The target is not the 2nd Amdt, or the 1st Amdt, but all of your Rights at once

Ah. Another wacademic professor of law, struts his stuff in the White House. It remains to be seen whether or not we can survive the lessons they've been teaching us, the last one nearly did us in... will this one make us stronger? Listen to this:

"“While there is no law, or set of laws, that can prevent every senseless act of violence completely, no piece of legislation that will prevent every tragedy, every act of evil, if there’s even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try. And I’m going to do my part.

This will not happen unless the American people demand it. If parents and teachers, police officers and pastors, if hunters and sportsmen, if responsible gun owners, if Americans of every background stand up and say, “Enough, we’ve suffered too much pain and care too much about our children to allow this to continue,” then change will come. That’s what it’s going to take..”"

Yeah. One of the more straight forward things he's said.

My understanding however, is that, although it took a couple tries for Mr. Obama and Justice Roberts to get it right, he did take an oath of office, and that oath was this:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Leaving aside the splitting of legal hairs... how does any reading of the Constitution of the United States of America, condone the President, the Chief Executive of the Administrative branch of the Federal Government, issuing executive orders that 'clarify' how individual, private, doctors, should attend to how,

"...The Administration is clarifying that no federal law in any way prohibits doctors or other health care providers from reporting their patients’ threats of violence to the authorities, and issuing guidance making clear that the Affordable Care Act does not prevent doctors from talking to patients about gun safety."

Clarify. Yeah. As Don Corleone's muscular friend Vinny 'clarifies' that

''doz are sum nice kidz youse got dere... it'd be a shame should sumthin' happen to 'em."

One of the more dead on comments I've heard regarding the latest sweep of political doings, came from DaTechGuy (H/T Doug Welch), who quite properly asks our media Esau's to consider something before selling their Rights for tasty treats:

"If this or any president can restrict the 2nd Amendment by executive order doesn’t that mean this or a future president can do the same to the 1st?

If you don’t understand this then you simply don’t get what America is all about."

Very, very true.

But with executive order being issued 'clarifying' what Doctors should or should not ask regarding whether you own a gun... do you really think that the 2nd Amendment is what is being targeted there?

These have NOT been attacks upon the 1st and 2nd amendments, so much as they are attacks upon the very concepts and principles of Rights as such. Getting people to comply with justifying their rights - or not - as I tried to point out the other day, is but a means of sweeping them aside by reducing the One concept of Rights in the public's understanding, to many particular chips, which can then can be easily stacked up, measured and bargained away.

Pay closer attention to what the President said with "This will not happen unless the American people demand it". Worse than targeting specific amendments that protect our Rights, they are targeting our thoughts and the words we think them with. After over a century, they are succeeding in getting people to think of their Individual Rights as being simply a fluctuating set of privileges and pleasures, to be justified, and re-justified (or discarded) as reflects their present popularity. Once that is complete, and it is frighteningly close, then all of our Rights will have been transformed into favors and privileges to be bestowed upon us by those we've given the power to do so.

That is what has been happening to our liberty.

While we've been distracted with this and that amendment, they've been attacking liberty where it lives - in our ability to comprehend it. That was the point of what happened a year ago with 1st amendment, under the cover of attacking religion, and it is happening now with the 2nd amendment, via the push for gun control.

You don't really have to destroy the amendments, only what people believe they are.

Make them think that the Right to bear arms in defense of your life, and all aspects of it, is something to be measured by what might be useful for hunting or taking down burglars - and it ceases to be a Right.

Make them think that the Right of liberty to follow your conscience depends upon making allowances for birth control, or exemptions from it - and it ceases to be anything other than administrative concessions to mollify those who can raise a ruckus.

I'll go a step further. What Obama actually said yesterday, as he signed his executive orders and called for legislation, was no more important than what he said the day before yesterday, in calling for such. Why? Because what is truly important right now, is not how those in power go about doing what they've been saying they're going to do, but in what you say and do about it (Sen. Rand Paul did make a nice start at getting the conversation started).

What is or is not Constitutional, hasn't changed all that much since it was ratified. As I pointed out in an earlier post "♫ ♪ ♬ You say you want a Constitution ... wellll ya know, we all want to change the world ♬ ♪ ♫", when a Federal Roads bill was passed in 1817, President Madison vetoed it as unconstitutional. When a Federal Roads bill was passed, and it was signed, by President Wilson, in 1916, and was not overturned as being unconstitutional, by the courts. Something had changed in that century, and in this regard, it wasn't the constitution, but We The People.

The Constitution records what We The People established for what may, and may not, be considered lawful. If any President or functionary seeks to act in contradiction to the Constitution, they are outside the bounds of law, as defined by the Constitution, which we defined.

If we forget the meaning of what it defines, and the reality behind that, then it's gone. A steady drip, drip, drip corrupting our understanding of what is, and is not, true, has been nibbling away at our Rights for 150 years. The more we forget that that paper serves only to remind us of who and what we are, that our Rights must be recognized and respected, that in order to 'pursue happiness' we must secure ourselves from what those in power would do - the more we forget that, then the more they will get away with doing what they will.

With FDR's outright theft of the citizens gold, where Supreme Court Justice McReynolds stated “This is Nero at his worst,” he thundered. “The Constitution is gone.”, but a case could be made that had happened twenty years earlier with the establishment of the first alphabet agency, the FDA. The Constitution has been dead and all govt actions have been those of outlaws for quite some time... but they can only get away with what you, We The People, forget about what they shouldn't be doing.

At the very least, the govt has been engaging in outlawry for a century. Thanks to an educational system that has taught us how to not only not understand what it means to be an American, but to actively wish that we weren't, we've now got a media, a culture, a President, a Congress, and a Supreme Court, who not only routinely disregard, but discard and disparage, the Constitution which they are formed from.

The Constitution hasn't changed. What Rights are, hasn't changed. You have.

And the more you continue to play along with their arguments, instead of pulling them up short, as any adult should do to an errant 8 year old trying to bargain their way around the rules, then those Rights which the Constitution serves to record for us, and which it does its best to uphold and defend, will be lost.

The secret of America and of the Constitution, is that the document doesn't actually do anything about your Rights - You do. It has always been you. The problem with Conservatives, especially, is that they have been foolish enough to believe in the magical talismanic power of paper. It has no power.

Never has, never will.

The Constitution does nothing more than serve as a reminder to us, all of us, that we do have Rights which are inherent in our nature as human beings, and which require a careful, orderly, defense - from our inherent nature as human beings. If we forget that it is every bit as much part of our nature to desire to exert power to get what we want, which is the reason why those Rights must be recorded, understood and defended - by us -  if we get carried away with thinking that all is well because of some asinine notion that 'We are the people we've been waiting for!", then what chance can Rights have to be respected and defended? And lacking that, what chance does Liberty itself possibly have? If you TRUST those who seek power over you, what chance has liberty got?

If we forget our Liberty and the Rights which enable it, or if we don't bother learning what they mean and require, if we are foolish enough

"... to trust to these parchment barriers against the encroaching spirit of power..."

, deluding ourselves into thinking that lines on paper are somehow going to prop your liberty up for you so you don't have to strain yourself - then it will be lost.

Period.

Stop looking to politicians and start looking to your own understanding, or lack of it. If you don't understand Liberty and the Rights it requires, then you have already lost it. If that is the case... what are you going to do about it?

Elizabeth Warren: The indecent exposure of a ravenous D.O.B.

Former White House financial reform adviser, and failed nominee, Elizabeth Warren, now running for Senator in Massachusetts, has exposed herself in public, and (shock), it wasn't a pretty sight.

As she made a stab at discrediting charges of engaging in class warfare, she denied it by attempting to fan the flames of class warfare, and inadvertently exposed her naked idiocy in public,

"No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody."

Uhm. How can I put this best. Oh, here we go,

DUH!

Do you know how their fortunes were MADE lizzie?! By EMPLOYING people, hiring people - and for the governmentally impaired, that means rewarding them for their Work with the MONEY they earned, which they did not have, and would not have had, without first being hired to work in the factory which they could not have created themselves - in order to help Produce the product that factory made!

Ho-ho! Adam Sharp of SharpElbows provides the video... and an extra little tie in at the end:

You ignorant leftist D.O.B! (Hey, if her buddies in the unions can call me and my buddies an S.O.B., I'm ok returning the favor. Just be glad I started it with a 'D', and not a 'B').

But lizzie Warren wasn't done yet (no word yet on whether she'll be arrested for such indecent exposure of her dark and private soul),

"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for."

Hey! Lizzie! Where do you suppose 'the rest of us' got the money to help pay for those roads? Hmmm? It was earned, made, produced, and otherwise became the property of 'the rest of us' because of either our labor in 'their' factories, or 'our' farms, businesses, etc.

Because of the Free Market, people were able to offer their services in trade with others, creating wealth in the process, and from the profit each of 'the rest of us' earned from those transactions, 'we' were able to, in some way, turn around and pay a (once) small percentage of our excess profits towards taxes so that 'the roads' could be built. And you know what else? Those 'rich people' also paid taxes, one hell of a lot more $$$ than 'the rest' of us did, and do you know why they were able to build factories and hire people for a wage and become rich?

Because we had a legal system that protected Private Property, and so wise risks of time, effort and wealth could be directed towards producing a product that might possibly be of interest to enough of 'the rest' of us to voluntarily purchase, and if so, the initiator of that cycle could then become 'Rich', and the people working for them, could then earn livings which they otherwise would not have. And if it turned out not to be such a wise risk? The 'rich' had a damned good chance of becoming 'the poor'.

Anyone ever explain this to you lizzie?

And guess what else Lizzie... those 'roads' didn't magically appear by socialist-govt decree, they were contracted for and built by contractors in the Free Market, who hired skilled, and not so skilled, labor to produce the roads which you, and 'the rest' of us drive on, and so the virtuous cycle continues on, and on and on.

Or at least it does until some damn bureaucratic _.O.B. gets the slobbering idiot idea in their brain pans that they can just print money and 'roads' will appear (BTW, do you know what comes of the idiot notion that money can just be 'printed' and distributed? Experts become surprised at the crash the 'rest of us' saw coming from decades away).

Lizzie continued,

"You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate."

I won't go into the obvious repetition of the above for how those schools are built and paid for, but I will say that the world today, and your own blatant ignorance, is a direct reflection of the pitiful job which you and your like minded ninnies, have wrought upon the field of 'education'.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Ladies and Gents, do you see the arrogant attitude with which she dismisses the time, effort, blood, sweat and tears that goes into building either a factory or a paycheck? Do you see the predatory ease with which she assumes she can use power to take whatever she wants, from whoever she wants to?

Look at that face folks, that is the face of a truly, ravenously, greedy, D.O.B.

I'm going to put another post up soon, an economics lesson which is simple enough that even a leftist economist, and possibly even a leftist politician (no promises on the last part there, but I'll try) can understand.

Good lord, the horrible price we pay for ignorance.
*************

Post-chill pill Update:
As the froth fades from my lips, I should probably say something more than the above... and a bit more calmly.

The statement from her “No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody."... is such a thoughtless, condescending and – no other word worthy for it (other that ‘duh’) idiotic one, it is as appalling, and it was infuriating.

Where did that Chill Pill go... it was here a moment ago....

I got some feedback (and flames fanned) from a friends facebook page as well, who actually captioned her words as "Well, said, well said.", and a friend of his said of this post, after chiding me on my rantguage, that,

"Regardless, you don't address the thesis, that there is a social contract that exists prior to and in conjunction with our system of Market Economy. That the conditions that allow you to do exercise your rights are built upon that foundation."

Well. To say that her comment had a 'thesis' is I think stretching it a bit, but while I'll agree that her subject was the social contract, the only meaning of one that can be taken from her description, is that of master to a slave - and in her scenario, the person who actually makes the workers job possible, is the one that is being put into the position of a slave to 'the rest of us', by her version of, what amounts to, a 'socialist contract'.

Saying the words ‘social contract’ doesn’t give you a free pass to ignore everything that a contract entails, such as coming to an agreement with the parties involved - in her view it is just assumed that the factory owner OWES those employed by him, more than their jobs. According to her statement, the factory owner does nothing but take from the 'working people' of America... how he does that by first offering them a job, for a wage which the worker agrees to before ever coming to work, she doesn’t get around to saying in her 'thesis'. How the worker and 'the rest of us' ever get our own money, from which we somehow (as she would have it) entirely pay for ‘the roads’ and so forth out of our pockets alone, she doesn’t say, ignores, and tries to bluff her way on past as if the thought is unthinkable.

That she says, and even worse, doesn’t say, all of this, while running for the office of a United States Senator... is sickening to me.

She, and other such non-thinking leftists, while mouthing the words of Liberty, proceed to make demands, which if ever fully implemented, would mean the complete loss of liberty and individual rights throughout the land.

In short, they petulantly whine for effects, while trying to ignore, and even denigrate, the causes of them. I will try and keep my cool better, but I will not stand aside and allow such vitriol (and that is what such language truly is) go by unchecked.

If anyone has an interest in pursuing the matter beyond this point, I'll direct you to a couple of my previous posts, Liberty - It all hangs together, or we all hang separately for the highlights, or
Liberal Fascism: The Spiral of Knowledge for a broader overview. If you're up to really digging in to matters, here are a few from my Justice (Posts series in progress...) posts:

* There oughta be a Law
* Teaching Justice at Harvard - NOT!
* Point of order
* What IS Justice? eh.. what is the question again?
* What is Justice: Two mis-States of Nature
* Forgotten Beauty and lost Justice
* Cruising for Justice
* The Contextually Tortured Thoughts of Man Caused Disasters
* Unknown Conspiracies – You don’t think, therefore, they are
* Louis L'Amour: Laconic Law - From Cicero to Blackstone to You
* Back To The Basics: Where Is Justice To Be Found?
* The Liberal Mind of a Conservative - what may not be known - Must be known
* What does Athens have to do with Justice?
* Athens and America: The Bog Of The Gaps
* What Would the Founders Do? Common Sense says WHO CARES!
* Common Sense Anti-Americanism
* Arbitrary Disasters - The Health of Justice in the Age of Obamao
* Common Sense Conspiracies - a Race To The ... Where?
* ♫ ♪ ♬ You say you want a Constitution ... wellll ya know, we all want to change the world ♬ ♪ ♫

If anyone who disagrees with me, and is capable of rubbing a couple thoughts together briskly enough to produce a spark - I always enjoy a good argument.

Pick a spot and dive in, comments are always open and welcome.

**********

Heh... one final comment. A fellow at my friend's site says

"Again, her point was simple- that individual accomplishment does not occur in a vacuum."

No, it wasn't a simple point, it was a fairly complex one, and it insinuated that businesses contribute nothing and intentionally leach off the benefits 'the rest of us' provide for it.

"She did not say that individual accomplishment is not of value, nor did she say..."

It isn't necessary to say that individual accomplishment is not a value, if you do say that 'too much' individual accomplishment should not be allowed... you've said the same, and created the power to determine how much is too much.

How much has anyone read of what she has said, when she wasn't saying it to an audience she wants to woo? Words don't simply have meanings, they come from the ideas a person holds. and those ideas will guide her actions - and the results of those actions - more accurately than the words we choose for others to hear. If you read the report of the panel which she chaired, the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), the measures she calls for would have the effect of essentially nationalizing - though under different terms (as with G.M.) - of banks and other financial institutions.

I'll try and find a line to the actual the report itself, but a quick scan looks like this one hits the highlights, such as,

"The report essentially argues for nationalization on the grounds that, under government reorganization, bad assets can be removed, failed managers can be ousted or replaced and business segments can be spun off from the institutions. "Depositors and some bondholders are protected, and institutions can emerge from government control with the same corporate identity but healthier balance sheets," the report argues, parroting a position that has been staked out by many prominent economic pundits.

Clearly, this is Elizabeth Warren's particular crusade against the banks, since a majority of panel members dissented from the direction the report took and two refused to sign off on it at all. Her letters to Secretary Geithner and Chairman Bernanke stop just short of attacking them for trying to restart the market for asset-backed securities. These markets have been an important part of the financial intermediation system for decades, funding student loans, consumer credit and small businesses. But Professor Warren has had a long-standing antipathy to consumer credit markets."

My friend's friend continues,

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

Yes, well, and sometimes a smokescreen is just a smokescreen for something else. Before striking the 'reasonable' pose, it's a good idea to look into matters a bit more to see whether or not being 'reasonable' is actually a reasonable thing to do.

Sometimes the things we think we see lurking in the shadows tell us more about ourselves than the world we live in.”

And of course the obvious reply is that sometimes what we want to pretend to not see lurking in the shadows, can tell us even more about ourselves and the reality we’ll soon find ourselves in.

You may want to believe what I’ve said is a stretch, that Warren doesn’t intend to practice what her fundamental ideas clearly mean. I have too many friends & family on the left to think that they have bad intentions, but frankly, their intentions don’t concern me too much, and I’m not interested in interpreting peoples actions to match my conclusions – I’m more interested in the ideas they’ve demonstrated that they accept – those ideas are what precede their actions and my conclusions about them; I’m more interested in philosophy than psychology.

I’m quite sure those who pushed for prohibition didn’t intend to establish organized crime or cause the death of thousands through gang warfare. Same with those wanting a war on drugs. I’m sure that those who want to impose a minimum wage, don’t intend to put people out of work. I’m sure Ben Bernanke feels he learned the lessons of the Great Depression and really intends to help the economy, not wreck it.

Doesn’t really matter. Despite their best of intentions, the place they lead to is still the same old hot, dry place.

Intentions don’t count for much, when their ideas are put into practice and given the force of law, certain things are bound to follow from them. President Obama says he never wanted to run G.M., nevertheless....
If nothing else, the last twenty years has given me a lot of empathy for Cassandra.

But as Lance says, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. While we can.

Constitutional Tipping Point

Today President Obama said he has "no intention" of running GM...as he announced that he had demanded and received the resignation of GM's CEO, Rick Wagoner, and as he let Fiat and Chrysler know that they were being given 30 days to get their affairs in order and up to his administration's satisfaction.

I hope it goes without saying, that the President of the United States of America, has no constitutional power whatsoever, to demand the resignation of any employee, of any business, in any industry, anywhere in the nation.

None. Zero. Nada.

With this, he has announced that he has discarded the rule of law. The principle is out the window.

Prior to today's bracing announcement, last week Geithner announced his intention that,

"Firms that are deemed to be systemically important large institutions must be able to give the government a comprehensive report on their aggregate counterparty risks exposures "within a matter of hours."

If business's spend bunch's of money to lobby and persuade legislators to alter prepositions, verbs and nouns in legislation now, in order to get a little bit more favorable of an angle on their business, can you imagine what is going to happen, when the favorable view of legislators, and their staff, have the ability to determine whether or not your business is a "systemically important large institution", and whether or not those staff members, legislators or even the President himself, considers your current decisions to be politically useful for sending a message that "... it will take a new vision and new direction..." to influence the market and his polls?

Oh. My. God.

Do you realize the sheer political power that each and every bureaucrat involved in this process, is going to have and command? As I said in my previous post, this has little or nothing to do with 'fixing' GM or any other business, this is about seizing power, pure and simple.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hate to borrow a phrase from our non-representing-representatives, but we've got to do something, and do it fast! I don't know if these Tax Day Tea Parties are promising or not, but it's something while we're trying to figure out a worthwhile plan to counteract this madness!

Oh... wait a minute. Maybe too late there too... "A tea party to protest government spending and taxing is canceled. Canceled by the government."

Ladies and Gent's, you've heard of 'Tipping Points'? Which way are you going to let the nation tip towards, Freedom or Tyranny?

Your choice.

The U.S. Constitution - use it or lose it! (UPDATED)

If you have so far managed (THIS WEEK!) to make it past the government destroying our wealth through the printing press, and were still stumbling past the ‘notion’ that government should be in the banking (or any other) business, only to be hit with the government using taxation as a way to target particular citizens… AIG peter-principle execs or otherwise, not to mention the fear that just as our government “took an interest in” AIG & leading Banks that were ‘too big to fail’ in order to ‘protect the economy’, there is now the very real possibility that the IMF & nations of the U.N. may decide that the USA is ‘too big to fail’ and so they (China, Russia, etc, who hold our loans) may propose that the fundamentals of our economy may need to be ‘managed’ in order to protect the rest of the world… (pause to catch breath … run-on sentence aerobics…) if you can possibly make it past all of that which is going on right now, which is damn near overwhelming, then this is where you may want to focus some of the remaining shreds of your attention upon: Free Speech.

Free speech, because if that goes, there will be no way left for us to combat the rest of the problems.

When foolish ‘moderates’ such as John McCain led the fight for campaign finance reform (which was also the excuse for the 17th amendment, which reduced the U.S. Senate to the status and quality of House Representatives with triple length terms – which, btw, also increased, rather than decreased, the ‘campaign finance problem’), giving the idiotic excuse that ‘money must be kept out of politics’; completely missing the fact that that established the right of the government to prohibit people from putting their money where their mouths wanted it to be heard - endorsing a political choice – the only free speech the founders had in mind to protect.

McCain and others of his ilk said these ‘protections’ would never spill into prohibitions on actual ‘free speech’ of individual citizens political ideals, no, no, McCain/Feingold would only prevent big money from corrupting big government (the truth is the other way around of course, but that’s another matter), while some of us said that once the principle was established, the rest would surely follow.

Well….

“Court hears arguments over anti-Hillary movie
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned whether government regulation of a movie critical of former presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton might also be used to ban books critical of political hopefuls during election season.”

No crystal balls are needed here to predict the future should this new principle stand, only the application of philosophical principles.

If the McCain/Feingold statutes themselves are not struck down, then whether or not this particular movie is successfully banned, more attempts will follow, until the logical expression of the new McCain/Feingold principle that “Speech can only be free, when and where the government says it’s ok to speak” is given the force of law.

You can see the same principle being applied through a different form in the efforts to recast the “Fairness Doctrine”, and trial balloons over control of speech on the internet. Once limits on movies or commercials are established as ‘detrimental to free speech’, then similar controls on books will follow quickly behind, then the scope of what defines an ‘election season’ will be expanded, and finally it will be extended to prevent interfering in the ability of elected officials to ‘carry out the peoples business which they were elected to do’.

At that point, the Founders Constitution will become only a historical curiosity… which you’ll probably need authorization to examine.

Am I exagerating? Well... have a look at this, which just passed the House, From H.R. 1388: Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, Down in Part III, SEC. 120. INNOVATIVE DEMONSTRATION SERVICE-LEARNING PROGRAMS AND RESEARCH, you'll find this gem,

"‘(B) service-learning is a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the
secondary schools served by the local educational agency."

Which part of 'Mandatory' sounds like 'volunteerism' to you? Which part of 'Home of the Free' do you think seems amenable to forcing our children to volunteer for government mandated 'community service'? People used to say 'It can't happen here' - folks, it IS happening here, here and now. It is happening because people are not familiar with the very document expressly designed and created to prevent such things from ever happening here - the U.S. Constitution, and the relevant documents (Federalist & Anti-Federalist papers, etc) which can help you to understand it, as it was intended then - not as it is being spun now. (BTW: For another look at this which is not as nonchalant as mine, try Gateway Pundit's take - Hat tip to QP)

If you know anyone who thinks anything that is being done now is ‘constitutional’, they are dreaming. If you don’t know how to explain how that it is un-constitutional, how are you going to avoid their dream from becoming your nightmare?

Examine it now. If you aren’t familiar with the ideas which shaped the Founders thinking in writing the Constitution, I’m aware of no better site than the Founders Constitution, hosted by the University of Chicago Press and the Liberty Fund. Each phrase, such as the Preamble, is hyperlinked to the relevant documents, ranging from the Greeks to Locke, the Federalist and the Anti-Federalist papers, even early Supreme Court decisions affecting them… it is outstanding.

Tell your representatives you ‘disapprove’ of these measures, assuming you do (and if not, why not?), but don’t count on them. No long term solutions will come from them, it will have to come from ‘We The People’ learning what is right, Why it is Right, and Demanding that the right thing be done, continually, and over the long term. If you are looking for easy answers, you will just as easily lose it all.

If we don’t learn it, and defend it, it will be gone.

Bank on it.

The Phony Diversion of Transparency... "Look, nothing up my sleeve..."

"Look, nothing up my sleeve... nothing in my hat."
Every good Magician makes a big show of providing his audience 'Full Transparency', in fact he relies upon it,

"Look closely ladies and gentlemen, there's nothing up my sleeve and nothing in my hat, in fact, why don't you sir, come up and pat me down... you agree I'm concealing nothing? Yes? Excellent... and by the way, what were you doing with this marble behind your ear?"
... and out pops a marble 'as if' it were behind your ear all along.

Here's a tip: it wasn't.

It is part of the act, 'providing transparency' is one of the magicians chief techniques for misdirecting your attention so that he can perform his trick without your noticing how he is actually accomplishing it.

No different with Uncle Sam. When Uncle Obama offers 'full transparency',

""The American taxpayer will benefit from full transparency at
each step of the process as these funds are disbursed.""

... in most cases we'll remain better informed by not looking at where he is directing us to look.

Where Else Not To Look
Don't look at the 'successful performance', or lack there of, of Govt programs. Those do nothing but stand in for 'nothing up my sleeves...', don't bother looking for infrastructure improvements (remember 'The Big Dig'?), or initiatives to 'improve education'... they will accomplish nothing of the sort.

We tend to make the mistake of viewing Govt as if its 'product' can be looked at, viewed and measured, in the same way as we would a business whose 'output' is the product produced - but that is not the case.

With a business such as Ford, the product is obviously a Mustang, or an Explorer, etc, and the machinery of the business; workers, managers and executives, are there to design, build and sell that product, and the relative health of such a business can be gauged by the sales of, and satisfaction with, that product. Which is very true... though we tend to forget that the purpose of the business and its product, from the shareholders perspective, is not the 'Mustang' or any other product, they are merely means to an end, and the end purpose of the business is ultimately to earn a profit.

Similarly so with Govt.

Profit is the result paid to shareholders, from a business that is run efficiently and creates dependable, functioning, products. But 'efficient', 'dependable' and 'functioning', do not describe the products which a Govt is in the 'business' of creating, for there is a corollary to profit in Govt, which we often overlook, because to most of us it has no value, but to the typical Govt person, it is THE value.

It is a mistake to think that the 'products' of business and of Govt can be evaluated in the same way, because their purposes are so different. The soundness and dependability of a business's product, serves to increase profit, but the soundness and dependability of a Govt's product, whatever the program or 'service', does NOT serve it's end purpose. And even those who do look past the 'products' to the end purposes of creating them, they tend to think that YOU, the Public, are viewed by those in Govt, as the equivalent of 'shareholders' to a business. But just as the products can not be viewed the same, neither can the 'customers' be viewed in the same way... and lest you do think that YOU are considered by those in Govt as if you were on a equal par as a business's shareholder, let me just speak for them... NOT!

With Govt, the output we see, and typically take to be its Product, is only a minor visible component of their 'business model', and in actuality it is but a means to the real ends, that which takes the role that 'profit' does in private enterprise, which is the maintenance, distribution, and expansion of Power.

When you have a budget, stimulus plan, etc, which have line items within it such as 'upgrade infrastructure' or 'education'; upgrading infrastructure and education, ARE NOT either the point, product or purposes of that budget. A more accurate, but still flawed interpretation would be to say that the purpose of the budget, is to

- 1st, reserve for some Govt administrator the power to control the allocation of the power that will be needed to do this item, and
- 2nd, to name other people, dept's and committee's, etc (expanding and enhancing power), and so on, for implementing that power

- and power MUST be exerted, it must be released, kinetic power in Govt is worse than useless, it is wasted. But that diverts attention away from the true primary requirement for steps 1, 2 and so on, which is transferring power from the populace, principally through taxation, and also through directives and regulations, to the Govt.

Any 'Budget' or 'Stimulus' plan in a Govt which has escaped its restraints, such as ours has, is NOT a plan to improve 'infrastructure' or 'education' or even to fix the economy; it is only a development plan for further enhancing, spreading and increasing power and entrenching the powerful. It's more akin to a plan for planting weeds, than wheat.

There are only two purposes for selecting how and where to exert power. Either for the sole purpose of Power itself (and you should forget about eliminating them, it will never happen, such people will always be among us, the best that can be hoped for is to control their excesses), or to accomplish some goal which the powerful desires to do (and these are far more dangerous than mere power luster's), whether it be because of grudge, whim or worse, 'morality'.

Govt Slipping the Surly Bonds
The only thing that has been discovered in all of human history that has had even a chance of controlling and directing power in such a way that benefits all of the people, not just the powerful, is a written constitution and a system of law which is based upon, bound to, and harmonized with, the higher laws as directed by that written Constitution.

This written constitution produces an irritating restraint upon those who have the reins of power. In even the best of societies, those in power, seek it in order to DO that which they see to be necessary and right, and a written constitution hampers and inhibits them at every step of the way. The constitution was barely dry, before the congress was seeking to 'upgrade infrastructure', to create what we today would term a 'Highway Bill', but there could be found no way past the still clear and un-fractured constitution and body of laws, to permit it, and so Madison and others (for a time), vetoed them.

It's instructive to read from President Madison's Veto Message for the 'stimulus' and 'infrastructure' bill of his day, the first 'Bonus Bill',

"I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.

James Madison,
President of the United States "

Madison did think that the goals of the bill were worthwhile, even necessary, but he knew that doing so without amending the constitution, would be destructive to the constitution - it would break its restraints. He urged Congress to begin the process of amending the constitution. It should be noted that the constitution never was amended to allow for such things as 'upgrading infrastructure'.

Why?

Because, 'upgrading infrastructure' was never the purpose of the bill, or at least that wasn't the purpose of those who sought to push it through despite the obvious unconstitutionality of doing so, which Madison pointed out.

Amending the constitution would have strengthened the constitution, and would have made ignoring it even more difficult, and doing that, was the real purpose!

Various forms of that 'highway bill' would surface and resurface through the centuries, seeking a way through those restraints, but it would take over a century and a thousand nicks, paper cuts in our body of laws under the Constitution, to support the 'nothing up my sleeve' flourishes needed to give the illusion that it could be allowed within the constitution.

Once that wound had been opened, the constitutional dam began to crumble, and more and more bills to 'do right' were shoved through the gap, until eventually the point was reached where the constitution could, except in the most shallowly obvious ways, be ignored and subverted almost at will, needing only nebulous polls of public opinion to accomplish it.

That is where we are today.

Looking up the sleeve
Another key difference between private enterprise' products, and Govt's 'products', is that private enterprise gains from a functioning and effective product. Govt, except when fully under constitutional restraints, almost never benefits from functioning and effective 'products'. An 'educational' system which actually educates children, is a dead end for the power monger... where, within a functioning and efficient system, do you think you can find an opportunity to expand power? If something is working to everyone's satisfaction, why would it require more services and funding and people & groups beholden to you?

A successful Govt Program, is a complete dead end, from the point of view of the power monger! And especially with education, if the public is actually educated, they are not going to allow those in Govt to do whatever the hell they want to do... and who wants that?!

Only within a written constitution, whose laws are in conformity to it, and whose purpose is to preserve the individual rights and property of the people, and to protect them from enemies foreign and domestic, and where those in power seek to exert their power only to accomplish those goals, only within that narrow scope, can a fully functioning and efficient Govt, be deemed successful... but we've slipped past that stage, long ago.

It only takes one leak in the Constitutional dam, beginning in the merest trickle, to spread and grow into the full crumbling flood we are experiencing today. It's been my contention that the earliest and most significant breach, was the Morrill Act, which was the first federal action which fully transgressed the defined constitutional scope and powers of the Federal Govt, even though it appeared to be just a wee bit and for a good cause - education -, and with those good intentions, began the diluting of Education with Proregressive purposes and theories, which has been central to the American public losing sight of what the Constitution originally was and why it ever even existed.

(As an example of the corrosive spirit of indoctrination that has taken over Educationists in particular, and modern philosophy in general, see this quoting of Richard Rorty, which gives a clear example of Goldberg's point from 'Liberal Fascism', that the real face of fascism today, is a teacher with a leftist education. Sickening(Hat tip to Julie for the link that linked to this link).)

Within forty years of the first version of the Morrill Act, Education; it's meaning, content, purposes, structure and practice, were completely transformed, and the U.S. Govt was routinely doing what the Founders would have been appalled to see it do. The Govt was directly infringing upon the peoples property rights in the most blatant of ways, 'trust busting' and further ventures into 'protecting' monetary stability, which would culminate within another two decades, in the defacto loss (or at least legitimized abridgments) of our freedoms, through the creation of the Fed, the Income Tax, mandatory public schooling, Govt regulatory agencies, and the leveling of the Senate with the 17th Amendment.

Don't Look Where You Are Directed To Look
Don't bother looking up the magicians sleeve, at least not when he offers it, look at what he is actually doing; not his flourishes, but the actions he's hoping you don't notice. Focus on the purposive/philosophically motivated anti-restraint (constitutional) power monger, for that is the rabbit which will breed and multiply and overrun our garden.

At the surface level of the statist's policies (all of which are leftist and little 'r' republicans), you'll find that they seek to forcibly change circumstances in order to 'improve' the people. Whether it be through, from the left, welfare checks, hate speech codes or quotas - or from the little 'r' right: educational reform (instead of the obliteration of the entire system), values education, prohibitions, blue laws, etc - they think that by rearranging the distribution of wealth or insensitive words or numbers of melanin or gender counts, or through forced actions labeled as 'choices', that they will be able to improve and fix and pacify 'we the people'.

Look deeper into the statist's policies (both leftist and little 'r' right), and you're going to find them doing what is 'necessary' for the feeding and caring of the powerful, which means the expansion of bureaucratic programs, regulations and taxes, all excused as 'necessary' for 'Success!' and even when it becomes obvious that they are only rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic, they will persist, to keep their power base happy at their apparent 'progress' and 'action!', and keep them in power right up until the ship has sunk.

If you look past the surface to the root of the statist's policies (and leftist and little 'r' right are the same in kind, differing only in degree), what you're going to find buried in the motivations and justifications for their policies and actions, are their metaphysical first principles, which will be Determinism. They do believe that outward changes in the environment will mechanically cause inward changes and 'corrections', like one billiard ball bouncing off of another, in the 'people'. And such deterministic scenario's are one of the few times they'll refer to that dirty term 'cause', and then only because they can't figure out how to get around using it.

However, the denial of free will, which determinism entails and requires (and which leads to the complete inversion of morality), and which that mechanical billiard ricocheting 'cause' is meant to discredit and take the place of, requires of the powerful not only the willingness, but the necessity, for them to violate the rights of the individual (righteously so), in order to serve the collective, and that is what keeps the powerful in the business of developing power.

When you hear 'Look, nothing up this sleeve', you can bank on two things. One, that isn't where the rabbit is, and two, the rabbit, no matter how it appears to have appeared, will not be pulled out of thin air. No matter the appearance of the free-lunch rabbit trick, the rabbit exists in fact, it has mass, and it must be fed and cared for, and you are going to be made to pay for it... or more accurately for them, for you must never forget, rabbits multiply.

Quickly.


*******UPDATE*******
I was just reading a column from the excellent Thomas Sowell, called False solutions and real problems
P ("...No one asked how many hundreds of thousands of dollars would be added to the cost of an average home by "open space" laws, for example. Yet empirical studies have shown that land-use restrictions added at least a hundred thousand dollars to the average home price in dozens of places around the country. ..."), and then browsed to one of his columns from earlier in the year, which beat me to this post's punch by a few months, called What are they buying?,

"What are the Beltway politicians buying with all the hundreds of billions of dollars they are spending? They are buying what politicians are most interested in— power.

In the name of protecting the taxpayers' investment, they are buying the power to tell General Motors how to make cars, banks how to bank and, before it is all over with, all sorts of other people how to do the work they specialize in, and for which members of Congress have no competence, much less expertise.

This administration and Congress are now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s— use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations."

Sowell is one of my Heroes.

Change that will destroy us

I replied in a comment to my last post by Lance, that it wasn't Obama I was equating with Castro (as did the video), but instead, I was saying that the undefined message of change itself, was what we had to beware of.

I'm amending that now.

Obama, himself, because of his ideas on the constitution that have come to light from local Chicago NPR interviews, is the danger. He is a danger himself, because he clearly seeks to undo the constitutional protection of our rights and liberties, in favor of what he would like to change them to be.

Sweetness and Light has npr interview clips of the obaminations views on the constitution, from as far back as 2001, and his views are as opposed to The Founders Constitution as you can get. I'll post them here as soon as I am able.

But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted. And the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties — says what the states can’t do to you — says what the Federal government can’t do to you — but it doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that…

Look at this:
"It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution"
Didn't break FREE!?
"In some ways we still suffer from that…"
Suffer from that?

He is saying that the restraints the Founding Fathers placed upon the Gov't, preventing it from interfering in your life, are impediments, nuisances, obstacles preventing Gov't from doing what Obama wants it to do! This kind of language hasn't been seen in a presidential candidate since Woodrow Wilson - you ought to go back and look at what Wilson did and wanted to do, if you don't understand the significance of that. He brought us as close to a fascist society as we have ever come... Obama intends to push us further.

Make no mistake, don't give him the allowance of possibly being a useful idiot as I have been, he is no amiable gent, Obama's pretence of geniality and declarations of being pro-American are a fraud, they are part of a mask he has consciously been wearing to hide the Halloween horror hiding underneath. He knows exactly what he wants and intends to do, and he intends to wipe out the last remaining vestiges of constitutional rights, in favor of the old Proregressivist/Marxist dream of enabling the Gov't to do what it feels is right to you, in order to 'promote' a change in you.

In any meaningful sense of the words, this creature is anti-liberty, anti-freedom and anti-American.

Those of you willing to focus on his race, either pro or con, are idiots and morons and you do a disservice to our nation. Look at his ideas, listen to him describe what he thinks of the constitution

If you aren't speaking out against this monstrosity - shame on you.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this man is intending to bring change like this nation has never seen.

If you comprehend what he is advocating, and do nothing to speak out against him - shame on you, your children and grandchildren will curse you, and you disgust me.

This is not an election, it is a sea change, and this ship of state is in danger of going down.

Wake Up!

Change you can count on

A Cuban who escaped to America, reminds us of the real changes "Change!" can bring.

Dodging the socialist bullet... for the moment

I left for lunch today, not to eat, but resigned to listen to the House vote to cripple freedom in America. I was pleasantly shocked to hear the bill go down in defeat, and not even along party lines.

Special nod's of appreciation go to Rep. Mike Pence (R) of Indiana,

"Pence had come out early against the administration's initial proposal, and attempts to include items requested by House Republicans were not enough to win him over.
"Republicans improved this bill, but it remains the largest corporate bailout in American history, forever changes the relationship between government and the financial sector, and passes the cost along to the American people," Pence wrote. "I cannot support it."
He said that before they vote, lawmakers should ask themselves "why you came here and vote with courage and integrity to those principals."
"If you came here because you believe in limited government and the freedom of the American marketplace, vote in accordance with those convictions," Pence wrote."

And a special nod of appreciation to Nancy Pelosi, whose incompetence and stupidity surely helped the defeat to come about, by calling House Republicans unpatriotic and all of the blame for the 'crises' at the feet of Republicans in general, and the 'failed policies' of the last eight years.

Of course she fails to acknowledge that she is the Speaker of the House because the Democrats have a majority of the seats in the house, which means SHE should have been able to carry the bill along strict party lines, were she somewhat capable.

Gotta love it... I sure do.

This particular problem stretches back multiple decades, and cannot be laid at the feet of either party, but this latest trigger can credibly be seen as pulled by these folks:

A Birthday or a Funeral, for the United States Constitution?

Two hundred and fourteen years ago, President [ahem... congressmen] James Madison, known as the Father of our Constitution, vetoed [voted no] an appropriations bill from Congress that wanted to give aid to French refugees fleeing an insurrection in Haiti to Baltimore and Philadelphia.

President Madison took a look at the bill, and took a course action which became the norm, which future presidents such as Peirce, Cleveland, Buchanan would echo, he announced that,

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

How much did that congress wish to expend (read as Madison read it: Steal) from the pockets of the citizens of the United States of America?

$15,000.00

Why? Because the constitution was based upon the principles of an Individuals Right to life and property as the source and safeguard of their Liberty, and the Gov't was designed as limited Gov't in order to protect those very rights. Limited in a way, that if the Gov't (and we're talking at the Federal level here) was not acting to defend a violation of fundamental rights, it was not supposed to act.

And at that time, the Progressives philosophical agenda was only just picking up speed.
But they weren't disuaded . They tried it over and over and over again over the years as the Progressives pragmatic (which you should never interpret as meaning 'good sense', what it means is taking action, any action perceived as 'doing something' based on appearances of the moment, rather than on timeless principles) ideas spread.

The anti-bodies of Freedom and Liberty, the principles which sustain Individual Rights and their political face, Property Rights, safeguards of our Freedom, were slowly lost through the degraded proregressive ideas circulating about Education. Those safeguards, limits and understanding began to weaken significantly during the Civil War with the Morill Act - which was the foot in the door of society, for Gov't to begin meddling with education and later taking over the education of the people as it saw fit.

The college presidents of the time warned that such measures would destroy education in America. Congress shrugged. People paid little or no attention. They wanted cheaper education, and vocational education at that, "something we can use!". Who cared if it meant taking money from people without having any right to do so... it wasn't that much, after all.

Fast forward through McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Harding, (skipping only Coolidge) Hoover, FDR, and every president of either party ever since, none of whom has bothered to stand up for the Rights of the American People; and bearing even more of the guilt, are the American People themselves, who haven't bothered to see any problem with violating and spitting upon the Rights of their fellow citizens, in order to do what made them feel better at the expense of others "Oh... it's not That much. And besides, They can afford it".

Or in the words of Joe Biden - "It's the patriotic thing to do!". May he rot for that.

Fast forward to the Two hundred and twenty first birthday of the Constitution.

Voice of America - Cost Of Financial Bailout In Hundreds Of Billions
NPR - 2 hours agoAP Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has sketched out the sweeping outlines of what could be the biggest bailout in United States history.

May God rest James Madison's soul.