Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

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This is how Liberty died

Not with a bang, but piece by piece.

If you have been a reader of this blog in the past, you know that I am in love with the Country that our founding fathers established and left to us. I wish I could still say that I was in love with the United States, but I have come to the conclusion that this is not the country that our founding fathers gave us. Instead our Liberty is under assault from the political “elites”, judges, and bureaucrats running us from the federal government.

Democrats and Liberals are fond of telling us that we are living in a Democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have NEVER lived in a Democracy, not even since the days of the founders. The founders left us with a representative republic – but we have not kept it.

Recall if you will a bit of history – in the late 18th century there were many European colonies here on this continent. The “new world” was seen as a source of wealth in Europe – hence the incentive for colonization. European conflicts that had simmered for ages spilled over to the colonies – resulting in the occasional war and the exploitation of the native populations as combatants against colonies on behalf of European powers. These conflicts were not cheap – Britain spent huge sums to protect her colonies from the French and their “Indian” allies. Already exploiting the resources of the colonies and over-extended by fighting in a conflict across the ocean Britain decided that it needed more and more money from the colonies – in the form of taxes.

Read the Declaration of Independence. Thirteen united colonies had finally had enough by 1776 (in fact armed conflict had broken out even before that) and unanimously declared themselves to be thirteen independent nations equal to all other sovereign nations throughout the world. They did this in protest of an overreaching monarchy and a central government far removed from local concerns. The British government and its agents had suppressed personal liberties, seized personal property, suppressed and invalidated the actions of local governments and the like. Revolution was the result.

These thirteen independent nations quickly banded together to form a confederacy under the belief that if they didn’t hold together they would be unable to defend themselves against other nations. The confederacy had little power other than to ask these nations to support it. The “States” or nations were sovereign – holding the powers of all nations and governing their people according to the will of those people.

The big problem with the confederacy was it’s general weakness. No state could by compelled to defend another. No state was required to permit free commerce between its people and the people of another state. The national debt was huge (for its time) and the confederacy couldn’t raise the money to cover it, because the states couldn’t be compelled to share their revenues with it. The Constitutional Convention was held to fix these problems with the Articles of Confederation. But, in a result that should stand as a warning to those advocates of a new Constitutional Convention to address what people see as deficiencies in our current Constitution, rather than merely “fixing” the Articles of Confederation the convention instead established a new form of Government in the U.S. Constitution.

A plain reading of the words of the Constitution, as well as a basic understanding of the debates and arguments that took place during the convention and the words of the founders both in the Federalist and the Anti-Federalist papers will make it clear that the founders intended for the federal government to be somewhat stronger than the confederacy but still limited in its powers. The federal government was given very specific explicit powers and obligations. The Bill of Rights established more clearly limitations upon the federal government. The ninth and tenth amendments in particular made it clear that the people had rights that were not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, and that the people and the States were left with any power that was not explicitly forbidden to them by the Constitution.

I think it would be nice to live in that country. The States were for the most part the sole governors of the people. The federal government was to protect and defend the States from foreign enemies – and from each other.

But we don’t live in that country anymore. In fact it seems that for my entire life we haven’t lived in that country.  Before I was even born the courts had decided that the federal government could tell a farmer how much of what type of crops he could grow on his own land. While I was a teenager the federal government decided that it could regulate what drugs a person could use as medicine or for “recreational purposes'” without regard for the fact that it had no constitutional authority to do so. Some decades previous to this it took a constitutional amendment to ban the sale, possession or consumption of alcohol in the country – but now by bureaucratic fiat the Constitution no longer mattered.

The trend just continues. The current administration and Congress has no respect for the voice of the people. They laugh at questions of constitutional authority. Some assert that the federal government can do whatever it wants. A single federal judge can call 7 million Californians bigots unqualified to cast a ballot and overturns the California constitution. The government seizes private property – nationalizing the automotive business for one. It dictates how much a private individual can receive in compensation for his services to a company via the whim of an unelected bureaucrat. It demands billions of dollars from a foreign company to compensate victims of its (the governments) misguided policies and tardiness in dealing with an accident.  It selectively enforces its own laws and ignores its constitutionally mandated duties to the states – while suing those very states for defending themselves. When nearly three quarters of the voters in a state vote against its unconstitutional mandate that individuals purchase a product that they don’t want or face a federally imposed fine its representatives dismiss that vote as “meaningless”.

The federal government under liberalism has grown into a monster. It bears NO resemblance to the government that our founding fathers created and left to us. We are now slaves to the whim of the “elite” in government.

We don’t even have the option that our founders had. The most recent nominee to the supreme court of the United States doesn’t think that the Declaration of Independence has any meaning. And armed revolt is doomed. The left has worked diligently to take away the one remaining protection that the people have against tyranny. We cannot arm ourselves in any way that would be effective in protecting ourselves from the military might that is under the command of today’s crop of socialists and statists.

Once this was a free nation. I lament that it no longer is, and that it may never be again. I wish I could see things in a better light. I wish that November would bring a real change. But I think it’s long past the time when even the TEA party activists can do anything effective to return our Liberties to us. The majority of people in this country don’t like the way it’s being run from Washington now. And Washington doesn’t seem to care – or even fear the wrath of the people.

Investagated? Even the D.O.J. contributes to illiteracy.

Another public education failure

There’s no need to add anything else, is there?

The Dalai Lama misses the point

I was reading AllahPundit’s article about the Dalai Lama’s statement that he’s a Marxist and something bothered me about it. Here’s what the Dalai Lama had to say…

“(Marxism has) moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits,” the Dalai Lama, 74, said.

He went on to remark how Capitalism had raised the standard of living in China while pure Marxism had not, crediting Beijing’s embrace of market economics for breaking the iron fist of communism. In other words, he acknowledged that the philosophy with “moral ethics” left the people impoverished while the urge for profits had raised the standard of living for most Chinese.

At first you would think that the Dalai Lama is starting to get senile at 74 based on these statements. Either Marxism (communism) is morally superior to capitalism and should result in a better society and standard of living for its people or capitalism is morally superior because it results in a better society and standard of living.

I think the Dalai Lama is simply wrong.

Marxism has the appearance of moral ethics – it doesn’t actually have them. Neither for that matter does capitalism. Both systems by themselves produce “social injustice”. Marxism does this by punishing the innovators and entrepreneurs and capitalism does it by ignoring the downtrodden and the weak. Neither system by itself is ideal. Nor is a mix of the two such as we have today.

In fact, a mix of the two is ultimately just as bad, because it pits the “haves” and the “have nots” against one another. It punishes those factors that result in success under capitalism and rewards those that lead to failure and ruin. Ultimately it will have to collapse into chaos as we see in Greece, or destruction.

People have argued that the United States was founded as a capitalist nation. That’s simply not true. Nowhere in our founding documents do you find a mandate for capitalism. What you do find is a mandate for Liberty, and Independence. You find protection for the rights of the individual, particularly for the right of the individual to recognize and honor his Creator. Throughout the writings of the founders you will find statements that a virtuous and faithful people are fundamental to the success of a republic such as ours.

The founders recognized what the Dalai Lama, the Chinese government, and the political left do not. Capitalism by itself is morally bankrupt but liberty and a free commerce coupled with Judeo-Christian ethics and faith is a path to both prosperity and social justice – without coercion. And THAT is the system that they left to us. That’s also the system that the “social progressives” have willfully abandoned in our name.

Marxism uses the force of government to take from those that have to give to those that will not produce. Capitalism ignores the plight of those stricken by misfortune because it will not reward failure. Both of these are evils. Judeo-Christian faith produces voluntary sharing of accumulated wealth with those in actual need. That is true moral ethics.

It is not moral to reach into your neighbors pocket to give to the downtrodden. It is moral to reach into your own pocket to give to the downtrodden. Punishing success will ultimately have the affect of causing less success. Rewarding failure will ultimately have the affect of producing more failure.

The Dalai Lama and other leftists miss the point. What makes a great society isn’t Marxism or capitalism. It’s faith in God, coupled with the liberty to do His will that makes a man, or a nation, great. Isn’t it strange that a “religious leader” would miss the point so badly.

The Democratic Party never gives up on a bad idea.

Three years ago the nation debated “comprehensive immigration reform”. The people overwhelmingly rejected it because it was simply a euphemism for amnesty for illegal immigrants despite lawmakers protestations to the contrary. This year it's the hot topic again.

What has changed? Well, there's a Democratic majority in the House, Senate, and the executive branch. They've discovered that they can shove their socialist agenda down the people's throats, but that without a change in voter demographics it will cost them their majority.

Three years have passed, and still the federal government refuses to enforce existing immigration law on our southern border. The drug cartels from Mexico have become more violent taking the lives and property of U.S. land owners near the southern border. Because of the federal government's shameless failure to carry out its constitutionally mandated duty Arizona has enacted a law requiring its police to uniformly enforce the requirement that proper identification be provided by suspects of traffic violations and crimes. If proper identification isn't given immigration status can be questioned, and arrests made. The only thing that really changes here is that the law no longer provides officers the choice to ignore the identification requirement – something they often do when stopping Hispanic people.

This attempt to enforce existing law regardless of the suspect's race is called “profiling” and “racist” by our president, and by the president of a foreign land with even harsher immigration laws than ours - laws that require profiling of suspects and that require local officials to enforce federal law. Our own state department, without ever having read the law declares before China that the idea of uniform enforcement of the law is somehow a violation of human rights. Arizona is chastised by the United Nations for doing something that all sensible nations would do.

Here, the left is making the claim that uniform enforcement of identification requirements is “racist” and that somehow local law enforcement aiding federal law enforcement is somehow unconstitutional. That's funny, I seem to remember that existing federal law has provisions in it that allow local law enforcement, with proper training, and with an agreement with the attorney general, to enforce federal immigration law. (follow the link and go to the bottom of the page.)  This is in Title 8 of the U.S. Code (as of 2009), chapter 12, subchapter II. The entire title is available here in PDF format.

Just in case you aren’t interested in following the links, here’s what it has to say…

(1) Notwithstanding section 1342 of title 31, the Attorney General may enter into a written agreement with a State, or any political subdivision of a State, pursuant to which an officer or employee of the State or subdivision, who is determined by the Attorney General to be qualified to perform a function of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension, or detention of aliens in the United States (including the transportation of such aliens across State lines to detention centers), may carry out such function at the expense of the State or political subdivision and to the extent consistent with State and local law.

Read Arizona’s law. It’s much shorter than the federal law at only 17 pages of straightforward text (45 lines per page). They’re simply prohibiting local jurisdictions from ignoring federal law. They’re checking identification of EVERYONE that commits a traffic infraction or is arrested (that’s not profiling, it’s the opposite of profiling, since it applies to EVERYONE), and taking steps to check upon the immigration status of people that don’t comply. Arrests are made, and the suspects handed over to federal immigration officials. And of course, the Department of Homeland Security is now considering not taking people arrested by Arizona police into custody. That’s right, the agency charged with ensuring the security of the homeland is deliberately choosing to neglect its own duty!

Three years ago a law was passed requiring a border fence be built. Another law was passed requiring electronic monitoring of the border.  Both laws were ignored and now will not be implemented.

Nothing really has changed has it, other than federal neglect of our laws simply getting worse? And now the sadly misnamed Democratic party wants to try shoving their failure from three years ago down our throats. Aren't you convinced yet? The Democratic party is no longer interested in anything but power, regardless of the cost to our nation.

Isn't it about time we defeated them once and for all?

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