, but neither you, nor the police is going to save me, my family or innocent bystanders during that time, therefore I have to protect myself. Not only is it the right thing to do, not to rely on someone else to save me, but it is also my natural right to defend myself and others. If I only have 5 minutes to possibly die, I want to make sure I live instead. The only way to do that is to kill the person trying to kill me.

See it’s funny, the founders and their ilk were of a much different thought process than Mr. Swalwell here. They thought much differently, Richard Henry Lee in the Federal Farmer No. 18 made a solid point “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them”.

18 minutes is much too long to wait in response to a shooting especially when I am expected to live less than 5. Rep Swallwell, I hope to God you never become president or we’re going to lose every right we have. Maybe you’ll just nuke us instead?

Live Free // Die Free,

The Disgruntled American

You know, I wish I could write about legislation coming out of the federal government. Something that highly interests me and is easy to compare to the founding fathers’ thoughts, alas, I must not, because the ridiculousness of the Democrats are getting in my way. You see, I may seem “Right-Wing”, but in actuality I’m just a constitutional libertarian. I’m truly a disgruntled American, but as I see it, the left continues to move so far left everyone must seem right to anyone claiming to be a Democrat.

Anyways, back to the title, the Democrats didn’t get their wish, and the Mueller report will be released tomorrow per Barr’s timeline. They are absolutely convinced there must be something in the report to expound upon the already erroneous and extravagant amount of congressional investigations into the President, and in the process our elected leaders have become Oligarchs over night. AOC aside, I thought any sane member of congress would understand their place as a mere servant of the people (a well paid servent mind you) and shy away from the air headed rhetoric of Ocasio-Cortez.

Today on Twitter, another New Yorker, Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), head of the House Democratic Caucus is determined to show his perceived power and moral superiority to his foes writing “So-called Attorney General is presiding over a dog and pony show. Here is a thought. Release the Mueller report tomorrow morning and keep your mouth shut. You have ZERO credibility.”

They are so desperate to find anything, whether it is taxes, crimes before he was president, ANYTHING to get him out of office. To be fair and I’ll reiterate, I am not a Trump Train kind of guy, I am very analytical and will call a spade a spade, but seriously, the guy is President, let him be. It’s gotten to the point that they are believing their own lies and continuing to pander to their obviously delusional and shrinking base that they can’t even get anything done.

Everyday they go into the Capitol and pass nothing that will get passed in the Senate, nor do anything remotely productive besides hearing, after hearing, after hearing that produce bumpkiss, millions of Americans’ dollars are wasted. Just like this collusion investigation, it was millions of dollars wasted for what? To know that we can’t trust Buzzfeed to be an accurate news source?

This has gone on long enough and honestly if they want to keep their majority, they better start passing some bipartisan legislation.

It’s my money, you’re my employee, now do your job.

Live Free//Die Free,

The Disgruntled American

Yesterday, in his campaign’s innaugural town hall, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) gave his compelling yet albeit shallow plan to provide healthcare, education and income to the American people. Needless to say, he admitted the plan would raise tax dollars, but of course it would garauntee ‘free’ everything at the expense of disposable income for the general public.

Of course, he gave no annumeration for the plan, who would get what, and how it would be deployed. He just promised free everything that anyone could want, because it’s a ‘right’. It’s interesting to see that at least some of the public would fall for this notion that anything they want is a right. Has consumerism, instagram bragging, and 24/7 reality shows created a monster of the American people?

Unfortunately for Bernie, a constitutional democratic republic isn’t supposed to be giving out these types of goodies. In my journey to becoming the Disgruntled American, my main justification was for the need of civic education among the masses. Government was never intended to take care of it’s people, it’s only goal was to provide the infrastructure necessary for prosperity. This may confuse alot of people, especially socialists, who think that they’re owed the world for merely surviving.

John Locke, who many call the Father of (classical) Liberalism, made it clear that the government can only do one thing, either protect property and stay aloof from the affairs of it’s citizens in order to allow prosperity or to directly care for it’s citizens and eschew protection. It cannot do both, as it will do both poorly and will fail. He also believed, of which I am in the same camp, that the individual not the community is the basis for a government.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a french philosopher, came in the 1800s to this country to study our culture. In it, he made a revelation, “It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”

My point is, children are dependent on their parents. They have limited rights, and when they wish for food it must be provided on their parents timeline. If they wish for better education, the parent’s must decide if they wish to provide it or if they have the monetary wherewithall to do so. If they wish for a doctor’s visit, it is up to the parent’s to decide if they will bring them. We are not children, we are adults and we are supposed to be able to take care of ourselves without anyone to do it for us.

You see, Locke and Tocqueville had a point, we are adults and we must put freedom above all or we will be begging the government for the bare necessities without the ability to pay for it ourselves. More government welfare means more taxes, and more taxes means less purchasing power in your pocket. The argument becomes “Capitalism isn’t fair”, not “Forcing someone else to pay for anything for me isn’t fair”. Freedom is a two edged sword, on one hand you can do whatever you would like, become as prosperous as you want to become or you can suffer due to mainly bad life decisions. Unfortunately, it is a person’s own responsibility to decide how they will live their life.

Begging the government isn’t freedom, begging for your next meal or begging for healthcare isn’t “gaming the system”, it’s no better than slavery; relying on someone else to provide for you when you’re just too lazy to do it isn’t freedom, it’s just pathetic.

Live Free // Die Free

The Disgruntled American

“The government cannot be run successfully by substituting the power of entertainment for the power of accomplishment. The essential quality for the voters to require in their candidates is capacity for public service.” – Calvin Coolidge

Over the past thirty years, we have seen a terrifying phenomenon in this country. Besides the fact that people have become more and more hardlined politically, we see that recent presidents have started cult like movements. An easy example would be to look at the 2016 Democratic primary. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had created a huge following and had it not been for the rigging of the election by democratic operatives, most likely would have won the nomination. His particular brand of followers were called “Bernie Bros” and used the phrase “Feel the Bern” as a mantra.

Easily enough by contrast is the current president, Donald Trump, and his cult of personality. Although I have been pleasantly surprised by what he has done, I do not follow him like a panting dog waiting to be pet, regardless, his particular brand included several phrases like “lock her up” (referring to Hilary Clinton), and the “Trump Train”.

Although campaign slogans have been used for centuries now to promote name recognition into the zeitgeist, never have they been used as chants or mantras. Mantras by definition are particularly dangerous, not only do they reform thoughts in the brain and have been used for centuries by authoritarian regimes to implant submissive thoughts into the citizenry, they also in a group setting allow for cohesion and bigotry (by dictionary definition, not social definition).

See, with entertainers, lights, effects, commercials, and speeches, the race to be a president is no longer about public service, but about popularity. In a world of instant gratification, followers, likes and subscribers to a person and not necessarily a service, can we really ignore that the same has happened to the presidency? Why do you think we are having discussions about the popular vote vs electoral college.

We have placed these men and women to such high of pedestals, we have pictures of them in our country offices and we revere them through dinners. We pay thousands to see tickets of them and pay for their merchandise. It’s no different than an entertainer, except this entertainer has influence, power and fame not only through their appointed position, but also by seemingly brainwashed followers as well.

The danger to a direct democracy isn’t majority rule, it really is majority turns into authority rule. We have literally set ourselves up by A.) allowing ourselves to be so involved with politics, we literally need therapists to cope with it and B.) defending our presidents and ideology at all costs, even resorting to threats and violence.

The terrifying thought is, if we don’t get ourselves out of this mess, who will?

Live Free // Die Free,

The Disgruntled American

I’m going to start this post off a bit interesting, and honestly bare with me here. Going around the news cycle today is the rise of the ‘nones’, which are the amount of people who don’t identify with any religion. The General Societal Survey, which is taken to measure general cultural trends in the United States, showed that 23.1 percent of respondents check ‘none’ for the ‘religious affiliation’ category, which skewed higher than 22.5 percent of Evangelicals (which is what the media is so very excited about, good thing to be anything other than a communist all you need is free will and a brain).

The part that I find concerning isn’t the amount of Evangelicals, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists etc. in this country, it’s the fact there is a steadily growing amount without any religious affiliation or even a belief in a higher power, moreover I am also more concerned about the evangelical belligerent atheists which crowd the internet.

Todays post is due to one of these. See, I posted as “The Disgruntled American” in one of my local news organizations to this very topic. I actually posted this very quote which is used in the header.

The following was the reply to my comment.

This is my fear, that soon we will not have a moral compass at all. Without a fear of a higher power humans are very dangerous beings and without that fear our very special form of government cannot function, as it requires personal responsibility which without a higher power, is very difficult for anyone to reign in. The founders knew that as well.

Thomas Hobbes, who, along with John Locke wrote the framework for our constitution in their philosophical writings a century prior, made an astute observation

Moral philosophy is nothing more than the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind. Good and Evil are names the signify our appetites and aversions; which in different tempers, customs and doctrines of men are different.

Men are fallible and each person thinks they know what is best and they are right. Look simply at how our politics are today. I have to write behind a pseudonymn using a God given right just to type this out so that my livelihood or my life isn’t put in danger. Without any type of higher power our country is slowly delving into chaos. And seeing the reply above convinces me simply that our founding fathers would have been laughed out of the Continental Congress.

Many of our Founders weren’t Christians per say, but they did believe in a God, much the same that aristotle and plato believed in a truly powerful being. Thomas Jefferson was extremely opposed to the idea of any kind of closeness between church and state, however they all understood that a society that respects and fears a higher power will flourish under a limited government. This wasn’t freedom from religion as many would like, but the power to practice any religion as you saw fit as it was beneficial to society as a whole.

Our Founders couldn’t have crafted the constitution today, all the entitlement demands, immigration squabbles, and foreign affairs notwithstanding, without a moral compass our country can’t work and it will, unfortunately fall apart. If our society does not subject to a higher power, then the government will become that higher power in order to subject society to it. That, therein, lies the real danger.

Live Free // Die Free,

The Disgruntled American

Today, President Donald Trump admitted to wanting to use sanctuary cities as the backup to the failing infrastructure that houses illegal aliens at the border. Ironically, the Democrats are freaking out about this…the same ones who have previously called for open borders. Speaker Pelosi, in a comment to reporters said this:

…just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful, the challenges we face as a country, as a people to address who we are — a nation of immigrants.

Here are two problems I have with this. One, have you ever played poker? I love poker personally, with the right people you can have a blast and enjoy the time to catch up. The problem here, isn’t the political game of poker the Left is playing with the President, it’s the fact that he called their bluff. See, they never expected to be called on it, or in reality to be called out in such a big way. This could be thousands, not hundreds, thousands of immigrant flooding to all of these cities that have decided to defy the Fed on one of just the few actual pillars that federal government should stand on. Since these cities have become a somewhat of a bait to illegal immigrants to get them to come over, we should drop them off there. We should give these cities everything that they have asked for.

Second, can someone, anyone tell the left we are a nation of legal immigrants? Does anyone, anywhere know the meaning between illegal and legal? This is insane. My great grandparents didn’t sell everything, pack up their children and spend a month on a boat to arrive in NYC with nothing, just so someone could jump a border and claim “Asylum” for whatever they’ve been trained to say and my tax dollars to fund them.

I’m going to make this abundantly clear, so my words will never be misconstrued. I openly welcome anyone that has waited in line, done the paperwork and became a citizen of these United States. You are no less American than my family or I. However, if you are illegal, get out.

Democrats don’t want their bluff called? They shouldn’t have bluffed in the first place, especially with this President, because if he can, he will call it. The left doesn’t care about the people, they just care about maintaining their political power. If they did care, they would find a way for all the incentives that these Illegals want were either removed or restricted. They would find a way to stop these people from making a treacherous trek with children dying along the way.

They won’t, because they’re not human

The Disgruntled American