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Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

The US Constitution is perhaps the most significant historical and governmental document in a millennia. It established the modern conception of the western Republic, along with true representative government designed to answer to the people rather than rule over the people.

The Bill of Rights outlined clear restrictions on federal and state powers to legislate away the inherent and God given freedoms of the citizenry; an accomplishment which had been attempted in the past but was never truly realized until the war for independence and the creation of the United States. Until that moment, the idea that common men answer to authority and authority answers to no one was the accepted norm.

It’s a document and an ideal that gave birth to an epoch.

However, our constitutional republic was created based on conditions that, frankly, no longer exist. The American population was 95% Christian. The implementation of “patriarchy” was widespread and embraced as the most solid foundation for society. Meritocracy was absolute. Cultural identity was rooted in western civilization without any deviation or distraction.

Marxism did not exist. Atheism was rare. Degeneracy was shunned or punished. Shame was an effective social tool. Psychopathy was easy to identify and remove from within the smaller population. Women were expected to raise families and care for the home. Men were expected to feed and protect those families; perhaps even die for them.

Voting was for land owners and people with an actual stake in the success or failure of government policies. Women did not vote until a hundred years later in 1920 (many commentators have offered compelling arguments that the country quickly went downhill from there).

In 2026, many Americans still treat the notion of representative democracy as sacrosanct and untouchable, even though they don’t really know why. They just think it’s about freedom, but, they are basing their devout reverence on a system that used to work because it heavily restricted who was allowed to participate.

As John Adams sated in 1802:

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other…”

Like many conservatives, I started out as predominantly libertarian. Millions of us of us launched our political lives in the era of the Ron Paul Revolution. That said, whenever I hear libertarians wax romantic about the Constitution and why we must strictly adhere to it today regardless of the circumstances, I have to remind them that if the system today looked like it did when the Founders were in charge, most people would not be voting.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. In fact, the central question I want to ask is, would that actually be a better way of governing than what we have now? Should we return to the idea of restrictions on civic participation for people who have a habit of causing harm? In our liberal drive to create total democratic inclusivity, did we end up destroying the social structures and expectations that made our country and elections work in the first place?

Hell, in 2026 we are actually fighting for our lives just to get voter ID laws in place to prevent foreigners from influencing election outcomes. Around 80% of the country supports this policy, yet, the Senate refuses to pass it and 20% on the radical left are viciously opposed because they WANT illegal migrants to be able sneak into the vote.

As if it wasn’t already obvious, this proves the fact that Democrats and Neo-Con politicians have no regard for “democracy” – They cry about majority rule all the time but when there’s a clear case of an overwhelming majority in favor of secure elections, they do the opposite.

The top 0.2% and the bottom 20% work in tandem to make life miserable for everyone else.

Is representative democracy even possible when a large portion of the population is actively fighting to burn our republic to the ground by any means necessary? How can our elections and our government maintain integrity when people who want to destroy everything are allowed to vote or take political office?

Maybe that 20% of militant leftists and Neo-Cons should NOT be allowed to vote. Maybe they should be denied participation in government. Maybe they should be kicked out of the country. It’s what the Founding Fathers would have done…

During and after the Revolutionary War, many states required oaths of allegiance to the new American cause. Refusal (often by Loyalists/Tories who supported Britain) led to disenfranchisement, property confiscation, banishment, etc. These rules and restrictions were explicitly ideological – punishing pro-British or “neutral” political views. Pennsylvania, New York, and other states used such tests and the Founders saw this as necessary for security.

The idea that every American citizen should be allowed to have a hand in national matters despite their dubious background or belief system is a foolish fantasy. The Founders were correct to make distinctions.

That said, is the system so broken by corruption and delusion that it cannot be mended? How do we fix this situation? Do we merely sit back and allow the country to deteriorate in the name of liberal hedonism? Because that’s not an act of freedom. Rather, it’s the attitude of anarchy and it’s important to understand the difference.

Anarchy is freedom without accountability; the abandonment of any personal responsibility for the future. It means national suicide.

This week, the Trump Administration released classified information which they argue is proof of election manipulation in 2020. In response, the legacy media has refused to air Trump’s speech addressing the issue. Many outlets “fact checked” Trump’s arguments online as false without having time to read the reports and classified documents he offered.

I’m not saying that 2020 was unequivocally rigged, but, I’m willing to look at the evidence and clearly the political left and the media are not. This tells us all we need to know about them.

Everyone remembers the “hockey stick” graph and the impossible voting numbers for Joe Biden in the early morning hours of November 4^th. Even the skeptics found it hard to come up with a believable rationale. To this day, Democrats are unable to explain how Biden got 81 million votes, the highest raw vote count for any presidential candidate in US history, in the middle of a pandemic.

In 2024, Kamala Harris fell short of Biden’s totals by over 6 million votes. It shouldn’t be possible, but it happened. The recent rigging revelations, if accurate, help us to understand why the Democrats (and some Neo-Cons) absolutely refuse to pass voter ID laws and limits on mail-in ballots despite the vast majority of Americans in favor.

But ballot rigging and illegal migrant voting are only two threats among many to our country’s elections. Let’s not forget:

1) The mentally ill still get a vote. Over 23% of all US adults report having at least one mental illness. Meaning 1 in 4 US voters many not have the mental stability required to make reasonable or logical decisions. Nearly 20% of US adults are on some form of prescription medication for mental health issues. The number of women on medication is double the number of men on medication.

2) Low IQ people get to vote. Around 10% of the population has an IQ under 80, which is 20 points below the average. An IQ of 80 or less is associated with poor impulse control, extreme aggression and an inability to maintain normal day-to-day responsibilities. Should such people be allowed to vote?

3) Psychopaths and sociopaths get to vote. Around 4% of the population has these dangerous psychological traits. Yet, they can vote, run for office, and get jobs within the bureaucratic system. There is certainly some nuance to consider here (for example, some sociopaths are highly functional and are not a threat when operating ion positions of authority), but I would argue that all candidates should be tested openly for these issues before they’re allowed to enter government office.

4) Finally, how do we bring transparency to a government that is built around a bureaucracy that has no term limits and few checks and balances? To Trump’s credit, he has been attempting to dismantle this “deep state” edifice and has had a few successes, including the shutdown of the nefarious USAID. But it would take multiple presidencies to accomplish any long-lasting changes to this entrenched secondary government.

The efforts of DOGE showed us that the bureaucracy has always been the true base of power – protected by an array of corrupt politicians, judges, journalists and NGOs. It doesn’t matter who ends up in office because the people managing the bureaucracy usually keep their jobs for life, and when a confrontational administration leaves, they simply change everything back to the way things were.

Should we ignore constitutional protocols and remove the vast majority of these people from their jobs? The courts are doing everything in their power to prevent these people from being fired. What if we ignored the courts and kicked them out anyway? What alternatives do we have?

None of the answers to these problems can be found within the Constitution and the current legal environment. Again, we can’t even get Congress and the Senate to pass commonsense voter ID laws. Which means, we would have to go outside the Constitution to save the Constitution.

Ah yes, the slippery slope reveals itself. But the constitution is designed to limit the actions of the federal government, not the people. This leaves us with the age-old conundrum of rebellion and reformation. Maybe this is the only way that things will ever really change.

What I know is this: We cannot continue on the path we have been following for so many decades. We cannot rely on the system to police itself. And, we cannot allow certain subsections of the population to continue to have influence over our society.

Something has to change, dramatically and for the long term. We could do it through partisan government while breaking a number of constitutional laws, or, we could do it through popular revolution and hope that the country survives the aftermath of total domestic war. In the end, sitting back and doing nothing is not an option.

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

Over at Twitchy, a publication that curates the news in funny yet insightful ways, a headline reads, “Head of Medical School Tells Congresswoman the Vast Majority of Pregnancies Occur in Women.”  Sure enough, Twitchy is telling the truth.

During witness testimony before a congressional committee examining the impact of forced “diversity,” preferential (non-merit-based) admissions, and “woke” ideology upon the quality of medical schools, the chancellor of UC San Francisco testified under oath that not all pregnancies come from women.  That chancellor, Samuel Hawgood, is not some administrative bureaucrat with a made-up bachelor’s degree in the discriminatory effects of man-made “climate change” upon “transgender” Pakistanis (and an obligatory master’s in why American taxpayers must foot the bill for all “sex change” surgeries around the world).  No, Hawgood is an actual pediatrician who previously served as UCSF’s dean of the School of Medicine.  A man who did his residency at the Royal Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Brisbane cannot tell us how babies are made.

It is astounding to watch just how far down the propaganda rabbit hole so-called “institutions of higher learning” have dragged society.  Until very recently, this kind of public display of sophistry would have embarrassed an intellectual of the lowest order.  For a medical doctor and university chancellor to pretend that men can get pregnant is a flashing neon sign warning just how corrupt and dishonest all of academia has become.  These days, university leaders sound indistinguishable from North Korean spokespeople assuring starving citizens that they are better off than anyone else in the world.

How did we get to this point in time when professors tell rank lies to the American people, while hiding behind their titles as false evidence that those lies are somehow “truths”?  Well, social media favorite “Oilfield Rando” points to part of the problem.  In an X post responding to the doctor’s pseudoscientific testimony, Rando includes an itemization of Chancellor Hawgood’s university pay and accompanying benefits.  The man in charge of one of the country’s top educational institutions takes home well over a million dollars each year.  Unless Chancellor Hawgood is a moron who genuinely believes men can get pregnant, it is likely that he is willing to sell his intellectual reputation and personal honor for a seven-figure salary.

What does that say about the current state of our society?  The modern university arose from Christian monasteries dedicated to God’s truth.  This is why divinity degrees are generally accorded highest honor during processions accompanying graduation ceremonies.  As monasteries developed into secular institutions of higher learning, they remained places dedicated to the pursuit of truth.  Harvard’s motto, veritas, simply means “truth.”

For hundreds of years, faculty members did not take positions on college campuses because they sought fame or fortune.  They became scholars and professors because they were dedicated to the rigors of their calling.  Just as a Christian monk lived in poverty because the pursuit of truth provided spiritual nourishment and personal fulfillment, a scholar embraced a penurious life within academia in exchange for the privilege of seeking authentic truth.  The reward — unvarnished enlightenment — was understood to be more valuable than money.

I have spent enough time on university campuses to understand that they are no longer sanctuaries for truth.  There was a time not so many decades ago when campuses were “safe spaces” for all ideas.  Unlike the real world, where an employee might be fired for taking unorthodox positions in the workplace, colleges once encouraged professors and students to advance eccentric, heretical, and dissenting points of view on any subject.  Intellectual debate was more important than “hurt feelings” or “political correctness.”

Now, the opposite is true.  Universities are so concerned about “hurt feelings” and “political correctness” that they proudly designate most of their campus a “safe space” free from the “dangers” of debate, disagreement, or dissent.  Of course, the kicker is that in the process of creating “safe spaces,” colleges must first decide what points of view to defend as part of their unquestionable curricula.  They stake out positions just as a cleric might do with tenets of a religious faith.  In this way, the university has come full circle.  It has once again become a medieval monastery filled with members of a religious order.  It’s just that these twenty-first-century “monks” despise God, truth, and Christianity.

In 2026, a pediatrician and chancellor of a major university is incapable of stating the truths that biological sex is real and that only women can become pregnant.  As much as we might be inclined to laugh, this should make us feel sad.  There has never been a time in human history when people struggled with the distinctions between men and women.

We are presently in an era when the people with the most prestigious titles and credentials are either dumber or more dishonest than the least educated members of any human society that ever existed.  In exchange for their dumbness and dishonesty, they are paid extremely high salaries.  The corporate news media command us to treat these people with respect because they have been recognized as official “experts.”  And these highly paid, credentialed, respected experts from prestigious institutions of higher learning are too cowardly to tell the truth.  The noble pursuit and defense of veritas have been replaced with ignominy and indoctrination.

University cowardice, of course, does not stop with the idiotic fad of “transgenderism.”  There are all kinds of bizarre, fanciful, and unscientific commandments within the “woke” faith.  Believing in hard work, skill, intellect, and merit is now cast as unacceptable “white supremacy.”  Instead, we are told, people should be admitted to universities and receive degrees based on the color of their skin, their recognized victimhood, and/or their sexual proclivities.  Entire generations of intellectual lightweights are now certified “experts” because they claimed to have Native American blood or wrote college admissions essays about having sexual relations with broccoli.  They can’t do math.  They can’t write without the help of AI.  But since they call themselves “doctors” or were handed Ivy League degrees, they expect the rest of society to respect them and believe what they say.

It is such an odd time to be alive.  In the halls of government and academia, nonsensical beliefs masquerading as “truth” run rampant.  Within these wonderlands of delirium, two ideas are so sacrosanct that they cannot be questioned:

(1) using any kind of energy other than those available during the Middle Ages causes catastrophic “climate change”; and

(2) mass immigration and “multiculturalism” strengthen a society. 

Consequently, university professors and government ministers expect us to believe two preposterous things. 

 First, unless we pay carbon taxes and allow bureaucrats to centrally manage the economy, we will all die.  

Second, unless we replace Western civilization with other civilizations, we are all bigots.

In other words, our “educated elites” treat as indisputable “truths” the canards that bad weather and insufficient “diversity” are the two biggest problems of our time.  Their solutions?  Central bankers, multinational corporations, and government bureaucrats should strictly regulate how productive people build things and prosper.  Ideally, incompetent people rewarded for their perceived “victimhood” and “diversity” should be put in charge of future production.  This is not a plan for success.  This is an idiotic operation that guarantees civilizational self-destruction.

Should we survive this age of stupidity, our descendants will look back and wonder why clear-thinking scholars from our august institutions of higher learning didn’t do more to halt the suicidal impulses now gripping Western civilization.  

How could the very universities that trace their lineages back to Western monasteries’ pursuit of God’s truth become cesspools of falsehood, paganism, and superstition?

Western civilization’s survivors will not have to look hard for their answer: University chancellors were given millions of dollars to “educate” the public about men having babies. 

College campuses are catnip for crazies.

Brent crude futures jumped a little more than 4% to nearly $88 a barrel, putting the crude oil benchmark on track for its biggest weekly gain since April. That move followed an Axios report that said the Trump administration had notified Israel it was deploying additional aerial assets to the region, signaling the US military could expand strikes on Iran as soon as this weekend.

Financial Times spoke with energy traders at the end of the week who warned that slowing tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a more severe supply crunch than the first round of the US-Iran war because emergency reserves and stockpiles around the world that cushioned the earlier disruption have been mostly depleted.

"We've burned through all of the buffers we had. Everything," said one trader. "All of that's now gone.

Related:

• Cushing Remains At 'Tank Bottoms'

Bloomberg noted:

Fuel markets strengthened again, with the ICE gasoil crack closing at the highest on record and the Nymex heating oil crack the strongest since March. More narrow Brent put spreads around the low $70s traded in sizable numbers.

Earlier today, the International Energy Agency revealed that member countries released three-quarters of the planned 400 million-barrel emergency reserves announced in March.  

Amrita Sen, founder of Energy Aspects, pointed out that heading into the US-Iran war, the global oil market had around 400 million barrels of excess inventories, not including strategic reserves controlled by governments.

"Now we have close to nothing ... and market complacency around Hormuz flows is being severely tested," Sen warned.

Strait crossings hit three week low

Strait of Hormuz traffic continued to weaken on 16 July, with confirmed crossings falling to eight, the lowest level in three weeks. Seven of the eight transits used the Iranian route, highlighting a growing concentration of movements through… pic.twitter.com/YEA63ZGkVJ

— Kpler (@Kpler) July 17, 2026

UBS analyst Henri Patricot wrote in the daily "Hormuz tracker" note that further Hormuz escalation has occurred, Gulf tanker crossings remain limited, and there is a sharp pullback in Gulf loadings:

Further escalation

The conflict in the Middle East is escalating further as Iran reportedly targeted power plants and desalinisation plants in Kuwait. Previous strikes had focused on US military targets. These followed US strikes on bridges and an airport in Iran.

Limited Gulf tanker crossings

Increased attacks continue to weigh heavily on flows via Hormuz. The latest UBS Evidence Lab data (> Access Dataset) show that oil and gas tanker crossings fell to one, with only one product tanker entering the Gulf (Figure 1).

July-to-date crossings have averaged 10, down from the mid-to-high teens recorded in late June and early July, and remain well below the c.50 level seen in February. Oil on water in the Gulf is ticking up again, up ~5Mb in recent days (Figure 10).

The absence of outbound oil and gas flows takes the July average down to 5.4Mboe/d, compared with 3.7Mboe/d in June and 1.3Mboe/d in May (Figure 4).

Capacity entering the Gulf fell to 0.7Mboe/d and has averaged 5.2Mboe/d month to date (Figure 5).

Meanwhile, flows via the Bab al Mandeb Strait have not been disrupted so far and increased further to 9.7Mb/d yesterday, above the July-to-date average of 6.7Mb/d.

A sharp pullback in Gulf loading

Gulf crude loadings ex-Iran fell sharply to 1.0Mb/d yesterday from 6.0Mb/d on Wednesday, with the past-week average at 3.2Mb/d vs 5.1Mb/d in July and 3.4Mb/d in June. Iranian loadings rose to 5.0Mb/d yesterday, lifting the July average to 1.5Mb/d, still below the typical 1.7-1.8Mb/d range, but above June's 0.8Mb/d (Figure 9).

Crude loadings at ports outside the Strait (Yanbu in Saudi Arabia and Fujairah in the UAE) eased following a sharp rebound, falling to 3.6Mb/d yesterday below the July-to-date average of 5.9Mb/d and June's 6.9Mb/d. Yanbu declined to 2.7Mb/d, below the month-to-date level of 4.2Mb/d and June's 4.8Mb/d. Product loadings inside the Gulf remain close to May-June levels (Figure 15).

The normalization pathway of tanker flows appears to have been disrupted as the US and Iran become locked in an escalation spiral, with neither side willing to back down. Any sustained reopening of the Strait of Hormuz has now been postponed.

With or without Tehran's cooperation, US-allied Gulf countries are in the beginning innings of what we've described as a "great energy rewiring" to bypass the Hormuz chokepoint.

Latest:

• Great Rewiring: US Supports Iraq-Syria Oil Pipeline To Erode Tehran's Hormuz Leverage
• Dubai's New East Coast Port Signals The Beginning Of End For Iran's Hormuz Leverage
• "Zero Hormuz Dependency": UAE Races To Rewire Energy Flows, Bypassing Chokepoint Chaos
• Hormuz Bypasses Maxed Out: Saudi East-West Pipeline Hits Record 7 MMb/d, As UAE Fujairah Crude Loadings Reach Capacity

"Ultimately, the market was pricing an optimistic flow trajectory that now is clearly not on the table, at least . . . not until we get another round of diplomacy," Natixis Bank analyst Joel Hancock wrote in a note.