Day 2 of reading and sharing my notes on Project 2025 (the long title is Mandate for Leadership 2024: The Conservative Promise. For my approach and biases, read this.

summary

We're still in the foreword, written by Kevin D. Roberts.

He's now expanding on "Promise #2: Dismantle the Administrative State and Return Self-Governance to the American People."

He discusses the budget and how it's nothing like the Constitution intended, how the document is too long for anyone to read before they vote on it.

"This process is not designed to empower 330 million American citizens and their elected representatives, but rather to empower the party elites secretly negotiating without any public scrutiny or oversight."

MY OPINION

I think there's some legitimate criticism there.

SUMMARY

He says the worst corruption is in the Administrative State, and then he goes on to define it.

"The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by bureaucracies of all the federal government's departments, agencies, and millions of employees."

He argues that Congress is ceding its power to bureaucrats, who can't be held accountable.

He gives several examples, most having to do with "woke extremism."

He says a conservative president should use "many executive tools" to "handcuff the bureaucracy, push Congress to return to its constitutional responsibility, restore power over Washington to the American people, bring the Administrative State to heel, and in the process defang and defund the woke culture warriors who have infiltrated every last institution in America."

MY OPINION

I really wish people who use the term "woke" would define it.

SUMMARY

Roberts says the most important government function is national defense.

**-"The next conservative President must end the Left's social experimentation with the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Community Party as its highest priority."

MY OPINION

Am I reading this right? Because he says the military's sole mission should be warfighting, and its highest priority should be defeating the Chinese Community Party. Is he calling for war with China?

SUMMARY

He talks about putting the interests of everyday Americans over the ruling elite, then defines the elite as the Left.

MY OPINION

So there are no elite conservatives? I think there are plenty of elites on both sides of the aisle who are after only their own interests. No party or ideology owns selfish ambition.

SUMMARY

He moves on to "Promise #3: Defend Our Nation's Sovereignty, Borders, and Bounty Against Global Threats."

He says Leftists want a Wilsonian order where the highly educated run things, and many corporations have joined them, caring more for their foreign investors than their American workers and customers.

MY OPINION

I was surprised by that last bit. I wasn't expecting a critique of corporations. Also, Roberts is a good writer, and he's at his best when he's espousing ideals. Here's a particularly eloquent bit: "Many elites' entire identity, it seems is wrapped up in their sense of superiority over (italics) those people (end italics). But under our Constitution, they are the (italics) mere equals (end italics) of the workers who shower (italics) after (end italics) work instead of before. This is as it should and must be. Intellectual sophistication, advanced degrees, financial success, and all other markers of elite status have no bearing on a person's knowledge of the one thing most necessary for governance: what it means to live well. That knowledge is available to each of us, no matter how humble our backgrounds or how unpretentious our attainments."

SUMMARY

He says progressives support the UN and EU because they share their values and are "mostly insulated from the influence of national elections." He bemoans international treaties that he claims circumvent Congress.

He moves on to sweeping statements about how the Left wants open borders no matter the cost and even invokes theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "cheap grace" to drive home his point.

**-"Those who suffer most from the policies environmentalism would have us enact are the aged, poor, and vulnerable. It is not a political cause, but pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals' ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue."

MY OPINION

Says the guy who just invoked Bonhoeffer completely out of context to make his point about environmentalism.

SUMMARY

He goes on to talk about how trade with China has been bad for the U.S., especially "Big Tech." He says China has also been "successful at compromising and coopting our higher education system ..."

**-"These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees--root and branch."

He advocates sealing the border, ending economic engagement with China, and outlawing Confucius Institutes and TikTok, and defunding universities who take money from the Chinese Communist Party.

He moves back to environmentalism, this time talking about fossil fuels.

**-"America's vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth."

He says dominating the global energy market would be good for the world and for us, for a variety of reasons, including disentangling from China and rebalancing power away from the Middle East and Russia.

I'm going to stop for today because the next section is "Promise #4: Secure Our God-Given Individual Right to Enjoy 'the Blessings of Liberty.'" I suspect I'll have some opinions.