Snippits From the Patriot Post

Quote of the Week:
"America's founders intended the federal government to have limited powers and that the states have an independent sovereign place in our system of government. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi legislation to take control of the American health-care system is the most sweeping and intrusive federal program ever devised. If the federal government can do this, then it can do anything, and the limits on government power that our liberty requires will be more myth than reality." --Wall Street Journal op-ed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Liberty University School of Law professor Kenneth Blackwell and American Civil Rights Union senior legal analyst Kenneth Klukowski

The Time Has Come

Below are excerpts from Mark Alexander's latest essay. You would do yourself a great dis-service if you do not go read the entire post.

Mark Alexander from the Patriot Post:

Ronald Reagan delivered an enduring challenge to conservatives entitled "A Time for Choosing": "You and I are told we must choose between a left or right," Reagan said, "but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism."

If Barack Obama has given us one thing of value, it is the opportunity to clearly discern between Left and Right, between rule of men and Rule of Law. He is the quintessential socialist, and his domestic and foreign policies present a contrast between tyranny and liberty that has rarely been so apparent. Many who have been hitherto reluctant to rise on behalf of liberty or have been too comfortable to be concerned by such conflict, are now making an ever-louder stand.

Obama is the personification of Leftist philosophy and dogma, and in a turn of irony, for the clarity he has provided to that end we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Despite the fact that the Leftists in media and academia have had a stranglehold on public opinion, seating one of their own as president, which they believe is a great prize, may well be their undoing.

The once noble Democrat Party is now led by those who have turned the wisdom of their iconic leaders upside down.

Today, Democrat Party Leftists deride the notion of individual rights. Instead, they advocate the supplanting of individual liberty with statism.

They promote the notion of a living constitution rather than the authentic Constitution our Founders established.

They despise free enterprise and advocate socialist redistribution of wealth, the ultimate goal of which is to render all people equally poor and dependent upon the state.

They loathe our military and our national sovereignty, and they propose to replace it with treaties that establish supranational governmental legal and policing authorities.

They detest traditional American values, and they support all manner of behavior resulting in social entropy.

Being debated right now is whether an additional 17 percent of the U.S. economy is going to be nationalized under ObamaCare, and whether the rest of the economy is going to be shackled by cap-and-trade taxes in addition to a plethora of other job-eliminating taxes on private sector employers.

Obama and his Democrat Congress have endowed future generations, unless soon reversed, not with liberty but with historically unprecedented levels of debt, which will enslave them to hyperinflation.

Conservatives and liberals can argue various policy points ad nauseam, but the question Americans are asking in greater numbers is this: Are we a nation governed by Rule of Law or the contemporaneous opinions of men?

History provides us with repeated evidence that the terminus of nations that are governed by men rather than laws is tyranny. In the last century alone, hundreds of millions have been enslaved under statist dictators such as Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Mao, Kruschev, Pol Pot, Ho Chi, Idi Amin, Castro, Hussein, Mugabe, Kim Jong-Il, Chavez, Hu Jintao and others.

Who might be next?

Baghdad Bob Gibbs Minister of Propaganda

Patriot Post on Liberty

"Can Washington Make You Buy Health Insurance?"

Yes, yes, says White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Congress has the power to make everyone buy health insurance.

'I don't believe there's a lot of case law that would demonstrate the veracity' of comments to the contrary.

Thank you, Mr. Justice Gibbs. We'll see about all that when -- if -- the matter of Congress' power over private commercial judgments of this nature gets to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile the knock-down, drag-out over health insurance 'reform' shouldn't be allowed to fuzz up another immensely vital question; to wit, how in James Madison's name have we reached the point that Congress can so much as contemplate telling you, and you, and you, and all of us that we'll buy health insurance, like it or not, Buster?

Why do we have to? Because the government says so, isn't that reason enough? For Mr. Justice Gibbs, and the people who employ him, it is. Just about anything Congress decides to do in the name of uplift seems to be constitutional: In other words, in accord with written stipulations as to what the national government may and may not do.

Several problems arise concerning this fine theory:

-- It's nonsense. It contravenes the whole constitutional concept of divided powers: particular functions reserved to particular branches of government. And other powers divided between states and the national government.

-- It threatens liberty. A government that knows no limits to its power can be counted on to step more and more heavily on citizens' rights and privileges. All for the 'general good' naturally!

-- It divides the citizens. On the one hand, those who want particular favors from government; on the other hand, those who deny that government has the right to dispense such favors.

The Obama administration, which desperately wants health care to pass, brushes off such concerns as cranky and relevant mainly to wild-eyed Limbaugh and Palin fans, when in fact concerns about the rightful exercise of government power should inform every legislative debate. Those it doesn't inform are likely to end badly. Majority support of this or that initiative doesn't legitimize the initiative."

--William Murchison, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation

The Useful Idiots Outnumber Us

Zero was elected because he is black. That is the only reason he was elected, because when enough people who don't care about anything but skin color, decide to vote for the "brother", the deal was done and I get it. They wanted to be the ones who put the first black American in office, and nothing else mattered.

The extreme left in this country, the really dangerous ultra-liberal extremists, knew this would happen. They knew they could put this man in office, because they knew that most of the people who would be voting for him do not read newspapers, do not listen to news program, or understand the concept of socialism and how evil it is, and the ones who do read, listen and pay attention, didn't care, because it was more important to put a black Amercian in the White House.

The Brushfires of Freedom

In November 2008, it was difficult to accept that a majority of our countrymen had fallen into such a stupor that they could be lulled by the dullard droll of "hope 'n' change"; that they could be conned into electing an inexperienced charlatan, an unapologetic socialist, to the office of president.

At the time, Obama's politically moderate supporters scoffed at the charges of socialism, but unlike Bill Clinton, who ran to the center after being elected, Obama has run as fast and far to the left as possible, just short of publicly declaring our Constitution null and void.

Too many Americans have been complacent about liberty, believing it to be their birthright and the birthright of generations to come. They have enjoyed the fruit of liberty defended by others, taking rights for granted and knowing nothing of the obligations for maintaining that blessing. Most Americans have never had to fight for liberty and, thus, have little concept of its value or any sense of gratitude for its
accumulated cost -- a cost paid by generations of Patriots who have pledged their Lives, their Fortunes and their Sacred Honor.

I encourage you to take heart, though, because change is coming, and not the variety proffered by Obama and his ilk.

There is a groundswell of conservative activism rising up across our great nation, as citizens are awakening to this ominous threat of constitutional adulteration and tyranny. Citizens are speaking out for liberty at public forums, attending grassroots "Tea Parties," making a stand for Liberty.

The first real political results of that uprising were manifest in the elections of Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie to the executive branches of the states of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. Each of these men vanquished a Democrat opponent for whom Barack Obama had extensively campaigned, and each had done so in a state that Obama had easily carried a year earlier. McDonnell's 18-point victory in Virginia, for example, represented a 25-point turnabout from Obama's 7-point margin in 2008.

Lets get a few things out of the way:
It is not conservative Americans who want to control your life...its liberals.
It is not conservative Americans who want to come into your bedroom...its liberals.
It is not conservative Americans who want to run every aspect of government and the economy...its liberals.

I am a consevative American. I don't care what you do or where you do it, as long as you extend me the same courtesey, and don't force me to accept or acknowledge that what you're doing is any more correct than what I'm doing, because that is not the way I think.

Like I said, I DON'T CARE!!! unless you restrict what I can do. That is when we will have issues.

Once you accept that it is conservative Americans that want everyone to be free to succeed or fail, you will be more inclined to understand that liberals are the problem.

ACORN and Housing: Alinsky Style

Patriot Post
Friday Digest

From the 'Non Compos Mentis' File
"The truth remains that thousands of New Yorkers who are facing foreclosure depend on charitable organizations like Acorn for assistance." --Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

But as Investor's Business Daily argues,
"The fact is that this 'charitable organization' helped precipitate the mortgage meltdown that shattered the economy. It was Acorn, under the cover of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), that intimidated banks through mob action into making risky loans in the name of 'fairness' to people who could not afford them. The tactics, taken straight from the pages of Saul Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals,' were used by Acorn as early as 1991, when it took over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA."

Yes Zero IS a Racist

Alexander's Essay – August 20, 2009
Media Blackout
"Equal and exact justice to all men..." --Thomas Jefferson
Editor's Note: PG suggested -- this essay contains graphic descriptions of a brutal crime.
In 1775, John Adams wrote, "There is in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong, a love of truth and a veneration of virtue ... if the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice..."
Adams understood that a shared penchant for justice and virtue is essential to liberty, and depends upon the ability of people to discern between right and wrong.
Today, it is evident to every astute social scientist (and most anyone with common sense) that among definable American subcultures the capacity for distinguishing between right and wrong is severely diminished.
The origin of these deteriorating standards for justice and virtue is rooted in the dissolution of the family, and the failure of our places of worship and our schools to instill those values necessary for self-government -- self-government being the foundation of family-government and that being the foundation of social responsibility.
U.S. urban centers, and to a lesser extent suburban and rural areas, are now home to generations of sociopaths who do not value your life, simply because they do not value their own.
Making matters worse, the MSM perpetuates a virtual blackout of news regarding select sociopaths, while trumpeting allegations and speculations of others. This results in a distorted popular understanding of the extent of the social degradation around us.

Three years ago (March 2006), the Leftmedia spent a year relentlessly convicting in the court of public opinion three white Duke University lacrosse players for a "hate crime" -- the alleged gang rape of a black woman named Crystal Gail Mangum. Millions of dollars in defense-lawyer fees later, it turns out that there was no evidence and that Mangum was a liar. The real victims were, in fact, the accused men: David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Colin Finnerty. (All charges were dropped, but there has been no apology yet from 88 Duke professors who jumped on the bandwagon, condemning Evans, Seligmann and Finnerty in an open letter before the first day of their trial.)

Four weeks ago, Barack Hussein Obama interrupted a live media propaganda confab promoting his administration's most critical national initiative (nationalizing health care) in order to accuse a white Cambridge, MA, police officer, James Crowley, of "acting stupidly" for arresting Obama's black friend, Henry Gates. That accusation was followed by similar knee-jerk pronouncements of racism by the black governor of Massachusetts and the black mayor of Cambridge. Under such heavy-handed political and media pressure, all charges against Gates were dropped.

The Gates' story dominated the national media headlines for a couple weeks, until it was determined that the officer's actions were, in fact, justified. Obama attempted to make amends by tossing back a few beers with the Gates and Crowley in the Rose Garden, but BO offered no public apology. (Narcissists do not apologize, they just reinterpret the facts.)

This week, there is a trial underway which is racially charged, but, unless you were reading The Patriot back in 2007, chances are you have not heard of this one since it involves a savage black-on-white crime, rather than MSM feeding frenzy accusations of white-on-black crimes.

Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom

I am referring to the brutal torture, mutilation and murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom by four black men in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In the event you were not a reader in '07, allow me to recount this horrendous incident ... because you won't see or hear it from any MSM news outlets.
On 6 January 2007, Channon (age 21) and Christopher (age 23) were out for a Saturday dinner date, after which Channon called her mom to report that they were on the way to visit friends. But Channon and Christopher never arrived at their friends' house -- nor returned home.
The next day, the mutilated and burned remains of Chris Newsom were found along a railroad track. Two days later, Channon's mutilated body was recovered from a trash bin.
Channon and Chris were in Channon's Toyota 4-Runner when they were carjacked. They were taken to a nearby house, brutally gang-raped, mutilated and then murdered. They were subjected to lengthy torture in each other's presence.
Newsom was raped, his genitals were cut off, and then taken to the railroad tracks where he was shot execution-style. The perpetrators soaked his body with an accelerant and burned his body.
Christian was kept alive for a while longer, repeatedly raped, mutilated, had cleaning solution poured down her throat in an attempt to destroy DNA evidence, and then stuffed inside a trash can where she suffocated to death.
This appalling attack is more than a case study in sociopathic evil. It is a case study about which stories the MSM headlines and which they do not. Yes, there are some 17,000 murders committed in the U.S. each year, but this double murder was clearly far more barbaric, far more monstrous, than most.
Regrettably, there is nothing new about the racial aspect of this story, which may explain why it was not national news. Although blacks represent just 12 percent of the U.S. population, black perpetrators are convicted by a jury of their peers in more than half of all murder and manslaughter cases. Additionally, per-capita black-on-white crime is far more prevalent than the inverse.
The underlying social factors contributing to such racially unbalanced crime statistics have been delineated by many conservative black leaders and academicians. However, their solutions -- most notably promoting family unity, faith-based programs, better schools and individual responsibility and accountability, contradict leftist political objectives, which seek to maintain black folks' status as wards of the state. (The modern Democrat implementation of a plantation system.)

The Accused

We STILL Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident

Mark Alexander
Patriot Post

On July 4th of 1776, our Founders, assembled as representatives to the Second Continental Congress, issued a declaration stating most notably: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ... That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

In other words, our Founders affirmed that our rights, which are inherent by Natural Law as provided by our Creator, can't be arbitrarily alienated by men like England's King George III, who believed that the rights of men are the gifts of government.

Our Founders publicly declared their intentions to defend these rights by attaching their signatures between July 4th and August 2nd of 1776 to the Declaration. They and their fellow Patriots pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor as they set about to defend the Natural Rights of man.

At the conclusion of the American War for Independence in 1783, our Founders determined the new nation needed a more suitable alliance among the states than the Articles of Confederation. After much deliberation, they proposed the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1787, ratified in 1788 and implemented in 1789 as subordinate guidance to our Declaration of Independence.

Since that time, generations of American Patriots have laid down their lives "to support and defend" our Constitution -- and I would note here that their sacred oath says nothing about a so-called "Living Constitution" as advocated by the political left.

Given that bit of history as a backdrop, consider the lexicography of our current political ideology.

On the dark side of the spectrum would be Leftists, liberals and tyrants.

(Sidebar: One should not confuse "classical liberalism" with "contemporary liberalism." The former refers to those, like Thomas Jefferson, who advocated individual liberty, while the latter refers to those, like Barack Hussein Obama, who advocate statism, which is the antithesis of liberty.)

Statism, as promoted by contemporary American liberals, has as its objective the establishment of a central government authorized as the arbiter of all that is "good" for "the people" -- and conferring upon the State ultimate control over the most significant social manifestation of individual rights, economic enterprise.

On the left, all associations between individuals ultimately augment the power and control of the State. The final expression and inevitable terminus of such power and control, if allowed to progress unabated, is tyranny.

The word "tyranny" is derived from the Latin "tyrannus," which translates to "illegitimate ruler."

Liberals, then, endeavor to undermine our nation's founding principles in order to achieve their statist objectives. However, politicians who have taken an oath to "support and defend" our Constitution, but then govern in clear defiance of that oath, are nothing more than illegitimate rulers, tyrants.

(Sidebar: Some Leftists contend that Communism and Fascism are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Properly understood, however, both of these forms of government are on the left, because both have as a common end the establishment of an omnipotent state led by a dictator.)

Over on the "right wing" of the political spectrum, where the light of truth shines, would be "conservatives," from the Latin verb "conservare," meaning to preserve, protect and defend -- in this case, our Constitution.

American conservatives are those who seek to conserve our nation's First Principles, those who advocate for individual liberty, constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and the promotion of free enterprise, strong national defense and traditional American values.

Contemporary political ideology is thus defined by tyrannus and conservare occupying the Left and Right ends of the American political spectrum, defining the difference between liberals and conservatives.

Though there are many devoted protagonists at both ends of this scale, the space in between is littered with those who, though they identify with one side or the other, are not able to articulate the foundation of that identity. That is to say, they are not rooted in liberal or conservative doctrine, but motivated by contemporaneous political causes associated with the Left or Right.

These individuals do not describe themselves as "liberal" or "conservative" but as Democrat or Republican. Further, they tend to elect ideologically ambivalent politicians who are most adept at cultivating special interest constituencies.

That having been said, however, there is a major difference between those on the Left and the Right, as demonstrated by our most recent national elections. Those on the Left tend to form a more unified front for the purpose of electability; they tend to embrace a "win at all costs" philosophy, while those on the right tend to spend valuable political capital drawing distinctions between and among themselves.

I would suggest that this disparity is the result of the contest between human nature and Natural Law.

The Left appeals to the most fundamental human instincts to procure comfort, sustenance and shelter, and to obtain those basic needs by the most expedient means possible. The Left promises that the State will attain those needs equally, creating a path of least resistance for that fulfillment.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Right promotes the tenets of Natural Law -- individual liberty and its attendant requirements of personal responsibility and self-reliance.
Clearly, one of these approaches is far easier to sell to those who have been systematically dumbed down by government educational institutions and stripped of their individual dignity by the plethora of government welfare programs.

That easy sell notwithstanding, the threat of tyranny can eventually produce an awakening among the people and a reversal of trends toward statism. But this reversal depends on the emergence of a charismatic, moral leader who can effectively advocate for liberty. (Ronald Wilson Reagan comes to mind.)

For some nations, this awakening has come too late. The most notable examples in the last century are Russia, Germany, Italy and China, whose peoples suffered greatly under the statist tyrannies they came to embrace. In Germany and Italy, the state collapsed after its expansionist designs were forcibly contained. In Russia, the state collapsed under the weight of 70 years of economic centralization and ideological expansionism.

The Red Chinese regime, having witnessed the collapse of the USSR, has so far avoided its own demise by combining an autocratic government with components of a free enterprise economic system. (My contacts in China, including that nation's largest real estate developers and investment fund managers, believe the Red regime will be gone within five years.)
Of course, there exists an American option for the rejection of tyranny: Revolution. And it is an essential option, because the Natural Rights of man are always at risk of contravention by tyrants. At no time in the last century has our Republic faced a greater threat from "enemies, domestic" than right now.

"Our individual salvation," insists Barack Obama, "depends on collective salvation." In other words, BHO's tyranny, et al, must transcend Constitutional authority. And in accordance with his despotic ideals, Obama is now implementing "the fundamental transformation of the United States of America" that he promised his cadre of liberal voters.

It is yet to be seen whether the current trend toward statism will be reversed by the emergence of a great conservative leader, or by revolution, but if you're betting on another Ronald Reagan, I suggest you hedge your bet.

Our Declaration's author, Thomas Jefferson, understood the odds. He wrote, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground," and he concluded, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Accordingly, George Washington advised, "We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."

Indeed we must.

Semper Vigilo
SemperFortis
Semper Paratus
et
Semper Fidelis!

Mark AlexanderPublisher,
PatriotPost.US