We have watched our leaders in Washington wobble like Weebles when it comes to making hard decisions. Often, when the choice is obvious, they still can’t bring themselves to stand up for their country. We’ve seen Senator Darryl Issa’s fine work in building the case against Attorney General Eric Holder… but will the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives move forward in dealing with this racist menace to our world? Not on your life!
These people are more interested in their positions and keeping the District of Corruption on an even keel. None are worthy of our predecessors like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. None would show up in President Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage. Yet there are some who do show signs of backbone – some who are willing to take positions that will have them pilloried in the press and even, if we follow history, could place them in physical danger.
One such legislator is Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall. One of the functions of the Old Dominion’s House of Delegates is looking into the qualifications of potential judges. As Victoria Cobb from The Family Foundation commented, “The General Assembly is tasked with reviewing and certifying judges. If that is little more than a rubber stamp, it means nothing. It has a duty to block judges deemed unqualified or unfit for the bench.”
[Editors note: Here are some comments on first time election day activities from my son. For those who have never spent part of election day passing out literature or knocking on doors for your favorite candidate, you will see that it is not so frightening... in fact it can be fun. Whoever you support... get out and support your man or woman.]
Last week I got a call asking if I would help Ron Paul by working a poll on election day handing out little cards promoting the delegates who support Dr. Paul at the convention. It was not something I was planning on doing and that sort of political activity is not something toward which I am naturally inclined. There were things I really should get done at work that day and coming home and having dinner with my wife is something I really do look forward to. Well, they talked me into it by saying that even if I could get there by 6pm (the eleventh hour) and work until closing that would be a help.
On Tuesday I got there about six and first went inside and took care of my own business in one of the two little booths. There was no line and after showing ID and signing my name I was directed right in. I am in Doylestown (PA) District 1-1, the belly of the county beast, so to speak, and the polling is done in the Bar Association building, which is about as comfortable and amenable venue as one is likely to find. In almost every room it seemed that there was someone thanking me for coming out to vote.
Recent actions by the Obama administration have raised numerous comparisons between the people running our county and Nazi Germany or worldwide Communism. Some, on hearing this, pooh pooh the idea this it is just the product of an overactive imagination or a simple antipathy to the White House resident… or possibly both. Progressives, of course, fall back on their old standby: racism.
Others see these similarities based on the inspirations to Obama and those he surrounds himself with. Some have been quoted as admiring Chairman Mao. Many are disciples of Saul Alinsky. Then, we have the family and friends who raised Barry Soetoro, aka Barack Hussein Obama: everyone, Marxist to the core with a dislike and distrust of our home, the United States of America.
Recent controversies have been associated with the selection of “Forward” as the campaign slogan. This word has been used frequently in the title of socialist and nazi publications. More recently the symbol of ObamaCare recognized as being strikingly similar to one used by one of the most evil personages of the last century, Adolph Hitler.
Let me start with a story. A man who had survived the great Johnstown flood died and went to Heaven. And not long after, all of the inhabitants of Heaven were allowed to take center stage and tell everyone about the most significant event that had happened to them while on Earth. The man couldn’t wait to tell everyone about his surviving the great Johnstown flood. After a long wait in line, it was finally his turn. The man was so excited to tell everyone his story. But just as he was climbing the stairs to the platform, an angel leaned over to him and whispered, “Don’t forget; Noah is in the audience.”
I am reminded of that story when I read the Scriptural passage in Hebrews 12: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.” The witnesses the Apostle speaks of are the great champions who have gone on before us, which are mentioned in chapter eleven. Included by implication in the great “Hall of Faith” of Hebrews 11 are the three young Hebrews: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (verse 34, “Quenched the violence of fire.”)
So, what was it that got these three young men included in this list that along with the likes of Abraham, Moses, and David? You’ll find their story in Daniel chapter three. In a nutshell, they refused to bow down to the image of the king. In other words, THEY DISOBEYED A CIVIL GOVERNMENT THAT HAD BECOME TYRANNICAL. And for refusing to submit to the king, they were thrown into a burning fiery furnace.
Some wisdom from one of our Catholic brothers, Father Frank Pavone. It puts things in perspective as we did nothing to warrant the love of God. He loves us because of who He is. It kind of sets the example for a mothers love.
Earlier this week, President Obama introduced us to Julia—a fictional character whose entire life is subsidized by the Federal Government (i.e., your tax money). Her website shows all the government benefits she would receive under President Obama from birth through retirement and compares them to what she would receive (or wouldn’t) under that eeeeevil Mitt Romney.
The narrative was written to emotionally appeal to the uninformed, as the information provided was extremely misleading, inaccurate, and incomplete, yet many of the President’s followers will undoubtedly accept it without question. Instead of taking time to pick apart every (non)factual representation myself—I’ll leave that for others to do—I’m going to focus on the most troubling aspect of this story from a faith perspective. Apparently, our friend Julia has no ability to provide for herself, as well as no family, friends, or faith connection to offer assistance when she has a need.
Government is her only hope.
This illustrates a topic I discuss in my book Saving America: A Christian Perspective of the Tea Party Movement. I line up the attributes and roles of God with the attributes and roles of our current governmental structure and conclude that government has usurped God’s authority, systematically decreasing our dependence on him, crowding out any room for his influence over our lives.
Barack Hussein Obama has finally publicly endorsed the idea of marriage between members of the same sex. This move should come as no surprise to anyone who as been paying attention, and many, including former presidential candidate Rick Santorum see the move as the end of a “charade” rather than the touted “evolution” of a position.
It is a necessary “evolution” for Obama as homosexuals are one of his key constituent groups. This happens because the Democrat Party, for all their rhetoric about standing up for the “common man”, really only sees constituency groups. They think of people as part of groups based electoral preferences. Are they union members? Do they work for the government? What is their race? We are told they are fighting racism by treating people differently and regarding them as worthy of assistance with taxpayer dollars because of their race.
In this case, though, they are segmented by sexual preference. The homosexual community had not been quite so free with their money or enthusiasm this time around as they were awaiting the announcement we heard today. Many were happy with the press conference… the hastily prepared press conference. They had pushed for the removal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” from the military. The got it, and wanted more.
Can/Should we do the Lord’s work through our political involvement?
If the person holding the position of authority operates in obedience to God’s Word, he or she will make decisions which God will honor whether or not those decision were made of own volition based upon their personal relationship with God’s son, Jesus Christ or because of Godly advice received from an adviser who garnered his advice from study with God’s word as his counsel.
John 14:13. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
Such a person will not poll you to see whether or not you agree. Because all too often in our society, we apply the WAM concept that asks the question: What About Me — a selfish interest.
We concern ourselves with our category: middle class, ethnic or racial group, prior circumstances, friendships and relationships and political Party identifications. These issues may replace God’s principles, and cause us to deviate from his will.
Can/Should we do the Lord’s work through our political involvement?
1. By Christian, I refer to a person who has accepted Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior and who, in so in so doing, has committed to a life of worship and obedience of Him.
Such a person is one who is “saved” from an eternity in hell (a real place designed for the devil and his angels where both the body and soul of those who have not accepted Jesus will burn forever (Mt. 10:28) in an inexhaustible fire).
Such a person is one who will understand that he or she is “saved” by God’s grace through faith and not by works lest he or she should boast.
Such a person is one who believes in Christ’s deity (He is God), his virgin birth, his sinless life while here on earth, his death on the cross for the sins of all mankind, his resurrection from the grave, his ascension into heaven where he resides today at the right hand of God the Father and intercedes for those who have accepted him, and his future return like a thief in the night to claim those who were given to him by God the Father and who never can be taken from him.
Such a person, in his obedience, will be known by his works (for faith without works is dead).
However, such a person will not be one who will “hide his light under a bushel basket.” Rather, such a person will be one who will allow his light to shine and illuminate the world so others may be drawn to the source of his light — that source being Jesus Christ as pointed to by God’s Holy Spirit.
Ronald Reagan restored honor to our country and to the presidency. He understood the dignity of each individual… and the God given rights and responsibilities that were ours simply because we walk the earth. He also understood that these rights were universal, not just for those fortunate enough to be born in the United States. Yet he did not seek to impose them on those without this knowledge around the world, but he spoke up for the downtrodden and stood up to the evil empire which eventually came tumbling down of its own corrupt weight.
During his time in office our country regained respect as he knew despots throughout the world had little use for concepts of right and wrong, but they could comprehend strength. He restored a military gutted by the previous administration as they sought to entangle more Americans in the web of entitlement dependency.
What was the source of his values that benefited our nation so greatly. It was his belief in a higher power. It was not an aloof, nebulous power, but a loving God who looked after each one of us and ruled and overruled in the affairs of men. He was not so concerned that God blessed America, but that our country was on the side of the Creator where we could be blessed.
Why me, Lord?
What have I ever done,
To deserve even one,
Of the pleasures I’ve known…
Have you ever felt that way? I guess we all do if we really think about it and take our eyes off our immediate situation. It’s good to back away from life’s struggles and look at the blessings that have come into our lives. We have been give so much more than we deserve, and the best way to keep those blessings coming is to thank the Lord and let Him know you appreciate them.
Thursday, May 3, 2012 was the National Day of Prayer. The Supreme Court has told us it this national remembrance is unconstitutional. Christians in the land know something different. Those attempting to drive religion from the public life cannot abide those of us who have allegiance to a higher power than our leaders and government. However, we are in good company.
George Washington told us, “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Even some of our opponents would agree with this assertion as it is a different kind of “morality” they seek. Their morality is not the morality of the traditional work ethic and individuals helping their neighbors. They seek a “morality” with neither restraint or responsibility and see religion as an inhibiting influence on their desires.
Yet the religion Washington spoke of was not religion in the abstract sense. It was a particular religion that guided the founders in their quest to form a more perfect union. Patrick Henry was witness to all these events. In fact, it was through his passion for liberty and dedication to the Creator that gave it to us that many took place. He said, “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”
After flying half way around the world to make a campaign speech with soldiers and military equipment as props Barack Hussein Obama got his answer within hours. After spending untold dollars, and, more importantly, American lives the President agreed that the Taliban should have a part in the future of Afghanistan. These were the people we were supposed to be driving from power in retaliation for their support of the 911 attackers.
Now, after all this adventure has cost the United States, and we have installed a corrupt and unreliable leader in the land, it’s as if he is saying “Never mind”. We could have achieved this same result years ago! Our country fell into the same “no win” strategy that it followed in the poisonous 60s and 70s. The best of America’s youth were sacrificed for internationalist political agenda where victory was never a consideration.
World War II ended when our enemies were no longer able to wage war. They surrendered and it was over. Modern internationalist diplomacy revolves around negotiated settlements where both sides agree to stop fighting, even though they still have the ability. This reduces treaties to agreements to suspend hostilities until it becomes more convenient to start them again.
[Editors note: this story illustrates the importance of even local elections in selecting the people who hold responsible positions at all levels. Cases like this bring to our consideration of what a law abiding citizen is and how far we can go in following our leaders and what we must do when faced with situations like this.]
Hutchinson, KS – The battle for our religious rights and moral values is now being fought in Hutchinson, Kansas. On May 15, the city council of the small town, just northwest of Wichita, will vote on whether to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the list of other protected classes, such as race, age, and disability. If passed, this new law will destroy the “free exercise of religion” in Hutchinson:
First Baptist Church on Main Street will be required to rent their facilities for drag-queen parties and homosexual “commitment ceremonies.”
Abundant Life Childcare, northeast of town, will be forced to hire cross-dressers to supervise children.
There is been a lot of discussion about the wasteful spending done by our government in the name of John Maynard Keynes. He preached the hair brained ideas that any kind of government spending was good for the economy. It put money in the hands of people who would spend it and stimulate businesses and help the economy. The reality is that it only takes from the hands from the productive people who earned it and could use it productively, and places it in the hands of people who only use it to increase the size and scope of governmental control.
One of the unexpected consequences, to the public at least, is additional wasteful spending in the private sector. A few days ago I received a letter from my mortgage company telling me all about the privacy rights I had and didn’t have. It went into great detail about how I could opt out of some information sharing, but how I had no say about other uses they made of my personal information.
My life is neither better nor worse for having received this correspondence. Yet this irritation was done by one of the fastest growing departments in any business – Compliance. Regulations force businesses into all sorts of non-productive efforts that rarely solve the real or imagined problems Washington believes plague the unwashed masses. None of the hoops companies have to jump through to please Big Brother come without cost. This presents another drag on the economy as money spent to comply with the maze of foolish and sometimes contradictory regulations could usually be spent on more productive pursuits like developing new products and hiring more workers.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Times liberal-progressive polemicist Paul Krugman disagree about the Fed’s monetary policy.
Krugman continues to expound the view that, if the Fed accelerates its rate of creating phony dollars, consumers will go on a spending splurge and businessmen will put their excess cash reserves into expanding their operations and hiring more people. Earlier he advocated multi-trillion dollar increases in government stimulus spending, i.e., fiscal policy, for that purpose. To answer the fact that such policies have never worked, Krugman and his fellow Keynesian economists always say that, however huge government spending may have been, it wasn’t big enough.
There may be a short-term flare up of business activity, as with Obama’s cash-for-clunkers or subsidies for home purchases, but such stimulus spending merely pulls already-intended purchases into the immediate term. As soon as the stimulus spending or subsidy ends, purchases drop below their earlier rate.
As a Christian, my relationship with God has been awesomer than usual. In all honestly, it’s all because of his grace. I’d also attribute some of it to my having hemophilia. Very little of our awesome relationship though, if any part of it at all, can be attributed to the way I’ve been living my life over the past few days. Recently, I’ve been like a rebellious child toward Jesus.
I haven’t been spending as much time in the bible as I ought. I haven’t been actively growing my faith through scripture as I ought. I haven’t been developing, as a Christian, as much as I’d like to. More importantly, I haven’t been learning about, studying, and being thankful for the grace of God that is revealed to us, that we have the privilege of reading about through his word.
I’ll take it even further and say that I have been in unrepentant, deliberate sin. I’ve been spending more time worrying about my hemophilia instead of taking about it with Jesus. I’ve been willingly doing things less important than studying the bible. Willingly! Even after being convicted by the Holy Spirit of not getting as much “Jesus time” as I should be getting! All this to say that when it comes to my Christian faith, I’ve kind of erred. In spite of all of this, he is still so good to me!
Almost every day we see more infringements on the rights given us by our creator and recognized in our constitution. That is they are outlined more specifically the first ten amendments that many insisted upon as a condition of ratifying the document.
We see the national government institutionalizing the end run around the Tenth Amendment with their overly broad and self-serving interpretation of the “commerce clause”. Of course everyone is familiar with the attempts to thwart the intent of the Second Amendment with all sorts of regulations, perhaps even treaties. These people, being smarter than we often give them credit for, understand that this amendment is not about protecting deer hunting.
Then there is the Fourth Amendment which is supposed to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures. In reality it would, if we had and administration and local authorities that respected the restrictions.
The destruction of the First Amendment is in a category all by itself. Laws restricting the free exercise of religion are prohibited and this is generally respected, unless the religion is Christianity. In certain progressive quarters there is a deep seated hostility toward followers of Christ because they know we cannot serve two masters. We can follow our Creator or the state, which puts the real church, the “confessing church” as it was known in Bonhoeffer’s time, on a collision course with those who would be our secular masters.
“These are the times that try men’s souls” – Thomas Paine
On April 20, 2012, a 15 year old black boy name Alton Hayes, and one of his friends came up behind a 19 year old white man, robbed him and them violently beat him up, kicking him repeated in the head with their boots. When arrested, the black boy told police he did it because he was angry over the Trayvon Martin killing.
In Kansas City, Missouri, on April 15 two black youths followed a 13 year old white child home, then grabbed him, threw him to the ground, poured gasoline on him and lit the liquid with a match. The boy suffered first and second degree burns on his arms, torso, and face and his lungs were seared from breathing the flames.
On April 24 in Mobile, Alabama a gang of around 20 blacks attacked a white man, Matthew Owens, on his front porch, beating him with paint cans, bricks, and metal pipes. As the gang of blacks left the scene one of them was heard to say, “This is justice for Trayvon.” The victim is currently in critical condition. The police have not made any arrests so far.
The Federal Department of Justice was quick to investigate the Trayvon Martin shooting as a hate crime but have said absolutely nothing about these incidents of black on white hate crimes. The Black Panthers put a $10,000 bounty on George Zimmerman, a “white” man and the DOJ has said nor done anything about it. President Obama was quick to comment on the Trayvon Martin shooting, condemning it but instead of trying to calm down the anger in the black community he has said absolutely nothing about the unprovoked and violent crimes committed by blacks because of the Martin shooting, thereby encouraging such action through his silence.
Rocker Ten Nugent’s comment that, “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year,” raised a collective gasp from the Obama regime and their protectors in the formerly mainstream media. The assumption was that these tragic events would come about because of something the guitar player would try to do to the President.
It fits their self-righteous mindset that anything bad would be perpetrated against them… never mind what they are doing to the rest of the country. It seems that it never occurred to anyone that Nugent might end up suffering from Breitbart’s disease or that the new infringements on free speech could land him in the pokey. However, given the history of the Obama regime and lack of criminal history shown by Mr. Nugent, this seems to be a far more likely scenario.
I recently saw a picture from the old Star Trek series where Mr. Spock was telling Captain Kirk something to the effect, “Logic dictates that if pro-gunners were as violent as anti-gunners say, there would be no more anti-gunners.” Nugent confirms this when he tells us, “If guns kill people then all of mine must be defective.”
“Evangelical Christianity lost one of its most eloquent and influential voices today with the death of Charles W. ‘Chuck’ Colson.” So reads the opening paragraph on the Prison Fellowship web site as much of the formerly main stream media only reminds us that he was a part of the Watergate conspiracy that brought down President Nixon. As with many of us who have been around a while, there are many aspects to our lives and both views of the man are true.
The last is not the complete story and the other came about because of it. He was a young and hungry hatchet man for the Nixon administration. Perhaps a stereotypical lawyer that no one really liked, but he got the job done. When a political executioner was needed, he performed the task with relish. His dedication to the success of the Nixon administration is what brought him to power and gave purpose to his life. Ultimately it led to his downfall – disbarment and imprisonment.
From frequent meetings in the oval office and sharply dressed adviser to the President, he fell prison garb and just one more number in the system. In his book, The Good Life, this once powerful and feared man wrote, “the most shattering thing about prison was the thought that I would never do anything significant with my life.” Even the harsh humiliation of prison did not quench his desire to accomplish something great. Like Victor Frankl who wrote about survival in a Nazi concentration camp, Colson looked for meaning… and he found it.
April 19, 1775, should be regarded as important a date to Americans as July 4, 1776. It’s a shame that we don’t celebrate it as enthusiastically as we do Independence Day. It’s even more shameful that many Americans don’t even remember what happened on this day back in 1775. For the record, historians call this day, “Patriot’s Day.” More specifically, it was the day that the shot was fired that was heard ’round the world. It was the day America’s War for Independence began.
Being warned of approaching British troops by Dr. Joseph Warren, Pastor Jonas Clark and his male congregants of the Church of Lexington (numbering 60-70) were the ones that stood with their muskets in front of the Crown’s troops (numbering over 800), who were on orders to seize a cache of arms which were stored at Concord and to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock (who were known to be in the area, and who had actually taken refuge in Pastor Clark’s home).
According to eyewitnesses, the king’s troops opened fire on the militiamen almost without warning, immediately killing eight of Pastor Clark’s parishioners. In self defense, the Minutemen returned fire. These were the first shots of the Revolutionary War. This took place on Lexington Green, which was located directly beside the church-house where those men worshipped each Sunday. Adams and Hancock were not taken. They owed their lives to Pastor Clark and his brave Minutemen–albeit eight of those men gave their lives protecting Adams and Hancock.
Jackson, MS – The State of Mississippi advanced the health of women and the lives of the unborn this week, when Governor Phil Bryant signed into law regulations requiring clinic abortionists to be an obstetrician-gynecologist with admitting privileges at a local hospital.
“Governor Bryant and the Mississippi Legislature are champions for the cause of women’s health and the sanctity of life,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “The lives of women will be saved because they stood courageously against Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion activists who operate under the pretext of women’s health but stand against this and other provisions that would advance women’s health.”
“No one leaves an abortion clinic uninjured – not the mother and certainly not the unborn child,” said Mat Staver. “This commonsense law would require that if those injuries require immediate hospital care, the mother can be treated immediately by her doctor in a nearby hospital.”
Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.
If anything, Paul Krugman and his fellow liberal-progressive Keynesian economic worshippers should castigate the GSA for spending far too little. After all, it’s a fundamental principle of Keynesian economics that saving (what used to be called prudent regard for the future wellbeing of our heirs) causes economic recessions.
According to Lord Keynes, when workers spend less than what they are paid, each bit of saving reduces aggregate consumption and drags the economy down. Keynes recommended that government spend as much as possible in order to counter the theoretical drag of saving on the economy. The nature of government spending, in Keynes’ theory, is immaterial. Government could employ people to dig holes one day and fill them on another, endlessly repeating this useless activity.
The GSA’s party was in this grand tradition of Keynesian theory.
Abe Lincoln said it best, “What is morally wrong cannot be politically correct.” Yet the exponential pornification of our culture is contributing both directly and indirectly to the epidemic of child sexual abuse, and unfortunately, certain segments of our government are turning a blind eye.
The U.S. spends trillions in military engagements overseas to prevent, protect and defend, and yet, research indicates that in our own country, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood (the majority are victimized by family members or someone whom they know and trust). Illegal adult pornography (i.e. obscenity) remains unprosecuted, and every child with unrestricted Internet access is just one click away from viewing this material. In a recent study, 53% of boys and 28% of girls, ages 12-15, reported using hard-core, adult illegal pornography. Additionally, law enforcement is grossly underfunded to prosecute predators, and the $3 billion child pornography industry remains one of the fastest growing businesses online. Over 200,000 rape kits remain unprocessed, and over 100,000 registered sex offenders are “lost in the system”, allowing rapists and child molesters to repeatedly abuse and expand their wake of exploitation.
A new movie called “Trust”, Directed by David Schwimmer, should serve as a wakeup call to our nation to open its eyes to the very real problem of child sexual abuse in this country. “Trust” documents the raw physical, social and emotional toll on 14-year-old Annie Cameron (Liana Liberato) as she is groomed online and later victimized during an offline meeting with “Charlie”, whom she initially believes to be a 16-year-old boy.
Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch has a problem with the citizens of his state wanting more responsive representation in Washington. He has called the echo chamber of Washington home since he was first elected to the upper house in 1976. That’s thirty six years ago, time enough for this good man to have lost touch with the folks back in the western state and find a new frame of reference for right and wrong among the government elites who run our country today.
Of course we all see people who will go beyond our real or imagined limits as over zealous or radical, never considering that we may be falling short. He says of those looking for a more conservative approach to running our country, “They’re radical libertarians and I’m doggone offended by it.”
It’s easy to tell those who have been around government too long when you start hearing why common sense solutions cannot be implemented and we have to deal with “political reality”. This generally means they have given up on principles to some extent and accepted the status quo as the normal that we have to work with. To Patrick Henry’s query, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” They have answered, “Yes”, and they are making choices for us.
A week or two back, I stopped by a local gun shop. I could not believe how busy the place was for a Thursday morning. Every clerk was busy hopping between multiple customer looking at all sorts of pistol, revolvers and pistol grip shotguns. Some were trying to sell the store Glocks or chrome plated Saturday night specials… with little luck. There was even a sheriffs deputy picking up about a dozen rifles.
The customers were intense… these were not casual purchases. Yet, they were purchases protected by our Constitution, if not all levels of our government. They were purchases based concern for family and personal safety, as well as appreciation for fine machinery. The customers were of various races, ages and apparent income come levels.
I am not critical of their presence or their motives… I was there too! On one hand, if this pattern is repeated throughout the country, I am comforted that so many people are paying attention to the world around them and taking steps they believe is necessary to preserve their welfare. On the other hand, the fact that events around us are so frequent and intrusive on our lives that the people are waking up to the realities of what our government is doing to the average American.
The Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered
For the Independent Journal.
Author: James Madison
[As we read the words of James Madison, it is difficult not to consider how far we have strayed from the concepts our founder hand down to us.]
To the People of the State of New York:
HAVING shown that no one of the powers transferred to the federal government is unnecessary or improper, the next question to be considered is, whether the whole mass of them will be dangerous to the portion of authority left in the several States. The adversaries to the plan of the convention, instead of considering in the first place what degree of power was absolutely necessary for the purposes of the federal government, have exhausted themselves in a secondary inquiry into the possible consequences of the proposed degree of power to the governments of the particular States. But if the Union, as has been shown, be essential to the security of the people of America against foreign danger; if it be essential to their security against contentions and wars among the different States; if it be essential to guard them against those violent and oppressive factions which embitter the blessings of liberty, and against those military establishments which must gradually poison its very fountain; if, in a word, the Union be essential to the happiness of the people of America, is it not preposterous, to urge as an objection to a government, without which the objects of the Union cannot be attained, that such a government may derogate from the importance of the governments of the individual States? Was, then, the American Revolution effected, was the American Confederacy formed, was the precious blood of thousands spilt, and the hard-earned substance of millions lavished, not that the people of America should enjoy peace, liberty, and safety, but that the government of the individual States, that particular municipal establishments, might enjoy a certain extent of power, and be arrayed with certain dignities and attributes of sovereignty? We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object. Were the plan of the convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union. In like manner, as far as the sovereignty of the States cannot be reconciled to the happiness of the people, the voice of every good citizen must be,
In addition, Will Grigg states that another major component of the indictment that is worrisome is the charge that Hutaree is guilty of “seditious conspiracy.” As Grigg writes, “Whatever is eventually learned about Hutaree, as things presently stand the indictment against it could provide a template for ‘seditious conspiracy’ prosecutions involving practically any group that endorses the use of defensive force to protect citizens against government aggression.
“Indeed, the definition of ‘conspiracy’ used in the Hutaree indictment could make a criminal out of anyone who reads Federalist Paper 46 in public, thereby sharing James Madison’s commendably seditious admonition that the people preserve ‘the advantage of being armed’ in the event that insurrection against the central government proves necessary in order to preserve liberty.”
Let’s look a little closer at Federalist 46, written by Founding Father, author of the US Constitution, and America’s fourth President, James Madison. In dispelling the fears of colonists toward a standing federal army, Madison said in Federalist 46, “Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.”
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