By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) December 10, 2019; see Brian’s related Dec. 24, 2020 article: The History of Russia’s Cyberwarfare Against NATO Shows It Is Time to Add to NATO’s Article 5 and June 7, 2021 article: Already in a Cyberwar with Russia, NATO Must Expand Article 5 to Include Cyberwarfare

WASHINGTON & ARLINGTON —  U.S. “engagement” with Russia needs to shift dramatically to acknowledge obvious reality: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin is actively hostile to the United States and constantly seeking to undermine its interests and those of our allies and Western democracy in general.  While open military conflict is obviously the wrong approach, far short of such action, America must meet Russia’s state of hostility with hostility, countering Russian moves to undermine America with our own forceful undermining of Putin’s power and the Kremlin’s reach and credibility.

Russia is not our friend and does not act in good faith.  Pretending otherwise gives the U.S. no advantages.  From Syria to Ukraine, from arms control to our own election security, treating Russia as a serious partner willing to play ball has only led to frustration, destabilization, death, and humiliation.  To make matters worse, the current extraconstitutional U.S. presidency, in particular Donald Trump’s White House, is clearly compromised by the Kremlin to the degree that, unwittingly or not, Donald Trump is acting in the Kremlin’s interests and is undermining American interests, despite the best efforts of his own political appointees, career intelligence officials, diplomats, bureaucrats, and other “adults-in-the-room.”  Furthermore, the Republican Party as a whole has been coopted to a degree by Russia, too, with an unprecedented amount of Russian money going to fund and promote Republicans and Republican-affiliated organizations like the NRA and with Republican leadership and rank-and-file all too happy both to turn a blind eye to election security (since doing so benefits them) and to adopt Kremlin talking points and tactics.

In the entire history of Russo-American relations, never has the U.S. been at such an overall disadvantage, let alone a major disadvantage, as it is now, but with Russia’s own Agent Orange in the Oval Office, it is what it is.  The question, now, from our compromised position, is: what do we do to fix it and deal with Russia effectively?

We can play hardball, with or without President Trump. Simply put, Russia—Putin’s Kremlin specifically—has greatly benefitted from its hostile posture towards the United States with minimal cost in return.  It will continue to do so until it becomes more harmful than beneficial, and for this to be understood, Russia must experience harm in a way that sinks deep and puts fear back into calculus of the Kremlin, as was the case during the Cold War.

We know that Russia has been owning us as far as cyberwarfare.  We, too, can hack secrets of prominent Russian politicians and release them through third-parties like the Russians did with WikiLeaks in 2015-2016.  We can impose severe penalties on platforms like Facebook and Twitter for disseminating what is clear Kremlin propaganda online.  We can also ban RT and Sputnik in the U.S.  The U.S. must also set up its own media arms like RT and Sputnik to be broadcast aggressively and to offer free VPN services for native Russian speakers and readers that will allow them to bypass any censorship the Kremlin can muster against them.

The United States, not Russia, is the world’s largest natural gas producer.  If the Kremlin wants to play hardball with its gas assets, so can the U.S., and more so.  Russia’s state-run Gazprom often sells at a loss to further the Kremlin’s geopolitical aims; the U.S. government, in turn, can buy up stocks of natural gas from its own private sector and then sell at far lower rates than Gazprom to Europe even as it sanctions Gazprom for any of an array of offenses the company has committed over the years.

Russia has supported secessionist movements to harm the West, from Brexit and Scotland to Catalonia and Donetsk.  The Russian Federation is rife with minorities with centuries of grievances against Russia whose pots can also be stirred by propaganda.  And where Russia has aggressively countered Western influence in places like Moldova and the Central African Republic, the U.S. can offer even more economic aid in exchange for alignment with the U.S. and democracy.

We can offer far more military support to Ukraine and engage in deniable special operations missions.  Russia’s one aircraft carrier, the aging Admiral Kuznetsov, might meet with an unfortunate accident next time it ventures far from home…

Perhaps most effectively, we can go after Putin’s and his henchmen’s money.

From the internet to gas, we can outplay Russia with the strengths it has used against us.  Most actions can be undertaken by Congress even without the president.  The time to act is now.

See Brian’s see Brian’s related Dec. 24, 2020 article: The History of Russia’s Cyberwarfare Against NATO Shows It Is Time to Add to NATO’s Article 5, June 7, 2021 article: Already in a Cyberwar with Russia, NATO Must Expand Article 5 to Include Cyberwarfare, and e-Book, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook; preview here

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

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A deep look at the Clinton vs. Sanders fight: the history, the present, and a path forward. Sanders never had more than the slimmest of chances. Besides never winning over even close to a majority of the Democratic constituency on a state-by-state basis, Sanders also failed to understand even the basics of politics, which is more than just haranguing special interests and saying what you think with no filter. Clinton knows this, and it is a big part of how and why she has accomplished more in her career than Sanders. Ultimately, if you don’t share the same beliefs as the political party you want to lead and don’t know how to play the game of politics, you won’t be successful, no matter how much you and your supporters would love to ignore the game. But the game is part of reality, part of politics, and part of winning. And, like in sports, in politics, winning is not only everything, it’s the only thing. It doesn’t mean you need to sell your soul, but it does mean that the model Sanders has laid out is both naive and ineffective, even more so in a general election. Still, we come here not only to criticize, but to both praise and bury the Sanders campaign.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 29, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) April 29th, 2016 

CNN/NBC News

AMMAN — Now is a critical time for the Democratic Party. There are two candidates vying for the presidential nomination of the Party. One is Hillary Clinton, very active in Democratic politics for almost half a century since her rejection of Republican ideology in 1968, coming after her days as a “Goldwater Girl” and being raised by a very conservative father, a political transformation she underwent during her days as an undergraduate at Wellesley College.

The other is Bernie Sanders.

*****

How We Came to This Point

The official Senate page listing all the senators of the 114th Congress does not list Bernie Sanders as a (D) for Democrat, but as an (I), displaying his status as an independent. Bernie’s own Senate website still proudly states that he is “the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history,” in his “About” section. As a non-Democratic who in twenty-five years in the House and Senate combined refused to declare himself as or officially become a member of the Democratic Party, and who proudly maintained his independence as a democratic socialist, he has clearly, beyond any reasonable doubt, failed to take over the Democratic Party as a shining outsider white knight he had hoped to be, an outsider that would have forced the Party hard and far to the left. And it was a Democratic Party that he only just joined (apparently) in time for this election season, but one for which for he so long clearly harbored disdain.

Listening to his rhetoric on the campaign trail, he clearly still harbors this disdain, playing a delicate balancing act of repeatedly decrying “The Political Establishment” that favors Clinton while simultaneously seeking its approval and endorsement (even to the degree of trying to get superdelegates to switch their support from Clinton to him), a contradiction that increasingly has not gone unnoticed. 

Despite his surprising early success (a near-tie in Iowa and a resounding, crushing victory in New Hampshire), it has been clear to those willing to look at the hard numbers of electorate beliefs and trends, supported by masses of polling and social science research, from quite early in the race that Sanders’ ability to win the diverse type of constituency necessary to clinch the Democratic nomination was practically nonexistent. As I noted before, this precise moment came in Nevada, when Hillary Clinton won by staggeringly dominant support from African Americans and Latinos. Prior to this win, the polling data already heavily confirmed that Sanders’ core of support consisted of white liberals and young people, a core nowhere near large enough win the majority of the overall national Democratic constituency. The main question was as to if Sanders’ very strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire would give African Americans and Latinos pause enough to consider, and then vote for, Sanders in large enough numbers for him to win the nomination. The Nevada contest on February 20th, coming just a week before South Carolina’s heavily black Democratic base would vote in its contest, and that coming just a few days before (the first) Super Tuesday contests that would award the most delegates in any single day and that would include most of South, with its heavily black Democratic constituency and with Texas and its huge Latino constituency, was Bernie’s one chance to show he could win over a diverse coalition of support before the South Carolina and the rest of the South would create a reality of, votes, delegates, numbers, and probabilities that would effectively end his candidacy in all practical terms if he failed to do so. 

After all, the laws of human behavior show that if a certain demographic of people favor one candidate generally by more than 4 to 1 (African Americans) or more than 2 to 1 (Latinos), those ratios will not switch in a matter days and weeks in the absence of some sort of remarkable event.

Such an event never happened in the run up to Nevada, and it has not since.  Clinton was not indicted by the FBI in relation to her e-mail scandal, a probability that might have even been lower than Sanders’ miniscule chances of winning the nominations, nor did she suffer a dramatic collapse or series of gaffes. On Sanders’ side, he stubbornly failed to tailor or alter his message in any significant way to appeal to new groups who had thus far not bought into it. Aggressively trying to court African Americans on his terms, not theirs, was never a sound strategy.

Sanders’s Ideological Disconnect

Yet it is a hallmark of his idealist, socialist, even pseudo-Marxist theories of social change that maintain if only the masses were educated in the right ideology, they would largely come on board and support the revolution (never mind that time and time again people have proven this theory wrong, from Russia to China and elsewhere). “Educating voters” was a phrase Sanders and his supporters constantly used when explaining how a conservative country like the United States would suddenly elect a socialist president despite a fierce, visceral opposition to socialism among huge swaths of voters, particularly many millions of voters in key, populous battleground swing states that are crucial for victory in November. Like many Russians, Yugoslavs, and others before them, African Americans are not receptive to ideas of Bernie’s socialist “political revolution,” its prospects even far dimmer than his sliver of a chance at winning the nomination. If Sanders can’t win over such staunch Democrats, how will more conservative non-Democrats and Republicans respond to his message?

In constant use of phrases like “political revolution” and “educate the American people,” Sanders, like most ideologues, demonstrates his disconnect with—even war against—reality. For the ideologue, data, facts, context, research, all matter little; ideas, inspiration, and ideals are what matter most; and yet, that is why the vast majority of ideologically-driven revolutions have failed miserably and have often descended into mass-murder of the very masses the revolutions are ostensibly designed to save after these masses speak out and say “no, thank you,” to revolution. 

Of course, Bernie Sanders and his movement are not violent like the Bolsheviks, Maoists, or Nicaraguan Sandinistas.

But there are similarities in mentality. 

That’s why the nickname applied to Sanders supporters of Sandernistas is so apropos; the revolutionary Nicaraguan Sandinistas were also self-styled populist “democratic socialists.”

One similarity that I’ve already noted is the arrogance of belief that most people are simply with them, a belief that is simply an assumption and not based on any wider research and is based at best on anecdotal experiences. Another similarity in mentality is that those who disagree must have been brainwashed. Still another is that every single power structure or mainstream institution is nefariously stacked against them. There are not rational people, institutions, or credible authorities that disagree with the revolutionary ideals and plans, these ideologues say, because the powers that be have either warped or bribed the vast majority of policy, political, and economic experts and academics, as well any non-“alternative” news media (“alternative” meaning media that is for the revolution, its plan and ideals, not critical of them). And Mayor of Burlington Bernie Sanders in the 1980s vigorously supported the Sandinistas, even arranging to have their TV programming broadcast on Burlington’s local public-access cable stations.

Rob Swanson/File

The idea that thinking people can either rationally disagree or rationally conclude that such ideas might be nice but are not practical on a variety of levels simply does not occur to the ideologue. In my many exchanges with Bernie Sanders supporters, I have to yet to hear or watch or read, or even see from the candidate himself, any kind of thought-out, intelligent, detailed, worthwhile response to this concept of rational disagreement. Instead, the response is snark and slogans, castigation and conspiracy theories, as if somehow, to question Bernie Sanders (!) even on his quest for the presidency automatically makes us somehow deficient, all the while these ideologues never question their own deficiency when it comes to anything regarding the nuts and bolts of actual governance. This campaign has, among too many of Sanders’ followers, become something of a messianic cult, where the messiah is come and if you don’t get it you’re part of Team Devil. And, to a degree, the contempt that Sanders’ supporters have for anyone who disagrees with them—regardless of how rational the disagreement’s basis is—is mirrored, though more politely if still quite rudely, by the candidate himself.

Decoding the Debate

This contempt was on full display in the last Democratic debate, but has hardly been limited to just that stage.

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Without a doubt, that latest Democratic debate in the Brooklyn Navy Yard (you can watch the full debate here) was the most spirited, eventful debate on the Democratic side yet: nasty, full of contrasts, and even with a few big surprises. But like all the other debates, in which Hillary Clinton had commanding leads in some sort of combination of delegates, votes, and polls, this debate once again featured a Bernie Sanders that needed to do something dramatic to alter the dynamics of the race to have even a prayer of a chance of winning the nomination, and, once again, that he failed to do.

It wasn’t for trying or lack of trying, but, as has often been the case with Sanders, the level of effort and level of strategic and tactical planning did not match each other. Both candidates were claiming that New York state was their home turf: Sanders, with his thick Brooklyn accent and his youth spent growing up in Brooklyn, and Clinton, with her service as a New York’s Senator from 2001-2009 and living in the state since those days up through the present day. Sanders made the calculation that perhaps he could afford to be, by far, his most aggressive and condescending yet to Clinton, perhaps feeling that NY would, in the end, prove to be more his home state than hers. He was snide, dismissive, and sarcastic; he laughed at her, mocked her, repeatedly used sarcasm; his body language and motions all evening were hostile, with him contorting his face constantly in expressions of derision and amusement while Clinton was talking (she, conversely, was often calm and stoic while he spoke) and literally pointing his finger at her incessantly, wagging and waving it at her invasively, raising it often while she was still talking, interrupting her, too (not that she did not interrupt him a few times as well). He was hypocritical in his modes of attack (her tiny amounts of fossil fuel industry contributions that her campaign and PACs received are, apparently, fair game, but not the small amount of high per-capita guns coming from Vermont into New York City; her votes should be viewed in black and white, his with respect to his environment and details). He even questioned her motives, again—what has been a staple of the Sanders campaign—implying that Clinton is a corrupt hack, bought and sold by her special interest donors, without actually directly leveling the accusation. Apart from interrupting Sanders, Clinton did none of these things. She stuck to a more elevated tone and to the issues, and did not question his motives for voting on gun issues the way he did with her even though he did not return the favor on other issues. 

Some would say because Bernie did not attack Hillary on the e-mail and  Benghazi issues that this is somehow him taking the high road, an example of his being exceptionally civil. I find that to be wholly unconvincing; unlike Republicans, Democrats do not see these issues as either terribly substantive or evidence that Clinton did something seriously wrong. Like most politicians, Sanders decided to attack Clinton where he could gain points for doing so; in a Democratic nomination contest with mainly Democrats voting, that was on issues of campaign contributions and super PACS, not on what Republicans were throwing at her. If anything, Bernie holding back on the e-mails and Benghazi is a just sign that Democratic voters would not have responded well to such attacks. Had he gone down that road, Bernie would have looked and sounded just like the desperate Republicans have if he had attacked her on those issues; it would have hurt Brand Bernie. So no, Bernie didn’t avoid those lines of attack out of charity and kindness; it was in his interests not to come off sounding like Republicans. When the topic resounds with the Democratic base, he has been happy to attack Clinton.

Conversely, I have not heard Clinton attack Bernie Sanders for broadcasting Sandinista propaganda in Burlington, for how he campaigned during the Vietnam War to reduce the American military to “local citizen militias and Coast Guard,” for how in 1980 he served as an elector in an obscure Trotskyist political party that called for “solidarity” with the Iranian Revolution even as its regime held Americans hostage, among other gems from Sanders’ past. And yet, you never hear Clinton being given credit for playing nice with Sanders, even though she clearly is, overall. The general approach for both seems to be that they attack each other from the left, not the right or with other tabloidy-stuff. And, as nasty as this race has gotten, the tone is astronomically more mature, substantive, and polite than the race on the Republican side. 

Of course, as the front-runner, it makes sense that Clinton would not come out swinging the way Bernie did, who was far behind and had to make up a huge gap. That is politics, and Sanders, lest we forget, is still a politician, much like Clinton. Neither has been a saint, but Sanders campaigns on being one while Clinton never has. So attack her he does, and often not fairly, often by insinuation, often indirectly, and often letting his surrogates and supporters do the dirty work, whom he often fails to restrain. That has not been much of a high road for those who have been playing close attention, although this has largely escaped scrutiny because of the outlandish conduct on the Republican side that has made it seem tame in comparison.

And in the debate, happy to attack her he was; Bernie clearly felt comfortable not holding back much against her. 

This calculation, in the end, would prove to be disastrously wrong.

In Bernie’s opening statement, he noted how far behind Clinton he was at the beginning of the race, and attributed how close it was to what claimed was the “radical” move of “telling the American people the truth” (the clear implication is the Clinton is not).

As usual, Sanders attacked Clinton for the support that she and organizations that support her received from special interests, including Wall St.

Sanders’ first big stumble was in saying he didn’t think the government should break up the banks, that the banks should break themselves up, a thoroughly unconvincing response from a man who has made the big banks one of America’s great public enemies in his campaign.  The second came right after, when he could not name a single instance of when Clinton’s money she received from Wall St. influenced a specific decision of hers when she was in power in the Senate. He followed up with his inability to do this with a salvo of nasty sarcasm belittling her speaking out against the big banks, noticing mockingly and acerbically that the bankers “must have been crushed by this.”

One line of attack that I thought was particularly unfair was Sanders’ minimum wage cheap shot swipe against Clinton. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. I will point out that from 1998, when I had my first job one summer while I was in high school, through mid-2013, the vast majority of the jobs I had and the vast majority of the hours I worked were at or near the minimum wage ($7.25-$8.25 an hour). Much of this was in the retail industry while I was in school or trying to transition to something better suited to my background and skills. So I know what it’s like to work a minimum wage job more than many Americans, and I care about this issue a lot. Hillary Clinton wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour, a huge increase of over 65%. She further thinks that in many localities, like New York City, $15 makes more sense, and she has supported such efforts at the state and local levels to make the minimum wage $15. The thing is, Clinton and many experts recognize that a one-size-fits-all minimum wage is not a good solution for the country as a whole; the cost of living in Northern Virginia, New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston, among other places, is dramatically higher than in most other parts of the country, particularly rural areas and small towns. A $15 minimum wage in the near future would be very difficult for many small businesses outside of major U.S. metropolitan areas to handle or afford. Clinton’s nuanced approach is very much called for, Sanders’ oversimplistic approach (as is often his type of approach to many issues) is not and would harm the economy in many parts of America. For Sanders to try to portray Clinton as if she is somehow against American workers, as if she has not fought for a $15 minimum wage in important instances, and to attack her so strongly on this issue, to me does not seem fair. Sanders’ calling for a nearly 107%, unrealistic increase in the minimum wage across-the-board, period, and to attack Clinton’s over 65% increase—still a major, historic increase—is attacking someone who is still fighting hard on an important issue to most Democrats, just in a different way than Sanders, and seems to be splitting hairs on an issue where they are far closer than they are apart. I would also add that it is telling that Sanders wants to discuss who wants the higher federal minimum wage instead of actually discussing the actual policy itself and the differences between $12 in a rural area and $15 in NYC, between federal efforts and state and local efforts. Sanders should, if his mantras are to be believed, be better than hyperinflating such differences. 

One could be tempted to say the same for Clinton on Sanders with, say, guns, except that she is generally responding to attacks from Team Sanders that have been going on for months. If he is going have some major attacks that focus on minor differences, it is entirely reasonable that Clinton respond in kind. Further, I would argue that their differences in guns are more substantive than their differences on the minimum wage

Bernie, as was his usual response to the issue of gun violence, noted that he had a rating grade of a D- from the NRA. Hillary was very effective in attacking his votes that were in line with the interests of the NRA (for these he had a nuanced explanation, but for all the issues with Clinton where her votes are questionable, it’s black and white to him!), but she should have mentioned that her grade is an F, and while that might not seem like a big deal to some, Sanders voting against the Brady Bill five times and for shielding gun manufacturers from liability are not insignificant differences; they are differences that may very well account for lives lost and lives saved, and certainly account for the different grades they have received from the NRA and for why Clinton’s grade was lower than Sanders; even in the NRA’s view, Sanders did not do everything he could to restrict guns; in its view, Clinton did; otherwise, both candidates would have received and F. And, while only a tiny number of the overall traced guns from crime scenes in New York came from Vermont, Clinton is still absolutely right that Vermont had more guns per capita showing up in New York crime scenes than any other state, so using that statistic to point out that that laxer gun laws in Vermont have had negative consequences for New York—an effect outsized for its tiny population—is fair game when discussing gun policy in general before the New York state primary, since both Sanders and Vermont have been less tough on guns than Clinton and New York.

Israel, Palestine, and the Politics of Political Theater

The one moment where I was by far the most impressed by Sanders was when he was bold in speaking out on the plight of the Palestinian people. I have written numerous pieces in which I have been extremely critical of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians, of its tactics and strategy, of its occupation, of Netanyahu.  I agree with Sanders 100% that, overall, the military intervention in Gaza in the summer of 2014 was disproportionate. A part of me was disappointed that Clinton did not express some of the same sentiments time in her recent AIPAC speech that Sanders has expressed, but at the same time, Sanders did not make the comments in question to AIPAC, which he skipped and which would certainly have been hostile to his message, and made the comments instead in an interview with the New York Daily News. Rather, Hillary (understandably if not admirably) tailored her message in a close race with Sanders, where even some polls in NY had them close, and, while not denying Sanders’ points, certainly avoided discussing them at all in favor winning over America’s Jewish political establishment in what has been a difficult primary (with NY state voting soon after this speech, NY being home to a huge portion of America’s Jews and, therefore, the world’s) and looks to be a difficult general election, one in which Republicans will try to make Democrats and Clinton look weak in terms of support for Israel. Sanders, as an American Jew and as many Jews do, may feel freer to criticize Israel than Americans who are non-Jews. Sanders also made the aforementioned comments to the New York Daily News as someone whose chances of ever being president were very slim; months from now, when Sanders is not the nominee or the president, he will face little scrutiny, and pay few penalties, for uttering them. Yet, if Hillary Clinton had said these things the way Sanders had said them, she could very well pay a price in November in a close race with Trump, or even once in the White House as she seeks to engage Israel and win reelection.

I can’t fault Hillary for not taking a big political risk on publicly speaking out for Palestinians the way Sanders has, though I would have preferred that her AIPAC address contained more lines addressing the plight of the Palestinians. Playing her cards closer to her chest is more than warranted in this instance, and I take far more comfort in Clinton’s actions over her long career rather than ascribe much to her statements made on the campaign trail when it comes to demonstrating fairness to both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She came out for a Palestinian state as First Lady, before her husband, and when she was Secretary of State, she repeatedly criticized Israel and Netanyahu for their treatment of Palestinians and settlement expansion, both privately and publicly.

As admirable, then, as Sanders’ speaking on the plight of the Palestinians was, it also demonstrated how politically unsavvy he is.  And political savviness is a crucial trait that one trying to run the American political system and run one of its two major political parties must possess. Sanders was even forced to suspend his Jewish outreach coordinator after it was discovered just days before the NY primary that she had posted some very pointed criticism of Netanyahu, utilizing offensive language, on social media. It is entirely possible, even probable, that Sanders comments and the story of his outreach staffer may have cost him some Jewish support in NY; Clinton did, after all, outperform the final polling that was conducted in the state, and Sanders underperformed. If she campaigned strongly right now during the election for Palestinians rights, it might cost her votes in a crucial state like Florida, and if she lost the election, she would also lose her ability to push for those very rights even as she spoke for them on the campaign trail. Sure, she slyly dodged the issue at AIPAC and the debate, but doing so was simply smart if not admirable politics (the former often more effective than the latter in terms of public discourse), and her record shows that there is little reason to believe she won’t stick up for Palestinians while still vigorously defending Israel’s right to defend itself.

If only politics were as simple as simply saying what you think, directly, all the time, consequences be damned, then Bernie’s style would make sense. But it’s far more complicated. Sometimes politics involves holding your tongue, playing your cards close to your chests, not saying everything you believe, tailoring your message, waiting for the right time. People who support Bernie like him for generally doing none of these; even some people who don’t support him like him for the same reason. 

But politics is often a dance, a game, kabuki theater; in Bernie’s world, most people agree with him (the silent masses!), and if you just mobilize their support, presto! That’s how you get change done, that’s how you transform America from a plutocracy to one of shared socialist values.  And that is what Sanders and his supporters believe.

Except it’s never that simple, that is not the real world, that is not the real America. 

The bottom line is that such an approach has not made him a winner in this race (it was clear since Nevada he would not win, clearer since Super Tuesday I, and now only painfully, obviously clear to all but his most die-hard, delusional partisans). But even before this presidential campaign, his approach has only led him to pass one—just one—of his own bills in twenty-five years in Congress to Clinton’s ten bills in eight years. His mentality and worldview have not made him an effective legislator; relative to Sanders, Clinton was a very and far more effective legislator. Sanders might not realize this as deeply as he should, but there is a hell of a lot more to politics than simply standing up and saying what you believe. Millions of people in the streets may sound nice, but that is not how any major change came about in America, certainly not without numbers and leadership in Congress to back up such forces. As Sanders’ candidacy has proven beyond a doubt, filling tens of thousands of people in a park, street, or stadium is hardly representative of the level of support a candidate has: Sanders drew a remarkable 27,000 people to a rally in Washington Square in Manhattan about a week before the New York primary, yet lost 42% to 58% to Clinton, by about 300,000 votes.

Truce, Peace, or an Alliance with Sanders and Sandernistas?

I know I’ve been hard on Sanders, and his followers. I just don’t have much patience for “movements” that are clearly doomed from the start, that at best, succeed only in highlighting a few issues a bit more than usual, but that most often simply succeed in inflaming the passions of a minority of millions, filling their heads with unrealistic expectations, causing their hearts to swell with hope, a hope that will only be crushed and let down, feeding a roller coaster of emotions that crests mightily, continues to crest well-after all reason has warned them this will not end the way they envision, and inevitably leads to disappointment in one way or another. The Sanders “movement” is but one of many of such “movements,” and whether or not it is generally forgotten and just a minor blip on the political radar, has less to do with Sanders himself and more to do with whether his adherents buy into the two-party system, make their peace with reality, and start to work on their causes as active, registered members of the Democratic Party, bolstering it during mid-terms (when it has recently suffered losses), and thereby earning a seat at the table and a right to help steer the course of the Party, having put in their time, having voted with Democrats for repeated election cycles, have been there to withstand the onslaught or organized Republicans. Because what is perhaps most offensive to me about the typical Sandernista, besides the gleeful and inaccurate denigration of Hillary Rodham Clinton, is the sense of entitlement that most Bernie Sanders supporters—most of them non-(registered)-Democrats, independents, unaffiliateds, who are and have been supporting third-parties, whose inaction or misdirected action has been as responsible for the Tea Party takeover of Congress and the election of George W. Bush in 2000 as any other single group of people—feel that they automatically have the right to participate, take over, and lead the Democratic Party for which they have long held disdain and have not fought for over the years. 

Sorry, but you haven’t been with us, you haven’t supported us, not enough. If you get to take part in an open or mixed primary, good for you, welcome to the action, but this is rightfully at the discretion of state parties, and the state parties that say “Democrats only for the Democratic primary” are perfectly within rationality and their legal and political rights to make their contests closed to non-Democrats. Nothing entitles you to have power in my party, not when you’re not a member, not when you haven’t been there fighting on our side. 

Sure, we appreciate the level of enthusiasm you have displayed; now, let’s see if you have the patience and maturity to stay engaged over time and apply that enthusiasm to actually making a difference. Simply latching onto a single candidate in a single election cycle that you think will change everything is not only foolish, but is the lazy, easy way out, when far more is required of you as a citizen over far longer a period of time than months or one year. I could have—and did—say many of the same things about Obama supporters in 2008; we got a fine president in Obama, to be sure; but the “hope and change” he campaigned on in that election, the transformative persona that so many of his supporters believed in, turned out to be a big disappointment, to no surprise to me. And yet with Obama, even if that more emotional aspect of his appeal never came to fruition, we had a candidate and a president who at heart was also a deep, substantive thinker, and thus disaster was averted and a pretty decent presidency emerged where “hope and change” failed. I was able to proudly cast my vote for him in November, both in 2008 and 2012. Bernie Sanders, as he has amply demonstrated time and time again, in interview after interview (most clearly in the now infamous New York Daily News interview), is not a man of substance, is not a deep thinker. It would have been with a large sense of unease if I had to vote for him in November in order to prevent Trump from winning the White House.

So no, I will not apologize for not respecting your movement, for not respecting your candidate, for not respecting the awful way you and he have treated the remarkable if imperfect woman who will be our standard bearer this fall. I was right to declare war on you when you and your candidate were out of hand and going to far.

But now I offer an olive branch: I offer a truce if you reign in your atrocious attacks on her, if Sanders is careful to encourage you to do the same, if Sanders stops allowing crowds to loudly boo Hillary at his rallies, if he himself reigns in his attacks on Clinton and focuses primarily on the issues for which he has been such a vocal and passionate advocate, then I happily offer a truce. I offer peace if you vote for Hillary in the fall, and do your part to stop a Trump and Republican takeover of the government. And I offer an alliance if you will register as a Democrat, be there election after election including midterms, stick with the Party and try to slowly change it from within, and maturely note as adults that, like in any relationship, there will be times that the Democratic Party will disappoint you, and such are no times to childishly storm off and say “I’m through.” 

Believe me, I understand being frustrated with the Party; I thought a few times about leaving myself, so full of disappointed was I. But that is no way to help the party, to change it over time, to make a difference. And the sidelines are no place to be for anyone who claims to care about politics, their countrymen, their nation, is not place for doers; the sidelines are for the narcissists, the delusional, the selfish, the self-indulgent, the noisemakers. And it’s not about me, about whether or not I respect you or vice versa, about any personal anger you may or may not feel in reading this or any of my other pieces, comments, or tweets, or those of anyone else; it’s about whether or not Bernie Sanders supporters are mature enough to become part of the solution—swallowing some bitter pills, compromising, even putting up with some things and policies they don’t like (gasp!) in the interest of the greater good—rather than being part of the problem.

There will be no revolution, no unicorns. Just the same type of political warfare we’ve had for generations. You have two sides; you don’t have to love one or both, but you either pick the one that is closest to you on the issues and help it move policy and itself in the better direction on those issues, or you are irrelevant at best, or empowering the side that moves policy in the worse direction on the issues at worst. This is reality. Declaring war no reality has not worked out well for you or the Sanders campaign. But history will judge you if you declare war on reality, if you aren’t part of the solution, of the real fight for real change.

Bernie Sanders is a passionate, exceptional advocate for the small number yet incredibly important types of issues he has chosen to take up, and he has drawn in millions of people who, together with him, can make a difference if they are willing to dance. They don’t get to dance on their terms; newcomers seldom do, and if they try to dance on their terms, they will dance alone, in a void, with no music. And even someone like Hillary Clinton is very constrained by both the realities of the political system and the American electorate. Operating within those constraints, and knowing how to do so, is the key to success in politics. And Clinton has understood this from her days as an undergraduate; even then she pushed against the Saul Alinksy tactic for disruption, and passionately knew that the best way to affect change in a messy system was to take responsibility for that system by working to change it from within, something Clinton has done ever since her days as an undergraduate at Wellesley, as this must-read article notes. 

This is the difference between her and Sanders, the realist and the fantasist.

Sure, it would be wonderful to destroy what we don’t like about the system by simply willing and haranguing it away. But that does not happen in reality, revolutions are incredibly rare, successful ones even rarer, non-violent ones that are successful even rarer than that. 

Sanders and his supporters never had more of a chance than hope and prayer; it is now time for responsible citizens to come together and to stop dreaming of a longshot Hail Mary, to not to make demands on a front-runner who will have more than enough delegates to seal the nomination, but to roll up their sleeves, and to get ready for the long-hard work of bringing about real change, to not bank an entire critical election against a terrifying opponent and the fate of a nation to hope and a prayer, but to bet more solidly on thought-out plans of workable change within the constraints of present reality and to back a candidate with an actual record of bringing about change by working practically within the system.

To be fair to Sanders, he and his wife Jane have signaled and begun to demonstrate over the last few days that the campaign will be toning down its attacks on Clinton and that they have no plans to play a “spoiler” role or run as a third party. This is both a welcome and a necessary step, if overdue. If this is indeed what they are doing, this is great news for all of us.

Join Us and Vote Democratic in the Fall

George Takei/Facebook

I know many of you Sanders supporters are angry and bitter. But that’s life. I was angry and bitter in 2008 when Clinton lost to Obama, but I came around to support Obama by November; Clinton lost and I did not feel she was entitled to make any major demands. I was also bitter and angry when Kerry and Gore lost in 2004 and 2000, respectively. But I didn’t give up. 

George Takei’s recent eloquent plea to unite for this fall election, to #VoteBlueNoMatterWho, should not go unheeded. We are defined just as much by what we do in defeat as what we do in victory. Sore losers and sore winners are both noxious forces. Yet as a Hillary Clinton supporter, I don’t feel like we’ve won anything yet. It’s all about November. And it’s been clear since the last Republican debate that the Republicans will not be nearly as big a mess as liberals were hoping they would be, as I have noted before, and the conventional wisdom that the Republican Party will deny Trump the nomination if it comes to a contested convention, thereby leading to a Republican meltdown and schism and the Party’s destruction, is misleading, as I have also noted before. In other words, Democrats will face an organized and tough foe in the fall, one led by Trump, who has an unprecedented ability to play the media in his favor. Unless Trump and the Republicans are kept out of the White House, their hands kept far away from Supreme Court nominations, we will all have lost. Like it or not, you’re stuck with Clinton if you’re on the left. But it’s up to all of us to make sure we aren’t stuck with Trump and the Republican Party that produced and empowered his rise over many years of anti-intellectualism, nativism, hatred of government, of division. Love or hate Hillary, she is against all of these things. So the choice in November is no choice at all. Are you with me? Are you with her? Are you with us? Or will you help them, even by inaction or misdirected action?

I’m with her. And you should be too, Sandernistas. And who knows, once you see what she can do in power, maybe you will actually like her. Even if you never like her, you still have a part to play if you want to be a responsible citizen in stopping the Republicans and Donald Trump. It’s up to you to convince your most die-hard compatriots that Clinton is better than Trump and worth supporting against him.  Get to it!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 8, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) December 5th, 2015

The following is an expanded chapter from the brand new short-but-powerful eBook Needless Deaths, Inexcusable Responses: Missives on Guns, Policy, and Politics in America,  available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and in ePub format!

A version was originally published by PolicyMic (now just Mic or Mic.com) November 19th, 2013; cited November 26 by Alliance for Gun Responsibility (Foundation)

December 2nd, 2015 update: it is not without some satisfaction that I note that the short piece I wrote highlighting this data was deemed to be such a threat to “the cause” that the NRA officially wrote a response, one which, predictably, was rather unconvincing, engaged in a bit of ad hominem behavior, and actually did not even address the data in my article, their points not negating mine when the data is more closely examined than the casual presentation it is given in the NRA response (e.g., they write that in states with lower gun death rates, there are higher rates of other types of murder but fail to note that these higher rates do not come anywhere close to making up the differences between the overall murder rates between states with lower gun death rates and states with higher gun death rates, or that European nations and others do not even come close to making up for the lower guns deaths in their countries with non-firearm deaths;  see the NRA’s response here for yourself if you care to after going through my piece below).

December 8th, 2015 update: included new article/data from National Journal

Like any dangerous product — cars, airplanes, explosives — sensible regulation of guns clearly plays a positive role in reducing both misuse of this product and the number of deaths resulting from such misuse.

The map itself was part of a scholarly study by researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital and published this March in JAMA Internal Medicine:

JAMA Internal Medicine

The map is not without exceptions and outliers, but the general trend is clear: States with more gun regulations had lower rates of gun deaths, and states with less gun laws had higher gun death rates, both in terms of suicide and homicide. That’s certainly not the message we get from the National Rifle Association (NRA) or from gun-rights advocates.

In the related study, the strength of gun laws was rated on a scale of 0 to 28, and scores ranged from 0 (Utah) to 24 (Massachusetts) (Image Credit: JAMA Internal Medicine):

Direct causation could not be determined, but at the very least, such a strong correlation should make it clear that existing public policy in many states with lax gun laws comes at a high price: more dead mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and others.

In addition, higher firearm ownership rates were also heavily correlated with higher firearm fatalities, and lower ownership rates were correlated with stronger gun control legislation.

Now, if you’re going to say, “Well, that’s just ONE study!” To that, I will retort that the Center for American Progress released another study in April that pretty much said the same thing, and that showed that 10 states with the weakest gun laws had over twice the rate of gun violence as the 10 states with the strongest gun laws. Also, in 2011, a writer for The Atlantic found, with the help of a colleague, that the presence of gun laws in states had a strong correlation with less gun violence, as the chart and map below also illustrate.

Martin Prosperity Institute

An even more recent article from just a few months ago with excellent data visualization by National Journal staffer Libby Isenstein pointed out the exact same trend, and laid these trends out in several charts, one of which showed every single state ranked by its gun death rate and showing which states have gun laws/restrictions and which do not; the resulting trend is undeniable and obvious (as before): more laws and restrictions correlate with lower gun death rates.

(“Stand your ground” laws refer to laws that empower residents to be free from prosecution when using deadly force for self-defense anywhere under any circumstances, whereas states without such laws mean a person has to attempt to flee and disengage from the altercation before resorting to deadly force unless they are at home or on their property.)

One point on these charts: you might notice that that Washington, DC, is something of an outlier for “states” with strict gun laws; that is because it is not a state, but a single city, and gun crimes in general are much higher in urban areas than in rural areas, and DC has no rural areas to balance out its average.  Additionally, DC is neighboring and close to states with much laxer gun laws, which means that it is easy for people from those states to traffic guns into DC, and virtually all (e.g., 92.8% in 2010) guns used in crimes in DC are traced to these nearby states or others.  DC’s tough gun laws over a city-size area can do little to stem weapons flowing in from surrounding jurisdictions (say, in Virginia) with lax gun laws.  Comparing a city like DC to a state is a bit like comparing apples to oranges for these and other reasons.  In fact, it is easy to single out numerous U.S. cities and find that they have comparable gun murder rates to some of the more violent “Third World” developing countries, which is disturbing and also an example of comparing two very different things.

Some final food for thought: Building on an earlier Harvard study, a brand new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology showed that the greatest factor that determines gun suicide rates by state was not mental health issues, but rather gun ownership. And when it comes to gun ownership rates, well, the U.S. is No. 1 by far. 

CNN

Leaving the gun laws as they are in states with the highest gun death rates is akin to pulling the trigger on thousands. Some states are better at this public policy issue than others, and it’s time for the laggards to learn from the high performers.  The time for action is long overdue: as Sen. Chris Murphy (CT) tweeted after San Bernardino, “Your “thoughts” should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your “prayers” should be for forgiveness if you do nothing – again.”  New York Times columnist Timothy Egan echoed this sentiment in a column titled “No More Thoughts and Prayers.”  Or, as The New York Daily News cover aptly stated, “God Isn’t Fixing This.”

But sadly, we’re doing nothing at the federal level whatsoever when it comes to regulating guns; as Nicholas Kristof titles his New York Times column,“On Guns, We’re Not Even Trying,” thanks the alliance between the NRA and the Republican Party that is determined to do nothing when it comes to regulating guns.

If you think I’m wrong (and by I mean these numerous peer-reviewed studies), the burden of proof is on you to provide counter-evidence. Not just ideology.

If you are interested in reading the full eBook, of which this article is just one chapter, you can find it on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and inePub format.  And, in general, do not hesitate to reach out to me or share your thoughts about the book on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)!

One author’s attempt to combine all his writing on gun policy/politics in America in way that he hopes will help others understand this pressing issue and arm them with knowledge to debate and discuss it along with a clear understanding of what needs to be done. 

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 5, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) December 5th, 2015

The following is a preview of the brand new short-but-powerful eBook Needless Deaths, Inexcusable Responses: Missives on Guns, Policy, and Politics in America,  available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and in ePub format!

Summary:

From Columbine to Sandy Hook to San Bernardino, mass shootings are an epidemic unique to America among developed/Western nations in their frequency. But the level of “normal” gun violence in America is also far higher than virtually any other developed/Western nation as well. In this short yet useful and data-driven exploration of the intersection between guns, policy, and politics in America, historian and policy/political expert Brian Frydenborg presents a series of discussions from a range of his work (including one article never before published) arranged by different themes to bring his readers up to speed on the crucial public policy and political issue of guns in America. 

Going over the history, American exceptionalism, numbers, mentalities, and, building on all of these, possible solutions regarding the problems with guns in America, Frydenborg takes his readers on a journey beginning with a historical, contextual understanding of the Second Amendment as America’s Founding generation would have understood and lived it, going back over a millennium into a sacred, constant tradition of English history dating back to the withdrawal of the Roman Empire, but lasting up to and through the American Revolution. Next, a brief yet sound data-driven analysis is presented explaining why America is so exceptional when it comes to gun violence. Then, an exploration of data on how gun violence is carried out in America, by whom and to whom and where, helps establish that the problems surrounding gun violence are hardly insurmountable. Next up, he discusses the absurdity of the mentality of Americans when it comes to gun violence, comparing the policy responses to gun violence and terrorism and noting that terrorism kills far fewer Americans each year, even taking into account 9/11 and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also embarks upon a surprising but eye-opening comparison between African-Americans and Palestinians. Finally, taking all of this into account, Frydenborg makes a clear and compelling case about the policy directions America needs to take as far as reducing gun violence.

Anyone seeking to understand the tragedy of gun violence in America would do well to consider Brian Frydenborg’s thoughtful, data driven, and conveniently thematically organized pieces on this urgent policy and political topic, especially as people consider who they will support in the presidential and other political races of 2016. The lives—or deaths—of thousands depend on the policy choices these leaders will make.

Table of Contents

Preface. 3

PART I: HISTORY.. 4

Chapter 1: The Irrelevant Second Amendment 5 

PART II: AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM.. 11

Chapter 2: Why is the US so Good at Gun Violence?. 12

PART III: NUMBERS. 17

Chapter 3: Gun Violence in the U.S.: The Numbers Behind the Madness. 18

Chapter 4: American Guns: Not Just Killing Americans (See Mexico) 26

PART IV: MENTALITIES. 30

Chapter 5: How Not to Stop Terrorism & Gun Violence: Lessons from the Republicans  31

Chapter 6: Arms and the Man (Underwater): The Myth of Mass Gun Confiscation in Post-Katrina New Orleans. 44

Chapter 7: A Ferguson Intifada: Why African-Americans are America’s Palestinians  49

PART V: SOLUTIONS. 59

Chapter 8: These Maps Debunk Everything the NRA Has Told Us About Guns. 61

Chapter 9: Development: The Fix for Terrorism & Violent Crime. 68 

Afterword. 75 

About the Author 78

Dedicated to all who have been touched by domestic gun violence in America, may their suffering not be in vain, and to my friends and family, without whom I would not be alive.  And to my readers, without whom this and all my articles are just fancy diary entries.

“I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.”

—Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir, 2010

“We say keep your change, we’ll keep our God, our guns, our Constitution.”

—Sarah Palin, speech at CPAC, February 11th, 2012

“Heroism breaks its heart, and idealism its back, on the intransigence of the credulous and the mediocre, manipulated by the cynical and the corrupt.”

—Christopher Hitchens, “What I Don’t See at the Revolution,” Vanity Fair, March 31st, 2011

Preface 

As Cicero wrote in his Orator over 2,000 years ago, “Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever” (120).  Therefore, we shall begin with history.  From history, we will progress to data, then to mindsets, and, finally, we will see where all that points us in terms of solutions.  Seemingly simple enough, and yet, on such a contentious issue, we shall go into some detail just so that the reader can more easily refute those who are part of the problem and not the solution, those who cling to fantasies and falsehoods in the face of much better, far more productive alternatives.  After all, this debate, among many in modern American politics, has become clouded in manufactured ideology and irrationality.  Yet such things are the mortal enemy of policy, with which the collection of essays/articles here is primarily concerned.  Tame the politics and mythology, and policy may yet win the day.

PART I: HISTORY

This was the first piece I had ever formally written about the issue of guns in America.  As a lover of and student of history, naturally, I felt a good place to begin was going back in history, to the origins and context of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.  Unless one properly understand what the Second Amendment is (and what it is not), any discussion becomes something of a farce.  Perhaps, then, is not surprising that most discussions on guns in America are just that: farces, as illustrated by how few Americans actually know and understand what is illustrated in this section.  Most conservative Republicans—including, unfortunately, too many Supreme Court Justices, believe that the Second Amendment enshrines a right to bear arms for every individual and that this right is not subject to any government regulation.  Such an interpretation flies in the face of the substantial weight of history and the Amendment’s context, as will be demonstrated in the following chapter.

Chapter 1: The Irrelevant Second Amendment

The individual right to keep and bear arms as part of the state militia is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. What does that have to do with today’s citizenry? Nothing.

Vikings vs. English Saxon fyrd- The History Channel/Vikings

Originally published by American Gun Laws, republished by LinkedIn Pulseand by Stupidparty Math v. Myth

Updated November 30th, 2015, to include a discussion of Lord Blackstone’s Commentaries 

Perhaps the most depressing thing about the gun-control debate in the United States, apart from the continuous stream of deaths that still have yet to merit not even a modestly serious policy response, is that for as many times as the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—part of what is termed the Bill of Rights—is invoked, nearly as many times there is a total lack of historical context of that very amendment presented alongside. Into this vacuum all sorts of creative reasoning has flooded, to such a degree that the highest law courts and judges of the land, too, have fallen to such erroneous thinking that ignores the history and tradition from which the Second Amendment emerged.

J. G. A. Pocock correctly notes that “[i]t is notorious that American culture is haunted by myths, many of which arise out of the attempt to escape history and then regenerate it,” and the Second Amendment is a textbook example of this phenomenon. The roots of this amendment go back to Saxon culture in the era of the Roman Empire. When Rome decided to withdraw from its provinces in the British Isles early in the fifth-century to consolidate its withering power in the rest of the West, the Saxons, Angles, (from which England got its name) and other Germanic tribes eventually filled the power vacuum the Romans left. The most visible presence of Roman governmental authority had been the army, the professional, standing Roman legions that had been stationed in Britain. Security after their withdrawal became nonexistent, but the Saxons, after a bloody conquest, imported a tradition of theirs from mainland Europe with them: that of the fyrd, as the U.S. Army’s official history explains. In this system, all adult males had to engage in military training, and, in times of war, would be expected to fight. This tradition continued throughout English history. The English freemen, like the Saxons before him, were given the right to bear arms as part of a contract in which their responsibility was to train in their local militia and defend the realm when necessary. This part is important: there is no tradition in English history of the local peasants having an institutionalized right to keep and bear arms without the responsibility of being part of an organized militia which would act to defend the land when needed; the right to bear arms does not exist without the militia, and the militia does not exist without the peasants being trained for and participating in a militia… (CHAPTER CONTINUED IN FULL VERSION)

END OF PREVIEW… WANT MORE??

If you are interested in reading the full eBook you can find it on Amazon Kindle,Barnes & Noble Nook, and in ePub format.  And, in general, do not hesitate to reach out to me or share your thoughts about the book on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter(you can follow me there at @bfry1981)!

Published by LinkedIn Pulse May 28, 2015

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter @bfry1981)

UPDATE 9/13/15: Donald Trump keeps talking about how bad the crime and criminals in Mexico are, and how that is spilling over into the U.S.  Americans should know the U.S. role in making the Mexican crime situation even worse.

Originally posted 4/18/2013 here at American Gun Laws thanks to Jason Rogers

Reuters

Other articles in this series: 
How Not to Stop Terrorism & Gun Violence: Lessons from the Republicans

Development: The Fix for Terrorism & Violent Crime

Gun Violence in the U.S.: The Numbers Behind the Madness

Why Is the U.S. So Good at Gun violence?

The Irrelevant Second Amendment

There is a country near the U.S. in which tens of thousands people have been murdered as a result of drug-related killings since 2006. No, it’s not Canada. We are talking, of course, about Mexico. It was in 2006 when what is commonly termed Mexico’s Drug-War (the big one) began when former Mexican President Felipe Calderón initiated his crackdown on the major Mexican drug cartels. He came to power promising to shut them down, but ultimately left office having fallen far short of that goal.

It is worth taking a brief look at how the Mexican drug cartels became so powerful. When the U.S. drug war broke the Colombian cartels beginning at the end of 1980s, and simultaneously shut down much of the Caribbean and south Florida drug lanes, Mexico’s cartels filled much of the vacuum, going from just courier status for the Colombian drug lords to being wholesalers and controlling the main routes for the biggest drug market in the world: the U.S. Having that much money for a product in such high demand, it is no wonder that the flow moved to Mexico when so many other routes were shut down. Perhaps not as simple as the law of supply and demand, but that law cannot be dismissed either in this situation. With so much more of the business directly under their control, the money, power, and stakes generally became that much higher and the competition that much more fierce. The RAND Corporation estimates that from 40-67% of U.S. marijuana comes from Mexico, and as much as 95% of its cocainecomes through Mexico, up from 77% in 2003 and 72% in 2002. Heroin and methamphetamines are also big on the list. Our own State Department estimates that Americans send between $19 billion and $29 billion every year to the Mexican drug cartels. As for the drug-related violence, it was already getting worse by the time Calderón took office and started his war against the cartels. In Mexico itself, as many as 40-50% of the population in general works in the “informal, if not illegal, economy,” according to one Brookings Institute scholar, with the drug economy being a huge part of this. Overall, the drug trade alone could be 3-4% of Mexico’s entire economy—perhaps $30 billion—and employs 500,000 or more people there.

OK, so by now I assume you get it: drugs in Mexico are a big deal, that industry and those cartels fates are tied more to the U.S. and the American people than any other place or any other people, and it has been getting worse, much worse, in just the last few years. The United Nations notes that the murder rate in Mexico increased 65% from 2005-2010, and in 2013 Human Rights Watch noted that over 60,000 people had been killed as a result of drug-related violence in Mexico since 2006 (even only up to September, 2011, Mexican officials had put the estimate at 47,515, and the Mexican paper Reforma estimates even more, over 70,000, and other estimates run that high, as well).  To put this in perspective, in one of my last articles on gun violence I noted that not even 7,000 Americans in uniform had been killed from late 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, through early April 2013 in operations relating to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Just remember, too, these are just the known murders known to be tied to drugs. These numbers do not include “normal,” non-drug related murders, which, combined with the drug-related murders, could top 120,000 for just six years (27,199 known in 2011 alone, the highest reported toll). The number of murders in Cuidad Juarez alone, right on the U.S. border, topped 10,500 in the same timeframe. During Calderón’s six-year term, official Mexican estimates are that 26,121 people also “disappeared.” These are very sobering numbers, considering that almost all those people have still not been found and in all likelihood are also dead. Political officials are not safe, either: 27 mayors were murdered just between 2004 and 2010, and over 3,000 soldiers and policeman just through most of 2011 had been killed.

Guns play a huge role in all of this. While overall murders committed by guns in Mexico are lower than the U.S. rate of 72.5% of all murders, it is still high: almost 55% in both 2009 and 2010, up from nearly 40% in 2007 and 2008, and far higher than the 31% in Calderón’s first year in power, 2006, and the 28.5% in 2005 before he took office. This means the gun-problem in Mexico is getting dramatically worse in recent years; compared with the period before Calderón, Mexico has seen a roughly 1.85 times increase in the gun-murder rate through 2010, a 2.75 times increase in the overall murdersthrough 2011, and over 3.5 times the gun murders through 2010.

For Americans, here comes the part where they might want to pay close attention: huge amounts of U.S. guns have been seized at Mexican crime scenes, over 20,000 in 2009 and 2010 alone, and those are just the arms seized by Mexican authorities, not those still in use by the cartels. Additionally, in just the year, 2009, 37,000 guns were seized at the U.S.-Mexican border alone.  And while stricter gun laws have helped California become a less attractive place for Mexican cartels and other undesirables to get a hold of firearms, that is not the case in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.  Overall, a conservative estimate has some 252,000 guns sold in the U.S. through “straw man” deals being trafficked  into Mexico every year, with a report using data from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and published by several sitting Democratic U.S. senators (some cry politics because of this) noting that 70% (it used to be 90%) of all the guns that Mexican authorities traced originated from the U.S.  Only about 30 percent of seized guns in Mexico have been subjected to tracing, but however incomplete the information, the bottom line is that very large numbers of guns being used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the U.S., whether it is 90% of them, 70%, or much less. And that means Mexicans are dying because of U.S.-originated weapons falling into the wrong hands. There is a reason the Mexicans cartels come here to buy guns instead of trying in Mexico: it is easier to get guns in the U.S.  As I discussed in my previously cited article, there are some relatively easy ways to reduce these numbers, since so many of the guns used by criminals come from such a small portion of dealers. But that means universal background checks, closing loopholes, and more funding for the ATF to go after the bad gun dealers, as I argued earlier. Too bad a background check measure was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate even as I was writing this article.

There is only hope if there is political will, and that seems to be lacking.

Since I wrote this article in 2013, drug-related gun violence has been declining, but is still a very serious problem confronting both U.S. and Mexican officials.

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Vikings vs. English Saxon fyrd

Published on LinkedIn Pulse December 4, 2014

By Brian E. Frydenborg 3/19/2013

Updated November 30th 2015 to include a discussion of Lord Blackstone’s Commentaries

Originally published here on American Gun Laws thanks to Jason Rogers, republished by Stupidparty Math v. Myth

Other articles in this series:

Development: The Fix for Terrorism & Violent Crime

American Guns: Not Just Killing Americans (See Mexico)

Gun Violence in the U.S.: The Numbers Behind the Madness

Why Does the U.S. Have So Much Gun violence?

Perhaps the most depressing thing about the gun-control debate in the United States, apart from the continuous stream of deaths that still have yet to merit not even a modestly serious policy response, is that for as many times as the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—part of what is termed the Bill of Rights—is invoked, nearly as many times there is a total lack of historical context of that very amendment presented alongside. Into this vacuum all sorts of creative reasoning has flooded, to such a degree that the highest law courts and judges of the land, too, have fallen to such erroneous thinking that ignores the history and tradition from which the Second Amendment emerged.

J. G. A. Pocock correctly notes that “[i]t is notorious that American culture is haunted by myths, many of which arise out of the attempt to escape history and then regenerate it,” and the Second Amendment is a textbook example of this phenomenon.

J. G. A. Pocock correctly notes that “[i]t is notorious that American culture is haunted by myths, many of which arise out of the attempt to escape history and then regenerate it,” and the Second Amendment is a textbook example of this phenomenon. The roots of this amendment go back to Saxon culture in the era of the Roman Empire. When Rome decided to withdraw from its provinces in the British Isles early in the fifth-century to consolidate its withering power in the rest of the West, the Saxons, Angles, (from which England got its name) and other Germanic tribes eventually filled the power vacuum the Romans left. The most visible presence of Roman governmental authority had been the army, the professional, standing Roman legions that had been stationed in Britain. Security after their withdrawal became nonexistent, but the Saxons, after a bloody conquest, imported a tradition of theirs from mainland Europe with them: that of the fyrd, as the U.S. Army’s official history explains. In this system, all adult males had to engage in military training, and, in times of war, would be expected to fight. This tradition continued throughout English history. The English freemen, like the Saxons before him, were given the right to bear arms as part of a contract in which their responsibility was to train in their local militia and defend the realm when necessary. This part is important: there is no tradition in English history of the local peasants having an institutionalized right to keep and bear arms without the responsibility of being part of an organized militia which would act to defend the land when needed; the right to bear arms does not exist without the militia, and the militia does not exist without the peasants being trained for and participating in a militia.

There is no tradition in English history of the local peasants having an institutionalized right to keep and bear arms without the responsibility of being part of an organized militia which would act to defend the land when needed; the right to bear arms does not exist without the militia, and the militia does not exist without the peasants being trained for and participating in a militia.

Fast forward centuries later to the establishment of English colonies in the New World, in particular the colonies that would form the United States of America’s original Thirteen. Most of these colonies were founded by the English, and those that were not came under English rule long before the American Revolution. The state militias were merely the continuance of the colonial militias after America broke off from Britain by declaration in 1776, by treaty in 1783. One has to think of the massive technological changes that occurred between 1791, when the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, and today, and then it should be obvious that the same system is not in place. For one thing, back then almost the whole population lived in the countryside, not cities, where there were lots of dangerous animals and pesky French, Spanish, and British troops prowling around, plus many Native Americans tribes that did not like their land being taken from them. This militia system made perfect sense in such a physical environment for almost all Americans except for a tiny minority in coastal cities lived in rural areas and on the frontier. It also made sense especially when one considers that many of the founders had a philosophical opposition to a large standing army, keeping in mind the warlords of republican Rome and the more recent example of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army which had not helped the brief experiment of England with republicanism in the mid-seventeenth-century. Theoretically, an army composed of state militias, tied to their localities, would be harder for a tyrant manipulate. Yes, some units of the Massachusetts colonial militia have survived in some form as they morphed, along with other units, into the U.S. National Guard, the direct descendant of the state militia system referenced in the Second Amendment. Yes, all adult males do register for the draft via the Selective Service. But registration is generally all that is required for adult males except for a few drastic eras in U.S. history. And the average men today do not regularly train, and are not expected to keep and bear arms of their own. Even those in the military, Guard or otherwise, do not own the weapons they will use in combat and cannot keep them in their homes. Even just by 1865, the state militia system, which evolved dramatically during the course of the four years of the Civil War, bore little resemblance to the system referenced in the Constitution, and after the first two decades of the twentieth-century, only a few vestiges of that system nominally existed. From WWI forward through the Vietnam War, the federal government brought in, trained, and equipped the vast majority of troops that fought, not the National Guard, which today is only a small part of the overall U.S. Military. The average adult man is not the only one, then, in the U.S. that has nothing to do with the National Guard; the average U.S. man in a military uniform has nothing to do with the Guard either and is part of a force structure that is only supplemented by the Guard. That should not, of course to discount the brave service of Guard units that served in Afghanistan and Iraq, or those that helped after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. But the U.S. Military today is overwhelmingly a professional, fully federalized, standing army. Even the Guard itself is composed of units structured in such a way that they bear virtually no resemblance in practice (even if they may in spirit) to the state militias referenced in the Second Amendment when it was written in 1789 and adopted in 1791.

As far as the arms that need to be “kept” and “borne,” if you’re in the Guard today you cannot bring a personal firearm you keep and own as an individual to bear while on active Guard duty. No, the weapons that will be borne into battle are owned by the U.S. Government, are kept on base, and not taken home or owned by the Guardsmen. Effectively, modern Guard practice destroys the traditional relationship between keeping and bearing arms and wholly separates those acts from service in the militia. In the end, all three major components of the Second Amendment—keeping, bearing, and serving in the militia—are transformed by modern Guard practice into relics from a past era that do not function or work together at all in the way they did in the late 1700s. Both its rights and the duties might still exist on paper, but they do not exist at all in practice and they apply to no one since no one keeps their own arms to bear in the capital M “Militia.”

The year after the Second Amendment was adopted as part of the Bill of Rights, Congress passed a law requiring all fit adult males to enroll in the militias, with each man required to provide his own basic equipment…Within months of its adoption by the states, the right to keep and bear arms as part of the militia allowed by the Second Amendment was coupled with the individual’s responsibility to enroll in the militia and to provide his own basic equipment, including his weapon, for his training and service in the militia.

The year after the Second Amendment was adopted as part of the Bill of Rights, Congress passed a law requiring all fit adult males to enroll in the militias, with each man required to provide his own basic equipment. Though enforcement of this law would prove very problematic, it is very important to realize how important the passage of this law is to understanding Congress’s conceptualization of the Second Amendment as Congress passed at the time it was passed: within months of its adoption by the states, the right to keep and bear arms as part of the militia allowed by the Second Amendment was coupled with the individual’s responsibility to enroll in the militia and to provide his own basic equipment, including his weapon, for his training and service in the militia. The point is this: the right does not exist without the responsibility. This goes back to the Saxons and early English, where this tradition began. This is not merely conjecture: the entire concept of citizenship in the late eighteenth-century minds of the Founding Fathers, almost universally educated in the Greek and Roman classics, was the same of republican Rome, Founding Fathers’ inspirationfor a republican government of checks and balances and divided government from which they created the American government and U.S. Constitution. In the ancient Roman republic, the Roman concepts of a right and citizenship are counterbalanced by the concepts of responsibility and duty: a right as a citizen is enjoyed because the responsibility of duty is accepted. And in today’s system, the responsibility to keep and bear arms in order to be of service to the militia is not a responsibility for all fit adult makes; in fact, it’s the responsibility of virtually no one.

Today, the Second Amendment is still on the books. It reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It is a clear reference to an existing right, longstanding in English tradition going back to fyrd and the individual’s roles, responsibilities, and rights in reference to the militia. Does that mean that there is not a right to bear arms for an individual person, who today is almost certainly not in a capital M “Militia?” That is an interesting question and an interesting debate. The Second Amendment clearly references an absolute right, one that is part of a clear and explicit pre-existing tradition going back to Late Antiquity.  The mainly English colonists-turned Americans would have generally understood this and the reading of the Second Amendment to them would have been clear, especially to the educated Founding Fathers, many of them lawyers who would have had to have known about English law, the legalities of this tradition of militia service, and the rights and responsibilities this service entailed.  They would also have been familiar with Lord William Blackstone‘s landmark Commentaries on the Laws of England, one of the great legal treatises in the history of the English-speaking world; published in four volumes from 1765-1769 in decade before the American Revolution, it was well known in its day and was the main source of knowledge on English law on the American continent both in the years before and for many decades after the American Revolution (one American printing of the fourth volume was pre-ordered by sixteen of the fifty-six future signers of the Declaration of Independence, including John Adams, and by the father of John Marshall, one of the great Supreme Court justices of early United States history.  In the very first part of this massive work, Lord Blackstone made clear that there were two types of rights for Englishmen in English common law: absolute rights and auxiliary rights, the latter subject to limits and regulation, and the individual right to bear arms in self-defense was explained as one of the key auxiliary rights of Englishmen:

THE fifth and laft auxiliary right of the fubject, that I fhall at prefent mention, is that of having arms for their defence, fuitable to their condition and degree, and fuch as are allowed by law. Which is alfo declared by the fame ftatute 1 W. & M. ft. 2. c. 2. and is indeed a public allowance, under due reftrictions, of the natural right of refiftance and felf-prefervation, when the fanctions of fociety and laws are found infufficient to reftrain the violence of oppreffion.  

And, again, this is not some new concept imposed upon English law by Blackstone; it is simply him putting into writing what had already been understood for generation after generation.  Thus, whether on one side of the Atlantic or the other, Englishmen in the era of Blackstone—the same era as the American Revolution and the drafting of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Second Amendment—would have understood that there were two sets of rights related to the keeping and bearing of arms: an absolute right as part of the ancient English militia tradition and coupled with the responsibility of militia service, and a second auxiliary personal right to bear arms for self-defense but subject to various conditions and regulations.  But in the context of today’s society, the debate about an individual right to bear arms is one about which the Second Amendment, and the Constitution, is silent, as they only discuss the absolute militia right, not the auxiliary personal right. Ironically, those “militia” groups which are such religious believers in their concept of the Second Amendment are not even referenced in it since they are not the actual “well regulated Militia” referenced in it. Sure, groups like the NRA and the Republican Party are among the uninformed, and the Supreme Court has recently ruled in favor of a very different interpretation of this. But this is the same body that ruled free African-American men were not U.S. citizens just before the Civil War. Legal does not have to mean something is right in the sense of being correct (just think about slavery), and the rulings of ideologically driven justices may be law but are hardly accurate when they wholly ignore the history and tradition described above. It’s time to leave the Second Amendment out of the current policy debate as it is, clearly, irrelevant, despite modern distortions and inventions.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)