An Agenda for 2024 and Beyond

A Series of Suggestions

            As the current administration’s popularity with the American people continues to sink into the thirty percent range, conservatives hope that a newly reconstructed GOP will inflict a crushing defeat on Democrats at all levels of government during the next elections.  Many anticipate that this sweeping victory will include the re-election of former President Trump, or the inauguration of a newly elected President DeSantis, setting the stage for national deliverance from our current bondage. 

It is important however to keep in mind that these fervently anticipated events are not inevitable.  Those of us who crave such an outcome will have to organize effectively among ourselves and work hard to bring it about.  A year in politics, as the conventional wisdom has it, is an eternity.  Anyone who doubts this has merely to think back to February of 2020 when the Democrat’s first ludicrous impeachment trial resulted in an acquittal of the president.  At that point, the economy was in great shape, and it looked as though the president would be easily re-elected.  But then, a once in a century pandemic swept out of a Chinese biological research laboratory and changed everything.  It was a “black swan” event that catalyzed the installation of the most destructive, corrupt, incompetent, anti-American, authoritarian, and lawless administration in American history.  Likewise, we cannot forget that the much anticipated “red wave” election of 2022 turned into little more than a red ripple.  History has a way of thwarting our hopes.

The COVID catastrophe has revealed with crystal clarity the totalitarian proclivities of the radical left in the United States and how the administrative state and its propaganda agencies in the mainstream media make use of fear to compel compliance with its dictates.  Fear of COVID has now been replaced by fear of “climate change,” and fear of “white supremacists.” The scales have fallen from the eyes of many Americans, but still not enough.  Looming financial and foreign disasters, combined with skyrocketing urban crime may open more eyes as the 2024 elections approach. Meanwhile, the administrative state, in conjunction with the political oligarchy that runs it, have no regard whatsoever for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, democratic processes, or any limitations on its exercise of power while attempting to crush freedom of speech, the press, and worship. It continues to seize greater power, even to the point of trying to dictate what type of stoves we use to cook our food!

Let us suppose that our fondest dreams come true.  A conservative president accompanied by a conservative majority takes over both the House and the Senate in January 2025.  Meanwhile, similar majorities are inaugurated in thirty to thirty-five state houses across the nation.   We need to start thinking seriously right now about what we will do with the great opportunities we will have to begin to reorder American politics and society.  Keep in mind that when President Trump was inaugurated in January 2016, the GOP held majorities in both the House and the Senate, yet, apart from tax reform, very little was accomplished.  A great opportunity was squandered.  That said, conservatives must get over our objections to the use of federal power.  We must seize federal power as the left has done, and use it to ensure the success of liberty in the future, while simultaneously taking measures to curtail the vast power of the unelected bureaucracy.  Should Republicans fail to take advantage of such a historic opportunity to carry out long overdue and radical reforms, the American people may not give us another such opportunity in our lifetimes.  Indeed, radical left totalitarians may obliterate what little remains of American freedom.

Accordingly, what follows is a proposed agenda.  It is by no means complete or definitive.  It is merely a series of suggestions intended to stimulate ideas and get the ball rolling because we dare not squander the radical reform opportunity once again.  We must have an agenda ready on day one.

·      Honest elections.  We cannot have self-government without honest elections.  Not only must they be honest, but they must also be seen to be honest by all participants.

·      Where honest elections do not exist, and a temporary minority is permanently locked out of power, its only choices are submission or violent resistance.  These are the bleak choices dishonest elections threaten to impose on half the country.

·      Democrats have been working assiduously since the days of the “Motor Voter” act of 1993 to diminish the security of elections by expanding the length of the voting process from one day to weeks or even months, and expanding the length of the counting process.  They have been eliminating basic security measures such as voter ID rules while refusing to purge the voter rolls of those who have died or moved away.  Most recently they have used the COVID-19 panic as an excuse to enact universal mail-in ballot schemes that lend themselves to fraud. 

·      Ballot harvesting, universal mail-in balloting and early voting should be prohibited.  Where there are legitimate hardships such as long lines and insufficient polling places, steps should be taken to overcome these problems.   Add more polling places. 

·      Election day should be made into a national holiday so people don’t have to vote after work when there are long lines.  The kinds of problems Democrats always allude to as reasons for extending the voting period can be solved.  This can be done without sacrificing the integrity of the process and enabling election fraud.

·      No activists, or unionized workers should be allowed to count the ballots.  A number of observers from each party, sufficient to verify the accuracy of the vote count must be permitted wherever counting takes place.

·      In order to ensure ballot integrity, eliminate voting machines and reinstate the use of paper ballots.  

·      Republicans at the state level should make it a priority to ensure the integrity of the election process. In any state controlled by both a Republican governor and a Republican legislature election reform should be a pressing priority.  This is so important that it should be the first order of business in legislative sessions across the nation.

·      While states should retain the final authority to determine their own balloting procedures, if Republicans should capture both the White House and both legislative branches in 2024, Congress should pass, and the president should sign model honest voting procedures.

·      Immigration Reform.  We cannot have a country without secure borders.  If the American people, through their elected representatives cannot control who enters the country, and who becomes a citizen, then we are no longer a self-governing Republic.

·      The first steps are to reinstate the Trump immigration policies beginning with the completion of the wall from San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico, and the reinstatement of the remain in Mexico policy. “Chain migration” should be prohibited.

·      Next we should take the money the administration has budgeted to hire some 87,000 more IRS agents, and use it to hire approximately that many Border Patrol agents and additional immigration judges.

·      Although this will be extraordinarily controversial and eventually go to the Supreme Court, Congress should pass an immigration law that clarifies the ambiguity of the Fourteenth Amendment’s definition of citizenship by specifying that only people born to at least one American citizen, or naturalized in the United States are American citizens, and that only American citizens can vote in any American election.

·      Congress should immediately pass a national version of E-verify.  Officers of businesses who deliberately violate its provisions by hiring people in the United States in violation of its laws should be subject to criminal prosecution.

·      Congress should pass legislation prohibiting states, cities, and other entities from declaring themselves “sanctuaries” from American immigration law.  Elected and appointed officials who deliberately violate this law should be subject to criminal prosecution.

·      NGOs that assist in the process of illegal immigration should lose their tax-exempt status and their officers should be subject to criminal prosecution.

·      Nobody who cannot demonstrate with valid ID that he/she is an American citizen should be registered to vote in any election in the United States.

·      Those who are here illegally should be deported.

·      No blanket amnesty should ever be granted.

·      Once we have successfully enacted these laws and carried through these policies in such a manner that they cannot be undone, we can consider what to do about so-called “dreamers.”

·      Legal immigration levels should be reduced to those consistent with the nation’s ability to assimilate newcomers into American society.

·      In the future immigration policy should emphasize talent and merit as criteria for admission to the country.

·      Education Reform.  Virtually the entire cluster of radical political and social ideas that form the core of the “woke” agenda originated and metastasized in the intellectual petri dishes provided by the Universities, many of which are state supported.

·      The nation should adopt the fundamental principle that children belong to their parents, not the schools, not the “community,” and not the state.

·      As suggested above, wherever there is a GOP legislative majority and a GOP governor, steps must be taken to extirpate all mandatory classes that promote radical feminist, gay, transgender, and essentialist racial propaganda. Florida provides a model of what can be done and how to do it.

·      Regarding elementary and secondary education, state departments of education must take action to eliminate “critical racism training” for teachers at all levels of the state school systems and from the schools of education themselves.

·      There shall be no mandatory or voluntary ideological training sessions permitted in any public-school systems in the United States.

·      Classroom instruction should focus on mathematics, science, technology, economics, reading, writing, art, music, American and world history, literature, philosophy, comparative religions, foreign languages, and other aspects of a traditional education.

·      Web cameras should be installed in all elementary and secondary classrooms and classes should be streamed to parents of all children.  In the construction of curriculum, all syllabi should be reviewed by Department heads, who must be held responsible for seeing to it that faculty teach only that which is on the syllabus.  Syllabi and lesson plans should be posted on the internet and be available to all parents.

·      Faculty and others will contend that these requirements abridge the First  Amendment rights of faculty.  But that is not true.  Faculty retain the right to write or say whatever they wish on their own time, but when they are in class to teach Shakespeare, that’s what they should be teaching.  When they are teaching advanced calculus, they should be teaching advanced calculus—not the latest feminist gender theories or essentialist racial theories.

·      With respect to K-12 education, parents should have the freedom to choose where their children go to school;  they should have the power to send their children to charter schools, private schools, or to home school their children.

·      The states and federal government should provide sufficient financial support to parents to enable them to implement their educational choices.

·      University administrations have become bloated.  They should be reduced by at least 75%, with money saved used to hire quality teachers and to support educational choice for parents, especially those with low incomes.

·      Teaching credentials should no longer be required for those teaching at the intermediate and high school levels.  Those who teach specific subjects at these levels should instead be expected to obtain a master’s degree in the appropriate subject.  They should be paid better.

·      In lieu of a teaching credential, those who teach in the elementary grades should be required to obtain a certificate in elementary teaching methods as well as certification of proficiency in English reading and writing, as well as elementary mathematics and science. These requirements can be satisfied in the four-year colleges and Universities for those majoring in education/teacher training programs as part of the B.A. curriculum.

·      The Education schools should be abolished and replaced by education departments [distinct from schools of education] in universities and colleges.

·      The Ed.D. degree should be abolished.  It is a worthless degree that serves only two purposes:  to encourage school districts to experiment with radical departures from a classical education, and as sinecures for incompetent left-wing mediocrities.

·      The Federal Department of Education should be abolished outright.  Not only does it spend approximately $68 billion annually, it is a highly politicized agency that pushes school districts nationwide to adopt radical left-wing curricula.  Its budget should be redirected to parents for educational purposes at the elementary and secondary levels.

·      Energy.   Energy is the life blood of any economy.  We cannot power our economy without electricity.  There is literally no excuse for the United States ever to suffer from a shortage of electricity.

·      Making electricity is as simple as boiling water.  Create steam, spin a turbine, and generate electricity.  We can boil water by burning coal, oil, natural gas, or by splitting atoms.  Yes, we can even make use of solar energy and wind turbines to generate electricity, but they are both unreliable at present and a danger to wildlife—something we  should all care about.

·      As a nation we should invest in the construction of a fleet of the latest nuclear power plants, including Advanced Small Nuclear Reactors.  Nuclear power is safe,  clean, and in North America there is an ample supply of the fissionable material reactors require. Contrary to the alarmist claims of anti-nuclear advocates, the safe disposal of nuclear waste is not a problem and has not been since the 1980s.

·      The transportation network runs best on gasoline.  We should immediately end the environmentalist’s war on fossil fuels.  Between the United States and Canada, we have reserves of oil and natural gas sufficient to meet our current needs for at least a century.  “Peak oil,” is a myth.

·      We should resume building pipelines.  They are far and away the safest way to transport fuels such as oil and gas.

·      We should abolish the Department of Energy which currently spends some $160 billion per year, while retaining such useful elements of it as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the nuclear laboratories such as those at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and elsewhere.

·      Our overall strategy should be to become so self-sufficient in energy that American oil production sets the marginal price of oil in international markets.

·      Reform of the Justice System.  We cannot have a politicized justice system and remain a free country.  The equal application of the laws must become mandatory.  To that end we must:

·      Reform the FBI, if possible.  Begin by strictly limiting its purview to its law enforcement function.  This means stripping the FBI of its intelligence gathering function.

·      Immediately terminate, and prosecute those individuals in the agency who have participated in the weaponization of the FBI.

·      If these steps are insufficient to ensure that the FBI does not infringe on the rights of American citizens under the Bill of Rights, abolish it and start over again.

·      The Justice Department should be handled in the same way.

·      The Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court must be able to maintain its independence.  We cannot allow the court or its justices to be subject to political pressures or intimidation tactics.

·      We need a constitutional amendment stating that the Supreme Court consists of nine justices, one Chief Justice and eight associate justices.  No more, and no fewer.

·      Homeland Security.  We cannot remain a free people if we permit government agencies to use against American citizens the tactics employed against foreign terrorists.

·      Accordingly, we need to repeal the USA Patriot Act, and abolish the Department of Homeland Security and make it a federal crime to spy on American citizens without warrant.

·      The Central Intelligence Agency was originally formed in 1947 for the sole purposes of gathering and assessing foreign intelligence.  It almost immediately morphed into an organization carrying out operations against foreign governments and movements.  In short, it has been interfering in the internal affairs of foreign governments ever since, generating anti-Americanism in the process.  We should consider whether such operations are genuinely in the national interest.  If, in the long run, they are not, we should strip the agency of such power.

·      Congress should investigate how best to ensure that the CIA does not remain a threat to the liberties of the American people, and take appropriate steps.

·      Environmentalism.  While climate change may indeed be taking place, it is overwhelmingly a natural phenomenon over which human beings have little or no power.  Environmental alarmism has no basis in science.  Its purpose is to generate sufficient fear that the public will comply with the edicts of the so-called experts.  “Give up your rights, and we will protect you,” is no way to govern a free people.

·      No agency of Federal or state government shall have the power to seize, prevent, or abridge the use of any form of transportation or energy production on environmental grounds.

·      The power of the Environmental Protection Agency should be limited to the maintenance of clear air and water.  Nothing else.

·      All elements of the “green new deal” that have been enacted should be repealed.

·      Abolish the position of “climate Czar.”

·      Retirement Reform.  We cannot allow woke corporations to use employee retirement funds to underwrite left wing politics.

·      Prohibit the use of retirement accounts to advance any political or social agenda.

·      Convert all qualified retirement accounts to Roth retirement accounts without any tax or other penalty.  This means that all retirement accounts will permit both tax free accumulation and tax free withdrawals without any “required minimum distributions.”

·      Use the Securities and Exchange Commission to prohibit the use of ESG scores, DEI scores, or any other similar devices, by fiduciaries, such as large mutual fund companies, in selecting retirement investments.

·      Take anti-trust action against large retirement fund management companies such as Blackrock, Vanguard, and Fidelity with the objective of breaking them up.

·      The Presidency.  During the past century and a quarter, the power of the presidency in both domestic and foreign affairs has grown enormously at the expense of the Congress.

·      The administrative bureaucracy, an entity not even contemplated in the Constitution has become so large and powerful that is tantamount to a fourth branch of government that threatens to overwhelm the other three branches.  Dramatic action must be taken to curtail its power—action such as the abolition of entire cabinet departments, and the restriction of their discretionary powers, as recommended above.

·      During the administration of Donald Trump, much of the administrative bureaucracy engaged in what can almost be described as a mutiny against the commander-in-chief of the executive branch of the government.  This cannot be permitted to take place in the future.  To control the administrative bureaucracy, the nation desperately needs civil service reform that makes it easier to terminate employees who attempt to obstruct the policies of the president.

·      A succession of presidents have used executive orders to bypass the Congress and enact rules, the equivalent of law, that Congress and the people would never approve.  Accordingly, the use of executive orders must be restricted to their original function which was to clarify ambiguities in the interpretation of laws passed by Congress, and their execution.

·      The ability of presidents to commit the armed forces to wars abroad without the consent of Congress must be curtailed.

·      Revisit the War Powers Act.

·      Civil Rights.  Equal application of the law is essential to any free society.  Accordingly, the nation should declare, as a fundamental principle, that government at all levels must act in a colorblind manner.  Justice John Marshall Harlan in his dissent to the 1896 Plessy decision declared that “Our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. . . . all citizens are equal before the law.” 

·      As Martin Luther King put it, American citizens should be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.

·      As a nation we should strive to create a meritocracy in which talent is rewarded.  To this end, equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, should be the object of public policy.

·      We cannot survive as a society with a permanent underclass defined largely by race, permanently locked into poverty, and permanently alienated from the mainstream of American life.

·      Almost sixty years since Lyndon Johnson launched his so-called “war on poverty,” we must acknowledge that the welfare state has not only failed, but made conditions immeasurably worse by encouraging the collapse of the nuclear family and dependence on the state.

·      To these failings must be added rising crime rates, drug addiction, and despair.

·      The solutions to these problems begin with intact families that support one another in their financial pursuits, such as we see among the Hispanic and Asian communities in this country.

·      To this end, we must provide incentives for family creation and preservation, along with support for entrepreneurial activities that enable people to rise out of poverty.

·      Likewise, we must drastically reduce levels of violent crime which make financial success—not to mention virtually every other activity, impossible.

·      Accordingly, we must elect District Attorneys who prosecute crime and judges who punish criminals.  Crime is not some sort of romantic rebellion against a racist system.  It is a crime against civilization.

·      We must discard plans to “defund the police.”  Instead, we must refund the police, while ensuring that the laws are applied equally to all.  

·      Simultaneously we must provide an adequate safety net for all who need it.

·      In short, we cannot abandon the cities to the left.  We must help those trapped in despair in the nation’s inner cities to realize the American dream.

Most of the foregoing suggestions focus on what must be done to repair the damage that has been done to the American people by the “progressive” left over the course of a century, and to forestall further damage.    I have not even addressed the question of our bankrupt foreign policy, the area of my professional expertise. Reform of our foreign policy is desperately needed. Much more could be added, and I encourage suggestions.

Environmentalists contend that the only way to avoid climatic catastrophe is for Americans to curtail their way of life.  In short, they say that our future must be one of scarcity.  But this is Malthusian nonsense.  Another part of an agenda for 2024 and beyond could focus on how Americans can realize the almost limitless possibilities for a future of abundance.  For more about this check the works of Edward Ring of the California Policy Center.  Although he writes primarily about California, most of his solutions can be applied nationwide.

Our progressive overlords do not trust the American people to make their own choices.  They think that their “experts” know better.  They promise the public that the government will shelter them from all risk and take care of them from “cradle to grave,” if only they will surrender their liberties.

That said, we the American people have a choice to make.   Embrace liberty and a society of abundance, or embrace the tyranny of experts, and succumb to an enforced scarcity.