Trump, the oligarchs and today's MAGA GOP, are gutting our Bill of Rights
TAT readers,
Today’s essay is not what I had planned, but watching another horrific GOP “townhall” where American citizens are roughly removed simply for questioning their congressional representatives, has preempted my plans. As for those family members and friends who vote MAGA, if they are silent in the face of losing theirs and everyone’s constitutionally guaranteed rights, forget it, because they are already too far gone.
Our Bill of Rights was in many ways, an afterthought for our founders and a product of passionate debate in the waning days of ratifying our constitution. That sacred document, largely the product of later president, James Madison, was running up against some, late-in-the-game resistance to one of the most important states to our constitution, Massachusetts. It wasn’t so much that they disagreed with Madison’s remarkable and revolutionary work, but they felt that the final version needed some very specific guarantees regarding the rights of our new citizens.
Madison, who had prepared for the constitutional convention, was at that time, a highly regarded scholar regarding representative government, from the ancient Greeks, all the way up to his own era. While his friend and fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson was serving as our representative in France, Madison had authorized him to purchase and send him every book of note regarding “ancient and modern confederacies.” Jefferson shipped home, two full trunks of extraordinary books. In other words, Madison studied everything he could about the form and format of every representative government from the ancient Greeks to the revolutionary thoughts, then stimulating revolt in modern France.
The point was simple; to lay them all out, while comparing and contrasting them, in order to find their weaknesses. Madison wished to avoid the pitfalls of the previous failures. When his notes were complete, he had his “notes” or as titled: Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies, [April–June?] 1786, He then had them put into a small, pocket sized, 39 page book, so as to offer readily available wisdom to himself and colleagues.
Library of Congress James Madison, May, 1787. Ancient & Modern Confederacies [April-June?]. OF ANCIENT & MODERN CONFEDERACIES.1 MAD. MSS. 1 This memorandum is written on small sheets of paper, which, put together, formed a compact little book, suited to be carried in the pocket. There are 39 pages, and it would seem Madison intended extending it, for an extra page is headed “Gryson Confederacy.”
He wanted to be ready and as well-informed before the ratification of our new constitution, mostly of his own design. Those insights have sustained us successfully, for a quarter of a millennia. The only reason that they are failing now, is because politicians and our SCOTUS, ignore his insights, most especially in the GOP’s assault during and just preceding the Trump era. Both main parties have failed to one degree or another, but now, with a spineless GOP running Congress and a dictator beholden to Putin’s style of government in the Oval Office, we are on the precipice of losing what millions of true patriots have fought to protect and sustain.
Madison, the brilliant scholar, was initially an opponent of a Bill of Rights, not because he didn’t believe in them, but mostly because he thought that the original constitution, already covered these issues. The aforementioned Massachusetts contingent finally convinced him that everyday citizens who had experienced a dramatic loss of individual rights under the British, needed those rights ensconced in these founding documents. Once Madison had been convinced, he became the primary and relentless proponent of a Bill of Rights.
"Few members of the First Congress wanted to make amending the new Constitution a priority. But James Madison, once the most vocal opponent of the Bill of Rights, introduced a list of amendments to the Constitution on June 8, 1789, and “hounded his colleagues relentlessly” to secure its passage. Madison had come to appreciate the importance voters attached to these protections, the role that enshrining them in the Constitution could have in educating people about their rights, and the chance that adding them might prevent its opponents from making more drastic changes to it." - The Bill of Rights: How did it happen? - The National Archives
Okay, after this important and admittedly too short, history lesson, let’s get to why I’m writing about this today.
Over the weekend, a 64 year-old NY social worker named Emily Feiner, was forcibly removed from a 600 person town hall meeting, by GOP congressman, Mike Lawler. She’s not the first American citizen removed harshly from GOP townhalls, since the Trump regime took office. GOP reps are routinely booed and jeered at, due to Trump and his GOP congress’ steady dismantling of our constitutional republic and abuse of our civil rights. In fact, Speaker of the House and White Christian Nationalist, Mike Johnson, along with Rep. “Richard Hudson, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, advised Republican members of Congress not to hold in-person town halls, and it appears that most of them are heeding his advice.”
This is a particularly harsh abuse of part, of our First Amendment rights. In fact, the harsh actions taken against protesters at GOP townhalls, violate two of the four rights enunciated in the First Amendment, 1. Freedom of speech and 2. the right of the people peacefully assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It’s not just the First Amendment either, that the current Republican Regime is intruding on our personal rights. Under Trump and his GOP sycophantic congress, our Fourth Amendment, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth are also currently under assault. Truth be told, I am no legal scholar but, I am a lifelong student of history and our government. I carried a small, pocket-sized constitution in a cargo pocket of my uniform, during my combat deployments and am also in the Thomas Jefferson school of thought about the law.
Apparently, Jefferson had already anticipated judges like, Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Judges like Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, etc. Even the disgracefully Aileen Cannons a federal judge, would have fit his concerns. These examples, often twist themselves into pretzels, with ambiguous and highly conceptualized versions of what should be straightforward. Simply look at how tightly Chief Justice Roberts twisted himself to come up with Trump’s immunity decision. Our first Chief justice, John Jay, is likely spinning in his grave.
So far, the MAGA Republican-controlled Congress, has enabled this depravation of our constitutional rights. What could possibly be more un-American? The spinelessness of the GOP in Congress, is directly contributing to the overthrow of our constitutional republic. By their own actions, they have proved themselves to be violators of their oath of office. For Veterans in congress like my former congressman, Tony Gonzalez of TX #23, it means that they now have dishonored two oaths, one to the military and one to congress. Those oaths:
Even a voter with a middle school education, can understand that violating their oath of office and actively enabling an unconstitutional agenda like Project 2025, not only makes them unworthy of their office, but that they must be removed as expediently as possible and for the sake of our national security. Don’t even get me started on how they enable the administration to ally us with a genocidal Russia, against our allies, while concurrently supporting the dismantling of our national security community. Apparently 76 million voters don’t know or don’t give a damn about our constitution, the very thing that makes us Americans.
So, let’s wrap this relatively short TAT essay up with these closing comments. We have a congress beholden to oligarchs and no, it is not just the GOP, although they are the ones actively embracing fascism and oligarchy as the modus operandi of our government. This is blatantly unconstitutional. We have a Mitch McConnell and Trump SCOTUS that has done everything possible, to take our “anti-oligarchy constitution” and convert it dishonestly, into a dark money-controlled political disaster.
We also now have a DOJ, hellbent on revenge, not supporting the constitution and an entire Republican Party, that voted for Trump and the GOP, based on spoon-fed Russian and GOP far-right extremist propaganda, 24/7, every day and night of the year. This is largely due to a forty year impotency by our national security community, that is what I would suggest, is criminally negligent in managing foreign influence over that span of decades. This claim will be explained in full in my next book, “Conned, the brainwashing of America.” For background on this, you are welcome to read a couple of previous essays on this topic, at the links below. These links will all be part of the upcoming book.
Combat ineffective, the rusted, broken hulk of US Influence Operations (truthaboutthreats.com)
Arrogance, waste fraud and abuse and cronyism in national defense contracting, are putting our republic at severe risk. (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US National Security community is incapable of managing mis/ disinformation threats (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US National Security Community has left us a critical vulnerability in US national security. (truthaboutthreats.com)
Failure in the National Security Influence community is habitual (truthaboutthreats.com)
A Five Point Strategy to Oppose Russian Narrative Warfare (truthaboutthreats.com)
We can't protect ourselves from mis/ disinformation, until we understand influence (truthaboutthreats.com)
Protecting our nation from Mis and Disinformation, requires true expertise at Ethical Influence (truthaboutthreats.com)
Guest article, by Friend and Narrative Strategies Founder, Dr. Ajit Maan (truthaboutthreats.com)
Dear America, I dare you! - by Paul Cobaugh (truthaboutthreats.com)
FOX News is an acute, national security threat that the Pentagon and national security community allows to be viewed in offices, bases, ships and commands. (truthaboutthreats.com)
Without a core, shared, national identity, there is no national security. (truthaboutthreats.com)
National Resilience to anti-American influence is badly wounded and we're unarmed and flailing. (truthaboutthreats.com)
A look at Xi's Narrative of Ascension, via narrative analysis (truthaboutthreats.com)
To deny Putin popular support at home, we must lead with Narrative Warfare (truthaboutthreats.com)
DoD must modernize their approach to conflict... and Great Power Competition (truthaboutthreats.com)
My podcast, hosted by the Lincoln Project and discussing narrative, re: today’s extremist controlled, GOP (truthaboutthreats.com)
Influence Operations are centric to every aspect of National Security (truthaboutthreats.com)
The military calls this, M.O.E., an indicator of the success of Putin's propaganda against the US. (truthaboutthreats.com)
Fake News is Yellow Journalism 2.0 - by Paul Cobaugh (truthaboutthreats.com)
The final thing that I will say on today’s essay, is that in our resistance to this Trump/ oligarchy coup, the primary targets of our protests, must be the home offices of every sitting GOP congressman and senator. We must as I have been recommending in my “Coup Series” also drag our cowardly, mainstream media to those protests too. With few mainstream exceptions like the Associated Press and Newsweek, there are few major media conglomerate, news agencies, willing to ruffle Trump and the GOP’s feathers. What good does it do us to have a constitutional guarantee of a “free press,” if they are too cowardly to report truth?
Coup Series:
Trump, Musk and the MAGA GOP's, coup attempt: fighting back! Part II in a series
Part III in the Coup series: The clock is ticking on Trump’s coup
January 6th & Project 2025... two strategies, one objective... COUP
As retired Army, my military oath to the nation, will remain intact and I will honor that oath so long as I draw breath. This country means something magical, to those of us who are willing to fight for our republic. Those huge protests… they are the real patriots. The rest, must now choose between our constitution or their brainwashed allegiance to a treasonous Republican Party, enabling a pro-Putin, unconstitutional and anti-American coup. The choice is simple for most of us. Those that are brainwashed, will not change their ways. This will be explained in detail, in a future essay and it was in fact, what was intended for today.
In a world of MAGA Republicans, be an Emily Feiner.
Onward my friends, always onward,
Paul