Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
A version of Christian nationalism believes that Christianity is a pro-war religion that supports strong nationalist policies that protect Christianity and what it views as traditional life. It is more focused on defeating the enemy than on love. It is more about militaristic and capitalist ideology, than the words of Jesus in the Bible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wouIJDFarpU
Sulla lost an election when running based on his successes as a junior officer. Next election, he ran by telling the voters what they wanted to hear and bribing people, and won.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbKMf3I0Vec
“the main opposition to including specific protections for the Bill of Rights came not from those who thought the document went too far, but from people who feared it didn’t go far enough.
James Madison, then a representative in Congress decades before his election to the White House, believed rights are natural and preexist any form of government. Man “has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person,” he commented in a 1792 newspaper column. “Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right.” Protecting specific rights, he feared, might lead Americans to believe those were their only rights, and that they’re granted by government.
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In an 1819 letter Jefferson wrote that “rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
That was long after he’d prevailed upon Madison in their correspondence to consider that the new Constitution assigns significant authority to the federal legislative and executive branches and should “guard us against their abuses of power.”
“If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can” with a formal Bill of Rights, he continued. While such a document “is not absolutely efficacious under all circumstances, it is of great potency always, and rarely inefficacious.”
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The Ninth Amendment addressed Madison’s concerns about protecting only some rights by embedding his natural rights ideas in the document. It states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.””
https://reason.com/2025/12/08/bill-of-rights-day-how-your-rights-keep-authoritarianism-in-check/
America’s rising debt, inequality, and inability to appropriately tax its wealthy, rhymes with what was happening leading up to the French revolution. The French put off their economic problems until the only solution was revolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqFSX7HQjwk
“some scientists in Iowa figured out how to extract sugar from corn, and high-fructose corn syrup was born.
But there was a problem. The high-fructose corn syrup that American corn farmers were producing was more expensive than sugar. To get food and beverage companies to buy what Andreas was selling, Andreas needed to make his sweet stuff more attractive in the market.
And one way to do that is to make your competitors’ products more expensive.
That’s exactly what the federal government has been doing for decades. In 1976, President Gerald Ford tripled the import tax on sugar. If you tax something, you’ll get less of it. Or, well, you get a more expensive version of it. That’s exactly what happened with imported sugar.
By 1988, sugar came to sell at 22 cents a pound in the United States despite the world price being just 10.5 cents per pound, with each cent increase adding $250 to $300 million to Americans’ collective food bills.
Faced with the rising price of sugar in the mid-1980s, candy and soda companies did the thing that made economic sense: They stopped using sugar and switched to high fructose corn syrup.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/26/how-special-interests-twisted-federal-sugar-policy-to-cost-consumers-2-5-billion-every-year/
“From the beginning, America was a mixture of peoples. John Adams wrote that it resembled “several distinct nations almost” and pondered whether such a collection could truly cohere. Leaders marveled as the first census revealed an array of languages, religions, and origins. Yet over time, Americans did form a common identity—not through blood or inherited culture but through shared ideals. National unity solidified after these ideals were articulated in the Declaration and given lasting institutional form in the Constitution.
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Constitutional limits exist because the Founders feared unchecked power, whether exercised by a ruler or by majorities which have at times been egregiously wrong. The Constitution protects a pluralistic society from the dangers of centralized authority and ideological certitude. In a nation as varied as ours, those protections are not optional.
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The Constitution doesn’t guarantee national unity. It guarantees something better: a system that channels conflict without destroying liberty. As Wood notes, democracy can be volatile. The Founders knew that well. Their answer is a framework that moderates collective impulses while preserving the rights of individuals and minorities.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/27/some-say-the-constitution-has-failed-this-thanksgiving-heres-why-it-hasnt/
Defenders are more likely to win longer wars. So, the idea that Ukraine can’t win because the war is going on so long, is backwards. The U.S. revolution was an eight year war.
The Americans were largely getting their asses kicked and were dependent on foreign aid, but in the end, they won.
The aggressor usually sustains more casualties compared to the defender. The defender often gains resolve the longer the war lasts, while the invader questions why they are doing this in the first place. The defender is fighting for their homes, their territory, and their independence, while the invader is fighting to gain something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wMCTv_9alQ
The British and the Americans are not even in the top ten for history’s biggest slavers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hjwmZJhGII
Ken Burns tries to describe history as it was rather than declare a person good or bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX0da14Ejaw
Russia’s privatization after the Cold War, failed partially because the Russian government was too weak. It could not enforce property rights and the rule of law. Instead, the government was corrupted by the oligarchs. When Putin took over, he exchanged many oligarchs for one–himself.
When the U.S. tries to deregulate for potentially good reasons, and avoids taxes, we need to be careful that we are not setting up our own oligarchs who avoid helpful taxes and regulations at the expense of the people.
https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/the-failure-of-russian-capitalism-with-bill-browder