Non-Negotiables

 House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries recently tweeted out “Reproductive freedom is not negotiable.”

There are a few problems with his tweet, not the least of which is that it is inaccurate and disingenuous.  Jeffries uses the phrase “reproductive freedom” but he really means “abortion.”  Further, abortion rights and limitations on it ARE negotiable, and as a society, we mostly arrived at an uncomfortable negotiated settlement—first trimester abortions were ok; no public funds to be used to finance them.

But, as usual, the Radical Left couldn’t stick to a deal and they pushed abortion to the moment of birth (and maybe a little after if the baby survived) and pushed to reverse the Hyde Amendment which barred the use of public funds for abortions.  The Dobbs decision solidified the notion that this issue IS negotiable as it kicked it to the states.

But if we’re going to talk about non-negotiables, I have a list of my own.  As I discussed in my last post, Majorie Taylor Greene caused quite a kerfuffle when she publicly asked for a national divorce, with some even calling her treasonous.  But if Jeffries is going to issue edicts that are nonnegotiable, here are some non-negotiables if we are to stay together as a nation.  Otherwise, I believe that we do stand a good chance of fracturing.

Sovereignty
We are a nation state with territorial integrity.  This means no open border, no Chinese spy balloons floating across our territory unharassed, and no handing decisions over the freedoms of our peoples to foreign bodies like the WHO.  Absolutely not.  Full stop. 

The notion that anyone can walk into this country and stay in violation of our laws—and get state benefits for doing so must cease.   We can have a discussion over how many immigrants are allowed to enter, but the notion that our immigration laws will not be enforced, and worse, that certain jurisdictions can declare themselves “sanctuary cities” harkens back to nullification, and we know where that went.

Moreover, while we from time to time need to enter into treaties with other nations, we must do so while preserving our own sovereignty.  This notion that the U.S. will hand over its response to a pandemic to the WHO (which misled during the entire COVID pandemic) is utterly abhorrent.  Treaties are treaties and approval must conform to the approval set forth in the Constitution--- not by executive fiat.

Restoring our full sovereignty is nonnegotiable and is a priority of first order if we are to stay together as a republic. 

Roll back and De-weaponize the Administrative State.
The Administrative State makes law, prosecutes and adjudicates, all without consent of the sovereign.  Its power was on full display during COVID lockdowns, inflicting massive pain on businesses and families.  The CDC even took a meat cleaver to fundamental concepts of private property by permitting tenants to refrain from paying rent without any recourse from landlords.  This resulted in disfigured and warped situations where some landlords were living in their cars while tenants were warm and comfy in their homes and not paying rent.  The Founders never envisioned that unelected bodies would have this kind of power.

The most egregious symptom of administrative state overreach has been the weaponization of the enforcement agencies for political purposes.  With limited exceptions, for most of our nation’s history, we counted on the enforcement agencies such as the FBI and IRS to play it straight.  Since the Obama years, this is no longer the case and is a real danger to the Republic.  It started in earnest with Lois Lerner at the IRS targeting Tea Party groups, dragging its feet in granting exemptions.   It then got very ugly with the FBI, as it falsified documents for the FISA Court, harassed pro-life conservatives, raided Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence, paid social media to censor conservative viewpoints, and holding on to Hunter Biden’s laptop.

We cannot have enforcement agencies turn into the Stasi to punish political enemies, target certain groups or surveil American citizens with an end around the 4^th Amendment.   Weaponizing these agencies is non-negotiable.

Election Integrity
Election denier has now become a thing.  Beginning with the 2000 election of Bush v. Gore, we have begun to challenge election results.   But just as important as determining a winner, our system has to persuade the loser that the results were accurate and fairly determined.  COVID, mail-in ballots, and rule changes blew that out of the water. 

The midterms evidenced worse defects.  In Pennsylvania, 70% of the ballots were received before the debate between Dr. Oz and Fetterman clearly showed Fetterman’s mental deficiencies.  In Arizona, substantial numbers of voters in key districts were likely disenfranchised because of glitches with the voting machines enabling Katie Hobbs to snatch the election from Kari Lake.

We have tossed illegals into the mix, early voting, ballot harvesting and some states now permit ballots to arrive long after election day with no signature verification.   All these things conspire to through into question the results of elections.  And if we can’t determine policy choices at the ballot box, they will eventually be made through mob rule and violent action.

Restoring election integrity, with severe limitations placed on mail-in ballots and early voting is non-negotiable if we are to stay together.

Protections for Women and Children
A society that doesn’t provide special protections for women and children is doomed.   Over the past five years, the Woke movement has destroyed them.   Women’s sports has been ruined by the transgender movement as women are now forced to compete with biological males in all sports—including swimming, powerlifting, hockey and MMA.  The absurdity of it all reached an apogee with Lia Thomas cleaning up the Ivy League while all of the other women stood looking dispirited and dumbfounded.  Not only are they forced to give back all the gains that Title IX afforded women, but their privacy rights are being invaded in the name of “inclusivity”   as their locker rooms and showers are invaded by wagging penises.  California prisons now permit men that identify as women to be placed in women’s prisons.   And we know where that goes.  The media is on board with this charade, using the words “persons with a uterus” and “chestfeeding” to further denigrate women’s role in a healthy society.  Even Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stumbled over the question, “What is a woman?” deferring that she “was not a biologist.  It’s a question most of us could answer that by 1^st grade without biological training.   Discussion of putting women in front line combat roles deserves its own essay, and I will refrain from commenting here.

Most maddening is the assault on the minds of children.  It started with drag queen story hour through the library system, aimed at 3-8 year old children, and has now graduated to “gender affirmation” hormone treatments and disfiguring surgery, as well documented by Abigail Shrier in her book Irreversible Damage.  I won’t repeat her arguments here, but the fact that the transgender activists have captured the American Medical Association and American Psychological Association as well as many school systems is deeply disturbing.  Psychiatrists can only “affirm” a child’s self-diagnosis that they are another gender, taking away a primary role of the profession—to diagnose.  And school systems and libraries are exposing children as young as kindergarten to genderism with explicit materials in school libraries.  Objections to age appropriate materials are met with howls and shrieking “Book Burners.”  Of course, this is nothing of the sort.  Nobody sought to ban drag queens or explicit materials until they started dragging our kids into it.  As pedophiles desperately tried to latch on to the LGBT movement, they attempted to change the designation to “minor attracted persons” and California has changed its laws to loosen criminal penalties and make prosecutions much harder for such offenses. 

A healthy nation provides special protections for women and children.  It is a nonstarter at keeping this nation together.  They are our future.  It is a hill to die on.

DEI,  CRT and Reparations
This has to go. Now.  These are very, very bad and corrosive ideas, tearing at the fabric of our society.  We can stipulate that slavery and Jim Crow were terrible and that they had long term effects.  But we don’t hold the grandchildren of the Nazis accountable for what their grandfathers did.  DEI, CRT and reparations have to be torn out root and branch.  DEI and CRT have largely accomplished three things—none of them good.  They have destroyed merit in business and academia.  They have created a class of college education make work workers- DEI officers.  And, along with the thought of reparations, are creating a lot of resentment with a threat of a real backlash.

The emphasis on diversity and inclusion must be replaced by an emphasis on social cohesion and merit.  In a multi-race, multi-ethnic nation, social cohesion is a greater virtue than any attempt to remediate past wrongs.   Our nation is fundamentally a forward looking one, not backwards looking.  Attempts to do so will only be counterproductive.  We need to go back to the MLK  precepts of judging people by the content of their character.  To do otherwise runs the risk of devolving into Rwanda, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, or South Africa.  The track record is very clear.

So, Mr. Jeffries, this is MY list of non-negotiables.  Majorie Taylor Greene might be viewed as a right wing zealot, but if we cannot restore these four points, I do not wish to share a polity with those that would deny them.  That they are even up for discussion is patently revolting to me and they must be put back in their proper place—and soon or a national divorce (and I prefer not to have one) is in order.  But we simply cannot go on like this.