As the debate over the debt ceiling heats up, each side is looking for an advantage. Except for a few principled holdouts, it would appear that both sides want to raise the ceiling, again, and are using it as a huge bargaining chip. The Republicans are trying to hold the line on taxes, or "revenue enhancements", and get major spending cuts. We shall see whether they hold fast, the last several months of capitulation don’t hold much promise. The Democrats want to keep every program and increase spending and taxes, particularly on the "rich." It is clear that President Obama wants to tax and spend, his recent speeches have made that abundantly clear. The question is, what is the end game?

Several years ago I postulated that the Democrats would use economic crisis to remove the Republicans from contention in politics for another generation. Their ability to demonize Republicans, particularly "conservative" Republicans, has been very successful over the years. If a "compromise" is reached, which is the most likely outcome, we will borrow even more and demonstrate to the world that we have no intention of reigning in our spending and balancing our budget. The compromise will probably take the following form. The Democrats will agree to a few trillion in cuts over the next ten years, meaning we’ll only borrow an additional twelve trillion dollars instead of sixteen trillion from our children and grandchildren. The Republicans will agree to some revenue enhancements like closing loopholes. Remember, a "loophole" is a legal way to keep more of your money so read that "tax increase". This will anger the TEA party, conservatives and libertarians among the Republican party who will either actively abandon them and go elsewhere or simply give up and stop supporting them. This will ensure Democrat victory in the near term and as the economy continues to falter under the greater debt and tax load, more dependents will be created-read "Democrat voters."

That is one possibility. What if a deal is not reached? What if on August 3rd we find ourselves unable to borrow the forty cents on every dollar we are currently spending? All of a sudden our government will be forced to live on the two hundred billion dollars that come in every month in taxes and no more. In the face of the fact that we have taken on obligations we cannot pay for, we will suddenly find ourselves in the position of having to choose priorities. If it were your household, you would be choosing between car and house payments, food, the cable and cell phone bills, the utilities. It is assumed that our first priority will be to pay the interest on our outstanding debt and redeeming bonds that come due in order to maintain our fiscal health and credit rating. Beyond that President Obama will have the discretion to choose which bills get paid. If the end game is to put the Republicans far in the back of the bus, as the President puts it, he will spend or not spend to his and the Democrat’s political advantage. He will slow or reduce welfare and social security payments, reduce Medicare reimbursements and panic the largest constituencies while blaming the Republicans and the rich who won’t contribute their fair share. The pressure won’t have to be applied long before the debt ceiling will be raised and the Democrats will get everything they want. More spending, more taxes and a new tactic for fear mongering. If you elect those mean Republicans, they won’t raise the debt ceiling next time and your benefits will go away. If the accumulation of power is the end, this is certainly an effective means.

However, what if the accumulation of power is not the goal? As I have been listening to all the talk from both sides, a crazy and very frightening thought hit me. What if the Democrats, and specifically the president, refuse to compromise specifically so the president can wield the discretionary power over what is funded and what is not. Not so they can use it for political advantage but to bring about the total collapse of the United States economy and with it, the United States itself. I know, it sounds crazy and I only suggest it as the remotest of possibilities. But think about this. Since President Obama has been elected he has done everything he can to make our financial position untenable. He has doubled the national debt, an amazing feat all by itself. He has hamstrung the economy through taxes and regulation. He has put through massive entitlements we can’t pay for. In the face of overwhelming evidence that nothing he has done works and has, in fact, made our economic situation worse, he wants to do more of the same. He wants to spend more, regulate more and borrow more.

That is not all, however. Consider all the evidence that he despises this country, its ideals and our republican system of government. He has placed socialists and outright communists in his cabinet or the ambiguous "czar" positions. He coddles and befriends brutal dictators and alienates our staunch allies. He apologizes for American exceptionalism at every opportunity. He bullies congress, the supreme court and major corporations to get his way. He is more than sympathetic to Muslim terrorists. He has demonstrated vindictiveness to those who don’t support him. His ideas are out of touch with reality and every time he tries to support them in a speech, he lies and lies and lies about everything. He was brought up by people who hated America, found a pastor in Chicago that hates America, married a woman that hates America. It is obvious he holds in contempt everything that made this country great. His words and deeds demonstrate his desire to see America lose its unique status as the leading force for liberty and good in the world because he doesn’t value liberty or believe America has done anything good.

What if, for Barack Obata and some other radical members of the Democrat party, the accumulation of political power is secondary to the destruction of the United States? If the debt ceiling is not raised and the President instructs the Treasury not to make interest payments on August 4th, our credit rating immediately falls below Greece’s. We will no longer have the option of borrowing because few will buy our junk bonds. The dollar will collapse. Our economy will be destroyed, we will no longer be able to afford much of our military or our social programs. In one fell swoop, we will go from the first first world nation to a third world nation. Such a crisis will give him the greatest opportunity of them all to seize even more power.

That is ridiculous, why would the President do that? It would be political suicide. Yes, it would. But what if Barack Obama is the most successful suicide bomber of them all? A political suicide bomber. A man who reached the highest office in the world for the sole purpose of ensuring our demise as a nation. A man who reached this office out of nowhere with no qualifications and no experience. A man who easily defeated the Clinton machine, the most effective political machine in recent history. A man who has demonstrated total incompetence in office while at the same time attempting to force an unrealistic ideology upon us all. He spends most of his time on vacation or on the golf course, swooping into the office at opportune times to cause more havoc. On top of all that he has professed adherence to, and demonstrated sympathy for, a religious ideology that desires our annihilation. As president of the United States, the keeper of the American legacy, and leader of the free world he is an abject failure. As a destructive agent of our enemies, he has had much success. If he finds himself wielding this kind of power, he could do more damage than any bomb ever could.

 

Coercion and evil are two things most of us believe are negative, things that should not be part of our lives as free individuals. Yet the insidious nature of the corruption of the American experiment has allowed us to turn a blind eye to our oppression, compelling us to focus on insignificant choices in entertainment and distraction while the chains that bind us grow thicker and heavier. Our nation was founded on the premise that the individual; his life, liberty and property, was supreme, that a man was the master of his fate unencumbered by the advantages or disadvantages of birth, that the fruits of his labor belonged to himself alone, that his freedom of action was limited only by the prohibition of violating the natural rights of another. The Constitution was a compact of individuals, "We the people." In our constitutional republic the individual is sovereign and is the source of all government authority, he is supreme even over the constitution itself, subject only to the natural law of the Creator. The Constitution defines the authority voluntarily relinquished to public servants who are constrained by the law. The legal authority of the government to use physical force to compel obedience or punish wrongdoing is strictly limited to specifically defined areas and can only be utilized after due process.

Today that ideal is upside down. We have allowed the system to be turned on its head so the individual is now at the bottom; a serf, a subject, a slave to a system in which an elite cartel of interests utilize the power of government to consolidate and expand their power and wealth. We, our children and our grandchildren exist to serve the needs of the state as opposed to the state existing only to serve our specifically defined wishes. Through "public" education and media the ruling class has convinced us that democracy exists. However, if our choices consist only of two parties which, despite their rhetoric, pursuing the same basic goals and policies, serve only to enslave us to an ever expanding government and whose real power has diminished as that of the ever expanding bureaucracy has grown, can we really say we live in a system substantially different than that of the one party autocratic rule we have been taught to deride around the world?

Coercion is defined as the use of force to compel or restrain. It is the use of force, or the threat to use force, to make us do something we would not freely choose to do. When a mugger accosts you on the street with a gun, he is threatening to use deadly force to compel you to give him something valuable, the products of your labor, that you otherwise would not relinquish. That is an example of coercion we can all understand. A thief stealing your property or even your life is wrong, no one questions that. Yet when the government uses the threat of force, fine or imprisonment, to coerce us to relinquish our property for purposes not in our contract or to give it to someone else, we meekly submit to the injustice. When the government uses the threat of force through an army of bureaucrats in its multitude of agencies to target businesses who create products or provide services they don’t approve of or are politically incorrect at the moment, we accept it as the government working in our best interest even as it eliminates our freedom to choose what we believe is best for us. When the government approves dangerous drugs or withholds experimental treatments from desperate people, no one protests. When the government threatens parents with fines or imprisonment if they don’t send their children to the government indoctrination centers we call public schools and hold the power over our very homes if we refuse to pay for such a horrendous failure of a system, we timidly surrender. When, through the draft or "selective service," the government asserts a claim on our very lives, we hardly whimper. Certainly the government does not yet have the resources to prosecute every minor infraction but by selectively targeting those who dare to raise their heads above the herd, they can keep the rest of us living in fear. In other countries where a small group uses force to target highly visible people or organizations in order to bring about a political result or shape public opinion we call it terrorism. Yet individuals and business in this country live in fear of the IRS, the EPA, the FDA, OSHA and a host of other government agencies and their supporters and we accept it as normal!

Evil is "having bad natural qualities", something that causes harm, sorrow, distress or calamity. At what point did we stop looking at government as did Thomas Paine? "Government, even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." Or George Washington who said, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire a troublesome servant and a fearfulsome master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." Yet it is before the altar of government we kneel in supplication. Through our inattention and inaction we have allowed it to become irresponsible and intolerable. We have forgotten who we are as free men and women. We have ceased to be the informed and educated people we once were. We have allowed ourselves to be bought off with other people’s money. We have deluded ourselves into believing we can use government for our own benefit. We have become isolated and distracted. We have been conditioned to tolerate the gravest injustices and the theft of our property, our lives and our souls. The greater the evil has grown, the more blind we have become and the more difficult it is to confront.

Confront it we must, if we and our posterity are to live free of oppression and tyranny. Our national government, though its unbridled quest for power, has spent too much to buy us off and whose oppression of those who cannot be bought off is becoming all to obvious. It has caused harm, sorrow and distress to our culture, our families and to the very fabric of our lives. Calamity is soon to follow. It is time to wake up and recognize the power of the individual. It is time we rose up and declared our sovereignty in the face of oppression. It is time we stopped playing the game of the tyrants and enforced the original rules. Our time is now. No less than the time of the revolution, "the times that tried men’s souls" when the enemies of freedom seemed overwhelming, today is the day when true patriots must be willing to pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, to make the sacrifices necessary so the next generation can enjoy the fruits of liberty, free from the terrorism of our current oppressors.

 

.

The news of the week are the new procedures implemented at airports around the country in the name of security. Once again we are closing the barn door after the horses are gone and refusing to consider the fact that it is a broken latch that keeps letting them out. First there was 9/11 so the list of prohibited objects in an airport grew immensely. Then there was the shoe bomber so we all have to take off our shoes. Then there was the underwear bomber so now we have to endure the hands of TSA employees in places only our wives or husbands should see. There have already been terrorists who placed explosives in various body cavities, and drug smugglers have been doing that for years. Are we going to have to endure full body cavity searches next?

Our security procedures are a strange mix of political correctness and a total disregard for our rights to be secure in our persons. Political correctness because we are afraid of offending the terrorists who want to kill us, the overwhelming majority of whom are young, middle eastern men from specific countries. They are not toddlers, senior citizens or nuns. Disregard for our rights because no one should be subject to such intimate and invasive procedures just because they want to travel. 99.99% of airline travellers are not terrorists and those 99.99% should not be treated as potential terrorists or criminals just because they want to fly to see grandma over the holidays. Certainly we have the choice as to whether or not we want to fly but it should be our free choice to enter into a private contract with an airline to provide us a service and the government should not require we check our rights or our dignity at the door when we enter into that contract.

There are simple solutions to this problem and they involve getting the government out of the airline security business. That’s right, the government should not be involved in airline security at all. Here is the solution. Let every airline run its own security. Some will say that the airlines will not do a good job but here is where you are wrong. The purpose of an airline is to provide a service, in this case getting people from point A to point B, for a profit. If an airline is lax in its security or maintenance or the ability to provide reliable service, it will gain a reputation for not getting people to their destination in a safe and timely manner. Therefore, they have a vested interest in making sure their planes are safe and well maintained or they will go out of business, and if they are negligent, to jail.

The airlines will go about this in various ways. Some may follow the TSA’s example and provide security with invasive searches and scanners that radiate people. My guess is that these airlines will find fewer passengers once there are choices available to the traveling public. Some may employ bomb sniffing dogs or require prior background checks. Some may employ ex-military personnel like El Al in Israel. Some will reinforce their cockpits or hire sky marshals to ride on every flight. Some may choose to profile. All of these are valid security techniques that incur a wide range of costs. The point is that by allowing each airline to experiment with what works, there will be an equilibrium reached between security and fare that will meet the needs of a variety of passengers. Paying ex-military personnel will be more expensive than having everyone walk naked in front of some minimum wage employee but some may choose the indignity to save money. That choice, however, should be ours.

Choice is the key. Not the choice made for us by some government bureaucrat motivated by political correctness and a complete disregard for our rights but the choice to enter into a private contract. In this case the contract the passenger makes with an airline to utilize its service for a set price. Before we enter into that contract we will be made aware of the security measures that airline takes and if we are dissatisfied with them we should be free to make our contract with another carrier. Will the occasional terrorist slip through the cracks in some airlines that choose the wrong security procedures? Probably at some point but that will be no different than what we have now. After all the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber and the mail bombers all found holes in our current procedures and it was only their ineptitude and the actions of the passengers that prevented catastrophes. Ultimately, that is the key. We voluntarily take the risk when we fly and therefore we are ultimately responsible for our own security. If we see something suspicious, we must act. If a terrorist wants to try something on a plane, we have the right to defend ourselves and our government should not punish us for doing so. For all its attempts to protect us, the fact is that the government can’t. It can’t be everywhere, know everything and properly utilize the tools necessary to prevent every criminal or terrorist act on a plane, or in our neighborhoods. Nor do we want it to try because any attempt to do so will result in a police state where our God-given rights are completely disregarded. We cannot trade liberty for security. It is up to us, as individuals and as a society, to stand together against lawlessness, being willing and able to defend ourselves, our families and our society against those who have no respect for life, liberty, property or our pursuit of happiness.

 

One of the great causes of division in America is the fact that everything, and I mean everything, has become a political issue. Any problem, any complaint, any issue that someone has is now thrown into the political sphere. Consider some of the big news on "the hill" this week. Rodger Clemens, a baseball player, is being prosecuted for lying to congress. What did he allegedly lie about? State secrets, embezzlement, fraud, treason? No. It was whether or not he ever used "performance enhancing" substances. Not to excuse his alleged lying but why was he ever before congress in the first place?! What authority does the government have to regulate A GAME!

We the people, unfortunately, have come to believe that it is right and proper to use the power of government to solve all our problems and meet all our needs. Every time one American citizen says "there ought to be a law" to fix some complaint or offense and another one says "government ought to..." to meet some need or want, our government is happy to intervene and in the process take more or our freedom and more of our money. Did you ever stop and wonder why we have all the special interest groups and lobbyists we love to complain about? It is because each one of them represents some group of citizens, small or large, that want to use the power of government for their own ends. In this game there are winners and losers and the animosity between the two increases as the stakes get higher and government becomes larger and more powerful. For every citizen that wants the government to do something, there is another citizen that must pay for it and give up some bit of freedom to accommodate this new government activity. That other citizen must now "lobby" on his own behalf, playing the game for his own protection. The government becomes no more than a legalized criminal enterprise, granting arbitrary favors and demanding payment for protection.

When we play this game, however, we never know when the power of government may be turned against us. That is why elections are so contentious. We feel the need to elect people who will protect the privileged status or benefits we have lobbied for and if the "opposition" gets elected, we think we are in danger of losing that status or those benefits. The dirty little secret is that the politicians are doing nothing but playing each of us against the other in order to increase their own power. They scare us exactly along those lines, that some group will lose this or that privilege or that government will adopt some policy destructive to our values or new found "rights". This scheme goes back to FDR who was the first politician on the national stage to adopt this strategy and it has been used ever since by both major parties. It is a game plan in which "we the people" ultimately lose because every time an individual or group succeeds in getting a piece of the government pie, we all lose more money and more liberty while government grows larger and becomes farther removed from its only legitimate purpose.

With the ascendancy of Barak Obama to the presidency, the mask has come off and this process of remaking our understanding of the purpose of government has reached its logical conclusion. President Obama’s only experience in life outside of government was as a community organizer. What does a community organizer do? He or she organizes the citizens of a community to more effectively lobby the government so they can receive some benefit. Now that they are in charge they have discarded the rhetoric of freedom and responsibility that has historically at least served as a veneer for self serving politicians and unabashedly proclaim that government can do anything, meet any need and solve any problem. If "we the people" would just shut up and let the experts in government take care of us, we would realize an American Utopia where everyone is equally healthy, wealthy and wise.

Think about the attitude of the people who desire to be "public servants" as election day approaches. Why do 99.9% of people go into government, either as elected politicians or unelected bureaucrats? One of two reasons. First, there are the selfish ones who want to receive personal benefits from fleecing "we the people". The elected ones want the prestige and the ability to use the power of government to enrich themselves and their friends. The appointed or hired ones want to receive pay an average of 20% more than similar jobs in the private sector, generous health benefits, pensions in which the taxpayers pay their salaries for the rest of their lives and the security of knowing that their job does not depend on their efficiency, value or success but on the ability of the politicians to wring enough money out of the rest of us to ensure their perpetual employment, with raises. Then there are the people who go into "public service" because they truly believe that government is the answer and that all problems should be solved by forcing people to pay for and conform to their vision of how people should behave and society should be organized. The only substantial difference between the con artists and "true believers" in our government and those of Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany are the penalties for non-conformity. We may be fined, jailed or litigated to death instead of being put in the gulag, concentration camp or shot outright. As our government becomes more and more totalitarian our real freedom becomes a distant memory squashed under the heel, not of a jack booted storm trooper, but the expensive wingtips of a highly paid bureaucrat.

The purpose of government, as defined in the Declaration of Independence, is to protect our God-given rights, among them being our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The only legitimate reason government has for using force against any citizen is if that citizen has violated the rights of his fellow. It does not have the legitimate right to extort money from one citizen to give it to another. It does not have the legitimate right to regulate the behavior of one citizen because it may offend another. It does not have the right to grant privileged status to one citizen and reduce the status of another. A government that was limited to the protection of our rights run by people who believed that was the only purpose of government would not be involved in most of the things that divide us so deeply. It would not be using the money it forcibly extracts from us for things we don’t approve of. It would not be surrounded by lobbyists circling like jackals to rip a larger piece of flesh from the taxpayer. It would be a government irrelevant to the daily lives of its citizens, staying out of their pockets and activities, allowing them to peruse their dreams, only interfering to call an actual penalty when necessary. It would be a government that would once again unshackle the indomitable human spirit which has yet to meet a problem that time and determination exercised in a free environment in which the rewards belong solely to the one who expended the effort cannot solve.

There is only one way that is going to happen and that is if we make it happen. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are just pieces of paper with wonderful ideas that only have worth when people of flesh and blood believe in their words and principles and act upon them. Only when people in government believe that their only task is to protect our rights will our rights be protected. Only when "we the people" believe that government exists only to protect our rights will we put people in government who will not use the power of government against us. Only when "we the people" stop expecting government to solve our problems, meet our needs and grant our wishes will we get the government the founders envisioned, the government best for us. We get the government we want. If we want a government that meets our every need, we will live as beggars and slaves. If we want a government irrelevant to our daily lives we need to start learning to live without it and elect people who will deconstruct it.

www.patricksamuels.com

The controversy of the day is the construction of a mosque in the shadow of the "ground zero" site. The talk shows are afire with all the reasons why it should not be built. Is it insensitive on the part of Muslims-certainly. Is it an exercise of freedom of religion and private property rights to build it-yes. Does it make most of us angry-oh yeah. But why? Why do seventy percent of us oppose the construction of this mosque? Is it fair to "profile" all Muslims for the actions of a few? Why are we reluctant to believe the statements of its organizers who assure us that the Muslim center is meant to be a bridge between the Muslim community and all Americans, a vehicle for healing and peace?

As a "radical" libertarian, it would seem impossible to come to the conclusion that the mosque should not be built even on the "sacred" site itself. After all, if the only purpose of government is to protect our rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and private property, how can we legitimately use the power of government to prevent this free exercise of religious expression? If it was a church, cathedral, synagogue, Hindu temple, Shinto shrine or Buddhist monastery, it would be nigh impossible. But it is not; it is a mosque, the symbol and center of the Muslim community, the focal point for the followers of the prophet Mohammed.

 

The crucial issue at hand is the fundamental nature of Islam and that is where we must go to make our case. The first thing we need to do is eliminate all the talk of religion and religious expression. That is irrelevant and we need to move our argument elsewhere. Listening to some commentators, they make a big deal about how Islam is an all encompassing way of life as opposed to...what? Christianity? Does not Christianity have ritual, symbols, a calendar of festivals? Do you not hear your preacher exhort you to live a "holy life", making every decision in accordance with the teachings of Jesus? What about Judaism with its 613 commandments, the Mishnah and the teachings of the rabbis that deal with the most arcane and seemingly insignificant areas of life. The Amish and some communities of orthodox Jews live lives just as separate and are just as devoted to their way of life as are Muslims, radical or otherwise.

But Muslims want to take over the world. Oh? And Christians do not want to convert every soul to their religion? Isn’t Judaism to be a "light to all nations"? No, the argument cannot be made there either. Discussing this as a religious issue in the common parlance will get us nowhere. We must ask the more fundamental questions. What is the purpose of religion? It is to give the individual a connection with the divine and a context in which to apply the product of that connection in the everyday world. Because religion is such an transcendent individual experience, it is explained through symbol and analogy and these evolve into religious expressions and for the "unsophisticated", superstition. Because of the ecstatic nature of religious experiences, people who have had them desire to share them. If the individual’s experience is profound and powerful enough, they may start a new "religion."

This is where history comes in. Judaism began with Abraham, Christianity with Jesus, Buddhism with Siddharta Gautama. To become part of Judaism, in the days of Abraham and in the present, one has to be born into the clan or voluntarily convert. Jesus preached voluntary repentance as did his followers and if one wants to be a Christian today, one has to voluntarily convert. Buddhism is a voluntary commitment to seek enlightenment. In contrast to the origins of all these other major religions, Islam began as a political system. By that I mean that from the beginning Islam used physical force to convert and enforce its edicts. That is the fundamental difference between religion and politics. Religion uses persuasion to influence belief and behavior, politics uses physical force. Within our social system, religion is a matter of conscience, people involved in religion employ the power of persuasion to influence behavior and belief. Politics, on the other hand, is concerned with the proper application of force, the power of the state, to influence behavior and ideas. For a libertarian, the use of state power to "positively" influence behavior rather than "negatively" employ it to protect personal and property rights, is where all governments become tyrannical. Islam began with the assumption that it is proper, that it is "God’s will", to use force to make others believe and behave in certain ways and that makes it a political system and it needs to be treated as such. There is not freedom of conscience in an Islamic system. In an Islamic state on cannot choose certain personal behaviors or beliefs. A woman in a bikini would be stoned in Iran or Saudi Arabia. Men without beards were killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Converting to another religion is also punishable by death. Women and children are mere property to be bartered with, abused and discarded. While some may decry the desires of the "religious right" to use the power of the state to impose morality, I know of no preachers who advocate the death penalty for the violation of a dress code, promiscuous behavior or conversion.

Using the power of the state to enforce moral behavior that does not violate the rights of others is a bad idea and in direct contradiction to the founding principles of this country. That is what freedom of conscience is all about. If one chooses to be part of a religion, one can voluntarily accept restrictions on behavior but that religion does not have the right to force you to do so or punish you with fines, imprisonment or death for violations. When religion becomes entwined with the state, using the power of the state to enforce its edicts, it always ends badly. The inquisition and witch hunts are two examples of Christianity getting away from its roots and experimenting with political power. However, the roots of Christianity and the other major religions were not political so such things are the exception and not the rule. Because Islam began as a political ideology, its abuses are the rule rather than the exception. Even in places like America and Europe where Islam does not have control of the power of the state, its war against rival ideologies is apparent. Outright attacks are part of that. Honor killings are another. The murder of filmmakers and cartoonists. The desire to enforce sharia law in their communities is another even though such enforcement is in direct contradiction with constitutional law and our founding principles. Are there some Muslims in America that have made the ideological leap and view Islam as a religion and not as a political ideology? Yes, but they are the exception. Those few have, in reality, abandoned Islam as conceived by its founder and are making it something else and that takes courage and persistence. Until the majority of Muslims make that leap and stop cheering every successful terrorist attack, they must be viewed as members of a violent and destructive political group and not as part of the larger religious community.

 

Because of this, the construction of the mosque is not a "freedom of religion" issue because we are not dealing with a religion, we are dealing with a political ideology. Most Americans perceive Islam as a religion because in the United States, it does not have real political power although in our politically correct culture, they do have an inordinate amount of influence. It is perceived as a religion because we find common themes with Muslims-prayer, worship, morality. But beneath the veneer is a political ideology that desires to enslave as it has in just about every country where it has become dominant. If we as Americans refuse to accept and understand that truth, actual acts of violence will escalate in accordance with the rhetoric we already hear from most Imams. Islam must be treated not on par with Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism but as we once understood Communism or Fascism-ideologies incompatible with our founding principles and therefore direct threats to the country, our freedom and our way of life.

As Americans, we have the right of self preservation, individually and communally. We have a country based on certain principles and ideals and we enjoy their fruits. We do not have to tolerate an ideology that is in direct opposition to those ideals and has not hesitated to use violence to advance its cause. This is more than a national security issue, it is about preserving our basic freedoms for our posterity. We do not have to let the politically correct crowd’s view of constitutional liberty transform our founding document into a suicide pact. We have a right to our country and Muslims have plenty of other places in the world in which to live. Harsh words for some but we are talking about self preservation here. Immigration from Muslim countries should be stopped immediately. Imams or other Muslims who are not US citizens should be deported immediately if their rhetoric or behavior in any way advocates violence. There should be a moratorium on any mosque or "community center" construction. They certainly shouldn’t be allowed to build a monument to their greatest attack as of yet in New York. Sound ridiculous? Would we not do the same if some neo-nazi group started building "community centers" where they advocated the violent overthrow of the government? Didn’t we round up Germans, Japanese and Italians, most of whom were good Americans and posed no threat, when their counties went to war against us? When are we going to realize that Islam is at war with the west just as the communists of the Soviet Union were? Their war was mostly "cold" just as ours is, but the primary front is not only in a distant country like Vietnam or Iraq but in our own cities and towns. No one doubted the intentions of the communists to "bury us" and the rhetoric of most Muslim leaders is no less vehement in advocating our destruction. We are, after all, the Great Satan.

So why do so many on the "left" support the "right" of the Muslims to build the mosque? Because ideologically, there is no difference between liberals/progressives and Muslims. They both believe in using the power of the state to enforce their ideas of how every human being should live and believe. One wraps itself in the cloak of religion, the other in environmentalism or fairness or social justice. The result is the same. Those who are under such systems are slaves, under the threat of the whip or the sword of their masters, freedom a distant memory, fear a constant companion. If liberty is to survive, if future generations are going to enjoy the vision our founders had for the country, we must jealously and unapologetically guard what freedom remains and stop retreating under the onslaught of political correctness or under misconstrued arguments for religious tolerance. It is time to advance the cause of freedom before it disappears forever from our blessed land.

www.patricksamuels.com

 

     What determines our morality? How do we determine the right course of action? How do we differentiate right from wrong? In the political sphere, how do we argue against our current rush into socialism? Too often, much too often, we quote polls or election results or statistics. If one major party or another wins an election, especially by a large majority, it becomes a license to act according to their platform or program, no matter how destructive, irrational or wrong. The statists for years have been arguing from polls, getting the ‘feeling’ for what the people want, using the media to steer their desires, stating their case from the standpoint of emotional crisis. They have convinced the majority of the people that a government answer to a problem is the only answer that needs to be explored, the politicians simply need to argue details and emphasis. Every year we slip further and further into the statist nightmare, we lose more and more liberty, the government gets bigger and bigger, exerts greater and greater control and takes more and more money. Few statists are honest about their goals because most people, due to the fact that they have been endowed by their Creator with a rudimentary understanding of the basic rights and liberties that make us human, would never choose slavery given an opportunity to hear a reasoned argument for and against its adoption. Nor do most want to be honest about the logical conclusions of statism, it has always led to the gulag and the death camps because it negates the value of the individual and the individual’s inherent rights. They simply want to be pragmatic, getting the benefits while trying to balance an inherently unbalanced system, hoping to get theirs before everything comes apart. Now that there is a group in charge who are unbalancing the system in order to bring about the final resolution of the conflict between freedom and tyranny in favor of tyranny, people are getting nervous, at the least.

     What do we hear from those who rail against the obviously socialist polices and actions of our government, the so-called conservatives? Two thirds of the people want health care repealed. This percentage think we shouldn’t bail out the banks. A certain percentage don’t think we should own General Motors. For those who make such argument, what happens if the majority do want health care, bank bailouts or direct government ownership of industries? Where are their arguments then? The same place as their arguments against Social Security and Medicare. They don’t make them because the majority of the people, while they may complain, don’t want them repealed or abolished. Because of that, arguments based on polls or public opinion or even elections cannot ever be winners for libertarians. The statists have the time to make people comfortable in their slavery, accepting of their chains, and in so doing they move the argument; not over whether or not to have state control of this or that arena but only the degree of control.   At best, policy based on public opinion is what we have now, with a hodgepodge of special interest groups vying for an ever larger piece of the pie. At worst, it becomes mob rule in which anything becomes possible and no right or property is respected.

     The men who founded this nation did so according to principles, the key one of which was an understanding of the sacrosanct nature of individual rights. Men have a right to their lives as men. Their lives and the production of their lives does not belong to any other man and it certainly does not belong to the state. That is the fundamental argument that needs to be joined today. Not over how to reform a system that has become increasing statist. The reformers will always lose because it only requires another election to reverse any progress made in the defense of liberty. We should not be arguing about what degree of statism we should have but whether the state should be involved in any of the things we currently accept. If we are going to argue against government run health care and be consistent, we cannot accept Medicare and Medicaid as legitimate forms of government intervention. If we try, the most consistent argument will win and the most consistent argument will either be all or nothing. The argument that allows exceptions will lose every time because once the exception is allowed, the premise of government control is accepted and the game is over. The same could be said for any government intervention in the market or our lives that is not directly related to the preservation of our fundamental rights.

     It is time that those who stand for liberty stop trying to be “moderate”, accepting a degree of slavery, a degree of respect for rights, a degree of redistribution, a degree of social justice, a degree of security or a degree of brute force. It is time to stand on absolute principles and learn to articulate those principles. After all, the fundamental nature of man yearns to be free, he must be fooled into becoming a slave. For too long so called “conservatives” have cooperated in the deception of the statists to reduce us all to servitude. They have failed to rise up to promote the “extreme” of “absolute” liberty. They have made arguments from fickle popular opinion, faith or even through appeals to history for history's sake and not according to the fundamental nature of man or the moral principles that make liberty and freedom so much better than tyranny. If we do not explain it and live it, freedom will continue to lose.

     One of the major differences between a republic and an authoritarian dictatorship is the glue that holds it together. In a dictatorship order is established through fear. In a republic, the social order is held together by a common respect for the law and a mutual appreciation for the system. “Law and Order” has been ingrained in the American psyche since the beginning, and rightly so. Anarchy is the antithesis of the American experience. It is the moral character of the individual citizen and a respect for the law that allows our society to function smoothly without an overwhelming police presence. The reason our system works is because the vast majority of the people are inclined to obey the law, even if they don’t always agree with it.

     The major reason for this is because we believe we live in a representative republic. We vote for people who make the laws with our best interests in mind. These leaders are supposed to respect our God given rights and create laws that solve any problems that crop up. Our system was designed to move slowly and deliberately so every law was carefully considered and the likelihood of a bad law being pushed through by a bad legislator or two was minimal. That was the idea. However, our republic now exists in form only and the system works very differently today.

     The electoral system is designed to maintain party leadership through gerrymandered districts and the creation of law has been outsourced to lobbyists and special interests. Our legislators, by their own admission, don’t understand or even read the legislation they pass. Most power has passed to the executive branch which interprets and implements the arcane legalese of current legislation. The average citizen is, for all intents and purposes, locked out of this process. Laws come down from on high that, at best, may not have our best interests at heart, and at worst, may be detrimental to our liberty and the health of the country as a whole; but are very good for expanding the power of those in charge.

     Consider where we are today. New laws, the rules of the game we are all supposed to respect and abide by, are being pushed by radical communists like Nancy Pelosi and voted on by congressmen who think islands tip over if too many people are put on them. They are written by radical policy groups, interpreted by executive branch bureaucrats and implemented by federal union workers. Does anyone think this is a system that works for us? The original cry of the rebellion was “No Taxation without Representation”. Our government has gone far beyond that. They create programs that create more problems and tear apart the very fabric of our society, rewarding immorality and corruption and punishing the “law abiding citizen”. They spend, borrow and print money in ways that will eventually destroy the economy. They confiscate the wealth of one citizen to give it to another and often that other isn’t even a citizen but a criminal alien. They give rights to terrorists and take them from us. The list could go on.

     The question then becomes, are we obligated to dig our own grave? At what point does the system and the laws it produces become so immoral that it is moral to become criminal? Consider the civil rights movement of the sixties. The law says “sit in the back of the bus; drink from this water fountain; go to this diner.” They were all legitimate laws passed by democratically elected representatives. Perhaps the blacks had little or no say but do we really have any more? If we are told to sit in the back of the bus but can see that the bus is heading for a cliff, do we not have the moral duty to disobey the law in order to do the right thing and try to save the bus and everyone on it? At what point does an immoral law, a law that directly attacks our God-given rights and the guarantees to be secure in our person and property under our contract, motivate us to act morally? At what point does the confiscation of our property, the attempts to silence our speech, the removal of our rights to self protection and self determination become too much? How much must they take before we realize we have been raped and beaten and if we do nothing, the death blow will quickly follow?  

     The only obligation we have to follow the dictates and proclamations of the “gods” on Mt. Washington is the obligation we create in our own minds. We the people as part of the various states entered into a contract with the “national” government and that contract is called the Constitution. It defines the duties and responsibilities of both parties. The federal government has its areas of responsibility and the people and the states has theirs. There has been an egregious breach of that contract by the federal government. Look at it this way. If you and I enter into a business contract in which I promise to deliver some item and you promise to pay a certain price for it and I don’t deliver that item, are you morally or legally obligated to pay for it? Of course not. Yet our federal government has refused to follow the stipulations of the contract and we continue to feel legally and morally obligated to pay.   We are not under any moral obligation to recognize the authority of a governments that has invented and stolen its power. Of course the government could force us to obey its edicts and endure the confiscation of our liberty and property.   These threats are becoming the primary motivation for the American people to yield to the increasing demands of Washington. No one wants to go pay a fine or go to jail, no one wants the stigma of being a criminal. But isn’t this how totalitarian regimes maintain control? Through intimidation and fear? In a republic, the government fears the people. If Washington can continue to count on our cooperation and support for their tyrannical actions, what do they have to fear? Nothing. Before our government’s despotism takes a very dark turn, we need to muster the courage of the original patriots, willing to risk it all and do what is right and moral, even if its not legal.

www.patricksamuels.com

     On of the things that irritates people about the political process is that so few of the men or women who are part of it are principled, and even fewer are willing to consistently stand on their principles. First, allow me to define a principle. Webster’s defines it as a “fundamental truth or law, a moral rule.”   I will also quote Ayn Rand’s definition, because I find it highly instructive. 

     “A principle is “a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend.” Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one’s long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and achieve it.” (Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, p143.)

     It is the lack of principles that have led, politically, fiscally and morally, to the situation in which we find ourselves. We have politicians we assume are corrupt and self-serving, debt we cannot repay, citizens who are content to be slaves whining for their basic bread from the hand of the state. Our political discourse consists of petty arguments over how to properly allocate billions or trillions of dollars to special interest groups in order for the politicians to secure their power and re-election. The only principle involved is that of power, gaining it and expanding it. The fiscal and moral health of the country, any consistency of program or policy, is all sacrificed on the altar of power. Power over the individual, the collective, over you and I. The power to determine every decision, the power to mold and shape minds, the power to control everything in society, for their own egomania. They happily sacrifice the freedom and rights of the individual on the altar of “the public good” or the “greater good” or “social justice.”   The merrily go about confiscating the wealth of those who produce it for their own aggrandizement and the perpetuation of the perverse system that supports them. They speak the language of “compromise,” “fairness,” and “bi-partisanship,” but they are all lies to hide their true motives and the consistent advancement of their cause at the expense of our liberty.

     There can be no compromise with evil.   Strong word, you say? Any man or system that proposes to reduce or eliminate my God-given rights to life, liberty and property is evil. Any man who believes it is in his power to grant or abrogate natural rights is evil. Any system that believes it has first rights to the labor of our bodies and minds, that thinks it owns our production and our property, that it has the right to dictate every decision and action, that our liberty is inconsequential to their desire for control is evil. I state that unapologetically. Therefore the struggle of liberty and tyranny, freedom and state control is one of good and evil, the free state of man as God intended versus man as a slave of the state. To “give up essential liberty...for a little temporary security,” as Franklin said, is a false choice for a free people. To give up a natural right, or any portion thereof, reduces our humanity. Any compromise of our freedom is only a green light to the statists to take more.

     In “the Anatomy of a Compromise”, Ayn Rand lists three rules about the application of principles.

1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.

2.   In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.

3. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden and evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

     Let us briefly look at each one of these in turn. In the first, the men involved purport to hold the same principles. However, if they disagree, one of them is inconsistent. For example, if two politicians hold the principle that job creation is important yet one supports government policies that have historically been demonstrated to drag the economy down, he betrays his true motivations and priorities. One of the reasons the Democrat party has been successful in moving the country ever closer to statism is because while both major parties believe in wielding the power of government, the Democrat party has been more consistent in its advancement and application while the Republicans have attempted to give lip service to limited government, while their actions demonstrate their inconsistency.   The problem we have in America is that both the political powers hold the same principles-those that support government expansion-and the only way to reverse our progress toward totalitarianism is to change the principles upon which our politicians govern and the principles by which we the citizens expect our politicians to govern.

     The second one states that in any collaboration between two different principles, the evil one wins. This is simply articulated by this quote from Atlas Shrugged. “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”   The Bible says the same thing, “A little leaven works its way through the whole batch of dough.” Any compromise which betrays a basic principle, any policy that infringes on basic rights, no matter what the supposed “emergency” or “crisis”, is a victory for statism. We cannot save freedom by abandoning freedom. A little poison or a lot of it will still bring about the same result.

     Finally, as we enter the debates in what could be the most important election in America’s history, an election that will put people in office who will be in a position to guide us through the most difficult times since our inception as a nation, who may determine the very survival of our nation and our way of life, we need to clearly define the issues. Platitudes, bumper stickers, sound bites and flashy smiles are not going to lead to the restoration of our liberty and the stability of our country. The statists will win if their true motives and the principles by which they govern remain hidden or they are allowed to evade answers to the crucial questions. Only the irrational would willingly vote for someone who said that their goal was to control every aspect of our lives, to confiscate all our wealth, that they believed the state owns our property and our very bodies, that it was only their desire for control that led them into politics in the first place. Yet those who support the status quo of our current government operation govern according to those principles. We need people to run for office who have the courage and the ability to articulate and apply the principles of liberty at all levels of our government. People who will consistently and unapologetically make the argument for the founder’s vision of America, a vision of limited government, individual freedom, God-given rights and laissez-faire economic policy that made us the “shining city on a hill” for so much of our history.

     “The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.” Ayn Rand

     Or, put another way, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

       After a year of protest, many are wondering “What’s next?” Many found their tax day protests less well attended than last year and with the passage of Health Care Reform over our vehement and organized resistance, discouragement is a real possibility. This is a function of the narrow focus conservatives as a whole have taken for decades, a focus that determined statists/progressives have been able to overcome with relative ease, until this last year. That focus is on politics and policy. Conservative publications and talk radio have been opposing our socialist creep with passion and eloquence for years yet every year government gets bigger and more intrusive. Every year government takes more of our money and liberty. The only thing that has changed in the last year is that by accelerating their agenda under the Obama administration, the statists have woken many more people up but the focus, for the most part, is the same. We argue policy and play politics, we try to influence increasingly detached and determined politicians, hoping throwing the bums out and putting in a new crop of politicians will solve our problem. How did that work in the eighties with the “Reagan revolution” and the nineties with the “Contract with America”? Is government smaller? Were they any more than a bump in the road to totalitarianism?

     We need to attack the root of the problem and that goes far beyond politics. Ultimately, the problem lies with our attitude. We have come to believe that the proper application of government is the solution to any problem. Some have criticized the statists for following a failed model, mocking them for believing that the socialist/communist system would work if it was just done properly by the right people. Yet the Republican party and other conservatives believe if we just “reform” the system, properly applying government, they will restore liberty and reduce government. Tinkering with a microwave won’t make it into a blender. Socialism is socialism and it cannot be ‘reformed’ to restore liberty because a statist system is diametrically opposed to freedom. The only way of restoring liberty is to dismantle the system we have and, in our case, reestablish the constitutionally limited government our founders envisioned.

    It is the fact that we have allowed the growth of government, particularly in Washington, that is the cause of almost all our ills. Consider the constant complaining about how “divided” America is. The reason for that division is that the government solutions we want are being applied almost exclusively at the national level, creating a set of winners and losers on every issue nationwide. Abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, spending, health care, just about any social issue you can name is being handled at the national level and that creates anger and feelings of impotence among the losers and arrogant gloating among the winners. The federal government was not designed to handle social problems and our attempts to do so have resulted in the wasteful behemoth that now sits beside the Potomac. The states, and more importantly, the people in their private organizations and religious associations, are much better equipped to handle social ills and they do so without angering half the populace with waste, fraud, corruption and improper application of their tax dollars.

     More importantly, the more we either allow or expect the government to do for us, the greater the destruction of our individual and corporate moral character. Socialism is designed to create weak and dependent people, the complete opposite of the characteristics of the people that made this country great. I would define the American character as a mix of rugged individualism, inventiveness, moral strength, compassion, honesty, frugality and a puritan work ethic. These things are required of a free people. Freedom creates these characteristics. Ultimately it comes down to this quote from the Bible. “If a man does not work, he should not eat.” If failure is an option, and I mean real failure where basic necessities like food and shelter are in jeopardy, men and women need to value hard work, they need to be inventive. Occasionally they will be reduced to relying on the generosity of friends and families but that generosity will be controlled by private individuals who will expect a lot form the recipient. If the “safety net” is only provided privately and reduces those who need it to “beggars” the motivation to do whatever is necessary (the jobs Americans just won’t do) to stay out of that position will be strong. In a free society there should be no top or bottom to the ladder of achievement and no government interference with our ascent or descent upon it. That was what took America from a few colonies on the Atlantic seaboard to a world power in a century and a half.

     Socialism, looking to the government rather than to ourselves to solve problems, is just the opposite. Socialism destroys good character because it creates dependent, expectant, people. It has made the states and the people beggars and removes them from responsibility for their actions. Consider welfare. If the government forces people to give through taxes to support people who have made bad decisions in life, it destroys the character of the people on both ends. The one who is forced to give resents it because government applies and wastes money in ways that are foolish and destructive. Seeing this, he becomes less inclined toward productive enterprise. The one who receives it becomes comfortable and has no motivation to make correct choices. Family responsibilities, proper child rearing, and any work ethic whatsoever go out the window when the safety net is perceived as a right rather than a privilege and we can see the results of this everywhere. 

     It is not only the poor that suffer the detrimental effects of socialism. Family units are weakened by the expectations we have of government. Once upon a time the family unit was paramount. It was the family that was the primary caregiver and educator of children and of the aged. With public school and social security we have allowed individuals in the middle to behave selfishly and evade responsibility. Instead of creating value among families and communities, socialist governments remove our responsibilites to each other and appropriates them to itself. Ultimately, this means that society places little value on the people at both ends of the spectrum. The old are warehoused on the public tab until they die and children are not taught to be exceptional but government automatons who will give their loyalty and support to the state until they reach the end of their usefulness. It also destroys neighborhoods and communities because our primary relationships are not with our neighbors but with the government and it is the relationships that affect us most that we spend the most time on.

     Short term and long term we need to reverse this trend. This is where the tea parties should broaden their efforts outside of politics and teach people within and without to become what Americans used to be. It is the restoration of the American character that will save this country. It will not be easy because we are swimming against the tide, socialism is all around us. It needs to be done, however, if for no other reason than the safety net is developing some serious holes. There are a number of very real scenarios in which the government will no longer be able to pay the largess we have become used to. Some may happen suddenly-the inability to borrow any more money, hyperinflation, total collapse of the housing and stock markets due to a crisis elsewhere, war with Iran and a reduction in the oil supply-or slowly-the interest on the debt eating up all our money, continued attrition of the tax base. The unfortunate thing is that most of us have lost the skill sets our ancestors took for granted that allow us to meet our basic needs when our all mighty government cannot. 

     Here are my suggestions for going beyond protests among the tea party adherents and concerned citizens everywhere. Politically we need to be the people of no. No more socialism, no more government solutions. Repealing health care is just the start. No more welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Education, Labor or Energy departments, or any other activity government is currently engaged in that is not in the constitution. Reduce Washington to a sleepy little town that requires a few hundred billion dollars to run. We can do that voluntarily or it will be done for us through economic collapse. Unfortunately I doubt we have the will or the time to do it voluntarily.

     We need to develop a comprehensive program among our families, neighbors and communities. We must become the leaders who will be prepared to rise up when the whole thing comes crashing down. Among our families we need to make correct and moral decisions to be able to meet the needs of ourselves and our loved ones. Have things of value other than dollars or bits of information in a computer somewhere. Store food and learn how to provide for yourself. Make sure you have the means to protect yourself from the looters. All of us can do these things now and they are smart actions regardless of what happens.    

      Then we should become educated in the things that our grandparents and great-grandparents took for granted. Learning to be resourceful and repairing things rather than replacing them constantly in our throw-away society. Knowledge of medicine and first aid beyond band-aids and trips to the emergency room. Learning how to produce our own food. Educating ourselves so we can educate our own children. The creation of contingency plans in case we need to protect ourselves from the looters or the government. The point is to be able to acquire our basic resources locally and make ourselves independent of government and its foolish actions. There is a wealth of knowledge among patriots, particularly those who have been around the block a few times, that needs to be coordinated and disseminated among all of us. This should be done among neighbors and communities, organized at the local level. And it needs to be done on a personal level, face to face, with as little reliance upon impersonal communication as possible. In order to create tightly knit communities, we need to get to know one another and that only happens when we can look one another in the eye.

      By emphasizing personal actions at the local level, tea party participants gain a sense of accomplishment, something often missing in the political arena where things happen slowly, elections have to we waited for and, as we have seen, the higher one goes the more insulated politicians are from reality and our voices.   Creating independence from government at all levels will, in the short term, prepare us for the time in the near future when governments are no longer able to provide all the things they do today. That is already happening among states and local governments who can’t pull all the financial tricks Washington can.   When the Washington ponzi scheme comes apart, states and local government will not be in a position to pick up the slack and we will be on our own whether we like it or not. Long term, by creating a sense of independent pride rather than dependent expectation, those who will rebuild this nation will do so with a great appreciation for the vision of the founders and the essential nature of an American character rooted in liberty and personal responsibility.

www.patricksamuels.com

       The tyrannical enemy we face is indeed formidable. The Federal Government is huge. Looking beyond the few elected members, consider the myriad of agencies staffed by two million government employees. That does not include the armed services, employees of the postal service and other contractors. All these employees are there to create and implement all the rules and regulations we live under, tens of thousands of pages every year. They are also there to spend/waste the trillions of dollars they squeeze out of us every year. Our national government, ruling over a vast empire at home and abroad, is larger, richer and more powerful than any in history. That government is, and has been, bent on imposing its totalitarian will upon every freedom loving person at home and now, every democracy abroad. Its momentum toward this goal has become nearly irresistible.

     Many look to our electoral system to tame the beast. In one hundred years we have had fifty congressional elections and twenty five presidential elections. Some of them were even called “revolutions”. Yet every year government grows, more money is collected and spent and our freedoms are confined in an ever shrinking box. Our national vehicle is speeding towards the grand canyon. A slight shift to the right or left is not going to keep us from going over the edge into the chasm of fiscal disaster and absolute tyranny. Gerrymandering and other electoral tricks are designed to maintain the status quo and continuity of leadership within the parties. The occasional seat turnover or even changes in party control do nothing to change our direction. The most they do is make slight adjustments in heading or speed.

    Beyond even that, consider the people we elect, even if they promise “change”. Who will we be replacing our current crop with? Most of them will still be career politicians who are in “public service” because they believe, fundamentally, that government is the solution, it just hasn’t been done right. Whether Democrat or Republican, each one believes, with few exceptions, that they have the solution to any problem and that solution is the proper utilization of government. That, however, is the problem. Most politicians, and a majority of the population, have come to accept the idea that the proper solution to any problem is a government solution. Of course too often any government solution creates ten more problems. But to the politicians that doesn’t matter. They increase their power and prestige and such a paradigm brings people, rich and poor alike, to their feet begging for favors. As long as there are millions, billions, and now trillions of our dollars in the hands of our politicians at every level, things will not change. For most men and women in public service, the temptation is simply too great. And for far too many, the utilization of such a system is the fulfillment of their dreams.

     “We the People” need to change our thinking about our government. It is not a mischievous puppy that we just need to train properly. It is the many headed hydra bent on eating even the marrow from our bones. Cutting off a head here and there is not going to do any good. They just seem to grow back. Consider welfare reform. It may have curbed some of the abuses and was a turn in the right direction but it needed only a new majority to put it back the way it was. How many times have we heard politicians say they are going to eliminate this or that agency? Have any of them disappeared? No. Its heads continue to grow and multiply every year with every election. The only weapon we have utilized up to this point is a two edged sword; one edge has a “D” and the other has an “R” and it has the consistency of overcooked spaghetti.   It would almost seem hopeless, and we don’t have the head of Medusa to turn it to stone.

     The beast does have an Achilles' heel, however. The beast feeds upon us, our wealth and our liberty. We stand out in the open, willingly yielding our flesh to its insatiable appetite even while we mouth empty protests. The only chains that hold us before the monster are the ones we voluntarily place on ourselves. Those chains are a misguided loyalty to what the beast once was. Before it was the hydra, the beast that is our government was a relatively docile beast of burden. It was well secured by the chains of the constitution and it served us well for over one hundred years. Then an alien organism from Europe infected our animal and it gradually morphed into the horrific monster that threatens us today. It has broken and discarded its chains and now demands our servitude. It no more resembles its original form as the cute gecko from the Geico commercials resembles a Tyrannosaurs Rex. It may have four extremities, a tail and scales but that is where any similarity ends. We are no longer dealing with a constitutional republic or even a democracy but an authoritarian oligarchy. In our fight against our government we do no disservice to the vision of Adams, Madison, Jefferson or Washington. The beast trampled their vision long ago. I would think they would be rather proud of our efforts to resist the its tyranny.

     That understood, how do we kill the beast? How do we exploit its “Achilles' Heel”? Every government requires money to operate. Ours requires trillions of dollars. Right now it devours around a third of everything we produce in this country. It won’t be long until it demands half. New taxes for health care, higher taxes to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent, a Value Added Tax are all coming. And we keep paying. Voluntarily we offer up our flesh and blood to feed the beast. Sure we complain. Sure it hurts because there are a lot of things we would rather do with that sizable chunk of money. Sure it annoys us because we know our money is being used to forge ever tighter chains or simply turned into worthless manure. But we stand there and take it because we think we have no choice, because we are afraid of the beast, because we have been brainwashed into thinking we asked for it so we have no right to refuse. We have every right to refuse. No man or government has the right to demand our involuntary servitude. No man or government has the right to seize our property. No man or government has the right to annihilate our liberty.   It is time to finally stand up and say NO. NO, you may no longer take the fruits of my labor. NO, my property is mine and I do not own it simply at your pleasure. NO, my rights and liberties come from God and not you and you may not manipulate them or take them as you wish. It is our refusal as a people that will bring down the beast.

     There are two ways to go about this. Keeping with our analogy, we can run or we can hide. If we hide we follow the lead of the characters of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Those men and women walked away, refusing to feed the voracious appetite of the looters any longer. Some of us can just walk away, some can sell their businesses and homes and put the proceeds where the government cannot confiscate them and wait until the beast collapses from malnourishment. If the ten percent that pay the vast majority of the taxes stop creating wealth for a while, the end will come quickly. The other way is to “run”. Not really literally. This would be following the path of resistance movements throughout history, including our own revolutionary generation. Create an underground economy and stop cooperating with the government. Do not obey their mandates or collect their taxes. Work on a cash (or gold/silver/barter) basis with your fellow patriots. Starve the beast of our money and cooperation. Riskier perhaps, but it also accomplishes something important that hiding does not. It creates tightly knit and organized communities that will be necessary when the beast succumbs. And it will fall. We are already stretched to the limit and even if we do nothing, the whole system, governmental and economic, is going to collapse. It is “unsustainable”. A good case could be made that our current crop of rulers is trying to hasten that end.

     The question becomes, then what? When the government can no longer meet the needs of the looters and we “test the bonds of social cohesion” as Moody’s said, what happens next? The crisis will be messy and difficult for all. At that point there will be those who are going to try to “fundamentally transform” this country, getting rid of the last vestiges of the American ideal and the vision of the founders. If they succeed, they will use the crisis, a crisis they precipitated, to impose an absolute tyranny and our God given rights and liberties will be reduced to a distant memory. We and our children will be consigned to perpetual slavery for there is no great power that will rescue us from that despotic regime.   Or we can resist in whatever way is necessary. That takes preparation and coordination. We cannot wait until the last minute, we cannot procrastinate. We must ready ourselves mentally, physically and spiritually for this ultimate contest. If we resist with courage and conviction, putting aside even the fear of death to secure freedom for our children and grandchildren, we could restore the constitutional republic of the founders and see the spectacular rebirth of America as its people rediscover the power of freedom that made this country great.

www.patricksamuels.com

Is Violence Never Necessary?

Before beginning to address such a controversial topic, let me say that I am not advocating violence. No one wants to get hurt and few are psychopathic enough to enjoy hurting others. However, it is time to consider the topic in a sober manner. In response to the passage of the Health Care Reform Bill, there were reports of threats, name calling and even violence. Whether they were planted or exaggerated, I don’t know. The point is that everyone from both sides came out and condemned even the idea of resorting to violence, even when our most basic liberties are threatened. Glenn Beck spent almost the entire week repeating that we must never resort to violence. Of course those in power repeated the same thing because for all the control they think they have, they are cowards. For them, it is fine to control us at the point of a gun but when the tables are turned, they cry "foul". There is something we need to consider, however. Our protests have fallen on deaf ears. Even if the government changes hands, realistically there is little hope for resurrecting the republic through our normal means. This government now holds absolute power of life and death. If we cannot rely on our protests or our electoral activities to motivate our leaders to respect our rights and liberties, do we just give up? If they win the battle and Health Care Reform remains the law of the land and they push forward with Immigration Reform and Cap and Trade against our will, do we simply conform to the new paradigm of totalitarianism they have created? It is our compliance with their despotism that has made any of this possible. If there is any hope of resurrecting the Republic, we need to stop complying with immoral and unconstitutional laws and exercises of power. That is civil disobedience. But is that where is ends? Consider these two quotes by Thomas Jefferson;

"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."

"What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Many of us rightly revere the founders as wise and courageous men. If, however, they did not go beyond protests and civil disobedience, we would still have the Queen of England as the titular head of our country. We must understand government as George Washington did;

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force: like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

Ultimately, government is force. Unless that force meets with resistance, it will continue on indefinitely until all people are brought under its totalitarian control. If our leaders are moral men and women, our protests and electoral activities will sway them. That is why Ghandi and Dr. King were successful. Those in authority had a basic respect for life and justice. Did protests and civil disobedience work against Stalin or Hitler or Mao or Che? No. These were godless men with no sense of morality and zero respect for life. Need I remind you that these are the heroes of the progressives, that Mao and Marx provide the ideology for those currently in power? That the murderous Che is celebrated? What happened to the people under the authority of those men? Those who were not killed were reduced to slavery. The Chinese people and those of Cuba remain under totalitarianism. Hitler and the USSR were defeated from the outside. Their people did not rise up. God did not miraculously deliver them. Any protests were crushed with violence. They gave up any means of resistance. Those governments have nothing to fear from the people, therefore the people live in fear.

If we declare unequivocally to our rulers that we will never resist their attempts to reduce us to slavery with force, if we declare that we will be good losers and comply with whatever they do, what is to keep them from doing whatever they want? Are we going to trust them with self restraint? Are you kidding? The Second Amendment is in the constitution for a reason. Allow me to quote;

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The founders understood that tyrants wield their power through the army and/or a national police force. It is at the point of a gun where their will is ultimately enforced. (I remember and Obama czar quoting something like that with appreciation.) Republics, however, are held together by a common morality and respect for the law among the people and their rulers. The founders distrusted a large standing army for this very reason. That is why a state militia, made up of free men who had their own means of self defense, was necessary for the security of a free State, as opposed to the Federal Government. If the federal Government sought to wield illegitimate power over the states and the people, they would be physically unable to because the state would have the "bigger guns". The "National" Guard does not fulfill this role. However, we now find ourselves in a precarious position. Individually, we can defend ourselves if we so choose but an individual is no match for the coercive power of the Federal Government. Such attempts at resistance lead to indiscriminate violence and serve only to embolden those in power and paint resistors as cooks and crazies. If we would resist tyranny we must follow the example of the original patriots whose militia provided the original resistance and who fought the British wherever Washington’s Continental Army was not. That requires planning and preparation. We all know that the shadow government of this administration is carefully plotting our subjugation. If our resistance is haphazard and disorganized at the start, we will be no match for a government machine that already controls so much of our lives.

It is my contention that we will reach the point where we will have to choose between ultimate submission to tyranny or armed resistance. If you think that is absurd, consider for yourself at which point you will stop complying with the wishes of our despotic government. Did you fill out your census form in its entirety? No, good, that was easy. Will you allow them to take a DNA sample for a national ID card? Will you allow them to take your children and place them into the indoctrination centers we know as the public schools so they can learn about the joys of Marxism and homosexuality without the option of home or private school? Will you turn in your guns when they finally require that? How much of your property are you willing to allow them to confiscate? What will you do when some bureaucrat tells you that your disease or condition is not cost effective to treat and you should just take the pain pill and die? When they openly begin censoring the media? When they load you in a truck to take you to a "reeducation" center? At what point do we stop cooperating, moving to civil disobedience, and if they try to force us, to armed resistance? When do we shake off our government indoctrination that violence is always wrong and defend our liberties with a vigor equal to those who desire to take them away?

My rights to life and liberty come from God and I am under no obligation to surrender them to any man or any government for any reason. Any man or government that desires to take those rights by carrot or stick is not worthy of my loyalty or affection. I also have the right to resist any attempt to take my rights by whatever means necessary. I do not have to submit to the confiscation of my property, incarceration or death because some despot decided his will to power superceded my God given rights. I do not have to allow myself to be beaten or intimidated by some union thug or statist supporter. If our leaders understood that "we the people" still had fangs and if backed too far into a corner would use them, however reluctantly, there would be no attempts to impose such tyranny upon us. Now is not the time to lay down our weapon of last resort. Our politics is no longer a game. Government power never has been. It is a matter of life and death, liberty and tyranny. Do we descend into the darkness with merely a whimper and condemn future generations to slavery in the hopes that one day someone will rescue us? Ask the Chinese and the Cubans how that is going. Or do we stand with our founders and tell our rulers that the line has been crossed and that if they do not retreat, our remaining liberty will not be acquired nearly so cheaply or easily.

www.patricksamuels.com

 

 

 

 

 

     For nearly a year we called, protested, e-mailed, wrote letters and organized. Many of us took to the streets of our town and the nation’s capitol, raising our voices in protest over what we all agreed was an attempt to remake this county in a socialist or Marxist image. We have worked within the system but our work was based on false assumptions. We assumed a fair debate of ideas, we assumed that if we could sway the public against these radical proposals Washington would listen, we assumed we were in a fair fight. All those assumptions were wrong. Ideologues who are bent on “transforming” America think nothing of lying, cheating, bribing, or threatening to get their way. The public to them are sheep to be led, not citizens to be heard. So we lost. And until we understand the fight we will continue to lose.

     In the last several blogs I have stated two important things. One, no matter which party is in charge, government is going to grow. Sure, we may have another “Republican Revolution” in November but will they be able to repeal this legislation even if they want to? How many of them voted against it just because it cost too much and not because it is the last and most blatant power grab of an unconstitutional government? Name one major (or even minor) government program that has ever been repealed by either party. Don’t place your hope in Washington. Also, don’t place a lot of faith in all these lawsuits. Most of what the government does is unconstitutional yet it has been consistently upheld. Even the obvious ones like campaign finance reform and our first amendment rights to speech. Finally, how loud will all those states be in their protest when Washington starts tightening the purse strings on the recalcitrant ones. Too many states have put themselves into a dependent position to object too strenuously.

     The second important thing is that we must realize that we no longer live in a constitutional republic or even a democracy. If that wasn’t obvious to you on Sunday, then you must be blind. We live in an oligarchy. The current democrat leadership will do whatever they want and do whatever is necessary to get it. Our protests have as much affect on them as do those of the people of Iran on the Mullahs. They don’t care. They have chosen a course and they will continue on that course until it reaches its logical conclusion. That, for us, is the collapse of America, the ashes from which they will build their totalitarian utopia. We are losing because we are playing by outdated rules of a republic long gone. This is not some silly legal dispute with our neighbor, we are fighting the “mob”. I’d say we are bringing a knife to a gun fight but we aren’t even brining that.

     Before I go on, consider where we are. We are now subject to a government that will have the power to regulate every aspect of our lives. By acting as the gatekeepers to the entire health care system, they now have the literal power of life and death over us. Crushing taxes demonstrate their total power over our property. By continuing to participate in their system, we are acknowledging our status as slaves. They own us, our bodies, our property, our lives. It is time to stop living as if the contract “We the People” made with the federal government was still valid. That contract has been broken repeatedly by our government for a very long time. In a marriage contract, it is considered broken due to infidelity. The parties may voluntarily choose to continue in that agreement and “work things out” but the aggrieved party is under no obligation to do so. If the infidelity is ongoing, however, the aggrieved party would be mentally deranged to continue. Our government has repeatedly violated our contract and has become more brazen about doing so. We voluntarily stayed within the bounds of the contract because we were dazzled by the baubles were were promised. Now the absolute destruction of our country is at hand and we see where our compromise has brought us. The Federal Government has been exercising illegitimate authority over us and it is time we stopped recognizing it.

     The real power lies with us. The government only has the authority we give it. It is we who are forging our own chains. It is we who build the scaffold upon which they will hang us. Why do we continue to participate? While we cannot hide ourselves in some remote valley as they did in “Atlas Shrugged” we can stop cooperating in the “looting”. They exercise their power through technology and by taking over the banks, mortgage lending and other financial institutions, they know all and can control all. Drop out. Deal in cash and precious metals. Put your important assets out of reach. Barter goods and services with your fellow patriots. Be ready to take responsibility for your children and your aging parents. Stock up on food and be prepared to defend yourself and your loved ones.   Refuse to cooperate with government intrusion, be it the census, a national ID, or even foolish EPA regulations. If you are ever on a jury in which tax law or some regulation is being prosecuted, vote to acquit.   One of the ways the colonists got Britain's attention before the war was by refusing to buy their goods, tea being the most famous. They learned to do thing for themselves and within their communities, without the government. If we refuse to participate, they will become irrelevant.

     Our end is upon us. Unlike Greece, we will not have the Germans or the IMF to bail us out. Our credit rating was in trouble before heath care, now it will be in real danger. We are broke and no amount of printing or borrowing is going to get us out of it. Hyperinflation is coming and when the interest on the debt consumes all our money the government checks will stop coming. There will be rioting, cities will burn and people will die because after having relied on the government for so long, they will have no idea how to fend for themselves. Remember New Orleans and Katrina? The LA riots? Now think of it country wide.

     What rises from the rubble of our insanity will be up to us. Those in Washington would be more than happy to establish their totalitarian ideology upon us as a result of the crisis. That will only happen if we are still looking to them to save us. If they are already irrelevant in our lives and we have removed ourselves from their power, they will be unable to succeed. Bonaparte, Hitler, Chavez, they all came to power in a crisis because the people were looking outside themselves for a savior. At your local TEA party next month, look around at your fellow patriots. It is our cooperation and community that is the key. It is we who must now stand together, prepare for what is to come and develop communities that will function when our government will not. It is from among us that leaders will arise at the local level with the courage to resist the plans Washington may have. It is we who will recapture the image of America as it was understood by those first patriots who resisted tyranny with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. 

www.patricksamuels.com 

     Within the next few weeks, we will all be getting our census forms. Many millions of our tax dollars have been spent on stupid commercials and other advertising to get us to understand the importance of filling them out. The main point of all of them is that if we don’t fill them out, we won’t get our share of government goodies. That is wrong on so many levels but it is indicative of how government, and way to many people, view government-as the repository for everything good we get. The only constitutional reason for the census is to correctly apportion representatives. To do so the government needs to know only how many people live in a particular area. It does not need to know my race, religion, income, number of toilets or any of the other questions it asks beyond “how many people live here.”

     What we have in our current census form is an obvious, blatant, unconstitutional government intrusion. Not that there aren’t a multitude of other examples. In another month our taxes are due. But the census is here now, today. A government form asking for information the government has no constitutional authority to ask for. Are you going to give it to them? What are you afraid of? If we do not refuse to cooperate with this intrusion, when will we stand against this government and finally refuse to participate in their incessant push for more power and control? If the vast majority of people in this country decided that the only information they were going to give this government was a head count in their household, what would they do? They can’t throw us all in jail. They could fine us but what if we refused to pay? Again, they can’t throw us all in jail. There are three branches of government that are supposed to check and balance each other to protect our liberty. If they refuse to do so then it is “we the people” who must stand up en mass and say “NO! you may not do that.” “NO! That is unconstitutional.” “NO! My rights do not come from you and you may not take them or my property.” Sure, there are a few million government employees but there are three hundred million of us. We outnumber them and they only have the power we willingly grant to them.

     We have stood up and protested, we have marched, we have complained, we have called our representatives, e-mailed, and petitioned but when we lose, we resign ourselves to the new status quo. Why? Why should we let them have their ill gotten gains at the expense of our liberty? Why should we continue to participate in their schemes that continually limit our freedom? Why do we continually allow them to steal our money to finance their totalitarian agenda? It is time we stopped tacitly endorsing their wins by accepting their new rules and regulations. It is time we refused to acknowledge their illegitimate authority. They have neglected, broken and trampled our contract. Why do we still consider ourselves under obligation to defer to their authority? The census is just one more intrusion. Just because they send out the form does not mean we have to fill it out. Just because they vote away a little more freedom does not mean we have to give it to them. When does it stop?

      There is a lot more coming down the road. The national ID card is in the news again. This will give the government total control over our lives. If we allow our liberty to be reduced to what the government puts on a card, it is over. Will we stand up then? Will we refuse to get it even though it will mean we may lose our job or be unable to access our bank account? That is a bit harder, isn’t it. But if we can’t refuse an intrusive form from the Department of Commerce, what makes us think we will stand up and refuse to give the FBI or Homeland Security our personal information for an ID card?   What about health care? Will we refuse to participate in their system and will there be health care workers who have enough courage to serve the people and not the government? What about when they come to put your approved, government controlled thermostat in your home or they come for your fishing poles or guns?

     Every time we let them get away with it, every time they intrude over our objections and we go along with it anyway, they are emboldened. If we all fuss about the census and do it anyway, they will figure the ID card will be easy. If the ID card is easy, then each new restriction it will bring will be even easier. We are desperately holding on to the last vestiges of our freedom. It is time to stop simply trying to defend what is left and go on offense. The census may seem a small thing or it may seem a big thing. Perhaps you’ve never refused to cooperate with the government before. It is time we started because for too long we have been cooperating in our own destruction.    

www.patricksamuels.com