.gif)
From The American Thinker:
August 31, 2010
The 'Citizen of the World' vs. America
Norah Petersen
The fact that the Obama administration included Arizona's immigration law in the United States' first-ever human rights report to the United Nations is alarming, but not exactly surprising. Obama and his administration have demonstrated an unsettling pattern of placing the international community above American sovereignty.
Back in May, Obama administration official, Michael Posner, basically apologized to Communist China for Arizona's immigration law. (Incidentally, the number of illegal Chinese immigrants apprehended in the Tucson sector of Arizona jumped tenfold last year.)
In December of 2009, Obama signed an executive order giving the international police force, Interpol, immunity from the US Constitution. Andy McCarthy of National Review wrote:
"...For no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol's property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States....
...Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize?"
To puts these things in context, one need look no further than the 2008 speech given in Berlin, Germany by the then Senator Obama, in which he infamously said:
"Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."
The conclusion of his speech was similarly disturbing:
" People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again."
Remake the world? In addition to "fundamentally transforming the United States of America"? Actually, the two go hand in hand; for whatever happens to America truly effects the rest of the world. Sadly, Obama, thus far, has proven faithful and persistent in following through with his schemes for change.
Posted at 07:50 AM
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Obama And The Democrats: Flushing The Constitution
From The Tenth Amendment Center:
Flushing the Constitution
by Jon Hall
“I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.” (Obama’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention.)
Whether it was to save himself from being labeled a liar for raising everyone’s taxes or to hustle ObamaCare through Congress, on ABC News last September Obama scoffed at the idea that the “individual mandate” is a tax.
Congress inserted the “individual mandate” into ObamaCare citing its power to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause.
Substituting for Rush Limbaugh behind the “Golden EIB Microphone,” Mark Steyn recently did a very funny riff on how the entire Constitution has been distilled down to Commerce Clause. Our dear old Constitution is just one giant Commerce Clause; every power flows from it. Upshot: Congress can do whatever it wants.
But Steyn neglected the other surviving remnant of the Constitution: the power to tax.
In responding to the states’ suits against ObamaCare, Obama’s lawyers now contend that the “individual mandate” is a tax after all. (Will the bait-and-switch ever end?)
Some might wish that ObamaCare were still being defended with the Commerce Clause, as America needs clarity on the limits of that pesky clause. But a defense based on the taxing prerogative of the feds sets up what might be an even more vital precedent. The argument the states should now use to combat ObamaCare is the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
The “individual mandate” is unconstitutional because it will be applied unequally. It seems some individuals are more equal than others — they are exempted from paying this new tax.
Among those exempted are the poor, who, last we checked, were still individuals. But inability to pay a tax is no excuse. If one can’t pay sales tax, one can’t buy things. If one can’t pay one’s property tax, one can’t license one’s car. If one can’t pay the tax on one’s income, the I.R.S. sends one to jail.
Individuals who are members of a “recognized religious sect” also won’t be required to pay the tax: H.R.3590, Sec. 5000A, (d) (2). Exemption of government-approved religions is unequal on its face. Do we really want Congress or, even worse, un-elected bureaucrats deciding for us what is a legitimate religion? We don’t exempt members of preferred sects from paying their income taxes, sales taxes, etc. Such exceptional treatment is entirely un-American. (But hey, we’re all Amish now.)
Most taxes in America are levied on assets and transactions. If one owns an asset, one pays taxes on it. If one passes an asset on through a transaction or transfer, one is also taxed. But this new-fangled tax in ObamaCare is something altogether different. It is a tax on the individual himself, not his income, purchases, real estate, capital gains, etc.
Therefore, each individual must pay the tax. And each individual must pay the same amount, down to the penny. But this is not the case with ObamaCare, where the various health insurance companies will charge different premiums. It should be noted that these premiums are what the “individual mandate” requires us to purchase and what Obama now says is a tax. But government cannot charge varying tax rates for the very same thing to various individuals.
Taxes cannot be discriminatory. Yet, the “individual mandate” is just that. Those unable to pay the tax won’t have to. And “the chosen” (the religionists chosen by Congress) won’t have to pay, either. And folks who do pay the tax, will have different tax bills based upon the very same tax assessment. Which is: They qualify as individuals.
That’s unequal. And state Attorneys General who are suing the feds over ObamaCare’s constitutionality need to have this arrow in their quiver. America is depending on you. The “individual mandate” is hateful to everything American.
Sadly, it has fallen to the states to defend the republic — the republic the states themselves created — from an out-of-control federal government. If the states’ suits over ObamaCare fail to get the judiciary to define limits to the federal government’s powers to tax and regulate, then We The People must seek other means of redress.
We’ve come to a point in America where the federal government is going to do whatever it wants to do; the Constitution seems to be is irrelevant. The Land of the Free is fast becoming The Nation of Slaves — tax slaves.
What part of “equal” does Obama not understand? One must give Obama credit, though; he never said: I’ll never lie to you.
Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City. This article first appeared at NewsRealBlog. Read other articles on this issue here, here (also here), and here.
ObamaCare fails to meet constitutional muster on several other grounds, too (video).
Flushing the Constitution
by Jon Hall
“I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.” (Obama’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention.)
Whether it was to save himself from being labeled a liar for raising everyone’s taxes or to hustle ObamaCare through Congress, on ABC News last September Obama scoffed at the idea that the “individual mandate” is a tax.
Congress inserted the “individual mandate” into ObamaCare citing its power to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause.
Substituting for Rush Limbaugh behind the “Golden EIB Microphone,” Mark Steyn recently did a very funny riff on how the entire Constitution has been distilled down to Commerce Clause. Our dear old Constitution is just one giant Commerce Clause; every power flows from it. Upshot: Congress can do whatever it wants.
But Steyn neglected the other surviving remnant of the Constitution: the power to tax.
In responding to the states’ suits against ObamaCare, Obama’s lawyers now contend that the “individual mandate” is a tax after all. (Will the bait-and-switch ever end?)
Some might wish that ObamaCare were still being defended with the Commerce Clause, as America needs clarity on the limits of that pesky clause. But a defense based on the taxing prerogative of the feds sets up what might be an even more vital precedent. The argument the states should now use to combat ObamaCare is the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
The “individual mandate” is unconstitutional because it will be applied unequally. It seems some individuals are more equal than others — they are exempted from paying this new tax.
Among those exempted are the poor, who, last we checked, were still individuals. But inability to pay a tax is no excuse. If one can’t pay sales tax, one can’t buy things. If one can’t pay one’s property tax, one can’t license one’s car. If one can’t pay the tax on one’s income, the I.R.S. sends one to jail.
Individuals who are members of a “recognized religious sect” also won’t be required to pay the tax: H.R.3590, Sec. 5000A, (d) (2). Exemption of government-approved religions is unequal on its face. Do we really want Congress or, even worse, un-elected bureaucrats deciding for us what is a legitimate religion? We don’t exempt members of preferred sects from paying their income taxes, sales taxes, etc. Such exceptional treatment is entirely un-American. (But hey, we’re all Amish now.)
Most taxes in America are levied on assets and transactions. If one owns an asset, one pays taxes on it. If one passes an asset on through a transaction or transfer, one is also taxed. But this new-fangled tax in ObamaCare is something altogether different. It is a tax on the individual himself, not his income, purchases, real estate, capital gains, etc.
Therefore, each individual must pay the tax. And each individual must pay the same amount, down to the penny. But this is not the case with ObamaCare, where the various health insurance companies will charge different premiums. It should be noted that these premiums are what the “individual mandate” requires us to purchase and what Obama now says is a tax. But government cannot charge varying tax rates for the very same thing to various individuals.
Taxes cannot be discriminatory. Yet, the “individual mandate” is just that. Those unable to pay the tax won’t have to. And “the chosen” (the religionists chosen by Congress) won’t have to pay, either. And folks who do pay the tax, will have different tax bills based upon the very same tax assessment. Which is: They qualify as individuals.
That’s unequal. And state Attorneys General who are suing the feds over ObamaCare’s constitutionality need to have this arrow in their quiver. America is depending on you. The “individual mandate” is hateful to everything American.
Sadly, it has fallen to the states to defend the republic — the republic the states themselves created — from an out-of-control federal government. If the states’ suits over ObamaCare fail to get the judiciary to define limits to the federal government’s powers to tax and regulate, then We The People must seek other means of redress.
We’ve come to a point in America where the federal government is going to do whatever it wants to do; the Constitution seems to be is irrelevant. The Land of the Free is fast becoming The Nation of Slaves — tax slaves.
What part of “equal” does Obama not understand? One must give Obama credit, though; he never said: I’ll never lie to you.
Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City. This article first appeared at NewsRealBlog. Read other articles on this issue here, here (also here), and here.
ObamaCare fails to meet constitutional muster on several other grounds, too (video).
Restoring Federalism: Repeal The 17th Amendment
From Big Government:
Restoring Federalism: Repeal the Seventeenth Amendmentby Alan Snyder
The “Restoring Honor” event at the Lincoln Memorial was inspiring. That should be just the beginning of a “Restoration Movement.” We don’t really need a revolution in America; all we need to do is restore what once was. I have a suggestion for another aspect of our Founding that needs to be restored—a suggestion that some will call unrealistic, yet one that the Founders considered essential.
Let’s restore the provision in the original wording of the Constitution that allows state legislatures to choose a state’s senators who serve in Congress.
Article I, Section 3 says, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof.”
The reasoning was lucid: the people of each state already had direct representation into the national government via the House of Representatives; it was necessary as well to provide representation for the state governments in the national Congress. The goal was to make sure that laws passed by each state were not going to be overturned by the national government without good reason.
It was one of those key checks on power; it was to provide balance in the federal system.
Why did this change?
By the early twentieth century, the progressive movement was gaining ascendancy. One of the primary tenets of the movement was to add an amendment to the Constitution allowing the people of each state to elect senators directly, just as they already did for representatives.
The argument was pretty much the following: there is too much corruption in the Senate, and the only way to ensure good government is to give the people at large the vote for senators. That will end the “evil” of state legislatures sending their favorites to Congress.
This reasoning was based on the belief that state governments usually legislated against the well-being of the people and assumed that if the people, not the state legislatures, chose the senators, they would no longer be corrupt.
Consequently, in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was added to the Constitution, shifting the choice of senators from the state legislatures to the people of the states. Now that the people choose their senators, corruption has vanished from the halls of the Senate.
Is there really anyone who believes that fantasy?
If state legislatures are corrupt, the people can change them. The maxim holds: in a representative system, the government is a reflection of the people who voted them into power. If corruption exists, the people allowed it. If the people awaken to the corruption, it will be much easier to root it out at the state level than at the national because the state government is closer to the people, and their voice can be more clearly heard.
Denying the state legislatures the choice of senators has effectively eliminated state government influence on national legislation. The senators don’t have to answer to their state governments anymore; they are elected or re-elected by the people directly. As a result, they don’t care about the interests of the state governments. They only have to pay attention if the people get aroused on an issue.
This changes the role of senators. They are now just like their counterparts in the House; the only differences are that their district is comprised of the entire state and they get to hang around for six years rather than two.
The problems go beyond theory. What about unfunded mandates? This is when Congress passes laws that require states to pay for them. Who is in the Congress to plead for the state governments and be concerned about state budgets? No one. In some respects, the state governments have become mere appendages of the national government. They have no say or recourse except to try to find relief through the courts.
Here’s another very specific consequence. The Senate has the responsibility for confirming federal judges, even to the Supreme Court. When going through the confirmation process, does any senator take into consideration how a judge’s judicial philosophy will affect state laws?
When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, forty-four state laws restricting abortion were overturned. If senators had to protect their state’s laws, as representatives of their respective legislatures, they would have been more attuned to whether the judges they placed on the Supreme Court would have the tendency to overthrow the principle of the sanctity of life.
In the past thirty-seven years, more than fifty million innocent children have lost their lives. Part of the blame should rest on the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment.
It’s time to consider the repeal of this amendment. Very few have taken up this cause. I know its repeal is not probable—but it is possible. If we can at least start the discussion, you never know where it may lead.
May the “Restoration Movement” continue to thrive.
Restoring Federalism: Repeal the Seventeenth Amendmentby Alan Snyder
The “Restoring Honor” event at the Lincoln Memorial was inspiring. That should be just the beginning of a “Restoration Movement.” We don’t really need a revolution in America; all we need to do is restore what once was. I have a suggestion for another aspect of our Founding that needs to be restored—a suggestion that some will call unrealistic, yet one that the Founders considered essential.
Let’s restore the provision in the original wording of the Constitution that allows state legislatures to choose a state’s senators who serve in Congress.
Article I, Section 3 says, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof.”
The reasoning was lucid: the people of each state already had direct representation into the national government via the House of Representatives; it was necessary as well to provide representation for the state governments in the national Congress. The goal was to make sure that laws passed by each state were not going to be overturned by the national government without good reason.
It was one of those key checks on power; it was to provide balance in the federal system.
Why did this change?
By the early twentieth century, the progressive movement was gaining ascendancy. One of the primary tenets of the movement was to add an amendment to the Constitution allowing the people of each state to elect senators directly, just as they already did for representatives.
The argument was pretty much the following: there is too much corruption in the Senate, and the only way to ensure good government is to give the people at large the vote for senators. That will end the “evil” of state legislatures sending their favorites to Congress.
This reasoning was based on the belief that state governments usually legislated against the well-being of the people and assumed that if the people, not the state legislatures, chose the senators, they would no longer be corrupt.
Consequently, in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was added to the Constitution, shifting the choice of senators from the state legislatures to the people of the states. Now that the people choose their senators, corruption has vanished from the halls of the Senate.
Is there really anyone who believes that fantasy?
If state legislatures are corrupt, the people can change them. The maxim holds: in a representative system, the government is a reflection of the people who voted them into power. If corruption exists, the people allowed it. If the people awaken to the corruption, it will be much easier to root it out at the state level than at the national because the state government is closer to the people, and their voice can be more clearly heard.
Denying the state legislatures the choice of senators has effectively eliminated state government influence on national legislation. The senators don’t have to answer to their state governments anymore; they are elected or re-elected by the people directly. As a result, they don’t care about the interests of the state governments. They only have to pay attention if the people get aroused on an issue.
This changes the role of senators. They are now just like their counterparts in the House; the only differences are that their district is comprised of the entire state and they get to hang around for six years rather than two.
The problems go beyond theory. What about unfunded mandates? This is when Congress passes laws that require states to pay for them. Who is in the Congress to plead for the state governments and be concerned about state budgets? No one. In some respects, the state governments have become mere appendages of the national government. They have no say or recourse except to try to find relief through the courts.
Here’s another very specific consequence. The Senate has the responsibility for confirming federal judges, even to the Supreme Court. When going through the confirmation process, does any senator take into consideration how a judge’s judicial philosophy will affect state laws?
When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, forty-four state laws restricting abortion were overturned. If senators had to protect their state’s laws, as representatives of their respective legislatures, they would have been more attuned to whether the judges they placed on the Supreme Court would have the tendency to overthrow the principle of the sanctity of life.
In the past thirty-seven years, more than fifty million innocent children have lost their lives. Part of the blame should rest on the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment.
It’s time to consider the repeal of this amendment. Very few have taken up this cause. I know its repeal is not probable—but it is possible. If we can at least start the discussion, you never know where it may lead.
May the “Restoration Movement” continue to thrive.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Dr. King And The Tea Partiers
From the American Thinker:
August 30, 2010
Dr. King and the Tea Partiers
By Sally Zelikovsky
Forty-seven years ago on August 28th, Martin Luther King wrote his seminal "I Have A Dream" speech which influenced the course of the civil rights movement in this country. What many might not know, is that on April 16, 1963, he wrote "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" after being arrested for marching into downtown Birmingham to protest its segregation laws. While King's "Letter" might lack the lofty and swirling oratory found in the "Dream" speech, it is a masterful work of persuasion and, therefore, compelling and uplifting in its own right. His words echo the sentiment of many in the tea parties today.
While incarcerated, King wrote the letter as a response to a statement from members of the clergy who agreed with him but feared his actions might lead to violence, be perceived as extreme and hamper real progress for blacks in the South.
King points out that constructive and creative nonviolent tension is often necessary for progress -- "to help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."
He argues that breaking the law is morally sound if that law is unjust or enforced in an unjust manner and reminds us of history's rebels from Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego defying the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, to early Christians refusing to submit to Roman law, to the civil disobedience of the Sons of Liberty in Boston.
It is part of the human experience, he comments "that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
If we stop right here, it's obvious that tea partiers share an affinity for King's civil disobedience. We waited a long time to take on the system...as did black America. We tried to negotiate our way to liberty by working with moderates...as did the black leadership in the South. We've endured all manner of broken promises from our politicians -- including their failure to work of, for and by the people. And they have ignored a long list of grievances -- lower taxes, fewer regulations, less spending, freedom to live our lives with minimal governmental intrusion, and so on.
When the government fails to make good, not only on its promises but on the principles set forth in the Constitution, then it is time for protests, boycotts and marches.
Is this not the essence of the tea parties? The evil of slavery and segregation can never compare with the ills of excessive taxation and irresponsible government spending. We know that. But they are both variations of enslavement -- of ownership and control of one over the other.
Many blacks didn't want to rock the boat during this time -- after all, they were better off than their parents. But waiting for progress by playing it safe was too costly. Those who are complacent are almost more dangerous than those who take a stand, even if that stand is wrong -- proven to the world most recently when German citizens looked the other way.
King remarks that "We will have to repent...not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work,' time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."
Yes, now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of injustice -- the injustice of judges who ignore the will of the people, of mayors who ignore the will of the people, of a Congress and President who ignore the will of the people.
King's letter is not only persuasive on the issue of racial injustice but resonates with regard to ANY injustice and how it enslaves.
•When the oppressor bars the oppressed from enjoying any of the G-d given liberties to which we were entrusted by the Constitution, then we are enslaved.
•When the government dictates how we live our lives, then we are enslaved.
•When an elite political class seeks to control us and enacts legislation that hurts us and to which they themselves aren't bound -- like health care -- then we are enslaved.
•When the party in power can tell private corporations how much they can compensate their employees, then we are enslaved.
•When the ruling class can throw elaborate parties, vote themselves a salary increase, send their kids to private school, and preserve their own private healthcare insurance, while depriving us of the same and imposing onerous taxes on the people, then we are enslaved.
Our shackles of slavery might be metaphorical but they limit our mobility nonetheless.
Is this the America envisioned by the Framers? On the contrary! This is reminiscent of exactly the kind of slavery, oppression and tyranny they feared the most. This is feudal Europe. This is plantation politics.
It doesn't matter if the injustice is racially motivated or stems from the fact that you are being handled by the ruling party, the outcome is the same-limited control over your life, money and property; limited choice and decreased liberties.
And the ruling class always claims to know what's best for the people -- today it's smart meters, smart cars, smart energy, government run education, government run healthcare and government controlled media. They'll continue to commandeer the private sector -- running our banks, manipulating insurance companies, replacing our mortgage brokers and controlling our car companies.
But, do not despair. As Dr. King said:
"The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the average American [King's words were "the American Negro"]. Something within has reminded [the average American] of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously...the average American [King said "the United States Negro"] is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of justice." [He limited it to "racial justice."]
That's right. Average Americans have been reminded of their birthright of freedom. When McCain lost to Obama, average Americans were forced to take a hard look at what it meant to be "America," to re-examine the Constitution, to understand constitutional principles. We had already reached the limits of what we could do politically -- complacently going to the polls, assuming our politicians were doing their jobs when they were carving out little fiefdoms of privilege and wealth for themselves.
And having reached this limit, we were suddenly jolted awake and reminded of the 60s, and Martin Luther King and civil disobedience -- of bus boycotts and marches and rallies. And we remembered that the power to force change... lies in the hands of the people.
And so, for the first time that I am aware of, conservative Americans of all parties and colors, took to the streets in protest -- to force a return to constitutional governance. Following King's example, we are moving with a sense of great urgency towards the promised land of...justice.
Yet, somehow, this man with whom we share so much, has exclusively become the darling of the left. And, I don't know why, because not only was he a Republican, but...we walk in his shoes; we think his thoughts; we uphold his principles; we dream his dreams; we share his destiny.
Here is an overview of what MLK knew in the 60s and we know today:
--Our political system is based on lofty and timeless principles that don't discriminate and are immutable. They can only be corrupted and abused by human beings.
--America was an experiment cobbled together by a bunch of white guys with big ideas. And as experiments go, there are positive and negative results. Slavery, segregation and Jim Crow were shameful lapses but only because of the people in charge.
--Despite the evils, this doesn't alter the original roadmap. We always have the founding documents to steer us in the right direction--towards a more perfect union.
--It is our destiny to preserve all of this for posterity-the solid foundation as well as the shaky misdeeds. Failure to do so begets tyranny and enslavement.
While the Obama administration knocked the complacency out of many of us, too many remain in the living room screaming at the TV. While they secretly support the tea parties, they remain spectators as opposed to participants. It is our duty to get every right-minded individual to rise up and join in.
This is our cross to bear. This is our destiny.
Like King and the Framers, we are locked in an ideological war and the opposition has been whittling away at our foundations for decades -- in our schools and churches, in the media and in a bureaucracy so bloated, you can hear it groaning under its own weight.
And we have been betrayed by politicians who have morphed into an elite political class, amassing power and money for themselves and their cronies.
And, the tea party is the conduit through which this war is being fought.
The grassroots momentum associated with the tea parties is not, however, a revolution of radical change. We do not seek to change the national character or the principles by which this country is governed or remake our political institutions. The Pelosi-Reid-Obama triumvirate is taking care of that.
Ours is a revolution to restore America to its rightful place in history and, as King stated, to "[bring] our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."
Recalling King's words again: "Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny."
America's destiny is to be that shining city on a hill, a place where the streets are paved with gold and endless possibilities abound, a society that stands as a light unto the world even during its darkest moments. Dr. King understood and embraced this. Even as he sat in jail, he still recognized that America was indeed the last best hope on Earth precisely because of the immutable principles on which she was founded.
As for our destiny it is indeed tied up with America's destiny: It is to remind those who have forgotten and inform those who never knew.
If we learned anything from the election of Obama, it is that we can no longer show up to the polls, vote, brush our hands together and go back to life the way it was-leaving the politics to those we elect.
We are the beneficiaries of the freedom and democracy left to us by the Founding Fathers, defended by millions who gave their lives and demanded by millions who suffered at the hands of brutal taskmasters.
Every generation must choose whether to embrace or reject this destiny. The Founding Fathers did, so did Lincoln and Martin Luther King, and so must we.
So, today, I bring you this message: Destiny is knocking. Are you listening?
Destiny was knocking when Moses climbed up that mountain and took on the burden of bringing light to a corrupt and desolate world.
Destiny was knocking when a handful of white men in powdery wigs carved out a shining city on the hill and took on the burden of bringing freedom to the millions of oppressed.
Destiny was knocking when thousands of young men sailed across a channel and took on the burden of bringing an end to the 20th century's greatest evil.
Destiny was knocking when a black republican reverend ended up in jail for acts of civil disobedience and took on the burden of delivering an entire nation from racial injustice.
And now, destiny is knocking once again...as millions of prosperous and sated Americans are being asked to take on the burden of preserving and passing on to their children the exceptional America they inherited.
If we turn our backs on over 230 years of history, if we leave the hard work of participation to others, if we let our "rendezvous with destiny" pass us by-unfulfilled--then, "we will spend our sunset years telling our grandchildren what it was once like in America when men were free."
That is not the destiny I choose. And I ask you to join with me in that choice. If you take nothing else from this article, let it be this: "Your assurance," as Reagan urged, "that those who come after us will say...that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith."
And in the words of MLK: "Let us all hope that ... in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty."
Sally Zelikovsky is the Founder of Bay Area Patriots and the Coordinator of the San Francisco Tea Party
August 30, 2010
Dr. King and the Tea Partiers
By Sally Zelikovsky
Forty-seven years ago on August 28th, Martin Luther King wrote his seminal "I Have A Dream" speech which influenced the course of the civil rights movement in this country. What many might not know, is that on April 16, 1963, he wrote "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" after being arrested for marching into downtown Birmingham to protest its segregation laws. While King's "Letter" might lack the lofty and swirling oratory found in the "Dream" speech, it is a masterful work of persuasion and, therefore, compelling and uplifting in its own right. His words echo the sentiment of many in the tea parties today.
While incarcerated, King wrote the letter as a response to a statement from members of the clergy who agreed with him but feared his actions might lead to violence, be perceived as extreme and hamper real progress for blacks in the South.
King points out that constructive and creative nonviolent tension is often necessary for progress -- "to help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."
He argues that breaking the law is morally sound if that law is unjust or enforced in an unjust manner and reminds us of history's rebels from Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego defying the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, to early Christians refusing to submit to Roman law, to the civil disobedience of the Sons of Liberty in Boston.
It is part of the human experience, he comments "that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
If we stop right here, it's obvious that tea partiers share an affinity for King's civil disobedience. We waited a long time to take on the system...as did black America. We tried to negotiate our way to liberty by working with moderates...as did the black leadership in the South. We've endured all manner of broken promises from our politicians -- including their failure to work of, for and by the people. And they have ignored a long list of grievances -- lower taxes, fewer regulations, less spending, freedom to live our lives with minimal governmental intrusion, and so on.
When the government fails to make good, not only on its promises but on the principles set forth in the Constitution, then it is time for protests, boycotts and marches.
Is this not the essence of the tea parties? The evil of slavery and segregation can never compare with the ills of excessive taxation and irresponsible government spending. We know that. But they are both variations of enslavement -- of ownership and control of one over the other.
Many blacks didn't want to rock the boat during this time -- after all, they were better off than their parents. But waiting for progress by playing it safe was too costly. Those who are complacent are almost more dangerous than those who take a stand, even if that stand is wrong -- proven to the world most recently when German citizens looked the other way.
King remarks that "We will have to repent...not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work,' time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."
Yes, now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of injustice -- the injustice of judges who ignore the will of the people, of mayors who ignore the will of the people, of a Congress and President who ignore the will of the people.
King's letter is not only persuasive on the issue of racial injustice but resonates with regard to ANY injustice and how it enslaves.
•When the oppressor bars the oppressed from enjoying any of the G-d given liberties to which we were entrusted by the Constitution, then we are enslaved.
•When the government dictates how we live our lives, then we are enslaved.
•When an elite political class seeks to control us and enacts legislation that hurts us and to which they themselves aren't bound -- like health care -- then we are enslaved.
•When the party in power can tell private corporations how much they can compensate their employees, then we are enslaved.
•When the ruling class can throw elaborate parties, vote themselves a salary increase, send their kids to private school, and preserve their own private healthcare insurance, while depriving us of the same and imposing onerous taxes on the people, then we are enslaved.
Our shackles of slavery might be metaphorical but they limit our mobility nonetheless.
Is this the America envisioned by the Framers? On the contrary! This is reminiscent of exactly the kind of slavery, oppression and tyranny they feared the most. This is feudal Europe. This is plantation politics.
It doesn't matter if the injustice is racially motivated or stems from the fact that you are being handled by the ruling party, the outcome is the same-limited control over your life, money and property; limited choice and decreased liberties.
And the ruling class always claims to know what's best for the people -- today it's smart meters, smart cars, smart energy, government run education, government run healthcare and government controlled media. They'll continue to commandeer the private sector -- running our banks, manipulating insurance companies, replacing our mortgage brokers and controlling our car companies.
But, do not despair. As Dr. King said:
"The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the average American [King's words were "the American Negro"]. Something within has reminded [the average American] of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously...the average American [King said "the United States Negro"] is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of justice." [He limited it to "racial justice."]
That's right. Average Americans have been reminded of their birthright of freedom. When McCain lost to Obama, average Americans were forced to take a hard look at what it meant to be "America," to re-examine the Constitution, to understand constitutional principles. We had already reached the limits of what we could do politically -- complacently going to the polls, assuming our politicians were doing their jobs when they were carving out little fiefdoms of privilege and wealth for themselves.
And having reached this limit, we were suddenly jolted awake and reminded of the 60s, and Martin Luther King and civil disobedience -- of bus boycotts and marches and rallies. And we remembered that the power to force change... lies in the hands of the people.
And so, for the first time that I am aware of, conservative Americans of all parties and colors, took to the streets in protest -- to force a return to constitutional governance. Following King's example, we are moving with a sense of great urgency towards the promised land of...justice.
Yet, somehow, this man with whom we share so much, has exclusively become the darling of the left. And, I don't know why, because not only was he a Republican, but...we walk in his shoes; we think his thoughts; we uphold his principles; we dream his dreams; we share his destiny.
Here is an overview of what MLK knew in the 60s and we know today:
--Our political system is based on lofty and timeless principles that don't discriminate and are immutable. They can only be corrupted and abused by human beings.
--America was an experiment cobbled together by a bunch of white guys with big ideas. And as experiments go, there are positive and negative results. Slavery, segregation and Jim Crow were shameful lapses but only because of the people in charge.
--Despite the evils, this doesn't alter the original roadmap. We always have the founding documents to steer us in the right direction--towards a more perfect union.
--It is our destiny to preserve all of this for posterity-the solid foundation as well as the shaky misdeeds. Failure to do so begets tyranny and enslavement.
While the Obama administration knocked the complacency out of many of us, too many remain in the living room screaming at the TV. While they secretly support the tea parties, they remain spectators as opposed to participants. It is our duty to get every right-minded individual to rise up and join in.
This is our cross to bear. This is our destiny.
Like King and the Framers, we are locked in an ideological war and the opposition has been whittling away at our foundations for decades -- in our schools and churches, in the media and in a bureaucracy so bloated, you can hear it groaning under its own weight.
And we have been betrayed by politicians who have morphed into an elite political class, amassing power and money for themselves and their cronies.
And, the tea party is the conduit through which this war is being fought.
The grassroots momentum associated with the tea parties is not, however, a revolution of radical change. We do not seek to change the national character or the principles by which this country is governed or remake our political institutions. The Pelosi-Reid-Obama triumvirate is taking care of that.
Ours is a revolution to restore America to its rightful place in history and, as King stated, to "[bring] our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."
Recalling King's words again: "Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny."
America's destiny is to be that shining city on a hill, a place where the streets are paved with gold and endless possibilities abound, a society that stands as a light unto the world even during its darkest moments. Dr. King understood and embraced this. Even as he sat in jail, he still recognized that America was indeed the last best hope on Earth precisely because of the immutable principles on which she was founded.
As for our destiny it is indeed tied up with America's destiny: It is to remind those who have forgotten and inform those who never knew.
If we learned anything from the election of Obama, it is that we can no longer show up to the polls, vote, brush our hands together and go back to life the way it was-leaving the politics to those we elect.
We are the beneficiaries of the freedom and democracy left to us by the Founding Fathers, defended by millions who gave their lives and demanded by millions who suffered at the hands of brutal taskmasters.
Every generation must choose whether to embrace or reject this destiny. The Founding Fathers did, so did Lincoln and Martin Luther King, and so must we.
So, today, I bring you this message: Destiny is knocking. Are you listening?
Destiny was knocking when Moses climbed up that mountain and took on the burden of bringing light to a corrupt and desolate world.
Destiny was knocking when a handful of white men in powdery wigs carved out a shining city on the hill and took on the burden of bringing freedom to the millions of oppressed.
Destiny was knocking when thousands of young men sailed across a channel and took on the burden of bringing an end to the 20th century's greatest evil.
Destiny was knocking when a black republican reverend ended up in jail for acts of civil disobedience and took on the burden of delivering an entire nation from racial injustice.
And now, destiny is knocking once again...as millions of prosperous and sated Americans are being asked to take on the burden of preserving and passing on to their children the exceptional America they inherited.
If we turn our backs on over 230 years of history, if we leave the hard work of participation to others, if we let our "rendezvous with destiny" pass us by-unfulfilled--then, "we will spend our sunset years telling our grandchildren what it was once like in America when men were free."
That is not the destiny I choose. And I ask you to join with me in that choice. If you take nothing else from this article, let it be this: "Your assurance," as Reagan urged, "that those who come after us will say...that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith."
And in the words of MLK: "Let us all hope that ... in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty."
Sally Zelikovsky is the Founder of Bay Area Patriots and the Coordinator of the San Francisco Tea Party
Birthrigth Citizenship And The 14th Amendment
From The American Thinker:
August 30, 2010
Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment
By J.R. Dunn
It appears that the GOP -- with the help of the Tea Parties, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and the Devil -- is out to revise the 14th Amendment to the point of meaninglessness. Maybe even write the amendment out of the Constitution itself -- if not discard the Constitution completely. And all so that poor foreign newborns, who have never hurt a fly, won't be awarded with free American citizenship upon first seeing the light of day. Makes you sick, doesn't it?
At least that's how the legacy media, along with various immigration activists and liberal politicians, have chosen to play it.
The question, of course, involves anchor babies (AKA "jackpot babies"), infants born to illegal immigrants in the certainty that, under the "natural-born citizenship" clause of the 14th Amendment, their status as American citizens, with all rights and privileges pertaining thereto, will enable their families, lo, even unto the third cousins, to maintain residence in the U.S. unmolested by immigration or other law enforcement.
Illegal immigration has developed into one of those controversies that parcel themselves out piece by piece rather than all at once, a factor that gives the immigration controversy its never-ending-saga quality. Anchor babies are the latest installment. At first glance, it's not the kind of thing that anyone thinks of as a problem. How many could there be, after all? A few thousand? But this is overlooking the fact that anchor babies constitute one of the few true loopholes in American immigration law. The actual numbers beggar belief. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 340,000 of the 4.3 million infants born in the U.S. in 2008 were children of illegals. That number was matched if not exceeded in 2009. Something on the order of 8% of all children born in American hospitals can be classed as anchor babies. Of course, this percentage varies from region to region. In some Texas hospitals, up to 80% of the maternity patients are illegals.
This isn't a problem -- it's a crisis. It's not surprising that it's arisen at this particular point of the debate. The real question is why it didn't come up years ago.
The clause the illegals are taking advantage of appears as part of the 14th Amendment, one of the most important amendments ever added to the Constitution, its purpose to guarantee that the freed slaves would not be cheated of their birthright as Americans. The passage in question, Section 1, reads:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This appears straightforward. The problem arises with the introductory phrase, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States ... are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside," which has been interpreted to mean that any individual born in the U.S. under any circumstances is automatically an American citizen. This was never the intention, as is made clear by the application of the amendment in the years since. American Indians were not considered to be citizens under the 14th Amendment, since they owed a higher allegiance to their tribes (today, Indians are considered to be something along the lines of dual citizens). Similarly, the offspring of foreign diplomatic officials are not considered to be American.
The case law concerning birthright citizenship is mixed. The Slaughterhouse Cases, decided by the Supreme Court shortly after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, held that birthright citizenship did have exceptions. But in the 1898 case U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the Court decided that a man born of immigrant parents could under some circumstances be considered a citizen. Although the court did not state that "all" children born in the U.S. were citizens, and in truth strongly implied otherwise, the majestic simplemindedness of the law established precisely that conclusion as common usage.
In recent years, several attempts have been made to plug this loophole. In 2009, Rep. Nathan Deal, (R-GA) introduced the Birthright Citizenship Act, which would have restricted citizenship to children born to citizens and legal immigrants. The bill suffered the fate you'd expect in the Obama Congress. This year, the midterm election cycle revived the question, with senators John Kyl (R-AZ), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Tom Coburn (R-OK) promising hearings into the matter for the next session.
Enter the media. With the rise of birthright citizenship as an issue, we've witnessed a transformation of media and left-wing gadflies from knee-jerk constitutional relativists to strict textualists of a purity to impress even Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. One example is Jonathan Allen of Politico, who wants us to know that "[t]he Republican Party was for the 14th Amendment before its members started turning against it." It seems that the RNC features the text of the amendment on its web site as one of the party's great achievements. According to Allen, the fact that some Republicans wish to examine one phrase of the amendment renders the entire GOP back to 1868 an army of hypocrites. By this logic, anyone in favor of any amendment to the Constitution deserves to be barred from public life. (Allen recently spent time as a political flack for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat and one of the party's prime wackos -- she worked to have Christian crosses banned from government buildings, supports direct financial payments to the Palestinian Authority, and was one of the loudest congressional voices calling for Terry Schiavo to be put to sleep -- before deciding that he was at heart a reporter, and not just that, but a "politically independent" one. Got it.)
The Los Angeles Times tells us that "... some Americans hold a fringe view and would deny citizenship to those whose parents entered this country illegally. That idea so violates our history and law that it has long been consigned to the periphery ..." Unlike the legalization of marijuana or gay marriage, both of which are supported by the Times and thus are obviously not fringe views. Keep in mind -- LA is in California.
According to Morgan Smith of the Texas Tribune, "No single document does more to warm the cockles of the Republican heart than the Constitution. Yet of late, the Texas GOP has evinced a special disdain for a particular constitutional amendment: The 14th, which contains the birthright citizenship provision." Difficult to tell whether she's being sarcastic about the GOP or the Constitution, isn't it? She's obviously unaware of that Republican website venerating the old 14th. She needs to talk to Jonathan Allen right away.
Mary Sanchez at the Kansas City Star is shocked, deeply shocked, to learn that there's politics going on, and in an election year, no less: "Election year scripts are pretty well established in American politics. For Republicans, the script usually involves a polarizing issue, invariably some imagined threat to the nation or its traditional values ... This year they've gone for broke with a proposal to revise the U.S. Constitution. Several leading members of Congress are pushing the idea of hearings to discuss gutting all or part of the 14th Amendment." That "gutting" is a nice touch. Sanchez deserves a Pulitzer for that alone.
But it would be difficult to top Maria Elena Salinas' "Leave Babies out of Debate on Immigration": "Now the new target is babies. Yes, babies. A group of prominent Republican lawmakers is proposing repealing parts of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to all persons born in the United States." Don't you understand? Can't you see? Those Republicans are after little babies. And puppy dogs. And butterflies. And snail darters!
There's not much in the way of actual argument amid all the hysteria, innuendo, and fantasy. Morgan Smith insists that we'll need a huge bureaucracy to handle infant IDs after the amendment is "repealed." (Exactly like the huge bureaucracy we had before Wong was decided, I suppose. And since when did liberals object to huge bureaucracies?) There's also a contention that the anchor baby loophole isn't drawing people across the border at all. It seems that a child of illegals would have to "declare" his parents on reaching age 21, after which they'd be required to leave the country for as much as ten years and then return. But of course, it doesn't work that way. What illegals are hoping for -- and what they get, in most cases -- is leniency from the authorities on producing an American-born child. Nobody would willingly separate a family under such circumstances, Maria Salinas to the contrary.
But of course, they don't need arguments, because arguments, facts, and debate are beside the point. These articles were written as a form of well-poisoning. They are designed to make a topic so radioactive as to render it untouchable. Once this is assured, the progressive left wins by default, with no opposition, only a line of empty shoes that the Lindsey Grahams of the nation have kicked off in order to run away faster.
This has been attempted many a time, and it has worked many a time -- with gay rights, Islamic activities, and much of the Green agenda, all of which are off limits as far as any meaningful debate goes. But it may not work in this case.
It may not work because the immigration debate is not media-driven, or politician-driven. It is voter-driven. Left up to the media and pols, it would never have come up. Quite the contrary -- both would work together to stuff the country full of foreigners for their own purposes, as has occurred in the U.K. and much of Europe. But that's not what's happening here. What we've seen over the past few years is the emergence of immigration as a quality-of-life issue. It's the sort of issue that, like inflation, or crime, or education, simply doesn't go away. Public concern has forced serious behavioral changes on such trimmers as John McCain and Lindsey Graham. It is no longer something they can dodge. Nor is it something that the media can manipulate, any more than it could manipulate the national crime wave of a generation ago. Voters will allow themselves to be fooled as long as it involves something that does not affect them directly. But when it does, there is nothing much for the "opinion leaders" to do but go along. And illegal immigration affects everyone directly.
It is very likely that the anchor baby question will end up in the courts. It's also quite likely that the current interpretation will be overturned. Because there's yet another phrase in the 14th that illegal supporters have overlooked. (Much the same as they overlook the second half of the Establishment Clause: ..."or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." When's the last time you heard that quoted in arguments over freedom of religion?) That's the line reading "...and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." It's that phrase that assures that the children of diplomats, POWs, and foreign criminals in U.S. custody are not given the benefit of citizenship. Simply put, they don't qualify because they retain allegiance to their native countries. It logically works the same way for illegals. It will take some time for this overlooked passage to unwind at last, but unwind it will.
I predict that when it does, the media -- including the above parties -- won't like it any better than they do now. This is the second time in as many weeks that circumstances have enabled the American left to pose as protectors of Constitutional values. The other is, of course, the Ground Zero victory mosque, concerning which the same people who have driven American children out of schools for the crime of praying have struck bold postures in favor of freedom of religion. In both cases, they have discovered their newfound love of strict intentionalism in support not of their fellow citizens, but of foreigners -- foreigners who are utilizing American law and custom to get away with something. People who are abusing both the Constitution and the principles on which it is based.
One thing for certain: if next week, a situation evolves in which it would benefit the American left and its backers in the media to toss the Constitution into the nearest dumpster, we can be sure they'd do so without a second's hesitation. We might wish for a little consistency -- but that would be asking too much.
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker and will edit the forthcoming Military Thinker.
He is the author of Death by Liberalism
August 30, 2010
Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment
By J.R. Dunn
It appears that the GOP -- with the help of the Tea Parties, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and the Devil -- is out to revise the 14th Amendment to the point of meaninglessness. Maybe even write the amendment out of the Constitution itself -- if not discard the Constitution completely. And all so that poor foreign newborns, who have never hurt a fly, won't be awarded with free American citizenship upon first seeing the light of day. Makes you sick, doesn't it?
At least that's how the legacy media, along with various immigration activists and liberal politicians, have chosen to play it.
The question, of course, involves anchor babies (AKA "jackpot babies"), infants born to illegal immigrants in the certainty that, under the "natural-born citizenship" clause of the 14th Amendment, their status as American citizens, with all rights and privileges pertaining thereto, will enable their families, lo, even unto the third cousins, to maintain residence in the U.S. unmolested by immigration or other law enforcement.
Illegal immigration has developed into one of those controversies that parcel themselves out piece by piece rather than all at once, a factor that gives the immigration controversy its never-ending-saga quality. Anchor babies are the latest installment. At first glance, it's not the kind of thing that anyone thinks of as a problem. How many could there be, after all? A few thousand? But this is overlooking the fact that anchor babies constitute one of the few true loopholes in American immigration law. The actual numbers beggar belief. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 340,000 of the 4.3 million infants born in the U.S. in 2008 were children of illegals. That number was matched if not exceeded in 2009. Something on the order of 8% of all children born in American hospitals can be classed as anchor babies. Of course, this percentage varies from region to region. In some Texas hospitals, up to 80% of the maternity patients are illegals.
This isn't a problem -- it's a crisis. It's not surprising that it's arisen at this particular point of the debate. The real question is why it didn't come up years ago.
The clause the illegals are taking advantage of appears as part of the 14th Amendment, one of the most important amendments ever added to the Constitution, its purpose to guarantee that the freed slaves would not be cheated of their birthright as Americans. The passage in question, Section 1, reads:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This appears straightforward. The problem arises with the introductory phrase, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States ... are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside," which has been interpreted to mean that any individual born in the U.S. under any circumstances is automatically an American citizen. This was never the intention, as is made clear by the application of the amendment in the years since. American Indians were not considered to be citizens under the 14th Amendment, since they owed a higher allegiance to their tribes (today, Indians are considered to be something along the lines of dual citizens). Similarly, the offspring of foreign diplomatic officials are not considered to be American.
The case law concerning birthright citizenship is mixed. The Slaughterhouse Cases, decided by the Supreme Court shortly after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, held that birthright citizenship did have exceptions. But in the 1898 case U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the Court decided that a man born of immigrant parents could under some circumstances be considered a citizen. Although the court did not state that "all" children born in the U.S. were citizens, and in truth strongly implied otherwise, the majestic simplemindedness of the law established precisely that conclusion as common usage.
In recent years, several attempts have been made to plug this loophole. In 2009, Rep. Nathan Deal, (R-GA) introduced the Birthright Citizenship Act, which would have restricted citizenship to children born to citizens and legal immigrants. The bill suffered the fate you'd expect in the Obama Congress. This year, the midterm election cycle revived the question, with senators John Kyl (R-AZ), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Tom Coburn (R-OK) promising hearings into the matter for the next session.
Enter the media. With the rise of birthright citizenship as an issue, we've witnessed a transformation of media and left-wing gadflies from knee-jerk constitutional relativists to strict textualists of a purity to impress even Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. One example is Jonathan Allen of Politico, who wants us to know that "[t]he Republican Party was for the 14th Amendment before its members started turning against it." It seems that the RNC features the text of the amendment on its web site as one of the party's great achievements. According to Allen, the fact that some Republicans wish to examine one phrase of the amendment renders the entire GOP back to 1868 an army of hypocrites. By this logic, anyone in favor of any amendment to the Constitution deserves to be barred from public life. (Allen recently spent time as a political flack for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat and one of the party's prime wackos -- she worked to have Christian crosses banned from government buildings, supports direct financial payments to the Palestinian Authority, and was one of the loudest congressional voices calling for Terry Schiavo to be put to sleep -- before deciding that he was at heart a reporter, and not just that, but a "politically independent" one. Got it.)
The Los Angeles Times tells us that "... some Americans hold a fringe view and would deny citizenship to those whose parents entered this country illegally. That idea so violates our history and law that it has long been consigned to the periphery ..." Unlike the legalization of marijuana or gay marriage, both of which are supported by the Times and thus are obviously not fringe views. Keep in mind -- LA is in California.
According to Morgan Smith of the Texas Tribune, "No single document does more to warm the cockles of the Republican heart than the Constitution. Yet of late, the Texas GOP has evinced a special disdain for a particular constitutional amendment: The 14th, which contains the birthright citizenship provision." Difficult to tell whether she's being sarcastic about the GOP or the Constitution, isn't it? She's obviously unaware of that Republican website venerating the old 14th. She needs to talk to Jonathan Allen right away.
Mary Sanchez at the Kansas City Star is shocked, deeply shocked, to learn that there's politics going on, and in an election year, no less: "Election year scripts are pretty well established in American politics. For Republicans, the script usually involves a polarizing issue, invariably some imagined threat to the nation or its traditional values ... This year they've gone for broke with a proposal to revise the U.S. Constitution. Several leading members of Congress are pushing the idea of hearings to discuss gutting all or part of the 14th Amendment." That "gutting" is a nice touch. Sanchez deserves a Pulitzer for that alone.
But it would be difficult to top Maria Elena Salinas' "Leave Babies out of Debate on Immigration": "Now the new target is babies. Yes, babies. A group of prominent Republican lawmakers is proposing repealing parts of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to all persons born in the United States." Don't you understand? Can't you see? Those Republicans are after little babies. And puppy dogs. And butterflies. And snail darters!
There's not much in the way of actual argument amid all the hysteria, innuendo, and fantasy. Morgan Smith insists that we'll need a huge bureaucracy to handle infant IDs after the amendment is "repealed." (Exactly like the huge bureaucracy we had before Wong was decided, I suppose. And since when did liberals object to huge bureaucracies?) There's also a contention that the anchor baby loophole isn't drawing people across the border at all. It seems that a child of illegals would have to "declare" his parents on reaching age 21, after which they'd be required to leave the country for as much as ten years and then return. But of course, it doesn't work that way. What illegals are hoping for -- and what they get, in most cases -- is leniency from the authorities on producing an American-born child. Nobody would willingly separate a family under such circumstances, Maria Salinas to the contrary.
But of course, they don't need arguments, because arguments, facts, and debate are beside the point. These articles were written as a form of well-poisoning. They are designed to make a topic so radioactive as to render it untouchable. Once this is assured, the progressive left wins by default, with no opposition, only a line of empty shoes that the Lindsey Grahams of the nation have kicked off in order to run away faster.
This has been attempted many a time, and it has worked many a time -- with gay rights, Islamic activities, and much of the Green agenda, all of which are off limits as far as any meaningful debate goes. But it may not work in this case.
It may not work because the immigration debate is not media-driven, or politician-driven. It is voter-driven. Left up to the media and pols, it would never have come up. Quite the contrary -- both would work together to stuff the country full of foreigners for their own purposes, as has occurred in the U.K. and much of Europe. But that's not what's happening here. What we've seen over the past few years is the emergence of immigration as a quality-of-life issue. It's the sort of issue that, like inflation, or crime, or education, simply doesn't go away. Public concern has forced serious behavioral changes on such trimmers as John McCain and Lindsey Graham. It is no longer something they can dodge. Nor is it something that the media can manipulate, any more than it could manipulate the national crime wave of a generation ago. Voters will allow themselves to be fooled as long as it involves something that does not affect them directly. But when it does, there is nothing much for the "opinion leaders" to do but go along. And illegal immigration affects everyone directly.
It is very likely that the anchor baby question will end up in the courts. It's also quite likely that the current interpretation will be overturned. Because there's yet another phrase in the 14th that illegal supporters have overlooked. (Much the same as they overlook the second half of the Establishment Clause: ..."or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." When's the last time you heard that quoted in arguments over freedom of religion?) That's the line reading "...and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." It's that phrase that assures that the children of diplomats, POWs, and foreign criminals in U.S. custody are not given the benefit of citizenship. Simply put, they don't qualify because they retain allegiance to their native countries. It logically works the same way for illegals. It will take some time for this overlooked passage to unwind at last, but unwind it will.
I predict that when it does, the media -- including the above parties -- won't like it any better than they do now. This is the second time in as many weeks that circumstances have enabled the American left to pose as protectors of Constitutional values. The other is, of course, the Ground Zero victory mosque, concerning which the same people who have driven American children out of schools for the crime of praying have struck bold postures in favor of freedom of religion. In both cases, they have discovered their newfound love of strict intentionalism in support not of their fellow citizens, but of foreigners -- foreigners who are utilizing American law and custom to get away with something. People who are abusing both the Constitution and the principles on which it is based.
One thing for certain: if next week, a situation evolves in which it would benefit the American left and its backers in the media to toss the Constitution into the nearest dumpster, we can be sure they'd do so without a second's hesitation. We might wish for a little consistency -- but that would be asking too much.
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker and will edit the forthcoming Military Thinker.
He is the author of Death by Liberalism
The Education Of Glenn Beck
from The American Thinker:
August 30, 2010
The Education of Glenn Beck
By Matthew May
Depending on where you get your news, I was one of about 87,000 -- or a number approaching 350,000 -- on the National Mall this past Saturday at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" event.
Despite the scoffing and screaming of the knights of the keyboard and czars of the cable nets that Beck is a hateful, lying racist and the throngs on the National Mall were bigoted, gullible dupes, Beck's gathering was a peaceful, orderly love-in; love of country, love of our heritage, love of fellow patriots no matter their origin.
Think what you will of Glenn Beck -- the descriptions are legion: He is a goof. He cries a lot. Sometimes he says some truly head-scratching stuff. He is America's history professor or the next P.T. Barnum. But there are some self-evident truths about Glenn Beck.
The man has a deep love of the United States. He has committed himself to just as deep and thoughtful study of the actual documents, letters, and papers of the men who founded this nation. He is on a quest to know the answers to his questions about our founders such as "What did they mean?" "What did they want for us?" "To whom are we the people truly beholden?"
For that, he is light years ahead of most, if not all, of our elected representatives in all the councils of government, and certainly most of the citizenry. He has a deep reverence for the military and the many sacrifices they have made not just recently but throughout the history of this republic. Beck has come to intensely know just what they are protecting. By the way, Beck and the crowd instantly raised $5 million for his Special Forces Warrior Foundation on Saturday.
Taking all of this newfound education, Beck realized that to truly effect the kind of change for which all patriots cry out he must utilize something about which he already knew, a majestically simple concept: A microphone is used for amplification. His microphone amplifies to millions each week. Beck's gathering was a synthesis of his professional knowledge and his ongoing education to do everything he can to begin a renewal in our country. The results speak for themselves.
Reflecting upon the scene in Washington on Saturday, though, recalling the amazing ecumenical and -- yes -- diverse mosaic of America, the most striking thing about Glenn Beck in the context of his being painted a racist is the realization that he and -- judging from the crowd reactions -- really believe in the words of Martin Luther King's speech on that very spot in 1963. This belief stems from how closely wedded King's words were to the founding documents. Beck believes (actually he knows) that this nation was founded on the principles of Judeo-Christian ethic and that all are equal under the law -- though we have the scars to prove it has taken some longer than others to live up to these principles.
Beck's argument and his plea to the citizens of the United States are simple: The founders knew that without God, without faith, there could have been no revolution and there could be no keeping our republic. Because the nation has largely abandoned these principles, and because we have abandoned even the ideas and spirit of the words Dr. King addressed to the entire nation, we are at risk. Our government has strayed far from its prescribed path. Our culture has strayed far from its prescribed path. As Glenn Beck and millions upon millions see it, we are at risk and those are the reasons why.
All of this was evident to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. It was evident in the list of invitees to his rally. It was evident in their speeches and in some cases their mere presence. It was evident in Beck's words and evident in the spirit of the entire morning and afternoon. The joy, hope, and fellowship among the attendees brought to mind Dr. King's words from 1963: "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred."
What Beck has learned in his massive and intense self-education project is that the vision of the founders and the vision of King are teetering on the precipice. This restoration, this awakening, has been slowly gaining momentum for a long time - those of us paying attention know that this groundswell has been growing for a great deal more than a decade, regardless of the political affiliation of congressional majorities or occupants of the White House.
All Glenn Beck did Saturday was use his power of amplification to demonstrate that "with firm reliance on divine providence," those citizens who still believe in the ideals of the founders and the dream of the civil rights movement are preparing to wrest control from those who would turn these principles on their heads. Perhaps what Glenn Beck did was distribute microphones to those of us who are preparing to send a clear message in November and beyond. Let freedom ring.
Matthew May welcomes comments at matthewtmay@yahoo.com
August 30, 2010
The Education of Glenn Beck
By Matthew May
Depending on where you get your news, I was one of about 87,000 -- or a number approaching 350,000 -- on the National Mall this past Saturday at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" event.
Despite the scoffing and screaming of the knights of the keyboard and czars of the cable nets that Beck is a hateful, lying racist and the throngs on the National Mall were bigoted, gullible dupes, Beck's gathering was a peaceful, orderly love-in; love of country, love of our heritage, love of fellow patriots no matter their origin.
Think what you will of Glenn Beck -- the descriptions are legion: He is a goof. He cries a lot. Sometimes he says some truly head-scratching stuff. He is America's history professor or the next P.T. Barnum. But there are some self-evident truths about Glenn Beck.
The man has a deep love of the United States. He has committed himself to just as deep and thoughtful study of the actual documents, letters, and papers of the men who founded this nation. He is on a quest to know the answers to his questions about our founders such as "What did they mean?" "What did they want for us?" "To whom are we the people truly beholden?"
For that, he is light years ahead of most, if not all, of our elected representatives in all the councils of government, and certainly most of the citizenry. He has a deep reverence for the military and the many sacrifices they have made not just recently but throughout the history of this republic. Beck has come to intensely know just what they are protecting. By the way, Beck and the crowd instantly raised $5 million for his Special Forces Warrior Foundation on Saturday.
Taking all of this newfound education, Beck realized that to truly effect the kind of change for which all patriots cry out he must utilize something about which he already knew, a majestically simple concept: A microphone is used for amplification. His microphone amplifies to millions each week. Beck's gathering was a synthesis of his professional knowledge and his ongoing education to do everything he can to begin a renewal in our country. The results speak for themselves.
Reflecting upon the scene in Washington on Saturday, though, recalling the amazing ecumenical and -- yes -- diverse mosaic of America, the most striking thing about Glenn Beck in the context of his being painted a racist is the realization that he and -- judging from the crowd reactions -- really believe in the words of Martin Luther King's speech on that very spot in 1963. This belief stems from how closely wedded King's words were to the founding documents. Beck believes (actually he knows) that this nation was founded on the principles of Judeo-Christian ethic and that all are equal under the law -- though we have the scars to prove it has taken some longer than others to live up to these principles.
Beck's argument and his plea to the citizens of the United States are simple: The founders knew that without God, without faith, there could have been no revolution and there could be no keeping our republic. Because the nation has largely abandoned these principles, and because we have abandoned even the ideas and spirit of the words Dr. King addressed to the entire nation, we are at risk. Our government has strayed far from its prescribed path. Our culture has strayed far from its prescribed path. As Glenn Beck and millions upon millions see it, we are at risk and those are the reasons why.
All of this was evident to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. It was evident in the list of invitees to his rally. It was evident in their speeches and in some cases their mere presence. It was evident in Beck's words and evident in the spirit of the entire morning and afternoon. The joy, hope, and fellowship among the attendees brought to mind Dr. King's words from 1963: "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred."
What Beck has learned in his massive and intense self-education project is that the vision of the founders and the vision of King are teetering on the precipice. This restoration, this awakening, has been slowly gaining momentum for a long time - those of us paying attention know that this groundswell has been growing for a great deal more than a decade, regardless of the political affiliation of congressional majorities or occupants of the White House.
All Glenn Beck did Saturday was use his power of amplification to demonstrate that "with firm reliance on divine providence," those citizens who still believe in the ideals of the founders and the dream of the civil rights movement are preparing to wrest control from those who would turn these principles on their heads. Perhaps what Glenn Beck did was distribute microphones to those of us who are preparing to send a clear message in November and beyond. Let freedom ring.
Matthew May welcomes comments at matthewtmay@yahoo.com
Sneaky Senate Trying To Sneak Internet Kill Switch Past Us
from Prison Planet and Personal Liberty Digest:
Sneaky Senate Trying To Slip Internet Kill Switch Past Us
August 30, 2010 by Bob Livingston
Sensing Senators don’t have the stomach to try and pass a stand-alone bill in broad daylight that would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in a national emergency, the Senate is considering attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider to other legislation that would have bi-partisan support.
“It’s hard to get a measure like cybersecurity legislation passed on its own,” Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.) told GovInfoSecurity.com. Carper is chairman of the Senate subcommittee with cybersecurity oversight.
Under instructions from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) are working to combine their separate bills into one that can be attached to another piece of legislation, such as the Defense Authorization Act.
While proponents say an Internet Kill Switch is needed to protect the nation’s power, water and banking grids, what it really is is a way to control the flow of information. Experts have said that the nation’s power and water grids are not connected directly to the Internet.
Lieberman let slip his real thoughts on the Internet Kill Switch in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley when he said, “Right now China — the government — can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war. We need to have the ability to do that, too.”
For more on Lieberman’s interview, go here.
And the idiot Rockefeller is no friend of the Internet either. He has said he wished the Internet had never been invented and we were back to communicating with pencil and paper.
China and other totalitarian regimes readily use their power over the Internet to deny their citizens the free flow of information. And that’s what in store for the United States if this bill comes to fruition.
The President — Democrat or Republican — can now use almost any excuse to declare a state of emergency and that would give him the excuse to shut down any and all parts of the Internet. The target of the shutdown could be sites that express dissenting views or entire sections of the country the President — or his puppet master — is displeased with.
The Senate will soon be back in Washington, D.C., for a four-week session before adjourning until the November elections. This is the window that provides the most danger to our freedom.
Hat tip: PrisonPlanet.com
Sneaky Senate Trying To Slip Internet Kill Switch Past Us
August 30, 2010 by Bob Livingston
Sensing Senators don’t have the stomach to try and pass a stand-alone bill in broad daylight that would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in a national emergency, the Senate is considering attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider to other legislation that would have bi-partisan support.
“It’s hard to get a measure like cybersecurity legislation passed on its own,” Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.) told GovInfoSecurity.com. Carper is chairman of the Senate subcommittee with cybersecurity oversight.
Under instructions from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) are working to combine their separate bills into one that can be attached to another piece of legislation, such as the Defense Authorization Act.
While proponents say an Internet Kill Switch is needed to protect the nation’s power, water and banking grids, what it really is is a way to control the flow of information. Experts have said that the nation’s power and water grids are not connected directly to the Internet.
Lieberman let slip his real thoughts on the Internet Kill Switch in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley when he said, “Right now China — the government — can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war. We need to have the ability to do that, too.”
For more on Lieberman’s interview, go here.
And the idiot Rockefeller is no friend of the Internet either. He has said he wished the Internet had never been invented and we were back to communicating with pencil and paper.
China and other totalitarian regimes readily use their power over the Internet to deny their citizens the free flow of information. And that’s what in store for the United States if this bill comes to fruition.
The President — Democrat or Republican — can now use almost any excuse to declare a state of emergency and that would give him the excuse to shut down any and all parts of the Internet. The target of the shutdown could be sites that express dissenting views or entire sections of the country the President — or his puppet master — is displeased with.
The Senate will soon be back in Washington, D.C., for a four-week session before adjourning until the November elections. This is the window that provides the most danger to our freedom.
Hat tip: PrisonPlanet.com
The Fourth Amendment Is Dead
from Personal Liberty Digest:
The 4th Amendment: May It Rest In Peace
August 30, 2010 by Bob Livingston
In Colonial America it was common for British soldiers, tax collectors and other representatives of the Crown to obtain a writ of assistance giving them the authority to enter any home, business or ship at any time of the day or night in search of contraband goods or to interrogate the residents and owners over payment of taxes or for most any other reason.
Writs of assistance were very vague search warrants and it was a simple procedure to obtain them. They could be had for any reason or no reason from the Colonial governor or from judges — all of whom held their positions at the whim of the King of England.
In 1761 James Otis Jr., the Advocate General of Massachusetts — whose job it was to defend the issuance of the writs in court — resigned his position and took the side of 63 Boston merchants in a court battle against the writs. He represented the merchants for free, and though he lost the case in a court stacked against him, he earned the title of patriot.
It was his five-hour speech in court that served “as the spark in which originated the American Revolution,” according to John Adams, who was sitting in the courtroom at the time.
“The child of independence was then and there born, every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance,” Adams said.
The issue was such an important one to the Colonists that it was mentioned as one of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence: “He (the king)… sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
Since it was so important an issue to the Founding Fathers it’s not surprising that an Amendment was included in the Constitution that forbids the government from arbitrarily searching people, homes and businesses.
It was the Colonists’ experience with unreasonable searches and seizures and Otis’ speech that planted the seeds that grew into the 4th Amendment which reads:
“The right of the people to be secure in the persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The 4th Amendment has been under assault before in our nation’s history. And that has been chronicled in other articles on this site. But now that right, guaranteed by our Constitution, is as dead as a hammer.
The most recent major assault on the 4th Amendment came in the wake of 9/11 when President George W. Bush proposed and Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which was most unpatriotic.
In the Senate the act passed 98 to one. Democrat Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) was the lone dissenter. Democrat Mary Landrieu (D-La.) did not vote.
In the House it passed 357-66 with nine not voting. Sixty-five of the dissenters were Democrats. Ron Paul (R-Texas) was the lone Republican to oppose the bill.
Without getting into specifics, the bill gives government investigators almost unlimited power to conduct wire taps, eavesdrop, access and search records and enter homes in an effort to root out those it considers terrorists. The bill was couched in a way that led Americans to believe it was to be used only in the war on terror but, like all other government powers, it has been abused and used against Americans. In fact, some Americans have been charged with terrorism-related offenses through the Act even though their “crimes” involved nothing more than making innocuous threats, taking or possessing photographs or drawing pictures.
The travesty is that Americans, for the most part, seemingly don’t care. They’ve decided that government should be allowed to do anything and everything “if it makes us safer.” In fact, many commenters on this subject on this site have said as much. So the heavy hand of government has grown bigger and stronger — as government is wont to do — and the USA PATRIOT Act has been renewed and strengthened.
In the name of safety we have ceded our right not to be searched at airports… almost without a whimper. First we accepted removing our shoes and opening our bags. Then we gave up our lotions, sanitizers and water bottles. Then we accepted being frisked and poked and prodded. Then we accepted having our bodies irradiated and naked pictures being taken and ogled at and saved in the system — in effect allowing government to assume we are all criminals with plans to blow up an airplane — all in the interest of “safety.”
But here’s what really killed the 4th Amendment. Technology and government have taken the next logical step beyond airport scanners. American Science and Engineering, Inc., one of the manufacturers of the backscatter radiation machines now being employed at airports, has made the backscatter radiation system portable.
The Z Backscatter Van™ allows law enforcement to look inside vehicles, buildings and homes just like the airport backscatter scanners allow agents from the Transportation and Security Administration to peer beneath your clothes.
AS&E’s website says the van:
“…is a low-cost, extremely maneuverable screening system built into a commercially available delivery van. The ZBV allows for immediate deployment in response to security threats, and its high throughput capability facilitates rapid inspections. The system’s unique "drive-by" capability allows one or two operators to conduct X-ray imaging of suspect vehicles and objects while the ZBV drives past.
“The ZBV can also be operated in stationary mode by parking the system and producing X-ray images of vehicles as they pass by. Screening can also be accomplished remotely while the system is parked. Remote operation allows scanning to be done safely, even in dangerous environments, while maintaining low-profile operation. The system is unobtrusive, as it maintains the outward appearance of an ordinary van.”
A company video of the van in action can be viewed here.
These vans and a more powerful, fire truck-sized version called the Mobile Search HE (high energy), are now on the roads in America. AS&E sold $242,093,000 of its backscatter imaging products in fiscal year 2010 with 63 percent of the sales in the United States, according to the company’s annual report. The company says 500 of the ZBVs have been sold.
The company’s main contractor — not surprisingly — was the Department of Defense, where the trucks were deployed in war zones. But the vans and trucks have been sold to other government entities — including states and municipalities — as well.
That means that, right now, ZBVs and Mobile Search HEs are prowling around our streets and towns looking into our cars, homes and businesses searching for something — anything — the heavy hand of government finds “suspicious.”
No longer are you secure in your “persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Government agents can peer into your car, home and business and you will never know it until they show up on your doorstep flashing a warrant based on something they saw through the walls.
And not only are you no longer secure in your home, your thoughts — or future thoughts — are being probed as well. A University of Pennsylvania professor has developed software that the developer says can predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder or be murdered.
According to ABC News, if the software proves successful it could influence sentencing recommendations and bail amounts. It is being used in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
And, of course, we already have “hate crime” laws in which judges and prosecutors deign to know the thoughts and motives behind criminal acts — giving the impression that a heinous crime is somehow even more heinous because the person harbors some type of grudge or bias.
Folks, we have reached the totalitarian regime foreshadowed in George Orwell’s 1984, where all that we do is watched and where even our thoughts have become crimes.
“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” — 1984, George Orwell.
No longer a thing of fiction, government has truly become Big Brother. What Orwell didn’t know is that the technology would advance to let Big Brother watch us even in darkness.
Our nation has become the Oceania of 1984, where history is changed daily, our actions are watched, our thoughts are discerned, our communities are decaying and we are in a perpetual state of war.
Buying Big Brother’s vow to keep us safe we have kicked the Constitution to the curb and if the Founders — who sacrificed so much for liberty — were alive today they would surely weep at our foolishness.
The 4th Amendment: May It Rest In Peace
August 30, 2010 by Bob Livingston
In Colonial America it was common for British soldiers, tax collectors and other representatives of the Crown to obtain a writ of assistance giving them the authority to enter any home, business or ship at any time of the day or night in search of contraband goods or to interrogate the residents and owners over payment of taxes or for most any other reason.
Writs of assistance were very vague search warrants and it was a simple procedure to obtain them. They could be had for any reason or no reason from the Colonial governor or from judges — all of whom held their positions at the whim of the King of England.
In 1761 James Otis Jr., the Advocate General of Massachusetts — whose job it was to defend the issuance of the writs in court — resigned his position and took the side of 63 Boston merchants in a court battle against the writs. He represented the merchants for free, and though he lost the case in a court stacked against him, he earned the title of patriot.
It was his five-hour speech in court that served “as the spark in which originated the American Revolution,” according to John Adams, who was sitting in the courtroom at the time.
“The child of independence was then and there born, every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance,” Adams said.
The issue was such an important one to the Colonists that it was mentioned as one of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence: “He (the king)… sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
Since it was so important an issue to the Founding Fathers it’s not surprising that an Amendment was included in the Constitution that forbids the government from arbitrarily searching people, homes and businesses.
It was the Colonists’ experience with unreasonable searches and seizures and Otis’ speech that planted the seeds that grew into the 4th Amendment which reads:
“The right of the people to be secure in the persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The 4th Amendment has been under assault before in our nation’s history. And that has been chronicled in other articles on this site. But now that right, guaranteed by our Constitution, is as dead as a hammer.
The most recent major assault on the 4th Amendment came in the wake of 9/11 when President George W. Bush proposed and Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which was most unpatriotic.
In the Senate the act passed 98 to one. Democrat Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) was the lone dissenter. Democrat Mary Landrieu (D-La.) did not vote.
In the House it passed 357-66 with nine not voting. Sixty-five of the dissenters were Democrats. Ron Paul (R-Texas) was the lone Republican to oppose the bill.
Without getting into specifics, the bill gives government investigators almost unlimited power to conduct wire taps, eavesdrop, access and search records and enter homes in an effort to root out those it considers terrorists. The bill was couched in a way that led Americans to believe it was to be used only in the war on terror but, like all other government powers, it has been abused and used against Americans. In fact, some Americans have been charged with terrorism-related offenses through the Act even though their “crimes” involved nothing more than making innocuous threats, taking or possessing photographs or drawing pictures.
The travesty is that Americans, for the most part, seemingly don’t care. They’ve decided that government should be allowed to do anything and everything “if it makes us safer.” In fact, many commenters on this subject on this site have said as much. So the heavy hand of government has grown bigger and stronger — as government is wont to do — and the USA PATRIOT Act has been renewed and strengthened.
In the name of safety we have ceded our right not to be searched at airports… almost without a whimper. First we accepted removing our shoes and opening our bags. Then we gave up our lotions, sanitizers and water bottles. Then we accepted being frisked and poked and prodded. Then we accepted having our bodies irradiated and naked pictures being taken and ogled at and saved in the system — in effect allowing government to assume we are all criminals with plans to blow up an airplane — all in the interest of “safety.”
But here’s what really killed the 4th Amendment. Technology and government have taken the next logical step beyond airport scanners. American Science and Engineering, Inc., one of the manufacturers of the backscatter radiation machines now being employed at airports, has made the backscatter radiation system portable.
The Z Backscatter Van™ allows law enforcement to look inside vehicles, buildings and homes just like the airport backscatter scanners allow agents from the Transportation and Security Administration to peer beneath your clothes.
AS&E’s website says the van:
“…is a low-cost, extremely maneuverable screening system built into a commercially available delivery van. The ZBV allows for immediate deployment in response to security threats, and its high throughput capability facilitates rapid inspections. The system’s unique "drive-by" capability allows one or two operators to conduct X-ray imaging of suspect vehicles and objects while the ZBV drives past.
“The ZBV can also be operated in stationary mode by parking the system and producing X-ray images of vehicles as they pass by. Screening can also be accomplished remotely while the system is parked. Remote operation allows scanning to be done safely, even in dangerous environments, while maintaining low-profile operation. The system is unobtrusive, as it maintains the outward appearance of an ordinary van.”
A company video of the van in action can be viewed here.
These vans and a more powerful, fire truck-sized version called the Mobile Search HE (high energy), are now on the roads in America. AS&E sold $242,093,000 of its backscatter imaging products in fiscal year 2010 with 63 percent of the sales in the United States, according to the company’s annual report. The company says 500 of the ZBVs have been sold.
The company’s main contractor — not surprisingly — was the Department of Defense, where the trucks were deployed in war zones. But the vans and trucks have been sold to other government entities — including states and municipalities — as well.
That means that, right now, ZBVs and Mobile Search HEs are prowling around our streets and towns looking into our cars, homes and businesses searching for something — anything — the heavy hand of government finds “suspicious.”
No longer are you secure in your “persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Government agents can peer into your car, home and business and you will never know it until they show up on your doorstep flashing a warrant based on something they saw through the walls.
And not only are you no longer secure in your home, your thoughts — or future thoughts — are being probed as well. A University of Pennsylvania professor has developed software that the developer says can predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder or be murdered.
According to ABC News, if the software proves successful it could influence sentencing recommendations and bail amounts. It is being used in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
And, of course, we already have “hate crime” laws in which judges and prosecutors deign to know the thoughts and motives behind criminal acts — giving the impression that a heinous crime is somehow even more heinous because the person harbors some type of grudge or bias.
Folks, we have reached the totalitarian regime foreshadowed in George Orwell’s 1984, where all that we do is watched and where even our thoughts have become crimes.
“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” — 1984, George Orwell.
No longer a thing of fiction, government has truly become Big Brother. What Orwell didn’t know is that the technology would advance to let Big Brother watch us even in darkness.
Our nation has become the Oceania of 1984, where history is changed daily, our actions are watched, our thoughts are discerned, our communities are decaying and we are in a perpetual state of war.
Buying Big Brother’s vow to keep us safe we have kicked the Constitution to the curb and if the Founders — who sacrificed so much for liberty — were alive today they would surely weep at our foolishness.
The Death Of The First Amendment Under Bush, And Now Obama
from Liberty Pulse:
August 27th, 2010
Death of the First Amendment — The Nazification of the United States
by Paul Craig Roberts
Chuck Norris is no pinko-liberal-commie, and Human Events is a very conservative publication. The two have come together to produce one of the most important articles of our time, “Obama’s US Assassination Program.”
It seems only yesterday that Americans, or those interested in their civil liberties, were shocked that the Bush regime so flagrantly violated the FlSA law against spying on American citizens without a warrant. A federal judge serving on the FISA court even resigned in protest to the illegality of the spying.
Nothing was done about it. “National security” placed the president and executive branch above the law of the land. Civil libertarians worried that the US government was freeing its power from the constraints of law, but no one else seemed to care.
Encouraged by its success in breaking the law, the executive branch early this year announced that the Obama regime has given itself the right to murder Americans abroad if such Americans are considered a “threat.” “Threat” was not defined and, thus, a death sentence would be issued by a subjective decision of an unaccountable official.
There was hardly a peep out of the public or the media. Americans and the media were content for the government to summarily execute traitors and turncoats, and who better to identify traitors and turncoats than the government with all its spy programs.
The problem with this sort of thing is that once it starts, it doesn’t stop. As Norris reports citing Obama regime security officials, the next stage is to criminalize dissent and criticism of the government. The May 2010 National Security Strategy states:
“We are now moving beyond traditional distinctions between homeland and national security . . . This includes a determination to prevent terrorist attacks against the American people by fully coordinating the actions that we take abroad with the actions and precautions that we take at home.”
Most Americans will respond that the “indispensable” US government would never confuse an American exercising First Amendment rights with a terrorist or an enemy of the state. But, in fact, governments always have. Even one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams and the Federalist Party, had their “Alien and Sedition Acts” which targeted the Republican press.
Few with power can brook opposition or criticism, especially when it is a simple matter for those with power to sweep away constraints upon their power in the name of “national security.” Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan recently explained that more steps are being taken, because of the growing number of Americans who have been “captivated by extremist ideology or causes.” Notice that this phrasing goes beyond concern with Muslim terrorists.
In pursuit of hegemony over both the world and its own subjects, the US government is shutting down the First Amendment and turning criticism of the government into an act of “domestic extremism,” a capital crime punishable by execution, just as it was in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia.
Initially German courts resisted Hitler’s illegal acts. Hitler got around the courts by creating a parallel court system, like the Bush regime did with its military tribunals. It won’t be long before a decision of the US Supreme Court will not mean anything. Any decision that goes against the regime will simply be ignored.
This is already happening in Canada, an American puppet state. Writing for the Future of Freedom Foundation, Andy Worthington documents the lawlessness of the US trial of Canadian Omar Khadr. In January of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the interrogation of Khadr constituted “state conduct that violates the principles of fundamental justice” and “offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”
According to the Toronto Star, the Court instructed the government to “shape a response that reconciled its foreign policy imperatives with its constitutional obligations to Khadr,” but the puppet prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, ignored the Court and permitted the US government to proceed with its lawless abuse of a Canadian citizen.
September 11 destroyed more than lives, World Trade Center buildings, and Americans’ sense of invulnerability. The event destroyed American liberty, the rule of law and the US Constitution.
August 27th, 2010
Death of the First Amendment — The Nazification of the United States
by Paul Craig Roberts
Chuck Norris is no pinko-liberal-commie, and Human Events is a very conservative publication. The two have come together to produce one of the most important articles of our time, “Obama’s US Assassination Program.”
It seems only yesterday that Americans, or those interested in their civil liberties, were shocked that the Bush regime so flagrantly violated the FlSA law against spying on American citizens without a warrant. A federal judge serving on the FISA court even resigned in protest to the illegality of the spying.
Nothing was done about it. “National security” placed the president and executive branch above the law of the land. Civil libertarians worried that the US government was freeing its power from the constraints of law, but no one else seemed to care.
Encouraged by its success in breaking the law, the executive branch early this year announced that the Obama regime has given itself the right to murder Americans abroad if such Americans are considered a “threat.” “Threat” was not defined and, thus, a death sentence would be issued by a subjective decision of an unaccountable official.
There was hardly a peep out of the public or the media. Americans and the media were content for the government to summarily execute traitors and turncoats, and who better to identify traitors and turncoats than the government with all its spy programs.
The problem with this sort of thing is that once it starts, it doesn’t stop. As Norris reports citing Obama regime security officials, the next stage is to criminalize dissent and criticism of the government. The May 2010 National Security Strategy states:
“We are now moving beyond traditional distinctions between homeland and national security . . . This includes a determination to prevent terrorist attacks against the American people by fully coordinating the actions that we take abroad with the actions and precautions that we take at home.”
Most Americans will respond that the “indispensable” US government would never confuse an American exercising First Amendment rights with a terrorist or an enemy of the state. But, in fact, governments always have. Even one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams and the Federalist Party, had their “Alien and Sedition Acts” which targeted the Republican press.
Few with power can brook opposition or criticism, especially when it is a simple matter for those with power to sweep away constraints upon their power in the name of “national security.” Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan recently explained that more steps are being taken, because of the growing number of Americans who have been “captivated by extremist ideology or causes.” Notice that this phrasing goes beyond concern with Muslim terrorists.
In pursuit of hegemony over both the world and its own subjects, the US government is shutting down the First Amendment and turning criticism of the government into an act of “domestic extremism,” a capital crime punishable by execution, just as it was in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia.
Initially German courts resisted Hitler’s illegal acts. Hitler got around the courts by creating a parallel court system, like the Bush regime did with its military tribunals. It won’t be long before a decision of the US Supreme Court will not mean anything. Any decision that goes against the regime will simply be ignored.
This is already happening in Canada, an American puppet state. Writing for the Future of Freedom Foundation, Andy Worthington documents the lawlessness of the US trial of Canadian Omar Khadr. In January of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the interrogation of Khadr constituted “state conduct that violates the principles of fundamental justice” and “offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”
According to the Toronto Star, the Court instructed the government to “shape a response that reconciled its foreign policy imperatives with its constitutional obligations to Khadr,” but the puppet prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, ignored the Court and permitted the US government to proceed with its lawless abuse of a Canadian citizen.
September 11 destroyed more than lives, World Trade Center buildings, and Americans’ sense of invulnerability. The event destroyed American liberty, the rule of law and the US Constitution.
Miranda Doesn't Need Fizing
from The CATO Institute:
Miranda Doesn't Need Fixing
by David Rittgers
David Rittgers is a legal policy analyst with the Cato Institute.
Added to cato.org on August 27, 2010
This article appeared on TownHall.com on August 27, 2010.
PRINT PAGE CITE THIS Sans Serif Serif Share with your friends:
ShareThis
The attempted attacks by would-be airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad opened a debate over the wisdom of reading a terrorism suspect his rights to remain silent and to an attorney under Miranda v. Arizona. Now U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has proposed legislation that "allows unwarned interrogation of terrorism suspects for as long as is necessary to protect the public from pending or planned attacks."
There are two serious problems with this proposal, one constitutional and one practical.
The constitutional issue is that even if this bill passes, it wouldn't mean much. Congress has tried to legislatively overrule Miranda before. The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the decision was a constitutional one, and therefore cannot be papered over by Congress. If the protection of Miranda is constitutional, presumably the scope is as well.
David Rittgers is a legal policy analyst with the Cato Institute.
More by David Rittgers
The practical objection is that Miranda doesn't need fixing.
The existing "public safety exception" to Miranda, approved in the 1984 Supreme Court case New York v. Quarles, is broad enough to cover emergencies created by terrorism plots.
The Quarles precedent comes from police officers responding to a rape call in Queens. The victim gave a description of her assailant, and told the officers that he was carrying a gun and had just entered a supermarket. One of the officers spotted the suspect, Benjamin Quarles, chased him down and discovered an empty shoulder holster that had held Quarles' revolver.
After handcuffing Quarles, the officer asked him where the gun was. Quarles nodded in the direction of some empty cartons and said, "The gun is over there." The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that this statement, made while Quarles was in custody but before police read him his rights, was admissible. The Court recognized that the exigency of a loose gun is a situation "where spontaneity rather than adherence to a police manual is necessarily the order of the day."
Supporters of Schiff's proposal to take Miranda out of play in terrorism cases will likely tell us that terrorism plots create dilemmas more serious than a revolver lying idle in the produce section.
What if the police had a bomb on their hands and only a recently captured terrorist knows knew how to defuse it? That's not a hypothetical, and the answer isn't to call Jack Bauer.
In 1997, NYPD officers raided an apartment where two men had constructed pipe bombs and planned to detonate them on a subway or bus terminal. During the raid, the police shot and wounded the bomb maker as he lunged for a black bag containing the explosives.
After bomb technicians discovered that a switch on one of the pipe bombs had been flipped, officers questioned the wounded bomb maker about the number of bombs, how many switches had to be flipped to set them off, whether there was a timer, what wires to cut to disarm them, and whether they were intended as suicide devices. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit let all of the answers come into evidence via the public safety exception.
The public safety exception is settled law and has been ruled on by every federal circuit and over half the states, allowing police to deal with all manner of emergencies. Courts have allowed questions about the existence or location of guns, bombs, assault or kidnapping victims still in danger, accomplices and their identities, and plans for future crimes.
Add to this the fact that statements given before Miranda warnings are still admissible to impeach a suspect who changes his story when he gets to court, and that physical evidence obtained without Miranda warnings remains admissible.
So, here's a practical proposal: the above list ought to be distributed to counterterrorism task forces across the nation. Instead of spending time and energy on a measure that is out of Congress' power, have government lawyers create a pamphlet to educate the local, state and federal officers who will capture tomorrow's aspiring terrorist. Boil down the law to bullet points and put it on a business card so that they have it on hand when the next emergency unfolds.
That's a tool first responders can use.
Save taxpayers the election-year posturing, and perhaps a few lives in the process.
Miranda Doesn't Need Fixing
by David Rittgers
David Rittgers is a legal policy analyst with the Cato Institute.
Added to cato.org on August 27, 2010
This article appeared on TownHall.com on August 27, 2010.
PRINT PAGE CITE THIS Sans Serif Serif Share with your friends:
ShareThis
The attempted attacks by would-be airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad opened a debate over the wisdom of reading a terrorism suspect his rights to remain silent and to an attorney under Miranda v. Arizona. Now U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has proposed legislation that "allows unwarned interrogation of terrorism suspects for as long as is necessary to protect the public from pending or planned attacks."
There are two serious problems with this proposal, one constitutional and one practical.
The constitutional issue is that even if this bill passes, it wouldn't mean much. Congress has tried to legislatively overrule Miranda before. The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the decision was a constitutional one, and therefore cannot be papered over by Congress. If the protection of Miranda is constitutional, presumably the scope is as well.
David Rittgers is a legal policy analyst with the Cato Institute.
More by David Rittgers
The practical objection is that Miranda doesn't need fixing.
The existing "public safety exception" to Miranda, approved in the 1984 Supreme Court case New York v. Quarles, is broad enough to cover emergencies created by terrorism plots.
The Quarles precedent comes from police officers responding to a rape call in Queens. The victim gave a description of her assailant, and told the officers that he was carrying a gun and had just entered a supermarket. One of the officers spotted the suspect, Benjamin Quarles, chased him down and discovered an empty shoulder holster that had held Quarles' revolver.
After handcuffing Quarles, the officer asked him where the gun was. Quarles nodded in the direction of some empty cartons and said, "The gun is over there." The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that this statement, made while Quarles was in custody but before police read him his rights, was admissible. The Court recognized that the exigency of a loose gun is a situation "where spontaneity rather than adherence to a police manual is necessarily the order of the day."
Supporters of Schiff's proposal to take Miranda out of play in terrorism cases will likely tell us that terrorism plots create dilemmas more serious than a revolver lying idle in the produce section.
What if the police had a bomb on their hands and only a recently captured terrorist knows knew how to defuse it? That's not a hypothetical, and the answer isn't to call Jack Bauer.
In 1997, NYPD officers raided an apartment where two men had constructed pipe bombs and planned to detonate them on a subway or bus terminal. During the raid, the police shot and wounded the bomb maker as he lunged for a black bag containing the explosives.
After bomb technicians discovered that a switch on one of the pipe bombs had been flipped, officers questioned the wounded bomb maker about the number of bombs, how many switches had to be flipped to set them off, whether there was a timer, what wires to cut to disarm them, and whether they were intended as suicide devices. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit let all of the answers come into evidence via the public safety exception.
The public safety exception is settled law and has been ruled on by every federal circuit and over half the states, allowing police to deal with all manner of emergencies. Courts have allowed questions about the existence or location of guns, bombs, assault or kidnapping victims still in danger, accomplices and their identities, and plans for future crimes.
Add to this the fact that statements given before Miranda warnings are still admissible to impeach a suspect who changes his story when he gets to court, and that physical evidence obtained without Miranda warnings remains admissible.
So, here's a practical proposal: the above list ought to be distributed to counterterrorism task forces across the nation. Instead of spending time and energy on a measure that is out of Congress' power, have government lawyers create a pamphlet to educate the local, state and federal officers who will capture tomorrow's aspiring terrorist. Boil down the law to bullet points and put it on a business card so that they have it on hand when the next emergency unfolds.
That's a tool first responders can use.
Save taxpayers the election-year posturing, and perhaps a few lives in the process.
The Free Market As A Redistributor Of Wealth
From Campaign For Liberty:
The Market as Redistributor of Wealth
By Jacob Hornberger
View all 70 articles by Jacob Hornberger
Published 08/30/10
Printer-friendly version
One of the primary arguments employed by statists to justify the welfare state is the necessity to equalize incomes. The rich just get richer and richer, and the poor just get poorer and poorer, in a free-market economy, say the statists. To balance things out, they say, the state must take from the rich and give to the poor.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, a free market is a tremendous engine for the redistribution of wealth, one in which the poor become rich and rich become poor.
In other words, you don't need the state to confiscate and redistribute wealth through income taxes, estate taxes, or any other taxes. The market does a fine job in redistributing wealth.
In fact, the market is the most just vehicle for redistributing wealth because it's based on voluntary choices, not the coercive action employed by the state. In the marketplace, consumers are ultimately sovereign. Through their buying decisions, they decide which businesses are going to stay in business and which ones are not. If a business fails to satisfy consumers, it will lose market share and possibly go out of business. New, upstart businesses have the opportunity to become wealthy by providing goods and services that consumers want.
By the same token, a rich person must make decisions as to how to manage his money. Nothing is guaranteed. If he makes the right choices, he keeps his wealth and even expands it. But if he makes the wrong choices, he stands to lose part of it or even all of it.
Consider, for example, the Wyly brothers of Dallas, Texas, who were the subject of a recent New York Times article.
The Wylys are billionaires. So, they're rich, right? Well, yes, but it's really not that simple because they actually were poor before they were rich. According to the Times,"Depression-era babies, they were raised in rural Louisiana by a well-educated mother and father who fell on hard times by failing to hedge a cotton crop. For a time, the family moved into a shack without electricity or plumbing."
So, here were two poor brothers. But the state didn't take money from the rich and give it to the Wyly brothers. Instead, these poor people became rich entirely through their own efforts by buying and selling businesses in the marketplace.
And there were no guarantees. In the 1970s, they lost almost $100 million of their and their shareholders' money in the purchase of a company that went bad. As Sam Wyly put it,"It's a game. You win some, you lose some. Some are sort of a tie."
Or consider the case of Larry Dean, who became a multi-millionaire through a software company he founded in the 1970s, who was also recently featured in the New York Times.
Dean used $25 million of his money to build a 32,000 square feet,"Xanadu-like" mansion in Atlanta that included $17,500 leaded glass and mahogany double front doors.
Dean, however, has fallen on hard times. Now on his third divorce, he recently sold the house for $7 million, after having it on the market for 17 years. The Times stated"The estate sale brought down the curtain on a particular kind of spectacle, a rags-to-riches tale that somewhere along the way slipped into reverse and played itself out in the unforgiving glare of the real estate market."
You don't need the welfare state to redistribute wealth. The free market does that. Moreover, since the market is based on voluntary choices rather than coercion, it's a better and more just method of deciding the allocation of wealth in a free society.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.
Copyright © 2010 Future of Freedom Foundation
The Market as Redistributor of Wealth
By Jacob Hornberger
View all 70 articles by Jacob Hornberger
Published 08/30/10
Printer-friendly version
One of the primary arguments employed by statists to justify the welfare state is the necessity to equalize incomes. The rich just get richer and richer, and the poor just get poorer and poorer, in a free-market economy, say the statists. To balance things out, they say, the state must take from the rich and give to the poor.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, a free market is a tremendous engine for the redistribution of wealth, one in which the poor become rich and rich become poor.
In other words, you don't need the state to confiscate and redistribute wealth through income taxes, estate taxes, or any other taxes. The market does a fine job in redistributing wealth.
In fact, the market is the most just vehicle for redistributing wealth because it's based on voluntary choices, not the coercive action employed by the state. In the marketplace, consumers are ultimately sovereign. Through their buying decisions, they decide which businesses are going to stay in business and which ones are not. If a business fails to satisfy consumers, it will lose market share and possibly go out of business. New, upstart businesses have the opportunity to become wealthy by providing goods and services that consumers want.
By the same token, a rich person must make decisions as to how to manage his money. Nothing is guaranteed. If he makes the right choices, he keeps his wealth and even expands it. But if he makes the wrong choices, he stands to lose part of it or even all of it.
Consider, for example, the Wyly brothers of Dallas, Texas, who were the subject of a recent New York Times article.
The Wylys are billionaires. So, they're rich, right? Well, yes, but it's really not that simple because they actually were poor before they were rich. According to the Times,"Depression-era babies, they were raised in rural Louisiana by a well-educated mother and father who fell on hard times by failing to hedge a cotton crop. For a time, the family moved into a shack without electricity or plumbing."
So, here were two poor brothers. But the state didn't take money from the rich and give it to the Wyly brothers. Instead, these poor people became rich entirely through their own efforts by buying and selling businesses in the marketplace.
And there were no guarantees. In the 1970s, they lost almost $100 million of their and their shareholders' money in the purchase of a company that went bad. As Sam Wyly put it,"It's a game. You win some, you lose some. Some are sort of a tie."
Or consider the case of Larry Dean, who became a multi-millionaire through a software company he founded in the 1970s, who was also recently featured in the New York Times.
Dean used $25 million of his money to build a 32,000 square feet,"Xanadu-like" mansion in Atlanta that included $17,500 leaded glass and mahogany double front doors.
Dean, however, has fallen on hard times. Now on his third divorce, he recently sold the house for $7 million, after having it on the market for 17 years. The Times stated"The estate sale brought down the curtain on a particular kind of spectacle, a rags-to-riches tale that somewhere along the way slipped into reverse and played itself out in the unforgiving glare of the real estate market."
You don't need the welfare state to redistribute wealth. The free market does that. Moreover, since the market is based on voluntary choices rather than coercion, it's a better and more just method of deciding the allocation of wealth in a free society.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.
Copyright © 2010 Future of Freedom Foundation
America's Wretched Refuse
From The Christian Reader:
America’s Wretched Refuse
by Eric Rauch
In the February 2009 issue of Christianity Today, Lisa Graham McMinn wrote a thought-provoking review of a book by Phil Zuckerman. Zuckerman’s book, Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment, is basically an indictment of what he believes is the hypocrisy of “Christian” America. Zuckerman’s point is that Americans, whom he describes as being very “religious,” actually display less compassion and love toward other people than the mostly irreligious citizens of Scandinavia.
McMinn’s review doesn’t bring up this point, but I always find it quite convenient that skeptics and atheists want to define America as a “Christian” nation only when it suits their statistics. Even though this country has a rich Christian heritage and Bible verses are literally chiseled into our government and state buildings, skeptics will usually deny this empirical evidence in their attempt to erase Christianity from America’s long religious tradition. However, when they want to accuse the American religious community of being less than faithful to their stated beliefs, the story becomes something else entirely. For atheists and agnostics, America is only a Christian nation when it can be used as a club against Christianity itself.
One of McMinn’s most important observations comes about midway through her review. While Zuckerman’s comparisons of Scandinavia and the United States depend on an “apples to apples” relationship, McMinn points out that it is not this simple:
Most nations, including the United States and Scandinavian countries, have histories that include shining moments of courage, compassion, and prosperity, but also have darker moments of war, slavery, and systemic oppression. Sin cuts through every soul, and through every political body and institution. But nations also have unique features that lead them to develop along different paths.
For instance, Scandinavian countries are smaller and less diverse than we are. The United States is a nation of immigrants, a grand experiment in forging a collective identity from people of different nationalities. We value this diversity enough to commit to the work it requires. We have the harder task of identifying our neighbor as kin because we don’t all look alike or come from similar backgrounds or share similar values. Scandinavian countries, as Zuckerman points out, are more homogeneous. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that strong welfare states emerged in countries where neighborliness often literally meant caring for one’s near or distant kin. That we have struggled more than they to embrace our neighbors, and have viewed those who look, talk, or eat differently than we do with some suspicion, makes sense given our history. [1]
McMinn’s point should not be overlooked or taken too lightly. This is a crucial fact that is frequently forgotten about our “melting pot” nation. No country on earth has the number of immigrants that America has. In fact, America IS a nation of immigrants. None of us are “from here.” The Statue of Liberty stands as a reminder that America is here to take the refugees of the world. A poem by Emma Lazarus adorns the Statue’s pedestal which reads:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name,
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
America has unique problems because America has unique citizens. As McMinn states: “Americans generally believe that charity should be given freely and not demanded by the state, and that people should pay their own way through life.” This does not mean that America is now somehow off the hook for taking care of its citizens, far from it. The biblical example of compassion and responsibility is taught by the Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians: “If anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). In other words, it is because of Christianity that America has the form of individual compassion that it has, rather than the state-run versions that characterize Scandinavian countries. For Zuckerman to then turn around and use this against the American people as being “uncompassionate” is stunning, to say the least. It proves nothing more than the fact that Zuckerman already had his mind made up before he wrote his book.
McMinn concludes her review by making a very important final point: “Zuckerman sells humanity short. If people are content but no longer care about transcendent meaning and purpose or life beyond death, that’s not a sign of greatness but tragic forgetfulness… What does it profit a society if, as this book’s jacket notes, it gains ‘excellent educational systems, strong economies, well-supported arts, free health care, egalitarian social policies, outstanding bike paths, and great beer,’ but loses its soul?” Humanists who want to discount and ridicule the effects of a Christian worldview on a nation are making their determinations on strictly materialistic grounds. For them, a country with better bike paths and free health care is preferred to one with myriad uphill challenges to turning the “huddled masses” and “wretched refuse” into loving neighbors. Interestingly though, the skeptics always choose to live in this country, rather than their so-called egalitarian social paradises.
Notes:
[1] Lisa Graham McMinn, “Learning from Secular Nations,” Christianity Today, February 2009, 57-58.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
America’s Wretched Refuse
by Eric Rauch
In the February 2009 issue of Christianity Today, Lisa Graham McMinn wrote a thought-provoking review of a book by Phil Zuckerman. Zuckerman’s book, Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment, is basically an indictment of what he believes is the hypocrisy of “Christian” America. Zuckerman’s point is that Americans, whom he describes as being very “religious,” actually display less compassion and love toward other people than the mostly irreligious citizens of Scandinavia.
McMinn’s review doesn’t bring up this point, but I always find it quite convenient that skeptics and atheists want to define America as a “Christian” nation only when it suits their statistics. Even though this country has a rich Christian heritage and Bible verses are literally chiseled into our government and state buildings, skeptics will usually deny this empirical evidence in their attempt to erase Christianity from America’s long religious tradition. However, when they want to accuse the American religious community of being less than faithful to their stated beliefs, the story becomes something else entirely. For atheists and agnostics, America is only a Christian nation when it can be used as a club against Christianity itself.
One of McMinn’s most important observations comes about midway through her review. While Zuckerman’s comparisons of Scandinavia and the United States depend on an “apples to apples” relationship, McMinn points out that it is not this simple:
Most nations, including the United States and Scandinavian countries, have histories that include shining moments of courage, compassion, and prosperity, but also have darker moments of war, slavery, and systemic oppression. Sin cuts through every soul, and through every political body and institution. But nations also have unique features that lead them to develop along different paths.
For instance, Scandinavian countries are smaller and less diverse than we are. The United States is a nation of immigrants, a grand experiment in forging a collective identity from people of different nationalities. We value this diversity enough to commit to the work it requires. We have the harder task of identifying our neighbor as kin because we don’t all look alike or come from similar backgrounds or share similar values. Scandinavian countries, as Zuckerman points out, are more homogeneous. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that strong welfare states emerged in countries where neighborliness often literally meant caring for one’s near or distant kin. That we have struggled more than they to embrace our neighbors, and have viewed those who look, talk, or eat differently than we do with some suspicion, makes sense given our history. [1]
McMinn’s point should not be overlooked or taken too lightly. This is a crucial fact that is frequently forgotten about our “melting pot” nation. No country on earth has the number of immigrants that America has. In fact, America IS a nation of immigrants. None of us are “from here.” The Statue of Liberty stands as a reminder that America is here to take the refugees of the world. A poem by Emma Lazarus adorns the Statue’s pedestal which reads:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name,
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
America has unique problems because America has unique citizens. As McMinn states: “Americans generally believe that charity should be given freely and not demanded by the state, and that people should pay their own way through life.” This does not mean that America is now somehow off the hook for taking care of its citizens, far from it. The biblical example of compassion and responsibility is taught by the Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians: “If anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). In other words, it is because of Christianity that America has the form of individual compassion that it has, rather than the state-run versions that characterize Scandinavian countries. For Zuckerman to then turn around and use this against the American people as being “uncompassionate” is stunning, to say the least. It proves nothing more than the fact that Zuckerman already had his mind made up before he wrote his book.
McMinn concludes her review by making a very important final point: “Zuckerman sells humanity short. If people are content but no longer care about transcendent meaning and purpose or life beyond death, that’s not a sign of greatness but tragic forgetfulness… What does it profit a society if, as this book’s jacket notes, it gains ‘excellent educational systems, strong economies, well-supported arts, free health care, egalitarian social policies, outstanding bike paths, and great beer,’ but loses its soul?” Humanists who want to discount and ridicule the effects of a Christian worldview on a nation are making their determinations on strictly materialistic grounds. For them, a country with better bike paths and free health care is preferred to one with myriad uphill challenges to turning the “huddled masses” and “wretched refuse” into loving neighbors. Interestingly though, the skeptics always choose to live in this country, rather than their so-called egalitarian social paradises.
Notes:
[1] Lisa Graham McMinn, “Learning from Secular Nations,” Christianity Today, February 2009, 57-58.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Early America's Greatest Mond: Jonathan Edwards
From American Vision and The Christian Reader:
America’s Greatest Mind
By Gary DeMar
Published: August 27, 2010
Jonathan Edwards (1703 — 1758) is best remembered for his masterful sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” In addition to his achievements as a pastor, Edwards was a father to eight daughters and three sons, missionary to the Housatonic Indians, revivalist, philosopher, and accomplished scientist. From a very early age, Jonathan was mesmerized by the beauty and order of God’s world. In fact, he was especially fond of studying spiders. So much so that his accurate observations have been preserved and are acknowledged in the scientific community today. Even more remarkable is that these observations were made when he was a boy with no tools, training or body of knowledge with which to compare and test his findings. In his childhood work, “Of Insects,” Jonathan wrote “Multitudes of time I have beheld with wonderment and pleasure the spiders marching in the air from one tree to another… their little shining webs and Glistening Strings of a Great Length and at such a height as that one would think they were tack’d to the Sky by one end were it not that they were moving and floating.” As a young man, Jonathan wrote seventy resolutions. One of these resolutions was, “To live with all my might, while I do live.” That he did. Blessed with a brilliant mind, Jonathan Edwards used his brief 55 years to advance the Kingdom of Christ. Many believe Jonathan Edwards was the greatest mind in American history.
America’s Greatest Mind
By Gary DeMar
Published: August 27, 2010
Jonathan Edwards (1703 — 1758) is best remembered for his masterful sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” In addition to his achievements as a pastor, Edwards was a father to eight daughters and three sons, missionary to the Housatonic Indians, revivalist, philosopher, and accomplished scientist. From a very early age, Jonathan was mesmerized by the beauty and order of God’s world. In fact, he was especially fond of studying spiders. So much so that his accurate observations have been preserved and are acknowledged in the scientific community today. Even more remarkable is that these observations were made when he was a boy with no tools, training or body of knowledge with which to compare and test his findings. In his childhood work, “Of Insects,” Jonathan wrote “Multitudes of time I have beheld with wonderment and pleasure the spiders marching in the air from one tree to another… their little shining webs and Glistening Strings of a Great Length and at such a height as that one would think they were tack’d to the Sky by one end were it not that they were moving and floating.” As a young man, Jonathan wrote seventy resolutions. One of these resolutions was, “To live with all my might, while I do live.” That he did. Blessed with a brilliant mind, Jonathan Edwards used his brief 55 years to advance the Kingdom of Christ. Many believe Jonathan Edwards was the greatest mind in American history.
The Restoring Honor Rally: A Warning To Obama And The Democrats?
From The Christian Science Monitor and Zionica.com and The Christian Reader:
Glenn Beck rally: A warning to Obama and Democrats?
There may have been some Democrats at the Glenn Beck rally Saturday, but even many of them aren't happy with the country's direction. Does the large turnout portend trouble for Democrats?
One hundred to two hundred thousand people attended a rally organized by Fox TV commentator, Glenn Beck, at the foot of the Lincoln memorial. Although it was avowedly "non-political," Sarah Palin was one of the main speakers and the crowd resembled very much the Tea Party crowd.
Newscom
.Enlarge
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer / August 29, 2010
Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington Saturday could not have been an encouraging sign for Democrats and the Obama administration.
Skip to next paragraph
Related Stories
Glenn Beck rally: 'I have a dream' theme takes tea party turn
Amid harsh criticisms, 'tea party' slips into the mainstream
.The crowd was huge by any count – likely at least a couple hundred thousand people judging by aerial photos and the reported comments of some police officers – stretching from the Lincoln Memorial back to the Washington Monument.
And far from being a gathering of self-proclaimed rabble rousers carrying offensive signs insulting of President Obama, as has often been the case with “tea party” rallies spurred on by Mr. Beck, it was mostly a heartfelt and largely nonpartisan expression of civic concern, patriotism, and religious faith.
In other words, there may have been some Democrats in the crowd, but even they are likely not happy with the direction the country’s taking, according to recent polls – including the policies and programs pushed by the majority party in Congress and the White House.
The irony regarding Beck – a brilliant communicator whose talents earned him $32 million last year – is that much of what he told the crowd flies in the face of what he espouses in his Fox News broadcasts.
Beck's rhetoric more mellow
“We must get the poison of hatred out of us,” he told the crowd. “We must look to God and look to love. We must defend those we disagree with.”
This from a man who has called Obama “a racist” and likened Al Gore’s campaign against global climate change to “what Hitler did” in having scientists use eugenics to justify the Holocaust.
Which drives Beck’s critics nuts.
“You can’t profit from fear and division all week and then denounce them one Saturday on the National Mall in Washington and hope nobody notices,” complains John Avlon on the Daily Beast website.
Beck “knows how to manipulate an audience’s emotions,” writes Avlon, author of “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America.” “He uses conflict, tension, fear and resentment to keep their attention day after day, buying his books, attending his rallies.”
But none of that was on display Saturday, when Beck sounded more like an evangelical preacher than a flame-throwing political provocateur. “Today we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished – and the things that we can do tomorrow,” he said.
Voters increasingly unhappy with Democrat-run government
Meanwhile Americans of the type that gathered by the thousands to hear Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (and other conservative speakers) are increasingly unhappy with their Democrat-run government.
A Rasmussen Reports survey this past week showed “voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 of the important issues” – including the economy and taxes, national security, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, immigration, government ethics and corruption, health care, Social Security, and education.
An Ipsos poll (also last week) shows 62 percent of those surveyed “think that things in this country are on the wrong track” with more people (52 percent) disapproving of the way Obama is doing his job than indicating approval (45 percent).
A new Newsweek poll shows independent voters – many at the Saturday rally would characterize themselves this way – moving toward the GOP. “Forty-five percent of independents say they’ll vote for Republican candidates, compared with just 33 percent for Democrats,” reports Newsweek.
GOP should be nervous too
At the same time Republicans have to be nervous about the antiestablishment political ground swell, and some recent primary elections have given both parties pause. Establishment GOP candidates have been knocked off by tea party favorites Rand Paul in Kentucky, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and perhaps Joe Miller if he hangs onto his lead in Alaska.
“But to be more than a political movement that is tugging the Republican Party ever farther to the right, the tea party must show in November that its candidates are electable,” writes political analyst Rhodes Cook in the Wall Street Journal. “If not, the movement could lose much of the luster and attention that it has gained over the past year.”
Either way, Glenn Beck and his media empire will continue to prosper.
Glenn Beck rally: A warning to Obama and Democrats?
There may have been some Democrats at the Glenn Beck rally Saturday, but even many of them aren't happy with the country's direction. Does the large turnout portend trouble for Democrats?
One hundred to two hundred thousand people attended a rally organized by Fox TV commentator, Glenn Beck, at the foot of the Lincoln memorial. Although it was avowedly "non-political," Sarah Palin was one of the main speakers and the crowd resembled very much the Tea Party crowd.
Newscom
.Enlarge
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer / August 29, 2010
Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington Saturday could not have been an encouraging sign for Democrats and the Obama administration.
Skip to next paragraph
Related Stories
Glenn Beck rally: 'I have a dream' theme takes tea party turn
Amid harsh criticisms, 'tea party' slips into the mainstream
.The crowd was huge by any count – likely at least a couple hundred thousand people judging by aerial photos and the reported comments of some police officers – stretching from the Lincoln Memorial back to the Washington Monument.
And far from being a gathering of self-proclaimed rabble rousers carrying offensive signs insulting of President Obama, as has often been the case with “tea party” rallies spurred on by Mr. Beck, it was mostly a heartfelt and largely nonpartisan expression of civic concern, patriotism, and religious faith.
In other words, there may have been some Democrats in the crowd, but even they are likely not happy with the direction the country’s taking, according to recent polls – including the policies and programs pushed by the majority party in Congress and the White House.
The irony regarding Beck – a brilliant communicator whose talents earned him $32 million last year – is that much of what he told the crowd flies in the face of what he espouses in his Fox News broadcasts.
Beck's rhetoric more mellow
“We must get the poison of hatred out of us,” he told the crowd. “We must look to God and look to love. We must defend those we disagree with.”
This from a man who has called Obama “a racist” and likened Al Gore’s campaign against global climate change to “what Hitler did” in having scientists use eugenics to justify the Holocaust.
Which drives Beck’s critics nuts.
“You can’t profit from fear and division all week and then denounce them one Saturday on the National Mall in Washington and hope nobody notices,” complains John Avlon on the Daily Beast website.
Beck “knows how to manipulate an audience’s emotions,” writes Avlon, author of “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America.” “He uses conflict, tension, fear and resentment to keep their attention day after day, buying his books, attending his rallies.”
But none of that was on display Saturday, when Beck sounded more like an evangelical preacher than a flame-throwing political provocateur. “Today we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished – and the things that we can do tomorrow,” he said.
Voters increasingly unhappy with Democrat-run government
Meanwhile Americans of the type that gathered by the thousands to hear Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (and other conservative speakers) are increasingly unhappy with their Democrat-run government.
A Rasmussen Reports survey this past week showed “voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 of the important issues” – including the economy and taxes, national security, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, immigration, government ethics and corruption, health care, Social Security, and education.
An Ipsos poll (also last week) shows 62 percent of those surveyed “think that things in this country are on the wrong track” with more people (52 percent) disapproving of the way Obama is doing his job than indicating approval (45 percent).
A new Newsweek poll shows independent voters – many at the Saturday rally would characterize themselves this way – moving toward the GOP. “Forty-five percent of independents say they’ll vote for Republican candidates, compared with just 33 percent for Democrats,” reports Newsweek.
GOP should be nervous too
At the same time Republicans have to be nervous about the antiestablishment political ground swell, and some recent primary elections have given both parties pause. Establishment GOP candidates have been knocked off by tea party favorites Rand Paul in Kentucky, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and perhaps Joe Miller if he hangs onto his lead in Alaska.
“But to be more than a political movement that is tugging the Republican Party ever farther to the right, the tea party must show in November that its candidates are electable,” writes political analyst Rhodes Cook in the Wall Street Journal. “If not, the movement could lose much of the luster and attention that it has gained over the past year.”
Either way, Glenn Beck and his media empire will continue to prosper.
The United States Was Born A Christian Nation
From Zionica.com and CNN:
U.S. was born a Christian nationBy Robert Knight, Special to CNNAugust 28, 2010 4:49 p.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Robert Knight disputes ideas in opinion piece by Will Bunch about Glenn Beck, David Barton
Bunch rejected idea of U.S.' Christian roots, but there's evidence for it, Knight says
Moses shown on some Supreme Court friezes; some founders wrote of Christian principles
Knight: U.S. unique in advancing individual rights because of its Christian ethic
RELATED TOPICS
U.S. History
Christianity
Glenn Beck
Editor's note: Robert Knight is a senior writer for the evangelical Coral Ridge Ministries and a senior fellow for the conservative American Civil Rights Union. He helped draft the "Defense of Marriage Act," the 1996 law in which the federal government defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman, and is the author of "Fighting for America's Soul: How Sweeping Change Threatens Our Nation and What We Must Do."
(CNN) -- Will Bunch's CNN.com tirade earlier this week against television host Glenn Beck and David Barton -- the founder and president of WallBuilders, a national pro-family organization that emphasizes history's "moral, religious and constitutional heritage" -- for allegedly creating "pseudo history" reveals more about Mr. Bunch than it does about what Mr. Beck and Mr. Barton are presenting.
Mr. Bunch seems, above all, to be annoyed that many people are no longer staying on the liberal plantation of secularized American history. He offers little in the way of examples of error, just differences of opinion, such as his own assertion about "the much-debunked idea that America's creation was rooted in Christianity."
Much debunked? That would have been news to many of the Founding Fathers, whose biblical understanding of man as created in the image of God informed their insistence in the Declaration of Independence that people have "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This was tempered by the biblically informed idea that man is prone to sin. In the Federalist Papers, No. 51, for example, James Madison wrote, "But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary."
Therefore, any government formed by men needs checks and balances to avoid tyranny. On a more elementary level, the signers of the Declaration and the Constitution were mostly Christian. You can look it up.
Bunch complains that, "In April, Barton told Beck's 3 million TV viewers that 'we use the Ten Commandments as basis of civil law and the Western world [and it] has been for 2,000 years.' "
Glenn Beck rewrites civil rights history
Perhaps this is why the Ten Commandments numerals are represented at the bottom of a door to the U.S. Supreme Court courtroom and why Moses, revered as the lawgiver to Jews in the Hebrew bible, and Christians in the New Testament, appears holding two tablets elsewhere in the Supreme Court building.
He appears between the Chinese philosopher Confucius and Solon, the Athenian statesman -- at the center of a frieze of historic lawgivers on the building's East Pediment. Moses is also among an array of lawgiver figures depicted over the Court's chamber.
Tellingly, Mr. Bunch does not dispute the accuracy of the quotes that Mr. Barton cites that spell out a Christian understanding of law and man among some of the Founding Fathers.
In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, written 37 years after the Declaration of Independence, John Adams wrote: "The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young gentlemen could Unite. ... And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United: ... Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System."
John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, wrote in a letter to a friend, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
Mr. Bunch further complains that Barton "gives less than short shrift to the real achievement of the Founders in separating church and state."
I would argue that their real achievement was elsewhere. Their real achievement was far larger: creation of a unique, limited government with protections for the freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly and protection of property rights, without which no freedom exists. The result was the most prosperous and freest nation in history.
And property rights are endorsed throughout the Bible.
The "wall of separation between church & state," by the way, is not in the Constitution. It's from a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists, who were concerned that the national government would favor one Christian denomination over others. But Mr. Jefferson's phrase has become a sacred totem used by activist judges to drive Christian symbols from the public square.
The real reason that Mr. Bunch is so exercised is that the truth about America's Christian founding is getting out, despite media hostility, politically correct schoolbooks and rising intolerance toward any public expression of faith -- unless it advances leftist goals.
America is a unique beacon of freedom precisely because of its founders' Christian perspective, which has protected the right of conscience and thus freedom of religion for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and nonbelievers. Try to identify another nation on Earth that similarly advanced individual rights without being influenced by Christianity.
Beck and Barton are striking what Abraham Lincoln described in a different context as the "mystic chords of memory." It makes perfect sense that many Americans are tuning in.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Robert Knight.
U.S. was born a Christian nationBy Robert Knight, Special to CNNAugust 28, 2010 4:49 p.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Robert Knight disputes ideas in opinion piece by Will Bunch about Glenn Beck, David Barton
Bunch rejected idea of U.S.' Christian roots, but there's evidence for it, Knight says
Moses shown on some Supreme Court friezes; some founders wrote of Christian principles
Knight: U.S. unique in advancing individual rights because of its Christian ethic
RELATED TOPICS
U.S. History
Christianity
Glenn Beck
Editor's note: Robert Knight is a senior writer for the evangelical Coral Ridge Ministries and a senior fellow for the conservative American Civil Rights Union. He helped draft the "Defense of Marriage Act," the 1996 law in which the federal government defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman, and is the author of "Fighting for America's Soul: How Sweeping Change Threatens Our Nation and What We Must Do."
(CNN) -- Will Bunch's CNN.com tirade earlier this week against television host Glenn Beck and David Barton -- the founder and president of WallBuilders, a national pro-family organization that emphasizes history's "moral, religious and constitutional heritage" -- for allegedly creating "pseudo history" reveals more about Mr. Bunch than it does about what Mr. Beck and Mr. Barton are presenting.
Mr. Bunch seems, above all, to be annoyed that many people are no longer staying on the liberal plantation of secularized American history. He offers little in the way of examples of error, just differences of opinion, such as his own assertion about "the much-debunked idea that America's creation was rooted in Christianity."
Much debunked? That would have been news to many of the Founding Fathers, whose biblical understanding of man as created in the image of God informed their insistence in the Declaration of Independence that people have "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This was tempered by the biblically informed idea that man is prone to sin. In the Federalist Papers, No. 51, for example, James Madison wrote, "But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary."
Therefore, any government formed by men needs checks and balances to avoid tyranny. On a more elementary level, the signers of the Declaration and the Constitution were mostly Christian. You can look it up.
Bunch complains that, "In April, Barton told Beck's 3 million TV viewers that 'we use the Ten Commandments as basis of civil law and the Western world [and it] has been for 2,000 years.' "
Glenn Beck rewrites civil rights history
Perhaps this is why the Ten Commandments numerals are represented at the bottom of a door to the U.S. Supreme Court courtroom and why Moses, revered as the lawgiver to Jews in the Hebrew bible, and Christians in the New Testament, appears holding two tablets elsewhere in the Supreme Court building.
He appears between the Chinese philosopher Confucius and Solon, the Athenian statesman -- at the center of a frieze of historic lawgivers on the building's East Pediment. Moses is also among an array of lawgiver figures depicted over the Court's chamber.
Tellingly, Mr. Bunch does not dispute the accuracy of the quotes that Mr. Barton cites that spell out a Christian understanding of law and man among some of the Founding Fathers.
In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, written 37 years after the Declaration of Independence, John Adams wrote: "The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young gentlemen could Unite. ... And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United: ... Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System."
John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, wrote in a letter to a friend, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
Mr. Bunch further complains that Barton "gives less than short shrift to the real achievement of the Founders in separating church and state."
I would argue that their real achievement was elsewhere. Their real achievement was far larger: creation of a unique, limited government with protections for the freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly and protection of property rights, without which no freedom exists. The result was the most prosperous and freest nation in history.
And property rights are endorsed throughout the Bible.
The "wall of separation between church & state," by the way, is not in the Constitution. It's from a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists, who were concerned that the national government would favor one Christian denomination over others. But Mr. Jefferson's phrase has become a sacred totem used by activist judges to drive Christian symbols from the public square.
The real reason that Mr. Bunch is so exercised is that the truth about America's Christian founding is getting out, despite media hostility, politically correct schoolbooks and rising intolerance toward any public expression of faith -- unless it advances leftist goals.
America is a unique beacon of freedom precisely because of its founders' Christian perspective, which has protected the right of conscience and thus freedom of religion for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and nonbelievers. Try to identify another nation on Earth that similarly advanced individual rights without being influenced by Christianity.
Beck and Barton are striking what Abraham Lincoln described in a different context as the "mystic chords of memory." It makes perfect sense that many Americans are tuning in.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Robert Knight.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Is It Time To Cut To The Chase And Begin Working For The Only Long-Term Solution To The Protection Of Liberty?
From Psychology University and Secession and Nullification--News and Information:
Is It Time To Cut To The Chase And Begin Working For The Only Long-term Solution To The Protection Of Liberty?
August 28th, 2010 adminSkip to CommentsFor the sake of discussion, let’s assume we can change the Federal government through the totally f-ed up democratic process and steer the sinking ship back towards shore before it sinks, patch the hull and set it out on the course of freedom again. How long before it starts to go wrong again? Not long, I’m afraid. Indeed, probably as soon as the patriots turn around and go back to tending their own business.
The system is fundamentally flawed because it lacks any meaningful check on Federal power. So even if, by a herculean effort, you reign it in, what is to prevent it from breaking out of its restraints again? People will get weary of constantly fighting the attempt by special interest to pervert government for their own benefit. Or they will forget what they were fighting against. The Public Choice school of economics has pretty well demonstrated why the economic incentives favor the hijacking of government and why the deck is stacked against those who want to keep it restrained. The bottom line is that the behemoth USA is unstable and unsustainable as currently constituted. So what is the solution?
Secession. The only force that can keep the USA together is the power to tear it apart the moment it ceases to serve the needs of its members. And the only way to re-establish the right of secession at this point is to secede and make it stick.
Indeed, the right of secession is critical to stability from the Federal level all the way down to the individual property owner. Real liberty can only survive when each individual has the option to reject the jurisdiction of any government that exceeds its powers. Only then will government truly be the servant of the people rather than the master. Nothing else will ever contain the beast for long.
So, isn’t it time to cut to the chase and begin working for the only long-term solution to the protection of liberty? Everything else is just Sisyphean torment.
The ultimate goal must be secession!
What do you think?
Is It Time To Cut To The Chase And Begin Working For The Only Long-term Solution To The Protection Of Liberty?
August 28th, 2010 adminSkip to CommentsFor the sake of discussion, let’s assume we can change the Federal government through the totally f-ed up democratic process and steer the sinking ship back towards shore before it sinks, patch the hull and set it out on the course of freedom again. How long before it starts to go wrong again? Not long, I’m afraid. Indeed, probably as soon as the patriots turn around and go back to tending their own business.
The system is fundamentally flawed because it lacks any meaningful check on Federal power. So even if, by a herculean effort, you reign it in, what is to prevent it from breaking out of its restraints again? People will get weary of constantly fighting the attempt by special interest to pervert government for their own benefit. Or they will forget what they were fighting against. The Public Choice school of economics has pretty well demonstrated why the economic incentives favor the hijacking of government and why the deck is stacked against those who want to keep it restrained. The bottom line is that the behemoth USA is unstable and unsustainable as currently constituted. So what is the solution?
Secession. The only force that can keep the USA together is the power to tear it apart the moment it ceases to serve the needs of its members. And the only way to re-establish the right of secession at this point is to secede and make it stick.
Indeed, the right of secession is critical to stability from the Federal level all the way down to the individual property owner. Real liberty can only survive when each individual has the option to reject the jurisdiction of any government that exceeds its powers. Only then will government truly be the servant of the people rather than the master. Nothing else will ever contain the beast for long.
So, isn’t it time to cut to the chase and begin working for the only long-term solution to the protection of liberty? Everything else is just Sisyphean torment.
The ultimate goal must be secession!
What do you think?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
