CNN: Would Trump Be a Dictator if Relected?

CNN: Would Trump Be a Dictator if Relected?

Jun 3, 2024 | Politics

William Cooper writes an opinion piece published at CNN asking if Trump would be a dictator if relected. Some nuggets:

“…A dictator dictates the workings of government. Merriam Webster defines a dictator as “one holding complete autocratic control: a person with unlimited governmental power.” This is what Trump will want to achieve. But he won’t get anywhere near “complete autocratic control” over American government.

[…]

The presidential pardon power isn’t broad enough to preemptively immunize widespread criminal activity; political appointees must be confirmed by a majority of the Senate (which would reject Trump’s worst co-conspirators); and the majority of federal officials serve across presidential administrations in a large, powerful and entrenched bureaucracy.

The federal bureaucracy can’t simply be “purged.” Valid federal legislation authorizes and funds government agencies — and powerful unions protect their workers — so the courts won’t allow federal employees to be fired en masse absent duly enacted legislation. Republican presidents have long tried to shrink the administrative state. They’ve failed miserably.

The Department of Justice moreover, didn’t go after Trump’s enemies the last time he was president. To the contrary, the department rejected Trump’s demands to prosecute former President Barack Obama, then-former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and others.

The Justice Department did, however, prosecute many of Trump’s friends. Roger Stone was convicted of lying to Congress and threatening a witness. Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017 and asked to withdraw his guilty plea in 2020. Steve Bannon was charged with defrauding investors in his campaign to build a wall at the southern border. Paul Manafort was convicted of tax fraud. And Tom Barrack was acquitted at trial of foreign lobbying charges. Trump eventually pardoned Flynn, Bannon, Stone and Manafort. But the Department of Justice’s lawyers had zealously prosecuted these men.

To imprison his enemies, Trump would need grand juries to indict on his command, courts to rule in his favor and juries to render his chosen verdicts.

The president of the United States doesn’t have power over these things. Grand juries operate under the supervision of the federal courts, not the executive branch. Federal judges sit for life subject to impeachment from Congress. And the only authorities with the power to affect a jury verdict are the trial judge and the appellate courts.

Trump-appointed judges, all confirmed by a majority of the Senate, have shifted the federal courts sharply to the right. But they have also shown their independence and ruled against Trump repeatedly. The Supreme Court allowed a New York prosecutor to receive Trump’s tax returns, denied Trump’s effort to end DACA and rejected Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Senate, furthermore, still has to confirm, by majority vote, all executive-level presidential appointments (including at the Department of Justice). Trump can’t just appoint, for example, Rudy Guliani as attorney general, Steve Bannon as secretary of defense or Michael Flynn as secretary of state. And pardons only apply to federal offenses, offer no protection under state law and may be voided in court if they are preemptive and not specific. They are hardly a license to go about committing major crimes. Just look at Bannon, who was pardoned by Trump in his border wall case and later convicted for refusing to cooperate with the January 6 committee in Congress.

Unlike a dictator, Trump wouldn’t control most government activity — at the federal, state or local level. If the Democrats take the House in 2024, would Trump control how they vote on legislation? Would he force state court judges to govern how he wants them to? Local school boards?

No way. To be a dictatorship, people have to actually do the things the dictator says. Given his historic unpopularity ratings, the resistance to a second Trump term will likely be fierce at every level of government.

The one way Trump could actually achieve a dictatorship is if he commandeered the military to use force — or its threat — throughout the country on his behalf. But there’s no reason whatsoever to think he could pull that off. Trump has long had strained relations with military leaders, including his secretaries of defense John Mattis and Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

As we saw with Milley — who actively opposed Trump’s attempt to reverse the 2020 presidential election results — military leaders won’t just obey Trump’s illegal initiatives. The military doesn’t “take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley said in his departing speech last September. “We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America — and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

[…]

Trump would have an ironclad grip on some things, such as international diplomacy and statehouses dominated by his loyalists. He would have some control in other areas, such as executive branch policies and initiatives. And he’d have little to no control over everything else, such as the daily workings of the state courts and Democrat-run state governments.

Full article: Opinion: Would Trump be a dictator in a second term? No, but he would be a disaster

Biden Administration’s Appeasement of Iran Is Driving The World To a Nuclear Holocaust

Biden Administration’s Appeasement of Iran Is Driving The World To a Nuclear Holocaust

May 16, 2024 | World

Allistor Heath writes in the Telegraph echoing Leonard Peikoff’s call to End States The Sponsor Terrorism:

If Joe Biden were a serious president, he would announce that the mullahs in Tehran have crossed a red line, that they are an existential menace to civilised nations. He would declare that enough is enough, that no country can shoot hundreds of drones and missiles at one of its neighbours with impunity, that no government can go on funding terrorism, rape, torture and murder on an industrial scale. He would understand the need to deter other rogue states through a show of strength.

He would state that the Iranian regime must be treated like the global pariah that it has become, that all of its proxies must be destroyed, and that, above all, it will never be allowed to get anywhere near nuclear weapons. He would put together a coalition, including as many of Iran’s Arab neighbours as possible. He would impose extreme sanctions. He would allow Israel to finish off Hamas. He would help hit Hezbollah.

If all else fails, he would use American military power to destroy Iran’s nuclear’s installations, just as Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and the Al-Kibar site in Syria in 2007. He would not invade Iran or impose regime change: that would be up to Iran’s wonderful, long-suffering people. But he would contain and neutralise one of the key players in the axis of evil, and make the world a safer place.

In the real world, in common with David Cameron, Biden clings to a policy of appeasement when it comes to Iran and its proxies, even though this strategy failed to contain fascistic, imperialistic powers in the 1930s and will fail to do so again in the 2020s. This isn’t even a tactic to buy time while an actual plan is put into place: our politicians are praying that today’s crisis will somehow solve itself.

It won’t. The West’s refusal to face reality means that it is increasingly likely that Iran will eventually gain a nuclear weapon, and quite possibly use it against Israel, itself a nuclear power, with the explicit view of triggering a millenarian moment. The world is careering towards a three or four-pronged third world war involving Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea: the Islamic Republic is the weakest link, the least difficult one to deal with today, if we had the sense to act.

“Iran is about to start a nuclear world war – and the West is determined to lose” is an important read.

 

Distrupt Tesla: The Assault on Tesla Factory and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

Distrupt Tesla: The Assault on Tesla Factory and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

May 16, 2024 | Books

German left-wing fascists attack an EV car factory — because it represents capitalism. The assault on Elon Musk’s factory is like the attack of Rearden Steel in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

The similarities of Elon Musk to the fictional character in the best-selling novel Atlas Shrugged — businessman Hank Rearden — are in principle uncanny, which just shows the philosophical genius of Ayn Rand.

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According to the organizers:

In Grünheide, near Berlin, 1 million new Teslas will roll off the production line every year, joining the avalanche of cars on the motorways. After three more expansion phases, the plant on the outskirts of Berlin will be the largest car factory in Europe. We want to stop that. More than 250,000 new cars are already produced there every year, adding to the useless electric and combustion engine junk that clogs up our roads and that no one needs in a future where mobility belongs to everyone.

The mysogynistic Twitter fascist Elon Musk has used his brand to establish the electric car as a ‘green’ alternative to the internal combustion engine. But electric cars are not the solution. They are the continuation of the individual transport madness by other means. And that is neither sustainable nor green. The production of an electric car creates a huge ecological footprint through the consumption of resources and thus drives the global climate catastrophe even further.

 

Pride is No Sin

May 16, 2024 | Philosophy

“Pride” is the commitment to achieve one’s own moral perfection” according to philosopher Leonard Peikoff in his book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Invoking Christian mythology, Jordan Peterson recently made this statement against the virtue of pride.

Peterson gets pride wrong. In the words of Ayn Rand’s famous character John Galt in her novel Atlas Shrugged:

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned—that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character—that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind—that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining—that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul—that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is born able to create, but must create by choice—that the first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself—and that the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul’s shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence to the blind evasions and the stagnant decay of others.

The moral amibition of pride is the quest to achieve moral pefection. It is as Aristotle note, the crown of the virtues:

“Pride, then, seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them. Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character.”

 

Anti-Israel: The Gradual Transformation of the Democratic Party

Anti-Israel: The Gradual Transformation of the Democratic Party

May 16, 2024 | World

Writes Glick on “Biden ends the US-Israel alliance at a fortuitous moment“:

“By placing a hold on congressionally approved offensive weapons to Israel, Biden is bowing to antisemites who are opposed by the overwhelming majority of college students and the general public. And he is siding with them six months before Election Day.

Biden’s actions energized Republicans to move harshly against his policy in the Republican-controlled House and in the Senate. Democrats in swing districts and purple states either hope to keep their heads down or speak out directly against the policy.

All of this places upper limits on what Biden can do to Israel before the elections. The White House’s efforts on Thursday to walk back his statement in the face of the furious backlash against it make those limits apparent.”

According to Glick, Biden’s appeasement of Hamas is a continiation of Obama’s Anti-Israel policies:

Thanks to Obama and his senior officials, coupled with the funding mechanisms they built and institutionalized, a steadily growing number of Democrats embraced the view that far from the last great hope of mankind and the leader of the free world, the U.S. was traditionally the world’s greatest aggressor. U.S. allies were viewed as accomplices to this evil, and as such, undeserving of support.

America’s enemies, on the other hand, were viewed as victims, and “innocent” by nature and incapable of doing wrong. Since the most anti-American actors in the world are Iran and radical, jihadist Arab states like Syria and Qatar were necessarily worthy of support and could be blamed for no wrongdoing.

The chief aggressor in Obama’s CRT taxonomy is Israel. And the chief victims are Israel’s existential enemies: Iran and the Palestinians. Empowering the latter against the Jewish state was seen as both a moral imperative and the key to repositioning the transformed United States on the “right side of history.”

Slowly, but surely, over his eight years in office, Obama incentivized abidance by CRT catechisms. Its primary expression in foreign policy was hatred of Israel and support for Palestinian terrorists and Iran.

Concludes Glick:

“Unfortunately, however, Biden’s willingness to side with Hamas (and Iran and Hezbollah) against Israel as Israel fights a war for its very survival also demonstrates that if he wins a second term, Israel will face a nightmare scenario of relations with Washington.”

Read the full article.

Teaching Critical Thinking Gets Teacher Warren Smith Fired

May 16, 2024 | Culture

With over 4 million views this video of teacher Warren Smith went viral:

Utterly inspirational.

Then this happened:

As the saying goes, let no good deed go unpunished.

Draft is a Black Mark on The Heroic Zelensky

Draft is a Black Mark on The Heroic Zelensky

May 16, 2024 | World

The real black mark on Zelensky is his institution of a military draft. (Of course, the same could be said for Putin who is far worse).

“Of all the statist violations of individual rights…the military draft is the worst. It…establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man’s life belongs to the state…” — Ayn Rand

 

Justice for Elon Musk: Tesla Asks Shareholders to Reapprove Elon’s $47B Stock Bonus

Justice for Elon Musk: Tesla Asks Shareholders to Reapprove Elon’s $47B Stock Bonus

Apr 19, 2024 | Business

Earlier this year, a Delaware Court ruling in Tornetta v. Musk (which can be found as Annex I to this Proxy Statement) struck down one of your votes and rescinded the pay package that an overwhelming majority of you voted to grant to our CEO, Elon Musk, in 2018. The Tornetta Court decided, years later, that the CEO pay package was not “entirely fair” to the very same stockholders who voted to approve it — even though approximately 73% of all votes cast by our disinterested stockholders voted to approve it in 2018. Because the Delaware Court second-guessed your decision, Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years that has helped to generate significant growth and stockholder value. That strikes us — and the many stockholders from whom we already have heard — as fundamentally unfair, and inconsistent with the will of the stockholders who voted for it.

The 2018 CEO pay package required Elon to deliver transformative and unprecedented growth to earn any compensation. It was a big risk, and many thought that the plan’s targets for benefits to stockholders were simply unachievable. But our company and our leaders have always had big dreams and it is fundamental to the entrepreneurial spirit of Tesla to take big risks for the chance at big rewards. This has led to the incredible innovation and progress — and economic gains — that we have achieved at Tesla. In 2018, we asked for unbelievable growth and accomplishments. Elon delivered: Tesla’s stockholders have benefited from unprecedented growth under Elon’s leadership and Tesla has met every single one of the 2018 CEO pay package’s targets. And — most importantly for the future of Tesla — the 2018 CEO pay package built in further incentives to benefit Tesla stockholders by requiring that Elon hold onto any shares he receives when he exercises his options for five years — which means he will continue to be driven to innovate and drive growth at Tesla because the value of his shares will depend on it!

The Board stands behind this pay package. We believed in it in 2018, as we asked Elon to pursue remarkable goals to grow the company. You, as stockholders, also believed in it in 2018 when you overwhelmingly approved it. Time and results have only shown the wisdom of our judgment.

We do not agree with what the Delaware Court decided, and we do not think that what the Delaware Court said is how corporate law should or does work. So we are coming to you now so you can help fix this issue — which is a matter of fundamental fairness and respect to our CEO. You have the chance to reinstate your vote and make it count. We are asking you to make your voice heard — once again — by voting to approve ratification of Elon’s 2018 compensation plan. –

Notice of 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders

“States Rights” Are Actually Delegated Powers

“States Rights” Are Actually Delegated Powers

Mar 28, 2024 | Politics

There is no such thing as “states rights”, the proper term to use is state powers.

States have no rights but only powers delegated to them.

Amendment X:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

You cannot delegate individual rights as they are unalienable, as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

What governments have are powers. Observes Ayn Rand:

“[George Wallace] is not a defender of individual rights, but merely of states’ rights—which is far, far from being the same thing. When he denounces ‘Big Government,’ it is not the unlimited, arbitrary power of the state that he is denouncing, but merely its centralization—and he seeks to place the same unlimited, arbitrary power in the hands of many little governments. The break-up of a big gang into a number of warring small gangs is not a return to a constitutional system nor to individual rights nor to law and order.” [“The Presidential Candidates 1968,” The Objectivist, June 1968, 5]

I do agree, in principle, to limit the federal government to its explicitly stated powers enumerated in the U.S. constitution, as the federal government has far overreached its powers.

Decentralization (or centralization) in government is only good to the extent that it enables the protection of individual rights. What the right mix is of central vs decentralization in any given context is a practical matter.

***

What of the American civil war?

There’s no such thing as the right to fight a war for slavery, which is the “custom” that the South was fighting for in the American Civil War. Law is not an end in itself.

Objectively law does not exist in a vacuum, but has a purpose. Under Americanism, that purpose is stated in the Declaration of Independence: the protection of individual rights. So any state in the Union cannot legally fight a war that undermines the basis of law itself. Any republic which legally protects slavery is illegitimate to that extent. The civil war was the way this defect was remedied.

Prior to the 13th amendment the North was working to legally limit slavery and its expansion so that the non-slave states “free states” would eventually outnumber the slave states of the South. The South saw the writing on the wall. If the North was not gradually working against slavery, the South would have stayed in the Union.

Florida Law Banning Social Media For Minors Violates Parental Rights

Mar 28, 2024 | Politics

Florida has passed a law, signed by Governor DeSantis,  that bans anyone under 14 owning a social media account as of from January 2025. The bill states children that are 14 -15 years of age must have parental consent to create an account on sites like X, Instagram, and Facebook”

“A social media platform shall prohibit a minor who is 14 or 15 years of age from entering into a contract with a social media platform to become an account holder, unless the minor’s parent or guardian provides consent for the minor to become an account holder…”

Apparently it will use “anonymous age verification.”

This bill should be overturned as it is a naked violation of parental rights.  It is up to parents to determine what their child have or do not have access to.

The state does have a role in going after child trafficking and exploitation which some claim is an issue on Instagram, but this bill is not the way to do it.

Musk on Immigration

Musk on Immigration

Mar 27, 2024 | Politics

Here is what I found:

1. Musk did not say illegal immigrants vote. I took what he said to mean that they are likely to vote if naturalized. (He may be wrong or right on this).

2. As an immigrant himself, Musk is for greatly expanding legal immigration. He is against border anarchy.

3. Some make the argument that immigrants who enter illegally because of the Biden administration are more apt to vote for Democrats (based on interviews with them). I agree, that whether they do vote or not is an empirical matter.

4. Thanks to Biden’s executive order, illegals count toward the census which determines house seat counts in Federal elections:

“Accordingly, the executive branch has always determined the population of each State, for purposes of congressional representation, without regard to whether its residents are in lawful immigration status.”

Some estimates show that the net effect of placing them in Democratic strongholds is to give Democrats a lock on an additional 20 plus house seats.

5. Illegals in some states do end up voting in Federal elections due to the lax state ID standards for voting, etc. See this thread:

Musk may be wrong or right on some facts. I see that he is open to changing his views when presented with facts which he sees as facts. I think his errors are due to the noise out there.

Ultra-Millionaire Tax

Mar 26, 2024 | Politics

When the 16th amendment was ratified, the federal income tax was to be no more than 2%. What will be the future rate increase and who will Warren’s confiscation of wealth tax be expanded to when the principle that she can steal people’s wealth is put into law?

According to the Tax Foundation, “The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 25.99 percent average rate, more than eight times higher than the 3.1 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers.”

Socialist Senator Warren lies by omission in order to confiscate the wealth of billionaires. “Fair share” for Warren and her ilk is a euphemism for legalized theft.

Good Journalism

Mar 25, 2024 | Business

What makes a good news organization?

1. The requirements to call oneself a “new organization” should be set by private citizens in their capacity as consumers of the news, and not the government.

2. Journalism should be reporting “just the facts.”

3. Goodjournalism is reporting all the relevantfacts, so readers can form their own opinion.

4. News reporting should not replace the opinions of “experts” at the expense of the facts (experts can be called in to give their educated opinions on facts when necessary.)

The problem with the lack of trust in traditional media outlets is that verification is time-consuming in a division of labor society, where the amount of information is greater than the time available for a single individual to examine it.

When trust is lost it’s hard to get it back.

“Progressives” Against Free Speech

“Progressives” Against Free Speech

Mar 24, 2024 | Politics

Writes Jonathan Turley on “Free speech hangs in the balance in 3 Supreme Court cases” in The Hill:

The free speech trifecta, therefore, covers the three areas of greatest concern for the free speech community: censorship, blacklisting and weaponization. The resulting opinions could curtail or magnify such abuses. For example, the social media case (Murthy) seemed to trouble the justices as to where to draw a line on coercion. If the court simply declines to draw such a line and rules for the government, it will likely fuel new censorship efforts by federal agencies.

What is disconcerting about the views expressed by Justices Kagan, Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor in two of the cases is not that they are outliers. The problem is that liberal justices long acted as the bulwark for free speech on the court. They are now viewed as the weakest link, often dismissive or hostile to free speech arguments.

When Justice Jackson defends the right of the government to coerce speech, she follows a long legacy of speech relativists on the court, including the earlier Justice Robert Jackson. He had warned that the court needed to approach speech prosecutions with “a little practical wisdom,” so as not to “convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

The current Justice Jackson seemed to channel the same practicalities over principle in stressing that “you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective.”

The view of speech as harm or violence is all the rage on college campuses, and also in many Western countries where free speech is in a free fall. France, Canada and the United Kingdom now regularly arrest people for expressing hateful or controversial viewpoints. Those same anti-free speech arguments are now being heard in our own Congress and colleges in the U.S.

It is not clear how the court will decide these cases. One fear is that it could retreat to blurry lines that leave us all uncertain about what speech is protected. In an area that demands bright lines to prevent the chilling effect on speech, such vague outcomes could be lethal.

The government loves ambiguity when it comes to speech regulation. It now may have found new voices on the left side of the court to join in the ignoble effort of combating free speech. That renewed effort to introduce “a little practical wisdom” could mean a lot less freedom for Americans.

 

Manifesto on the Proper Relationship Between Ukraine and Russia

Manifesto on the Proper Relationship Between Ukraine and Russia

Mar 20, 2024 | World

Russian freedom hero Alexey Navalny’s Manifesto on the Proper Relationship Between Ukraine and Russia:

On the eve of the anniversary of the full-scale and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, I have summarized the political platform of mine and, hopefully, of many other decent people. 15 theses of a Russian citizen who desires the best for their country.

What was all this about and what are we dealing with now?

1. President Putin has unleashed an unjust war of aggression against Ukraine under ridiculous pretexts.
He is desperately trying to make this a “people’s war,” seeking to turn all Russian citizens into his accomplices, but his attempts are failing. There are almost no volunteers for this war, so Putin’s army has to rely on convicts and forcibly mobilized people.

2. The real reasons for this war are the political and economic problems within Russia, Putin’s desire to hold on to power at any cost, and his obsession with his own historical legacy. He wants to go down in history as “the conqueror tsar” and “the collector of lands.”

3. Tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians have been murdered, and pain and suffering has befallen millions more. War crimes have been committed. Ukrainian cities and infrastructure have been destroyed.

4. Russia is suffering a military defeat. It was the realization of this fact that changed the rhetoric of the authorities from claims that “Kyiv will fall in three days” to hysterical threats of using nuclear weapons should Russia lose.
The lives of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were needlessly ruined. The ultimate military defeat may be delayed at the cost of the lives of hundreds of thousands more mobilized soldiers, but it is generally inevitable.
The combination of aggressive warfare, corruption, inept generals, weak economy, and heroism and high motivation of the defending forces can only result in defeat.
The Kremlin’s deceitful and hypocritical calls for negotiations and ceasefire are nothing more than a realistic assessment of the prospects of further military action.

What is to be done?

5. What are Ukraine’s borders? They are similar to Russia’s – they’re internationally recognized and defined in 1991. Russia also recognized these borders back then, and it must recognize them today as well. There is nothing to discuss here.
Almost all borders in the world are more or less accidental and cause someone’s discontent. But in the twenty-first century, we cannot start wars just to redraw them. Otherwise, the world will sink into chaos.

6. Russia must leave Ukraine alone and allow it to develop the way its people want. Stop the aggression, end the war and withdraw all of its troops from Ukraine. Continuation of this war is just a tantrum caused by powerlessness, and putting an end to it would be a strong move.

7. Together with Ukraine, the U.S., the EU and the UK, we must look for acceptable ways to compensate for the damage done to Ukraine.
One way to achieve this would be lifting the restrictions imposed on our oil and gas, but directing part of the income Russia receives from hydrocarbon exports towards reparations. Of course, this should only be done after the change of power in Russia and the end of the war.

8. War crimes committed during this war must be investigated in cooperation with international institutions.
Why would stopping Putin’s aggression benefit Russia?

9. Are all Russians inherently imperialistic? This is nonsense. For example, Belarus is also involved in the war against Ukraine.
Does this mean that the Belarusians also have an imperial mindset? No, they merely also have a dictator in power.
There will always be people with imperial views in Russia, just like in any other country with historical preconditions for this, but they are far from being the majority.
There is no reason to weep and wail about it. Such people should be defeated in elections, just as both right-wing and left-wing radicals get defeated in developed countries.

10. Does Russia need new territories? Russia is a vast country with a shrinking population and dying out rural areas. Imperialism and the urge to seize territory is the most harmful and destructive path.
Once again, the Russian government is destroying our future with its own hands just in order to make our country look bigger on the map. But Russia is big enough as it is. Our objective should be preserving our people and developing what we have in abundance.

11. For Russia, the legacy of this war will be a whole tangle of complex and, at first glance, almost unsolvable problems. It is important to establish for ourselves that we really want to solve them, and then begin to do so honestly and openly.
The key to success lies in understanding that ending the war as soon as possible will not only be good for Russia and its people, but also very profitable.
This is the only way to start progressing toward removal of sanctions, return of those who left, restoration of business confidence, and economic growth.

12. Let me re-emphasize that after the war, we will have to reimburse Ukraine for all the damage caused by Putin’s aggression.
However, the restoration of normal economic relations with the civilized world and the return of economic growth will allow us to do so without interfering with the development of our country.
We have hit rock bottom, and in order to resurface, we need to bounce back from it. This would be both ethically correct, rational, and profitable.

13. We need to dismantle the Putin regime and its dictatorship. Ideally, through conducting general free elections and convocating the Constitutional Assembly.

14. We need to establish a parliamentary republic based on the alternation of power through fair elections, independent courts, federalism, local self-governance, complete economic freedom and social justice.

15. Recognizing our history and traditions, we must be part of Europe and follow the European path of development. We have no other choice, nor do we need any.

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