The Grover Cleveland of Our Time

As a historian and admirer of Grover Cleveland, I have been on the hunt for a modern-day version of the 22nd and 24th President, someone with like qualities who could clean up the growing, and seemingly insurmountable, mess in Washington.  I now believe that man is quietly emerging in the state of New Jersey.  Governor Chris Christie, with less than a year in office, is now on the lips of many conservatives who are seeking new leadership for the 2012 presidential race.

Neil Cavuto of Fox News recently asked Governor Christie about a possible White House run, pointing out that Woodrow Wilson became President after serving as governor of New Jersey.

“I’m not Woodrow Wilson,” the governor said.  “I think nobody could confuse me with Woodrow Wilson.”

Conservatives in New Jersey may thank God for that.  Chris Christie is nothing like the progressive Wilson, but he can be compared to another reform governor, the Jeffersonian Grover Cleveland, the only president born in the Garden State.

There are amazing similarities between Cleveland and Christie – both from New Jersey – Cleveland born in Caldwell in 1837, Christie in Newark in 1962; both big, burly men of similar build; both governors – Christie of his home state of New Jersey, Cleveland of his adopted state of New York; both lawyers by trade; both politically conservative; both with combative, confrontational styles; and both with the political courage to say what they believe without fear, to take on powerful, entrenched special interests, and to never back down from a fight.

Before the governorship, Cleveland served as mayor of Buffalo, where he fought mass corruption in city government.  In his lone year in office, he saved the city over a million dollars in frivolous spending, a huge amount of money in 1882.  State Democrats took notice of Mayor Cleveland’s reform efforts, which propelled him to the statehouse in Albany.

Christie served as a U.S. Attorney from 2002 until 2008 and fought corruption in one of the most corrupt of states.  He successfully prosecuted 130 dishonest public officials, of both parties, without losing a single case.  The New Jersey Star Ledger called it an “impressive resume” and Christie was praised across the state, a record of achievement that helped carry him to Trenton.

While governor, Cleveland took on the forces of big government and the entrenched special interests of his day, namely the infamous Tammany Hall political machine in New York City.  To defy Tammany Hall was the surest way to lose one’s political shirt.  Cleveland never hesitated.  And he won.

Christie has also fought big government, taking on one of the most powerful special interest groups in New Jersey, the unions, particularly those supporting teachers.  Rather than capitulate to the unions, Christie has taken them on.  And if he stands his ground, he will win.

As governor, Cleveland vetoed 200 bills in two years, upholding the state’s constitution and protecting taxpayers.  Just as he had done as mayor, Governor Cleveland ended the “business-as-usual” mentality in the New York capital and brought needed change and reform.

Christie has also changed the political culture in Trenton, aggressively wielding the veto pen to kill measures that boosted spending and taxes.  Governor Christie recently vetoed a tax hike on millionaires, the so-called “success tax,” just two minutes after it passed the legislature.  He needed no time to decide what he believed about the issue.  He has consistently defied a state legislature that is insistent on more government and higher taxes.

Both men possess similar styles.  Cleveland was criticized because he was confrontational.  In an age before modern mass media outlets, Cleveland laced his veto messages with hard-hitting, and often sarcastic, commentary directed at legislators.  He was not afraid to say who he was and what he believed.

Neither is Christie.  Like Cleveland, Christie has taken heat for his “confrontational tone.”  But he will not back down, stating his positions “directly, straightly, bluntly,” as he said in a recent press conference, “and nobody in New Jersey is gonna have to wonder where I am on an issue.”

Both also expressed a similar reluctance to be considered for President of the United States.  Unlike Governor Woodrow Wilson, who earnestly desired the presidency and pursued it in 1912, Cleveland and Christie shunned the White House.

“I have but one ambition,” Governor Cleveland said in 1884, “and that is to make a good governor and do something for the people of the State.”  He wanted to be governor of New York and an “offer of a second term will satisfy any wish I can possibly entertain, at all related to political life.”

Christie’s reluctance is nearly identical to Cleveland’s.  “I want to be governor of New Jersey.  I ran for governor of New Jersey.  I want to do this job for as long as the people want me to do it,” he told Neil Cavuto.  “I am ready to do the best job I can for the people of this state.  I want to serve the people of the state where I was born and raised,” he continued.  “You have to be really in your gut, and in your heart, ready to be President of the United States if you decide to run for that. And I simply do not have the desire to do it, nor do I think I’m ready,”

Such disinclination might depress some conservatives, but this is precisely the kind of person we need in a President, one who does not earnestly seek the job, exactly the way the Founders desired it.  In Grover Cleveland’s day, it was very unfashionable to pursue the presidency.  To desire it meant you had only mischief in mind.  The office should seek the man.  Not the other way around.

Democrats drafted Cleveland to run for the White House in 1884, after only one and a half years as governor, and he acquiesced.  The nation needed him, he was told.

Cleveland did not actively seek the nomination at the national convention but would accept it if it came his way.  “Every consideration which presents itself to me tends to the personal wish on my part that the wisdom of the Democratic Party in the coming convention may lead to a result not involving my nomination for the Presidency,” he wrote a friend.  “If, however, it should be otherwise and I should be selected as the nominee, my sense of duty to the people of my party would dictate my submission to the will of the convention.”

The result was a two-term presidency that greatly benefited the nation.  President Cleveland brought needed reforms to Washington, serving as the last Jeffersonian president.  He stopped lavish spending, cut taxes, protected the Treasury’s surplus, maintained the gold standard, fought inflation, resisted big government solutions to a financial panic by employing laissez faire policies, helped saved the West from exploitation, and held firm against the growing imperialist tide then rising across the country.  Grover Cleveland accepted the call and served the American people well.

For the good of the nation, let’s hope Governor Chris Christie will do likewise.

A House Divided

In the Age of Obama, America is becoming polarized. The “Anointed One” promised the country that he could bring us all together, but now it seems he is tearing the nation apart.

During the course of U.S. political history, Americans were polarized in a handful of instances, most notably in the 1850s, just before the War Between the States.

Abraham Lincoln warned of this just three years before the war. On June 16, 1858, upon receiving the GOP nomination for a United States Senate seat in Illinois, Lincoln gave his famous “House Divided” speech to the Republican state convention in Springfield.


Obama campaigned on a similar theme and on the night he won the presidency spoke of a new direction in American politics:


But we now find ourselves not united but as divided as ever. There is little evidence that Obama is attempting be fulfill his lofty campaign rhetoric. He has become a divider, not a uniter.

No president this early in a term has seen the kind of popular uprising that has emerged with the Tea Party movement. Obama has exhibited a total disregard for Republicans and like-minded citizens. He has rammed unpopular legislation through Congress even as polls indicated the nation is against his agenda.

And Democrats are becoming more and more frantic these days to get the attention off their power-grabbing programs and onto something else.

They fear the Tea Party movement and desperately want to destroy it, namely by demonizing it as racist. The media are complicit in the leftwing smear campaign. Major outlets have stated that the underlying motive in the healthcare debate is racism. The Baltimore Examiner even compared the Tea Party movement to a “Klan Rally.”

Supposedly, Tea Party members hurled racist and hate-filled epithets at members of Congress. Supposedly, Tea Party members spat on members of Congress. However, capitol police officers were standing in close proximity to these congressmen and never made any moves toward the Tea Party members.

But, rather than bringing us all together, and speaking out against the race-baiting media, as well as those in his own party who are desperately fanning the flames, Obama has yet to address the issue.

By the end of the Obama presidency, America will be more divided than it has been in decades and race relations will be set back 30 years.

A recent Rasmussen poll showed Obama with a disapproval rating of 51 percent, while 48 percent approved of his job as president. The striking number in this poll was that 99 percent had an opinion one way or the other, instead of the usual 8, 9, or 10 percent who don’t know.

Our House is becoming Divided. But which way will we go?

The Party of No











The Hope of History

























The Great Transcontinental Railroad Scam













































Obama Rewrites History























Happy Birthday, Charlie!

In one of the unique facts of history, two of the most influential men in world history, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, were born on the same day, February 12, 1809. Last week marked their 200th anniversary, to which Lincoln has stolen most of the show, but Darwin should have received his due, as Darwinism continues to exact an enormous amount of influence in the world, particularly when the Left needs a club to bash Christianity.

Make no mistake, Darwinism is the Left’s baby. To a liberal it’s akin to religious dogma and must be taught in public schools. But Christians must wage an all-out fight, including court action, to teach creationism. The Left does not even want public school students to be free thinkers and decide the matter for themselves, after having been presented both sides of the argument fair and equally.

Yet, when it comes to other issues, such as global warming, the environment, and public welfare, liberals conveniently leave out Darwin altogether, seeking to separate them from Darwinism, as if it were distinct from what he intended. This is usually referred to as Social Darwinism – the application of Darwin’s theories to other areas of society.

But, despite the Left’s propaganda campaign, the two are actually one and the same. They attempt to propagate the lie that only a handful of heartless monsters twisted Darwin’s theories to suit their own evil desires. It’s just another example of liberal hypocrisy.

For example, it is often remarked, especially in the world of academia, that Darwin was not talking about humans in his book, On the Origins of Species. This fact is true but human beings were implied if you consider the subtitle of the book – By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Most professors never bother to point out this brutal subtitle. I found it out on my own when examining an older copy of the book. Newer reprints often do not include the subtitle at all!

Liberal scholars also conveniently forget that Darwin wrote a second book, The Descent of Man (1871), where mankind was the subject.

And if you think Darwin did not apply any of his theories to humans, consider this gem from The Descent of Man:


Hitler could not have said it better. He was a passionate believer in Darwinism and survival of the fittest. The whole of Nazi philosophy was centered on natural selection. But most of the geniuses constituting the Left do not realize this (or maybe they do but think we are so stupid not to ever find out). These crazies drive around in their cars with the ridiculous Darwin stickers and magnets on the back for all to see, but it might as well be a swastika.

Another of the Left’s icons, Friedrich Nietzsche, of “God is dead” fame, who was also a Darwinist, wrote that should we “preserve all that was sick and that suffered” then we would “worsen the European race.”

Liberals conveniently forget about these gems.

The Left also dumps Darwin when it comes to issues like the promotion of big business and welfare programs. Applying Darwinism to economics would allow for monopolies and prevent any public assistance to the needy, to which Darwin would have approved.

A British philosopher named Herbert Spencer applied Darwin’s theory to the business world, arguing that the brightest, the most energetic, and the most imaginative business tycoons would survive the brutal rigors of capitalism and the weak would fail and end up in bankruptcy. The strong businesses would become stronger, and as a result, the whole of society benefited. This philosophy found wide acceptance among the wealthy tycoons in late 19th century America, as it seemed to justify what they were doing and how they had arrived at such a high station in life.

A Yale professor, William Graham Sumner, wrote about this philosophy in a 1902 essay entitled “The Concentration of Wealth: Its Economic Justification”:

“What matters it then that some millionaires are idle, or silly, or vulgar, that their ideas are sometimes futile, and their plans grotesque, when they turn aside from money-making? How do they differ in this from any other class? The millionaires are a product of natural selection, acting on the whole body of men, to pick out those who can meet the requirement of certain work to be done. They get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society.”

Poverty and slums, then, were the unfortunate consequences of this competitive struggle but poverty should only be temporary. Only the slothful, lazy, ignorant, unfit, and defective people would not rise from poverty and the state should not intervene to alleviate or attempt to eliminate poverty because that would negate the good effect of natural selection, where the strong survive and the weak perish. Nature’s process must be allowed to run its course.

During the late 18th century, Europeans were worried that a massive population surge over the previous 100 years could have devastating consequences, namely that there would not be enough food to feed everyone. An economic philosopher, Thomas Malthus, came up with one possible solution in a 1798 pamphlet entitled “Essay on Population.” Malthus believed that the population would grow too quickly for the earth to supply enough food and mass starvation would be the result.

Therefore, the government should not attempt to relieve the condition of the lower classes by increasing their incomes or improving agricultural productivity, as the extra means of subsistence would be completely absorbed by an induced boost in population.  As long as this tendency remained, Malthus argued, the “perfectibility” of society will always be out of reach.  And perfectibility, or Utopia, has always been the ultimate goal of socialists.

But in the 1840’s, it looked as though Malthus might be right, as Ireland experienced a potato famine beginning in the fall of 1845. Ireland had experienced food shortages before, usually lasting a few months, but never anything like this. It came to be known as the “Great Hunger” and lasted until 1849. One million Irish fled to the United States during the famine, while another million emigrated over the next few decades. Records are not available but it is widely believed that anywhere from 500,000 to 2,000,000 died in the famine. Although the British government instituted some assistance programs, for the most part it did nothing to help, believing in the validity of Malthus’ theory, as well as that of Darwin.

During the same time period, the economist David Ricardo, applying Darwin to economics, maintained that the wages of laborers should be kept at the lowest possible level because their high rate of reproduction ensured a surplus supply of labor. In other words, wages should be kept low and government should not set any type of minimum wage.

Ricardo also advocated a restriction of the so-called “Poor Laws.” These had originally been passed by the British Parliament in the early nineteenth century to bring relief to the poorer classes in British society.

But in our modern era, to advocate anything like Darwinism regarding liberal issues would essentially destroy your career.

In 2007, Dr. James Watson, the 79-year-old co-winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine, saw his tenure canceled at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where he taught for four decades, as well as a book tour promoting his latest work. The prestigious Science Museum in London canceled a scheduled lecture, all for a remark that was pale in comparison to anything the Brit Darwin ever said.

Dr. Watson told The Sunday Times in October 2007 that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.” He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

His views are also reflected in his newest book Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science, in which he writes: “There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

Hadn’t Darwin reasoned much the same way, that there are races that have not been able to measure up to others? This is not to accuse Dr. Watson of being a Darwinist or even a racist, for I don’t believe he is one. He is only drawing conclusions from the scientific data, as was Darwin.

So why is Darwin a God of the Left but Watson a child of the devil?

In today’s society, the slightest instance, the tiniest utterance, however innocent it might be, if directed toward a protected group can lead to being branded a racist, the 21st century equivalent of a Scarlet Letter, which can ruin any career in any field. Ask Dr. Watson, ask Trent Lott, if you think it not so. Though neither can be considered racist, Darwin was every bit as racist as the most vile among us.

The Left invokes Darwin when it is useful, such as bashing creationism and Christianity in general, but conveniently puts him in the closet when it does not suit their immediate political needs in regards to other issues, like promoting victim-hood.

Darwinism is incompatible with Christianity. You cannot be a Darwinian Christian, for Jesus is the very antithesis of Darwin, teaching to help the poor, the weak, and the sick, though I don’t think he meant for the government to do it, only his Church.

So either you are a Darwinist or you are not. Either you believe all men are created equal, as Christ did, or you believe that they are not, as Darwin clearly did. We must either use Darwinism in all its sick and twisted ways, or we place him where he truly belongs, on the ash heap of history.

Ignorance Kills








What are the three branches of government?

A. Executive, Legislative, Judicial

B. Executive, Legislative, Military

C. Bureaucratic, Military, Industry

D. Federal, State, Local


The United States Electoral College:

A. trains those aspiring to higher political office

B. was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates

C. is otherwise known as the U.S. Congress

D. is a constitutionally mandated assembly that elects the president

E. was ruled undemocratic by the Supreme Court














Lincoln Mania
















