What Can Americans Learn From Egypt?

What Can Americans Learn From Egypt? As the world watched, millions of Egyptians engaged in an eighteen-day democratic revolution. For those of us fortunate enough to live in the United States, there are five lessons to be learned from the insurrection in Egypt. Democracy remains the world's most precious commodity. The Egyptian revolution was a spontaneous uprising of millions of ordinary people yearning for democracy; a movement no doubt inspired by U.S. history. We should take pride in the fact that America has become a beacon of light to billions throughout the world who yearn for freedoms that many of us take for granted. Nonetheless, we should remember that democracy is hard work. Winston Churchill famously observed, "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." The struggles of the Egyptian people remind us how precious U.S. democracy is, how fortunate we are to live in America, and the reality that an effective civil society requires our active involvement. It helps to have a job. While the Egyptian revolution involved specific political complaints, such as the lifting of martial law, there was a significant economic component. The Egyptians who took to the streets yearned for opportunity as well as freedom; they wanted a better life for themselves and their families. Under dictator Mubarak, many Egyptians, particularly young people felt they were trapped in a dead-end existence. Unemployment was high (more than 10 percent) and most educated young Egyptians who could not find meaningful work. The insurrection should remind Americans that a vital democracy also provides economic opportunity. In addition to the right of free speech and assembly, and the other civil rights that we hold dear, there are important economic rights the U.S. needs to pay more attention to: the right to hold a decent job paying a living wage, to work in a safe environment, and to organize and join unions; as well as the right to adequate education, housing, and health care. The new technology has reshaped the face of protest. A lot of attention has been paid to the key role of Facebook in the Egyptian revolution, but in general the eighteen-day protest demonstrated that, over the past thirty years, developments in information technology -- the Internet, satellite TV, and mobile phones -- have made the world a global community and thereby facilitated democratic protest. At an early stage of the Egyptian revolution, the Mubarak government tried to snuff dissent by turning off the Internet, restricting cell phone traffic, and beating up foreign journalists. The fact that this didn't work is a testimony to the bravery of the protestors and reporters, and the robustness of the new media. (By the way, shutting down the Internet turned off Facebook but had the side affect of blocking most forms of Egyptian commerce.) The free-flow of communication is a precursor to democracy. The new technology not only makes global communication easier, but also protest. Nonviolence works. Except for the actions of Mubarak's thugs, the Egyptian democratic revolution was nonviolent. It was another reminder that nonviolence is the most effect method for producing lasting social change. During the sixties, Martin Luther King Jr. was a powerful advocate of nonviolence and his leadership caused the Civil Rights movement to both accomplish its short-term objectives and produce lasting change in American society. Just before his untimely death, Dr. King shifted his focus from the problem of racial injustice to economic injustice; he was convinced the US democracy would not flourish if workers did not have good jobs and benefits. Sadly, the problem of economic injustice remains and should become the focus of a new nonviolent American social movement. These weren't the people we were warned us about. Mohamed Atta, a key leader of the 9/11 attacks was an Egyptian citizen, as was the Al Qaeda second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. As a consequence, some commentators lumped Egyptians with "Arabs" and "Muslims" and branded them as terrorists. We were told that they hated Americans, hated our freedoms. There may have been terrorists participating in the Egyptian revolution but, in general, the protestors didn't look like the folks we have been warned about. The protestors seemed a remarkably diverse group: old and young, men and women, religious and secular, urban and rural. For the most part, they looked remarkably like Americans taking to the streets in the defense of their liberties. We didn't hear a lot of "we hate America" rhetoric from the protestors. To the contrary, the general impression Americans got was that Egyptians would like to be more like us, they would like to have the democracy that we so often take for granted. The Egyptian revolution was incredibly heartening. Hopefully, it will remind Americans that we live in a country that serves as a beacon of hope to the rest of the world. And, that we need to take steps to clean up our own act, to ensure that democracy remains a reality for everyone in the United States.

Thanking Our Soldiers on Independence Day

Thanking Our Soldiers on Independence Day Join us in thanking those who continue to make freedom possible. I started to write this week about all of the upcoming July 4th activities and some cutie-pie crafts that would dress up the table for your Independence Day BBQ. I wanted to tell you all about the local area fireworks, and parades, as well as the bigger scale activities in Philadelphia. But then I started thinking about the meaning of the July 4th holiday: We have Memorial Day to honor the memory of the soldiers who died in service to our country, and we have Veteran's Day to honor those who have already served. But what about the serviceman (and women) who are in active duty? This question led to a conversation with my kids about what Independence Day is about. It's more than just fireworks, parades and family barbecues. The idependence we enjoy is due to the men and women who willingly enlist into our military; those who are willing to give Uncle Sam a blank check that they are willing to cash up to and including their very lives to preserve the freedoms that we enjoy, and sometimes even take for granted. Soldiers leave their homes and families, and put themselves in harms' way to preserve our way of life. This week, Serena, Cody, Kelsey, Brandon and I will be writing letters and making pictures (for those too young to write letters) to soldiers in active duty overseas through www.anysoldier.com. I hope you'll join me. We're taking this Independence Day as a most appropriate time to say "we appreciate you, "and "thank you." The site was begun by a military family while their son was serving overseas. Their son passed on his own care packages to soldiers who never received anything in the mail. Founders of www.anysoldier.com, Marty and Sue Horn, began their site to fill the needs of those thousands of enlisted who never received a word of support, or comfort items while in service. While there are comfort item requests for specific items (hair products, tampons, baby wipes, shampoo, powder, lotion, snacks, etc.) by soldiers on anysoldier.com, the Horns say that Letters are THE MOST requested. So, all you need do is send a normal letter in a normal envelope with a normal stamp. You simply sign up on the site by looking at a list of soldiers, pick one (or 2) and fill out the form with your name, address and email address, and you will be emailed your chosen soldier's APO address. Depending on the chosen soldier's situation, you may or may not hear back from them. Some soldiers, in "active" zones are unable to write back for a variety of reasons...as the site puts it, "I mean, these guys and gals have other things on their minds, y’know? Like...oh, STAYING ALIVE?" To increase your chances of hearing from a soldier you write to, include your email address and/or pre-addressed envelope and note paper. Postage isn't necessary. The military picks up the tab for that. Explain to your children that freedom isn't free. Freedoms we are blessed with aren't experienced by others around the world. While you're enjoying the , teach your kids what those fireworks symbolize. While we're enjoying the booms and pretty colors overhead, our enlisted are experiencing "bombs bursting in air" overseas. While attending your local Independence Day parade, help your children to remember that this celebration of independence and freedom, is continuing to be fought for by soldiers for you and your family. And while savoring your barbeque, enjoying that slice of Americana, remember those brave men and women who aren't having family get togethers while in active duty, because they're out preserving your way of life. Happy Independence Day!

Please read The Declaration of Independence

Please read The Declaration of Independence IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America declaration When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that doing so would make them a target of the British Empire.

Liberty For All?

We the people speak out as soldiers, patriots and citizens Liberty For All? And what is liberty? Can it be limited, or is true liberty only unlimited liberty? Liberty Is . . . The word liberty carries powerful connotations, but in common usage it often lacks definition. It can be tied to personal initiative and responsibility or, just as easily, to licentiousness and perversion. One dictionary defines liberty as “the power to do as one pleases.” The Oxford Dictionary speaks of freedom from “oppressive restrictions imposed by authority.” Another dictionary provides a longer list of possibilities: freedom from “control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.” The unreality here should be apparent. No one has the power to do all that he pleases. No one, by an act of his own will, can ascend into the heavens, turn stones into bread, or live forever. No one but God. No one is free from control or interference at all time or on all levels. Rush hour traffic testifies to this. So does cancer. Traffic and disease don’t ask our permission before they interfere with our intentions or our manner of life. And no one is free from all obligation. Those who talk this way are normally denounced as criminals or psychopaths. Their freedom of movement and action often becomes severely curtailed. They end up in prison or in a psycho-ward. What about freedom from “oppressive restrictions”? The problem with this phrase is that it begs the question—what exactly is oppressive? The pornographer finds censorship laws oppressive. Swingers find laws protecting marriage oppressive. The Marxist finds any laws oppressive that defend private property rights. Oppression, like liberty, is a moral concept and can only be defined in terms of religious presuppositions. If there is no absolute by which we may define oppression, then there is no such thing as oppression. If there is no absolute law to define liberty, then liberty is an illusion. The Foundations of Liberty The history of western philosophy shows us that defending the idea of liberty is as difficult as defining it, and for the same reason. Why should we value liberty, either our own or that of others? Why should society permit it? I may insist on my own liberty for purely selfish and hedonistic reasons, but that insistence strikes no universal chord, establishes no cosmic value or law. If we are going to be serious, the discussion of liberty must at some point turn into a discussion of metaphysics, of what is real and the nature of that reality. Materialism and pantheism are both monistic in that they posit only one sort of reality. Whether reality is physical or spiritual, it is metaphysically limited. Logically, there can be no question of right or wrong, good or bad. There is nothing outside of or beyond the universe which can serve as a moral standard. We may recognize personal preference within the fleeting moment or pragmatic decisions based on private or social considerations, but we can find no absolutes anywhere. What is, is. And what is, is “right.” Christianity, however, recognizes two sorts of reality—the transcendent and uncreated Being of God and the finite created being that is the universe. Scripture tells us that, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). That is, there was the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and this God, without any sort of help or interference, spoke the universe into being. God then created, and now upholds and owns the universe. His ethical nature is creation’s final and absolute ethical standard. God has put this standard into words, propositions, and commands which clearly communicate His law to us and the proper nature of our liberty within that law. Law and Liberty God’s law is rooted in God’s triune nature. The Father reveals Himself perfectly, honestly, and exhaustively in His Son. The Son perfectly images and honors His Father, bearing a true and faithful witness to Him. They “breathe forth” the Holy Spirit to one another, so that the Spirit is the personal, divine bond of love and life between the two. There is, then, perfect openness, faithfulness, and communion among the Persons of the Trinity. Their relationship provides our basis for life, love, and fellowship. Because man is wholly God’s creature and image, his peace, well-being, and liberty lie in imitating his Creator, that is, in obeying His Creator’s laws. God’s law describes the nature of man and the ethical standards that allow for his greatest fulfillment, contentment, and happiness. In other words…it’s really best for humanity, both for time and eternity, that we love and serve God; that we respect our neighbor’s life, marriage, property, and reputation; and that we be humble, faithful, honest, gracious, loving, and kind. You Gotta Serve Somebody The “natural man,” the man outside of Christ, can’t see or accept this. Honesty is costly, marriage is confining, property distribution is unfair, and humility is for suckers. The natural man may speak a great deal about love and liberty and justice, but the words, rich in connotation because of their biblical roots, remain empty claims or vaguely defined goals. The Marxist aims at social justice through universal theft. The pornographer “talks” of liberty while corrupting everyone his words or images touch. The pedophile speaks of love, but he wreaks havoc and destruction in innocent lives. The drug dealer promises happiness, but his customers live lives of addiction, dissipation, and mental and moral deterioration. Every rebel against God’s law relishes his freedom from God and God’s supposedly harsh standards, but every such rebel is, in fact, in bondage to his own corruption. Jesus said, “Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). And Paul writes, “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey”? (Rom. 6:16). The natural man would like to pretend that his choice lies between personal autonomy and happiness, or slavish subjugation to the oppressive demands of a mythical God. Scripture says that service to God is freedom and joy; rebellion against God is slavery to corruption, madness, and death. And we really do have to serve somebody. Conclusion At this season of the year in these United States, we hear a great deal about liberty. In our shallowness and delusion we too easily believe that all liberty is good and worthy of our commendation. And in our culture, we take it for granted that anybody who speaks out against personal liberty is necessarily a bigot and a hatemonger, one who is without sympathy or compassion, one who revels in tyranny and abuse. But what if God is real? What if personal property and hard work really are kinder and more just than socialism? What if biblical marriage is a more loving arrangement than modern alternatives? What if moral responsibility is actually liberty and sin a very terrible slavery? What if contempt of God is really as destructive as recent history has shown it to be? Jesus said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). The way back to moral responsibility, to true liberty under the right sort of law, lies through the cross. Jesus saves sinners from the bondage of sin; He frees those who trust in Him from addiction, fear, and corruption. He turns rebels into friends. He gives those friends the freedom to love and obey Him. This was the colonial vision of true liberty and it built an amazing nation. It should be ours.

Let's right this wrong with two more 'A's - Anniversary and Action!

Let's right this wrong with two more 'A's - Anniversary and Action! We Should Declare a Second Independence on This 237th Independence Day How much longer do you think we will have to wait to hear the tin-horn puppet of billionaire Communist George Soros, usurper president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama give his ultimate order for Christians to cease and desist any and all mention or reference to their (bogus to him) religion in a public venue? This traitorous and treacherous liar, who finagled his way into the White House on a series of lies and cheating maneuvers is getting closer with each passing day to the issuance of an Executive Order to put into effect the termination of all Christian practices, proving he was telling us a gigantic lie when he said that Rev. Wright was his Christian mentor at the beginning of his first term in OUR Oval Office, a now thoroughly besmirched part of OUR sacred and historically significant American culture. It is flabbergastingly questionable why our supposed remaining governmental entity not under the spell and command of this emboldened self made dictator, the House of Representatives, will not or CAN NOT take remedial and country saving action to at least issue a declaration of independence from his tyranny. The formal and current Speaker of the House is a Republican and in control of that single body remaining that can and SHOULD declare actions to impeach this very obvious American traitor. I am fully aware that the other Congressional arm, the United States Senate, has been lost as a venue of salvation activities as a result of a slim majority of socialist-communist liberal Democrats who no longer have the country’s interest at heart, now that they also can depend on the traitorous support from at least FOURTEEN turncoat RINOs who willingly assist Obama’s moves to hand our country over to the corrupt and evil United Nations. Then there is another anti-American group laughingly called the Supreme Court when in fact that title has also been usurped by the Usurper in Chief now that it consists of four socialist-communist liberal Democrats and one fence straddler for a majority of five anti-American votes under Obama’s control. I have to agree that the odds of anything favorable to conservative patriots and our country’s founding fathers is a very steep uphill battle, particularly when the Speaker or the only person with the authority to call for action as opposed to just talking about it to the liberal and also anti-American media, has lockjaw and brain cramps. But, although RINOs also exist in the House of Congress they are not as vocal nor as traitorously motivated as that same-named claque in the Senate and surely there must be at least ONE who can step forward to exert the will of the people and bring our rogue government to heel and straighten its course of direction properly. We must do something positive soon or there won’t be any country left after Obama turns its sovereignty over to the United Nations communists. Just three days before the country’s 237 th anniversary of our country’s independence from a terrorist government of Great Britain, an online website, Godfather Politics, writer Dave Jolly warned the country that Obama had said in so many words to Christians that “he doesn’t give a damn about our faith.” How ironic is it that 237 years after our very first formal celebration of a declaration of independence from a hostile and tyrannical government, we are eyeball deep in the midst of a repeat of such a declaration to try to extricate ourselves once again from a modern day tyrant in order to continue that freedom that was won 237 years before? The only problem now is nobody in our government is doing a damned thing to make this second attempt come to fruition. Why can’t someone who cares, that enjoys the proper office and legal instruments to initiate a leadership action, step up and light a fire under the only remaining government entity, the House of Representatives, to begin the task of bringing colonial justice and conservative America back to the descendents of our Founding Fathers? It has become obvious to all that the expected leader, the Speaker, does not want to initiate any action but just wants to continue doing what his job title infers - speak; without action. This July 4th should be the classic podium for an action so unique and demanding as that which is called for not only here, but in all the corners of our vast country that is lacking a brave step forward to right a gigantic wrong. The 237th anniversary of our first declaration of freedom is a perfect time to declare our intentions of returning freedom to a nation that is slipping under the wheels of injustice because of two words beginning with the letter ‘A’ - Apathy and Amnesty. Let’s right this wrong with two more ‘A’s - Anniversary and Action!

The Right to Happiness

As we celebrate the Fourth in an America where the pursuit of individual happiness has been forgotten and repressed The Right to Happiness Revolutions are not unique. Before the fireworks begin bursting in showers of life over American skies, they fall sparkling over the crowds of Tahrir Square to commemorate another revolution. Some countries have revolutions all the time. After a while revolution becomes a national sport. In banana republics, the overthrow of one dictator to make way for another gives everyone a day off from work. But these revolutions, no matter how they are cloaked in the familiar rhetoric of liberty, are nothing more than tyranny by other means. What made the American Revolution unique was that its cause was not the mere transfer of power from one ruler to another, or one system to another, but a fundamental transformation of the nature of rule. Every revolution claims to be carried out in the name of the people, but it’s never the people who end up running things. The Declaration of Independence did more than talk about the rights of the people. It placed the people at the center of the nation and its government, not as an undifferentiated mass to be harnessed for whatever propaganda purposes they might be good for, but as individuals with hopes and dreams. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” That is not merely some bland reference to a mass of people. There is no collective here, only the individual. The greater good of independence is not some system that will meet with the approval of the mass, but that will make it possible for the individual, each individual, to live a free life, not a life lived purely for the good of the mass, but for his own sake. In a time when government mandates caloric consumption, cracks down on cold medicines and regulates every aspect of daily life for the greater good—the declaration that started it all declares that the purpose of government is not social justice, a minimally obese population, universal tolerance or even equality. Equality is acknowledged as a fact, not as a goal. Instead the goal of government is to allow people to be happy. That seems like a silly goal. What kind of great nation gets started by asserting that government exists to allow people to be happy? But look at the common condition of any tyranny. Take in that sense of 1984ness and its most obvious characteristic is unhappiness. People are persistently unhappy under a tyranny, whether they are rich or poor, because they are robbed of the necessary freedom to pursue individual happiness. They are not allowed to be individuals. We live in an age of collective tyrannies under systems that seek to maximize the ideal welfare of the group. They care nothing for the happiness of the individual. And they care even less for the notion that the individual has a right to achieve that happiness by pursuing it on its own terms, rather than through their socially-approved and market-tested form of happiness. The Declaration of Independence lays out the conundrum that governments exist to allow individuals to pursue their own forms of happiness. A government that makes it possible for individuals to do that cannot be a tyranny. And conversely a government that makes it impossible is a tyranny. Modern revolutions are solution-based. So are modern governments. Redistribute the wealth. Power to the workers. Put X in charge. Strengthen Laws Y through Z. Impose your will on everyone else. And there is the Declaration of Independence, old and worn, offering up an idea as fragile as a butterfly, that government does not exist to impose solutions, but to protect the individual’s pursuit of happiness. What is it that threatens the individual pursuit of happiness? Government. The proper government that the Declaration of Independence gives weight to is one that protects the people from government’ other governments as well as their own government.It protects from them from being regarded as a mass, a great porridge of people to be poured into the proper molds. It protects them from being a people, an undifferentiated mass reduced to a mathematical average of allotted happiness based on the latest trends in sociological happiness research. It protects their individuality. The pursuit of happiness is not necessarily wise. It is often foolish. One man finds happiness in overeating and yet he lives in a society where his pursuit of gorging on giant sodas and salty snacks is protected from all the fidgeting experts eager to rush in and begin prodding him into good health. Another man finds happiness in inventing airplanes and is free to essay flight despite all the bearded men and women wearing fake Indian jewelery and smelling of patchouli who want him to write up an environmental impact statement. Happiness is individual and individuals are eccentric. Their pursuits of happiness will have both good and bad in it. Individuality is the ultimate diversity and there is no substitute for it if you want a society that breaks through barriers, rather than wrestling in the streets over the fortieth revolution that will finally convince everyone that the right way to live is under Osceopeology. (It won’t.) The Declaration of Independence was not only a national statement, but an individual statement as well. It envisioned a government fit for individuals, rather than massive masses. A government that would free individuals to pursue their own goods, rather than enslaving them to the greater good that is intellectually fashionable at any given moment. And that is what makes it more relevant than ever. The Redcoats are not about to march into Boston, but the Regulators are. The rising power of government has transformed its laws and systems into a means for the elites to impose their will on the whole country, to stamp out their private pursuits of happiness for collective ends. The nanny state, like every good nanny, is suspicious of private and unsupervised pursuits of happiness. It accepts equality not as a fact, but as a goal, whose achievement requires the absolute and total regulation of all private matters and activities. It has no truck with liberty because it understands, rightly, that liberty imposes limitations on its powers of control. The Fourth is not only a celebration of nationhood, but of a nation of individuals. It is as much a celebration of private freedoms as of public ones. It is a celebration of a nation of individuals capable of voluntarily pursuing their happiness by securing a nation, rather than a nation of slaves waiting to be given their marching orders by another government agency. An unalienable right can be restricted or taken away, but it never disappears. It never goes away because it origin source in a Divine Power transcends governments and ideologies. It is not bound by the fashions of the day. It is a permanent and absolute statement that the dignity of the individual is not distributed with a soup ladle in the shelter of the state, but comes from the individual. It is not the people who need governments. It is governments who need people. As we celebrate the Fourth in an America where the pursuit of individual happiness has been forgotten and repressed, mark the occasion by exercising your right to the pursuit of your happiness.

Hey, American voters, you’re stupid!

Obama’s legacy will be one of ignominy because their policies will result in the impoverishment of more Americans than the Great Depression Hey, American voters, you’re stupid! The cynicism and contempt with which President Obama and the Democrats hold the American people is downright criminal. The latest move by the White House postponing full implementation of the Obamacare small business mandate amounts to an admission that the so-called Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have a huge negative impact on the American economy. In short, the ACA will neither be affordable nor will it have much to do with “care.” Most disgusting is that the postponement betrays a level of contempt for American voters that is unprecedented in this country and is on par with countries like the former Soviet Union or Zimbabwe. Obama appears to believe that if he postpones the damage to the economy his signature healthcare law will engender long enough to get past the 2014 mid-term elections, then the Democrats will have an opportunity to take complete control of all three branches of the government. And if that happens, it’s lights out for liberty. There’s a real danger that this ploy may succeed, given the low level of sentience that the average American is capable of displaying. But then if life revolves around Dancing With The Stars, American Idol and Keeping Up With The Kardashians, then it isn’t a stretch to think that cheap tricks and trinkets will distract voters long enough to ensure a complete takeover. The past five years have shown us that there are a large number of Americans who would be content to have the government provide for them without their having to expend much, if any effort. However, I don’t believe the majority of Americans would be content to exist at a subsistence level with the government providing for their basic needs and postponement of the small business mandate proves this point. An increase in unemployment and further decline of the US economy would be on Obama and the Democrats’ head. Part of the reason that the Democrats haven’t been totally turfed out of Washington is that American voters aren’t being offered a real alternative. When you consider presidents like George W. Bush with his ridiculous “compassionate conservatism” and candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney with their “progressive light” agendas, then it’s a small wonder that there is any Republican support in America at all. The Democrats are heading for the Perfect Storm and Obama’s legacy will be one of ignominy because their policies will result in the impoverishment of more Americans than the Great Depression. The US economy has been kept afloat with newly printed money that may as well be counterfeit. Once the Fed stops pumping $85 billion a month into the economy and Amnesty brings out up to 30 million low-skilled, uneducated workers that vie for jobs with our indigenous low-skilled, uneducated workers and families are forced to pay as much as $20,000 per year for government mandated healthcare, American voters will smarten up pretty quickly. And they will graphically disprove the Democrats’ belief that the American electorate is stupid.

ObamaCare and taxation without representation

ObamaCare and taxation without representation Not everyone can say they’ve been officially certified by the United States Supreme Court as a liar, but Barack Obama loves to point out how “historic” his presidency is. The Court today declared that ObamaCare’s “individual mandate” is a tax, but Barack Obama consistently and repeatedly said it was not a tax. Here’s a clip of his most famous denial, delivered to George Stephanopolous of ABC News in September 2009:
Note that Obama does not merely deny that ObamaCare is a tax. He ridicules the idea, and suggests that anyone who says it’s a tax is engaged in sophistry. He compares ObamaCare to the concept of purchasing auto insurance, and says “nobody considers that a tax increase.” Further, he accuses anyone who disagrees with him to be “making up language.” Ed Henry of Fox News noticed today that White House website still, as of 3:00 PM Eastern time on Thursday afternoon, includes a blog post that reads as follows: “First, the health insurance reform bill being considered in the Senate does not raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 – in fact it is a substantial net tax cut for American families. The bill being considered represents a substantial net tax cut for middle income families. According to the independent Joint Committee on Taxation, the bill will provide nearly $450 billion in individual income tax cuts over the next 10 years.” (Emphasis in the original.) The title of this official White House blog post is “The Truth on Health Care Reform and Taxes.” Another little nugget of truth to be gleaned from this post is that one specific component of ObamaCare was explicitly acknowledged to be a tax: the special excise tax levied on high-cost health plans, also known as the “Cadillac tax.” Clearly, the architects of ObamaCare knew perfectly well that the concept might include some taxes – and they were emphatic that the individual mandate, in contrast, was not a tax. The White House even portrayed ObamaCare as neutralizing a “hidden tax,” citing the long-discredited fable that cost-shifting to cover the uninsured was a secret tax of $1,000 apiece on “the millions of Americans who get insurance through their job or buy it on their own.” If you haven’t been following the health care debate closely, you should know that is not true, and it never was. The $1,000 figure was based on a non-peer-reviewed study from a single liberal advocacy group called FamiliesUSA. It ignored the fact that a good 75 percent of those costs are actually covered by “charitable organizations and federal, state and local governments to reimburse doctors and hospitals for the cost of caring for the uninsured,” as the Wall Street Journal noted in March 2011. So, Team Obama was willing to stretch the concept of a “tax” pretty darned far… and then adamantly maintain the individual mandate was not a tax. On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama could not have been more clear about his promise not to raise taxes, in “any form,” on families making less than $250,000 per year: It matters that Barack Obama lied about all this. Whatever the other strengths and flaws of today’s Supreme Court decision, it has the practical effect of transforming ObamaCare into the very opposite of what it was presented as. This is the ratification of fraud. The Court should have restrained itself to the arguments made around, and within, the legislation itself, instead of rooting around in the Constitution to discover a justification for the ObamaCare power grab, replacing the individual mandate (which the Court did say was unconstitutional) with a tax, as if they were changing the batteries in a dead flashlight. The people of the United States, and their representatives, were deceived about the nature of this bill – not just the huge blank-check unwritten segments, but even the parts that were written down. Of course it wouldn’t have passed if it had been presented as a gigantic tax increase; many of the Democrats who were cajoled into voting for it, through back-room deals, would have run for the hills. Americans can vote to inflict a great many foolish ideas upon themselves. They even have a lawful mechanism for altering the Constitution. But we have laws against commercial fraud because they are a form of unlawful coercion. The Supreme Court’s decision on ObamaCare reveals it to be an even worse act of coercion than we thought, because it was passed on false pretenses, and now it has been substantially altered without a vote by our elected representatives. In other words, the phrase for freedom-loving Americans to meditate upon tonight is one that was very familiar to our Founding Fathers: taxation without representation. Update: Not only did Obama insist that the mandate was not a tax, his Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, made a point of insisting it was not a tax during arguments before the Supreme Court. At one point, Justice Samuel Alito mocked him for it: ““General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax.” Later, Verrilli slipped up and called the mandate a tax, which led Justice Stephen Breyer to get big laughs by asking, “Why do you keep saying ‘tax’?” A contemporaneous Fox News report noted that “The justices, particularly the four Democratic-appointees, and Justice Antonin Scalia, appeared skeptical that the fine constitutes a tax.” But whaddya know? It turned out to be a tax after all, even though Obama’s chief legal representative absolutely refused to make that argument! The last laugh was on America, I guess.

Time is running out

Time is running out as World War III looms on the horizon Time is running out As detailed by well known Erwin W. Lutzer in his book “When a Nation Forgets God,” an unidentified Christian pastor shared a story with him of someone living in Germany during the Nazi takeover. The person sharing the story was a churchgoing Christian and a member of a small church located adjacent to railroad tracks. Every Sunday morning, according to this eyewitness, the congregation could hear the whistle of the train in the distance, the noise of the wheels over the tracks, and as the train passed, the cries coming from inside the train. The cries were those of the Jews being transported to concentration camps, a process that occurred with regularity each Sunday morning during their worship service. According to this eyewitness, week after week the whistle would blow and the church members dreaded the sounds they heard. The screams tormented them. So, what did they do? As the train approached and in anticipation of the screams from the Jews, herded like cattle into the train cars, the Christians sang louder to drown out the screams. Soon, they head them no more. The eyewitness ended his account by describing the torment of hearing the train whistle in his sleep, and pleaded for forgiveness for not only himself, but for all of those who called themselves Christians but did nothing to intervene. Regardless of your faith or station in life, chances are great that you are exactly like that eyewitness, and equally, if not more accountable for the actions of our government today. What is coming is going to be far worse than the world has ever seen, and is going to blindside many. Don’t be one of them. World War III is looming like the train whistle in the distance A global war of unimaginable atrocities is being planned as I write this. It has been in the works for some time, yet few will want to read what I have written. Rather, most will instead choose to “sing louder” to drown out the screams of innocents, except this time, the screams will be too loud, too frequent, and too many. The United States of America has been overtaken from within by a group of heartless and soulless individuals with designs on reshaping the world into a state of global governance. They are members of both political parties, and part of their plans include reshaping the Middle East at any cost, including the inevitable and incalculable cost of human life. Currently at the helm is Barack Hussein Obama, although his way was paved by the majority of his predecessors and elected officials of both parties. He was purposely selected as the man for the job to insure that the inappropriately celebrated Arab Spring that swept North Africa and the Middle East was conducted as planned. It was a staged and orchestrated event by the globalists and those in power in the U.S. and elsewhere. Using your tax dollars and in your name, the United States has been providing funding and operational support to the groups toppling governments in favor of radical Islamic control. Such control is nothing but a necessary means to an end. While many correctly decry the brutality of Islam, few realize that is a tool of the globalists. They are not thinking big enough. The lie is bigger than you have been told. As I have previously written, a window of understanding, or a glimpse into this agenda, exists in the murderous events that took place in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Full disclosure into this event would reveal a criminal enterprise so vast and staggering that it would eclipse anything we’ve ever seen. Benghazi was not about any film, protest, or even a kidnapping operation. It was about weapons smuggling to Syria to assist Islamic terrorists to topple Assad, install a Muslim Brotherhood-backed regime, causing further regional destabilization leading to a massive global war. Full disclosure would reveal that the United States, through the approval of members of both political parties we elected and acting in our name, are siding with associates having direct ties to al Qaeda and other Islamic groups. The truth is sickening, revolting and shocking. The face of what is to come There are those who doubt this agenda, instead opting to believe that we are seeing inevitable sectarian violence that existed in that part of the world for centuries. While the matter of sectarian violence is indeed a factor, the U.S. has been funding, training, and equipping the anti-Assad terrorists for their own purposes, using our tax dollars and acting in our name. Again, this is the reason no elected official wants to open an unbiased investigation into Benghazi, for it will reveal the extent of our complicity, and the blood on their hands. For anyone doubting what is on the immediate horizon, I would like to direct your attention to a picture I first saw published on the website Before it’s News last week. The picture accompanies a graphic video and tells the story of an innocent, crying and distraught four-year-old girl chained to a fence by the anti-Assad Islamic terrorists - the very group the United States is funding. Perhaps you’ve seen it. She was chained to the fence and forced to watch the decapitation and dismemberment of her parents, whose crime was being members of the Shia sect. These are the people our elected leaders, our State Department, and our CIA at the direction of Barack Hussein Obama are helping. These are the people who claim to be on the side of righteousness, by exacerbating the violence under the pretext of fighting oppression. Worse, they are engaging in these evil and unspeakable acts in our name and with our tax dollars. At the same time, there is an active plan to fully destroy our economy by killing our national currency, thus disabling us domestically. This is being done not only to stop any meaningful opposition to a global system of governance through our financial enslavement, but to insure that our future generations are beholden to a global financial power as well. Concurrently and as part of the larger picture, we have allowed the moral fabric of our nation to become ripped by last week’s Supreme Court decisions on homosexual unions. As I detailed in my article on this site, all is not what it seems with regard to this agenda. It is a work in progress to further destroy this country from within. The coming destruction It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. I believe the picture that accompanies this article is worth a bucket of tears. It represents the evil that comes this way. As uncomfortable as it will make you feel, I urge you to look at the picture of the little girl and understand that by our silence, we are complicit in the most evil agenda of modern times. A multi-faceted agenda that is being accomplished by your individual and our collective silence, which amounts to tacit approval of the evil that is being done in our name. By the very grace of God, that could be your little girl. If more people fail to awaken, it very well could be. We must not choose to cover the screams by merely singing louder, but by making a choice. Are we going to allow this evil to progress unabated, or are we going to take a stand? Time is running out as World War III looms on the horizon.

It Can Happen Here

How the Jews Defeated Hitler: Exploding the Myth of Jewish Passivity in the Face of Nazism It Can Happen Here “How the Jews Defeated Hitler” is the title of a new book by Dr. Benjamin Ginsberg PhD, subtitled “Exploding the Myth of Jewish Passivity in the Face of Nazism.” The title is counter-intuitive because, as is well known, the Nazis murdered six million Jews in Europe during the course of a deliberate genocide that has since become known as the Holocaust. The author is a professor of political science and is chair of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the book is more than just a history of that horrific period of history. It is not that long ago. I was a child at the time so, within the living memory of the survivors, their children and grandchildren, as well as others like myself around the world, it is living history. The value of the book is the way it explains how many of the Jews of Europe, particularly those herded into ghettos, failed to grasp what was happening. “It was initially difficult for most Jews to believe that the Germans actually intended to kill them all.” Another major factor was that the Nazis ensured that they were disarmed and unable to defend themselves, as were others who opposed the regime. Where resistance fighters emerged, Ginsburg notes that “Germany relied, especially in Western Europe, on the help of local police forces to deal with partisans, and, especially in France and Holland, whose local police were quite helpful.” In occupied France, “The French police helpfully compiled a card index of all the Jews of Paris by name, street, occupation, and nationality.” Therein lies the fears and concerns of Americans as they slowly come to realize that their government not only knows where they live, but a great deal of information about them courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, right on down to their local law enforcement authorities. If or when Obamacare is fully implemented, anonymous bureaucrats will be able to “target” selected Americans who are seeking medical care for death simply by denying it. No need to set up concentration camps to kill them en mass. Just as the little girl who needed a lung transplant that was initially denied by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, individuals identified as “patriots” or other enemies of the state could simply be allowed to die. So, yes, it can happen here. Zionism, the political movement that supports Israel, is a handy substitute for anti-Semitism The focus of the present day animus against Jews in general—extremely active throughout the Middle East and a major trend in Europe—is the nation of Israel. Zionism, the political movement that supports Israel, is a handy substitute for anti-Semitism. Dr. Ginsberg, however, notes that “In actuality, Israel’s founding was very much the result of the West’s postwar unwillingness to accept Jewish refugees. Governments that felt that even one Jewish refugee was one too many had to find someplace to resettle several hundred thousand Jews.” The State of Israel, like the mythical phoenix, literally rose from the ashes of Europe’s murdered Jews. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The United Nations is a hotbed of anti-Semitism “To the Americans and eventually even to the British, the State of Israel seemed the least undesirable alternative. Within two decades of Israel’s creation (in 1948) though, the reasons for its existence were forgotten or had become irrelevant, and new configurations of political forces gave rise to a renewed European anti-Semitic discourse taking the form of anti-Zionism…The European Left loudly proclaims its anti-Zionism by denouncing Israel as a racist and apartheid state and calling for boycotts of Israeli products, citizens, and ideas.” The United Nations is a hotbed of anti-Semitism. During World War II, however, Jews played leading roles in the partisan efforts to disrupt German aggression, often held leadership positions in the allied military forces and served within them, were active throughout the FDR New Deal administrations, supported the U.S. bond drives to finance the war, and were instrumental in breaking the codes of the Nazis and Empire of Japan. Jews were also the core of physicists and engineers who developed the atomic bombs that speeded the end of the war in the Pacific. The same authoritarian and leftist forces, whether it is the rise of Islamic ambitions to conquer the world or the efforts of the Left to impose a one-world government via the United Nations or just to undermine the former power and position of the United States as a defender of freedom, are at work today. Growing centralization of power in the federal government You need not be a Jew to fear the growing centralization of power in the federal government. If you are a gun-owner, you know that the Obama administration and some in Congress seek to amend and erode the Second Amendment in an effort to take your arms away from you; a common goal of fascism. If you are a member of the Tea Party or a patriot movement, you now know that the Internal Revenue Service sought to deny applications for tax-exempt status needed for fund-raising. If you fear that your Fourth Amendment right to privacy is being eroded then you know that the Constitution is under attack. If you are concerned about government by executive order, then yes, it can happen here.

Our American exceptionalism now is a small thing that takes place in the shadow of guilt

Our American exceptionalism now is a small thing that takes place in the shadow of guilt There was once an America that built its shining cities on a hill in the name of virtue. That nation has been replaced by another nation that builds housing projects in the name of guilt. We used to elect the best men for the job, or at least we believed we did. Now we hold elections of guilt, deciding which oppressed minority has been most shamefully overlooked, before casting our vote for a more diverse and equitable society. Our American exceptionalism now is a small thing that takes place in the shadow of guilt. It is rarely mentioned now without implicit rebuttals of that guilt. Its advocates are forever laboring to get out from under the burden of slavery, segregation and a thousand other hissing sibilant S’s that have been used to mark us as an eternally unworthy nation. Guilt is the shadow side of virtue. A politician who speaks about the virtues of a nation panders to his audience, and leads them with a golden halter rope to follow his policies. If he says that America is a great nation because it is a nation of immigrants, or a diverse nation or a nation where men can marry each other—his audience will internalize that lesson and repeat it back. If a foreigner accuses his country of being a bad place, he will reply that this accusation is false because it is actually a great nation where diverse gay immigrants can marry each other. People are susceptible to building identities out of the compliments that they are given. Tell a man that he is a generous host and he is more likely to invite you, or someone else, over for dinner. That is how philanthropists are made, with dinners, awards and other social rewards for giving money. That is also how philanthropic nations are made. Americans keep giving money to the world and expect that one day an international rubber chicken dinner of some sort will be held in our honor. Virtue imposes no obligation, except that of living up to that virtue. Guilt, however, imposes the endless obligation of escaping the burden of guilt. As politicians spoke less of virtue and more of guilt, America changed from a nation of shining cities to a nation of slaveowners forever striving to recapture its virtue in the face of the numberless crimes of its past. The United States of Guilt is no longer benevolent for benevolence’s sake The United States of Guilt is no longer benevolent for benevolence’s sake. It is benevolent because it has something to prove. When it voted for the historical moment of Barack Hussein Obama, it was trying to escape another history. It was creating new history in order to leave the old history behind. Did America owe a debt of any sort to the bastard son of a Kenyan diplomat who had as much to do with 19th Century slavery or even 20th Century segregation as he did with the Napoleonic wars? No it didn’t. Guilt, however, isn’t rational, it’s neurotic. It is a coat of fear that someone else puts on you and that you will do anything to take off. It’s a voice in your head that says you are a bad person and, even when you don’t fully believe that voice, you know that other people do, and you want it to go away. Above all else, guilt is power. It is a debt that, once accepted from outside, has no natural end. It is a bridle, a bit and finally a cage. It makes slavery so much easier by eliminating resistance from those who no longer believe that they have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is no room for these things, especially happiness, while wearing the hairshirt of a thousand historic crimes. Exploiting guilt is much more effective than exploiting virtue Exploiting guilt is much more effective than exploiting virtue. Participating in your own virtue is optional; participating in your own guilt isn’t. To be guilty is to be automatically complicit in crimes that have been assigned to your name. It is the essence of being considered “Part of the problem” rather than “Part of the solution.” The only hope of redemption lies in bending your back to the whip of the solution or wielding the whip against those who are still reluctant about becoming part of the solution. Laws can only make you do so many things. Even the busiest police states have only so many men in black suits that fit badly around their shoulder holsters and sunglasses that don’t reflect the sun, only so many informers and so many operators to listen to wiretaps. The best stooges and informers are the ones that men and women plant in their own heads to threaten, intimidate and spy on their own actions, to censor their own words and thoughts, and to drive them to do what they do not wish to do. The house of guilt is built on taboos. Acts and thoughts which should automatically inspire guilt. If they do not inspire guilt in you, then they will inspire guilt in your neighbors, and, if your neighbors catch you not feeling properly guilty about something in the way that they do, they will deem you a bad person. And that will make them feel virtuous. The dirty little secret of guilt is that it brings forth such feelings of virtue. Liberals need racism, not only because it is another crisis that vests them with the right to rule as protectors of the oppressed, but also because it reaffirms their virtue. They need racists the way that they need people who don’t recycle, who don’t agonize over America’s foreign policy, who unironically wear American flags on their t-shirts, who think that violence solves things, who believe that taxes should be lower, who are so privileged that they aren’t aware of their privilege, who don’t care about the planet or about any of the other things that they we have all been duly designated to care about this decade. It makes them feel good about their own virtues. The manipulators of guilt strive to create a United States of Guilt, a permanent state of guilt run for their own benefit that works by imposing so much guilt that the guilt-ridden population never notices how their guilt is being spun into gold. Their goal is not to assuage the conditions that bring guilt forth, but to exacerbate them. The worse the conditions become, the greater their power grows. As with all sociopaths, those who exploit guilt for a living are the guiltiest and yet feel the least guilt. In the United States of Guilt, the social crisis has replaced the Constitution In the United States of Guilt, the social crisis has replaced the Constitution and legislatures, courts and executives casually rewrite that old yellowed document for the sake of the social crisis. The crisis, whether it is the heat death of the planet, racism, obesity or health care must be perpetuated endlessly because it has become the source of political legitimacy and national illegitimacy. The political legitimacy of the presidents of guilt derives from that national illegitimacy, the heaps of books, articles, documentaries, wall graffiti, pamphlets, sociological texts, scatological poems, speeches and cave paintings that thoroughly and completely prove the past and present day criminality of the nation and the complicity of its people in that criminality. This Constitution of Guilt, with its hundreds of thousands of pages, its multimedia apparatus and its glorious flag of guilt waving bleakly everywhere, is the true source of political legitimacy for the elite. It has displaced democracy and law with social crisis after social crisis whose very existence shames us all and makes all other forms of government, other than the emergency response to the crisis, irrelevant. To protest anything that the crisis managers of the United States of Guilt do is to display racism, criminal selfishness, disdain for the planet, a lack of concern for the future heart problems of six year olds drinking soda; along with a legion of other crimes, all of which add up to being a bad member of society. A guiltless sociopath. The social consensus determines who is and isn’t a good person. It says that good people feel a sense of responsibility toward others. Guilt is the emotion of failing to live up to those expectations and responsibilities. When it is universally cultivated, then everyone feels guilty for not living up to their social duties and guilt for not feeling more guilty about it; except those high-achievers totting back organic fair trade groceries in reusable Amnesty International bags on the way to prepare lunches for homeless gay illegal aliens while wearing buttons condemning the occupation of Afghanistan and Gaza, nuclear power, West Virginia, hunting wolves, drilling for oil, driving cars and not being more engaged with the problems of the world. People will only do so much in the name of virtue, but they will do far more if they are hag-ridden in the name of guilt. People tire of being virtuous, but they are never allowed to tire of being guilty. They will allow their own freedoms to be stripped away from them if they can be convinced that they do not deserve those freedoms because they have taken them from others. They will allow their money to be taken from them, if they are convinced that their hard-earned money is actually ill-gotten loot. Most of all, they will allow their happiness to be taken from them if they are convinced that their happiness indicts them for not caring enough about all the misery that they have caused. And yet virtue is the gateway to guilt. If you allow politicians to spend enough time singing your praises, eventually they will force you to live up to them. As virtue easily becomes guilt, so the dictatorship of virtue becomes a United States of Guilt If they praise America as a generous nation, that means they expect to take your money. If they praise it as a tolerant nation, that means you are expected not to put up a fight against any imposition. If it is praised as being willing to meet all challenges, that is a blank check. If it is praised for its willingness to come to terms with the past, that means the guilt is about to be piled on with a wheelbarrow. Be wary of praise, for it often implies obligation. The easiest way to trap a population in guilt is to praise them to the skies, swell their heads with their own greatness, and then pull out the rug from under them by blasting them for their shortcomings. Make a people think that they are possessed of extraordinary virtues, and it is a matter of child’s play to entrap them by showing them that it is not so. As virtue easily becomes guilt, so the dictatorship of virtue becomes a United States of Guilt.

Politically, Obama would no doubt prefer that we not find out how badly he screwed up this time

Politically, Obama would no doubt prefer that we not find out how badly he screwed up this time Obama just had to meddle in Egyptian affairs. He decided Hosni Mubarak had to go. A flawed leader, to be sure, but a dependable ally to the United States and Israel who did a good job of reigning in extremist elements in his country. In the middle east, there are never truly “good” options. Sometimes there are less terrible ones. For all of the celebrating among the American punditry and the president who foolishly believed the Egyptian people would glide gracefully from life under a dictator to Jeffersonian democracy overnight, what really happened was as predictable as night following day. Pushing Mubarak out created a power vacuum. In the mid east, those are always filled immediately by Islamic extremists and this time was no different. The Egyptian people, nowhere near prepared to govern themselves, elected the Muslim Brotherhood by way of Mohamed Morsi. One year later, the people are so pleased with their choice, there is massive violence in the streets. That ought to be enough to declare Obama’s Arab Spring to be a flop. But, wait, it gets worse. Was Morsi involved in the plotting of the 9/11/12 attack on our embassy at Benghazi? Kevin McCullough at Townhall.com has found that reports began popping up in June of 2013 citing an internal Libyan government memo that has not yet been noticed by the American press. According to McCullough, multiple sources have confirmed that the document details confessions of six Egyptians in Libyan custody for the attack. The memo was written as merely a perfunctory after action report. The report reveals that an Egyptian terror cell had been involved in the planning and execution of the attack, all connected to the terror group Ansar al-Sharia, well known to the U.S. Concerning the most important claim of the Libyan memo, Raymond Ibrahim, (an American research librarian, translator, and author, whose focus is Arabic history, language, and current events) indicates that ‘during interrogations, these Egyptian jihadi cell members ‘confessed to very serious and important information concerning the financial sources of the group and the planners of the event and the storming and burning of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi…. And among the more prominent figures whose names were mentioned by cell members during confessions: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi…’‘’ The investigation also has led to a video taken the night of the attack in which the jihadis claim to have been sent personally by “Dr. Morsi”. Next thing we know, Obama is delivering fighter jets and tanks to the Egyptian regime. McCullough also wants to know why Morsi’s invitations to the White House kept getting canceled between September 2012 and March 2013. Did the White House know something about Morsi that made them a tad uncomfortable? The Commander in Chief was unreachable during the attack. To this day, we don’t know where he was or what he was doing. We do know that Hillary supported the Brotherhood’s project at the UN—to declare blasphemy of Islam a global crime. We know the White House and NSA hosted a Muslim Brotherhood radical on June 13, 2013, who is a personal assistant to a terrorist so extreme he’s not even allowed in the U.S. The current administration is rife with mid to upper level appointees with ties to the Brotherhood. Is Morsi’s involvement the reason for the staggering amount of lying that went on immediately after the attack? McCullough also points out this might be a good time to revisit our aid to Egypt program, at the least. The issue is whether anyone will pay attention to the memo. It was drafted for no other purpose than the normal course of business and should be given serious consideration as a credible document. Politically, Obama would no doubt prefer that we not find out how badly he screwed up this time.

IF YOU CAN READ THEN HEAR MY WORDS AS A SOLDIER AND PATRIOT OF THE PEOPLE

The Founding Conservatives: How a Group of Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution The Conservative Founding Fathers Who Saved America IF YOU CAN READ THEN HEAR MY WORDS AS A SOLDIER AND PATRIOT OF THE PEOPLE On the Fourth of July it is traditional and proper that we pay tribute to the nation’s Founding Fathers. The names of Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madison are well known to Americans, but far less of the names of the conservative founders who, in many ways, saved and created the nation through their efforts and sacrifices. They include Robert Morris, Gouveneur Morris, John and Edward Routledge, James Wilson, Philip Schuyler, and John Dickerson. Their achievements have been mentioned in passing by many historians, but it took David Lefer to do them the full justice they deserve in his new book, “The Founding Conservatives: How a Group of Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution.” For conservatives today, it is testimony to the tenacity, fortitude, and sacrifice these men demonstrated during the long years of the Revolution and it is also the story of the way the colonies, later states, often failed to meet their obligations to fund the soldiers who fought for freedom from England, often suffering horribly at Valley Forge and elsewhere. When the fighting ceased, they just as often found themselves without pay or pension. From the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to the peace treaty in 1783, to the ratification of the Constitution in 1788, and the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in 1791, Lever notes that “The Revolution was a time of war without end; of real estate crashes, rampant speculation, and mounting public debt; of popular outrage at bankers and merchants who grew rich while the rest of the nation struggled; of bitter disputes over taxation; and of such animosity between left and right that it left Congress paralyzed for months on end.” In short, times not unlike our own today. In the years following World War II, historians of that time “made a conscious decision to downplay any hint of strife among the Founding Fathers”, but the reality can be found in Lefer’s book and it is far from what a generation or two of Americans were taught. America’s economy was based largely on agriculture, but it was the conservative Founders who were the first advocates of a banking system, corporations, and large-scale industry. It was the conservatives who set in motion the rise of America. Today it is fashionable among liberals to depict the Founding Fathers as slave-owners and many were in an era where their labor was needed, but many of the conservatives chose to free their slaves after the nation was established. Of the men mentioned above, all could be considered the “elite”, wealthy men who nonetheless risked their wealth and their lives in the cause of establishing a new nation and, indeed, many lost everything as they risked the investments in a wide range of land speculation and other enterprises. At the heart of their endeavors was the 17th and 18th century concept of virtue which was very different from how we interpret it today. “It implied manliness as well as selflessness, an ability to fight for the state, and a willingness to place its interests about one’s own.” None perhaps exemplified this better than George Washington whose tenacity kept together the ill-clothed and fed army that ultimately defeated the most powerful empire of its time. The Founding Fathers were extremely distrustful of the concentration of power as was seen in the concept of monarchy and today Americans are distrustful of a government whose powers of surveillance and thus control are seen in the revelations about the role of the National Security Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Homeland Security. Most particularly, Americans fear a presidency that ignores the Constitution and Congress, preferring to rule by executive orders. By April 19, 1775, “the stench of gunpowder and dead men filled the air between Boston and Concord” and soon enough the Second Continental Congress “which met for the first time three weeks later, found itself in charge of a war it had not authorized and did not know how to run.” Their job was made easier by an arrogant George III who refused any efforts at compromise. “By the end of the Revolution, writes Lefer “Americans were toppling old patterns of deference as relentlessly as gilded statues of King George. A new world of greater social mobility and political participation was rapidly coming into being. And while hostility to the rich continued to exist, the changes taking place in American society were far more democratic than radical. It wasn’t that the lower classes wanted to limit wealth. It was that they too now demanded the right to earn it.” It was the belief among the conservative Founders that large-scale capitalism would be the engine that drove America to greatness. They were right. Of those who met in private and in secrecy to draft a Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation, “thirty-nine were lawyers and judges. Two were college presidents, and three were or had been professors. Almost half had served in the Continental Army or the militia…American conservatives were well represented at the convention.” The threats to the new republic were not so different then as they are today and the future of the United States of America was no more in question then as now.

Egyptians March against Obama

Egyptians March against Obama Obama’s leadership Fourteen Million people marched in Egypt yesterday against the man Obama backed to be the Egyptian President. Morsi was Obama’s man and the Muslim Brotherhood was Obama’s party because Obama has the Muslim worldview. Fourteen million people out of a country of 84 million is roughly the equivalent of 52 million Americans Marching against Barack Hussein Obama. During his inauguration on January 20th 2009, a day that will live in infamy as being far worse for America than Pearl Harbor, Hussein Obama had a message for his Muslim friends as he offered them “a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect”. Who could have known at that time that he meant to offer American military support and American tax dollars to support Muslim fanatics in the destruction and captivity of their countries? Obama also said the USA would “extend a hand” to those “who cling to power through corruption and deceit” if they “are willing to unclench” their fists. Clearly he was referring directly to Hosni Mubarak President of Egypt who had kept his country safe from the tyranny of the Muslim Brotherhood since they assassinated President Anwar Sadat in October 1981. Sadat made peace with Israel and Mubarak kept that peace alive for 30 wonderful years. So Mubarak had to go. Right after his inauguration Obama’s first phone call was not to the Prime Minister of the UK, or the Prime Minister of Canada, or some European leader. He called Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Was that symbolic of his determination to finally kick God’s People out of Israel? Few of us will ever forget that on June 4, 2009, in Cairo, Egypt, President Obama expanded on his inauguration speech and proposed a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, based upon mutual interest and mutual respect. Specifically, the President said that the U.S. would seek a more comprehensive engagement with Muslim-majority countries, countries with significant Muslim populations, and their people by expanding partnerships in areas like education, economic development, science and technology, and health, among others, while continuing to work together to address issues of common concern. That should have warned America of what was coming from this radical Marxist Muslim who even stated that America is a Muslim Nation. But Americans were too busy watching television to know that their country was being pulled out from under them like a Persian carpet. On April 1st, 2009, Obama played a really good April Fool’s joke on the United States by bowing deeply before the self-proclaimed “king” of Saudi Arabia and dragging the flag of the United States into the dust as he made his obeisance to a man who was a sworn enemy of the United States. We all know he was our enemy because he represented and funded the most radical sect in Islam – the Wahhabis. We also know that most of the fanatics who murdered three thousand people in the New York in 2001 were from Saudi Arabia. Wahhabis believe that all those who don’t practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies. Therefore we are their enemies. It amazes me that some people in the United States argue that Hussein Obama is a Christian because he attends church occasionally. Yassar Arafat, the most dangerous terrorist in the world, used to be in the front row in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. It’s all part of the gigantic lie of Islam. Islam condemns lying unless it is for a good cause, such as the spread of Islam. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Barack Hussein Obama is a dedicated Muslim Marxist Barack Hussein Obama is a dedicated Muslim Marxist who is determined to destroy the United States but it is interesting to note that one of his most heralded accomplishments was the removal of Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt and his replacement by the Muslim Brotherhood. Yesterday 14 million Egyptians took to the streets to protest Obama’s choice for their leader. Why do we not see 52 million Americans marching in Washington for a peaceful transition of power from our dictator back to an American President?

Speakin’ Out

Speakin’ Out The concept of the American dream has largely been replaced by the piece-of-pie myth. Rather than believing that individual productivity produces benefits for us all, many are captive to what is essentially a Marxist concept - the economy is a set size, a pie to be divided up by hook or crook. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In this view, the “haves” are seen as obtaining their wealth at the expense of the “have-nots,” therefore the “have-nots” need to somehow take it back. This false view of the world and of economics is running rampant around the world these days, and is not simply relegated to those who profess to adhere to the views of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao or a combination of any of the above. The piece-of-the-pie view has given us, among other things, entitlements, the welfare state, corporate welfare, and revenge politics. And in my days as a parking lot attendant on the streets of downtown Chicago, the terms “getting over,” “a hustle,” “stickin’ it to the man,” concepts around long before Marxism, were a few of the terms one would hear, used to describe the illegal piece-of-the-pie activities of thievery and fencing (buying stolen property to be quickly resold) which makes up a large part of the underground economy. When we hear a candidate tell voters that electing them means people can finally get revenge, watch out! They see the government and taxpayers’ money simply as something to be divided up, with the only way to replenish it being higher taxes and more borrowed money. And while they say it will be divided up among the people, what happens is that the elected official lives high off the hog while the people who voted them in face increasing joblessness and poverty. So with so much attention devoted to dividing up the “pie,” no attention is given to promoting the growth of business and industry, and in this situation, the economy really does become a pie of diminishing size, and people at all economic levels continue to see diminishing returns from their productive activity. An economy is not a fixed amount to be divided up. Rather, it is something that continues to grow as long as private enterprise and personal entrepreneurship are allowed to flourish. Rich people always make more people rich on the way to their prosperity, they don’t cause more poverty. Poverty can be defined as a condition in which people are unable or unwilling to hook up to the economy and be a part of it. A neighborhood or a community in decline is not a product of someone becoming wealthy at their expense. It has somehow become disconnected from the overall economy. The problem of a community in decline is not solved by government handouts but by finding a way to connect the individuals and/or the community to the economy at large.