Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Can you hear us... now?


Jerry sent this illustration in:


It seems to fit this Michelle Malkin story perfectly.

This country is still center-right. And the enemies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence must be defeated politically, first in 2010 and again in 2012, if the Republic is to survive.


Tuesday, November 03, 2009

How Beautiful We Were

American Digest:

A short list. In no particular order.

We had car shows, boat shows, beauty shows and dog shows.

We ran robots on the surface of Mars by remote control.

Our women came from all over the world in all shapes and sizes hues and scents.

We actually believed that all men are created equal and tried to make it come true.

Everybody liked our movies and loved our television shows.

We tried to educate everybody, whether they wanted it or not. Sometimes we succeeded.

We did Levis.

We held the torch high and hundreds of millions came. No matter what the cost.

We saved Europe twice and liberated it once.

We believed so deeply and so abidingly in free speech that we protected and even honored and in some cases even elected traitors.

We let you be as freaky as you wanted to be.

We paid you not to plant crops and not to work.

We died in the hundreds of thousands to end slavery here and around the world.

We invented Jazz.

We wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysberg address.

We went to the moon to see how far we could hit a golf ball...

Read the rest at American Digest.


Monday, November 02, 2009

Sound the Bugles: It Is Our Time to Act


Let your voice be heard.

“As President Ronald Reagan said: ‘Since the American founding, we have been a people with a government, not the other way around.’”

“Now comes the Pelosi plan for a government takeover of health care. It is a freight train of runaway spending, bloated bureaucracy, mandates and higher taxes.

“If the liberals in Washington have their way, they will forever change the relationship between the government and ‘we the people.’

“If the Pelosi plan for a government takeover of health care passes, we will each become dependent on the political class in Washington for the provision of services of the most urgent and personal nature.

“Illness, our own, or more importantly the illness of a parent, or a spouse, or a child, has the capacity to suspend our priorities.

“What was important before the crisis grows dim in the harsh light of disease affecting a loved one.

“The Pelosi health care plan targets us when we are most vulnerable.

“The Pelosi health care plan makes us dependent on the state at the most urgent moment in the life of our family.

“Their hope: that little by little, we’ll yield our freedoms and our resources to the ever-growing appetite of the federal government.

“After years of runaway federal spending, borrowing, bailouts and takeovers, it’s easy to give way to despair; but I assure you: there is a remnant that still cherishes freedom, personal responsibility and limited government all across this land.

“I have seen it in the faces of ordinary Americans who have traveled to rallies, town halls and tea parties. I have read it in my mail. I have heard it from friends and neighbors who have lost their jobs but not lost their faith in America.

“The time has come for those who still cherish our ideals—the ideals of our founding: life, liberty and the pursuit of the American dream—to arise.

“Wherever you are, whoever you are, let your voice be heard.

“Republicans in Congress who are standing in the gap, cannot do this alone.

“I often tell my colleagues that a minority in Congress plus the American people equals a majority.

“‘We the people’ have the power to stop out-of-control spending at the federal level.

“‘We the people’ have to power to stop the Pelosi health care plan, in its effort to take over one-sixth of the American economy.

“And ‘we the people’ have the ability to protect the finest health care system this world has ever known and demand real health care reform that will reduce the cost of health care without growing government.

“I appeal to you not as Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, but as Americans.

“You cherish freedom, you fear the crushing weight of big government and debt that Congress and this Administration are leaving to our posterity, and you still believe that the strength of this nation is in the character and courage and ingenuity of the American people, and not the politicians and the bureaucrats.

“This is your moment, now is your time, let your voice be heard.”

This is our call to political action. Our armed forces, police officers, firefighters and emergency personnel serve in harm's way every single day.

Now is our time. If you are eligible to vote in any of the special elections, do so. This is a political battle for the future of our country and the choice is clear: freedom or socialism; liberty or tyranny.

This is our mission now: to defeat the Statists who would burn the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the very fabric of our founding.

Contact Your Representatives Now. Tell them that you choose freedom.


Wednesday, October 28, 2009

What to do when they're expecting (a decision on the troops)


Complain to The New York Times about all the attention and criticism paid to your "date night" on Broadway.

Collect a Nobel Peace Prize for actions and accomplishments unknown.

Fly to Copenhagen to lobby for the Olympics which, by the way, worked as well as the Stimulus package.

Play 24 rounds of golf; by comparison President George W. Bush, mocked mercilessly by the media for the same 'offense', played a third as much golf as 0.

Attend 23 fundraisers in nine months; by comparison, W. attended 6 fundraisers during his first year in office.

Given thirty-plus speeches pressing for socialized medicine... and I think that's understating things.

Name disgraceful moonbat Alan 'K Street Whore' Grayson "an outstanding member of Congress".

Very, very important things to do. Much more important than making a decision regarding our men and women in combat.


Monday, October 12, 2009

Exclusive: Thomas Jefferson on Hannity


Tonight on Hannity -- a world-exclusive, the first televised interview with Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States.

Hannity: Sir, thank you so much for meeting with us. It's a unique honor and privilege.

Jefferson: You're welcome, young man. Your industrious society has created many marvels worthy of the American people.

Hannity: Mr. President, President Obama enters office with a huge amount of "hoopla" and an almost messianic belief that he can "heal the environment", fix the economy, and solve problems like global terrorism. Is some sort of reckoning certain?

Jefferson: No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

Hannity: His immense, trillion-dollar "stimulus" package puts control of the people's money in the hands of a few central planners. What is your reaction to that strategy?

Jefferson: Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories... I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Hannity: So you are generally opposed to a top-down stimulus package and prefer that the spending decisions reside with the people who pay taxes?

Jefferson: I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Hannity: What about Democrats' tendency to grow the size of government and intrude in every aspect of our lives... from the New Deal's entitlement programs, transportation, energy, health care, etc.?

Jefferson: My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Hannity: And increasing taxes on the highest earners -- the "progressive" income tax?

Jefferson: A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.

Hannity: How troubling is it that the amount of debt that the Federal Government is undertaking -- combined with entitlement programs that are massively underfunded -- means that we are passing huge amounts of debt to our children and grandchildren.

Jefferson: It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world... Never spend your money before you have earned it.

Hannity: What would you like to say to the those of our current leaders who are operating under ethical clouds: from Rangel, to Dodd, Murtha, Frank, Mollohan, Clinton, Geithner, Holder and Reid.

Jefferson: Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Hannity: You've seen one of my "man-in-the-street" interviews, where we ask random people simple questions about current events, like 'who is the Vice President'? We found during the Obama campaign that many of those voting for him were completely uninformed and various surveys confirm that general ignorance about the man and his motives. Is that troubling?

Jefferson: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Hannity: Mr. President, what are your thoughts about President Obama basically ignoring Republican requests for a bi-partisanship approach to the stimulus package, stating "I won" and to get over themselves?

Jefferson: Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Hannity: The concept of welfare, where the state redistributes wealth to the poor even though many could easily work, has been statistically shown to increase single-parent families, a culture of dependency and crime. What are your thoughts on welfare?

Jefferson: Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

Hannity: Moving to the First Amendment: this concept of blogging, where anyone can be a well-read author or pundit, is a new innovation for politics. Do you believe that blogging is a useful tool to promote Democracy?

Jefferson: Information is the currency of democracy... Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Hannity: Interestingly enough, the whole newspaper business has suffered mightily with the rise of the Internet. Your reaction?

Jefferson: I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

Hannity: Regarding the Second Amendment, Barack Obama has historically opposed private ownership and possession of firearms. In fact, his home city of Chicago has onerous regulations that effectively prohibit guns altogether, yet the city has the highest number of murders per year of any state in the Union. Your thoughts?

Jefferson: No man shall be debarred the use of arms... Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

Hannity: How do you respond to Democrats who have made a variety of moves to revive the ill-named "Fairness Doctrine", which threatens conservative free speech and which was already ruled unconstitutional once in our history?

Jefferson: I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man... It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Hannity: Final question, sir. What about the Democrats' massive dependency programs, entitlement programs, and efforts to censor free speech such as the "Fairness Doctrine"? Doesn't this violate the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

Jefferson: Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Hannity: Thank you so much for your valuable time, Mr. President.

Next on Greta, breaking news regarding some teen who killed some other teen on some island...


Note: Every Jefferson response is verbatim as reported by BrainyQuote. If statements were made at separate times, they are separated by an ellipsis when combined into a single response.
Fox News Ticker: Hijacked from from the brilliant People's Cube.


Sunday, October 11, 2009

Whom Despots Fear


“Greece would not have fallen had it obeyed Polybius in everything, and when Greece did meet disaster, its only help came from him” Pausanias, 8.37.2, Inscription on the Temple of Despoina near Arakesion.


In Book VI of his Histories, the ancient Greek historian Polybius described three basic forms of government, each categorized by the number of those in power. He listed monarchy (rule by the one); aristocracy (rule by the few); and democracy (rule by the many). Polybius described, over time, how each type of government would gradually decline into their various corrupted forms of tyranny, oligarchy and mob rule, respectively.

Polybius believed that Republican Rome had designed a new form of government that could help check this inevitable decline. Rome combined all three forms of government -- monarchy (its elected executives, called consuls); aristocracy (the Senate); and democracy (the popular assemblies). In this mixed form of goverment, each branch would check the corrupting ambitions and power of the others.

Plato, Aristotle and Cicero all praised the construction of a "mixed constitution" and the requirement of a separation of powers within government.

The French nobleman and legal expert Charles-Louis de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu, studied the rise and fall of the Roman Republic. He believed that a properly designed government, in order to prevent tyranny, would require three branches of government. He wrote, "If it is to provide its citizens with the greatest possible liberty, a government must have certain features. First, since 'constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it … it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power' . This is achieved through the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government... [to prevent any one] from acting tyrannically."

The British philosopher John Locke was also keenly interested in a design for government that would prevent it from descending into tyranny. In the late 17th century, Locke argued that monarchs had no "divine right" to rule; instead, he asserted that the source of power lay in the people. Furthermore, he stated that humans were born into this world with certain natural and "inalienable" rights including to "life, liberty and property". Locke believed that government could not grant these rights because they were God-given; therefore, no government could take them away or withhold them from the people.

Thomas Jefferson used Locke's concepts as central tenets when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He proclaimed the government's duty to protect the sacred attributes of the individual: "...to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form..."

"...when 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."

As well, America's Founding Fathers repeatedly cited Baron de Montesquieu's seminal Spirit of the Laws and its emphasis on checks and balances within government. As James Madison wrote, "the oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu."

We conservatives are originalists: If the Constitution's meaning is not interpreted as the framers intended, if it can be altered at will, then what protects any law from arbitrary interpretation, from the capricious whims of the ill-intentioned?

If the Constitution is "living and breathing", an amorphous guidebook of suggestions that may freely be interpreted based upon current events, trends, whims or biases, what then are the limits on government? And if the Constitution doesn't mean what it says, what protects the individuals from the encroachment of government intrusion into every aspect of individuals' lives?

The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution strictly limits the power of the Federal Government. It states, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. In the Founders' view, state and local governments were free to experiment -- to serve as "laboratories" in the words of Justice Louis Brandeis -- in areas prohibited to the federal government. In the 1980's, for example, Oregon's successful welfare reform efforts became the models for subsequent actions by other states and even the federal government.

When the federal government ignores and breeches the Tenth Amendment, it represents an illegal diminution of representative government at the state and local levels.

The once-powerful states, which created the federal government by ratifying the Constitution, have become -- in the words of Mark Levin -- "administrative appendages of the federal government." The states are subject to ever-increasing federal regulation, strangled by dictates from agencies old and new, and held hostage through billions in federal tax dollars. Levin asks, "Does anyone believe that the states would have originally ratified the Constitution had they known this would be their fate?"

The path the modern federal government is on today was accurately described by Stuart Chase in 1942. He wrote that the agenda of the Fabian Socialists -- who had launched a counter-revolution against America's founding -- was to create an authoritarian, centralized government. The agenda of the Fabian Socialists include:

• Strong, centralized government
• Government-controlled banking, credit and securities exchange (TARP, etc.)
• Government control over employment (the "Employee Free Choice Act" to speed unionization of the workplace)
• Unemployment insurance, old age pensions (lengthy unemployment benefits, Social Security)
• Universal medical care, food and housing programs (socialized medicine, food stamps, HUD)
• Access to unlimited government borrowing (massive deficits)
• A managed monetary system (an opaque Federal Reserve)
• Government control over foreign trade (China tire tariffs)
• Government control over natural energy sources, transportation and agricultural production (drilling prohibitions, Cap-and-Trade)
• Government regulation of labor (the Wagner Act, monopolistic power of trade unions)
• Heavy progressive taxation.

This indeed describes "the road we are traveling"; the direction accelerated by the branches of government controlled by modern Democrats. While it may no longer be called socialism directly, nonetheless socialism it is. The Fabian Socialist counter-revolution began in earnest in the U.S. in 1933 with the imposition of the "Welfare State" and has been steadily progressing since. It confiscates ever more taxes, consolidates ever more power, while bankrupting program after program. And always -- always -- the federal government proclaims its need for more money and more power, promising that if only it can levy one more tax, enforce one more regulation, it will be able to solve all of man's woes.

The Greek historian Thucydides observed that “The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.” And in writing about the calamitous Peloponnesian War that engulfed and ultimately destroyed his society, he added that, "Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought."

History teaches us that the decline of a society and the demise of a government comes with the institutionalization of corruption and a wanton disregard for the written law. Such is our situation today, wherein the states have become puppets of an all-powerful federal government that confiscates more and more private property while exerting increasing control over every aspect of our lives.

If we are to protect our society from despotism and decline, whose counsel should we then cherish? Should we abide by thousands of years of experience and the wisdom of history's greatest philosophers -- Polybius, Plato, Aristotle, Montesquieu, Locke, Jefferson, Adams and Madison among them? Men who understood the nature of a government's despotic decline and sought to construct a system to counter it?

Or should we disregard their guidance and follow instead the Fabian Socialists? Should we heed Cass Sunstein, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama?

The greatest bulwark against tyranny in America has always been the Constitution, which instantiates our carefully designed system of private property, God-given individual liberties and free enterprise.

If we are to protect our society from despotism and Fabian decline, whose counsel should we then cherish? I contend that we must fight the socialist counter-revolution using every political tool possible. We must return our country to the rule of law as defined by our founders and codified in the Constitution. Anything less condemns our descendants to the fate that Thucydides described.



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