I was also astounded at the way the ten and twelve year olds went after each other during the sparring competition. For those concerned about the safety these boys and girls taking part in full contact martial arts, they are fully padded and protected from the blows the give and receive. In this sense it is a great experience for the children as they learn to take hits and continue to fight harder. It is also an individual sport where they are completely responsible for their own outcomes. Team sports function help the participants work together, which is another essential lesson, yet, there are times in life when there is no team around and you just have to take responsibility for the outcome.

For those a little older, Tae Kwon Do, or any of the martial arts, is a wonderful adjunct to a concealed weapon in this increasingly dangerous world. A world made even more dangerous by the class warfare and entitlement mentality promoted by the regime in Washington. What’s more, it’s highly unlikely the statists can get away with outlawing and and feet like they are trying to do with firearms.

Tae Kwon Do is great exercise… better than any video game… but it does something even more. It teaches youngsters qualities lacking in large segments of today’s youth. Those qualities are discipline and respect. In a way, it’s a model of the way our country used to work. The participants show respect for those who have accomplished more in the sport and, though focused effort and training, the students can learn to be like the masters. They, by exhibiting the type of work effort that made America great, can even surpass the masters.

One more thing… this kind of thing, isn’t just for boys. Girls need to be able to handle themselves in dangerous situations as they are more frequent victims of violent assaults. Such training could just be a life saver for one you love.

Now that the announcement has been made that he is backing the former Massachusetts governor, I’m a little more certain of my selection. He said his decision was based on his tough position on China and that old bugaboo of common sense, “electability”. Now we must keep in mind that electability is defined by the polls provided by the formerly mainstream media whose agenda is far different than those of us who love freedom and love our country. Need I add that it is an atheistic, socialistic formerly mainstream media we are turning to for electability measurement.

It is good to have a confirmation of the wisdom of my choice. Many others feel the same way. A FoxNews poll showed many of the same mind. Ten percent said his support would make the candidate more appealing while twenty seven percent said Trump’s endorsement would make them less likely to support a candidate. The rest just didn’t care.

We need to keep in mind that such endorsements have little to do with the quality of the candidate and more to do with revealing the perspective and priorities of the endorser. In this case, Trump sees China as a growing danger, and it is. But, so is the Federal Reserve, and so are the dictatorial courts, our southern border and militant Islam… and on and on. We need a leader with the wisdom of Solomon. Unfortunately I don’t see any in the current field with this quality.

Lacking anyone with such wisdom, we can only pray that the one selected as the Obama slayer, electorally of course, can, and is willing to, tap into the same source of wisdom that Solomon had and that he does not lean on his own (or his advisers) understanding.

The fact that most don’t care about such endorsements gives us some hope. Those among us who base their lives on the opinions of others have a wide selection of false prophets to follow… along with some leading us into the light. If we really have the need to look to others for our opinions and standards, we need to do more than just look to celebrity.

Peewee Herman was big in show business for a time, yet few would depend on his wisdom to guide their lives. Yet, many, for some unexplained and unexplainable reason, follow the wit and wisdom, or lack thereof, of Janeane Garofalo or Alec Baldwin… Sean Penn even.

We all need to pay a little more attention to whose thoughts we permit inside our heads. The Donald has actually accomplished much. He is almost as skilled at self promotion as Jesse Jackson in his heyday. Why else would there be such drama surrounding this announcement that is ultimately of minimal importance? He certainly has much more to offer than show business types who earn their living pretending to be someone they are not.

However, if we spend time looking into, and deciding who to follow as our opinion makers, wouldn’t it be far more productive to spend that time formulating our own opinions based on facts? Knowing what is going on in the world and knowing where I stand on various issues is the path to personal responsibility. That is the rub. For some reason personal responsibility is not all that attractive to some people. It’s easier to have Oprah or Whoopi do our thinking for us. The only problem is… they aren’t thinking.

James Dobson tugged at the heart strings, S.M. Lockridge spoke with passion. However, for me, the most memorable speaker, was Dr. Robert A. Cook from The King’s College in Briarcliff Manor, NY. – now moved to New York City. He was a delightful gentleman who had a way of putting things into perspective. He began his address by telling us that two days before, he talked to Vice President Bush, and just the day before, he talked to the President. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he said. “But this morning… I talked to God.”

In his own, plain spoken way, the bow tied Dr. Cook showed an unusual understanding of the what was important and where the real power rests. As great a man as Ronald Reagan was, he could not walk on water or turn water into wine… and, even though this may come as a surprise to some, neither can the man who occupies his office now nor any of those seeking to replace him.

We are told to respect our leaders and pray for those in authority. This does not mean we are to blindly follow and not speak up when we see things are amiss. They are men… only men. We are privileged to live in country where we still have the ability to raise our voices when we see the train is headed off a cliff. With this privilege comes the responsibility to do so! After all, it’s not just about us. We are our brothers keeper.

As a practical matter, then, we need to stay in touch with our legislators, at all levels. We are not doing our jobs as citizens if we don’t and our complaints to others just become ineffective whining… and nobody likes a whiner. People respect those who take decisive action – even if they don’t agree with, or even like, you.

Don’t FAIL to ask a candidate why he or she believes what he or she believes

Church leaders often are under pressure from the government (Attorneys General or IRS, to name a few departments) to not involve themselves in providing parishioners access to information to make up their own minds about candidates or ballot issues.

They claim that pastors, by doing so, are in violation of what has become known as “separation of church and state.” Typically this is done whenever someone does not want a person who professes Christ as their Lord and Savior to use the doctrine of the faith as foundation for their choosing between competing points of view or candidates.

There are two problems with this so called doctrine:

1. Pastors have a God-given right and responsibility to preach and teach “thus sayeth the Lord” from the pulpit and parishioners have a corresponding right to “choose ye this day who you will serve” relative to moral issues.

2. The term, “separation of church and state,” is a misnomer. It implies that a Christian’s faith is somehow outside of or otherwise “attached” to the follower of Christ rather than it being from within as the Holy Bible tells us, because our “body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [Spirit]” – the place where God resides within us — and “… ye are not our own.”. (1 Cor. 6:19)

Christianity therefore is the essence of a Christian’s being. It is his or her character. It is the foundation for their decision making, and as such, is who Christians are. And since they cannot be separated from themselves, the idea that they should not bring to the table who they are is ridiculous.

I believe that the intent of this effort to separate church from state has two purposes:

1. To remove the God who judges both behavior and persons from the discourse even in the house dedicated to his honor and glory.

2. To curtail the influence (especially in the political arena) of those who profess to be Christians so as to move an agenda forward that is contrary to God’s revealed word.

To further present this, I now will provide you with my definitions of two terms: position and opinion.

1. Position: taken where the proof is inviolate and a conclusion can be made.

2. Opinion: given when there exists the ability to have more than one conclusion

Why are these definitions important? Because we need to remain vigilant and because candidates for office who stridently cite scientific studies, poll data, etc., as authority for their position on secular issues, even though the so called “experts” they cite may disagree among themselves, must similarly be made to cite their authority for their position on moral issues.

I contend that there are one or the other of two main reasons candidates might profess agreement with a bible-based position but not cite the bible as their source:

1. Their position was derived at by happenstance and represents only the opinion they have arrived at without the use of an absolute standard.

2. Their position truly is taken from God’s Word, but they are ashamed of the author of the truth they speak because they fear man more than they fear God.

Scripture, however, admonishes us against this. We are to fear God and not man (Mt. 10:28) and to “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord . . . but be though partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God.” (2 Timothy 1:8)

Christians therefore need to be wary of those who merely present an opinion that, in truth, just happens to agree with the biblical principle that applies, but that may only be a matter of expedient personal choice or preference and not necessarily a position someone is committed to as we would be as non-ashamed persons indwelled with the Holy Spirit.

The fact that there is no standard against which a candidate may come to a conclusion other than what is in his or her own mind is even more egregious with regard to moral issues than it is were the issue to be a secular one. And both are inconsistent with representing the public interests.

And even worse, if some who truly are Christians are fearful of or ashamed to publicly acknowledge such and therefore withhold boldly speaking about what they know to be true; they thereby cause other Christians to struggle to identify them.

As for me, I take positions on moral issues based upon my understanding of God’s Word and am not ashamed. (Please note that this does not imply that I received a unique revelation from God, merely a revelation that is consistent with that received by others who know and love the Lord as do I, and who then have studied His Word to show themselves “approved.”)

[This is an updated extract from the paper, Traditional Family Values, written by Paul R. Green Jr. in July, 2006 while he was the Republican Party general election nominee for the California State Senate District 6 (Sacramento County). Paul is a member of and former adult Sunday school teacher at Faith Baptist Tabernacle, North Highlands, CA. He also served as interim pastor of First Filipino Baptist Church in Los Angeles, CA for one year while a member of the United States Air Force stationed in El Segundo, CA at the Los Angeles Air Force Station (now Air Force Base).]

[Part 1 of this article was originally published on To the Source and The Independent Institute.  Part 2 will be published January 2012.]

Part 1:

We live in an increasingly secularized world of massive and pervasive nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is ruled unwelcome and even a real danger on the basis of a purported history of intolerance and “religious violence.” This is found in most all “public” domains, including the institutions of education, business, government, welfare, transportation, parks and recreation, science, art, foreign affairs, economics, entertainment, and the media. A secularized public square policed by government is viewed as providing a neutral, rational, free, and safe domain that keeps the “irrational” forces of religion from creating conflict and darkness. And we are told that real progress requires expanding this domain by pushing religion ever backward into remote corners of society where it has little or no influence. In short, modern America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God.

For the renowned Christian scholar and writer C.S. Lewis, such a view was fatally flawed morally, intellectually, and spiritually, producing the twentieth-century rise of the total state, total war, and mega-genocides. For Lewis, Christianity provided the one true and coherent worldview that applied to all human aspirations and endeavors: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” (The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)[1]

In his book, The Discarded Image, Lewis revealed that for Medieval Christians, there was no sacred/secular divide and that this unified, theopolitical worldview of hope, joy, liberty, justice, and purpose from the loving grace of God enabled them to discover the objective, natural-law principles of ethics, science, and theology, producing immense human flourishing. [2] Lewis described the natural law as a cohesive and interconnected objective standard of right behavior:

This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all values are rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) “ideologies,” all consist of fragments from the Tao itself. Arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. (The Abolition of Man)[3]

And in his recent book, The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark has further shown “How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and the Success of the West.”[4]  Similarly and prior to the rise of the secular nation-state in America, Alexis de Tocqueville documented in his 1835 volume, Democracy in America,  the remarkable flexibility, vitality and cohesion of Christian-rooted liberty in American society with business enterprises, churches and aid societies, covenants and other private institutions and communities.[5]

In his book, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict, William Cavanaugh similarly notes that for Augustine and the ancient world, religion was not a distinct realm separate from the secular. The origin of the term “religion” (religio) came from Ancient Rome (re-ligare, to rebind or relink) as a serious obligation for a person in the natural law (“religio for me”) not only at a shrine, but also in civic oaths and family rituals that most westerners would today consider secular. In the Middle Ages, Aquinas further viewed religio not as a set of private beliefs but instead a devotion toward moral excellence in all spheres.[6]

However in the Renaissance, religion became viewed as a “private” impulse, distinct from “secular” politics, economics, and science.[7] This “modern” view of religion began the decline of the church as the public, communal practice of the virtue of religio. And by the Enlightenment, John Locke had distinguished between the “outward force” of civil officials and the “inward persuasion” of religion. He believed that civil harmony required a strict division between the state, whose interests are “public,” and the church, whose interests are “private,” thereby clearing the public square for the purely secular. For Locke, the church is a “voluntary society of men,” but obedience to the state is mandatory.[8]

The subsequent rise of the modern state in claiming a monopoly on violence, lawmaking, and public allegiance within a given territory depended upon either absorbing the church into the state or relegating the church to a private realm. As Cavanaugh notes:

Key to this move is the contention that the church’s business is religion. Religion must appear, therefore, not as what the church is left with once it has been stripped of earthly relevance, but as the timeless and essential human endeavor to which the church’s pursuits should always have been confined…. In the wake of the Reformation, princes and kings tended to claim authority over the church in their realms, as in Luther’s Germany and Henry VIII’s England…. The new conception of religion helped to facilitate the shift to state dominance over the church by distinguishing inward religion from the bodily disciplines of the state.[9]

For Enlightenment figures like Jean-Jacques Rousseau who dismissed natural law, “civic religion” as in democratic regimes “is a new creation that confers sacred status on democratic institutions and symbols.”[10]And in their influential writings, Edward Gibbon and Voltaire claimed that the wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were “the last gasp of medieval barbarism and fanaticism before the darkness was dispelled.”[11] Gibbon and Voltaire believed that after the Reformation divided Christendom along religious grounds, Protestants and Catholics began killing each other for more than a century, demonstrating the inherent danger of “public” religion. The alleged solution was the modern state, in which religious loyalties were upended and the state secured a monopoly of violence. Henceforth, religious fanaticism would be tamed, uniting all in loyalty to the secular state. However, this is an unfounded “myth of religious violence.” The link between state building and war has been well documented, as the historian Charles Tilly noted, “War made the state, and the state made war.”[12] In the actual period of European state building, the most serious cause of violence and the central factor in the growth of the state was the attempt to collect taxes from an unwilling populace with local elites resisting the state-building efforts of kings and emperors. The point is that the rise of the modern state was in no way the solution to the violence of religion. On the contrary, the absorption of church into state that began well before the Reformation was crucial to the rise of the state and the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Nevertheless, Voltaire distinguished between “state religion” and “theological religion” of which “A state religion can never cause any turmoil. This is not true of theological religion; it is the source of all the follies and turmoils imaginable; it is the mother of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind.”[13] What Rousseau proposed instead was to supplement the purely “private” religion of man with a civil or political religion intended to bind the citizen to the state: “As for that man who, having committed himself publicly to the state’s articles of faith, acts on any occasion as if he does not believe them, let his punishment be death. He has committed the greatest of all crimes: he has lied in the presence of the laws.”[14]

As a result, the Enlightenment set in motion what has become today’s secular theocracy that is authoritarian and hypocritical for not just its denial of moral condemnation of secular violence, but its exaltation of such violence as highly praiseworthy.

[David J. Theroux is the Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Independent Institute and Publisher of The Independent Review.]

[1] C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2001).

[2] C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1994).

[3] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1974), 44.

[4] Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (New York: Random House, 2006).

[5] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

[6] William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 62–68.

[7] Ibid, 70.

[8] Ibid, 79–83.

[9] Ibid, 83–84.

[10] Ibid, 113.

[11] Ibid, 127.

[12] Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in The Formation of National States in Western Europe, ed. Charles Tilly (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), 42.

[13] Cavanaugh, 128.

[14] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. Willmoore Kendall (South Bend, IN: Gateway, 1954), 149.

I love my puppy Grover. He’s a one year old purebred bishon frise who was given to me as a gift from a friend earlier this year. Some of you may have heard him on our show, as he tends to bark, when we’re on air. But here’s the thing, I observe this dog and his protection maneuvers. Not only is Grover extremely cute and brilliant as a dog can be, but he’s a wonderful example of how most Christians jump to protect our religious liberty and values. Here’s the steps I’ve observed that Grover takes to protect me and my home.

1. Grover sleeps next to me on the couch during the day. All is calm and all is quiet.

2. A sudden noise jars him from his snooze. Something like my mail man delivering the mail and shutting the lid on the mail box.

3. Grover hears the sound, jumps to his feet, barks and growls while looking out the window while his tail remains stiff.

4. Once he looks out the window, he turns and jumps off the couch, still barking and growling and then runs into the kitchen, away from the danger.

5. After Grover is securely in the kitchen, he hides behind the doors in the kitchen and continues to bark.

6. By this time the horror of my mail arriving has subsided and then Grover comes back out of the kitchen and goes back to sleep.

Most Christians are the same way. They are snoozing and don’t really think much of the moral decay in our culture or the church. Then someone brings an issue of concern to their attention and they “yap and bark and growl” about it for a minute. But as the issue becomes larger and larger, they go and run and hide behind the door and may bark a few more times but then they do nothing. All the while thinking that the issue has gone away, when in reality all it has done is gone down the street.

And then the Christian falls back asleep and snoozes again, until the next time an issue of concern is brought to their attention. Sound familiar?

Here’s the deal though, I know that Grover isn’t protecting me from the mail man. I also know that by and large the majority of Christians who say that they care about stopping the moral rot in our culture and the church, really aren’t. Because if they were, it would be finished. The truth is they aren’t, because they go back to sleep until the person sounding the alarm wakes them up again.

If you think the bell that goes off in a fire house isn’t that important or the person who has the job of ringing that bell isn’t vital, you’d be wrong. And I realize that God didn’t call everyone to be a watchman on the wall, but he did me.  So, here I am again, sounding the alarm and reminding you all, to wake up from your snoozing and make a difference for what is right.

Go with God!

For more by Stacy Lynn Harp check out Active Christian Media.

Orlando, FL – Liberty Counsel is continuing its eighth annual “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,” pledging to be a “Friend” to those entities that recognize Christmas and a “Foe” to the Christmas censors. Liberty Counsel is also releasing an updated “Naughty and Nice” list, which catalogs retailers who either censor (“naughty”) or recognize (“nice”) Christmas. The list is compiled from information gathered by consumers and is updated whenever new information is received.

Liberty Counsel encourages shoppers to print out the list and use it to decide which stores to patronize during the Christmas shopping season. The list has been very influential in motivating retailers to acknowledge Christmas. So far this year, Best Buy has embraced Christmas and switched to the nice list, and Dick’s Sporting Goods has promised to change and include Christmas in their advertising. Liberty Counsel was the first organization to launch the “Naughty and Nice” list a number of years ago and since then other organizations have promoted similar programs. The results have been amazing. Major retailers like Wal-Mart moved from the “naughty” side of the list to the “nice” side. There was a time when Wal-Mart sold only “Holiday Trees,” not Christmas Trees and when Wal-Mart employees were forbidden from returning the greeting “Merry Christmas” to customers who initiated the greeting. But Wal-Mart, like many other retailers, has changed and now openly acknowledges Christmas.

Liberty Counsel encourages consumers to report the naughty and the nice by sending an email to Liberty@LC.org. Liberty Counsel also encourages shoppers to compliment the nice stores and tell the naughty ones that you will shop elsewhere.

Liberty Counsel also offers a Christmas Action Pack, which includes educational legal memoranda to inform government officials, teachers, parents, students, employees and others that it is legal to celebrate Christmas. Liberty Counsel has handled numerous situations restoring Christmas to schools, events and even a nursing home.

Mathew D. Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, remarked: “Consumers can have a big impact this year by choosing to shop at stores that acknowledge Christmas. Retailers that profit from Christmas while pretending it does not exist will find that consumers will shop elsewhere.”

From the viewpoint of Legal History…

The time may be ripe being that Chief Justice Roberts clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist, and this Rehnquist DISSENT in Bigelow v. Virginia case (heard 18 December a.d. 1974, decision 15 June a.d. 1975) involves the state protecting its Citizens from adverse health “services” available in another state. Rehnquist wrote:

The result is the fashioning of a doctrine which appears designed to obtain reversal of this judgment,

Remember that in the movie “Amazing Grace” after years of failure at the “direct approach” of outlawing Slavery in the British Empire, as suggested by a young man NOT involved in the years of unsuccessful legislative efforts, Wilberforce obtained an inroad against Slave Traders by a “flanking attack”, passing a law that Slave Ships had to meed certain health and safety requirements.

After a warning or two, the British Navy could seize the slave ship, which the Navy did, and that put a huge hole in the profitability of the Slave Trade. That then led to the banning of Slavery, after the Slave Traders income was reduced by legislative attack.

The Bigelow decision addresses tangentially the “profitability” and the commercial aspects of Aborticide services. There may be a connection with the issue of “Federally Mandated Health Care” (Obama’Scare, a scary program as contrasted with the more main stream media label of “Obama Care”), originating in another state, or directed from DC, and indeed, even the very premise of the 14th Amendment extension of Roe and Doe to overrule State laws outlawing Aborticide services. Read Rehnquist’s short DISSENT (below) to understand there was a VERY slim legal logic or legal history for the majority opinion in Bigelow v. Virginia.

Given the “evolving standards” of banning advertisement in the Tobacco Settlements of the 1990s, provided now are additional reasons for this issue being “ripe” for plucking by a well designed action plan and well crafted legal argument.

Reading the opinion and the dissent, but NOT the transcripts of the Virginia Attorney Generals assistant before the U.S. supreme Court, there are sad indicators of a weak and poorly crafted argument.

There seemed to be “confusion” as what position that Virginia would assert because of the Roe and Doe decisions that the U.S. supreme Court had recently issued.

The Transcripts of the Oral Arguments would affirm or refute that “reading between the line” discernment.

Now is the time to plan a careful strategy, and craft a well-reasoned and thorough legal argument by the Virginia Attorney General, with others, to “reverse Bigelow v. Virginia” as Rehnquist suggested was possible in his Dissent of 36 years ago.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their countrymen, even those still in the womb… Heroic in American History are the “Abolitionists” for “Abolishing Slavery”, so to the Abolishing of the Mental Slavery of Killing a Child in the womb.

Yes, while the Children of Israel were 40 years in the wilderness, after 38 years (2011-1973) in the “Wilderness of Roe and Doe and Bigelow”, now is the time for a Rallying Cry of “Abolish Abortion” – For Equal Justice for All (born and unborn).

According to a local Tennessee news source, “You’re probably used to seeing TSA’s signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

“‘Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate,’ said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

“Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.”

The report went on to say, “The Tennessee Highway Patrol checked trucks at the weigh station with drug and bomb sniffing dogs during random inspections.”

See the report.

As I have noted in this column before, the one thing that the bogus “war on terror” and “war on drugs” does is it justifies and ratchets up the emerging surveillance state in America. In this regard, virtually every constitutional and historical protection of our God-given and civil rights are being systematically and thoroughly expunged–in the name of “national security.”

For all intents and purposes, the Patriot Act eviscerated the 4th and 5th amendments to the US Constitution (and seriously injured many of the others). The Posse Comitatus Act, which dates back to 1878, was flushed down the toilet during the presidencies of George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama. Since 1968, 2nd Amendment liberties are only a shell of what America’s founders intended and established. And the above-mentioned story out of the State of Tennessee is just the latest example of how the US and State governments are continuing to shred the Bill of Rights—and virtually every other protection of individual liberties once thought sacred.

The State of Tennessee should be ashamed of itself–and the people of Tennessee should be outraged!

The problem is, this kind of unlawful activity has been taking place for years. And more often than not, it is the federal government that is both promoting this practice and paying for it, of course. So, why should anyone be alarmed that TSA is now joining scores of other federal alphabet agencies and getting into the act? At least, that’s the thinking of these KGB wannabes.

Most of us over the age of 50 can well remember the stories and images that came out of the old Soviet Union and its satellite states in the East Bloc. In fact, the phrase, “Show us your papers,” was symbolic of totalitarianism and despotism. Today, that same phrase is part and parcel with America’s “war on terror” and considered “patriotic.” Back in the days of “Free America,” checkpoints were synonymous with Red Russia and Red China. We could never have imagined–or tolerated–those kinds of practices going on in these United States. Now, they are part of everyday life in “Occupied America,” and standard operating procedure in the State of Tennessee and elsewhere.

For federal police agencies to be conducting checkpoints (i.e., Tennessee), organizing searches and seizures against citizens complying with State law (i.e., Montana), patrolling city streets (i.e., Alabama, Florida), and even ambushing and killing American citizens (i.e., Idaho, Texas) is the sign that the American experiment of federalism, separation of powers, State sovereignty, etc., is certainly over, and that this new “Occupied America” is in the throes of an ever-burgeoning police state!

If Davy Crockett lived today, he wouldn’t have to ride far to find oppression to fight, would he?

For more by Chuck Baldwin, go to http://chuckbaldwinlive.com .

In a letter to Monsieur A. Coray, dated October 31, 1823, Thomas Jefferson wrote “At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.”

Our third president was well aware of the problems posed by a renegade judiciary… a judiciary more concerned with precedents set by it’s own members than with legislation by representatives elected by the people. As he noted in his letter, this third branch of government was to be a helpless and harmless administrator of laws and regulations coming out of the other two branches. It just didn’t work out that way as the egos of these men and women in black robes pushed them to the point where they now sit in judgment on the other two branches as a mafia godfather ruling with an iron hand.

While he was in office as President, Jefferson was faced with an out of control judiciary actively working in directions harmful to the country at that time. Instead of throwing up his hands and waiting for the expiration of disruptive judges, his administration came up with a plan. It was a plan that worked for it’s time. If we are paying attention to history, we can learn from it.

At its’ core, the Judiciary Act of 1802, reorganized the circuit courts and abolished sixteen judgeships. Sure these grand high officials with lifetime appointments fussed and fumed, but the surviving judges did not object. Today, the judicial masters may try to fight such a common sense driven action. Then we would have what many would call a “constitutional crisis”. Something the ruling elites would never consciously trigger as it might put their own positions in jeopardy.

Yet, when we have judges using criteria other than the constitution, as it was written, and with legislation by elected representatives, we already have a constitutional crisis. We have judges today who rule by international law. Others accept sharia law as valid in some cases. Still other times, the judges resort to what they call, “evolving standards”. We are just not able to bring ourselves to deal with the problem. And we are being damaged by it, individually and as a country.

I don’t know if Mr. Gingrich would follow through on this idea, should he find himself in the White House, or if he could get congress to follow his leadership on this issue, but he is the first one to admit that we have a problem and propose a solution other than waiting for hundreds of judges to assume room temperature.

It’s a problem we have been aware of for years. Our elected representatives have generally just accepted that their best efforts could be shot down by a judiciary with a set of values foreign to most Americans. If they don’t stand up for us in this area, we are foolish to stand up for them. We don’t elect them to be fat and happy. We elect them to get the job done… and they haven’t.