Note to former president Donald J. Trump: Time to channel a fellow New Yorker, a Roosevelt, no less.  That’s the Oyster Bay Roosevelt, Teddy.  Trustbusting needs to be a cornerstone of your America First agenda -- the agenda that’s going to return you to the White House in 2024. 

In term Number One, President Trump was on track to bust up free speech loathing, oligarchy bent Big Tech outfits.  This Sunday at CPAC, Trump plans to speak about “a vision where the Big Tech monopoly is dismantled and free speech and free expression and free thought can reign,” says Jason Miller, a key advisor to the ex-president.  In the states, there’s currently momentum toward antitrust action against Google and Facebook.  Federal lawsuits started during Trump’s term are still in play.    

This from the New York Times, February 16, 2021:

The suits add to the mounting legal pressure on the tech companies. Federal and state officials have filed three lawsuits against Google, saying it illegally maintained monopolies in search and the online advertising market. Lawsuits filed against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission and a group of states could seek to break the company up.

We’ll see if the Biden administration continues to pursue lawsuits and actions against its Big Tech allies.  If the last four years are any indication, Democrats will fix it so that their cronies wiggle off hooks.  It’s only uppity Republicans and patriots who are on the receiving end of “justice.”      

Trustbusting has broad appeal, but it’s not for short-term, crass political gain that Trump should champion antitrust sweeps: it’s to restore the free market, and to thwart enterprises that have made cynical calculations: Big government power can be leveraged to cement market dominance.  Hence, a large swath of Corporate America is eager to help Democrats and the left trample our liberties.  Always follow the money and power.            

Andrew Torba, Gab founder and Jekyll to Jack Dorsey’s Hyde, has made a bold proclamation: Patriots must build a parallel economy.  Wrote Torba in a February 17 communication from his platform:

We must exit this broken and failing system and start building a new one immediately. We are not revolutionaries. We are not violent. We are reformers. We are builders. When we up and leave the existing system in favor of our own the existing system will crumble without us lifting a finger.  

Patriots, similar to Atlas Shrugged, exiting the system may cause it to crumble, but fail?  Not right away, necessarily.  

Though an untold number of Russians and others escaped Lenin’s and Stalin’s hell -- tens of millions of others were dispatched to eternal rewards -- the Soviet Union endured for 75 agonizing years.  Putin’s oligarchic Russia is a lesser form of wretched.  Castro’s shabby Caribbean failure is ongoing.  Xi’s China is a chimera of prosperity.  CCP potentates and apparatchiks, oligarchs, and coastal denizens enjoy Western-style affluence.  But, despite CCP propaganda (lapped up by the MSM), hundreds of millions of Chinese exist precariously. 

Tyrants can survive crumbling -- until the slaves run out, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher.      

Yet Torba is right.  Liberty loving Americans need to max their economic resources to create greater independence.  They can no longer rely on enterprises that have been coopted by Democrats and the left.  Livelihoods -- the very wellbeing of many millions of families -- are at risk.          

A parallel system of commerce isn’t enough, though.  Why?  Well, what do we know about the nature of tyranny?

Tyranny is cancerous.  It’s predatory.  It thrives only by consuming.  A separate America within America is probably a partial solution.  Otherwise, it may only be a firebreak.  Firebreaks are necessary expedients, not permanent answers.

Sooner than later, America’s emerging tyrants will prowl, seeking to seize, devour, and, finally destroy whatever patriots build independently.  A good defense is smart offense.  Short of outright secession, the Republic needs to be retaken.  Why would dark souls be permitted any purchase on America, anyway?

There’s much that has to be done to reclaim the nation.  Heavy lifting is the price of freedom.  Breaking up concentrations of power is about as American as apple pie.  That’s private and public concentrations.    

The Revolution was a war for independence from monarchy.  The Constitution was designed as an essential bulwark in frustrating concentrations of power in government.  Jacksonian Democracy was the successful challenge to, principally, the domination by New England and Northeast elites.  Populism and antitrust, which came along in the late 1800s, were responses to the monopolies and cartels that had sprung up in industrializing America. 

MAGA is the latest in a series of modern grassroots uprisings.  It’s a rejection of the centralization of power in national government.  Trump and MAGA are the inheritors of the Goldwater movement that begat Reagan, then Rush Limbaugh and Gingrich’s Contract with America, and then the Tea Party.  On the other hand, as mentioned, Democrats, the left, and moguls see big advantages in Big Government aligning with Big Business.  The battlefields in this fight are more than about government overreach.       

The old saw bruited about by libertarians that free markets are the cure for monopolies and cartels is facing a stiff challenge.  Markets aren’t remedies alone because, over the years, markets have become much less free. 

Indeed, national government must be curtailed and decentralized.  That’s critical to restoring freer markets.  President Trump was doing seminal work at deregulation, but even more aggressive approaches are required.  Big Business moguls are sophisticated in ways that late 19^th century titans weren’t.  They’ve acquired a lot of money, cunning, and will to waylay competitors.  Their tentacles reach deeply.  

Corporate giants have learned the value of collusion with politicians and bureaucrats.  They spread their money and favors to leverage government.  Higher taxes and more red tape aren’t necessarily impediments to big players.  Carveouts can be achieved in legislation.  In fact, taxes and regs can be used as weapons, putting the hurt on smaller competitors.  Crippling competitors and crimping markets boost bottom lines.   

Big Tech is the most conspicuous threat to commerce and our liberties, but Big Finance poses a global threat that requires priority focus. 

This from Kelsey Bolar at The Federalist, February 19, 2021:

The Trump administration rule appeared innocuous enough, instructing banks to “conduct risk assessments of individual customers, rather than make broad-based decisions affecting whole categories or classes of customers when providing access to services, capital, and credit.”

Under Operation Choke Point, federal regulators instructed banks to do the opposite -- to openly discriminate against entire industries the Obama administration found objectionable. Weaponizing the power of banking regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, the Obama administration realized it could block entire industries from the banking system that it didn’t like. This made it difficult -- if not impossible -- for politically unfavored businesses such as gun sellers and short-term lenders to operate.

Biden’s handlers, per Bolar’s analysis, are reviving “Operation Chokepoint.”  That should send chills up the spines of freedom-loving Americans.  Epic crony capitalism is underway, and its terminus is oligarchy or fascism. 

The distinction between trustbusters of the right and left is that conservatives want to open up markets, promoting more competition, and minimize government meddling.  The left wants to eventually coopt enterprises, making them public utilities or outright state enterprises. 

President Trump is an instinctive conservative, and can command the heights in this fight to end this rising threat to our freedoms and prosperity. 

J. Robert Smith can be found on Parler @JRobertSmith, and is new to Gab, again @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.   

Image: Library of Congress