This is simplest the best essay on the 2008 presidential race. It's by Peter Hitchins, a Brit who writes for the UK's Daily Mail.
The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth
10th November 2008
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084111/PETER-HITCHENS-The-night-waved-goodbye-America--best-hope-Earth.html
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn’t yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.
Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
He needn’t worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.
Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a ‘new dawn’, and a ‘timeless creed’ (which was ‘yes, we can’). He proclaimed that ‘change has come’. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn’t know what ‘enormity’ means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don’t try this at home).
I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.
And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated – but rather hesitant – invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will – ‘Yes, we can’. They were supposed to thunder ‘Yes, we can!’ back at him, but they just wouldn’t join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He’d have been better off bursting into ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony’ which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.
They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.
If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn’t. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.
If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.
And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.
I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.
They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
WHAT'S GOING ON?
Guest column by Robert Chapman, retired U.S. intelligence officer.
Even before the Cold War, the Soviet Union suppressed the freedom of the press in the countries it controlled as well as the Soviet Union itself. The public was deprived of truth which led to the West’s beaming VOA, RFE and BBC radio broadcasts to inform the Russians and Eastern Europeans. Thinking they knew what the listeners wanted, the broadcasts were of international happenings, but it was soon apparent the listeners craved to know what was happening in their own country.
At the time I wondered how awful it must be to not know what was happening in one’s own country; but after the past primary and presidential election, I know.
The past lingers with us; however, now more importantly, what will the future bring? The President-Elect’s cabinet choices are middle-of-the-road people, but outside of the secretary of state and the secretary of defense, what role will they play in changing our country?
The paramount question is whether the President-Elect will veer toward the center as his cabinet choices indicate or will he stick with his friends of 25 years and support the political philosophy they shared? He is indeed a Manchurian candidate. From his youngest days, from the time of his mother, he’s been immersed in far leftist, communist, Marxist ideology. Will he shake this off?
But there has never been a better time to go to the far left. Our economy is shattered. With globalization, jobs are gone. Factories are gone, the machinery of many shipped overseas. Skills are gone. Unemployment is going through the roof, and our debt reaches hopelessness. My fear is the situation is much worse than we know. “We’ve been done in.” The people want change and rightly so.
The juxtaposition of the stars foretells the President-Elect can do about anything he wants to do. By two steps he can implement his leftist ideology, if it’s still part of him, and change our country to one different from what we are. The first is to create jobs which are directly paid by the national government or by federal subsidies through the states. In effect, they become “federalized employment,” which creates a dependency by the jobholders upon the continuance of the administration or one like it. The troubling aspect is the President-Elect has talked about militia-type employment, the “National Civilian Security Force” as well as forming auxiliaries of Homeland Security, which normally are adjuncts of police states. Hopefully, this is not to be.
Even before the Cold War, the Soviet Union suppressed the freedom of the press in the countries it controlled as well as the Soviet Union itself. The public was deprived of truth which led to the West’s beaming VOA, RFE and BBC radio broadcasts to inform the Russians and Eastern Europeans. Thinking they knew what the listeners wanted, the broadcasts were of international happenings, but it was soon apparent the listeners craved to know what was happening in their own country.
At the time I wondered how awful it must be to not know what was happening in one’s own country; but after the past primary and presidential election, I know.
The past lingers with us; however, now more importantly, what will the future bring? The President-Elect’s cabinet choices are middle-of-the-road people, but outside of the secretary of state and the secretary of defense, what role will they play in changing our country?
The paramount question is whether the President-Elect will veer toward the center as his cabinet choices indicate or will he stick with his friends of 25 years and support the political philosophy they shared? He is indeed a Manchurian candidate. From his youngest days, from the time of his mother, he’s been immersed in far leftist, communist, Marxist ideology. Will he shake this off?
But there has never been a better time to go to the far left. Our economy is shattered. With globalization, jobs are gone. Factories are gone, the machinery of many shipped overseas. Skills are gone. Unemployment is going through the roof, and our debt reaches hopelessness. My fear is the situation is much worse than we know. “We’ve been done in.” The people want change and rightly so.
The juxtaposition of the stars foretells the President-Elect can do about anything he wants to do. By two steps he can implement his leftist ideology, if it’s still part of him, and change our country to one different from what we are. The first is to create jobs which are directly paid by the national government or by federal subsidies through the states. In effect, they become “federalized employment,” which creates a dependency by the jobholders upon the continuance of the administration or one like it. The troubling aspect is the President-Elect has talked about militia-type employment, the “National Civilian Security Force” as well as forming auxiliaries of Homeland Security, which normally are adjuncts of police states. Hopefully, this is not to be.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
CHRIST-MAS DAY, 2008
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
A man named John was sent from God,
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light, but came to testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone,
was coming into the world.
He was in the world,
and the world came to be through him,
but the world did not know him.
He came to what was his own,
but his own people did not accept him.
But to those who did accept him
he gave power to become children of God,
to those who believe in his name,
who were born not by natural generation
nor by human choice
nor by a man's decision but of God.
And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father's only Son,
full of grace and truth.
John testified to him and cried out, saying,
"This was he of whom I said,
The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me
because he existed before me."
From his fullness we have all received,
grace in place of grace,
because while the law was given through Moses,
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God.
The only Son, God,
who is at the Father's side,
has revealed him.
John I:1-18
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
FREEDOM OF RELIGION, REVISITED
Guest column by Glenn Neal, retired-lawyer-turned-writer
Merry Christmas!
I respectfully request that you read all the way to the end, then see my comments re: the illegality of the Supreme Court decisions restricting religious freedom.
(Note: the author of "T'was the month before Christmas" is unknown)
T'was the month before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
See the PC Police had taken away,
The reason for Christmas - no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing,
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say,
December 25th is just a 'Holiday.
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod,
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.
As Targets were hanging their trees upside down,
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith,
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace.
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded,
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree,'
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say,
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS , not Happy Holiday!
Please, all Christians join together and wish everyone you meet MERRY CHRISTMAS. Christ is "The Reason" for the Christ-mas Season! --(Anonymous)
There is a problem with that. It’s WRONG! The Constitution does not say that. The only two references to religion are the Freedom of Religion Clause in the First Amendment and a prohibition in Article VI against applying any religious test as a condition for holding public office under the federal Constitution.
Joseph Story[1] wrote,
What if we disobey the Court and do what our conscience demands? There would be consequences, of course. But Christ did not promise that Christianity would be easy. Only that it would be worth it. Civil disobedience anyone?
-----------------------------------------------------------
[1] Joseph Story was a poet, scholar, prolific writer, Supreme Court Justice, and Harvard Law Professor. His Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) is still considered the standard treatise on the subject.
[2] Story, Book III, §1873
[3] 330 U.S. 1 (1947).
[4] In its legal definition, de facto “is used to characterize an officer, a government, a past action, or a state of affairs which must be accepted for all practical purposes, but is illegal or illegitimate.” Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th affairs which must be accepted for all practical purposes, but is illegal or illegitimate.” Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th ed.
Merry Christmas!
I respectfully request that you read all the way to the end, then see my comments re: the illegality of the Supreme Court decisions restricting religious freedom.
(Note: the author of "T'was the month before Christmas" is unknown)
T'was the month before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
See the PC Police had taken away,
The reason for Christmas - no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing,
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say,
December 25th is just a 'Holiday.
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod,
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.
As Targets were hanging their trees upside down,
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith,
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace.
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded,
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree,'
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say,
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS , not Happy Holiday!
Please, all Christians join together and wish everyone you meet MERRY CHRISTMAS. Christ is "The Reason" for the Christ-mas Season! --(Anonymous)
............
"The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another." --U.S. Supreme Court, Everson v. Board of Education.
There is a problem with that. It’s WRONG! The Constitution does not say that. The only two references to religion are the Freedom of Religion Clause in the First Amendment and a prohibition in Article VI against applying any religious test as a condition for holding public office under the federal Constitution.
Joseph Story[1] wrote,
In some of the states, episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in others, presbyterians; in others, congregationalists; in others, quakers; and in others again, there was a close numerical rivalry among contending sects. It was impossible, that there should not arise perpetual strife, and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy, if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment. . . .Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments.[2] [Capitalization as in original].The Supreme Court had no power over the control of religion in the states. The Court unlawfully seized the power to rule against freedom of religion in Everson v. Board of Education.[3] We didn’t protest. The unlawful power became de facto[4] power.
What if we disobey the Court and do what our conscience demands? There would be consequences, of course. But Christ did not promise that Christianity would be easy. Only that it would be worth it. Civil disobedience anyone?
-----------------------------------------------------------
[1] Joseph Story was a poet, scholar, prolific writer, Supreme Court Justice, and Harvard Law Professor. His Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) is still considered the standard treatise on the subject.
[2] Story, Book III, §1873
[3] 330 U.S. 1 (1947).
[4] In its legal definition, de facto “is used to characterize an officer, a government, a past action, or a state of affairs which must be accepted for all practical purposes, but is illegal or illegitimate.” Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th affairs which must be accepted for all practical purposes, but is illegal or illegitimate.” Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th ed.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
DON'T WASTE AN AMENDMENT
Guest column by Glenn Neal, retired-attorney-turned-writer
A website is raising the alarm in an attempt to stop the Ohio legislature from voting for a Constitutional Convention for the United States in the fear that it will become an open convention.[1] Their fears are unfounded. Article V of the Constitution permits the states to demand "a Convention for offering Amendments . . . [to] this Constitution" [emphasis added], and nothing more. Reinforcing that limitation is a law passed by Congress that the convention cannot consider anything that is not in the call for the convention. You can be sure the people in power will not give up any unless you strictly follow the letter of the law.
I could not confirm that thirty-two states have called for the convention--Google "constitutional convention" and you will come up with 448,000 hits. Do a Google search on "con con" (an abbreviation in the blogosphere for constitutional convention) and get 138,000,000 hits. Obviously, I did not check all of the sites. I'll continue to research this. It may be the subject of a future post.
What I did find is several states have proposed a convention for amending their own state constitutions; Illinois in particular is in the news right now because of Governor Blagojevich's arrest. And there are countries like the Philippians who want to amend their national constitutions.
Nonetheless, this provides an excuse for me to put in my own 2¢ worth: a convention to propose just a balanced budget amendment would be a horrendous waste.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting in Olmstead v. U.S. (1928), wrote,
The balanced budget amendment is an important amendment but so is term limiting Congress; a more vital amendment is reigning in the unlimited power of the United States Supreme Court.
In the year 2000, Justice Scalia stated in his dissent in the Dickerson case that the Supreme Court had given itself the power to amend the Constitution. The only remarkable thing about Dickerson is the Court came out and openly stated (in lawyer-speak, of course) that it could amend the Constitution. In fact, it had been covertly amending the Constitution at least since the Warren Court of the 1950s.
It will never be possible to amend the Constitution fast enough and often enough to keep up with an illegitimate, activist Supreme Court. Of some ten thousand amendments proposed during the history of this nation, only twenty-seven have been ratified to become a part of the Constitution.
If several amendments compete for the public's attention, it diminishes the probability that any one of them will be adopted. Instead, the people should unite in support of a Convention for offering amendments under Article V. of the Constitution.
When the Supreme Court seized power in Marbury v. Madison (1803), the people, acquiesced and allowed it to happen. But the country still belongs to the people. The idea that this is a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" did not die when Abraham Lincoln was shot.. We can still do something about it.
The Constitution does NOT give the Court the right of judicial review (overturning an Act of Congress) nor does it give the Court the power to amend the Constitution. See, U. S. Const., Art. V here: http://www.usconstitution.net/. In drafting the Constitution the founders considered, and specifically rejected, the notion that the Court could overturn an Act of Congress. Nonetheless, the Court seized that power in Marbury v. Madison (1803).
We need to take the power back.
A website is raising the alarm in an attempt to stop the Ohio legislature from voting for a Constitutional Convention for the United States in the fear that it will become an open convention.[1] Their fears are unfounded. Article V of the Constitution permits the states to demand "a Convention for offering Amendments . . . [to] this Constitution" [emphasis added], and nothing more. Reinforcing that limitation is a law passed by Congress that the convention cannot consider anything that is not in the call for the convention. You can be sure the people in power will not give up any unless you strictly follow the letter of the law.
I could not confirm that thirty-two states have called for the convention--Google "constitutional convention" and you will come up with 448,000 hits. Do a Google search on "con con" (an abbreviation in the blogosphere for constitutional convention) and get 138,000,000 hits. Obviously, I did not check all of the sites. I'll continue to research this. It may be the subject of a future post.
What I did find is several states have proposed a convention for amending their own state constitutions; Illinois in particular is in the news right now because of Governor Blagojevich's arrest. And there are countries like the Philippians who want to amend their national constitutions.
Nonetheless, this provides an excuse for me to put in my own 2¢ worth: a convention to propose just a balanced budget amendment would be a horrendous waste.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting in Olmstead v. U.S. (1928), wrote,
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
The balanced budget amendment is an important amendment but so is term limiting Congress; a more vital amendment is reigning in the unlimited power of the United States Supreme Court.
In the year 2000, Justice Scalia stated in his dissent in the Dickerson case that the Supreme Court had given itself the power to amend the Constitution. The only remarkable thing about Dickerson is the Court came out and openly stated (in lawyer-speak, of course) that it could amend the Constitution. In fact, it had been covertly amending the Constitution at least since the Warren Court of the 1950s.
It will never be possible to amend the Constitution fast enough and often enough to keep up with an illegitimate, activist Supreme Court. Of some ten thousand amendments proposed during the history of this nation, only twenty-seven have been ratified to become a part of the Constitution.
If several amendments compete for the public's attention, it diminishes the probability that any one of them will be adopted. Instead, the people should unite in support of a Convention for offering amendments under Article V. of the Constitution.
When the Supreme Court seized power in Marbury v. Madison (1803), the people, acquiesced and allowed it to happen. But the country still belongs to the people. The idea that this is a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" did not die when Abraham Lincoln was shot.. We can still do something about it.
The Constitution does NOT give the Court the right of judicial review (overturning an Act of Congress) nor does it give the Court the power to amend the Constitution. See, U. S. Const., Art. V here: http://www.usconstitution.net/. In drafting the Constitution the founders considered, and specifically rejected, the notion that the Court could overturn an Act of Congress. Nonetheless, the Court seized that power in Marbury v. Madison (1803).
We need to take the power back.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
MY DEMOCRATIC DILEMMA
Guest column by "ex-spook" Robert Chapman, retired U. S. intelligence officer
All my life I believed in one man, one vote. I criticized the South for poll taxes and literacy tests. Now, I don't know. I am confused.
I live in eastern North Carolina in what is called the "Prettiest Town in the South" which was spared the ravages of the Civil War. We have the ocean, the sounds, all kinds of fishing, hunting, golf; the people are kind and polite. Our problem, which afflicts so much of America, is our county is 61% illiterate. The county to the north is the same, but the larger one to the south reaches an illiterate rate of 81%. Ipso facto, public education ranks low. There's no quest to learn. And there's nothing even over the far horizon that this will change. One must wonder what people think about, talk about or know.
Our county had a nest egg of $20 million coming from the sale of our hospital to a state university. It was a good deal. Interest could be spent for town betterment, but the investment was not to be touched. However, our county commissioners, all from the Democratic Party, unschooled in governance, wrongly allowed the moneyto be spent for extravagant town buildings. Perhaps the townspeople should have known but instead mistakenly trusted government. The shock came when the town learned millions of dollars were due on government loans, and the nest egg had whittled down to $100,000 orso. From the housetops, responsible people shouted to get the rascals out of office. For the first time in the town's history, Republican businessmen and farmers ran for county commissioner seats to repair the damage in the best way possible.
The 2008 Presidential Election came upon us. The Obama campaign sent community organizers to our region from 500 or more miles away. Aided by local Democrats a massive voter registration program began sweeping the poor, the illiterate, and the uneducated into a previously unknown voting block. Tragedy followed.
The new voters had never voted before. They flocked to the polls. Unbelievable stories abounded. The voters knew only that a black man, Obama, was running. Some thought Palin was his running mate. They were totally uninformed. One poor illiterate came into the poll to vote. He did not know if he was an American citizen. Patient poll workers questioned him and found he remembered being born in town. They asked for whom he wanted to vote, and when he answered "Obama," they registered him as a Democrat and let him to vote.
The Democratic organizers and their cohorts wanted North Carolina to go Democratic and as the uneducated approached the polling station they were instructed to vote the straight Democratic ticket. They did. The most intelligent man running for the county commission was crushed in the voting.
The same incumbent county commissioners who caused our fiscal crisis were voted back into office. We are falling into county bankruptcy.
All my life I believed in one man, one vote. I criticized the South for poll taxes and literacy tests. Now, I don't know. I am confused.
I live in eastern North Carolina in what is called the "Prettiest Town in the South" which was spared the ravages of the Civil War. We have the ocean, the sounds, all kinds of fishing, hunting, golf; the people are kind and polite. Our problem, which afflicts so much of America, is our county is 61% illiterate. The county to the north is the same, but the larger one to the south reaches an illiterate rate of 81%. Ipso facto, public education ranks low. There's no quest to learn. And there's nothing even over the far horizon that this will change. One must wonder what people think about, talk about or know.
Our county had a nest egg of $20 million coming from the sale of our hospital to a state university. It was a good deal. Interest could be spent for town betterment, but the investment was not to be touched. However, our county commissioners, all from the Democratic Party, unschooled in governance, wrongly allowed the moneyto be spent for extravagant town buildings. Perhaps the townspeople should have known but instead mistakenly trusted government. The shock came when the town learned millions of dollars were due on government loans, and the nest egg had whittled down to $100,000 orso. From the housetops, responsible people shouted to get the rascals out of office. For the first time in the town's history, Republican businessmen and farmers ran for county commissioner seats to repair the damage in the best way possible.
The 2008 Presidential Election came upon us. The Obama campaign sent community organizers to our region from 500 or more miles away. Aided by local Democrats a massive voter registration program began sweeping the poor, the illiterate, and the uneducated into a previously unknown voting block. Tragedy followed.
The new voters had never voted before. They flocked to the polls. Unbelievable stories abounded. The voters knew only that a black man, Obama, was running. Some thought Palin was his running mate. They were totally uninformed. One poor illiterate came into the poll to vote. He did not know if he was an American citizen. Patient poll workers questioned him and found he remembered being born in town. They asked for whom he wanted to vote, and when he answered "Obama," they registered him as a Democrat and let him to vote.
The Democratic organizers and their cohorts wanted North Carolina to go Democratic and as the uneducated approached the polling station they were instructed to vote the straight Democratic ticket. They did. The most intelligent man running for the county commission was crushed in the voting.
The same incumbent county commissioners who caused our fiscal crisis were voted back into office. We are falling into county bankruptcy.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
ANIMUS TOWARD RELIGION
Guest column by Glenn Neal, retired-lawyer-turned-writer
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between a man and his God;… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." —Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Association.
The United States Supreme Court likes to claim the Constitution built a "wall of separation between Church and State." That is patently false. It is the Supreme Court that erected the wall of separation as we know it today.
In 1947, the Court in Everson v. Board of Education declared, "The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another."
But that is the Court's interpretation, not the history of America.
Joseph Story, whose Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) is still considered the standard treatise on the subject, wrote,
Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions; and the Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, [sic] the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national counsils, [sic] without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship.
The guarantee of freedom of religion in the First Amendment did not promise freedom from religion. President John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
By the year 1702, all thirteen American colonies had some form of state-supported religion. Support varied from tax benefits to religious organizations to requirements to restrict voting or serve in the legislature.
Imagine the turmoil if the federal government had chosen the Anglican faith established in Virginia and applied it nationwide—-to the Quakers in Pennsylvania, to the Puritans in New England and to the Baptists and Jews wherever they may be found.
Although Delaware quit government support for religion as early as 1792, some states continued state support for religion and/or restrictions on anyone but Protestants holding public office until after the American Civil War. The last states to cease all government support for religion were Maryland (1867), South Carolina (1868), North Carolina (1875), and New Hampshire (1877).
Maryland's law requiring that one must believe in God to hold public office was not overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court until 1961.
It should be obvious to everyone but the Supreme Court that the Constitution did not bar establishing a religion. It just prohibited the federal government from establishing a national religion. The Supreme Court of the United States, in direct violation of the First Amendment, is prohibiting the free exercise of one's religion in any public events where there is state or federal government involvement.
Religious observations are deeply imbedded in our laws: religious holidays, opening sessions of Congress and other public functions with prayer, the Declaration of Independence, which refers to the "protection of divine Providence," the swearing of oaths on the Bible, and in other ways too numerous to mention.
Why do we let a few atheists, the ACLU and the United States Supreme Court dictate how and where we worship our God?
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
Guest column by Glenn Neal, retired-lawyer-turned-writer
As President-elect Barrack Obama moves toward his inaugural, and maybe the highest taxes in history, there is a more sinister taxing body many people don't even know about. Do you remember voting for a delegate to represent you on the United States Supreme Court? I don't.
Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, "An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." The Supreme Court seems to have forgotten that.
In Missouri v. Jenkins (1990), the Court affirmed the right of federal courts to levy taxes. Justice Anthony Kennedy criticized that part of the decision giving the federal courts the power to levy taxes directly. He called it, "An expansion of power in the Federal Judiciary beyond all precedent. Today's casual embrace of taxation imposed by the unelected, life-tenured Federal Judiciary disregards fundamental precepts for the democratic control of public institutions."
There are also indirect taxes. When the courts require local governments to build new, more "humane" jails, for example, the argument is not about whether the court has jurisdiction to do that. It doesn't, actually--the Constitution confers no authority for the federal courts to impose unfunded mandates on the states. The court just assumes it has jurisdiction and the Supreme Court allows it to happen.
Direct and hidden taxes levied by the federal courts are separate from taxes levied by Congress. Over the past ten years, federal taxes enacted by Congress have averaged 19% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The director of CBO testified earlier this year that if entitlements continue to expand at their present rate, by the middle of this century the tax to pay for just three of the entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- will be 21% of GDP, up from 4.1 %in 2004. The cost of running the government, the military, foreign aid, the farm subsidies, the bailout and all other federal giveaways would be in addition to that.
So what can we do about it?
To believe that you can successfully "lobby" the average heroin addict to give up his habit voluntarily, without drastic intervention by some outside force, is naïve. To believe Congress or the Court will restrain itself from imposing taxes goes beyond naiveté to delusional. For there to be meaningful tax reform and/or limitedgovernment, there must be some draconian action by the people to impose limits that Congress--and the Supreme Court--cannot avoid.
President Lincoln at Gettysburg called on those gathered there, "to be dedicated here to the unfinished work . . . that this nation,under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." We need to follow his lead.
Stay with me, I'll tell you how.
As President-elect Barrack Obama moves toward his inaugural, and maybe the highest taxes in history, there is a more sinister taxing body many people don't even know about. Do you remember voting for a delegate to represent you on the United States Supreme Court? I don't.
Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, "An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." The Supreme Court seems to have forgotten that.
In Missouri v. Jenkins (1990), the Court affirmed the right of federal courts to levy taxes. Justice Anthony Kennedy criticized that part of the decision giving the federal courts the power to levy taxes directly. He called it, "An expansion of power in the Federal Judiciary beyond all precedent. Today's casual embrace of taxation imposed by the unelected, life-tenured Federal Judiciary disregards fundamental precepts for the democratic control of public institutions."
There are also indirect taxes. When the courts require local governments to build new, more "humane" jails, for example, the argument is not about whether the court has jurisdiction to do that. It doesn't, actually--the Constitution confers no authority for the federal courts to impose unfunded mandates on the states. The court just assumes it has jurisdiction and the Supreme Court allows it to happen.
Direct and hidden taxes levied by the federal courts are separate from taxes levied by Congress. Over the past ten years, federal taxes enacted by Congress have averaged 19% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The director of CBO testified earlier this year that if entitlements continue to expand at their present rate, by the middle of this century the tax to pay for just three of the entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- will be 21% of GDP, up from 4.1 %in 2004. The cost of running the government, the military, foreign aid, the farm subsidies, the bailout and all other federal giveaways would be in addition to that.
So what can we do about it?
To believe that you can successfully "lobby" the average heroin addict to give up his habit voluntarily, without drastic intervention by some outside force, is naïve. To believe Congress or the Court will restrain itself from imposing taxes goes beyond naiveté to delusional. For there to be meaningful tax reform and/or limitedgovernment, there must be some draconian action by the people to impose limits that Congress--and the Supreme Court--cannot avoid.
President Lincoln at Gettysburg called on those gathered there, "to be dedicated here to the unfinished work . . . that this nation,under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." We need to follow his lead.
Stay with me, I'll tell you how.
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