WELCOME TO THE AMERICAN PATRIOT COUNCIL HOMEPAGE
This page is the APC Blog.
To learn more about our organization, philosophy and activities, please click on the Navigation Menu above.
—- WELCOME — 3 comments
Dr. Benjamin Carson’s Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast
Waging and Winning the War of Ideas
WAGING AND WINNING THE WAR OF IDEAS
by Michael Dennin
http://americanpatriotcouncil.com/2013/02/17/waging-and-winning-the-war-of-ideas/
In a February 15th Op/Ed published in the Washington Post , Leftist columnist Eugene Robinson belabored what has become a sobering fact – President Obama is winning the argument over government. As he correctly points out, “In his bid to be remembered as a transformational leader, President Obama is following the playbook of an ideological opposite, Margaret Thatcher. First you win the argument, she used to say, then you win the vote.”
Evidently, today’s Republican Party never got the Iron Lady’s memo.
The reason Mr. Obama is winning the argument over government is simple – Republicans aren’t even engaged in the War of Ideas. When was the last time we heard John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor professing the Conservative and Libertarian Right’s philosophical argument against Mr. Obama’s collectivist case for more government and less individual freedom. When was the last time we heard the GOP’s leadership hearkening back to the lofty ideals, virtues and accomplishments of the Founders and Framers to make the conservative case against the Left’s nihilistic effort to “fundamentally transform” America into a socialist state? The only Republican who seems to be actively engaged in the grand philosophical argument is TEA Party and Libertarian favorite Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Why is this? Are Republicans clueless and/or apathetic about the necessity of taking the philosophical fight to their socialist adversaries and making their case to the American people? Could it be that the GOP leadership is bogged down in the nuts and bolts of running the government and campaigning for office? Could it be that there is a lack of passionate and articulate Republicans who are willing and able to effectively persuade Americans of the desirability and superiority of the Conservative and Libertarian argument? Is the GOP too divided, too fractured, to make a coherent case to the public? Could it be all of the above?
Regardless of the explanation, in the absence of the Republican party’s effort to “win the argument”, it is both obvious and imperative that someone is going to have to step forward and fill the breach in the War of Ideas, and that someone is YOU and that someone is me – grassroots Conservatives and Libertarians all across this great land. Like it or not, it has fallen to us to present and explain our philosophy and our agenda to our communities, states and nation, and persuade our fellow Americans to embrace our philosophy and agenda. Conversely, we must cut through the lies and obfuscation of the Left and explain their philosophy and agenda and convince our fellow Americans to reject them in total. In doing so, let us not underestimate our “progressive” (socialist) adversaries as the Republican party has underestimated Barack Obama. Never forget that the only thing “progressives” care about is power. Never forget that they will justify any means necessary to possess it. Never forget that they are at war with us, our philosophy and the country that they seek to “fundamentally transform” – the United States of America. The good news is that we are not “progressives”. We don’t have to lie about who we are. We don’t have to lie about our agenda. We don’t have to lie and pretend that we love and respect the United States of America, the Constitution and Individual Freedom.
We can win the War of Ideas. Our ideas our superior to theirs. Our ideas work. Our ideas made our people and our country free and prosperous. Our socialist adversaries can make none of those claims. However, Barack Obama and his “progressive” co-travelers will continue to win the argument (and win the votes) if we don’t refute their argument ourselves. The Republican party hasn’t gotten the job done, and we are at best complacent and at worst foolish to expect and/or assume that it will get the job done for us. Therefore, you and I – grassroots Conservatives and Libertarians across America – must take it upon ourselves to accept this challenge, step forward and fight for what we believe in. The greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity is not Barack Obama and his socialist argument, it is our silence. Let us raise our voices and make ourselves heard.
On Private and Public Virtue
ON PRIVATE AND PUBLIC VIRTUE
by Robert Williams and Michael Dennin
In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders make mention of “one people” and a “good people” – a people who are wise and virtuous enough to make their own decisions concerning their lives and their country. In response to the despotism, injuries and caprices of the ruling elite in Great Britain, who had placed themselves above accountability and the will of the American people, our Forefathers exercised their inalienable right to renounce and abolish that regime and replace it with a limited form of consensual republican government where power and sovereignty was invested in the individual and bound by the rule of written law.
What is happening now in America is that a slim majority of ”the people” have decided to abandon the principles of limited government and the rule of law in favor of rule by the machinations and arbitrary fiat of a political “elite” who are selected purely on their ability to deliver entitlement funding and services, not on their ability to govern in an effective and fiscally responsible manner. This corrosive and corrupt arrangement, where too many lazy and irresponsible people survive by preying on hardworking taxpayers, is a product of the declining state of personal and public virtue in our country. In the not too distant past, Americans valued the freedom and dignity that self-sufficiency and personal independence brought them. Dependency was considered a shameful thing – a consequence of personal weakness and failure. Today, Socialist elites, such as Barack Obama, cater outrageously to people who look to government to do what those people themselves are able but unwilling to do for their own welfare. Politicians entrusted with wise representatiion have instead made a conscious effort to de-stigmatize unnatural dependency. They do this by propagating the phony narrative that the people who use our social safety nets as a hammock are the victims of Capitalism and the “greedy” rich. Never mind that the rich pay approximately 70 percent of the total quantity of revenue taken in.
What we see here is the mutually reinforcing collapse of private and public virtue, where public officials and private individuals conspire to steal and redistribute the wealth of productive Americans not just for the benefit of people who genuinely can’t help their own need, but also for the benefit of numerous lazy freeloaders. Worse yet, this conspiracy is motivated primarly to buy votes while at the same time it is purposely cloaked in a false claim of “compassion for the poor” while trumpeting the “harsh lack of compassion” in anyone who objects to this subterfuge. To compound that abuse and try to strengthen their case, both of these classes of thieves, having convinced each other of the righteousness of their larceny, have turned to the media for propagandizing their “redistributionist” racket as an honorable and noble form of altruism, while viciously and dishonestly vilifying the victims who dare to protest it. Once you can convince people that crime is a virtue, you have corrupted and debased them to the point where you can convince them of anything, including the “need” for everyone to surrender their freedom and the fruits of their honest labor.
One might think that such a thing could never happen in this country, but consider what happened during and and after the enactment of the ObamaCare individual mandate, when the government elite in Washington ignored the Constitution and rule of written law in this country and overturned the Founding Principle that rights and responsibilities are derived from the Individual, not the State. It all began when a majority of the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate violated their solemn oaths to uphold the Constitution, and in true Orwellian fashion attempted to classify inaction as action in order to force Americans to purchase health insurance so that the government could fund its latest multi-trillion dollar entitlement program. Unable to pass the individual mandate’s exaction as a tax, Congress passed it as a regulatory penalty and then sent it on to President Obama for signature. At this point, the President violated his own oath of office to uphold the Constitution and signed the bill with its illegal penalty in place. From there, things went from bad to worse.
After this illegal penalty was rightly challenged in court, the Obama Administration, in yet another Orwellian sleight of hand, arbitrarily decided to ignore the language in the statute and dishonestly declared that the unconstitutional penalty it had signed into law was now a tax, in spite of the fact that the exaction was repeatedly and explicitly defined as a penalty. This completely arbitrary ex post facto alteration of the language in the statute was finally argued before the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice John Roberts violated his oath to uphold the Constitution and arbitrarily decided to ignore and alter the language in the statute that Congress and the President signed into law. By arbitrarily alterating the language in the law and judging the constitutionality of the mandate based on this alteration, not only did the Chief Justice violate the Constitution by engaging in what his fellow justices described as an unconstitutional act of “judicial tax writing”, but the Chief Justice, following in the footsteps of President Obama, also trampled on the rule of law by declaring that the language in a statute meant nothing – that it could be arbitrarily altered after it was written and signed into law.
Clearly, this is an argument against the rule of written law and in favor of the rule of arbitrary fiat. This outrage permitted Congress to get away with passing a tax it never enacted and enabled all three branches of government to violate the Constitution and rule of law with impunity. When the Founders and Framers established our tricameral system of government, they did so with the intent that all three branches would serve to prevent each other from committing unconstitutional expansions of power that undermined the rule of law and freedom of American citizens. Instead, as we find that with the passage of the ObamaCare individual mandate, all three branches become a mutually reinforcing vehicle that serves the unchecked expansion of government power and arbitrary rule.
These are not the actions of a virtuous government that could legitimately command our lawful compliance and respect. Instead, these are the actions of an arrogant political establishment that serves itself at the expense of the freedom and prosperity of the American people. This is a troubling matter in itself, but what is even more disconcerting is what this despicable political establishment reveals about the character of the people who are responsible for its existence. A virtuous people would never tolerate a political establishment that eagerly violates the Constitutional compact between the people and the state. In the decade preceding the American Revolution, the violation of the social compact between the British Colonists in America and their capricious and unaccountable government in London constituted grounds for revolution. Today, a venal segment of our populace not only tolerates the violation of our social compact and the rule of law by a similarly arrogant political elite, it actually demands these violations and rewards the traitors who commit them.
For all the talk of reforming and restraining our government, this can never be achieved unless we address the corrupted state of private and public virtue in America. For its part, the GOP has spent a lot of time talking about values but it hasn’t spent much time talking about virtues, probably because so many Republicans have compromised their own public virtue. Democrats, on the other hand, aren’t even remotely interested in restoring the virtues that made our country great – they’re too busy trying to de-stigmatize both their own lack of public virtue and their entitlement constituency’s lack of private virtue. The only people who have made a determined effort to restore these values are the grassroots conservative movements in this country, and they have struggled mightily in the face of fierce opposition from the Left and its slander artists in the mainstream media. However, the Left’s efforts to prevent the restoration of private and public virtue in this country does not excuse the Right’s own failure to convince the American people of the imperative and genuine practical benefits of re-embracing the virtues that made America the freest, strongest and most prosperous nation on earth. Republicans, Libertarians, and grassroots conservatives must make a sincere commitment to uphold and promote those virtues, and they must impart the fact that these are universal, common sense virtues that have enabled human beings regardless of their race, sex or creed to live both free and prosperous. We must also make clear that when we talk about these private and public virtues, we are also talking about civic duty. Contrary to President Obama’s delusional propaganda, our primary and essential civic duty is to provide for ourselves, not rob others by decree. If a citizen refuses to do what is possible to do in fulfilling the fundamental personal and civic responsibility of self-support, then that citizen is a selfish burden rather than a productive member of society who contributes the resources that provide for the common good. Individuals and businesses – not the government, and not the unproductive members of the entitlement class – pay the taxes that build our military, our infrastructure, our educational system, our social safety nets, etc..
Yes, we the People who believe in private and public virtue built our country. We built ALL of it! The government does fulfill some of the legitimate functions enumerated above, but where do the funds come from? The funds come from taxes paid by self-sufficient hard-working Americans and those funds are far too often squandered on the vote-buying redistribution schemes of corrupt politicians. The American people must be reminded of the importance of private and public virtue and its correlation to civic duty if we are to retain our freedom, strength and prosperity not only for ourselves, but for future generations of Americans.
Teaching Public Virtue
TEACHING PUBLIC VIRTUE (PART I)
by Robert Williams
There is little controversy about the need for adults to educate their young by utilizing some sort of public or private schooling methods. The common desire and expectation is that the young will grow up instilled with sufficient societal skills to assume adult responsibilities by the time they are 21 years of age. These societal skills include the basics of academic subjects such as reading, writing, and arithmetic — plus an understanding of what society in general considers behavior beneficial to, or detrimental to, the advancement of the human species. Behavioral topics constitute what is most often meant by the words “morals” and “virtues” and “vices”. Be their origin divine or secular — the usefulness of such principles to society is seldom questioned because everyone throughout history has noticed that humans without such training are like ships without rudders that are condemned to the whim and fancy of nature’s winds and tides and can do much harm.
Since its foundation, America has used morals taught by the Christian religion as a basis for distinguishing “good” from “bad”. It is not surprising then, that any kind of instruction of appropriate behavior is in the minds of many Americans automatically associated with religion. While it used to be that Christianity was openly espoused and practiced in public schools, modern interpretation of the First Amendment tends to prohibit such. The end result is that the teaching of “moral” behavior has little or no emphasis in modern public schools. Unless private schooling and parental guidance can fill the gap, too many citizens can now grow up without any rudder one could call “virtuous”. The result is rampant bribery, dishonesty, and general chicanery at all levels of American society including the highest levels of government and finance. A ruinous condition to be sure.
It should be obvious that if our society is to right itself, it must restore a behavioral rudder. Call that rudder what you may, it has to be taught to our young. In the hopes of avoiding a religious connotation and for the sake of discussion, I term it here “public virtue” or a “public value system”. It should not matter who believes what about the origin of such a system as long as there is a majority agreement about the good public impact of its principles. Deciding on the enumeration of these principles is really not all that hard. We merely have to pick from the common-sense evidence of what has worked well through the ages. Be charitable, don’t lie, don’t steal, reserve violence for self-defense, be civil in general, observe others’ rights as defined by the Constitution and the laws, etc.
The question is, how can we restore the teaching of such principles into public schools without running afoul of the First Amendment and ACLU law suits? One answer may be to use words which cannot be associated automatically with religion. Existing classes called “civics” for instance, could include topics called “principles of social behavior” instead of being called “morals”. In colleges they could be associated with “the psychology of public behavior” or some such. It is a shame we should have come to the point where such subtleties become necessary, but hey — they are used all the time in “polite society” — such as calling sexual organs “private parts”.
The final answer of course will depend on how much of the public can be alerted for putting sufficient pressure on elected school boards to have any effect.
TEACHING PUBLIC VIRTUE (PART II)
By Michael Dennin
It’s no secret that much of the support that Barack Obama has received over the years comes from young people, and it’s no secret a lot of them think he’s “cool”. No doubt, part of this comes from the slick persona he has projected to the public, and some of it comes from his hipster pot-smoking days in Hawaii when he was a member of the Choom Gang. However, a lot of the appeal has to do with the ages old tendency of young people to be naive, idealistic, liberal and even collectivist-minded – traits that are commonly associated with the Left. To be anything otherwise – i.e., conservative – is often considered backwards, lame and uncool. Naturally, Leftist ideologues and politicians promote and exploit those attitudes for their own benefit. What can the Right do to counter the Left’s propaganda?
In a nutshell, Conservatives and Libertarians have to counter the collectivist lies that Socialists are feeding young Americans. One of the most outrageous of these lies is the one that President Obama peddled at his recent inauguration speech – that our entitlements and government’s socialist redistribution schemes are what makes this country great. They’re not. What made this country great is individual freedom and initiative. It was the hard work of the people who settled the American wilderness, farmed its lands and toiled in factories to make a better life for themselves and their children that made this country great. The government didn’t build that. The Left’s socialist redistribution schemes didn’t build that. Individual freedom and initiative built that.
And this brings us to a little thing called History and what Socialism did build. It built the Soviet Union and its Gulag Archipelago. It built the Killing Fields of Cambodia. It built the starving wastelands of the Ukrainian Holomodor, China’s “Great Leap Forward”, Mengistu’s Ethiopia and the Kim dynasty’s North Korea. It built the re-education camps of Communist Vietnam. It built the Berlin Wall. It built the most rights-repressive socio-economic system in human history, killing 100 million human beings and destroying every society and economy that it touched. It built the Great Lie that Socialists can bring freedom and prosperity to all by robbing individuals of their freedom and prosperity. This totalitarian Lie is the roadmap to slavery and ruin. As William Faulkner pointed out in his numerous stories about the American South, Man cannot defy Nature with impunity, and it is Man’s Nature to be free. When men defied that truth here in America it led to the catastrophe of our Civil War and the decades of strife that followed. When men defied that truth in Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Southeast Asia and elsewhere, it brought more war, death and destruction. Those who forget and ignore this bitter lesson of history risk repeating it themselves. Our young people need to be made aware of this.
Finally, the Right must aggressively attack the Collectivist lies and propaganda of the Left. We must counter the Left’s campaign to de-stigmatize government dependency and its phony narrative that freeloaders are the “victims” of Capitalism and the greed of the “rich”. This is naked power-mongering at its worst, and it must be exposed as such. Dependency – most particularly dependency on the government – is not a good or desirable thing. Independence is the key to freedom. Dependent people can never be free. Dependent people can never be the masters of their own destiny. Dependency is not cool – it sucks, and the “progressives” who promote dependency for the sake of enhancing their own power are not cool. They’re not even progressive – they are Socialists. They are not revolutionaries, they are reactionaries who still cling to an 18th Century socio-economic ideology that should have perished with the Berlin Wall. The only true revolutionary ideal is Individual Freedom. It is this ideal that represents the true revolutionary break from the long dark centuries of State-imposed tyranny and totalitarianism. Again, Conservatives and Libertarians must spell this out to young people.
Leftists are waging open war on Individual Freedom and they are targeting their propaganda at the most vulnerable segment of society, our youth. If we wish to preserve Individual Freedom in this country, we must make it our duty to actively promote it to our youth. Their hearts and minds are the battleground for America’s future and we must arm them with the truth.
Unalienable Rights
UNALIENABLE RIGHTS
by Robert Williams
The dictionary defines “inalienable (unalienable)” as not subject to transfer (cannot be taken away from those designated and then given to others), inviolable (cannot be violated), non-negotiable (cannot be misconstrued or changed) , and absolute (no hedging allowed).
The American Declaration of Independence avows that all men (persons) are created equal, which is a clear rejection of the inherited divine right of Kings or of some self-perpetuating elite group. The Declaration also says that all persons are not only equal but also endowed with unalienable rights, “— among which are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. It further declares just exactly what government should do. “ — secure these rights”, by “— deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. The Declaration also points out that “— whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it —”.
The American Constitution lists more unalienable rights including the right to free speech, free assembly and redress of wrongs, and the right of the people to bear arms against the possibility of a runaway government that suppresses any of the sacred rights reserved to the people. The Constitution clearly defines a balanced three-branched government whose primary function is protection of the people’s rights — and while it may use democratic principles — it is more properly defined as a representative Republic than a grass-roots Democracy. The Constitution provides a means to be amended by majority approval of the public. Those who see the Constitution as a “Living Document” which should keep up with modern times and modern culture changes, should also make sure that proposed amendments do not violate any of the peoples’ non-negotiable rights already enshrined for the ages.
The American Revolution was sparked by over-taxation without representation and there was sound reason for this. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in 1819 (McCullough v. Maryland) that, “— An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation”. Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that, “ — To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it”. Jefferson further declared that, “ — we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt ….. I place economy among the most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared”.
There is more and more reason to be alert to the current fiscal crisis in Washington. What would Jefferson have thought of a 16 trillion dollar debt burden with no cap? What would he have thought of killing job growth by over-taxing the very folks who have the money to create industry and jobs? What would Jefferson have thought of misleading the public to think only of tax rates when it is the total quantity of taxes paid that would show the rich pay almost 70 percent of all revenue already? What would all our founding fathers have thought of the steady erosion of citizen rights by an ever more bloated government which increasingly bypasses our Constitution by taking on arbitrary extra-constitutional powers?
I bet the same thing I am thinking now. Time for a clean-out of a bloated and corrupt fiscally irresponsible government and a return to the basic virtuous principles of our original intent that served us so well during our first 170 years or so. Of course for my expressed desire to restore our former wisdom and prosperity I will be viciously vilified by those misled to believe that they have a birthright to steal my hard-earned money and a birthright to rule unwisely. I know that temporarily I may be of a minority opinion, but I am not disturbed by that because I know I am in the right and they are in the wrong and will eventually suffer for their misconstruction of reality.
I, “Extremist”
I, “EXTREMIST”
By Michael Dennin
I have a confession to make: I am an “extremist”, and if you are reading this confession, chances are you’re an “extremist”, too.
You are probably wondering when did this happen – when did I become an “extremist”? If you’re anything like this “extremist”, you work an honest day’s work to put the bread on your table and don’t expect or demand that others do this for you. You budget your household finances and live within your means – sometimes this means making sacrifices and cutting out things you can’t afford, but you don’t complain about it. You pay your bills and your taxes on time because you’re a fiscally responsible person. You provide for your children, and despite the cultural sewer we live in, you do your best to raise them to be moral, law-abiding responsible individuals such as yourself. You do all of these things, not because someone has to tell you to do them or forces you to do them, but because you believe that they are the right things to do.
So, where did you and I go wrong? We went wrong when we started expecting these things not only from ourselves but from our fellow citizens, and then we committed the cardinal sin of expecting those same things from our government.
For this, the Left has been smearing us as “extremists”.
Of course, this isn’t all our fault. You and I weren’t born with these “extremist” values and expectations. Our parents instilled these “extremist” values and expectations in us, as did our “extremist” ancestors who preceded them. They taught us to value personal responsibility, self-sufficiency, and the freedom, dignity and respect that are derived from them. They taught us that dependency is neither a virtue nor a strength, and when we abdicate our personal responsibility we not only abdicate our own individual freedom and dignity, we weaken our fellow citizens and our society.
While our parents and their parents are largely to blame for teaching us the “extremist” beliefs that you and I have come to value, perhaps the greatest offenders of all were the “extremists” who founded this nation and its government. It was these “extremists”, operating on the understanding that for Man to be free, rights and responsibilities must be derived from the Individual, not the State/Collective, who built the United States and framed the Constitution upon the foundation of Individual Freedom. It was these “extremists” who, recognizing the corruptive influence of power on men, invested power and sovereignty in the Individual instead of the State and the political elite who constitute the state and wield its coercive power. Having been subjected to the arbitrary fiat of power-hungry tyrants, they established a Constitution based on the “extremist” notion of a limited fiscally responsible government bound by the rule of written law, and they handed this “extremist” social compact down to us so that we would not have to suffer the same wanton lawlessness and despotism that they endured during their lifetime.
Despite the wisdom and prescience of our “extremist” ancestors, today we find the nihilistic Leftists who are attempting to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” into a socialist state portraying the people who have remained true to the virtues and values that made our people and our country great as “extremists”. Why do they do this? Because these nihilists know that their ideology cannot compete against our own, therefore they must slander our character to delegitimize our beliefs. In terms of Logic, this is what is referred to as an ad hominem fallacy – when you can’t win a debate based purely on the merits of your argument, attack your opponent on a personal level to distract from the failure of your argument. In contemporary political parlance, this is referred to as “the politics of personal destruction”, and this gutter-level skullduggery plays straight out of the “progressive” playbook, Rules for Radicals, written by Barack Obama’s mentor Saul Alinsky (the original “community organizer”).
There’s another reason why the Progressive/Socialist Left has to crawl down into the sandbox and throw its little rhetorical plastic shovels at us. The Left is terrified of the conservative grassroots movements that have burst onto our nation’s political scene since the mid-2000s. The hysterical vitriol spewing from the Left is a reflection of their fear of the existential threat that this popular movement poses to their socialist ideology and agenda. This is why “progressives” are bound and determined to strangle this movement in its crib, and since they cannot wage open ideological warfare and compete with our ideas – this would expose them as rank socialists/communists – they have to resort to childish name-calling. However, there is a peril to this tactic that all of us on the Right would do well to remember and remind the public over and over again – that it is a damning indictment of the Left, not the Right, that Leftists would label the virtues and values that we stand for – individual freedom, personal responsibility, limited government, fiscal responsibility and a dedication to our Constitution and the rule of written law – as “extremist”. What does that say about the Left? It says that they stand for socialism, dependency, unrestrained government, ruinous deficit spending, and the rule of arbitrary fiat dictated by a socialist political elite that has no regard for the Constitution and the rule of law. This is the Left’s idea of “moderate”.
So be it. If the Left is going to tar us as “extremists”, it’s time we returned the favor and explained to the American people exactly what the Left’s idea of “moderate” is all about. If we want to win the battle over public perception, we are going to have to fight smart and turn the Left’s underhanded tactics against itself.
Danger! There’s a Muddy Road Ahead
DANGER! THERE’S A MUDDY ROAD AHEAD
by Robert Williams
There may be a few people around that would do nothing to “offend” an attacker even if that attacker were raping their own daughter right in front of their eyes. I am not one of those people. But neither am I in favor of unnecessarily offending folks who most Americans would think of as “decent”. Therefor I make an effort here not to insult where insult is not deserved, but I don’t hold back when it comes to raw fundamentals. These raw fundamentals include my instant willingness to defend my family and friends and country even if I might ultimately have to include violence as a last resort. That is why I joined the U.S. Army in the 1950‘s, to defend what I sincerely hold dear and valuable about my homeland which is the United States of America.
So just what do I hold dear and and valuable? It is really rather simple and straightforward. The founding fathers of our country made a sincere effort to overcome their seemingly insurmountable differences in order to forge a Constitution that would stand the test of time and seal in place the firm commitment to a balance between individual liberty and governance by temporary representatives elected by an adult citizenry where every legal citizen has an equal single vote. Then what endangers this concept? Foreign powers have tried to disrupt it in two world wars and Islamic Jihadists continue to hate America’s existence because we stand for the freedom they wish to deny everyone. So far we have successfully resisted such blatant external threats. The internal challenges are in some respects more difficult because they are more subtle and gradual over time. It has become obvious to me that as a societies go, the Europeans have gone completely into “ineptocracy” and are now suffering the dire consequences. No, I didn’t invent the word. Somebody else did, but I do think it more and more fits our own American society and therein lies the danger.
I recently ran across a definition of ineptocracy as “A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.” I would only add to this that America has become close enough to that definition so that I believe we are in serious danger of no longer having enough producers to balance or even begin to pay off a National Debt of unbelievable proportions that is increasing BY THE DAY. And that is only one of our major problems. The others being a decline in general public intelligence in spite of pouring billions of taxpayer money into schools, enough foolish greed to go all around, and a rapid drift towards the type of socialist-communist insanity which collapsed Soviet Russia and got Europe into very deep do-do.
After observing what has transpired in our country over the past few years I have concluded that both our major political parties and the general public are culprits in this disaster. I include myself because I was economically and politically asleep for most of my working life and only woke up to pay real attention after the shock of 9/11. I am way past the age of vigorous physical activity, but I can still YELL! So I’m going to do a lot of yelling. I believe we now need a wake-up resurgence of the kind of old-fashioned deep-down American patriotism, accountability, frugality, respect for real education, and hard work, that too many Americans now sneer at. I don’t give a damn who sneers at me — I’ll do my own sneering for a change — and I’ll do it especially at those I feel are the most guilty — namely our political party hacks, the millions of lawyers and lobbyists and bureaucrats supporting them, farms and corporations on welfare, and most of all the damned socialists and communists who have infiltrated our educational system for so long and duped our young people. THEY HAVE TO BE SHOWN THE DOOR!!
The fundamental issue is the same as it was in 1775. VIGILANCE AGAINST TYRANNY. The King and government of England forced their American Colonists to violence as the last resort when all diplomacy had failed. The goal of the American people now should be the same non-violent initial diplomacy, but with an added advantage. In 1775 the American Colonials had no say in their governance. Now we American citizens still have the vote, but our so-called “representatives” no longer reflect the interests of a truly free people because huge government agencies and their non-elected bureaucrats have eroded so many of our original liberties and taken on so much unconstitutional power that the whole idea of government of the people, by the people, and for the people has been distorted almost beyond recognition. “Obamacare” is just the latest and most heinous example. 2700 pages of government regulation of our bodies. We don’t even own our own selves anymore — which means we can be completely controlled. THINK ABOUT THAT! But the most alarming thing of all, is that a large proportion of Americans have been hoodwinked into thinking that Obamacare is a good thing! You don’t believe me? THEN READ THE 2700 PAGES!
Betrayal of the system our founding fathers presented us began not too long after the 1930‘s when “Social Security” became popular. It started as a voluntary “savings” program with certain government “guarantees” that you’d get your money back when you retired. One of these guarantees was that the funds would remain untouched by other government expenditures. Later this promise was violated by including collected Social Security funds in the “general fund” and then spending that money lavishly on other government social engineering projects. So much for government promises. There are many other examples — far too many. When the spendthrift politicians finally ran out of taxpayer money they borrowed from foreign countries including America-hating China. Now that debt has reached unfathomable trillions so huge that economists tell us every American baby born today starts out life owing foreigners about $50,000 and that sum is going up daily!
To top it all off, each U.S. government since the 1930‘s has squandered the citizens’ hard-earned money on ever more hair-brained projects that never reach their stated goals but always cost more and more money to pay more and more enforcement agents. The government itself is so corrupted by money and power mongering that it even affects our Supreme Court that sides more and more with the power-mongers. There is a hole in the dam of Liberty and it is widening BY THE DAY. If we are to prevent a total tyranny in the next decade we have to do more than stick a finger in the hole. WE’VE GOT TO JUMP IN WITH BOTH FEET ! That is the fundamental issue requiring immediate action. Jumping in with both feet in a disciplined and highly visible way as a unified force of true American Patriots who are uncompromising in one very important issue — UNCOMPROMISING DEDICATION TO PREVENTING THE TYRANNY OF BIG INVASIVE CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT.
George Washington was uncompromising in the following related aspect. In his 1786 Farewell Address he warned against overly intrusive government as follows: “It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in their exercise of powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to use it which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our own country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them.”
General George Washington was advocating “reciprocal checks” of one department on another, but he did not seem to anticipate what is happening now, which is THE COLLUSION OF ALL GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS TO CONSOLIDATE POWER AGAINST THE PEOPLE AND IN FAVOR OF INTIMATELY RUNNING EVERYONE’S LIVES BY DECREE OF SOME “PANEL OF EXPERTS” WHO FANCY THEMSELVES SMARTER THAN THOSE WHOSE LIVES THEY PROPOSE TO CONTROL. That is what the 2nd. Continental Army is to guard against — with our lives if it ever comes to that. But it won’t come to violence by our own intent. As it was in our first violent revolution, there will only be a second violent revolution in America if the forces of government run so far amok as an attempt to destroy American liberties altogether, as Hitler and Stalin did to their people at the cost of millions of lives and eventual economic collapse.
THE DUTY OF ALL AMERICAN PATRIOTS IS TO WATCH FOR THE EARLY SIGNS OF TYRANNY AND ALERT THE PEOPLE. SUCH EARLY SIGNS ARE QUITE EVIDENT IN THE SERIES OF ADMINISTRATIONS AND CONGRESSES SINCE AND INCLUDING FDR’S GOVERNMENT OF THE 1930′s. THE TIME FOR ALERT IS NOW!! THE SIGNS HAVE MULTIPLIED AND WILL CONTINUE TO MULTIPLY AS LONG AS ABOUT HALF OF THE POPULATION IS HOODWINKED BY FREE MONEY CONCOCTED FROM NOTHING BUT MORE DEBT. BUT THERE IS A LIMIT TO HOW MUCH LENDERS WILL CONTINUE TO LEND AS THE BORROWER SHOWS LESS AND LESS FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY. AND THERE IS A LIMIT ON HOW FEW PRODUCERS CAN SUSTAIN HOW MANY FREE-LOADERS. THIS IS VERY EVIDENT IN EUROPE RIGHT NOW!
FAIRNESS IS NOT ENFORCED EQUALITY. FAIRNESS IS PROVIDING THE LIBERTY TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ONESELF IN A MANNER CHOSEN BY THE INDIVIDUAL — AND NOT BY THE GOVERNMENT. FAIRNESS IS EARNING YOUR MONEY BY YOUR OWN LABOR, NOT DEMANDING THAT SOMEONE ELSE SUPPORT YOU BY THEIR LABOR. LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT POWERS ARE CLEARLY LISTED IN THE CONSTITUTION AND WE THE PEOPLE MUST SEE TO IT THAT OUR GOVERNMENT DOES NOT EXCEED THOSE POWERS. HOW? — GATHER AND SPEAK OUT ! — MARCH AND DEMAND! — AND VOTE!
