Many have reacted to events of late as though we are in the End of Days. "Four years of darkness", said one friend. To which I replied, "Perhaps, perhaps not." I am trying to see us in these trying times, differently.
On January 18, thanks to another Facebook friend, I had an impromptu observation of the day, listening to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's 1968 Mason Temple address in support of the Memphis sanitation workers strike. To say I was impressed is an understatement. First, let me say I am NOT drawing any equivalency between the social and political problems today and the historical arc of oppression of blacks removed from their native lands by the slave trade, raised in generations of bondage, freed from one oppression, only to be held down for generations by Reconstruction and Jim Crow. I get that. And this is the last time, as I try to develop these thoughts, that I will offer this disclaimer. I get that.
Yet, there may be those who see this and say that I, an East Tennessee born white man, have no business appropriating Dr. King's legacy in the 21st century. But I disagree. I have just begun to look into his words and I am convinced that we would all be better served by finding the humility in these trying times to see if we could appropriate the God given wisdom in Dr. King's words.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't just speaking contemporaneously, to black and white Americans of the day. He cast a vision of America that looked beyond that time out across history to future generations. To us, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see it. King spoke of wanting the America on paper to live up to what was written there. He spoke of people with straight backs, who faced down dogs and fire hoses, and unthinking brutality to demand that America live up to its promise.
Like the Americans of the 20th century, we in the 21st century find ourselves confronted by a similar existential threat. There are still forces in society and in government who seek to divide us by economics and race, peddling a particularly regressive notion of ideological purity. Men and women of conscience and faith need to stand together to oppose this new oppression, not because "they're out to get us", but because we're people endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights. Because our great nation was founded upon the idea, and still exists today, because our founders believed "that all men are created equal."
Perhaps, instead of bemoaning what we think is lost, longing for the past, railing against the now and the future, we should rediscover these timeless truths that say who we are, a great nation of people possessed of confidence, courage, faith, and straight backs. People not willing to be railroaded, or bent to the will of a party or ideology.
Perhaps it's time to simply stand and proclaim: We shall overcome We shall overcome We shall overcome some day Deep in our hearts we do believe That we shall overcome some day
Google's doodle on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech seems evocative of someone and something other than the memory of Dr. King's eloquent cry for freedom -
Google may claim the motto "Don't Be Evil" for its business, but they're obviously shameless when it comes to other things. It is this writer's opinion that President Obama has demonstrated over and over again by his actions and his words that he is the most politically and racially polarizing figure in America today. He's a mere politician, an opportunist, not worthy to stand on those steps in the shadow of heroes like Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Google's doodle is promoting President Obama's speech on the anniversary of Dr. King's address, instead of celebrating the anniversary of Dr. King's address. Google is conflating Dr. King's legacy with the one they're trying to help build for the president.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when people can't seem to tell the difference between a hero and an opportunist.
Benjamin Franklin, has gotten a lot play in media and social media in the past several days. His quote on liberty and security is ubiquitous now due to revelations of active spy programs, some for domestic surveillance, run by the by the federal government's National Security Agency, among others. Seems to me that if you really stop and think about what he said, we've taken it out of context. In my view Franklin was talking about acquiescence, where, given the choice, some people would CHOOSE to be less free in order to be more secure.
There is another Franklin quote, which I believe to be a more apt representation of the state of the nation, if for no other reason than to contrast how we find ourselves today with how it all began. When asked what kind of government they had created for the United States, Ben Franklin replied,
"A republic, madam, if you can keep it".
The government we have now is not a cause of the problems we see, but a symptom of the fact that we couldn't keep it. Some may view it as a case of the chicken or the egg, but in my view, we lost the culture first, the government merely followed.
Government, after a half-century of unconstrained growth, no longer operates within its constitutional boundaries, and is now, both guarantor and arbiter of national, economic, financial, and social security. Government is no longer responding to these needs, but defining them for every area of our lives. What started out as an historically unique experiment with a republican form of limited government, has morphed into an authoritarian nanny security state of unlimited reach. How unlimited was finally made clear by the recent leaks of information on the domestic phone metadata captures, and Prism, where the top nine internet service providers colluded with the federal government to spy on offshore internet users.
Also abundantly clear now is that there is a cadre of statist enablers of this expansion, even among erstwhile conservative political and media figures. These are the people who have worked hard to assure us, for example that this domestic phone metadata capture is "lawful" and "legal", dismissing our concerns as unfounded and attributing our concerns to mental defect or unhealthy fascination with with tanks and helicopters. They hope we'll soon get tired and go back to carping at the IRS so they can have a peaceful adult discussion about this spy and get something done whatever that means.
Hopefully they won't get their wish.
Eternal vigilance is price of liberty, with apologies to Mr. Franklin and our posterity for having squandered our inheritance.
Readers of today's Wall Street Journal were treated to an opinion piece authored by apparent statist, former federal judge and US Attorney General Michael Mukasey. I haven't seen a hit piece like that on conservatives and libertarians in the Journal since the '08 presidential campaign. It was such a tantrum, I thought he might have been channeling Saul Alinsky. What follows is my response to his op-ed screed.
Where to begin? I neither hear nor see tanks nor black helicopters. Mr. Mukasey follows his scurrilous assertion that all opposed must be conspiracy nuts, with the despot's favored cudgel - that we're all afflicted with a psychiatric malady, namely "delusions of reference".
So we're crazy for being concerned about all these mere perceived violations of propriety, but before and after the diagnosis General Mukasey went on in detail about the ways the government, including and especially this current administration has mishandled confidential information and intelligence assets. At the same time he tried to make the case that it was, and still is all quite lawful (which doesn't make it RIGHT) but we're crazy for being concerned... because the surveillance isn't political. But, everything - EVERYTHING - this administration does is political...
Judge Mukasey ridiculed us for drawing parallels between Orwell's "1984" and Metadatapalooza 2013, but never really denied it. And then there's this. Mr. Mukasey wrote, "Foreign governments spy on us and our citizens. We spy on them and theirs. Welcome to the world."
I fully expect foreign governments to spy on us.
I fully expect this government to do everything in its power to prevent it.
I will not, however, accept that the United States government has any justification to spy on me.
Since Mr. Mukasey mentioned "1984", I wonder what he'd make of this, sent to me by a friend yesterday, from "Nineteen Eighty-four" Part 2, Ch 9, by George Orwell, published June 8, 1949:
"... in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end...." emphasis mine
Replace television with the internet and wireless communications....
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty because it's NOT just Mukasey versus the people of the United States.
I've not read the book in over 20 years, so it at least seemed an odd direction to go on a Sunday morning....
Most of what passes for government in America today is corrupt, from the corridors of power in Washington, to the state house in Nashville, to the local level here where I live. Nevertheless, like a lot of Americans I have been surprised, and quite offended by the most recent revelations of treachery perpetrated by the federal government, the revelation of the scope of the metadata being swept up by the FBI and NSA under the auspices of their Verizon telephone warrants.
On the heels of that comes the latest revelations of another surveillance program called Prism and the subsequent release today of a video of the alleged leaker, Edward Snowden. It was jarring to watch as he discussed in measured tones the nature of that program, and his reasons for outing it. Needless to say there are already people lauding his courage and others calling for his head. Irrespective of his stated motivation, I found his point about turn-key tyranny a more than a little chilling. I am gravely concerned over the "1984" authoritarian overtones pervading the federal government. I wonder if O'Brien wouldn't feel right at home?
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty because, apparently, Big Brother is watching you.
Joe Citizen watches the news. He hears about acts of violence all over the country and decides it's time to take responsibility for his personal security. Joe wants to start carrying a handgun for security and self-defense. Joe is told that his state has several conditions which must be met before he is allowed to actually carry his weapon. Being a law-abiding citizen, Joe complies with those requirements by applying for a concealed carry permit to legally carry his handgun.
Joe spends a few hundred dollars on classes and a handgun, and his application for a concealed carry permit. Joe meets all the requirements and qualifications for concealed carry and his state issues the permit. Joe then purchases a handgun, which he carries in a manner that complies with the terms of his permit.
A few weeks after Joe begins carrying, he gets a call from a friend who has seen Joe's name and address in the local newspaper. A reporter for the newspaper petitioned the state government for the names and addresses of concealed carry permit holders in the area, and published the information in an article and included a handy map showing the location of all the handgun owners in Joe's area.
Preposterous, you say? Never going to happen? Well, try again, because in December of last year it happened in New York State. Click here to read about a New York newspaper's abuse of the First Amendment to attack the Second Amendment rights of New York gun owners, then click here to read about the possibility of something similar happening in my home state of Tennessee.
Up to now, it has been standard practice at Eternal Vigilance to not offer commentary on state and local politics. I have sought to always believed that raising awareness of serious issues of great importance to our nation was the best use of these resources. However, conservative Tennesseans are currently confronted by a purportedly conservative Republican, but increasingly activist (big government), majorities in both houses of Tennessee's legislature.
That activism is most clearly on display with their approach to "protecting" the Second Amendment rights of Tennessee gun owners. Rather than offer a full-throated endorsement the United States' Constitution and the right to keep and bear arms, they have, in fits of legislative whimsy, cherry-picked places where they think guns should be allowed - city parks, state parks, bars, car trunks in parking lots of campuses, schools, and businesses, and then created new laws accordingly. I find this approach to be very limiting to Second Amendment rights, especially since Tennessee's lieutenant governor and reputed gun rights advocate, Ron Ramsey, is said to favor the abrogation of the private property rights of owners who choose, for a host of reasons, to restrict firearm possession in their place of business.
Unfortunately, that big-government power trip against private property rights is not the only issue of concern related to gun rights in Tennessee. As mentioned in another article linked above, Ramsey has come out in favor of public media access to concealed carry permits in Tennessee. This is a wildly impractical and flawed idea, as the legislature would not only violate the privacy of, and potentially endanger Tennessee gun owners, but prompt a number of constitutional challenges by media outlets who fear their First Amendment rights might be infringed by the restrictions being discussed with the legislation.
The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says, clearly and simply, "A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
Where, in those 27 simple words, does the Tennessee legislature find the authority to waltz over the privacy and private property rights of its citizens?
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - especially when a Republican legislature can't be trusted to do the right thing....
As a Republican voter, I'm tired of seeing leading figures from the GOP engage in class warfare. Seems every day brings a "news" story of another member of the party elite or the presidential candidates themselves engaging in race or class warfare.
From the pack and the media lobbing race and class charged grenades at Mitt Romney to Romney's shots back to the pack to the media and the candidates obfuscating the real issues facing our society, the campaign has been hugely disappointing to voters interested in reversing America's rapid slide toward Eurosocialism. All the rancor and the name-calling have served to reinforce in the minds of Republican voters that issues and discussions of the numerous challenges and threats facing us have taken a backseat to this media driven cult of personality.
Instead of a race to the top, the media, with the acquiescence (or complicity) of the Republican party and the candidates, seem to be plumbing the depths to find the lowest common denominator. Whatever the goals of the GOP and the media for this election cycle, they seem to be antithetical to the hopes and aspirations of Americans everywhere. Sure, we want to see Obama limited to one term, but merely replacing a president is but a small part of the changes that must take place if America is to confront the crises and challenges before us.
If one I were to describe the GOP field, I couldn't be much more complimentary to them than I could to Obama. In Romney we have a big-government statist and moderate flip-flopper on global warming, abortion, gay rights, who ran for Senate to the left of Senator Edward Kennedy. His claims to fame are saving the winter games in Salt Lake City and instituting the Massachussetts model for Obamacare. Gingrich is a weird mix of Third-Way globalism, grandiose notions and class warfare, with global warmism for good measure. Ron Paul is simply untenable. And Santorum is occasionally intemperate and never seems too far removed from the rhetoric and small ideas of the modern Washington political class.
The Obama years have been a disaster for this nation. The 2010 congressional elections did nothing to reverse, or even slow the radical socialist agenda from Obama's first two years of democrat control of the executive and legislative branches. The presidential campaign has done nothing to clarify the situation. Media outlets right, center, and left, are jockeying for influence and the Republican candidates are playing along. The GOP elite are advising nothing more than a soft version of the left's class warfare.
Jeb Bush says a kinder, gentler campaign and special outreach to the Latino population in Florida is key to electoral success there. Allen West says black outreach is the key. The GOP candidates are hawking strategies lifted straight from the Obama playbook based on wealth-envy, class warfare and division along racial and ethnic lines. They should be aware that the only thing this pandering will accomplish is more division.
Pretty soon there won't be a Republican or conservative base left, and Obama will be the shoo-in that he hopes to be. Rhetorical though it may be, this class and race warfare is a lousy substitute for solid conservative ideas and ideals and policy solutions. At its end, all this infighting is as damaging as the real-life policies of the Obama administration. And will have the same outcome.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when there's very little hope and even less change...
Herman Cain's supporters, including your humble correspondent, are being asked who they'll support - if, when, or now that - Mr. Cain's presidential run is finished. "Who's your Plan 'B'?", they say.
We need to face the fact that, in this election, THERE IS NO PLAN 'B'.
It is time to draw a line in the sand.
There is no "Not-Romney" candidate.
There is no "Anybody But Obama" candidate.
There is only Herman Cain. Consider the attacks on the Cain candidacy to be the trial run. If the leftist government/media enterprise are successful in running him out of the race, they'll only be emboldened.
If the leftist government/media enterprise are able to dispirit and disillusion Herman Cain's base, whose passion for their candidate is only matched by the zealots supporting Tex Quixote, how easily will they be able to drive the lemming media and middling moderates, and scatter the moral relativists and partisan hacks backing the remaining Republican candidates?
No, there is no Plan 'B', just a line in the sand...
Four more years of Barack Obama if the Republican nominee is anybody other than Herman Cain.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty because freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
My choice for president of the United States, Mr. Herman Cain, has made waves recently (imagine that!) He has referred to the US tax code as 21st century slavery and has also said that many blacks in America have been brainwashed into rejecting conservatism and conservative candidates. In my opinion he is correct on both counts. What follows are my thoughts on the topic, which expands on Mr. Cain's idea just a bit to include America's entire dependency underclass.
Slavery was wrong, an ethical and moral blight on the South. My family were slaveholders in East Tennessee. My family was split as a result of the civil war, with war fatalites on both sides buried in separate cemeteries, and a split that exists to this very day.
It is a visceral issue, so much so that I don't believe it can ever be discussed or even understood via the sterile and arcane esoterica of philosophy.
The currency of slavery today is in its use as an excuse for political and social malfeasance on the part of progressives, manifested in demands for reparations, accusations of oppressive behavior and the guilt imputed to 21st-century white Americans by the hacks and baiters in the race-grievance industry.
Mr. Cain is right to bring it up. The race-grievance industry needs to explain how tripling down on the failed policies of the Great Society and its resultant permanent underclass, mass minority unemployment and government dependency can possibly improve life for the 3rd and 4th generation of that underclass. And yet they continue to support and enable their progressive oppressors in the democrat party.
What happened 150 years ago may color or even taint race relations, but that intergenerational oppression that continues at the hands of politicans, pundits and bureaucrats can no more be laid at the feet of 21st century Republicans and conservatives, than at the feet of Lincoln and his fellow abolitionists in 1858.
Conventional wisdom holds that America voted for Barack Obama to assuage its majority white guilt and ushered in post-racial age. Yet Mr. Cain's supporters are branded racists because we oppose Mr. Obama at every turn, despite our active support and intention to vote for Herman Cain, who also happens to black. Let me be perfectly clear - if Barack Obama felt about America the way Mr. Cain does. If Barack Obama carried the same world-view, policy outlook and personality, demonstrated the same character, conviction, courage and had the same qualifications as Herman Cain I would surely be torn. But Mr. Obama doesn't, so I'm not....
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when the choice has never been so clear.
Pajamas Media asks an interesting question. They didn't pose it quite the way I did in the title, but there's a subtle condescension, however unintended, that informs the asking and their discussion of the issue.They never got around to answering it themselves, but it struck me as a topic worth exploring.
The gist of the piece is that the GOP has an image problem that has so confounded the current GOP leadership that they've given up the idea of getting any black votes. While the current GOP leadership hasn't released a statement to that effect, Timothy Johnson, of the Frederick Douglas Foundation provides anecdotal evidence that some GOP candidates have given up on black voters. So that idea is out there. Colonel West says it's a problem with the quality of the GOP's outreach to blacks, that the democrat party has then sequestered to the democrat plantation. Others say it's simply a matter of messaging.
Seems to me that we have some people waiting, or perhaps hoping for, in order to absolve themselves of the responsibility of having to deal with the problem, on the 21st century Moses (or Harriet Tubman in the form of Colonel Allen West) to lead the black community off the democrat plantation and out of socio-economic bondage. While an ennobling sentiment, I believe it misses the mark, by a wide margin. You gonna leave everybody else there or can they be free too?
See, it bothers me that people want to make it an ethnocentric issue when that bondage has entrapped an entire underclass in a subsistence existence of government largess, a state of permanent lack - of challenge, ambition, intellectual curiosity, economic opportunity, and hope. Just look at how America reacted to mere campaign slogans consisting of the words hope and change in 2008. To focus on allegedly intractable issues relating to one minority group plays right into the hands of race-baiters and grievance industry hacks on the left, and the reinforces the soft bigotry of low expectations on the right.
I was in Walmart last night. I don't go to Walmart as a rule, but I'm traveling on business, away from home and I needed a few things since I extended my trip by a week. There are websites dedicated to "Walmart people", but my observations are not those. I saw all kinds of people and many ethnicities - families, solo adults accompanied by children, morbidly obese people using oxygen on scooters, including a couple shopping together, young couples holding hands. Heard all kinds of conversations about brands, flavors, current events, movie titles and two distinct languages I couldn't understand. I found myself making judgments about the people around me, generalizations in fact, not unlike this Pajamas Media piece and its conventional wisdom. I was thinking in terms of what I thought I knew about the people around me, when I'm really 600 miles from home and know as much as about these people in Walmart as the GOP does about the people it wants to represent. The reality is that ALL THESE are the people the GOP should represent.
The real challenge in this most political of all seasons is to not see people just as demographics. To not propound ideas and notions which confine voters to barrios and backwoods, city and country, but to see them as Americans, imbued with all the distinctiveness and individualism that term confers. Once the GOP recognizes this, recovers from its embrace of the soft bigotry of low expectations, and speaks to Americans of every race as joint heirs to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it won't need Moses or Harriet Tubman. And the democrat plantation will be a distant memory.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when there are so many yearning to be free....
Note to the readers - Eternally Vigilance officially endorses Herman Cain for the 2012 Republican nomination for president of the United States.
What follows is my response to an Australian friend who expressed a specific concern about whether Mr. Cain would actually be able strengthen the US dollar (USD), which has seriously sagged in relation to his home currency, the Australian dollar (AUD). I shared my view of the US economy and then offered Herman Cain as a solution.
The problem here is that we've got this big-government (I started to call him Keynesian, but John Maynard might turn over in his grave were he to be blamed for Obama's mess) wacko in the White House who has spent 7tril USD in two years against a little over 4.5til in receipts.
Also, under the guise of saving the economy and preserving various business and industrial sectors, our central bank (Federal Reserve) and Treasury have monetized the federal debt by buying hundreds of billions in bad loans and commercial paper, inflating the currency with trillions of dollars created out of thin air in order to cover these purchases and maintain liquidity for the credit markets. Add to that a massive trade imbalance and you get the flight to gold and other commodities and other currencies, while the USD collapses in value.
None of Mr. Cain's "Common Sense Solutions" are particularly radical. They've worked in other countries where they've been implemented or when they have have been implemented here in the US in the past. I believe that Mr. Cain's common sense soluions would definitely yield postive outcomes to stabilize the our economy and, as a result, strengthen the USD as well. Obviously it would help if there were a conservative sea change in the composition of the US House of Representatives and Senate.
Herman Cain is a man of courage, character and conviction, who enjoys credible and documented success in life and business. He's the most capable and qualified of all the candidates in the Republican field. Given that practical majorities of the 435 members in both houses would be willing to put the country first and work with him, I am confident in Mr. Cain's ability to lead the biggest turn-around in his 40-plus year career.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, though the election of Herman Cain to the presidency of the United States might afford us a minute or two to relax....
Our understanding of the media has changed. Many conservatives agree that the profession of journalism died during the 2008 presidential campaign. There's not a not a mainstream media now. There's not a left-wing media now. And there's no longer a conservative media, either. Many erstwhile conservatives spent last week and weekend beating the drum of tea party criticism. Media outlets once thought to be at least fair, if not outright sympathetic, to tea party conservative values were openly hostile during the debt ceiling battle in Congress. Tea party conservatives learned a hard, but valuable lesson last week.
They're all media now.
Many pundits and publications that used to be known as conservative media were actively assisting in the left wing's dirty work by drinking the compromise kool-aid, joining in the left's attacks on the tea party and spreading the president's fearmongering disinformation on the possibility and repercussions of default. I don't appreciate the way the tea party movement and conservatives who were opposed the debt ceiling increase were abused by a range of allegedly conservative pundits and publications.
The Wall Street Journal alone which, by its own self-description, purports to resist bullies, dictators, and the "ukases of kings" published at least a half-dozen columns and editorials in favor of compromise, hectoring the tea party for it's obstructionist ways, branding them hobbits and banishing them back to Middle Earth for having destroyed Speaker Boehner's chance at a "grand bargain" with the president
One such Journal editorial was seized on by Arizona's John McCain, who took it to the well of the Senate and entered it into the record, word for word. There were letters and commentaries from David Brooks, David Gergen, Peggy Noonan, Laura Ingraham, Fred Thompson, Bill O'Reilly, etc., etc., demanding we sit down and shut up. Accusations of terrorism, hostage-taking, the same over-the-top rhetoric that you'd find on CNN or MSNBC. Now all these outlets are trying to convince the tea party to sit down and shut up because of the glorious victory won. Some victory. The Senate passed the bill at about lunchtime today. By early afternoon the White House had taken to their Twitter account promising fair and balanced debt reduction, i.e. TAXES.
Many tea partiers feel that a trust was broken. This writer certainly joins in that sentiment. Politics make strange bed-fellows. Conservative media, once the fourth estate's sanctuary for conservative thought, ideas and open debate, actively joined in an effort to silence voices of dissent on the right, to somehow cool the ardor of tea partiers and conservatives for real and substantive tax and entitlement reform, all in a bid to be the enablers of political compromise. But at what cost to the American people?
A bad bill, back-loaded with out-year spending cuts that will surely not be adhered to by the 113th Congress, certainly not by the 120th or 122nd Congress.
A bad bill that creates a super committee of 12 representatives from the House and Senate, with a broad mandate, to likely include tax increases, whose recommendations will require an up or down vote in the Congress. This committee will not be accountable or accessible to the voters, and failure to deliver on their mandate will result in a range of draconian cuts to both national security and the social obligations so precious to progressives.
A bad bill which grants a further $2.4tril in deficit spending authority to the most partisan and radically progressive president to ever hold the office. Just in time for the presidential campaign....
A bad bill which the media are furiously spinning as a victory for the tea party since it didn't raise taxes and forced the deepest spending cuts in history on a progressive president and his progressive caucuses in the House and Senate. At least until the afternoon the bill was signed.
Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are unbowed. The media are already calling for congressional support for their "balanced approach" to debt reduction.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when they're all media now.
Minnesota's Muslim democrat senator Keith Ellison thinks it's unfair to single out a community when discussing the radicalization of Americans who engage in acts of terror against other Americans. The New York Times calls Congressman Peter King's hearings on radicalization "an obsession" and accuses him of "stoking fears" of "supposed radicalization".
I have a few questions for Mr. Ellison and the NYT. Was the Times Square bomber a destitute tea-partying Quaker opposed to health care reform? Did a hymn-singing Southern Baptist men's Sunday School class commandeer four airliners to attack New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11th 2001? Or attend an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan? Did the holiday (Christmas) Tree bomb plotter in Portland Oregan attend confirmation classes at the local Episcopal church? Did a Mennonite sniper kill ten people in the D.C. area in 2002? Was it an observant Jew who shot and killed 13 people and wounded 29 at Fort Hood Texas?
In fact all the people who perpetrated the crimes discussed above had some connection, if not a singular devotion to the ideas of a particular prophet and religion, not Judeo nor Christian in origin. Perhaps Islam is the single most prominent connection between all these crimes.
Whether these crimes stand alone, or are part of some strategy to implement sharia law, or are the first steps to the establishment of a global caliphate is not relevant. These crimes, inspired by Islam, took place on American soil and the plots were hatched in our neighborhoods. These people walked our streets, shopped in our stores, attended our colleges and flying schools and even served in our military services. In some cases, authorities even knew what was happening and, because of cowardice or political correctness, took no action.
With little or no respect to Kyrie Ellison and the New York Times editorial board, I doubt that Echelon is getting much terror chatter out of Catholic dioceses or Methodist conferences. Holding congressional hearings is the very least someone in the federal government could do.
"Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists." President George W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress, September 20, 2001. There are those in American society who try to have it both ways....
"Every nation has to be with us or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or finance them are going to pay a price". Senator Hillary Clinton, September 13, 2oo1. There are those in American society who do both....
"If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security." George Orwell, from his 1942 essay, "Pacifism and the War.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when the country is under assault from within by a political and media fifth column who fancy themselves aloof and somehow superior to the struggle....
There's an interesting article in the March 2011 edition of the International Monetary Fund's quarterly publication, Finance & Development. The authors have concluded that consumers should get used to higher food prices.
One of the more interesting statistics cited in the piece is that in 2010, 15% percent of global corn production was consumed by the biofuels industry. According to a report by the OECD from January 2010, the amount of grain required to fill the average car gas tank with ethanol would feed one person for a year. There is also the matter of the amount of water, electricity, and fossil fuels required by the ethanol manufacturing process.
It seems government and industry are faced with a choice between providing affordable food for people and meeting arbitrary quotas for ethanol production. Among people of common sense, this is a no-brainer. Unfortunately common sense seems to be lacking in direct proportion to the amount of foodstuffs and money wasted on ethanol.
In this tight economy, some people have to choose between fuel and food. At this rate, nobody will be able to afford either. Perhaps all these ethanol devotees could consider a hunger strike on behalf of world food production.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - and is a bargain compared to eating and driving in 2011.
Earlier this week CNN posted an article by John Blake, in which he described white Americans as "the new face of racial oppression". He uses the liberal media's favorite intellectual straw men, "they" and "some", to discuss purported calls for ethnic programs to promote racial pride, including "whiteness studies". Using a blend of innuendo and pop psychology with a few quotes from supposed white racialist intellectuals, he attempts to paint a picture of a racially fractured America, with white people on the sociological ropes. Seems that CNN has a vested interest in promoting the fiction of an oppressed white race to justify the continuing existence of the race-grievance industry.
Funny thing is I don't feel oppressed. I'm glad they told me about it though. Maybe I should find someone to sue....
Sherrod Brown, democrat, Ohio tried to hitlerize Republican governors who are trying to limit the political influence of public sector unions in their states. Following a trope devised by teachers unions that Hitler went after the labor unions in Germany, Brown embellished the tale with Stalin - a move for which he apologized today. His apology implied that his passion for the middle class apparently got the better of him, causing his "mistake". Uh, Sherrod you were talking about unions, not the middle class. Who knew that statist unionist progressives were such ardent champions of the middle class?
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - especially when the media and politicians get it so wrong....
Today, the United States Supreme Court, by an 8-1 decision I've dubbed the Phelps' Precedent, affirmed the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to freely express themselves by picketing military funerals. There will surely be all kinds of learned commentary, both supporting and criticizing this ruling. We are a nation of laws, and I suppose it is appropriate that the Court should uphold the law and rule in favor of freedom of speech.
Today's legal ruling unfortunately highlights an abridgement that is beyond the purview of any court or legislature to correct - the diminution of human decency. In days gone by, Americans knew the difference between right and wrong. Their conscience was their guide. People understood the value of hard work and sacrifice, respected each other, and demonstrated reverential awe for God, and held family and country close in their hearts.
Now, many in American society are drawn to the pornographic. Pornographic can describe any action taken to elicit a quick and intense emotional reaction, not only something salacious or lewd, but shocking or titillating. Larry Flynt wrapped himself in the flag and almost single-handedly won First Amendment protection for pornography. Show gory photos of shattered babies in the aftermath of an abortion to get the antiabortion message across. Burn a cross or a flag or a Koran to show how bad those other people are or how bad you hate them.What passes for entertainment is replete with pornographic moral dysfunction and violence.
What Westboro does is no different. The problem is that they now see themselves as somehow legitimized by today's court ruling. Westboro has been waging a shrill and self-indulgent pogrom against the world since 1991. The Phelps' Precedent makes peddling a pornographic message of hate a constitutionally protected activity. In our free society, the law allows them to vent their spleen in the marketplace of ideas. The best thing we can do for ourselves is turn our backs and walk away.
The law truly is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, because legal and right aren't always the same thing.
What would be the reaction in politics and the media if white people referred to other white people as "my people"?
Suppose that John Ashcroft or Ed Meese or Janet Reno had referred to white people as "my people". Would the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan, the Congressional Black Caucus and Ben Jealous of the NAACP call for their job? Probably not Reno - she served as attorney general under the first black U.S. president - but that's another topic for another time....
Politico (with a nod to Debra Burlingame on Facebook) reports that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder became frustrated during congressional testimony because members of the U.S. Congress kept questioning his decision and motivation regarding the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation incident during the 2008 election at a Philadelphia polling place. In his remarks, he drew a distinction between those alleged victims of the Black Panthers, and those who struggled to get voting rights for African-Americans in 60's America, a group to whom he referred as "my people".
Mr. Holder said there is no equivalency between voter intimidation in 2008 America and that stuff in the 60's. Mr. Holder stated that any comparison was "inappropriate" and "...a great disservice to those who put their lives on the line for my people" (emphasis added). The writer informs the readers at the end of the fourth paragraph of the Politico piece that United States Attorney General Holder is black, perhaps implying that by "my people", Holder meant people like himself.
In fairness to Mr. Holder, one could assume that he's actually referring to the people, many of whom were eastern liberals much like himself, except for the ones who weren't, who put "their lives on the line" as his people. However, the writer seems to believe that Holder's decision to not prosecute the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation is somehow colored by Holder's race. After all, it was Mr. Holder who bravely pointed out that Americans were afraid to have a discussion about race, although he didn't say Americans, whether his "people", or perhaps some other eastern liberal Americans.
The members of congress seemed confused by this. One member even accused Mr. Holder of a holding a double standard on voting rights for those "...other than African-Americans....". First a member of congress and and now this writer for Politico. No wonder Mr. Holder was at pains to explain that "This Department of Justice does not enforce the law on the basis of race".
Whew boy, I'm glad he cleared that up! For a minute there it seemed that United States Attorney General Eric Holder was of the same mind as the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton.
Seems to me that Holder doesn't really have excuse for refusing to at least investigate, if not prosecute, the New Black Panthers. Using a congressional hearing to dismiss similarities between thuggery in 2008 America and the historic desire for social and political equity makes a mockery of that voting rights struggle in the 60's he claims to revere.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when government officials make extralegal and racially biased decisions under the color of law.
When I originally posted this in September 2010, President Obama's deficit commission had just published their report. I'm bringing it out again in response to the president's assertion that we're not paying attention out here. I'll be so forward as to say I've probably given his deficit commission report more thought than he has. Some of the figures are somewhat dated, as cost of tax code compliance has apparently more than tripled since the 2009 report cited here. America is experiencing record-breaking deficits and unemployment, and is far worse off than when Mr. Obama was elected. Recognizing that our out-of-control federal government is the problem, not the solution is the first step on a long, long road back to prosperity and liberty.
Alan Simpson, esteemed Republican co-chair of PBHObama's deficit commission, recently found himself in hot water for his colorful, and possibly vulgar (according to some government/media outlets) description of Social Security as a very, very, very well-endowed cow, and something about a rude remark to a lobbyist. Now, all kinds of leftists are calling for his ouster from this commission, because he told the truth, under the guise of his rudeness to the lobbyist. At least he didn't describe the lobbyist as a well endowed cow....
I don't envy Mr. Simpson his job. Assuming he survives this, he and the members of the commission have the unenviable job of making non-binding deficit reduction recommendations to the executive and legislative branches, recommendations they're free to ignore. What follows is my view of the problem and what I believe they should do, not just to reduce the federal deficit, but to radically transform the federal government and the tax system that funds it.
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." Nowhere does it say Congress shall enable/encourage home ownership through a mortgage interest deduction. Or guarantee a federal minimum income floor with the minimum wage, egged on by the Earn Income Tax Credit and child care tax credits. Or design schizophrenic tax tables that favor singlehood over opposite marriage, while encouraging the creation of children with a per child income tax deduction. Or substitute America's traditional generosity with tax deductions for charitable giving. Or limit free speech under the guise of "tax exemption" for non-profits (religious organizations). Or expand the police powers of the Internal Revenue Service to levy fines or new taxes to compel private citizens to enter into contracts with health insurance providers for the purposes of Obamacare. I know, despite what we hear from the "living" Constitution crowd, that these things aren't there. This scheme of credits and deductions might lead some to believe this is the government giving back, but that view begs the question, "Whose money is it to begin with"? The federal government doesn't have any money. In the face of reckless federal spending, and the future crises it portends, the current tax structure is a severe impediment to sound fiscal policy and fiduciary responsibility. No serious effort to reach entitlement reform and government reform should be undertaken without addressing the tax problem at the root of it all.
The deficit commission should point out the imaginary Roe-style penumbras and emanations that have morphed the thirty words of the 16th Amendment into the 3,700,000 word (2009) US Tax Code. The vast tax bureaucracy and regime are more dedicated to social engineering than to raising government revenue. Congress has codified incentivized behavior, redistributive transfer payments, financial and personal manipulation, and punitive police measures which force otherwise free Americans, "under the penalty of perjury", into compliance with this purportedly voluntary system of taxation. The Internal Revenue Service's own National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina E. Olson, released a 2009 report calling on Congress to reduce the complexity of the tax system. She also described the $193bil (2.66 billion hours at the $7.25 federal minimum wage) in compliance costs, and 7.6bil hours spent on paperwork, equivalent to the hours worked by 3.8mil full-time employees or 190,000,000 40-hour work weeks.
The tax commission should recommend a single flat tax rate. No marginal rates. No loopholes or deductions. No more rebates, prebates, tax credits or stimulus checks. No tax "shelters" or death taxes, so that you and I, and Warren Buffet, all devote the same percentage of our treasure to meeting our individual tax burden. End the class warfare by extending the obligation to pay taxes to 100% of all working Americans, not just those whom the elitist radical progressives in Congress and the Obama administration would like to soak. For some Americans, it might result in fewer cartons of cigarettes. For others it might mean taking fewer vacations. Would this make my tax bill go up? Probably, but that just means I've got courage and a little more common sense than most of the politicians and lobbyists in Washington.
Any tax increase must be accompanied, not by cuts in growth of spending, but real reductions in spending at the federal level. The commission should recommend an immediate freeze in entitlement spending at current levels until 2016, and further recommend the repeal of Obamacare, the remainder of Stimulus and Son of Stimulus, labor union buyouts and the dissolution of FannieMae, FreddieMac and all other government sponsored enterprises. The commission should acknowledge Mr. Simpson's candor and require government functionaries and politicians to tell the truth about entitlement programs, which takes us back to the well-endowed Social Security cow.
The truth is that 1/6 of all Americans receive some kind of federal assistance. Social Security and Medicare alone consume 10% of GDP, right now. Barring drastic action by the next Congress, spending on all entitlement programs will continue to grow exponentially because more Americans then ever before believe the progressive lie that they're actually entitled to them. This, and the fact that America is now governed by a cabal of elitist radical progressives whose own sense of entitlement drives them to accrue more power by expanding the scope and influence of the federal government. Their ascendancy and ever-expanding entitlements have coincided to become a vicious and self-perpetuating cycle of dependency, which reaches beyond the permanent underclass of the New Deal and Great Society, into the boardrooms of business and industry with federally subsidized long-term unemployment and government stakes in trade union pensions, banking, insurance and manufacturing. Now they have granted themselves a permanent seat at our kitchen tables with Obamacare. Obamacare alone imposes nearly $100bil in new taxes just for itself beginning in 2011, three years prior to the delivery of a single service.
At the end of its life PBHObama's deficit commission may be just another turkey in the political theater which is Washington, DC. Given courage and a little common sense, it could be so much more, with real reductions in federal spending on entitlement programs and the possibility of real tax reform. One can always hope....
An Australian friend asked me to explain a recent posting on a popular web-based social networking site. I had said,
"I would prefer that politicians stop screwing around with the US Constitution and simply follow it. Corrupt politicians and activist judges with their penumbras and emanations are the problem. If they can't simply do their jobs, they should be FIRED!!!!"
I explained further that it's, "'...Hard to believe - US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas actually inserted an astronomical phenomona (penumbras) and a scientific term for gases resulting from radiological decay (emanation) into a 1965 SCOTUS opinion (Griswold v. Connecticut) to find a new and federally protected "right" to privacy. Douglas wrote that, “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” His flight of judicial fantasy was later used to justify the newly found and federally protected "right" to abortion on demand in1973's SCOTUS ruling in Roe v. Wade and a whole raft of prurient and repugnant laws. Now, on the left and right, hypoliticrites are mouthing about "modifying" the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution as it relates to so-called "birthright citizenship", in the context of so-called "anchor babies" born in the US to illegal aliens.'"
Hypoliticrites are only interested in demagoging hot-button issues for partisan gain and personal self-interest. As a people group they are predisposed to believe the opposite of most everything that's actually true. Chafing under the constraints imposed on them by the 4,400 words of the United States Constitution, hypoliticrites spawn monstrosities like the 363,000 word Obamacare bill and the over 42,000,000 word United States Code. Their analogues in the judiciary, the judge-activists aren't even satisified with all that. Since Griswold and Roe, they have continually searched out penumbras and emanations, even from international law, which in the balanced minds of thinking people have no relevance to our Constitution or even our experiences as Americans.
James Taranto writes in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web for August 13, 2010 that due to possible appellate shenanigans surrounding judge-activist Vaughn Walker's ruling against California's ban on gay marriage, gay marriage could end up being settled federal law - only in California. Will judge-activist Walker mandate legislation to insure fair and equitable gay divorce? State certification for specialized gay-marriage counselors? Specific gay-marriage spousal abuse and domestic violence prevention programs? Or will he simply order all this from the bench? All this, because 7 million California voters said no, their state should not sanction gay marriage.
Among hypoliticrites and judge-activists, it is a foregone conclusion that We the People are so morally and intellectually bereft that whatever innate common sense we possess must be necessarily be eclipsed by the penumbras and emanations from their tortured and perfidiously profane imaginations. Both the left and the right need to pay close attention, especially now. I can speak with authority only for myself, but believe this sentiment to by fairly wide-spread.
There is a strong sense that the electorate has had its full measure of lying and self-interested hypoliticrites, and self-important judge-activists. Were I them, I would be very concerned about disregard for the Constitution, and even more concerned over our reaction to, "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Heed the the 4400 words... or else....
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and the cause of liberty demands that we resist these hypoliticrites and judge-activists, for the sake of our nation and our posterity.
America's foremost challenge and opportunity in the 21st century is to consider the question of whether she will continue to be that city on a hill spoken of by John Winthrop in 1630.
I've been thinking about this for a while, but became more focused, thanks to an article sent to me by an Australian friend from The Age newspaper in Melbourne. The author is commenting on the US economic situation. I found very little to disagree with there. The country is in a mess. But we didn't get here just because of economic choices. The source of the problem in the US is an out-of-control government.
The difficulty is in undoing the damage. I'm personally optimistic that the situation can be turned around, but it requires, not only smart short-term economic moves, but pinning our hopes on the right sort of political changes in the November election, and again in 2012, and the economic changes that (hopefully) flow therefrom.
The seeds of this disaster were planted in the early 20th century, going back to Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The dirty work of undoing a century of progressive influence will be harder than we think. Progressive politics and policy are all tangled up with graft and corruption, and have become a way of life among the lifers in the US House and Senate and their enablers in the government, media and even private enterprise. It could be that an entire generation of politicians and public figures will have to die off or be otherwise removed from positions of power and influence before true societal change can be realized. Shades of the children of Israel in the wilderness....
Irrespective of the extant politics, I believe that America, by virtue of the circumstances of her founding and her various trials, is unique among nations. The American ideal is bigger than self-indulgent, small-minded politicians. In 2010 we need people who aspire to that uniquely American ideal and are not ashamed to wholeheartedly embrace and live it. People who see being an American, whether by birth or assimilation, as a prerogative and an opportunity, not to simply have and acquire, but to overcome trials and adversity with courage and hard work, and then succeed beyond their wildest imaginations.
We need these people, not only in politics and the media, but in schools and houses of worship, in the workplace and at home. People who are guided and compelled by the conviction that "everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required", not from the largess of man or government, but as a consequence of the very deliberate application of his blessings of intellect, passion, resources and talent.
Mr Ferguson is correct as far as it goes, but ours is not just an economic problem, but one of attitude and identity. Solving our economic problems will require the rediscovery of America's founding values and virtues - compassion, hard work, loyalty, self-reliance, thrift. It will require us to get beyond the self-indulgent "me-ness" of narrow agendas and petty politics, and the meanness of race and class warfare, willing to be judged, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, by the content of our character.
America has, at times, endured direst privation and enjoyed great wealth. Yet her underlying constancy, in the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, yields the blessed assurance that this, too, shall pass.
