Inependence Day - 2010

July Fourth marks the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; the announcement that the British colonies established in the new continent would no longer yield to the edicts of Great Britain and would establish a new system of self rule based on the principals that their freedoms were ordained by God and not granted by the British crown.

Like many, I received a mass e-mail signed by Barack Obama and sent through democraticparty@democrats.org; the official e-mail link to the Democratic National Committee to commemorate the 4th. I will reprint that e-mail below for the benefit of those that may not have received one:

Paul --
The Fourth of July is especially dear to my family. For us, it is not just our nation's birthday. It is the day Michelle and I became parents 12 years ago. And I can't wait to watch the fireworks with Malia on her birthday tonight, as we do every year.

As we celebrate the profound pride of being American, today is a time to honor the women and men in our armed forces, whose immeasurable bravery and sacrifice have made our country what it is today.That sacrifice is shared with husbands and wives, with sons and daughters, with fathers and mothers, who are asked to wait at home as their loved ones protect our nation. Their heroism, too, has helped pave the path of our freedom.

Even before we moved into the White House, Michelle was a champion for those military families. She has witnessed their struggles, and she has made it her personal mission to fight for them. On this Fourth of July, she recorded a personal message, commemorating our nation's birthday and paying tribute to these families.

Please take a minute to watch Michelle's video -- and join us as we honor our military families here and abroad.

:http://my.democrats.org/page/m/4052b0db/51f4b9d/6b18329e/74b960b9/1130136430/VEsE/.

From all of us, happy Independence Day.

Thank you, and may God bless America.

President Barack Obama
July 4th, 2010


The President’s message mentions family and fireworks or more specifically, his family and fireworks. Yes, just as any confirmed narcissist would do, he has even managed to make Independence Day about him. It’s not just our nation’s birthday…it’s the day that he became a parent twelve years ago. In all fairness he did mention the brave men and women serving in America’s armed forces and I have no issue with that except to say that he failed to mention the real reason we celebrate the Fourth of July.

Considering the President has a staff of speech writers, advisors and special advisors, I doubt that failure was an oversight. Perhaps the President fears that drawing attention to the Declaration of Independence would create additional impediments for his radical Progressive (Socialist) agenda. Let’s face it; the Declaration of Independence was more than just a document that announced our intention to sever ties with Great Britain. The Declaration also included a list of grievances that the colonists noted as justification for their actions. Many of the grievances written into the Declaration of Independence are once again becoming issues in the United States but this time the oppressor is not the King of England, it is the Federal Government itself. Don’t believe me?

Well, the Declaration begins, in part, by saying that “…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — 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…” It is clear to most that the passage of TARP, Healthcare Reform and the current drive to pass the cap and trade and immigration reform legislation has all happened without the consent of the governed. In fact, the polls against such legislation and the massive public outcry witnessed throughout the process displays that this administration has not only sought to forward their agenda without the consent of public but in spite of it.

One of the grievances listed in the Declaration says: “He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.” Doesn’t that sound like the entire argument behind Federal opposition to the Arizona Illegal Immigration Law (SB1070). The Governor signed a bill into law presented to her by the duly elected State Legislature to address the immediate and pressing need of reigning in illegal immigration and the crime that accompanies it. Once signed into law, the Federal Government is now prepared to sue Arizona because Immigration policy, in their interpretation, is the sole responsibility of the Federal government; a responsibility that the Federal Government has chosen to ignore for political expedience.

How about this one? “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” No, I’m not making this up…it’s in the original document. There are hundreds of agencies and panels created by the new healthcare bill alone. Let’s not forget the debt reduction panel that is now meeting in secret to figure out how the American Tax payer is going to resolve the trillions this President intends to add to our already massive public debt. Of course their findings will not be released until December 2010, well after the mid-term elections. We have a gulf oil spill commission to study the effects and suggestions to effect remediation of the leak but just this past week, the President established a second commission to oversee the operations of the first commission. The EPA under the Obama administration is using their newly expanded powers to threaten Congress to vote for Cap and Trade or else. If Cap and trade is not passed, the EPA warned Congress, the nation will face dire economic consequences as the administration unilaterally enacts carbon restrictions that will bring American businesses to a halt.

How about: “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation”. What is Cap and Trade, Climate Accords and the U.N. Small Arms agreement other than allowing a commission of foreign powers to exact controlling power over the citizens of America without our consent or representation"? Yes, it can be argued that there is representation because those agreements must be ratified by the Senate, but we have all seen the coercion and bribery used to gain Senate support for other items in the President’s agenda so can we be absolutely certain that the rights of free American’s are being protected if the process allows any meetings to be held in secret? Do we really have representation if we are bound to foreign agreements once they are ratified and have no power to rescind bad agreements through our electoral process?

Then there is: “For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.” The Federal Government may not have suspended the State legislatures but the actions of the Federal Government since the inception of the Progressive Era have rendered them increasingly impotent. The Federal Government has gained control of millions of acres of State lands and in some cases, lands equal to 90% of the State’s entire land mass. Those lands can not be exploited for their rich mineral deposits nor can they be used for private purposes that could generate billions in revenues for the afflicted States. States that have enacted legislation to protect the Second Amendment rights of their citizens to own guns for hunting and for their own protection have received letters from Federal authorities reminding them that Federal Law supersedes State law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. States that have enacted legislation to protect their citizens from having to purchase healthcare insurance because of the unlawful mandates in the healthcare bill are facing court challenges under that same Supremacy Clause.

Of course, to have that supremacy, the Federal law in question must be constitutional but now that we have adopted a policy that allows ideologues with no judicial qualifications to be seated in the Supreme Court simply because their politics favor the President’s agenda, is there any doubt that the highest court in the land is now as completely corrupted as the Federal Government is?

No, the President will not mention the founders or the actual Declaration of Independence on Independence Day. He knows full well that if more people actually read this incredibly important document or took an interest in the Founding Fathers that not only his agenda, but the Democratic Party as well as the Progressive movement would be brought to their knees. Do not be fooled by the Obama’s feigned respect of the armed forces. Progressives know all to well that everyone in the military has taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and that this oath takes precedent over the orders issued by the commander in chief. Obama’s glowing admiration of the military is meant simply to hold them at bay while he continues to “transform America” little by little; hoping they won’t notice until he’s done.

Paul

A Constitutional Government? What a Concept!

Let’s play a game! I’d like to pretend for a moment that the Progressive movement doesn’t exist; that the subsequent Liberals never discovered Karl Marx or Friedrich Nietzsche. Let’s imagine an America where we had the foresight and courage to block Soviet Russia’s attempts to demoralize America by infiltrating the American press, film industries and educational systems. Let’s ponder the future as if our past had followed a course that more closely resembled the government our founding fathers had meant for us to have. Before we can actually play that game, we must start at the beginning with a review of what that government was supposed to look like. Only then can we remap the last two hundred years and perhaps, speculate on the next two hundred.

The people that founded the American colonies were for the most part, British émigrés, people that sought to escape religious persecution or leave the crowded streets of England’s urban centers and seek new fortunes by settling a vast, new and relatively uninhabited land. There were spacious tracts of land and seemingly limitless resources to be exploited by adventurous men that were fit and industrious. Living in a pre-industrial, agrarian world, uses for many of the “new world’s” resources were still largely unknown but they would certainly come into play later. By the time the British colonies were firmly established in America, the Spanish myths about cities of gold had been disproven and fur trade, fertile lands and natural ports were considered to be America’s greatest assets.

While many still traveled back and forth to England, the American born descendants of the original settlers had mostly taken their father’s places by the turn of the 18th Century. They were beginning to create an identity separate from their British heritage mainly because the British Crown treated them as second class citizens. England had fought several skirmishes with Spain since the inception of the colonies and was actively sparring with France on the borders of the American colonies by the time the mid 1700’s had arrived. England had stationed a number of troops to guard the colonies against French incursion but the British Treasury was under pressure and the cost to maintain a protective force in numbers was becoming prohibitive. The English population was already overtaxed and on the verge of revolt so England turned to her second class citizens in America to carry the financial burden of her own protection.

For many, it may seem proper that the beneficiaries of that protection should pay for it but this story could not be written if Britain had not taken that principal too far. Strict limits were placed on the manufacture of American goods so that British made goods would still be in demand. While one new tax after another was levied on colonial trade, the colonies were continually denied the representation in Parliament that British citizens had enjoyed for centuries. The troops sent by England to guard the colonies were slowly assuming the duties of suppressing the anger that was slowly brewing against the unfair restrictions and tariffs. The troops themselves became the center of the controversy as colonists were forced to house and feed the soldiers at their own expense.

All of this would boil over into open insurrection and finally result in a bloody revolt against British rule. The Declaration of Independence would have had no more historical significance than an advertising poster for fertilizing manure had the colonies not defied all odds and emerged victorious. With their independence from England, the colonies would use their proclamation of natural rights and the list of grievances in that declaration to create an entirely new form of government.

The new government would be founded on the principal that man’s fundamental rights descended directly from God and were irrevocable; that these rights had always existed and were not an act of kindness granted by a beneficent government. The basic structure of the government they created borrowed the most historically successful parts from a variety of cultures. It would contain a body of civilian representatives as found in the British Parliament; a Senate as found in the Roman Empire and a democratically elected leader as part of the experiment. All of these would be restrained by law and for the first time in the history of the planet, the word of law shackled the reach government and the citizens retained supreme rule over all of it.

Central to the formation of the new government was the principal that the States remained sovereign and self governing. The Constitution created a governing body that would unify the States while each retained autonomy and that would not be an easy trick. They achieved this through a “bottom up” strategy. The people retained direct control over State government through the electoral process and the State would govern its citizens by laws enacted with the consent of the governed. The individual States would freely enter into a Union of States whose governing body would be comprised of elected representatives from each State and a President elected by the citizens of all of the States in the Union. It would be a Republic, with the electorate selecting representatives based on their principals and those representatives would vote for or against legislation on their behalf.

Each State would have to agree to abide by the United States Constitution in order to enter the Union. The Constitution is a document that not only reaffirms the State’s sovereign rule but clearly defines the powers that the States would delegate to the Federal government; strictly limiting the Federal government to those powers alone. As part of the Union, the States would agree to obey the laws passed by the Federal government so long as those laws pertained to the responsibilities delegated to the Federal government by the Constitution. A Supreme Court was established that would rule on any Federal law that was challenged by a State or citizen that could prove harm.

Curiously, the Bill of Rights were added as the first ten amendments to the Constitution and not written into the original document. It is not that the Founding Fathers considered those rights as an afterthought; indeed they considered those rights supreme. They did not add them because they did not feel they embodied the Federal government with any power sufficient to threaten those rights. We now know the confidence they had in the Constitutional limits placed on the Federal government was overstated and the Supreme Court spends much of its time hearing cases surrounding those sacred rights. While visionaries, the Founding Fathers saw that power is corruptible and did the best they could to see that the Federal government was correctly restrained. What they did not envision were the future generation of Constitutional scholars dedicated to finding pathways around those restraints and that would inevitably bring us to a point where the Federal government it threatening to become the master and not the servant of the people.

The Founding Fathers were geniuses but alas, they were still mere mortals. If they possessed the powers of clairvoyance perhaps they could have avoided the mess we are in today with a simple table of definitions added as an appendix to the Constitution. That would certainly have taken the wind out of the sails of those prominent Constitutional lawyers and closed the loopholes that they are now driving trucks through. Those definitions already exist in the Federalist Papers, a series of letters and correspondence penned by the founders that clearly detail their intent and place the language contained in the Constitution in context. Unfortunately, since those letters are not part of the actual Constitution they bear no weight in the actual review of the law as it is written. Armies of legalist attorneys now argue each and every word written in the Constitution and assign modern interpretations that shatter what were once considered iron chains on the power of the Federal government.

Tomorrow we begin our experiment in earnest. We will imagine that the Founders did include that table of definitions in the actual Constitution and that there is no longer any question as to the role of the Federal government. Make sure you wear a helmet and elbow pads because it’s going to be one hell of a ride!

Paul