Scott and I get together to chat about our military experience and what Veteran’s Day means to us.
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Podcast Episode 8: Campaign Update
In Episode 8, Scott and I circle back to discuss his campaign for the House of Delegates in the 59th and how things are going so far.
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Stan Visits a Confederate Monument, Part 1
Sculpted in bronze by French artist Antonin Mercie and based on an Aldabert Volck lithograph of Lee on his horse, this is the statue that once stood on Monument Avenue and honored the traitor Robert E. Lee, who deserted his post with the United States Army when Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861. Lee instead took a Commission in the Confederate Army in defense of the power of states to permit slavery.
Lee, a prominent Virginian, opposed secession but resigned the US Army Commission he earned at West Point to avoid fighting against his home state. He commanded Confederate forces in western Virginia and helped organize coastal defenses in Georgia and South Carolina before taking command of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862. Lee has been praised as a strong battlefield tactician and commander but in fact proved ineffective at building an effective staff and issuing clear orders. His insistence on offensive operations cost the Confederacy casualties they could not afford to lose. He focused too narrowly on defending Virginia and contributed little to a broader strategy for defending the entire Confederacy and winning the war.
Continue readingA Fourth American Republic?
I’m working on putting together an online American government course intended for homeschoolers and adult learners – think high school senior AP class that would look like a college freshman class – and my research on the Reconstruction era got me into The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, by Manisha Sinha. The title borrows from Shirer’s The Collapse of the Third Republic, an examination of the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940. This framing of French history refers to the series of democratic (more or less) revolutions that ended monarchies and established something resembling parliamentary democracy.
Sinha frames American history in a similar way without the monarchy part, with the First Republic established by the original Constitution and the Second Republic she refers to coming through Reconstruction and the Reconstruction Amendments ratified after the Civil War ended in Confederate defeat. I’ll try to write a more comprehensive review once I’ve read the book, but the short version of her argument as I understand it now is that Reconstruction established, for a time, a true multi-ethnic democratic republic based on the abolition of slavery. In her reading reconstruction also opened a pathway for women’s suffrage and greater independence from husbands and fathers, in part at least as a result of the role women played in the abolition movement. Sadly, this Republic died at the hands of Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and segregation.
Continue readingRob Wittman and Social Security
Yesterday I received this flyer outlining Congressman Rob Wittman’s thinking on Social Security.
This comes very early in the 2026 mid-term cycle so I’d like to highlight three points:
Continue readingChaos and Power
A few weeks ago I spoke at a Hands Off rally in Williamsburg. I had just read Raymond King’s short book, The Psychopath Mantra: Chaos is Power, and focused my speech on ways the conservative movement uses the methods outlined in the book to create a chaotic environment that they use to grasp and hold power. The short version: American fascists work hard to keep people wondering what’s going on so they can take control of institutions and use them to complete their goals while most folks are distracted.
I want to discuss the connection between chaos and power, and how today’s current conservative elites use chaos to distract enough people to achieve their goals. First, however, a short discussion of King’s book, because I think he gives us a broad outline showing how they have accomplished so much.
King characterizes the book on his website as taking the reader “inside the predatory mind of the ruling class,” and it does that, though not terribly well. He numbers the paragraphs for some reason, he does not give examples, and he does not attempt to make a cohesive argument. He makes excellent points and offers important insights, but he does not state a thesis or create a logical argument in support of one. Indeed, the book has a satirical vibe, as if he’s written a self-help book for aspiring members of the ruling class.
Nonetheless I read his argument as follows: the ruling class consists of shameless psychopaths who manipulate morality, set themselves up as martyrs by constructing a concept of sacrifice that gives them prestige, create resentment among the masses, and reconstruct truth to suit their needs, all in an effort to take and hold power.
Continue readingWhat’s Behind the Hegseth General Officer Memo?
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary issued a memo calling on the US military services to reduce the number of General and Flag officers by 20% across the board, with another 10% reduction associated with realignment of the Unified Combined Plan.
As a general matter, this appears to be a good idea. R. D. Hooker argued in Defense One last December that “surplus generals, swollen staffs, and excess headquarters drain headcount and resources from warfighting units.” He cites the Army’s Installation Management Command (IMC), which took over military installation management from local commanders in 2006 as falling short in its mission of applying “common standards and greater expertise” to managing Army infrastructure. Leaving aside that Hooker points only to substandard barracks conditions to support his claim, he does correctly point out that the ratio of officers to enlisted soldiers has increased 21% since 9/11.
Some began making this case almost 15 years ago. Ben Freeman, writing for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), called it “Star Creep” and noted that despite then SecDef Robert Gates “efficiency initiatives,” and successor SecDef Leon Panetta’s expressed support, the Department of Defense added 6 General of Flag officers in 2011 rather than eliminate a planned 17 billets.
I think the issue is more complicated that a simple calculation of percentages officers in the force, and my concern here is not whether the US military should or should not reduce the size of its officer corps. My concern is the administration that has set out to do it.
The first problem is that Hegseth and the current administration seems to think it can cut budgets and workforces simply by lopping some set percentage off the top. It may well be that the percentage cuts ordered in the memo make sense, but Trump and his team have demonstrated that they act without thinking, with no consideration for unintended consequences or follow-on effects. Tariffs appear to be the most obvious example, but I think a better comparison is to the cuts to the US Agency for International Development. Cutting foreign aid, like reducing the number of General and Flag officers may or may not be a good idea. The argument that we should take care of homeless veterans before we worry about people starving overseas resonates. But no one in Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency seems to have considered the effects on American farmers who produced and sold many of the commodities purchased by USAID and sent overseas. These cuts also affect agricultural research and training that reduces the cost of food and helps protect food sources. Virginia alone will lose more than $7.24 billion in contracts and assistance. This causes uncertainty among farmers and other producers, and whatever the wisdom of this policy the administration should have taken a measured approach to these cuts so those affected could prepare and reduce the hit.
Continue readingCircular Firing Squad?
The inner workings and various factions that make up Virginia’s Republican Party fascinate me, and I’ve been attending Tea Party meetings and following the debate between these factions pretty much since I moved to Hanover County in 2008. The short non-academic version is that a very active and motivated base has worked to take over the Virginia GOP for more than a decade. This base very much wants to enforce a kind of ideological purity that focuses far more on cultural issues than policy.
This intra-Party insurgency initially manifested itself in the capture of local Virginia GOP units by Tea Party activists after Barack Obama won the Presidency. Ideologically, this group is to the right of what I call “Chamber of Commerce” Republicans (defined as conservatives who want small government but want it to actually work). Think of this as the “conservatives lose elections because they’re not conservative enough” crowd.
They successfully won the 7th District Congressional nomination for Dave Brat over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014 because the very conservative Cantor was not conservative enough to suit them – these activists ousted a very powerful Congressman for ideological reasons. Brat went on to win the seat and served two terms before Abigail Spanberger won the seat in 2018. She held it in 2020, but narrowly.
Continue readingBlue Collar Billionaire
We’re at a place in American politics where conservative leaders make the claim the Republican Party represents regular Americans rather than Country Club elites.
This comes from a Senator who got his degrees from Princeton and Harvard. A Senator who ran to warm-weather Cancun from a winter disaster in his home State instead of volunteering to help out the…blue collar…workers in Texas who were freezing to death because the free-market policies he supports drive profits, not reliable utility services.
In support of someone who literally owns – and lives at – a country club.
Wouldn’t the States Have the Receipts?
We’re right to worry about whether the Republican Party as an organization would sanction executing the plan outlined in this Newsweek opinion column. I have no doubt in my military mind that Donald Trump would do anything he could to stay in power, and that the Conservative movement (defined as the GOP and associated think tanks and interest groups) would do anything to keep a conservative in power. If those interests align and leaders see a unique opportunity, an attempt to establish a Presidency that lacked popular support is not out of the question.
I’ve written before about the Republican Project as I see it: a long-term conservative effort to capture the legal institutions necessary to keep power without having to bother assembling a coalition that can win elections, and block progressive legislation when they can’t. They would use these institutions to protect friends and hurt enemies, and to uphold orders restricting the right to vote while blocking local rules that would protect it. Once in control of these institutions, conservatives would use that control to protect their power if possible.
As I read the Newsweek scenario, it boils down to this: Biden wins the popular vote as well as the Electoral College on the strength of wins in four swing states which all have GOP legislative majorities. Trump and the GOP establishment challenge the result arguing that counterfeit ballots printed by China (presumably an anti-Trump Chinese intelligence operation) made the difference in those four states. Trump declares a national emergency and a national security investigation, which delays appointment of their Electors. Neither candidate assembles a majority in the Electoral College and the House, with its majority of GOP state delegations, would decide the election in favor of Trump.
Continue reading