Jay - I found this passage because of you many years ago. Only recently did I read the full speech. It deserves a monument on the Mall in my view. It's interesting, I think, that the message has only become more relevant in these times than when I first read it in one of your Impromptus decades ago. I also recently discovered some (very distant) familial relations to Coolidge, so he has become all the more important to me. Great piece.
Coolidge may have been a great speaker, but he also allowed the KKK to be his secret police and run rampant throughout the U.S. That includes marches down Pennsylvania Avenue. It did not stop until 5he Grand Dragon was indicted (later convicted) of the brutal rape of his secretary, who died frim her injuries. His lack of oversight of the stock market and banking also set us up for the Great Depression. Cooledge, along with Ronald Reagan, are the last kinds of presidents I would ever want to run the country ever again. Virulent racists and homophobes are not needed in the Oval Office.
We the People of the United States, on the eve of that really big, unprouncable, easily misspell-able…anniversary, we the living in Idiocracy…Where, on the otherwise sacred Peoples House grounds..a mobster, I mean monster is going to put on a show to his patrons at the Bada Bing…where two men are going to duke it out with weapons, to the death ….dont I wish…for the entertainment pleasure of the wannbe Don King Trumps guilty, maniacal pleasure
The historical fact, I mean to the great shame of the greatest nation on Gods Green Earth…a minority, majority of the electorate, mostly pure white trash, nominating an Il Duce wannabe Tony Soprano in the flesh for POSPOTUS ….AND the loyal opposition party powers that be, whose political world view obscures everything through a broken moral prism of race, gender and upper class faculty lounge luxury beliefs nominating Selina Meyer….We the People now, ironically, have a Commander and Chief of the U.S. Military who…if one could take his depraved soul back to the future in a Delorian…there is a 100% chance Don King Trump would tell the British “The Americans are COMING”. We the People have a trader in our mist. Please. God HELP U.S. Calgon take me away. Gotta run on. Thanks for taking my rant to the Next Level Peace through superior mental firepower
Remember Congressional Nazi Republicans(CNR)Are Complicit With Cheeto’s Lawlessness
The CNR continues to be complicit with Cheeto’s corruption by giving him no pushback on his raiding of the Treasury for his own financial gains. The CNR’s have decided to not only give the ultrawealthy individuals and corporations a huge tax break while Americans struggle with daily budgetary strains including the hidden tax called tariffs, they have failed to check the power of the executive through legislative action with Cheeto’s authoritarian blitzkrieg, eliminated farm to school programs hurting the American farmer, and betrayed the confidence of the American electorate. Wait until after the midterms when the medical safety net is largely eliminated with Medicaid cuts leading to millions thrown off their health care and with continued rural hospital closures(https://bit.ly/4ebsaDr). The CNR’s have plans to trim Medicare and Social Security next year, further eliminating the financial safety net while the purchasing power of the dollar falls making American daily life more unaffordable.
That creates an obvious political contradiction. If the deficit is truly a $40T emergency, critics ask, why are Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security described as the problem while tax cuts and new spending initiatives remain on the table? Giviing $70B to ICE to lock up immigrants without due process takes priority over WIC and SNAP programs.
Ethics and morality be damned Full steam ahead. The CNR pushed through poorly qualified cabinet nominations from Kegseth to RFK Jr to Lutnick to McMahon. But now CNR’s are confirming nominations for incompetent federal prosecutors in Wyoming and Los Angeles. Not only has Cheeto abused the pardon power, his CNR’s are confirming or sneaking incompetent prosecutors into federal prosecutor positions. Watch these unqualified Nazi prosecutors go to work to deny and challenge in courts the results of free and fair elections, as has just happened in LA.
But, hey, Nazis like incompetence and giving criminals lack of prosecution in the days of Cheeto’s bought off pardons.
You bring literal meaning to the Dennis Millers quip…”I don’t want to go on a rant here” as you make like Robert Smith “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”, I mean Substack. Anywho, I hate The Don King Trump, and forgive me Jesus, I do mean I effing HATE TRUMP…the Ill Duce wannabe Tony Soprano, anti truth Neo nationalist socialists, I mean sociopath…but me thinks that if he delivered on the big government goodies you desire, you would have already purchased ring side tickets to the cafe fight to celebrate the 4th of July in the Rose Garden…If I am wrong about you, I a, sorry, but me thinks not. Afterall, you made no lament about The Dons literal crimes against humanity because they don’t come out of a government cookie jar your hand is reaching form
The Nazi Republicans are hell bent on eliminating the federal government "social safety net" that many less fortunate Americans rely on. This net includes Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security with their hardcore belief that the federal government is not a "cookie jar" for welfare queens. Meanwhile spendthrift Nazi Cheeto has put us in a $2B/d war, awarded all his Nazi cronies no bid contracts far surpassing what they are worth, trying to pull $$ out of the treasury for his own needs, rob Americans with a tax called tariffs, bankrupting farmers with trade policies, force Americans with 401K plans to pay a now trillionaire millions of "compensation" for his DOGE government work, while canceling USAID which was saving lives in Africa and giving tax breaks for billionaires as he bankrupts the country. And the Nazi Republicans are trying to normalize all of this corruption. Nothing to see here.
But this is the Nazi Republican way. The way they see it is that the federal government is not to serve WE the People which is the government but to serve the rich and powerful, making them wealthier and dictators forever....selfish and for self aggrandizement. So in the end, it's what you believe is the role of government. I just prefer the former which our Constitution mandates.
He retired to his slow paced, modest life because he had suffered a lot during his presidency, primarily in the loss of his son. But also because he was a man of principle and did not think he was a king who should lead a country for longer than anyone else had.
Lovely. We need another Silent Cal. And the type of citizens who’d back him.
Thank for this. You can trace the throughline from Coolidge to Reagan. But not to Trump. Will it ever be picked up again?
“It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.”
I read it more than twice. What an astonishingly fresh and frank observation; as true today as when it was first spoken/written.
Just as important, is President Coolidge’s comments on the virtue and responsibilities of the citizens.
My American history courses were quality acts, but admittedly short on the time spent with President Coolidge.
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.
Imagine a leader,today in 2026,regardless of party affiliation,that wrote and spoke that way.
There are none,damn shame. Speaking for myself,I'd try and vote for him/her twice,at least.
Thank you for that, Jay!
Pleasure.
Jay - I found this passage because of you many years ago. Only recently did I read the full speech. It deserves a monument on the Mall in my view. It's interesting, I think, that the message has only become more relevant in these times than when I first read it in one of your Impromptus decades ago. I also recently discovered some (very distant) familial relations to Coolidge, so he has become all the more important to me. Great piece.
Thanks.
The words “riotous insurrection” might remind you of January 6, as they do me.)
.
reminds me of blue-funded Antifa, BLM and Resist riots. Of which we've seen hundreds. Compared to one stupid J6 protest.
Coolidge may have been a great speaker, but he also allowed the KKK to be his secret police and run rampant throughout the U.S. That includes marches down Pennsylvania Avenue. It did not stop until 5he Grand Dragon was indicted (later convicted) of the brutal rape of his secretary, who died frim her injuries. His lack of oversight of the stock market and banking also set us up for the Great Depression. Cooledge, along with Ronald Reagan, are the last kinds of presidents I would ever want to run the country ever again. Virulent racists and homophobes are not needed in the Oval Office.
We the People of the United States, on the eve of that really big, unprouncable, easily misspell-able…anniversary, we the living in Idiocracy…Where, on the otherwise sacred Peoples House grounds..a mobster, I mean monster is going to put on a show to his patrons at the Bada Bing…where two men are going to duke it out with weapons, to the death ….dont I wish…for the entertainment pleasure of the wannbe Don King Trumps guilty, maniacal pleasure
The historical fact, I mean to the great shame of the greatest nation on Gods Green Earth…a minority, majority of the electorate, mostly pure white trash, nominating an Il Duce wannabe Tony Soprano in the flesh for POSPOTUS ….AND the loyal opposition party powers that be, whose political world view obscures everything through a broken moral prism of race, gender and upper class faculty lounge luxury beliefs nominating Selina Meyer….We the People now, ironically, have a Commander and Chief of the U.S. Military who…if one could take his depraved soul back to the future in a Delorian…there is a 100% chance Don King Trump would tell the British “The Americans are COMING”. We the People have a trader in our mist. Please. God HELP U.S. Calgon take me away. Gotta run on. Thanks for taking my rant to the Next Level Peace through superior mental firepower
Remember Congressional Nazi Republicans(CNR)Are Complicit With Cheeto’s Lawlessness
The CNR continues to be complicit with Cheeto’s corruption by giving him no pushback on his raiding of the Treasury for his own financial gains. The CNR’s have decided to not only give the ultrawealthy individuals and corporations a huge tax break while Americans struggle with daily budgetary strains including the hidden tax called tariffs, they have failed to check the power of the executive through legislative action with Cheeto’s authoritarian blitzkrieg, eliminated farm to school programs hurting the American farmer, and betrayed the confidence of the American electorate. Wait until after the midterms when the medical safety net is largely eliminated with Medicaid cuts leading to millions thrown off their health care and with continued rural hospital closures(https://bit.ly/4ebsaDr). The CNR’s have plans to trim Medicare and Social Security next year, further eliminating the financial safety net while the purchasing power of the dollar falls making American daily life more unaffordable.
That creates an obvious political contradiction. If the deficit is truly a $40T emergency, critics ask, why are Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security described as the problem while tax cuts and new spending initiatives remain on the table? Giviing $70B to ICE to lock up immigrants without due process takes priority over WIC and SNAP programs.
Ethics and morality be damned Full steam ahead. The CNR pushed through poorly qualified cabinet nominations from Kegseth to RFK Jr to Lutnick to McMahon. But now CNR’s are confirming nominations for incompetent federal prosecutors in Wyoming and Los Angeles. Not only has Cheeto abused the pardon power, his CNR’s are confirming or sneaking incompetent prosecutors into federal prosecutor positions. Watch these unqualified Nazi prosecutors go to work to deny and challenge in courts the results of free and fair elections, as has just happened in LA.
But, hey, Nazis like incompetence and giving criminals lack of prosecution in the days of Cheeto’s bought off pardons.
You bring literal meaning to the Dennis Millers quip…”I don’t want to go on a rant here” as you make like Robert Smith “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”, I mean Substack. Anywho, I hate The Don King Trump, and forgive me Jesus, I do mean I effing HATE TRUMP…the Ill Duce wannabe Tony Soprano, anti truth Neo nationalist socialists, I mean sociopath…but me thinks that if he delivered on the big government goodies you desire, you would have already purchased ring side tickets to the cafe fight to celebrate the 4th of July in the Rose Garden…If I am wrong about you, I a, sorry, but me thinks not. Afterall, you made no lament about The Dons literal crimes against humanity because they don’t come out of a government cookie jar your hand is reaching form
The Nazi Republicans are hell bent on eliminating the federal government "social safety net" that many less fortunate Americans rely on. This net includes Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security with their hardcore belief that the federal government is not a "cookie jar" for welfare queens. Meanwhile spendthrift Nazi Cheeto has put us in a $2B/d war, awarded all his Nazi cronies no bid contracts far surpassing what they are worth, trying to pull $$ out of the treasury for his own needs, rob Americans with a tax called tariffs, bankrupting farmers with trade policies, force Americans with 401K plans to pay a now trillionaire millions of "compensation" for his DOGE government work, while canceling USAID which was saving lives in Africa and giving tax breaks for billionaires as he bankrupts the country. And the Nazi Republicans are trying to normalize all of this corruption. Nothing to see here.
But this is the Nazi Republican way. The way they see it is that the federal government is not to serve WE the People which is the government but to serve the rich and powerful, making them wealthier and dictators forever....selfish and for self aggrandizement. So in the end, it's what you believe is the role of government. I just prefer the former which our Constitution mandates.
Jesus, grow up.
I have and that's why I can make these comments and not ignore reality.
I wonder if Coolidge knew what was coming in October of 29 and declined to run leaving the mess to Herbert Hoover ?
He retired to his slow paced, modest life because he had suffered a lot during his presidency, primarily in the loss of his son. But also because he was a man of principle and did not think he was a king who should lead a country for longer than anyone else had.