“What changed the world was not the words, but the commitment and the spirit of the people who were willing to labor, sacrifice, and even give their lives, what Lincoln at Gettysburg called, ‘The last full measure of devotion’ for the Declaration’s principles. It is that devotion to which we owe our rich inheritance.
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When Americans look to Washington and wonder why it so often disappoints, it is not because there are too few people who know what is right. It is not because we lack the intellect, or the capacity, or the talent. It is instead because there are too few people who are willing to do what it takes to do the right thing, to sacrifice the popularity, flattery, comfort, and security that are the purchase price for principle. It is because too few of us reflect on, and reflect, the courage and commitment of that final sentence of the Declaration. And so many seem to have forgotten how much others have sacrificed so that this nation can exist and endure.
None of our rights come from the government. All of the government’s authority comes from our consent. And the structure and limited role of government is to assure that it does not exceed the authority to which we have consented or intrude on our natural rights. The Constitution is the means of government. It is the Declaration that announces the ends for government. The Constitution achieves its purpose by protecting our natural rights and our liberties from concentrated power and excessive democracy.
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Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.
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In my view, we must find in ourselves that same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration…so that we can do for our future what they did for theirs . . . But if you stand, you will find that courage, like cowardice, can be habit-forming. And it will become a part of your life, and a part of who you are. And I may dare say, it is liberating.”
–Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking at The University of Texas (Austin).
One of The Observations‘ recurring topics and themes is government overreach and tyranny. It saddens me that we are a nation of people, so many of whom are either ignorant of our history, or willing to destroy our history for their own selfish gains. And then there are those who simply are apathetic to what our legacy is, and what is becoming to it. Too many people either do not know, or do not care.
Of course many do know. Many do care. I dare say that 99% of The Observations’ readers know and care deeply. But that number needs to grow.
Right now, there are so many issues facing our country, and most of them are not being addressed. And when someone dares try to address them–for example, President Trump–he is vilified, and figuratively lynched for the gall of confronting the errors of the ruling elite.
No one is perfect (though on the subject of the law, Justice Thomas is darn close). There are many things about Mr. Trump that I find distasteful. But should not we all be pulling for our President, our nation, and for the rediscovery of our system of government? Should we not all jealously guard our God-given liberties and freedoms? What about the phrases “shall not be infringed”, or “Congress shall make no law”, do the politicians not understand? What kind of madness must grip voters in Northern Virginia that they would disenfranchise and subjugate their fellow Virginians in Southwest and Southside? How much envy is in one’s heart that you would vote to punish through taxation the more successful among us?
The other day, someone whose opinions I greatly respect mentioned that perhaps not all of the gun control legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly was bad. Really? Again, what about the phrase “shall not be infringed” do you not understand? If a God-given right is subject to man’s regulation, then it is not a “right”, it is a “privilege”. And privileges can be revoked.
We are at a seminal point in our history. Our country’s 250th birthday is less than 2 months away. Now is the time for Americans to correct their ignorance and apathy, and to stand for what our forefathers struggled and died to leave us as a legacy. Now is the time for us to act, to secure for our posterity, the blessings of liberty and freedom.
Today, below are 3 articles touching on various issues relative to what Justice Thomas, and I, have discussed above. I hope that you find them interesting, and enlightening. And importantly, I hope you find this entire day’s discussion to be motivating, so that our children and grandchildren will benefit from our efforts. As always, thank you for reading.
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Resurrecting The American Dream
The Founders’ dream of limited government ended when the Supreme Court ruled that enumerated powers were mere suggestions. We need to walk that back.
BY: Ted Noel, The American Thinker (May 1, 2026).
I read with pleasure Mike Tsichlis’ piece on the American Dream. It was a wonderful walk through history, written with a flowing pen and a musician’s ear. It almost reached the flowering heights of the Declaration of Independence or the powerful prose of The Federalist.
But the historical reality is that none of the huddled masses thought in that language. Yes, they heard the siren song of what Horace Greeley later put on paper, and gladly endured brutal conditions on small ships to get to America and seek their fortune. However, they only heard one word: “opportunity.”
Like so much of language, America as the “land of opportunity” sprang full-grown from the common mind, much as Athena sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus. It was an irresistible phrase describing an irresistible force pulling people away from truly oppressed lives on the (loosely described) treadmill of sweatshops and slaveholdings of one sort or another. This pull was so strong that they were willing to risk their lives to reach for the brass ring.
The “po-folk” saw a chance to work hard and get ahead in America. The problem with that view was simple. Lots of people left the sweatshops of European cities, only to end up in sweatshops in American cities. They lived in slums and did menial work with little hope of a better life. Many became desperate to make a leap and head for the frontier with little but the shirts on their backs. Some died, but others made it through, ultimately creating the place called “America.”
It was a simple idea that possessed that creative power. You could risk everything to bust your butt and make a better life. This was the American Dream. Period. Full stop.
If the next generation sold everything and bought a covered wagon, they might make it into Oklahoma sooner than the next family. With the right land and hard work, they could become secure. If others survived the Oregon Trail Indian attacks, the Willamette Valley held similar promise. They could turn dirt, plant crops, and get ahead. The examples are nearly infinite. And the threats were nearly as limitless.
The second half of the American Dream is the idea that once you produced something, it was yours. No one could take it from you. But that covered wagon you bought could be destroyed in a minute by flaming Indian arrows. The crop you brought in could be stolen by a more powerful landowner. So people banded together to protect themselves and their property. This eventually became governments. Unfortunately, the government itself failed.
There is an evil pull felt by all inside the government. If you have power, you can use it to get more power. Power becomes an end in itself. It leads to privilege, wealth, and insulation from consequences. And all that comes ultimately from taking goodies away from the people who formed the government for their own protection. This process informs the second half of the American Dream.
Fully stated, the American Dream says this: The American Dream is the idea that you can bust your butt to make a better life, and not have it stolen from you by the government.
This full formulation is very important because it explains our problem in the US. We need the government to be the policeman who stops the thief. But the lure of easy money and power turns that officer into a dirty cop who runs the protection racket for his own benefit. And this ultimately happens at every level. The phenomenon of “regulatory capture” demonstrates it at the highest level.
Regulatory capture is a situation in which a government regulatory agency, created to protect the public interest, instead acts primarily in the interests of the industry or companies it is supposed to regulate. The agency was supposed to set basic “rules of the road” so that everyone “plays by the same rules.”
Instead, the regulated industries provide the agency with “expert opinion” through lobbyists. That supposedly neutral information leads to regulations that protect the big companies the agency was supposed to police. In turn, it makes it far more difficult for little guys to get ahead.
When the agency hires people from those big companies, it gets worse. And after a tour of duty with the government, the expert can then return to “private” industry and be paid well for his temporary duty in the government.
Our current situation presents the citizen with a bloated federal government that legislates willy-nilly on every vanity project that comes near the D.C. media echo chamber. This is based on the false idea, put forward by New Deal Justices Roberts and Cardozo, that the “enumerated powers” (particularly in Article I § 8) are merely “examples.”
Actually, the Framers were extremely cautious, with Anti-Federalists forcibly expressing a fear that a central government with unlimited powers would become the Swamp. No, they didn’t use that language, but that’s what they were afraid of. All the Federalists were united in explaining that the Constitution simply did not allow that level of central authority. The listed powers were all that the feds would be allowed to do.
We now know that their fears were fully justified. Lord Acton was right. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The Constitution allows nearly limitless taxation, but not limitless spending on projects not specifically enumerated. But with unchecked power after the New Deal, the grift was on. Congress could drain your wallet to support its habit, and there was no meaningful recourse. You don’t have “standing” to challenge anything.
CongressCritters and BureauRats love to hand out favors paid for with your tax dollars. The groups that get this filthy lucre are now loyal supporters of the thieves who stole your hard-earned money. They provide campaign finance money to re-elect their benefactors, who then answer the key question: “What have you done for me lately?” There is no end to the imagination of the Swamp.
And this brings us full circle. We saw that the American Dream implicitly understood by real Americans is “The idea that I’m free to bust my butt to make a better life, and NOT have it stolen by the government.” The Socialist Dream, constantly enacted by the Swamp, is: “The idea that the government should steal what real Americans busted their butts to create, and give it to people who won’t get off their own butts.”
James Madison was quite emphatic that competing interests placed in mutual opposition by the separation of powers would help protect the citizen. But since the New Deal Court decisions in Butler and Helvering, the incentives for the Legislative and Executive branches have aligned. Graft and corruption are now approved by the Supreme Court. Most of George III’s evils decried in the Declaration of Independence are now fair game in Mordor on the Potomac.
There’s only one real way to restore the American Dream at the federal level. We must rein in Congress by restoring the limits of enumerated powers, as the Framers intended. With real guardrails, the incentive to steal from hard-working taxpayers will be largely eliminated, and the American Dream will be resurrected.
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The Courts Are Guilty of Failing to Do Their Job
BY: Kurt Schlicter (April 30, 2026).
So, I want to get this straight, because I’m a little confused. We’re supposed to respect federal judges who are appointed for life and not subject to any kind of outside pressure by design. We’re supposed to allow our democracy – yes, I know it’s a constitutional republic, but let’s not be anally retentive about these things – to have a built-in veto by people we didn’t vote for and can’t, as a practical matter, remove. Our only protection against them running rampant with their personal prejudices and peccadillos is their own character. But what if they don’t have any character? What if they do whatever they damn well please? Do We the People just have to take it? Because that’s not going to happen. If it’s a choice between serfdom with Article III – no, Ilhan Omar, that is not Article One Hundred Eleven – and liberty without Article III, adios Article III.
If and when the judiciary dies, and it’s not looking so great right now, the cause of death on the certificate is going to be suicide.
Now, I’ve been in front of a lot of federal judges during 30 years as a lawyer, and the big difference between federal judges and God is that God doesn’t think He’s a federal judge. There are some good ones out there, some stunning mediocrities for such a prestigious post, and some insane ones who really let their incredible power go to their heads. And it is an incredible power, with an incredible lack of accountability. But under our Constitution, properly understood, that can work. It gives them the ability to stand up for the Constitution against partisan pressure. Of course, the problem is that far too many are Democrats who stand up for partisan pressure against the Constitution. Like so much of our Constitution, it requires character to function. It requires a judge to look at the facts and the law and decide the case according to them, even when that decision runs against what he, she, or whatever weird pronoun the Democrat appointee prefers. Sometimes, as a judge, you have to rule against what you want. And leftists aren’t good at that.
In fact, leftists are actively against that. The Constitution envisions a system where rights, responsibilities, and procedures are clearly set, and you apply the facts to those, and the result is what the result is. Sometimes, you lose. Leftists can’t abide by that because they can’t lose. Leftism is the highest morality, the only morality, and anything that helps leftism is necessary, proper, and essential. You can’t be a leftist judge and rule against a leftist position. It’s inconceivable because the purpose of the law is not to create fair outcomes.
The purpose of the law, like every other tool, is to increase leftism. When you understand that, you understand everything you need to know about why the courts are collapsing upon themselves.
For example, not long ago, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made a ruling in some case involving transsexual weirdness where she explained that a state had no right to deny to kids (or rather, their Münchausen) what she characterized as medical care and what normal people characterize as mutilation. Then, in another case, this one involving psychologists not being allowed to treat people for transsexual weirdness, she explained that it was essential that the government be able to decree that you couldn’t get medical care to cure your transsexual weirdness. It was a total 180-degree change, and it didn’t matter to her. At all. Similarly, they eagerly embraced California’s redistricting, but the three liberal judges decided Texas couldn’t do the same thing.
To function as intended, the Constitution requires the consistent application of legal principles to different fact patterns. This provides equal justice. The ruling should be the same whether a party is right-wing, left-wing, or no wing at all. But consistency, and therefore justice, has nothing to do with legal analysis to a leftist. The law exists to enforce and promote leftism, that’s all. You have no rights. There are no procedures. There is only leftism.
Look at what’s happening in Virginia with that shriveled, sour apple doll woman governor’s gerrymandering power grab. There are very clear provisions in the Virginia Constitution and its law about how you go about acting on a constitutional amendment, and there’s no real dispute that the Democrats failed to abide by. Oh, they claim they did, but they know they didn’t, and everybody knows they didn’t, and the fact that they didn’t is utterly irrelevant to them. A trial court enjoined the referendum result, and the case was before the Virginia Supreme Court this week. Again, there’s no real dispute over the facts. It wasn’t enacted in accordance with the rules, so it shouldn’t stand. But it’s going to stand. The Virginia Supreme Court is absolutely not going to enforce the rules because enforcing the rules would get in the way of what the leftists want, which is for the gerrymander to succeed. And so, it will, the law be damned.
And it’s happening in all these dumb district court rulings. You need to understand that when they rule against Donald Trump, there’s no legal basis for it. It’s not even close, which is why these pronouncements from the judges with the Star Wars names in all the commie venues like the Northern District of Tatooine keep getting overturned. Look at the ballroom case. There’s a thing called standing. You can’t sue when you don’t have skin in the game, where you are not going to suffer a real, cognizable injury of some sort unless you are given relief by the court. What was the standing in this case? Who was going to suffer a real injury from Donald Trump building a ballroom? According to this judge, it was some woman walking her dog who might have looked at it and not liked it. If this were a thing, any one of us could sue Obama for that weird library that looks like the building is infected with some sort of brutalist Peyronie’s Disease.
But it’s not a thing. It’s ridiculous. Similarly, there is the bizarre notion by another judge that the Congress of the United States acted unconstitutionally by refusing to appropriate funds to support baby killing. That’s certainly an interesting and innovative notion, and of course, it has nothing to do with the Constitution, but the Democrats hate fetuses, so it’s OK.
We have the judge who allowed the ridiculous case brought by that kook in New York, accusing Donald Trump of molesting her 30 years ago, without a witness, like he would ever have given her a second glance. Or you have the judge who allowed the unprecedented civil suit against him in New York. Then there’s the judge who allowed the unprecedented criminal case against him in New York; those garbage convictions will soon be overturned on appeal. The pardons of the J6 political prisoners were well justified by the outrageous and disgraceful conduct of the judges in allowing ridiculous charges against them, in failing to change venue when they faced grotesquely biased juries, in disallowing bail, and in general, railroading them.
So we’re back to the big question – why have judges? If judges are simply going to be independent actors who substitute their own personal belief system for the law in making their rulings, why do we have them at all in a democracy? What is the point of adding this extra layer between our elected representatives and the enforcement of the law? What justification is there for having judges if they’re just unaccountable people doing whatever they want? How is that democracy?
Well, it isn’t, as everyone can see, which is why Article III is going to go away if Chief Justice John Roberts doesn’t rein in these clowns on the federal bench, and if the states don’t rein in their own. Remember, all judges can do is rule. They can’t enforce. They don’t have any guys with guns. That’s the executive, and if there’s a critical mass of public support for the executive to ignore the courts, the executive is going to ignore the courts.
And that critical mass of public support for ignoring the courts is being created by the courts themselves. People aren’t going to put up with being told “No” based not on law, but on whim. People will accept losing if they think the process is fair. They won’t accept losing if they think the process is rigged, but rigging is exactly what leftism is all about. Leftism is, by definition, rigging the system to create an outcome that leftists want. We’re not going to do that. And if the judiciary wants to keep existing, it had better figure that out before the American people find it guilty of failure.
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Will SCOTUS Do Plessy Again in Birthright Citizenship Case?
‘Illegal but equal’ is the new ‘separate but equal.’
Brian S. Messenger, The American Thinker (May 1, 2026).
Most people have heard of the infamous Supreme Court decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), where the Court ruled that “separate but equal” was constitutional. That awful precedent sanctified segregation throughout the South and took over 50 years to start to unwind.
One of the key causes that led to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision was that the Supreme Court lost sight of the fundamental rights of all American citizens. These nationwide rights precede what we know of as the Bill of Rights and are protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution. That simple sentence states, “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the Several States.” If the Supreme Court doesn’t apply this critical clause to the birthright citizenship case of Trump v. Barbara, it is likely to create a Plessy-like precedent that could last for decades.
The situation for illegal alien parents is analogous to someone who shoplifts multiple times and then demands to be able to return all the merchandise for cash, even though he claims to have “lost” his receipts. These illegal alien parents are trying to plunder the tremendously valuable privileges and immunities of United States citizenship for their children, after violating the privileges and immunities of every citizen in the United States. In the post–Civil War Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), Justice Miller explained how privileges and immunities “owe their existence to the Federal government, its National character, its Constitution, or its laws.” The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution declares that “this Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof … shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Illegal aliens, in complicity with open-borders politicians and judges, are directly violating three privileges and immunities of all American citizens. These rights flow from the Constitution and the laws made to directly implement its enumerated provisions.
The first violation regards circumventing the congressionally mandated naturalization process. The Constitution states, “The Congress shall have Power … to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Permanent residents and visa holders must follow strict rules, or they are subject to deportation. By bypassing this congressionally mandated process, an illegal alien is violating a privilege and immunity of all United States citizens. This can be defined as the right that non-citizens shall be subject to Congress’s rules of naturalization to be permitted to reside here. The Wong Kim Ark (1898) decision directly spoke to this requirement:
Chinese persons, born out of the United States, remaining subjects of the Emperor of China, and not having become citizens of the United States, are entitled to the protection and owe allegiance to the United States, so long as they are permitted to reside here; and are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” in the same sense as all other aliens residing in the United States.
Since illegal aliens are not permitted to reside here by the laws of Congress, they are not showing allegiance to the United States. They are purposely avoiding being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Being within the jurisdiction is clearly not equivalent to being subject to the jurisdiction. Otherwise, none of the descriptions of being permitted to reside here would have been necessary in the decision. Wong Kim Ark describes multiple exception cases, including for American Indians, that prove that being within the jurisdiction is not equivalent to being subject to the jurisdiction.
The second violation regards unapproved migration. Most people who illegally enter the United States are migrating here for economic benefit. The Constitution states, “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight.” This constitutional provision dealt with both immigration and slavery. After the year 1808, Congress, instead of the individual states, was provided with full control over migration. When illegal aliens migrate to the United States, many states support their behavior. The illegal alien and the state are both violating a privilege and immunity of all United States citizens. This can be defined as the right for only migrants approved by Congress to be permitted to migrate into the United States.
The third violation regards their invasion of the United States. In any biological system, invasive plants or animals take resources away from the native population. The Constitution states, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.” If you believe that invasion is only by a foreign army, that is not what Justice Story thought when he analyzed this in 1833. He discussed the wide latitude of this phrase and the additional fact that it protects states against invasions from other states. He wrote,
A protection against invasion is due from every society, to the parts composing it. The latitude of the expression here used, seems to secure each state not only against foreign hostility, but against ambitious or vindictive enterprises of its more powerful neighbors.
Entering the United States, while intentionally bypassing the legal authorities created by Congress, is an aggressive and hostile act — a form of invasion. American citizens have no way of knowing which of these invaders are criminals, murderers, drug-dealers, or human-trafficking victims. Illegal aliens are violating a privilege and immunity of United States citizens that can be defined as the right for citizens of every state to be protected against invasion.
These three privilege and immunity violations by illegal aliens result in a strike-out with respect to being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. The Wong Kim Ark precedent should be used by itself to rule that birthright citizenship does not apply to children born to people illegally in the country. If the court majority is unable to rule that way, the case should be scheduled for reargument to thoroughly brief and discuss the privileges and immunities violations described above. Otherwise, the court in Trump v. Barbara is likely to imitate the abhorrent “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson by declaring that “illegal is equal.”
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 