Programmed People

Programmed People

 

Ever had a conversation (or tried to have one anyway) with someone who couldn’t focus on one main point if their lives depended on it? Chances are it isn’t just ADD. Too many people today react like Pavlov’s dog whenever important topics like politics or religion are brought up. Instead of an honest thoughtful exchange of ideas, so many people today regurgitate prepackaged responses to important questions like a Tourretes patient stuck on a spasm of talking points. Critical thinking and basic logic is a lost skill set.

It is nearly impossible to have an important two way conversation with someone like that because no matter what you say, it just isn’t registering with the gray matter between their ears. They aren’t thinking critically about what you said. What’s worse is that they aren’t just repeating words. Any one of a dozen push button topics will not only launch them instantly into insulting personal attacks, but they will believe the absolute worst about you without any evidence or further discussion.

Case in point: After the recent election, a friend and I were lightly joking about how stressful the night was for both sides until they brought up something their neighbor did that, in their words, “really pissed [them] off”. The next day after the election their neighbor had hung his American flag upside down to show his disapproval. My friend was incensed that someone would use that legitimate military signal for life threatening distress as a sign of their political opinion. They said they were angry because they had friends in the military that they felt would be highly offended by what they believed was a casual use of that vital signal of a life threatening situation.

Maybe there are some in the military that would be offended to see their sign of distress used for political posturing, but there are also some veterans who have done the exact same thing. There are many who believe that our country is at such a critical point that it isn’t just about the economy anymore, but about our core liberties, and yes even life threatening political policies that are destroying this country from the inside out. Try as I might I could not get them to see that. Being self-blinded to the serious liberty and life-threatening policy differences that do exist; my friend fell back on the baseless charge of racism to explain their neighbor’s behavior. My friend asserted that they knew I wasn’t a racist for my opposition to Obama, but that so many other people really only opposed Obama because of his race. My friend could see no other explanation for it.

Racism? Seriously? Nobody was charging liberals with racism when they called Bush a Nazi or a war criminal. Nobody was calling Jimmy Carter’s detractors racists back in the 1970’s when he employed some of the exact same policies that Obama has now. My friend had previously qualified the statement about their neighbor by saying he seemed nice. My friend made no mention of race or his neighbor’s thoughts about race previously. My friend said they had liked their neighbor before, but as baseless and insulting as it was, racism had to be the answer for why he turned his flag upside down.

Hearing the get-out-of-jail-free caveat that my friend just knew I was not a racist, I tried to offer my explanation for why their neighbor did what he did. I lowered my voice and considered my words carefully. Trying to both ease my friends concerns and relate to their situation, I first admitted that I too had turned my flag upside down for a brief amount of time when Obama won his first term in 2008 because of what I knew his policies would do to this country. My friend’s face collapsed. It was like a switch flipped in their heads and nothing I said next mattered. I was one of them.

Every example I cited of Obama’s direct involvement in the loss of our constitutional liberties was ignored and countered by unrelated or untrue accusations about Obama’s political adversaries. They just laughed when I cited Obama’s 6 trillion dollar increase in the deficit in only 4 years. My friend was stuck on the image of that flag being upside down and not why. “Yeah but Romney would not have changed that” was another repeated riposte. They even brought up Arizona’s immigration enforcement law and falsely asserted that it was somehow an example of racism that conservatives, like myself, allegedly tolerated as if it was a relevant counterpoint to the Obama TSA’s daily violation of the 4^th amendment. I even cited Supreme Court cases (which garnered nothing but glazed eyes). Finally I cited the chief example of why my friend was so upset about that flag being up-side down; Obama’s recent cover-up, lies, and abandonment of our people… even our Navy Seals in Benghazi, Libya whose calls for help went through to the White House situation room multiple times over hours. If they had been a part of a unit on a battlefield their flag would have been up-side down because they were cut off and dying. Their pleas for help were denied, they were murdered as the White House watched and then lied about it, and my friend refused to consider it as a valid reason why their neighbor might not be a racist just because he hung a flag upside down.

My friend, if they are still my friend, hasn’t said a word to me since. They are programmed. They are spring loaded to shoot off in a pre-planned spastic reaction to politics. Even when presented with undeniable, current, widely-reported facts, they can’t let go of the narrative. This is why people tread lightly around friends and family over politics and religion. Sad day. Guess, all I can do is pray for them now. Maybe they will listen to God.

Death of a Republic

Death of a Republic

 

A republic is a form of government that is characterized by adherence to foundational law regardless of popular opinion. In a republic, there is a difference between democratic law that can change depending on the simple-majority mood of the people or even just a few politicians who decide to do whatever they want and foundational law that is based on a super-majority of widely held core beliefs.

In the United States of America, those core beliefs were instituted into the foundational law of the republic through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Constitution provided the basic structure for our system of government and the Bill of Rights provided guarantees to safeguard our liberties and limit the power and growth of government.

After the structure of the Constitution was drafted it was sent to the states for approval because each state was independent and sovereign. The Constitution was not imposed on the states; it was agreed to by the states. Before the states agreed to adopt the Constitution they demanded a top ten list of basic protections against tyranny. The Bill of Rights was that list and again was not imposed on the states, but was a list of demands from the states for agreeing to the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was specifically written to protect individual people from tyranny and the Tenth Amendment specifically was written to protect the sovereignty of the states. The states and the people came first, not the federal government. That was the foundation of our republic.

In keeping with the super-majority aspect of what was republic law, the requirement for adopting the Constitution for the United States and our very union required three fourths of the legislatures of the states to agree. Any future changes to that foundational republic law required not only the same three fourths ratification from the states, but two thirds of each branch of congress and or the states just to open up an official constitutional convention to even begin the process. That is how broad-based and widely accepted, and hard to change that our foundational republic law was.

In keeping with the simplicity of republic law, the entire Constitution was only about 8 pages (in a modern size 10 font) and some of the amendments in the Bill of Rights were only one or two sentences long. That was the elegant fundamental simplicity of basic God given rights and the reason why a republic form of government was superior to all others. Almost anyone could understand and agree to the old republic law.

That was then.

Today, politicians and their circus performers in the media appeal not to the old republic laws, but to simply-majority popularity to garner votes from a gullible public that has forgotten why our forefathers declared their independence in the first place. Today’s democratic laws are not vetted against the old republic laws and do not require the same standards of wide acceptance to become law. A simple majority of 51% is all it takes. As a result, it is much easier to pass new democratic laws. Today the government and it’s lickspittles in the media pump the public for support of what they want and pit once unified groups against each other. It is a brilliant way for the government to manipulate the people and get what they want while at the same time fooling the voting public into to thinking they have control over the government. A special benefit here and a crisis there provide all the excuse needed to hit the public up to vote for politicians who promise to “fix” things by way of more laws that result in more authority for the government and less freedom for the people.

Compare the old republic law to the new health care law for example. It is over 2000 pages (that is just one law folks). It is written in a language only lawyers understand. It did not originate in the House as all revenue-generating (tax) bills are constitutionally required. To top it off, all polls the entire year it was being rammed through congress showed that the overwhelming majority of people were opposed to it and more than half the states immediately sued the federal government to stop it. The public’s opposition came too late. The bill was passed in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve when congress was supposed to have already gone home, but was forced to remain in session to pass the bill before the newly elected congressman who opposed it could stop the foul thing. The difference between the old foundational republic law requiring a super-majority of support and that unconstitutional, politically-corrupt, simple-majority democratic law is the difference between a secured freedom and tyranny.

That is where we are today. Now, one bad law, even a blatantly unconstitutional one, doesn’t topple a healthy republic. There were many bad and plainly unconstitutional democratic laws over the years. This one though was the crowning achievement of politically-corrupt simple-majority democratic law over the old republic because even the Supreme Court abandoned the Constitution to place its official stamp of approval on that wicked law. There are no checks and balances any more. The federal government has totally abandoned republic law and the people voted for the politicians who made that happen believing all the while that they were in control.

What developed in the United States of America that sounded the death knell for the republic was apathy over what were considered minor inconveniences by a population whose standards of living were the highest in the world. No one cared when their liberties were infringed on minor levels, because they had so much excess of freedom and wealth that they barely noticed. Most people didn’t even realize they were losing their freedoms with every little encroachment. They bought into the lie of a benevolent government that only wanted to provide for their security or to help some poor soul who was down on his luck, or to make the world fair by taking more money from mean old rich people who didn’t need it anyway in their eyes. Worse, the people stopped teaching their children about the old republic laws and why those simple old beliefs were so important to the very fabric of society and their future as well. Instead, they let simple-majority democracy and an arrogant sense of entitlement sweep over the land and into law upon law upon unconstitutional law.

Here are just a few recent examples of the rise and triumph of simple-majority democratic laws over the old foundational republic laws.

2005 – Supreme Court case 545 U.S. 469 Kelo vs. New London, CT

Verdict: The government, even a small city government can condemn the land that has been in your family for generations, seize it, and doesn’t even have to pay you fair market value for it for no other reason than it wants the higher tax revenue it could get from it were zoned for commercial use. Nothing you own is safe from government seizure. The 5th amendment is now irrelevant.

2008/10 – Supreme Court case 554 U.S. ___ and 561 U.S. __ District of Columbia vs. Heller and McDonald vs. Chicago, IL.

Verdict: You have the right to own a gun to defend yourself… by a 5/4 margin. We are one judge away from losing the 2nd amendment.

2010 – Supreme Court case 558 U.S. ___ Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Verdict: You have the right to buy advertising, publish a book, or just print a little political flyer to distribute even within 60 days of an election… by a 5/4 margin. We are one judge away from losing the first amendment.

2012 – Supreme Court case 567 U.S. ___ National Federation of Independent Businesses ET AL Petitioners vs. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, ET AL (and several other related cases)

Verdict: The government can force private individuals to buy a private product or service from a private business under penalty of IRS fines for non-compliance. The Chief Justice’ explanation for allowing this tyranny was to take it upon himself to change the wording of the law from penalty to tax. Your money is not your money and you have no choice in how it is spent if the government says so and simply calls a penalty a tax.

Ongoing: The TSA violates the 4^th amendment every day in cities all over the country by denying the right not to be unreasonably searched or have your property seized without a warrant.

Ongoing: The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 authorizes (unconstitutionally of course) the military to apprehend and detain any American citizen without charge, or access to legal counsel indefinitely. The claim of national security is the excuse that is used and we all want to get bad guys, but without requiring a warrant, criminal charge, access to legal counsel, or any limit on how long they can detain you, the government could literally come to your house and take you away in the night without any explanation and no one would know what happened to you. You have no expectation of freedom.

There are more examples, but the point is that at the highest levels of government, old republic laws that were based on wide acceptance and once even called divine rights from the Creator that had stood for over two centuries became irrelevant. Simple-majority democracy took over with each election cycle appealing to the smallest simple majority instead of the highest and the government took advantage of this by increasing its power and reducing individual freedoms on all fronts.

In 2008 America elected a person whose own books describe how he chose to study under and associate himself with Marxist professors. In 2008 America elected a man who chose to spend nearly 20 years attending a church where the political doctrine called Black Liberation Theology Marxism was taught by a man he publically called his “spiritual mentor”. In 2008 the American people elected a self proclaimed “community organizer” who taught his ACORN workers to emulate the communist political tactics from Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals”. Now, after 4 years of Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders, appointments of self proclaimed Socialist and even Communists, and unconstitutional laws that have chillingly Orwellian implications, the American public just re-elected him by a margin of 50.5% of the simple majority popular vote. If the old republic has not completely died, it is surely gasping for its last breaths.

We were warned about this in the early 1800’s by a French political historian who wrote a book called “Democracy in America”. Consider the quotes below from it. Consider reading it. The only solution now is to re-learn what we have forgotten and teach a new generation how to revive a dead republic.

“The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” - Alexis de Tocqueville

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship." - Alexis de Tocqueville

May God have mercy on us all.

The Blind, The Naïve, and The Willfully Ignorant

The Blind, The Naïve, and The Willfully Ignorant

 

There is a potentially fatal flaw in the reasoning skills of most people. It’s called the Normalcy Bias. When something is too far outside of what is considered “normal” it is ignored. That’s a great automatic filter if what is being ignored is trivial or just flat wrong, but it can be deadly when there is an actual threat. The perfect example would be those who live on the slopes of an active volcano. From a distance, it’s easy to think those people are nuts. From their perspective though, the mountain just rumbles from time to time, but has never hurt anyone in their lifetime. Their normalcy bias prevents them from leaving even when the volcano erupts until it is too late.

The Blind: For some, this normalcy bias creates a sort of blindness. An example of that is the car driver who doesn’t see the motorcyclist. Even good car drivers who are usually very safe and alert will run over a motorcyclist in a second if they only look for other cars, because in their mind, no car on the road equals safe and safe equals go. So when they pull out into the oncoming traffic of the motorcyclist they always say they didn’t see him. The motorcycle was there. It was clearly visible. Their normalcy bias simply didn’t allow them to see it because they were looking for a car.

The Naïve: Some people just don’t know any better to start with. It’s one thing to try to always think the best of others. That is a noble sentiment. Expecting that common criminals will not harm you just because you yourself mean them no harm though is naïve. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Predators almost always go after the defenseless weaker looking target first. Whether the naïve think they are being high-minded or brave won’t matter a bit to their attacker.

The willfully ignorant: Some are stuck in denial out of fear of what they don’t want to accept. Some reject the truth in favor of their own hubris. They never learned that pride comes before a fall. Of course, some are just plain dumb as a stump too, but so many people consciously chose not to acknowledge danger even when they are presented with solid evidence. They are like the ostrich who sticks his head in the sand pretending the danger isn’t there. Willful ignorance doesn’t make a problem disappear. It just makes you totally unprepared to deal with it when it can no longer be ignored.

It is a sad, but there are people out there who just never will be convinced, understand the importance of, or care enough to act on important information even when it means their very survival. You can’t expect everyone to see things your way, but when that person is a close friend or family member and the issue is of vital importance, it’s just heart breaking to think of a loved one paying the price down the road for their refusal to heed today’s warnings.

That happened to me recently when a friend who generally avoids politics like the plague sent me a link to a website that monitors the US debt in real time and shows how much each person owes. Their email simply said “this is scary”. I replied advising them of just what those runaway near uncountable numbers mean and how important it is that they prepare themselves. I explained what happened during the Great Depression and told them to buy food and to be prepared to defend themselves. My friend glibly retorted that they were “not worried about food and bullets” and were “pretty much anti-gun”. They said, “When the end times come, they come, and it just means that looking to the next life, the one that lasts, is even more important.” I just shuddered when I thought about the prospects of his two little children paying the price for his ability to ignore the realities of this life to live in the next before he gets there.

Why did he bother emailing me about it in the first place? He has done this kind of thing before. Someone asks him a question he isn’t sure about or shows him something that alarms him and he asks me what I think, because he knows I pay attention to important things. Then his eyes glaze over when I try to explain, or like this time, he just totally ignores the warning like the level of seriousness tripped some kind of circuit breaker for his ability to cope.

Please folks. Be aware of more than what is normal. Question why. Think critically and prepare yourselves for what is coming. Jesus did go to prepare a place for us and he is coming back again to take us there, but an awful lot of nastiness is going to hit a gigantic fan before we shuffle off this mortal coil. People who are your friends and family are trying to help you see what is coming. Please prepare.

The Second Amendment

The Second Amendment

“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.”

The Second Amendment is a single sentence and a simple one at that. So, why are so many people and politicians unclear on what it says? A lot of politicians would rather you didn’t know and their useful idiot supporters are all too eager to spout off all kinds of nonsense to muddy the water. Perhaps some people really don’t know though so, here is a brief word by word breakdown of what the Second Amendment says and means.

Well Regulated: predictable, working, practiced, equipped, ready

Militia: volunteer unpaid civilians 18 year or older who equip and train themselves (not military, that is different and separately covered under article 1)

Necessary: required, something that you must have

Security: to guard, to keep safe from harm and to be ready to do so, to possess a state of being

Free State: a people not governed by force but by their own personal responsibility that is an integral part of liberty, not a police state

“,” : Very important! A comma in a sentence distinguishes two separate thoughts that are a part of a whole. In this case the comma separates the reason for the right from the declaration of the right and the protection provided for it.

Right: pre-existing condition bestowed by God

The People: everybody, not limited to police, or military, or even just the volunteer militia,

To Keep: to permanently posses, to own

Bear: to carry, to have with you on your person, to have in hand

Arms: any means of defense, Examples include but are not limited to guns, knives, swords, clubs, bows, spears, axes, etc.

Shall Not: legal imperative phrase commanding that no action be taken

Infringed: to impose upon, to violate boundary, to impair, or make difficult

Paraphrased right: Because we do not live in a police state but each have the personal responsibility to maintain our own liberty and care for ourselves and others independently, no-one is allowed to prevent us from owning, possessing, and carrying on our person any means necessary to remain alive and free.

The Second Amendment is not about hunting or any kind of sport or collectors hobby.  It is the lifeblood of liberty. Exercise your right today and keep freedom alive for tomorrow.

Self Governance

Self Governance

A little over two centuries ago, the founding fathers of the Unites States of America championed an ideal that founded the greatest nation on Earth. They dared to declare themselves not only independent from a king in a distant land, but to insist that the people would govern for themselves. The total corruption of all three branches of our government, it’s recent abandonment of our constitution, and complete lack of integrity our nation’s highest court have called that ideal back into question for some.

People absolutely are capable of self governance... within the framework of a constitutional republic which is rule by law and by a people who adhere to basic moral standards. John Adams, second president of the United States, was asked what kind of constitution we had. His reply was that, “the Constitution for the United States was written for a moral and upright people and is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other”. That is what makes self governance work. As a constitutional republic of “moral and upright people”, the United States was the world's most successful self governing nation for a couple of centuries. We managed to remain free, save large portions of the rest of the world from tyranny, achieve the highest standard of living in the world, the highest levels of technology, and we were the world’s lone economic and military superpower.

Anyone upset about the use of past tense in that last paragraph needs to stop and take a candid look around you. We are not the moral nation we once were and we are paying the price for abandoning our founding principles. The lie of democracy has taken root in the immorality of hedonism. “If it feels good do it” has translated into “if you want it vote for it” no matter whether it is wrong or unconstitutional or violates the very founding principles of our nation. That is the difference between a functioning constitutional republic and the free-for-all lawlessness of a democracy.

Under the lawlessness that is the mob mentality of a democracy, nothing long will stand. This ultimately immoral system of rule by influenced popular whims has now led to an oligarchy here. The imposing authorities push the buttons of useful idiots to sway popular opinions and thus gain excuse to impose any tyranny that the latest “crisis” is manufactured to obtain.

Economically, this has resulted in limitless government spending asked for and or allowed by a public that has traded its self sufficient heritage for dependent expectation on a government that simply isn’t capable of meeting its needs. We have witnessed an exponential explosion of debt that is 16 trillion and climbing. That is more than the annual GDP of the entire United States. Additionally, the strain to comply with the unconstitutional reach of government regulations in private business has resulted in an economic climate that is openly hostile to new businesses which are the life blood of our economy.

On the moral front, this means nothing less than the loss of our most cherished freedoms. Chaplains in the military are being barred from public prayer in violation of the first amendment’s protection against any such prohibition. Groups of people must gain approval and even pay for permission to exercise their first amendment right to “peaceably assemble to petition their government for a redress of grievances” in the nation’s capitol. Gun owners are vilified by the attorney general and his boss the Marxist in chief who both swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend not just the second amendment, but the entire Constitution for the United States. The TSA and DHS, America’s version of the Nazi Gestapo and SS, violate people’s fourth amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure and that without a warrant on a daily basis. The latest National Defense Authorization act contains a provision that violates rights to legal counsel, trial by jury, and excessive bail. Now, the government that used to be “of the people” is employing military grade drones to spy on us from the sky.

Freedom has quietly died.

To be self governing you first have to have and adhere to moral and upright principles. Sadly, most people just don’t have those any more. It isn’t the practice of self governance that has failed. It is the abandonment of the principles of that system that has failed.

Go back and read the history of how kings, dictators, and tyrants have subjugated whole nations of people and killed millions. Maybe you weren’t taught that kind of vitally important history in school. The government has stripped so much of what we once were from our education system. Do it on your own. No one else can learn it for you. Read again about the United States own humble beginnings, our Declaration of Independence based on the firm reliance on the divine providence of our Creator God, the Constitution for the United States, and the Bill of Rights. Read the Bible. Grow a spine and stand for what is right. It is the only way self governance works.

Happy Depend… “Independence” Day

Happy Depend… “Independence” Day

from the Department of Homeland Security

236 years ago right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A., a few disloyal colonist declared their independence from the crown. It took a couple of centuries, but the people living in the land formerly known as the land of the free and the home of the brave are once again compliant subjects of distant, unelected, unlimited, unrepresentative authority!

Think I’m kidding? Read the government’s own report. Here is a PDF of a DHS study done just this year in January 2012. http://start.umd.edu/start/publications/research_briefs/LaFree_Bersani_HotSpotsOfUSTerrorism.pdf

In case you don’t feel like downloading it right now, just take a few seconds to read a couple of quick quotes from the report here that detail who the DHS considers a suspected terrorist.

“Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism-United States report compiled by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism”

“Extreme Right-Wing: groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism. Groups may also be fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty, and believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.”

The report also list definitions for “Extreme Left-Wing”, “Religious, Ethno-Nationalist/Separatists”, and “Single Issue” groups. Go check out the report if you think any of those might apply to you.

Here is the real kicker. Look back up at that quote above. The word they used to describe what that group does was “believe”. “Believe”, not “commit” or “act” or any other word that would convey action. A belief is just a thought! You don’t have to do anything now to be considered a terrorist. Bottom line is that the federal government sees you not as a citizen who is innocent until proven guilty, but as a potential terrorist and they treat you like that too. If you doubt that, just try taking a leisurely stroll through an airport terminal without submitting to having your 4th amendment right not to be searched or seized without reasonable cause violated. They don’t care about your constitutional rights.

Can you imagine Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, or George Washington letting a TSA agent grab their crotch and demand that they sit there and take while they are searched without consent even though they did nothing wrong? Hell no! They were the DHS definition of “Extreme Right-Wing Terrorist”.

But wait there’s more! Last week the Supreme Court created an excuse for the federal government to force you to do anything they want and make you pay for it to boot. All they have to do is use the magic word “tax” when they really mean “mandate. So says the great and all powerful Chief Justice Judas Roberts. See my last post below for more on that bit of lawless tyranny.

Today, the federal government does not have to enforce or bother to even give feigning respect for your constitutional rights and they can force you to do pretty much anything they want you to do as long as they call it a “tax”. Are you a little overweight? A new gym tax could be in your future. Like a beer with you pizza? You may just qualify for a new HHS alcohol consumption tax. Want to exercise your first amendment right to freedom of religion or speech? TO BAD! Doing so makes you a suspected terrorist. Oh and smile when you look up next time, all that independent thinking just might require a surveillance drone to keep an eye on you.

This is not your grandpa’s America anymore. Just thinking it is makes you a suspected terrorist. Be careful today. Celebrating Independence Day by doing anything more than watching properly licensed fireworks from an officially regulated safe distance at a state sanctioned event is now a terrorist activity.

Happy Independence Day comrades.

Lawless

Lawless

Lawless: That is what Amerika is now. I usually make sure to use the name “United States of America”, but after this week, any idea that we were a union of sovereign states went up in Supreme Court smoke.  First the Supreme Court “ruled” that Arizona didn’t have enough sovereignty to police its own borders, and now today it upheld federally mandated healthcare that more than half the states were suing to stop. The Supreme Court has decided against state sovereignty twice in one week.

But wait there’s more!

Judas Roberts… sorry, “Justice” Roberts shocked constitutional conservatives today by a stunning betrayal, performing legal wording acrobatics that twisted constitutional logic like a carnival pretzel. He used a lot of words, but the bottom line is that he upheld Obamacare today by substituting the word “tax” for the word “mandate”. His convoluted explanation for this was that while congress does not have the authority to mandate that people buy something, they can make people pay for it so long as they use the word “tax” to do it. Ever seen a street con-man running a shell game with some nut shells and a little ball? That’s what happened at the Supreme Court today. Amerika got conned.

When you get conned you usually lose something. What we lost today was the rule of law. Our most basic law is the Constitution and nowhere in it was the federal government given the authority to do the kinds things it has been doing for the last several years. Originally it was called The Constitution for the United States because it was originally a bunch of states who were trying to figure out how to best unify while keeping their sovereignty intact. It was for the states, not imposed on them. The states empowered the federal government with only a limited amount of power and retained the rest for themselves. It worked great for a couple of hundred years. (The Civil War happened after the South lawfully seceded by unanimous vote of congress).

Today though marks a new day in Amerika. Today the federal government can force individuals and States to do anything or stop us from doing anything it wants regardless of what the old irrelevant constitution has to say about it. There is a Marxist in the Whitehouse, a traitor at the head of the Supreme Court, and a congress that couldn’t keep its own lust for power in check if they were forced to watch the Star Wars clip of Chancellor Palpatine turning Anakin Skywalker to the dark side every day.

A wise man once said “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. In November, it is going to take a heck of a lot of good men and women voting for people who want to live in a free Constitutional Republic. Failing that, we are witnessing the end of the Republic. May God have mercy on our souls.

The Moral Solution

The Moral Solution

Why are people so opposed to any solution that involves God or personal morality? Politics, business, and everyday life today is overrun with people clamoring for and offering solutions to problems but virtually every single one is based not on a real solution, but on alleviating the effects of the problems. The root cause is rarely addressed. Symptoms are what get the attention.

Got a problem paying bills because you bought a bunch of stuff you really didn’t need and couldn’t afford? Get a loan and poof!  Your money problem is gone… until the loan is due and then you owe the loan company more than you did before. A lot of cities, states, and even whole nations are facing the same problem right now and they are all following the same model. Get a loan and poof! All our money problems are gone… until the debt is so heavily leveraged that one last little straw brings down the first big domino that flattens everything and everyone in the nation.

Is the crime rate in your town skyrocketing because young men have no fathers at home to teach right from wrong and provide basic direction and correction? Why, those kids just need midnight basketball courts opened up for them to run off all that misdirected energy! More cops and bigger jails come when that fails and the crime problem is simply cuffed and stuffed until they are sprung and flung back out into society. The problem of broken dysfunctional homes and the practically wild kids that grow up to be violent thugs isn’t solved and the cost of it all swamps the city into bankruptcy and drives away businesses and people.

Don’t want to have to be “punished with a baby” (direct quote from Barack Hussein Obama explaining why abortion is a good thing) because you couldn’t control yourself long enough to use protection or *gasp* get a job and get married fist? No worries! The government will not prosecute the selfish murder of your unborn child just to alleviate the symptoms of your problem. Promiscuity and irresponsibility is never given a second thought and the results, like diseases without cures and the deaths of the unborn, just can’t be undone.

There comes a time when treating the symptoms alone, just doesn’t cut it anymore. Too much debt, too much crime, too much disease and death will conspire to destroy a nation from within; all for the want of the moral solution that was rejected. God. We were born into this world with nothing and can’t take a thing with us when we go. None of the stuff we amass, mess up, and chase after holds the solution to our most basic problem. The rejection of God and His basic morality of right and wrong will get us into deeper and deeper trouble the farther we get from God.

We need God. We need a moral direction for the things we do in life. America has forgotten that and we are paying the price. No government program; no amount of bailouts or business incentives are going to fix the mess we have gotten ourselves into because they are only temporary analgesics to the terminal cancer of a society that has traded it’s faith and dependence on the providence of the Almighty for the degenerative spiraling tyranny of government. Return to God America. Return to the moral solution.

The Economy

The Economy

… is not the most important issue in this year’s presidential election. It wasn’t the most important in the last election either. Oh it is important to be sure, but it isn’t the most important aspect of Presidential or congressional power. The state of the economy (good or bad) affects elections because it is used as a wedge against and a distraction from the most important issue America has ever addressed. Freedom. Without freedom private enterprise suffers and the economy with it, but having less money and or opportunity to get it pales in comparison to the loss of freedom.

Folks we are there now. The TSA violating the 4^th amendment rights of thousands of people at airports all over the country is so passé now. The once freedom-loving people of the land of the free and the home of the brave who boasted they would defend freedom with their very lives have come to accept being treated like cattle by a government who doesn’t recognize even the most basic of the original constitutional rights.

As I write this, Chicago has been turned into a police state for the NATO summit. Did I miss a constitutional amendment somewhere? When did we give up our rights to freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble to petition our government for a redress of grievances? Now, there is a difference between a peaceful protest and a violent mob, but there is also a big difference between policing serious threats to property and life on a case by case basis and locking down an entire city with a small army of armored cops and military grade aerial surveillance before any protesters even show up. Word of the near Martial Law state that was coming to Chicago for the NATO summit was broadcast through major media outlets well in advance. Citizens were warned to evacuate. Read that again and let it sink in. Citizens of Chicago (an American city last I checked) were warned to evacuate. Today the advisory is that if you are still there and can work from home, do it at home and don’t go out at all.

If you think that last paragraph is an overreaction to a little security then you need to wake up, re-read the Bill of Rights, and brush up on your Ben Franklin. “Those that would give up a little liberty to purchase a little security deserve neither and will lose both.” The NATO summit in Chicago right now is a text book example of a tyrannical government and the loss of personal freedom. NATO is an international body that not one citizen ever votes for and they answer to no one. Chicago mayors have a long dark history of running the city like third world dictators and that is exactly what Rahm Emanuel would be if he could get away with it. Oh wait, he has! All that riot control equipment Chicago has bought over the past year or so, all those new riot control laws Rahm Emmanuel has built up and is now enforcing literally by the force of a police baton and end of a gun barrel will be the new normal for Chicago for a long time after NATO leaves.

Now that you have lost your first and 4^th amendment freedoms America, ask yourself this. What will be the next protected right lost? Trial by jury? Protection against excessive bail? The right to legal counsel?  Too late. That happened with the last National Defense Authorization Act. Just how much longer will it be until the next unelected jackboot demands that you must give up another constitutional protection or be arrested for non-compliance?

A Bridge Too Far

How far away from our core principles are we willing to go to vote for a political candidate? Nobody is perfect and thus no candidate or voter will perfectly match up. We make allowances. We create bridges of acceptance and toleration for minor differences not only to keep the peace with those who share our core principles, but to maintain and advance those beliefs through the minefield of the presidential election process and to arrive on the other side with an elected official who will best represent us and lead the nation the way it should be lead. That said, how far is too far?

Sadly, we have become so accustom to misleading and flat out lying politicians and their self serving ads that their deceptions are shrugged off as politics as usual. That apathy results in much of the mind-numbed public accepting any candidate as long as they are a part of the party for whom they are accustomed to voting. Anybody not going along with the growing list of objectionable missteps, election year conversions, and embarrassing reversals are chided to “take one for the team” in the name of victory at any cost. It’s like our election process has become one big football game. It doesn’t matter how dirty the game is played so long as the home team wins. Well, that is just wrong and I’ve about had enough of it.

From a host of 9 or 10 Republican primary candidates that were running all at the same time last fall, we are now down to two. Regardless of how gracefully or shamefully the others bowed out of the race, we are left with Romney, the guy the press has constantly lavished positive and unending headlines for and Paul, the invisible man. The establishment of the Republican Party wants Romney because he is just like they are; vapid and malleable. Beyond the establishment of the Republican Party, most conservatives in general are scared to death of Paul because of his naivety (or just willful ignorance) of the existential threat of jihadist Islam and the suicidal foreign policy that would result in a Paul administration.

I will not be voting for the Marxist currently occupying the Whitehouse, so I find myself reduced to considering either a candidate whose public persona is eerily similar to a life-like Ken doll (perfect hair and all) that can be dressed up and bent into any form any time or someone whose worldview says that we are the bad guys, that 911 was our own fault, and the bomb vested Islamic jihadists are only blowing themselves up for Allah because of us. Not wanting to be beheaded, dismembered, or generally blown to smithereens by a not-so-friendly Muslim Brotherhood representative, I find myself left with the Ken-doll candidate. Good grief. Boy do I ever miss Ronald Reagan now.

So just what are the bridges of acceptance and tolerance I’m going to have to build to vote for Romney. Well, they are many and they are long.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room is health care of course. He says he would repeal Obamacare. Sounds great! Why wouldn’t he do the same for Massachusetts? You see, despite his insistence that it is wrong on a national level he sees no problem at all forcing a government program like that on people at the state level which means he really has no appreciation at all for the basic freedoms and more importantly restrictions on government on which our nation was founded. He has simply made an economic and political calculation in a federal race. Accepting this would mean accepting a bridge to a place I do not want to go with a candidate I do not agree with or trust.

Romney promotes himself as the businessman extraordinaire and he certainly does have credentials to show for that. However, while he is out talking about how he would cut spending and reduce the size of government in our personal lives, he supports government subsidies for things that the pop culture and junk science says we should have. One very good example is Ethanol. He has publically stated that he supports subsidizing ethanol to help reduce green house gasses and fight allegedly man-made global warming. Bridge number two is up in flames, carbon emissions and all.

Romney is no friend of the gun owner. Oh he has (laughably) said that he was a hunter and tried to court gun owners, but it’s a bit insulting coming from a governor who was proud to have some of the strictest gun laws in the nation for his freedom hampered MA citizens. Ask him about what the second amendment has to say about that and I doubt the words “shall not be infringed” would be on his lips. It’s getting harder to see how I’m going to cross the political river to vote for the Mitt man but until recently I had kept my sights set on that distant shore just knowing I was going to be able to get there on that bridge of justification and sacrifice for the team.

There are other reasons, but a couple of weeks ago something rather quietly came and went without much attention at all. Romney hired someone who is openly homosexual to be his top spokesman for national security and foreign policy and when that … stuff hit the fan, the official spokesman suddenly was not given any opportunity to speak. He resigned because of it and Romney’s response was that he wished he would have stayed. Mr. flip flop who is adamant that marriage is between a man and a woman sees no problem accepting and elevating an openly homosexual person (who is a vocal supporter for same sex marriage of course) to the highest levels of his campaign, muting him when people found out what was not hidden, and then lamenting the loss.

Mr. Romney, this is a bridge too far. You have no principles that extend any further than the nearest popular opinion. However better you would certainly be as an alternative to the Marxist we have now, I can not in good conscience continue to fall on my moral sword. It enables the Republican Party to keep forcing candidates like you down our throats and what is far worse is that it is an abandonment of the moral system on which our nation was founded and blessed to prosper.

God removed his protection on our once-moral nation on 9-11-01. In 2008-2009 a second blow came with the biggest loss of our economic stability since the Great Depression. What did we do with those warnings? Since then our presidents have created tyrannical departments (think TSA and DHS) that get away with violating several of the first ten amendments on a daily basis. We’ve spent more money in the last 3 years than the previous 200+ plunging us into an irreversible dept spiral. If that weren’t enough defiance of God’s clear warnings, the current occupant of the white house calls the Koran “holy”, the Bible unfit for guidance on running a country, and our founding constitution flawed. The bridge for that correction does not cross a river of accepting the loss of our most sacred freedoms, generational government imposed debt, and end-stage moral decay. That bridge leads to perdition and that is not a road I am going to travel any more.