Benjamin Pugh

California Attorney

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

@DarrigoMelanie Yes, she got a seat row to all herself in a bus that was standing room only full of white supremacists, apparently, was perfectly safe throughout her ride.

This picture is powerful, but not for the reason you think it is.

[Benjamin Pugh @benjaminppugh]

@Oilfield_Rando If it was real, nothing.

[Orson Scott Card @orsonscottcard]

And America is a land of makers. That’s why they want to destroy it. @elonmusk

[Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson]

To the Americans:

I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.
Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

[Benjamin Pugh @benjaminppugh]

@ShemekaMichelle Go Down and Giving the Dog a Bone by AC/DC.

[Benjamin Pugh @benjaminppugh]

@the_jefferymead The first thing before capital, before labor, was a human mind, thinking of and designing the product and before that, its components.

[Orson Scott Card @orsonscottcard]

Our current Civil War:

I must point out that in 2016 a President was elected who was immediately rejected by a certain portion of the population and by state and local governments. They brought criminal legal action against Trump and impeached him before he'd even had a chance to do anything, and accused him of being a dictator and the death of democracy — though it was they who rejected a lawful election and threw the Constitution out the window. Sanctuary laws in defiance of federal authority are in every case the equivalent of besieging and firing on Ft. Sumter. 

When Trump won reelection in 2024, the rebels doubled down on their secession from the Union by passing laws against federal officers enforcing federal law within their sanctuary purview, all the time claiming that Trump was oppressing THEM by taking completely proper actions. So by rejecting the results of the election, they are in open rebellion.

And if you say “Trump is no Lincoln” you'd be right. Trump has not arrested and charged with treason the deniers and rejectors of federal authority, including mayors and governors who threaten to prosecute federal officers for enforcing the law. Trump has been far more restrained than Lincoln ever was — though the defiance of the Constitution is no less egregious. Sanctuary laws are exactly the same as secession — a declaration that the federal government has no authority here. They have declared war against the President and openly abused him as has not been done to a President since Lincoln. But the President has not sent federal troops to arrest those publicly guilty of sedition and treason, and take over the defiant government bodies and throw them in jail. They claim to fear Trump's officers — while they are the ones who suppress free speech and try to adjust campaign laws so as to prevent the candidates they oppose from being on the ballot. California doesn't even pretend to be a democracy anymore … but Trump stays his hand.

So, true — he is no Lincoln. He has been infinitely lenient in dealing with people and governments that are in open rebellion against the federal government because the wrong guy made it into the White House.

[Zachary Werrell, Esq. @zkwerrell]

Yes, John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, it is just “revisionism” to claim that the understanding of the 14th Amendment’s use of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” meant something other than; as you put it, “the power of the United States to govern those within its territory.”

So I guess Thomas J Cooley, namesake of Michigan’s School of Law, when writing his textbook “Principles of Constitutional Law” in 1880 and as revised in this 1891 edition, was engaged in revisionist history?

He was announcing a made up, revisionist understanding of the 14th Amendment, and not capturing the public or even legal understanding of that phrase?

M’kay.

[Benjamin Pugh @benjaminppugh]

@Ike_Saul What was the “plain English” meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction” in 1868? How do you determine that other than reviewing the understanding of the people authoring and voting on that phrase?

[Benjamin Pugh @benjaminppugh]

@ConceptualJames Did you know the Nazis had a military and built rockets? We have to find solutions to national defense and space exploration that don’t make us Nazis. See how stupid you are?

[🇺🇸 Bull Moose American 🇺🇸 @BullMooseMemes]

Whites are utterly delusional about how fundamentally alien the nonwhite mind is: they lie, cheat, scam, betray, and molest children with zero remorse or guilt, it’s just business as usual, no internal voice stopping them.

They lack any real personal conscience. Instead, they live in a raw, amoral world of tight kinship norms and tribal duties, completely stripped of universal principles like fairness or individual rights. Guilt is a foreign concept; shame only kicks in if the clan sees them fail.

Nepotism, bribery, corruption, out-group exploitation, and ruthless denigration aren’t seen as immoral, they’re celebrated virtues that serve the ingroup, strengthen the family/clan, and fulfill sacred kinship obligations.

Their moral circle barely extends beyond blood, tribe, or ethnic network. Outsiders are resources to be used, tricked, or discarded.

The entire Western liberal order rests on the catastrophic, self-defeating lie that nonwhites are psychologically capable of the same high-trust honesty, fairness, decency, and rule-following that evolved in European populations.

They’re not. Importing tens of millions on that fantasy, then expecting functional societies, is pure civilizational suicide.

[Zachary Werrell, Esq. @zkwerrell]

My reaction is based on the fact that the more you actually study the question, the more incorrect the conventional wisdom seemed to be.

And I naively assumed that ACB was going to give the significant contrary authority at least some serious consideration.

Going into law school, I just assumed ending birthright citizenship for illegal aliens was going to require a constitutional amendment.

Then I actually read Wong Kim Ark, and found that the holding was too narrow to be binding on the questions of illegal immigrants, as the question at bar concerned only children born to parents with "permanent domicil and residence."

Then I read literally every single word of the Congressional Debates over the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. It became clear to me that "subject to the jurisdiction," while seemingly so simple in modern parlance, was loaded to the gills with a tremendous amount of nuance, political and legal philosophy—almost all of which cut against birthright for illegal immigrants.

Then I studied the jurisprudential, legislative, and executive record after the 14th Amendment and Wong Kim Ark, and found that there was a decades-long consensus that children of temporary visitors, and even many classes of foreigners who were not here permanently were not covered by the 14th Amendment... and that it wasn't until the Roosevelt administration that the Executive Branch unilaterally changed the interpretation of the 14th Amendment to include illegal immigrants by fiat.

Thereafter, I became somewhat disheartened in my discussions and debates on the topic, because I found that the "conventional wisdom" on the topic was so heavily ingrained in the minds of so many. It was like the teachings of third grade civics teachers were comparable to a religious belief. People who are open to new ideas and even thought birthright for illegal immigrants was a bad idea were aghast that I could suggest the 14th Amendment didn't actually confer birthright onto illegal immigrants.

I assumed the case would turn out this way, but held onto some hope that if any group of people would be capable of truly and substantively engaging with the historical and legal record and capable of shaking their deeply-held romantic notions of the constitution in favor of reasoned legal analysis, it would be the Supreme Court.

After oral arguments, I was asked by a lawyer friend what I thought the biggest legal obstacle, the weakest legal argument in favor of the EO was. My answer was that the biggest obstacle wasn't legal in nature, it was swimming upstream of conventional wisdom that the Boomers and their children had been relentlessly told was a fundamental part of our Constitution.

After reading the majority opinion, all 27 pages of it, I was completely shocked by its pathetic attempt to deal with the voluminous contrary authority. Rather than do a serious historical and legal analysis of the contrary authority and the authority on its side, the majority simply hung its hat on dicta from Wong Kim Ark, and claimed that the authors of the Amendment and the subsequent Congresses, Courts, and Executives in the decades that followed were engaged in a revisionist rebellion against the 14th Amendment, rather than reflecting the public consensus regarding its meaning held by the people who wrote, passed, and lived under it and subsequent generations.

The majority, rather than seriously contending with the contrary authority and the dissent, spent the last 40% of their decision mischaracterizing and dismissing the dissent and all the contrary authority.

I think Roberts and ACB, but especially ACB, knew that they had to simply dismiss and mischaracterize the contrary authority, because if they actually seriously considered it, they would have to rule the other way, or at least avoid the sweeping constitutional conclusion they authored.

I was less upset about the result until I actually sat down and read all the opinions. The more I read them, the more upset I am with ACB in particular, because I expected better from her.

[Benjamin Pugh @benjaminppugh]

@P_Kallioniemi Why was USAID funding a depot near the Syria-Turkey border?

[Notre Dame College Republicans @NDRepublicans]

Barrett is an absolute disgrace to the Notre Dame name. We apologize on her behalf to all who will suffer the devastating consequences of infinity third-world migration.

[Benjamin Pugh @benjaminppugh]

@JamesAGagliano @davidaxelrod Byron White. The only one.

[Benjamin Pugh @benjaminppugh]

@OrevaZSN I have not observed climate change. Fixed it for you. Nothing you say matters. Nullius in Verba.

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

Lifelong liberal Jillian Michaels names the exact moment her worldview fell apart, and it started with her own wife.

Her wife called out the “party of tolerance” as the least tolerant, most judgmental of all. Jillian thought she was crazy. Then she started seeing it in her own work:

“I was a lifelong liberal. There’s no universe where Clinton was advocating for open borders, late-term abortions, transing children. That party has become unrecognizable to me.”

“My wife, who is a staunch conservative, said, ‘You think you’re the party of tolerance? You guys are the most judgmental, the least tolerant.’ And I thought she was crazy. I thought we were the good guys.”

“We held the moral high ground until my whole world came crashing down.”

“I saw it with my work. It’s, ‘It’s okay that you’re 300 pounds and you’re gonna die of type 2 diabetes. Don’t change. That’s beautiful.’ If you make them a victim, they’re never capable of taking responsibility.”

“When we strip them of their agency, they’re fundamentally enslaved.”

[Benjamin Pugh @benjaminppugh]

@omgsidewalks Engineers, like Elon Musk? Artists, like George Lucas? Hard physical workers, like Michael Jordan?