Thread by @ThyConsigliori

4 November 2020 #BetweenTheLinesDotVote Analysis

Rule of Law - 2nd of our 10 MAGA Planks

I can't say I'm proud of them, but, almost as good, I'm at least NOT disgusted with two sites that I still follow, in spite of myself. Drudge and Dornsife. Here's Drudge's lead today.

2) I have to give it to them. That is not an unfair lead. Isn't the old school news term, "page 1, above the fold?" Data guy that I am, I have zero dispute with the reported numbers, such as they are. Do they follow the Rule of Law? We'll get into that below.

3) Now, you're just going to have to let me brag a bit here, you know, data guy that I am! Check out the one accurate chart at Dornsife out of all there completely wrong other charts all of them. You're gonna have to give this one to me.

4) If you can't bear bragging, skip down a couple of numbered comments or so. I'm telling my story now. I got this much right. It appears to be my superpower. It's kind of like a Spidey Sense. I know real data when I see it. I know false or even just questionable data as well.

5) For instance, I adore my polling venture BetweenTheLines.Vote. But I just knew our data was not adequate to represent America and chose, painfully, to NOT proffer it formally. Man am I glad I didn't. Our data called for a blowout victory for Trump. Last night was not that.

6) I brag again, gigantic fan of Dornsife as I was, I knew they'd killed the golden egg laying goose of polling data when they announced all their changes this season. How wrong were they, I won't try to count the ways. Well, I have to say...WRONG, WRONG, WRONG and etcetera.

7) That was no easy call to make. And last point of braggadociousness, the one chart above, out of so many others they proffer, is validated by Drudge's lead this morning. And that's the one chart I followed. So, at least there's that. Bragging officially ended now.

8) We turn to a point of federalism, its strengths and weaknesses. Federalism? I know, you know the term. Yet I assure you that as this election season has worn on, I too have had to refresh my comprehension of this key term. It is the heart and soul of our Rule of Law.

9) This is my own take on the term. As always, I welcome instruction and correction from my two favorite patriot attorneys, @shestokas and @TPCLJ. I see federalism as the mutual support and opposition for benefit of 3 entities: Nation, States, and We The People.

10 It is my layman's view that what we witnessed last night was sadly a failure of federalism. Here's my point. In our Republic, we leave it to each State to determine its own voting laws and procedures. I suspect it is in exactly that, where we see the failure.

11) I am not recommending the Federal Government take over all voting for national elections. I am saying that our nation needs a limit, or perhaps a set of limits that it is empowered to enforce. Here's one for instance. A State allows early voting but disallows early counting.

12) I'm not sure I approve of early voting, but I did do it myself. What I can't imagine is the benefit of NOT counting early votes, early. If you believe in the polling day, then disallow early voting. If you allow early voting, by logic, you must allow early counting. No?

13) What I utterly disapprove of is ballots accepted AFTER the polling date, by any means. Why do we grant this power to the States? They are NOT trustworthy in this function. They not only do NOT serve the nation, they absolutely wound it thereby. We are wounded.

14) Who is "we?" It is the nation as a whole AND it is We The People. It is the greatest breach of our Constitutional Federal Republic's wellbeing that we do NOT yet know who our coming president will be. This is as wrong as wrong can be. Our Republic demands we address this.

15) Here's another layman's example. A State decides to stop counting its votes with no tally, no determination of winner or loser. The day has come and gone. The votes are not yet tallied. But, we're tired, so, we simply stop. How is that legal? If it is, it shouldn't be.

16) Here's the remedy I recommend. In a Federal election, every State must be mandated to count every vote. And, it must be mandated to succeed in that count by midnight, the day of the election. This should be a Federal Law, NOT one delegated to individual States.

17) That's a high standard. I ask, why do we tolerate such a low standard as currently exists? Of 350,000,000 Americans, I am just 1 soul. Yet, I stand as part of We The People. As a legal person in America, I demand that it is MY RIGHT to know the winner...NOW.

18) Funny thing, I don't blame the States, and I don't blame the Federal Government. Rather, I blame us, We The People. I ask you, do you, and if you do, how many of your friends have the slightest idea of what "federalism" means? How many of your friends feel their own rights?

19) Which brings us back to Rule of Law. Very simply, it cannot exist in a nation whose people do not know the law. It's more than that, though. Allow me to illustrate. After 2012, I realized I did NOT know the law. Due to Ron Paul's recommendation, I discovered a book on topic.

20) Asked what was the most important book he ever read, Ron Paul without hesitation stated: Frederic Bastiat's The Law. I'd never heard of it before. I'd been a Libertarian for years without knowing it. Please read this amazing little book.

fee.org/media/14951/th…

21) Trump is no Libertarian, and sadly, no longer am I. When I signed on as a Trump supporter here is what I realized. Bastiat's world is an ideal, and one I adhere to this day. But, Trump's world is one of realism, pragmatism over idealism. Man that's painful to write.

22) After I read Bastiat for the 1st time, something made me read Thomas Paine's Common Sense again, for the first time in about 4 decades since high school. I loved it in high school, but had nothing to do with it, back then. In 2013 or 2014, it was different.

23) Since you have no way of guessing, I'll just tell you. My current obsession is with James Fenimore Cooper, who's work I never read before. I bought everything he ever wrote for my Kindle for $2.99. I'm on my 5th or 6th novel of his, right now. They're time machines, each one.

24) Why do I share? If there's a single thing to note, in all his amazing works, it is this...

LOVE OF LAW

Not just knowledge of law. Not just respect or adherence to law. The true thing: LOVE OF LAW.

25) I'm here to tell you, if you haven't read Cooper and traveled back to the decades from 1750 - 1820 or so, you simply cannot feel our 1776 Revolution fully. Why did we rebel against our duly empowered government in London? Because it breached its legal rights over us.

26) A government enjoys duly empowered rights. On the other side of the legal line are wrongs. Contemplate that with me deeply.

RIGHTS vs WRONGS

I fear that we've lost the simple sense of that. What is right? What is wrong? This is the basis of law.

27) By the way, I'd just NOT have the confidence to speak on these points at all, if it were not for my friend, hero, and teacher, @shestokas. No single modern book of history as so affected me as his great work: Creating the Declaration of Independence.

amazon.com/Creating-Decla…

28) My friend David is a true attorney. He eats, breathes, thinks, and dreams the law. He feels it the way you and I feel hunger or thirst. He knows the law the way you know your own name. It is that utter absorption of the law that drives David's book.

29) As I recall, he teaches us that the Declaration takes the form of a legal complaint. I may not have that term right. But, I'm close enough for now, until he corrects my error. There is, however, a formal legal term, and he walks us through the law of the Declaration.

30) His book reads just like a novel. Who remembers high school English class, and the term "God's eye view?" A novelist simply knows everything about each of his characters, what they think and feel and decide and how and why they do so.

31) After I read his book - I met him first, read his book second - I challenged him. David!, how could you POSSIBLY know all that about every single character and event in your book? Simple, he said. They all documented their every thought and decision for history.

32) Again, funny thing. It wasn't until I started obsessively reading Fenimore Cooper's works that I could finally feel David's points about what we know about history. Cooper puts the same emotion into his characters and events. Our forefathers loved the law. Loved it.

33) How much did they love the law? More than life itself. That simply means they were ready to die for the law. Rather than surrender to criminals with the appearance of legal right, they were ready to die for the truth of the law, as opposed to its false use.

34) Even if, unlike me, you read Cooper in high school, you likely did NOT read the first of the Leatherstocking Tales, The Pioneers. Ha! I now have. And in it, there is a scene you should take in. Natty Bumppo, our hero, stands at the door of his little hut.

35) He faces an officer of the law. The officer demands entrance. Natty simply says no. You may not enter here. He was the lawful lord of his little hut, which was, by law, his own personal castle. The lawman had no right to enter in. Natty was ready to kill or die over that.

36) It was Natty's right to stand watchman over his own home, his little wilderness castle. It was more than his right. It was his duty, his obligation. More than his own life, he cared for the law. He was illiterate. Yet, he knew the law. Do you? Do you feel the law as he did?

37) When I read Bastiat and Thomas Paine, I found myself ashamed. I did not know the law. I did not know why we rebelled against King George. I did not understand that we deemed him criminal in his kingship. We did not rebel against a king. We rebelled against a criminal king.

38) I cannot this morning speak to the actual state of law in America over this election. Our president attacks that the law has not been followed, that illegality is here, now. I can neither affirm or disaffirm. It is my hope that my legal friends will guide me, guide us.

39) I tell you this. There is such a thing as Natural Law. It is indeed founded upon Common Sense for which reason it is called Common Law. If it fails to speak to the heart of a common man, it fails. As I said, I cry out foul. I deserve to know the name of my new president, now.

40) But what if Biden wins by breach of law? It is most surely possible. I simply don't know. What I do know is this. Like you, I'll be here tomorrow and tomorrow. I will fight for law. I'm no Natty Bumppo. But like you, I am a patriot.

As with the law, we take it from there.

Thread ends at #40.

This is part 2 of 10, taken from the 10 planks in @KateScopelliti's and my book: America First, The MAGA Manifesto.

amazon.com/America-First-…