A New Year & A New Focus on Success to Significance – Top 3 Takeaways – January 3rd, 2023
- What we can do now. What we need to do now. Last week’s 5-4 Title 42 ruling by the Supreme Court, leaving the Trump-era health policy in place (whereby in the name of public health, those lacking status who've crossed our border are to be quickly sent wince they came) is no doubt a win for those on the right, in addition to the twenty states specifically which brought the legal challenge to the Biden administration's effort to repeal it. But it also epitomized a longer-term issue for those on the right. Even when conservatives “win” on an issue, they’re still losing ground overall. As an aside, independent of the merits of the case as raised before the Supremes, if outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could continue to allow emergency proxy voting to occur in the House throughout December in the name of the virus, surely, we can attempt to maintain a semblance of sovereignty along our southern border in the name of it as well. But here’s the thing. And it’s a big one. Bigger than the gap in President Biden’s memory. The country is still losing even on that issue. As Senator Mike Lee tweeted out... SCOTUS’s temporary stay of Title 42 protections will forestall a surge of trafficking and drugs. Lives will be saved. Yet as Democrats recently rejected my effort to remedy this situation legislatively, it falls to @POTUS to enforce the laws currently on the books. And that’s the most instructive point here. Conservatives had a legal win simply to maintain the status quo border crisis we’ve experienced for nearly two years. And as Senator Lee alluded to, his proposed legislation, which simply would have legislatively kept Title 42 in place - introduced into the Omnibus spending debacle wasn’t even something the Democrat controlled congress would consider. In other words, even when conservatives win, a la the SCOTUS ruling, we’ve been losing nationally because of an inability to achieve even the most basic public policy measures of consequence. And what kind of a “win” is it when the win is to simply maintain the status quo crisis anyway? In the case of the border crisis consider this. In the most recent fiscal year (ended in September) there were about 2.8 million documented border crossings. A total higher than the population of 15 states and greater than 1 million more than the previous annual record which occurred last year. The boiling frog effect doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the stunning erosion of sovereignty in this country. And so, the big win for conservatives last week is to simply maintain that debacle. And that’s got to change. The border and Title 42 example, is endemic of a much bigger problem which has plagued our country for decades. Incrementalism and the moving of the goal posts on policy overtime. What we really need in this country is...
- Success to significance. I’ve often spoken of how our society arrived in this place, you know the place where Democrats, including a Supreme Court Justice, no longer can define what a women is. We didn’t just arrive here. It wasn’t like one day leftists woke up and decided biology was too confusing to determine male from female. It’s that they’d been busy corrupting it for decades. The 1964 Supreme Court ruling, striking down religion in public school classrooms. The 1980 Jimmy Carter created Department of Education seeing to it that the agendas of teachers’ unions, as opposed to the education interests of our kids, would be served. Those two events were the preeminent catalysts behind how we got here. Control the classroom, control the educational agenda, control the minds of Americans for generations. It’s all part of the long game successfully played by Democrats which is straight out of Sal Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. The breaking down of morality and any semblance of right and wrong is how, for example, over 2.8 million people are allowed to pour over our border within a year and it’s now considered a “win” that it’s not even more. It’s how for example, the very group of people who just two years ago were claiming that anyone who questioned mask and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy were science deniers, are now literally denying science by suggesting one’s biological sex isn’t a necessarily a thing and that minors should be taking surgical and chemical action to “correct it”. It’s nuts but it’s been mainstreaming. What’s next? Well, that depends. Do we want success to significance where we begin to reinstitute right from wrong? Do we want to truly begin to meaningfully bend back the absurdity in our society, or do we want to feign outrage issue by issue as the absurdity grows while feeding it with our actions and our decisions?
- A time for choosing. Ronald Regan said this: So we have come to a time for choosing. Either we accept the responsibility for our own destiny, or we abandon the American Revolution and confess that an intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. Political wins are fleeting if they’re a) not made through legislative action, and b) aren’t accepted by future generations of voters. Now, here’s the good thing. Many in our society have grabbed onto the time for choosing concept. According to the 1776 PAC, starting with Virginia school boards last year, 100 school boards across the country have flipped from essentially being controlled by teachers' unions, back to parents who are more concerned with reading, writing and arithmetic than say gender fluidity discussions in elementary school. In fact, according to the 1776 PAC, the success rate for flipping school boards over the past year plus was approximately 70% when real concerted efforts were made to flip local school boards. That’s huge. That’s success to significance. In Florida, Governor DeSantis endorsed 36 challenging school board candidates across the state as part of the effort to flip local school boards. 30 of them, or 83%, won – flipping numerous school boards across the state. The point is, on the most fundamental issue of all, education and the minds of future generations, there is a roadmap for having success to significance. And going forward there’s much more of that which needs to take place. Turns out there’s a lot of wisdom in Woody Allen’s saying that 80% of success is just showing up. For far too long conservatives haven’t. We haven’t been playing the long game the Marxists have. As we’ve entered the new year, we need to focus on continuing to show up in South Florida as we did last year. It’s imperative that we do so in the coming local elections in our communities. It’s a time for choosing and rather than simply complaining about what’s happening in our society, it’s time to show up and do something about it. Where people meaningfully have, like specific school districts nationally and in Florida’s elections generally, there’s been success to significance. Every election has consequences, however it’s often those closest to us which have the biggest impact on our daily lives. Last year was a year of action in Florida and conservatives experienced record success in our state. We’re entering this new year with more Republicans elected top to bottom in Florida’s history and lots of momentum in our state. I’ve long said that one day South Florida would save this country from itself. The time is now. It’s time to begin to Make America Florida so the whole country can benefit from the success to significance that we have in our state. It starts at the grassroots level with us identifying and supporting good candidates for offices at all levels, and it’s exported when those we’ve elected to federal offices take our model and begin to advocate and implement similar policy nationally. Speaking of which, while Republicans have a drama ready to play out regarding the vote for House Speaker, as they are ready to take control of the House today – the country, not just Florida, is better off than it’s been in about two years with the ability to impose some checks and balances on the Biden administration and Democrats generally. It’s a first step towards rolling back Marxist incrementalism and achieving success to significance.