People who cherish their lives are egoists, and therefore normative and good and decent people. But where does the blessing come from? At one time, it came from Jefferson, Madison, and their cohorts who gave us the legal "blessing" to be ourselves and find the best way to honor our own lives and the lives of those we cherished.
Today, the Originalist readers of that wonderful document called the Constitution of the United States are harassed as being behind the times. The only "blessing" we get from the progressive thinkers is the blessing of higher taxes to pay for enlargement of government and in the process for the shrinking of our liberties.
The Founders believed that God had blessed the U.S. and given all mankind a place to peacefully find a place to pursue his or her own happiness. Now, if it was God, he has either forsaken the idea of a place to seek our own happiness; or he has condemned us for choosing leaders who routinely destroy the Tenth Amendment. [For Tenth Amendment references seeAand B.]
"In the first five weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has acted so rashly that at least 11 states have decided that his brand of 'hope' equates to an intolerable expansion of the federal government’s authority over the states," wrote A.W.R. Hawkins in HumanRights.Com
"When the Constitution was being ratified during the 1780s, the 10th Amendment was understood to be the linchpin that held the entire Bill of Rights together," Hawkins pointed out. This is one of the primary history lessons learned by all American elementary students when they are taught that each state was considered to be its own "country" before the ratification of the Constitution.
The amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
"Sometimes thought of as an afterthought, to 'sweep up' anything the Founders may have forgotten, the 10th Amendment today is taking on monumental importance as increasing federal intrusion into state affairs threatens to completely destroy the balance between state and federal power," says State Rep. Samuel E Rohrer, PA-128th District. 10th Amendment Center
The Founding Fathers "took pains to outline how the Constitutional structure of the government would prohibit the federal government from becoming big enough to overwhelm the powers of both the states and the democratic process," he said.
"Republicans and Democrats alike have been guilty of trampling states' rights for generations," said Constitution Party National Committee Chairman Jim Clymer. "Finally, elected officials in state legislatures across the country are pushing back."
The website MRStep makes the claim that thirty-three States can soon be counted as having similar resolutions about their Tenth Amendment rights.
As of this date, there seems to be little media attention paid to what the States are doing. I have seen no major online publications such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc., with articles on this movement; but there are dozens of independent online sites trying to keep it in front of the public.
At present, it seems the only purpose to which any State may be using their resolutions is to refuse to accept certain public funding that the Obama administration would like to force upon them, one case in point being the much publicized refusal of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin refusing Federal funding for special needs education, despite the fact that she and her husband have a special needs chile themselves.
Alaska is not the only State to consider refusing "line item" funding. Some States have said they would refuse certain funding because to do so with the expectation that they would pay back the Federal Treasury means they would have to raise taxes to do it!
Europe does not like Obama's nationalistic economic policies either. "The United States' decision to pump ever-larger sums into its economy is the 'road to hell,'" Mirek Topolanek, the President of the European Union, said Wednesday, just a week before he was set to meet the US president in London.
If the States face down the Obama administration, there will be a Constitutional upheaval such as we have not seen since the secession of the southern States during the Civil War.
Let us hope so. It may be the only saving grace left for individual sovereignty in this nation. The Ninth Amendment states that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, [meaning the 1st through the 8th Amendments] shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
And that means that just because some of our rights are guaranteed in writing does not mean we do not also retain "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States," because what is not delegated to Washington D.C. and not prohibited to the States "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." [10th Amendment]
They are absolutely not reserved to the Federal government.
It amazes me how people often know so little about the world in which they live. That is not to say that what I think I know about it is always correct. I've learned sometimes that I was wrong.
But when someone, even someone young, asks this sort of question, it terrifies me to think that it is the reason we have headed so far down the paths of nationalism and socialism. Someone asked:
"Did American (USA) society just come to be or was its creation...a conspiracy (but either good or bad- i don't know what word to use). What I'm trying to ask is, was it planned? Who's trying to control us!? Some kind of secret order?"
We all wonder about "control." We hear stories, about how J. Edgar Hoover had the "dirt" on everyone who was someone and used it to control them. We all have heard about the New World Order and if we believe in it, each of us has our theory of what it means and who's behind it. First we thought it was Ronald Reagan, but even Bill Clinton was caught up in it according to some accounts.
If there is a "new world order," it isn't what we though it was twenty years ago. It now seems as if this new order is western governments caving in to Muslim Sharia. It isn't the Islam in this order that scares me; it's the Sharia.
Britain has been caving for years, its courts allowing limited Sharia to operate in the UK. There is a least one member of the House of the Lords who is not only Muslim, (again, no problem so far as I care,) but he is also an Islamicist, and if Britania isn't careful, it will fall like Lebanon, except there won't be any war to accomplish it. Britain will go quietly into the night, and it is already turning off the lights on its own heritage dating from before the Magna Charta, heritage that finds freedom for the people where it was only the light at the end of the tunnel.
Now it has tunnel-vision, and the light of Western freedom is retreating.
But the answer to the opening question goes something like this:
The truth? No one is trying to control us but the politicians, and what they do is transparent enough if you read the laws they pass.You were born with individual sovereignty, said the founders.
"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day; " http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm
Another word for this type of sovereignty is "unalienable rights." THAT was the "conspiracy" that constructed our way of life. Unfortunately, the Founders didn't see the future coming, and left so many holes in the Constitution that it is basically worthless today.
But you can get back some of your sovereignty by supporting your states in their effort to force to the Fed govt to respect the 10th Amendment. The Tenth Amendment Newly Ascending
It won't be easy to regain your personal, individual, unalienable sovereignty, but it can be done because the 10th Amendment does exist, and it cannot be ignored--except by efforts such as the Patriot Act that declare the safety of the nation to be more important than its own laws which protect its own citizens.
In Britain, it may be harder. There is no hard, written Constitution except precedent, which, under the right leadership, may be able to pull England out of the clutches of the clerics who are Islamicists. Lord Ahmed is a repugnant individual in association, character and morality who has threatened jihad on the House of Lords. "The Pakistani Press is jubliant, and [ ] is praising Allah for delivering ‘a victory for the Muslim community’." Creeping Jihad at Harvard & VA; Your Town Next?
But don't think Sharia isn't coming to a U.S. location near you soon. Muzzammil Hassan, founder of Bridges TV, is charged with murder in the beheading of his wife, Aasiya Hassan in Orchard Park, New York. http://www.buffalonews.com/437/story/578644.html
"A cautionary tale is unfolding in the Netherlands this week about how dangerous those can be: proving that such tools in the hands of the powerful enable them to silence the powerless and crush dissent, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ordered that Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament and maker of the notorious film "Fitna", be prosecuted for 'incitement to hatred and discrimination based on his statements in various media about moslims [sic] and their belief. In addition, the Court of Appeal considers criminal prosecution obvious for the insult of Islamic worshippers because of the comparisons made by Wilders of the Islam [sic] with the nazism.'
"The action against Wilders is taking place against the backdrop of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference’s efforts at the United Nations to silence speech that they deem critical of Islam -- including 'defamation of Islam' that goes under the 'pretext' of 'freedom of expression, counter terrorism or national security.'
"If they succeed in doing this, Europeans and Americans will be rendered mute, and thus defenseless, in the face of the advancing jihad and attempt to impose Sharia on the West -- in fact, one of the key elements of the laws for dhimmis,non-Muslims subjugated under Islamic rule, is that they are never critical of Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an. Thus this initiative not only aids the advance of Sharia in the West, but is itself an element of that advance." Jailed for an Insult?
"It will be interesting to see how much attention the news media pays to this story. It will be even more revealing to see if anyone in the media investigates why [Hassan] chose beheading as a means to murder his wife. Will the media look into what the Qur’an and Hadith say about beheading enemies? Will the media look into the relationship between honor killings, beheadings, and shariah law? Will the media investigate this man’s background, and how he worked to raise money in Saudi Arabia for his television station?
The New World Order under Islamicism does not believe in individual sovereignty as defined by the 10 Amendment and Western laws that protect wives from being the property of their husbands, and who can be beheaded on the whim of a religious idea.
Natural law as it applies to Mankind requires that men respect the boundaries of freedom that do not make economic or social slaves of others.
"Barack Obama made fifteen references to 'pie' in 100 seconds of a speech -- all about dividing up the pie of the American economy [while] his audience laughed and chanted, 'Pie! Pie!' to show how hungry they were. In one fell swoop Obama gave away the rapacity of socialism.
"Or as Michelle O explained, "The truth is, [ ] someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more." James LewisAmerican Thinker
Lewis makes a compelling case about how, while "The Left likes to preen itself with the word ‘progressive,' [ ] it is actually the most regressive political strategy in history."
As I wrote in Monday's Academy Blogger, numerous states are currently declaring sovereignty from the Federal government.
For those not familiar with this concept, it has nothing to do with secession from the Union. It has everything to do with the Tenth Amendment, which states:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"...
This means specifically and categorically that the Constitution was, as we know from history, created by the States to unite them under a Federalist system. What we have had for more than a hundred years is not Federalism, but Nationalism as inadvertantly conceived, in great part, from the creation of the "citizen of the United States" by the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.
This means the roles were reversed, whereby the States became agents of the national government. The States did not accept this during the debates over the design of the Union, did not write the Constitution to be National rather than Federal, and would not have signed it that way because the States intended to keep power from being centralized in D.C., which is the definition of a national government: centralization of power.
What in the Federal Constitution gives the President, the Congress, the Courts when they side with nationalism, Michelle O. and all others who think like her, to accept the Marxist decree, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need?"
That is precisely what our First Lady said, and precisely what she meant. She meant what she said. So did the President when he made his "pie" speech; so did the crowd chanting, "Pie! Pie!"
"Socialism is rapaciously greedy -- that's what endless envy warfare comes down to. [ ] That is why everything is grist for the mill of Obama Marxism. Old-time Marxism just pitted the poor against the rich--[but] Odacity is voracious because there's never enough free pie. It's the pie supply that grinds to a halt," says Lewis in the Thinker.
The Obamas are not asking people to altruistically give up a portion of their own pies so that government may decide who it wishes to give it to; it is economically much worse and morally more evil than that. The Obamas are telling people that the government will take as much of the pie as they deem necessary in order to redistribute it to those they deem worthy or needy enough of receiving our stolen goods.
The States are tired of being "demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government...[ ] many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; yet a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States..." [condensed from the Michigan "Journal of the House of Representatives]
And yet, States are clamoring right now for the $40 billion removed (as of this writing) from the $815 billion (as of this writing) "stimulus" bill, which 200+ economists disagree will properly "stimulate".
To solve the problem of there never being enough pie, we must begin to recognize, as historically we used to do, at least two truths: 1) the pie belongs to those who made it, but they must voluntarily, capitalistically, re-distribute some of it--to those who can help them make the pie larger. When they capitalistically redistribute, the pie gets larger, and no one must altrusitically give some away, nor be forced at the point of the government's gun to have it taken from his/her politically dead, cold fingers. And 2) nature's evolution of man did not create him to be a rapacious beast toward the fellows of his own species. Natural rights are not to be compromised for the purposes of nationalism.
Natural law as it applies to Mankind requires that men respect the boundaries of freedom that do not make economic or social slaves of others. Everything the Left, and much of the Right, stands for anymore is a breach of that boundary.
That is why the Obama administration understands that a populist uprising will fill the streets of America will protests against these invasions of our Constitutional liberties--just as the streets of other nations are beginning to fill with protests.
"Seems to me that in tough economic times you can expect to see civil unrest, rioting and even armed resistance. The Federal government saw fit to recall soldiers from Iraq to post them on American soil waiting to be deployed to quell disorder..." Circle of 13
"Whereas, The scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and
Whereas, Today, in 2009, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government..."
"In case you didn't hear about it on the mainstream media (which you haven't because they want to keep us asleep), numerous states are currently declaring sovereignty, including: http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message720700/pg1
Here is that portion from the Michigan "Journal of the House of Representatives, 95th Legislature, Regular Session of 2009":
[all emphasis added for the purposes of this blog] Rep. Opsommer offered the following concurrent resolution: House Concurrent Resolution No. 4. A concurrent resolution to affirm Michigan’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and to urge the federal government to halt its practice of imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States. Whereas, The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"; and Whereas, The Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and Whereas, The scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and Whereas, Today, in 2009, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government; and Whereas, Many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and Whereas, The United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and Whereas, A number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States; now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That we hereby affirm Michigan’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States. We also urge the federal government to halt its practice of imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States; and be it further Resolved, That copies of this resolution be transmitted to the Office of the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and the members of the Michigan congressional delegation. The concurrent resolution was referred to the Committee on Government Operations.
"[These States] have seen fit to reaffirm their sovereignty and make various demands to the Federal government in recent months. At the same time, the Federal government saw fit to recall soldiers from Iraq to post them on American soil waiting to be deployed to quell disorder, and are now coming out about their labor camps and forced civilian labor programs.
"Coincidence?
"Seems to me that in tough economic times you can expect to see civil unrest, rioting and even armed resistance. Especially when fascism increases right along side the economic collapse. Perhaps it would be best to draw out the "homegrown terrorists" before the general population is upset enough to be willing to listen to them and even stand beside them. Perhaps the government figures you'd be willing to actively rebel prematurely if you think your state government will support your efforts. Perhaps the government wants to appear weak and unable to cope with you so that they can take you out've the game before they really can't handle you." Circle of 13
It seems to this blogger that States rights as they were designed are finally being recognized once again, in light of the fact that for over a century "the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government," and that "the total scope of federal power [is] that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and [was] created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states."
It seems that Originalism in the reading of the Constitution is once again in vogue. Let us hope that, one by one, the States retreat from the fascism of the rule of Washington.
But let us also hope they do not retreat into their own State regimes of collectivism and ignore that the "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
When there are Muslims in America who have publicly spoken out against Jihad, why was Ingrid Mattson chosen for this interfaith prayer service?
Today, Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), will deliver a prayer at the National Prayer Service, invited by President Obama. It is sufficiently problematic that ISNA, the organization of which Ingrid Mattson is president, was designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial (which produced guilty verdicts on 108 counts). Mattson’s words and views beg the question: When there are Muslims in America who have publicly spoken out against Jihad, against shariah law, and against ISNA, why was Ingrid Mattson chosen for this interfaith prayer service?
In her own words:
"[C]onsider the role of American Muslims in the [specific] context of world events following the terrorist attacks of September 11th. I will acknowledge that since Muslim leadership must be responsive to events, this question cannot be answered completely in isolation of specific circumstances. The appropriate response will necessarily depend on the nature of the threat. At the same time, I will stress that any truly appropriate response must be firmly rooted in faith. [ ] People of faith have a certain kind of solidarity with others of their faith community that transcends the basic rights and duties of citizenship."
She did not author this in an article titled "Stopping Our Muslim Extremist Brothers." Instead, it was titled Stopping Oppression: an Islamic Obligation. Guess what "oppression" she meant.
In a reasoned "translation" of Mattson's words: the "role" of American Muslims must be judged in a "context" of events that happened after 9/11; cannot be judged "in isolation of specific circumstances; and must be rooted in faith with other Muslims, a faith that takes no note of the rights and duties of being Americans first. Instead, American Muslims "role" must be in solidarity with others of their "faith community."
Forget that American Jews, Catholics, Coptics, Hindus, atheists, Southern Babtists and others came together in a solidarity that specifically transcended their own congregational communities. Instead, they came together in the brotherhood and spirit that comes with having our rights and citizenship guaranteed.
"The true values of America are those which we decide to embrace as our own [because] the American Constitution, like foundational religious texts, can be read in many different ways."
Again, to translate: Muslims can pick and choose which American values to call "true" and then may decided to embrace only those, because they can read anything into the Constitution they wish.
She is wrong when she says the Constitution can be read in many different ways. There are only two ways: Originalism, and non-Originalism which covers everything the Founding Fathers wrote were not the intentions of that document and does not cover most of the things they wrote were the specific intentions of that document. Justifications for following non-Originalism are usually for the purposes of pragmatism, which obviously would serve the Muslim community as it picked-and-chose only the parts of the law they found served the ideas of Sharia, of Shura, of takaful insurance, or of anything else associated with Islam; but specifically nothing that does not serve Allah.
Mattson denies the existence of terrorist cells in the United States: "There's a prejudgment, a collective judgment of Muslims, and a suspicion that well 'you may appear nice, but we know there are sleeper cells of Americans,' which of course is not true. There aren't any sleeper cells.[emphasis added]
Mattson defends Wahhabism. All unbelievers (i.e. Muslims who do not accept the teachings of 'Abd ul-Wahhab, as well as Christians, &c.) were to be put to death. Immediate entrance into Paradise was promised to his soldiers who fell in battle, and it is said that each soldier was provided with a written order from Wahhab to the gate-keeper of heaven to admit him forthwith.Wahhabi
"This is not a sect. It is the name of a reform movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islamic societies of cultural practices and rigid interpretation that had acquired over the centuries. It really was analogous to the European protestant reformation." Center for Security Policy (Research Brief)
Forget that shura is cultural practices and sharia is a rigid and merciless practice of Muslim justice.
When there are Muslims in America who have publicly spoken out against Jihad, against shariah law, and against ISNA, why was Ingrid Mattson chosen for this interfaith prayer service?
"We think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals composing the society to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent..." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816.
The "mass" of individuals is what the framers of the Constitution called "We, the People," and wrote that the Constitution was "to provide for the common Defense" and to "promote the general Welfare."
Never did the Founders dream that what was "common" among them--their defense, their promotion of security, their lives, their liberties, and their pursuit of happiness--would congeal under the nationalism of Federal laws into something called "the common good."
They could not have conceived it, because they could not conceive that the individualism promoted by securing a nation would be turned on its head, turned into the denial of individualism in order to promote the security of everyone but the individual.
The "common good" is nothing but the result of either democracy by majority in which that majority overwhelms the minority rather than protecting it; or it is the republicanism of our representative government becoming the majority. Once case in point is how Washington ignored the people's wishes in this bail-out mess. Poll after poll demonstrated how Americans were against the bail-out, repeatedly telling Washington to let the free market fix the problems caused by Washington.
The people knew there would be hard times. The people know that harder times are now to come because Washingon ignored their pleas to let the banks fail and to let Detroit fail. Why are the harder times to come?
A senator on live TV was heard to say just yesterday that all this debt that the Federal government has taken on in the name of the economic security of the people, will be paid for by the generation now being born and by the children born of that generation.
But what of the debt we must incur before the first-born generation of indebted children can begin to pay off our debts? That will be at least twenty years, if not forty. In that amount of time there will be literally quadrillions, not just trillions, more dollars spent in the red. Then it will be up to the third, forth, even the fifth generations to come to pay off that debt. How will they do it?
They will not be able to pay it off until it is recognized that the free market, when allowed to fail, will heal itself. That is the purpose of capitalism. No capitalist ever thought he should not "try, try again," except in the case of bureaucratic roadblocks and "progressive" taxes that took from him when he made money the very profits needed to make more money.
"Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted." “The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness; Ayn Rand
Since individuals may do anything whatsoever that does not violate the rights of others, keeping his profits is within his own rights. Proper taxes are those which go to pay for government infrastructure. Improper taxes are the debts incurred by "the people" when government prints even one dollar that is not backed by the security of goods already manufactured. Since Nixon took us off the gold standard, and since the dollar is backed only by the Gross National Product (GNP), and since all the manufactured money for the bailout is credit in the name of the hope of future production that can back up the debt, such credit is immoral of any government to print, and should be illegal if it is not already.
What is missing from the Constitution is a provision such as the one below, a provision that explicitly states the derived nature of "individual sovereignty" in order to prevent our government from acting in the name of the "people" when the "people" is merely the "mass of individuals," not some organic whole made of everyone now living and yet to be born for generations.
"Reserved to each Citizen of the several States, and to each citizen of the United States, the unalienable and rightful powers of said Citizens as defined by Natural Law shall not be abridged except to conform where necessary to the functioning of the common sovereignty of said Citizens. 'Natural Law' shall be defined as the right of action by any and all individuals when those actions do not violate the same right of action of any other individual. 'Common sovereignty' shall be defined as those minimal powers deemed necessary for the maintenance of a democratically operated republican government to establish justice, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. 'General Welfare' shall be defined as the mitigating powers of the common sovereignty over individual sovereignty. 'Liberty' shall be defined as the unalienable and rightful powers of each individual Citizen as is given at birth by the fruits of nature and of nature's god, except where mitigated by the common sovereignty, which mitigation shall constitute the general Welfare."
This provision would do much to restore American law and jurisprudence to the Originalist position. From there, changes could be made to the Constitution where "the mass of individuals" saw a need for it. The "exercise of all rightful powers" is the right of every individual under any doctrine of natural law. "The exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent..." is a matter of prudence and justice under the law of men. We are engaged as a nation in the politics of pragmatism, which is neither prudent, nor just, denying the exercise of any rightful power because to deny one is to deny the principle that makes all of them "rightful."
Note: I am withdrawing my membership in the Center for Inquiry. It's liberalism, it's humanism, and its subjectivity are beyond the pale, when considering such items as this, from CFI Chigago:
The Center For Inquiry/Chicago is pleased to present: Re-Framing the Educational Debate: Teaching and Freedom with Guest Presenter Dr. William Ayers
Not only is this the very same Ayers at the center of controversy in the Obama for President debate, the CFI Chigago, after listing his many academic milestones and failing to mention his domestic terrorism background, has only this comment to make: "He is an inspiration to a generation of young teachers."
The Center for Inquiry seems to have no standards for their behavior or their moral choices for investigation of any subject except that of secularity. Secularity is not a moral choice. It is the division of one's life--or the life of an organization--into the religious and the non-religious, or the outright rejection of religiosity; and it is the separation of church of state.
I reject outright any faith and religiosity in my life; but I also reject the presentation in the name of "secularity" of terrorists as legitimate objects of veneration, respect, and inspiritation.
Last Saturday I wrote that the politics of Original Intent that were practiced by Senator Barry Goldwater in his race for the Republican nomination of 1964, are not the politics of Washington as we know it today. Originalism is not respected by those who see necessity in specific government programs which defy strict Constitutionalism.
The politics of pragmatism has become the standard, practiced by both Republicans and Democrats. Pragmatic politics sees necessity as the trump card, whether or not American supreme law supports it. I do not deny that many things are "necessary," and can be implemented by governments without reverting to any form of collectivism.
But in order to implement necessary policies and programs that are pragmatic rather than Constitutional, the Constitution must be changed. That is what the Founders said. That is the mechanism the Founders gave us in the Law. What is so hard for pragmatists to understand about that mechanism?
Bush the Pragmatic decided an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would be better than a Middle East that remained inclusive of him. He started an unnecessary war, a divisive war, a war based on perfectly incompetent intelligence reports.
Bush the Pragmatic decided that limiting the individual sovereignty of Americans through the coercive, and therefor mis-named "Patriot Act", was a better means of advancing the "common" good rather than the Constitutionally provided-for "individual" good.
("We, the People," meant specifically "We, the Individuals collectively called 'the People.'" Among others of the Founders who wrote or spoke of such individual sovereignty, we have these words of Jefferson:
("We think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals composing the society [i.e., all the individuals collectively] to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent and to delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named and removable for unfaithful conduct by themselves immediately." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816.)
Bush the Pragmatic decided it was better to save the "Barney Frank Democrats" who led us down this thorn-and-shard-laden housing financing debacle. That debacle led to the "me too" attitude of banks that had been allowed to become "too big to allow to fail"; the hands-out attitude of the Motor City who couldn't keep up with the smarter looking and better selling cars made by the Asians and Europeans. There is a one year waiting list in the U.S. for the Nano Car manufactured by the Indian company the Tata Group.
And of course, there are the "me too hands" held out for Federal funding by the states and cities across America.
Bush the Pragmatic, who never opted for the "redistribution of wealth", opened the door for the wealth redistributing Obama the Pragmatic.
It appears that many local governments are going to get their palms greased.
It is, of course, pragmatic to destroy the capital value upon which this nation was built, and to destroy that very wealth by taking from those who have it and giving it to those who do not--so that those who do not get some of it whether or not they know how to create more wealth with it so it can be redistributed again; or whether they merely know how to spend it before coming looking for more to be redistributed in their direction.
Either way, pragmatic redistribution "stimulates" the economy, like a cattle prod "stimulates" a cow, with a sting worse than Muhammad Ali's fist to your face. The purpose of the sub-prime lending was to make the Democrats look good through the stimulation of the economy by lending. The "sting" was that those to whom sub-prime loans were given could not afford them or they would not have needed sub-prime rates.
Though Obama stated that his team members share his "'pragmatism about the use of power' in foreign policy," Dr. Tara Smith, speaking for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, said Democratics and Republican presidents disagree vehemently about foreign policy and "all manner of moral and political issues, [and] that the way forward is always through moderation and compromise. [But] pragmatism, from either the Left or the Right, is inherently self-destructive and a threat to Americans." [emphasis added] CapMag.Com
What makes for pragmatic politics? In these times when non-Originalism is the order of the day, "anything that goes" and which seems to fill a need is pragmatic. Non-Originalism is the idea that no written Constitution can anticipate all the methods by which government could use--after the law was written--to oppress people, so it is sometimes necessary for judges to make decisions based on other laws with similar intents, and the precedents set by interpretation of those laws.
Judge Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. Bork is a an Originalist. His nomination was scuttled by Democrats who didn't like his former involvement in Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre," nor by some of his controversial opinons.
(Neither do I. But, putting that aside,) his case, in part, for Originalism is solid as rock: "If the Constitution is law, then presumably, like all other law, the meaning the lawmakers intended is as binding upon judges as it is upon legislatures and executives. There is no other sense in which the Constitution can be what article VI proclaims it to be: Law....
"This means, of course, that a judge, no matter on what court he sits, may never create new constitutional rights or destroy old ones." [citation]
"Pragmatism is about how well things work in practice, not how they should work in theory. [But] we present evidence that non-originalist judicial decision making has, in fact, done a good job of enhancing social welfare, as measured by popular ap-proval of the Court’s decisions. " [emphais added]THERE IS NOTHING PRAGMATIC ABOUT ORIGINALISMDavid S. Law & David McGowan
This "good job" measurement is pragmatism defined. But Goldwater, the Conservative's hero of Heros said this in the long, honorable tradition of Originalism:
"I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible." [emphasis added] Barry Goldwater Quotes
This policy is the measurement of someone who believes in a nation of laws, as Bork spoke about, not of a nation of men who proceed to find things that are necessary--as the bailouts may have been, but which are un-Constitutional.
Respecting the Constitutional individual sovereignty of each member of "We, the People" would preclude taking from he who has in order to give to he who has not. Such redistribution is neither in the letter of the law, nor in the spirit of the law. Pragmatism is not about law; it about results irrespective of law.
I just joined--with a donation--a new organization called the Conservative Society for Action. There is only one reason I did this. The site's sidebar contains quotes from none other than, and no one but, Senator Barry Goldwater.
The conservative lineage CSA claims to follow--as demonstrated by the pictures at the top of the page--are Thomas Paine; Thomas Jefferson; Robert Taft, "the first to fight 'New Deal' Socialism"; Goldwater; and Ronald Reagan, the friend and so-called heir of Goldwater's modern ideology of conservativism.
As the CSA's website makes clear, Goldwater was out to protect the Constitition, quoting him with statements such as: "I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible"; and: "It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden."
This is clearly not the conservatism of Washington in the Twenty-First Century. In fact, in was only by the barest standards that Reagan, the "hero" of modern conservativism, can be said to have furthered Goldwater's Originalist politics. He was the best President of the Twentieth Century, but Goldwater had the potential to be a game changer, taking the Constitution back to its originalist roots.
Stephen Flanagan of the National Defense University, founder of the CSA, has it right when he states, "Obama's win means nothing! Capital Hill is the enemy! [ ] As I said before the election, Obama won't really come through on his campaign promises because that would end up hurting HIM. [ ] But here's the REAL danger... The Liberals in this country now control 4 out of the 5 centers of political power. [ ] There's one more item on their checklist and that is the Supreme Court. By the time Obama's presidency is over, they likely will have that too. Five out of Five for the first time in American history."
But as modern conservativism goes, Nixon, not Goldwater, was the next Republican President. Leaving all Nixon's scandals aside, his disastrous (and traitorous) act of taking America off the gold standard eliminates him from rationally conservative status. He unilaterally cancelled the Breton Woods Agreements signed by 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations, which adopted the gold standard as the only objective measurement of a nation's wealth. A nation's wealth is now tied only to its "good name," its economic strength, in world market comparisons.
Gerald Ford was a popular centrist in the House of Representatives, but after becoming President when Nixon resigned, he showed none of the strength of that Goldwater lineage. Had he shown any such strengths, he probably still would have lost to Jimmy Carter. Goldwater's radical defense of liberty frightened many Americans who saw him as a hawk who would take us to war against the Communist enemy.
More than likely Goldwater's international policies of strength, and his domestic policies making each American more economically wealthy and thus independent of government charity, thereby enriching the Treasury, would have broken the economic back of the Soviets two decades before Reagan was able to accomplish the same thing when he challenged the Soviets to keep up with our military spending.
Goldwater had objective standards. Reagan had objective goals, but his policies were strictly pragmatic, lowering taxes for the purpose of reaping higher levels of revenue from smaller percentages; America grows wealthy and even lower taxes will have the effect of providing a larger budget. But Reagan also blew the budget, and he left America deeply in debt. Pragmatism is not conservatism, but when used for the purposes of strengthening both our economy and our national defenses, pragmatic Presidents become heroic.
What Ayn Rand wrote about Barry Goldwater could have been written about Reagan, (although she was angered by Reagan's religious conservatism, especially his opposition to abortion based on the idea that the separation of church and state did not apply when in reference to a fertilized egg, a zygote, or a fetus undeveloped enough to live on its own.) She wrote:
"Barry Goldwater is singularly devoid of power lust. Even his antagonists admit it with grudging respect. He is seeking, not to rule, but to liberate a country."
The CSA says its first priorities are these: ACT to Repeal the Community Reinvestment Act! ACT to Impeach Barney Frank! ACT to Defeat Card Check Legislation ACT to Stop the Flow of U.S. Oil Dollars Going to Hostile Countries ACT to Stop Congressional Censorship of the Broadcast Media.
To read the reasons behind each of the ACT links is to understand something of the nature of Goldwater's goals. Unfortunately I see no overall philosophical basis for each ACTion that CSA seeks to perform. They are worthy actions, necessary actions, and yes, conservative actions.
But the problem with conservativism is that it does not lay out a black-and-white philosophical strategy, as Goldwater did. Goldwater frightened many Americans because unlike any other candidate since Abraham Lincoln he had an unwavering plan.
The conservatives cannot allow themselves to appear to have the luxury of a black-and-white, unwavering plan. That it is not a luxury but absolutely necessary to break the back of the growing menace of the overpowering, power-hungry federal machine and its leaders is a fact.
"If a [politician] evades, equivocates and hides his stand under a junk-heap of random concretes, we must add up those concretes and judge him accordingly," Rand wrote. "If his stand is mixed, we must evaluate it by asking: Will he protect freedom or destroy the last of it? Will he accelerate, delay or stop the march toward statism?"
Whether or not Flanagan and his staff and the general membership of CSA can ACT with Goldwater-like reserve, and with Jefferson and Paine's committment to individual sovereignty, remains to be seen. Flanagan has the background. Now let's see if he has the vision and the rationality to take on Capital Hill with the balls that are necessary to make him an enemy of the state.
"I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom," Flanagan quotes Goldwater. But Goldwater also said, "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." Extremism of any sort is frowned upon now, because the Religious Right is extreme but so are the Islamicists. Goldwater's extremism was his downfall even in 1964.
Flanagan has the credentials to be an extremist. Let's see if he has the credentials to sell the extreme position that the Constitution must be adhered to, and sees to it, with membership help, to destroy Goldwater's idea of "necessary but un-Constitutional" legislation.
We are living in very dangerous times for American freedom. It does not come primarily from overt acts of terrorism, such as 9/11. It comes from "stealth jihad", the practice of getting the federal government to either approve of sharia practices in America, like Takaful insurance, or to ignore the practice of forcing sharia principles in the workplace, as Islamacists did at a meat processing plant.
Christians should be worried because they have not had as much progress as Muslims, in their own endeavor of breaking down the walls of the separation of church and state, to get the government to either approve of, or to ignore, the practice of Christian principles. The U.S. wouldn't want to make the Muslims angry, would it, at this time in history, so the living Constitution, rather than the original Constitution, twists the Supreme Law to accomodate them.
Because the secularity of the Constitutional rights of America are not being protected by whatever particular authorities have the power to do so, such as the court system or Congress or State Attorneys General, there is a power vacuum between the People, who deserve justice, and the powers-that-be who are not willing--or who claim to be unable--to stop such Constitutional erosion.
The Constitution has eroded measurably since the end of the Civil War, and no one seems willing or able to stand up and say so. Just the opposite is happening: we have Amendments to State's Constitutions that have the sole purpose of denying rights, and we have a new incoming President who is running full-steam-ahead with the Marxist economic football under his arm.
But these are things Americans have lived with for decades or more, watching the Constitution being torn down from inside the country. We deal with it, though obviously not effectively because the erosion is like that on a mountain side with constant rain upon it and little protection from trees and undergrowth. The Constitution is going to landslide if the rain is not stopped.
Stealth jihad, however, is something new, and something the American people will not stand for--once they realize the severity of the situation. In the vacuum of official worry over sharia-compliance under the Constitution, Americans will soon come to find that sharia Muslims have powers which the Constitution can not give to Christians, Jews, atheists, and others, and that is the power to enforce their beliefs on society where ever justice fails society.
"Take special note of the shariah-compliant supervisory board at AIG," warns Act for America. "Muhammed Imran Usmani is the son and disciple of Muhammed Taki Usmani. The elder Usmani is a 'who’s who' in the Islamist world and an outspoken proponent of aggressive jihad. For example, he has issued numerous fatwas (religious rulings) that provide material support for terrorism.
"The danger of American financial institutions getting in bed with well-known advocates of jihad and terrorism should be obvious to anyone who takes even a cursory look. It was Lenin who stated 'The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.'"
In this case we are not selling the jihadists the rope; we are condeding that they have a right to make us give them rope at our own expense. We concede their right to the rope because we are unwilling to admit that we need to take an Originalist view of the Constitution. To take such a view would cause irreparable harm to the socialism and the anti-individualism already rampant in this country.
But here is the point of this piece: in the vacuum of official power to uphold the Constitition and the Supreme Court rulings on Originalism, such as the acceptance of Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state," some Americans are going to fill that vacuum with guns and bombs, and they will use them on any Muslim targets they see.
These Americans will be seen as "domestic terrorists," by officialdom, but they will be seen as heros by the Originalists and libertarians and conservatives and others who understand that stealth jihadism is just as insidious and evil as the things we are fighting against in the "war on terror," in our two wars are, in our efforts at Homeland Security.
The problem is, no one in officialdom is securing the homeland against legal attacks on our Constitution from within our own borders. That is partly what is stealthy about this form of jihadism; the sharia-believing Muslims don't have to use bombs against us. They can use against us our own ignorance of how much Constitutional integrity we have already lost, our stupidity, and our compassion to be fair.
Something will have to give, and if officialdom in America does not stop the sharia erosion of the separation of church and state, then some Americans are going to see that guns and bombs will, at the least, stop the jihadists--and possibly the officials--who are converting Americans into virtual Muslims by forcing us to accept that those officials are going to protect sharia Muslims as they have never protected any other form of religious practice in this country.
I would be the first to applaud those who use the guns and bombs against sharia. Those people would be the real heros, not people like me who sit behind a computer screen and tell the rest of America how far we are falling.
But it would be a wasted effort to use guns and bombs, which is why I won't do it myself. It would be wasted because officialdom is hell-bent on twisting the Constitution to their own egalitarian purposes, from the new President on down, and backward for fifteen decades.
A little domestic terrorism is only going to create domestic terrorists. Officialdom will not protect them, and they will be the losers, not the sharia Muslims.
