Neal's Soapbox

Have you ever gazed upon a herd of cattle or sheep and wondered what they were thinking? If you have then you probably can relate to how I feel when I gaze upon large groups of human beings.
Doctors who specialize in the human brain use electroencephalography to monitor the electrical activity inside the brain by way of electrodes attached to the scalp. This helps them to learn what activity, if any, is going on in certain areas of the brain.

I don’t know how much you know about the anatomy of the human brain but the cerebrum, or cortex is the largest part of the human brain and it is responsible for the higher functions such as thought and action. On the other hand, human emotions are carried out by the limbic system in the temporal lobe; specifically the amygdala.

I would love to see the results of a scientific study of human beings with an EEG, or electroencephalogram performed on people having a political debate to determine whether people are using their cerebrum or their temporal lobe during the debate. I’d be willing to bet that the cerebrum would probably be registering little to no activity.

There is a quote attributed to Thomas Edison that states, “Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think that they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” Regardless of whether Edison actually said that or not, I think there is a lot of truth to that statement.

The human brain has been equated to a muscle in that the more you use it the stronger it gets. Well, according to Edison I’d guess that cerebrum of most people is pretty underdeveloped; as they certainly don’t appear to be using it very much.

Now I’m not saying you can’t be passionate, or get emotional about issues, but if that’s all you are doing then you aren’t using your higher functions; you aren’t actually thinking. I am very passionate about my right to keep and bear arms, but I back up my position with the most well thought out, and fact based argument that I can. Most people, particularly those who favor tougher gun laws, are simply emotional; they are unable to provide many facts to support their position on the issue. Think about the children, or we have got to do something to curb gun violence are not facts; they are emotional responses to a situation that most people have given little thought to.

Instead of looking at the causes behind all this gun violence, they offer up these knee jerk reactions to the symptoms; never thinking about the disease that plagues America–a lack of morality and respect for human life. So their solution is to deprive everyone of their rights because a relatively small percentage of the people abuse that right.

Take any of these crimes where some lunatic takes a firearm into a heavily populated location and begins firing into the crowd; how many gun laws is that person in violation of at the time of their crimes? I would guess that they are violating anywhere from five to ten gun laws just by opening fire into a crowd. Yet people think that one more gun law could have prevented them from committing that crime?

Look at the war on drugs and Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No campaign; how effective has all those laws been on preventing drug usage in America? Look at the war on poverty; how much money have we infused into the system to eradicate poverty, yet poverty still runs rampant in America. Look at how we deal with declining intelligence in our high school graduates; we funnel more money into the system and lower the standards to artificially inflate SAT scores.

Yet we still have crime, we still have poverty, we still have drug usage, and we still have a whole lot of people running around who are simply unable to think critically; to present facts in a clear and concise manner in support of their position on any number of subjects or issues.

I dare you; go into any public place and just sit there watching people as they move to and fro. What are most of them doing? Staring down into their smartphones; that’s what they are doing. The technology and the access to knowledge we have at our fingertips today is mind boggling; but how many people actually use that technology for anything other than checking Facebook or Twitter feeds?

How can anyone be expected to engage in an intelligent debate with people who bring no facts of their own to the debate; or worse, to whom facts don’t matter? As an example, let’s talk about U.S. foreign policy in regards to Iran. I’d be willing to bet that most Americans are pretty much in agreement that Iran is a threat to America and that our government needs to take steps to ensure it does not obtain a nuclear weapon and use it against us in an act of terrorism.

To begin with, I wonder how many people could locate Iran on a map if the name of the country was omitted from the map. Yet these people believe they are informed enough to form opinions about our relations with a country they couldn’t find on a map if the name of the country was omitted?

Unless you are over the age of 40 you probably don’t remember the Iran Hostage Crisis during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The Iran Hostage Crisis began when a group of Iranian college students held 52 Americans hostage for over a year; 444 days to be exact. I wonder, how many have given any thought to what led to those Iranian college students taking 52 Americans for hostages.

Before I was even born the U.S. and Great Britain, by way of the CIA and British Intelligence agencies, in an operation entitled Operation Ajax, orchestrated a coup d’état in Iran; overthrowing the democratically elected Prime Minister; Mohammad Mosaddegh. In his place western forces installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, or the Shah of Iran.

A bit of history as to why this coup took place is in order. Prior to the coup Mosaddegh had sought to audit the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, or AIOC; a British held firm which we now know as BP, or British Petroleum. When the AIOC refused to cooperate, Iran nationalized its oil reserves; severely cutting back AIOC’s control AND profits. The coup was undertaken to place a more ‘western friendly’ leader at the helm in Iran and restore AIOC’s access to Iranian oil fields.

Just look at how some in this country are upset over the allegations that the Russians played a role in influencing the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election, (unsubstantiated allegations I might add). Mind you, these people are upset simply because of rumors that another country interfered with our democratic election process; imagine how angry they would be if the Russians had orchestrated a coup and overthrown our democratically elected president; not to mention the fact that they then installed a Russian puppet in his place?

You have to look at this from Iran’s perspective; we interfered in their government by booting out a duly elected Prime Minister to replace him with a ‘western friendly’ Shah for the sole purpose of maintaining foreign access to Iran’s natural resources. How would we feel if another country did that to us?

And Iran is just one of many times our government has interfered in the internal politics of other countries. But because we are America, the land of the free, we think we have the moral high ground in any argument, and that it is okay if we do things that we condemn other countries of doing. Does the word hypocrisy mean anything to you?

Look at Al Qaeda; birthed out of the remnants of the U.S. assisted Afghani mujahedeen and Osama bin Laden’s anger towards the U.S. Look at ISIS; birthed out of the vacuum created when we toppled Saddam Hussein. We create our own monsters, and then use those monsters to justify our foreign policy and a continual state of war against the very terror our foreign policy gives birth to.

Now I’m not saying that there aren’t religious fundamentalists, or zealots if you will, who would still commit acts of terror against us simply because they believe they are doing Allah’s will. But we certainly aren’t making matters any better by sticking our noses into their business like we have been, and continue to do. Then to make matters worse, we go into their country and bomb the shit out of the, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, then say we have to let them emigrate to America as refugees. That’s just brilliant; piss somebody off by blowing up their house, then invite them over to live in yours.

Like I said, there is a draught in critical thinking going on here in America.

I just thought of something I need to insert here. I liken American politics to cotton candy. Our elections, especially our Presidential elections, are like a TV event more than they are the election of a new Executive. Look at all the pomp and circumstance; the TV analysts giving their two cents on the outcome; and all the fanfare; it’s like a flipping parade that lasts for months.

Yet with all this fanfare, this shiny appearance, it is empty and without substance. I have often wondered whether people are actually more influenced, even subliminally, by campaign slogans than they are the actual issues. Hope & Change, Make America Great Again; all designed to hook people into supporting this candidate or that. It’s like Jackson Browne says in his song Lives In the Balance, “They sell us the President the same way they sell us our clothes and our cars.”

It doesn’t matter what the issues are; fixing our declining economy; improving the standard of living for all Americans; reducing crime; graduating students who are capable of critical thought, the average person does not want to look at the underlying causes that led to these problems. Instead they want a leader who can make all these promises that sound good, but in the long run don’t do anything to solve all our problems.

If you were to truly think about it most of the problems this country faces can be traced back to a problem that is twofold in nature. First of all we have abandoned the principles which made America great to begin with; a sense of morality and respect for the lives and property of others; an abundance of liberty and a respect for the rights of the individual; and a general willingness of the people to assume total responsibility for their own lives and sustenance. Secondly, and correspondingly I might add, people today look to government as if it is some god to whom they can pray to solve all their problems.

Imagine if you will that you know a family who has a child they did not teach any values to. That child then grows up and causes all manner of problems for the parents; problems which the parents are then required to pay for to solve. Yet instead of disciplining their child, they let him go on doing things that cause more problems for them; until one day the family finds itself bankrupt and on the verge of ruin.

Well that’s America in a nutshell. We, or our Founders, created a system of government with very limited authority and an even more limited scope of operation. But like the parents, we did not refrain our government from overstepping its authority and causing all manner of problems in the process. So we bail the government out, either via higher taxes or by supporting wars or laws that infringe upon our fundamental rights. We are nearing the point where America collapses under the weight of its national debt. But to even hint at cutting our government down in size causes people to laugh derisively at those who make such suggestions.

It’s all because people simply do not want to exert the effort to truly think about the issues that face this country; they want quick and easy solutions that require little to no effort on their part. Not only are they averse to thinking, they tell me they don’t have time for the kind of study that I do. Yet they can certainly find time to check their Facebook feed, or spend hours on the weekends watching sports.

Actor Stephen Fry once said, “There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”

Knowledge is out there, you just have to want it bad enough to go out and find it. I guess it all boils down to your priorities. Are you more content to go through life believing lies, or do you have enough personal integrity to seek out the truth; and then use that truth to affect how you make your decisions in life?

America could be great again, but it has to begin with the people wanting what made America great to begin with more than they want anything else. As Patrick Henry said, “Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings-give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else.”

Your choice America; either stand for the principles and values that made America such a great country or keep putting your trust and faith in charlatans and false idols. One choice leads to prosperity and an abundance of freedom and the other leads to ruin.

I don’t know what else I can say. I feel like I’m beating my head against a brick wall; trying to get people to see what is so painfully obvious to me. So if I seem to be repeating myself time and time again, forgive me; it’s just that I feel like I’m stuck trying to teach people to add 2 + 2 and they simply are unable to get it. I am therefore forced to conclude that people either don’t care, or they are just flat out stupid.
I’ll leave for y’all to decide which one applies to you personally.

It began with people calling for the removal of the Stars and Bars, otherwise known as the Confederate Battle Flag, from public display. I believe it was Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina who was the first to publicly support such a measure and then took steps to remove the CBF from public display in South Carolina. Soon others followed and now the movement has spread to include the tearing down and relegating to trash heaps the statues and monuments dedicated to the Confederacy or its leadership.

George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, once said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

To begin with, what exactly is history? History is nothing more than the telling of past events, is it not? But for history to be accurate it must examine those events, and the people who participated in them, from all sides; not just the side that fits whatever is considered politically correct. In short, for history to be an accurate rendition of past events, it must be truthful in all aspects. Now let me ask you something; what is the first thing that comes to mind when you see an image of the Confederate Battle Flag or a depiction of Robert E. Lee? Is it slavery, racism and prejudice?

Before I go any further I want to make it perfectly clear that I do not condone the idea of one man owning another as a piece of property. Slavery is, and always has been an idea that I find to be abhorrent and evil, as it deprives one human being of all their rights and freedom and subjects them to the arbitrary will of another.

That said, the Bible contains many passages regarding the treatment of slaves. You cannot read through the early books of the Old Testament without stumbling across the beliefs of the ancient Israelites regarding the slaves they owned. For instance, slaves are mentioned in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

So slavery is not something that is new in the world, and is most certainly isn’t an evil that was confined to the antebellum States of the South prior to the Civil War. Slave labor was used to build the Great Pyramids in Egypt and it was used to build many of the buildings in our nation’s capital. Are you aware that slaves were part of the labor force that built both the White House and our nation’s capital building; are people going to call for them to be taken down as well?

History does not take sides, it only tells the story of what happened; both good and bad. I wonder how people would feel if Brits began demanding that the U.S. flag be taken down because it was offensive to them due to our little rebellion against their king back in 1776. Yet that is the same logic that is behind the removal of a huge chunk of American history; the fact that because the display of that history offends a portion of the people of this country.

Why do these images and monuments conjure up images of racism and prejudice in so many people? Could it possibly be that the history regarding those images and monuments has been intentionally skewed to paint them in a false light? Could it be that those images and monuments do not represent slavery, they represent something different altogether?

In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne wrote, “Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”

Yet today’s children grow up receiving an education, (and maybe an indoctrination would be a better way to describe it), which tells them that the South was fighting to perpetuate the institution of slavery, while the North was fighting a righteous war to end it. Excuse the language, but what a crock of shit!

However evil the practice of owning slaves may have been, in 1861 it was perfectly legal to do so under our Constitution. Are we going to burn the Constitution as well? While I’d be all for that if you burnt the government it established to the ground at the same time, that is beside the point. The point is that at the time of the Civil War slavery was legal, so even if the North was fighting to end slavery, (a point I DO NOT agree with), how could they do so without violating the Constitution itself?

Did you know that prior to the Declaration of Independence being written, 35 years before to be exact, that 1/5 of the population of New York consisted of slaves? Are you aware that many a Northern family made a large percentage of their profits from the importation of slaves into the United States? Are you aware that Brown University, a bastion of Ivy League education, was built largely off the profits made by the Brown family from the slave trade?

Are you also aware that it was a Southerner and a slave owner that was amongst the first in our nation to call for the ending of the eventual ending of slavery in America and the emancipation of all those held in bondage? That’s right, Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner and yet it was he who, as early as 1774 blamed the King of England for slavery. In his Summary View of the Rights of British America Jefferson writes, “For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa; yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his majesty’s negative: Thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few African corsairs to the lasting interests of the American states, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.”

Also, in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, prior to the general delegation hacking it to pieces, Jefferson also blamed the King for the despicable practice of slavery, “…he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.”

People today believe that the North was this enlightened paradise where all men enjoyed the same rights, and that they were engaged in a righteous battle to end the evil practice of slavery. But is that truly the case, or is it just a lie you have been told to justify Abraham Lincoln’s unconstitutional invasion of another sovereign nation?

Thirty years before the Civil War a Frenchman by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville obtained permission from his government to travel to the United States under the pretense of studying our prison system. However de Tocqueville had other reasons for coming here; he wanted to study the U.S. in its entirety to see what made us such a great and powerful nation. What he learned was condensed into a two volume set entitled Democracy in America. In his epic work de Tocqueville writes, “In that part of the Union where the Negroes are no longer slaves, have they come closer to the whites? Everyone who has lived in the United States will have noticed just the opposite. Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known.”

Yet we are taught that racism and prejudice are the definitive terms to describe the Confederacy, when it seems those supporting the North are ignorant of the truth, or hypocrites. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which one is the case.

If, and like I said, this is a point I DO NOT agree with, the Civil War was fought to end slavery, why would Congress and Abraham Lincoln himself support a proposal for a constitutional amendment that would have made slavery a permanent institution in America? To quote Mr. Spock from the Star Trek series, “That seems highly illogical.” Why would they support a measure to make slavery permanent, then turn around and fight a war to end it?

Ratified by Congress on March 2, 1861 this Corwin Amendment states, “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”

Two days later, in his first Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln made reference to this Corwin Amendment by saying, “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service … holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

That doesn’t sound like the words of a man who is about to engage in a bloody war to put an end to slavery; at least it doesn’t sound that way to me. Personally Lincoln may have hoped that slavery would eventually disappear from the American continent, but in his official capacity as President even he realized that he had no Constitutional authority to do anything about it without an amendment to the constitution being ratified by the States.

Yet, once war broke out, he did use his implied war time powers to interfere with slavery. This was the basis of his esteemed Emancipation Proclamation; which had people actually read it, did nothing to free those held in bondage in Northern States. It was a wartime measure designed solely to weaken the Confederacy; that’s all. There was nothing noble or mighty about it. In fact, it paralleled his thoughts as stated in a letter to editor Horace Greeley, “If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

While monuments dedicated to Confederate heroes are being torn down across the South at an alarming rate, there exists a huge monument to Abraham Lincoln in our nation’s capital. Yet even though Lincoln may have personally hoped that slavery would come to an end in America, he wasn’t the bastion of racial equality that people believe him to be.

Prior to his having won the election of 1860 Abraham Lincoln engaged in a series of debates with his opponent Stephen Douglas. In the fourth of these debates Lincoln states, “While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Can you imagine a candidate for the presidency today saying something like that in a political debate? He would lose in epic fashion if he did. Yet those are the views of the man America esteems to be the Great Emancipator, the man who fought a war to end slavery.

I don’t want to make this any longer than it needs to be, but if Lincoln and his army of the North were not fighting a war to end slavery, then what were they fighting for? What they were fighting for was the subjugation of an entire segment of the country by force of arms.

In any war there are always opposing sides to a conflict. Unfortunately, what your text books and teachers teach our children is a distorted and perverted version of the causes of this great war between the South and the government of the United States.

Now think about what I just said. Would there have been a Civil War if Abraham Lincoln had not first raised an army to invade the South? Do you think Northerners would have picked up their rifles of their own volition and invaded the South in an effort to bind them to a union they sought to leave?

I don’t think so. Therefore, whatever the reasons for seceding from the Union may have been, the war itself is the fault of Abraham Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln alone. All those lives lost just because he refused to allow the South to leave the Union in peace.

To sum up the Civil War, and possibly shine some light upon what the images honoring the Confederacy actually stand for, it is probably necessary to go to someone who didn’t have a stake in the outcome; an outside source so to speak.

Therefore, I present you with the following, taken from an editorial published in the London Times, dated, November 7, 1861, ” [T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.”

The South was fighting for its independence from a government that it believed had become too tyrannical and oppressive; just as our Founders did in 1776. Just because they lost does not alter that fact. As John Adams said in his defense of the British Soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

But that’s the problem today, and it isn’t confined solely to people’s understanding of the Civil War; facts simply don’t matter anymore. All that matters is how they feel about a subject and how good having uninformed opinions makes them feel inside… the truth be damned.

Well, as Patrick Henry said in 1775, “For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.” I guess that’s what separates people like me from the rest of the people in this country, the truth actually matters to us.

The truth is the North may have won the war, but the people and States which comprise America are the ones who really lost, as the victory of Lincoln’s army over the South was the final nail in the coffin for the hope that any version of a government based upon the beliefs of men like Jefferson and Madison; leaving us with a government dedicated to perpetuating the principles and beliefs of men like Alexander Hamilton; turning us all into slaves whose sole purpose is to keep the wheels of our economy turning and provide taxes to pay for an ever increasing debt.

Lincoln may have won his little war, but America as a nation free from the arbitrary and oppressive power of a tyrannical government lost. And that is the truth they do not want you to know; so they feed the lie, causing you to support the tearing down of monuments and images that represent the same beliefs as those who fought our war for independence.

Isn’t ignorance grand?

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
~Johann Wolfgang van Goethe~

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled
to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
~Harlan Ellison~

Whenever I take copies of my articles to work for others to read there are inevitably those who say, “What’s this, more propaganda?” I usually just mumble a quick yes while inwardly thinking, “This idiot probably doesn’t even know what propaganda is.” So for those who say that to me, allow me to enlighten you. The first dictionary I checked defines propaganda as: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Are my writings biased? I suppose you could say that they are; but not in the manner most assume. While most people either support or oppose the actions of their government, (for I refuse to call it MY government anymore), based upon whether or not they align with their partisan ideology, I support or oppose the actions of your government based upon whether or not the Constitution authorizes government to take those actions.

But to call me misleading causes me to become somewhat angry. The only way a person could consider my writings to be misleading is if they have not made the effort to verify the truthfulness of what I say by researching the matter on their own. If you say I am misleading it is probably because what I say contradicts what you have been taught or told. However, have you ever stopped to ask yourself if what you have been taught or told isn’t what is misleading, or biased? You know George Orwell once said, “In a time of universal deceit ― telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Maybe you react the way you do because you have never been exposed to the truth. Has THAT ever crossed your minds?

There is a scene in the film The Matrix that kind of explains what I’m talking about. In this scene Morpheus is explaining to Neo why he freed him from the Matrix, and he says, “I feel I owe you an apology. We have a rule…we never free a mind once it reaches a certain age. It’s dangerous, and the mind has trouble letting go.” Of course what Morpheus is referring to is the fact that once a person reaches a certain age it is difficult, if not impossible, for a mind to accept that everything they had believed to be true has been a lie. Of course Neo does go on to accept the truth and accept that he is, in fact, ‘The One’. If only reality mirrored fiction.

I think people have been conditioned to believe that this country would devolve into anarchy without the guiding hand of government to help us control our inner passions and provide us with programs to provide and care for us. Sure, a certain amount of government may be necessary to keep society from devolving into anarchy, but ONLY enough government to protect the rights of the individual and nothing more. Once government goes beyond that it begins to become tyrannical and oppressive. In his pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”

When you choose to support a candidate or the actions of government in general you are most likely doing so because that is what you believe to be the function of government? But what forms your opinion as to what the functions of government are? Is it the news media; the speeches given by candidates for office; your high school text books? Let me ask you something, during your studies of civics or American History, did any of your teachers ever go into any great detail the drafting and ratification of our constitution? I can’t answer for you, but my teachers only went over the basic form our government has and the general powers given to each branch; i.e. the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches.

I cannot recall my teachers ever discussing Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution where the specific powers given to Congress are found; can you? I did not even know that there was a contentious debate that occurred over ratification of the constitution, with the Federalists writing their articles in support of that document and the anti-federalists writing their own articles opposing the ratification of it. On top of all that, I had never read James Madison’s notes on the convention which produced the constitution until I made the effort to find them and read them for myself.

Whether you like it or not, all those writings are part of this country’s history, and if you aren’t aware of what was said in those writings your education has been biased and misleading; with the intended goal of indoctrinating you into accepting that your government is supreme and endowed with almost unlimited power and authority. So who, in reality, is guilty of propagating propaganda; me or your school text books? All I’m trying to do is open your eyes to truths you may not have been exposed to; yet I am the crazy one?

When people go to the polls to cast their votes, or whenever they choose to either support or oppose something our government wants to do, the ONLY thing that should matter is whether or not the constitution authorizes government to undertake those actions. Unfortunately, that is the last thing that people think about when choosing which candidate to vote for, or whether or not to support the actions of their government.

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why we even need a federal government? After all, we already have State governments, so why do we need a centralized federal government? Come on, there must have been a pretty good reason our Founders would establish a central government with all that power and authority; what do you think that reason might have been?

To answer that question one must first ask why does any government exist? The answer to that can be found in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

That’s right, the purpose of government, at least according to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence was to secure the rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. I think there is a huge misconception in regards to this whole pursuit of happiness part. I think people today believe that our government exists to ensure we achieve happiness and equality in all things. Are you aware that Benjamin Franklin once said, “The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” I’ll go into that in a bit more detail in a moment, but for now I’d like to continue discussing why our government was established all those years ago.

In 1791 James Wilson, a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, wrote, “Government … should be formed to secure and enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government which has not this in view as its principal object is not a government of the legitimate kind.” (Source: Lectures on Law)

A year later, James Madison, the so-called Father of our Constitution, would write, “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.” (Source: James Madison, Property, 1792)

There you have it, the reason for which government should exist from 3 leading Founding Fathers; Jefferson, Madison and James Wilson. But I’d like to spend a moment or two discussing Madison’s comments; particularly as they regard to property. How do you define property? Do you define it as the things you have purchased? Well, Madison felt that property was much more than our personal possessions. In the speech which contained the abovementioned quote Madison also explained what he considered property to be. Madison’s thoughts on what property is are as follows, “In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”

Therefore, if anyone attempts to tell you what to think or say, are they not attempting to deprive you of your right to free speech and thought? If anyone tells you that you must give of a portion of your earnings so that this money can then be given to others who have not earned it, is not your property being taken from you? If you are told that you must surrender a portion of your unalienable rights for the overall public good, is not your property being violated?

I hear a great many people say that the money that is withheld from their pay in the form of Social Security taxes should be locked away and be beyond the ability of government to touch for any purpose other than the funding of their retirement. Yet these same people seem to have no qualms about having their rights violated for the greater public good. Are these people aware that the Bill of Rights also had a preamble which states its intended purpose?

The preamble to the Bill of Rights states, “THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution.”

The Bill of Rights is not the granting of those rights by government; rather it is restrictions imposed upon our government from ever touching those rights. Although I am not a fan of the Supreme Court, they sometimes get it right, as was the case in 1943 when they held, “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” (Source: West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette, Justice Robert Jackson delivering the opinion of the Court)

Can you tell me, after all the evidence I have provided, that your government is serving the function it was established to serve? How can you say that when your government has taken upon itself to determine what is meant by the word arms and what class of arms you are allowed to keep and bear? How can you say that when the Supreme Court has held that public prayer is not allowed in places funded by tax dollars; thereby restricting your right of freedom of speech and worship? How can you say that when you are being monitored, surveilled, and are required to undergo a search before boarding an airplane; all without a warrant; thereby violating the restrictions imposed upon government by the 4th Amendment? How can you say that our government is doing its job when it takes money from your pay and gives it away in the form of subsidies, benefits and foreign aid; all without your consent?

You see, in James Madison’s speech on property there is a key point he made that people today seem to have forgotten, “Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”

The problem with your government today is not that there are too many programs instituted by either the Republicans or Democrats; the problem is that an excess of power prevails; and therefore our property and our rights are no longer being protected by the laws your government passes.

When the debate over whether or not to accept the proposed constitution was raging, James Madison attempted to alleviate the fears of the people regarding an omnipotent central government that would deprive the States of their authority and the people of their rights. In Federalist 45 Madison described the separation of power and authority between the States and the federal government as follows: The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.

The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

Can you honestly tell me, with an honest face that is, that this separation of power still exists? Has not our government overstepped its just authority and made a tyrannical use of its power, and in the process created a multitude of agencies whose sole function is the enforcing of the laws our government passes? Is that not one of the reasons our Founders chose to revolt against their government in 1776, stating, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” (Source: Declaration of Independence)

You know the stupidest argument I’ve heard in support of your government today is that it is the only one we have so we might as well make do with whatever options are provided for our choice at the voting booth. That’s like saying that a person born into slavery should accept that they are a slave and not seek their freedom; simply because that’s the cards they were dealt in life.

Those men we call our Founding Fathers did not sit back and bemoan the fact that their government was violating their rights; they took action to resist those violations of their rights and to restore their liberty. Did the Son’s of Liberty obtain a permit for their little excursion into Boston Harbor to dump all that tea into the water? Did those who formed up at Lexington and Concord make sure they had their concealed carry permits on hand in case the British asked for them?

The answer to all the above is a resounding NO!!! The stood for their rights; even if doing so meant they would lose their lives. That is what is missing in America today; that courage to tell government to go to hell; that we will not obey any law which restricts our liberty. America today would rather be comfortable in bondage than it would expend an ounce of effort defending the very thing government was established to secure; their liberty.

I see these people applauding Trump for all that he is doing to Make America Great Again, yet they ignore the fact that he said that we should take the guns then give people due process later. How can you support a President that has so little concern for the rights government was restricted from infringing upon by constitutional amendment?

People’s primary concerns these days are their comfort, the fact that we have a booming economy, and that taxes are low. Yet in his speech opposing the Constitution Patrick Henry declared, “You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government.”

Are comfort, security and wealth of more importance than your liberty? If so then you are not cut from the same clothe as were our Founders. In the same speech as the above quote, Mr. Henry also said, “Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings-give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else: But I am fearful I have lived long enough to become an fellow: Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man, may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old fashioned: If so, I am contented to be so: I say, the time has been when every pore of my heart beat for American liberty, and which, I believe, had a counterpart in the breast of every true American.”

The of course there is this, one of my favorite quotes from Samuel Adams, “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

I fear for what the future holds when I see the unwillingness of people today to accept that their government has become a monster that is far more tyrannical than the one our Founders fought a war to free themselves from. I fear for what the future holds when the truth is labeled propaganda and shunned or ridiculed by the overwhelming majority of the people.

In the film Warriors of Honor there is a quote that is displayed in the opening scenes that says, “A nation that is ignorant of its past, is a nation that is ripe for deception and manipulation. Therefore, it is not what happened, but rather what people believe happened which determines the present actions of a nation.”

There is so much truth to that. People today believe their government is endowed with all these powers because they have been taught a lie. People accept that their government can, and ought to restrict the rights of the people when it serves the greater public good.

But there is another quote that is equally true, this one comes from Willem Hendrick von Loon, “Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession – their ignorance.”

Our country is in such sad shape not because the Republicans or Democrats have instituted programs the other party does not like; it is in such sad shape because the people of this country don’t know, or care why their government was established in the first place. And that is why I included the quote from van Goethe at the very beginning, because it is truly frightful to watch ignorance in action; especially when you consider that the eventual loss of all our liberty is the end result of the ignorance of the average American voter.

In closing I’d like to repeat a quote I’ve used many times before. In an 1822 letter to W.T. Barry James Madison wrote, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

Well our government has become a farce and a tragedy, because it no longer seeks to preserve and protect our liberty; and until the people pull their heads out of the sand and see it for what it is, not a damned thing is going to change in America; in fact it will only continue to get worse.
Sometimes the truth is painful or uncomfortable, but to reject it simply because of that is foolish. As Patrick Henry said in his immortal Give me Liberty or give me death speech, “For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”

Can you say the same? Are you willing to go out and seek the truth, or accept it when it is presented to you? If so, there is hope still for this country. If not, then America is doomed…and that is a truth you will find out soon enough if you don’t start defending what remains of your liberty.

(Thanks to my friend Louis Turner for the graphic)

“Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.”
~Aristotle~

Nothing is more dangerous to liberty than is the belief that the ends justify the means; that the overall public good is all that is required to justify laws which violate the rights of certain groups, or the individual. Each of us, and each of us alone are responsible for our own actions, for providing for our own sustenance, and for protecting and defending the liberty that is God’s gift to all men. The belief that society is responsible for these things, and that government is the coercive power that society uses to force others to bend to their beliefs is diametrically opposed to all that our Founders fought for.

I have repeatedly mentioned that I believe America is in a downward spiral, that eventually it will fall. I think people tend to laugh at such predictions; thinking that a mighty nation such as ours could never fall. Besides showing how arrogant Americans are, this also shows me that some do not realize what I mean when I say America will fall if we don’t turn things around and return to the values this country was built upon.

Did Rome vanish when the Roman Empire fell? Of course not; look at any map of Italy and you’ll see that it’s still there, smack dab in the middle of the country near the Tyrrhenian Sea. Nor will America vanish when it falls; all that will happen is that the land of the free will be but a brief few moments of greatness in the annals of time.

There is a quote that sums up nicely how I feel about this, although I’ve been reluctant to use it because I do not know who originally said it. However, on the website The Federal Observer one can find the following quote, “The phrase “the Fall of America” suggests some cataclysmic event ended the American Empire which had stretched from Maine to California and Florida to Washington. But at the end, there was no straining at the gates, no barbarian horde that dispatched the Empire in one fell swoop. Rather, the Empire fell slowly, as a result of challenges from within and without, and changing over the course of hundreds of years until its form was unrecognizable.”

Now is it a bit clearer in regards to what I mean when I say America is going to fall? America will not vanish into nothingness as did the lost continent of Atlantis; rather the life-giving principles which made America great will die a slow and painful death until all that remains is an empty husk of the America that was first envisioned in 1776.

The America of our Founders dreams was a land where people were free to pursue their own dreams and pursuits with little to no interference or assistance by their governments. After all, that’s what liberty is; true liberty that is; not this imagined thing people believe they have today. In his first Inaugural Address Thomas Jefferson defined good government as, “…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” (Source: Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address)

From the moment George Washington took office our government began exercising certain powers that were not specifically delegated to them by the Constitution. This concept of implied powers is the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton and is the Pandora’s Box that is at the root of every law being passed today, and every intrusion upon our sacred and unalienable rights.

Our Founding Fathers resisted the laws being passed by Parliament and King George from the moment they went into effect; some more than others. Some felt that the correct answer was to petition the King, asking that he repeal the laws being passed which violated their rights. Others, such as the Son’s of Liberty, felt that civil disobedience was the answer. While their acts of civil disobedience may, and probably did cause the King to escalate by passing ever more restrictive laws upon the Colonists; including the deploying of troops in Boston to maintain order, it is highly unlikely that a restoration of their lost liberty would have occurred if the Colonies would have rested all their hopes upon peaceful petitions to the King for a redress of grievances.

They had tried that, to no avail. The King was steadfast in his belief that he had the power and authority to bind the Colonists in all cases whatsoever, and that as British subjects they were bound to obey.

If you don’t mind I’d like to take a few moments discussing a key distinction that few today seem to think about; the difference between a subject and a freeman. As subjects whatever rights they have come at the good grace of their sovereign; usually a monarch or a despot. When that circumstance exists what the people really have are not rights, they are privileges; and privileges can be revoked.

However, our Founders believed that their rights came from a higher authority than a King; from God Himself; and that anyone who attempted to restrict those rights was a tyrant and it was their duty to resist to the best of their ability. They were willing to die to establish a free and independent country founded upon that belief; and look at what we have allowed to happen to their vision.

While I don’t buy the argument that our Founders could not have envisioned the technological advances that society would make, let’s just say that argument is valid for the point of arguments sake. Does the fact that the 2nd Amendment not specify automatic weapons or weapons capable of holding magazines with 30 rounds mean that the 2nd Amendment does not protect our right to keep and bear those type of weapons?

You see, the 2nd Amendment, and all the others for that matter, are principle based; meaning that there is a purpose for which those rights were singled out for protection against governmental intrusion by Constitutional Amendment. The 2nd Amendment was not ratified to give people the right to hunt, to target shoot, or even to protect their homes and property; although those are all side benefits of having the right to keep and bear arms. The 2nd Amendment was written so that the people could raise a force that was superior to any standing army our government might raise to impose tyranny upon us.

Yet how many laws have passed, both at the state and federal level which tell us what type arms we may keep and bear, how many rounds the magazines of these weapons might carry, and under what circumstances we are allowed to carry and use them for their intended purpose? And why have we allowed our lawmakers to pass such laws? We have allowed them to pass such laws because we care less about defending our liberty against tyrants than we do having a sense of safety and security from those who would do us harm. I believe Ben Franklin had something to say about a people like that, “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

But I don’t want to make this all about the 2nd Amendment, so let’s talk about the 1rst Amendment as well, but before I do I want you to read something the Supreme Court said back in 1943. In the case of West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette, Justice Robert Jackson, issuing the ruling on behalf of the court, stated, “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

If, as Thomas Jefferson stated in our Declaration of Independence, our rights come from our Creator, then how is it that we allow the will of men to restrict them? I can see asking people to express themselves in a manner that is not hateful or disrespectful of others, but to attempt to silence, in any way, be it a restriction of speech or a removal of images that offend, goes against the free part of freedom of speech. Rap lyrics offend me but you don’t see me going around trying to censor rap artists. The constant talk of football offends me as do the things I hear people say about politics and government which show the width and depth of their ignorance, but I don’t run around constantly telling them to shut up.

This whole political correct movement is nothing more than a flat out attack upon our freedom of speech and expression which is designed to push forward a specific agenda and silence anyone who opposes that agenda. All that is required for something to be deemed politically incorrect these days is enough people to say that whatever they want silenced is offensive to them.

A person’s right to exercise their rights is not limited by how many are offended by the exercise of a particular right; it is only limited by how much harm it brings to another. If someone says something, or displays something that you do not like, that is not sufficient cause to demand that the person stop saying that, or remove an image so that you do not have to see it.

Look at how our freedom of religion has come under attack simply because those of other faiths are offended. The 1st Amendment states freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion; there is a difference you know. Freedom of religion means that we are free to worship as our conscience demands. People today believe the 1rst Amendment means that no religious discussion at all can take place on taxpayer funded sites, such as schools. That’s simply not what was intended by the 1st Amendment.

The 1st Amendment was written to allow for freedom of religious worship for all. It was written so that the government would not select a single faith as a state sponsored church, and demand that everyone worship according to the dogma of that sect. Yet the Supreme Court has upheld that no religious discussion can take place in locations that are funded by tax dollars; such as our public schools.

In the Kentucky Resolutions Thomas Jefferson states, “One of the amendments to the Constitution… expressly declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,’ thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others.” Read that carefully, for what Jefferson is basically saying is that if you deprive a person of their right to worship their Creator as they see fit you are undermining the ENTIRE 1st Amendment.

But you say, “But Neal, the Supreme Court ruled that religious discussion in public school violates the separation of church and state.” Who cares what the Supreme Court says? Quoting again from Jefferson, “If [as the Federalists say] “the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government,” … , then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de so. … The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they may please.”

Are you aware that in an 1844 Supreme Court Case the court held, “Why may not the Bible and especially the New Testament be read and taught as a divine revelation in school? Where else can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?” Now how could the Supreme Court hold that religious teaching is tolerated back in 1844, yet it is not allowed in 2018 if they are not doing exactly as Jefferson warned they would do; twist and shape the constitution into any form they please?

Back in 1987 Chief Justice Warren Burger, in an interview for the Christian Science Monitor, said, “Judges … rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times.” Yet isn’t that what they often do today, render their decisions based upon the prevailing public sentiment?

So now I have shown you that two of the rights protected by the Bill of Rights have come under attack; are there more? Of course there are. What about the 4th Amendment which states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Spying, if done correctly, is about as unobtrusive a thing there is. What I mean by that is that if you are being spied upon you probably don’t even realize it; and believe me, you ARE being spied upon…by your own government!

If you have an electronic device, such as a smart phone, a home PC, or even a cordless phone, your conversations are not only being listened to, they are being recorded and stored in huge data banks maintained by the National Security Agency. Every keystroke of your computer, every text message you send, every picture you post to Facebook is being stored, and computer algorithms attempt to predict whether or not you may pose a threat to our country, or our government itself.

All this is done without your knowledge and without any justification. Read the 4th Amendment again, it states that your property shall be free from UNREASONABLE searches and seizures, and that no search shall occur without a warrant being issued based upon probable cause; describing the exact place to be searched and what they are looking for.

But that hasn’t stopped them, has it? Our government collects information like a net fishermen collects fish; it casts a huge electronic net out and brings in everything in its path; then it stores and analyzes it, looking for potential threats. If the police knew that a criminal was in a certain area of a city or town, but didn’t know the particular house he was in, would they be justified in kicking in the door of every home and searching for that criminal? If you answer no, then why is our government justified in sifting through the personal communications of every American looking for those who might commit acts of terror?

This isn’t something new, back in 1975 Senator Frank Church appeared on Meet the Press and warned of the dangers posed by our governments surveillance capabilities:

In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (…) Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies.

We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. (…)

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return. (17 August 1975) Their capability to spy upon us has only increased as time has gone by and now they can monitor and collect almost everything we do or say without our knowledge.

The sad thing is that we have been conditioned to accept these violations of our rights as necessary for the public safety. The news media is complicit in this conditioning in that when something such as a violent shooting takes place, or a terrorist attack, the news goes into overdrive, providing 24/7 coverage for weeks on end; maintaining the desired level of fear until the people demand that something be done to protect them.

But it’s not just the news. Look at the TV shows you watch; especially the crime dramas like NCIS or Criminal Minds where computer hackers slip in and out of the private lives of people in search of evidence connecting them to a crime. What is happening is that we are being conditioned, or brainwashed if you will, into accepting these violations of our rights as being necessary. Our resistance to these criminal acts by our government is slowly being programmed out of us; and the eventual outcome is that we will become a nation of mindless sheep who meekly follow orders without question.

This conditioning has been so effective that people don’t even realize their rights are being violated, and if they do they don’t care. Their thought process has been altered to accept these violations of their most sacred rights without question, and not only that, they reject any effort to show them that their government is breaking the law by doing so.

You would not believe the level of frustration this causes me; trying to get people to see the truth that is RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES!!! Yet people are still confined to the Republican vs Democrat game; only caring that their party gains control of the machine that is government, never caring that the machine is chewing through the Bill of Rights and turning them all into slaves. And then of course there are those who simply don’t care; those who think that sports, Reality TV, YouTube videos, Twitter, shopping on QVC or Amazon, or simply getting drunk are far more important than learning how far our government has overstepped its legitimate authority and how many of their rights have been lost.

As I said in the beginning, America will fall unless people wake up, and wake up fast. Did our Founders place all their hopes and dreams in the hope that King George III might die and be replaced by a more benevolent King who would restore their lost liberty? No, they resisted each violation of their rights until the King had proven that his actions were designed to establishing “…an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

Well my friends, history certainly has a way of repeating itself; especially when people ignore the lessons it provides us. Our government today is 100 times more tyrannical and oppressive than the one our Founders fought a war to free themselves from. As far as that goes, it is a 100 times more tyrannical today than it was in 1860 when the Southern States seceded and sought to exercise their right to “…institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” But the conditioning by our public schools and the media has been so effective that most believe the Civil War was not a second war for independence, rather it was a war to end the institution of slavery.

And that’s what happens when people refuse to seek out the truth for themselves; they end up believing lies. That’s what happens when people reject the truth because to accept it means that they would have to accept that they have been played for fools into surrendering the liberty our country was founded upon.

America may still be here as a continent in 100 years, but if people don’t pull their heads out of the sand and start caring, the vital principles it was founded upon will have gone the way of the dodo bird and America will be populated by people who have no rights other than those their government grants them. And that is NOT the kind of freedom our Founders fought for!

I’m almost certain that out of all the subjects taught in school, history is probably one of the most boring things a student could be subjected to; at least that’s how I felt while I made my way through the public school system. They say hindsight is always 20/20, and maybe that is why I am going to such extremes in my old age to compensate for what I did not pay attention to while a youth.

There have been a lot of Hollywood movies filmed based upon the subject of time travel. The Terminator series is one, as well as the Back to the Future series as well. Although I would probably be burnt at the stake for witchcraft if I showed up in pre-revolutionary America in a modified DeLorean; I think the knowledge I could learn from travelling back to that period of our history would be well worth the risk.

Can you imagine what it would be like if you could travel back in time and have a discussion with Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry; the things you could learn from them? I can think of only one other person I’d love to travel back in time to meet; and that would be Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, at least for the time being, time travel is a thing of fiction and imaginative fiction writers; so the best one can do is to seek out the writings and correspondence those men left for posterity to learn from. That is, of course, if one cares enough about the history of their country to make the effort.

The day is quickly approaching in which America celebrates its independence from Great Britain. Yes, I’m talking about July 4th; Independence Day. Typically, as that day approaches, I’ll write something about how I’m feeling at that particular moment in times towards independence and the principles of liberty that our Founders were fighting for. This year I thought I’d do something a bit different; this year I thought I’d write something a month in advance to sort of plant a seed in people’s minds so that when the day actually gets here maybe they’ll stop and think more on what they are celebrating. Yeah, I know, it’s a long stretch, but one can always hope.

I wonder, how many actually know of the process that took place for the Declaration of Independence to be written and voted upon. Do people know that the Congress that voted upon it was not the first time that delegates had met in Philadelphia to discuss their grievances against the King of England? That’s right, between the months of September to October of 1774 delegates from 12 of the 13 Colonies met in Philadelphia to discuss the laws King George and Parliament were imposing upon the Colonies.

Although not much of substance was accomplished during those months, at least not according to the delegates from Massachusetts who were suffering the most from these laws, it did show that they were willing to meet and present a somewhat unified front against the invasions upon their God-given rights.

A lot happened between the time the First Continental Congress met and the decision of the Colonies to seek independence. During those two short years Patrick Henry had delivered a fiery speech at St. John’s Church, concluding with the famous words, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Then of course there was the attempt by the King’s men to confiscate the arms at Lexington and Concord and arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock.

I’ll bet many weren’t aware that the Second Continental Congress began their deliberations not in 1776; rather they began in the spring of 1775. So it was well over a year from the time they met to actually voting upon the Declaration of Independence.

I’d also be willing to bet that many aren’t aware that the proposal for independence came not when the Declaration of Independence was presented to the Convention, but when Richard Henry Lee proposed his resolution on June 7th. Lee’s resolution contained 3 parts, but it is the first which I’d like to focus your attention upon, “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

When Lee first introduced his proposal for a complete and irrevocable separation from England many of the delegates attending had not been given instructions by their State Legislatures on how they should vote is such a proposal were submitted for their consideration. Some went so far as to threaten to return to their home states if such a resolution were even hinted at. So independence, at least at this stage, was not the unanimous consensus among the Colonies.

Nevertheless, prior to the delegates returning home after a 3 week recess had been called, a Committee of Five was appointed to draft a formal declaration should the delegates be given the go ahead to vote on such a proposal. This Committee of Five consisted of Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert Livingston of New York, and of course Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.

Why did they choose Thomas Jefferson to be the primary author of a document that had such wide ranging ramifications? To begin the process a vote was taken among the members of the Committee of Five as to who should write the formal declaration, with Jefferson coming in first and Adams coming in second. When Jefferson asked Adams why he should be the one to write the document Adams responded by saying, “Reason first—You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second—I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third—You can write ten times better than I can.”

So the decision was made, Thomas Jefferson would write the draft of a formal declaration of independence, and once he presented it to the other members of the Committee of Five they would read and edit it to produce a document they felt would be accepted by the full Congress.

Jefferson did not have much time to write the Declaration of Independence; having other duties he also needed to attend to. Yet he did a masterful job considering the pressure he must have been under to produce a document that all the delegates would eventually have to vote upon. Upon having been chosen to write the first draft Jefferson retreated to a recently constructed brick boarding house; the location which remains today at the corner of 7th and Market Streets in modern day Philadelphia. At the time this location was far removed from the hustle and bustle of the center of town; surrounded by fields and giving Jefferson a semblance of the solitude he would have had at his home at Monticello.

Once completed the Committee of Five made a few minor changes; such as changing the wording about our rights being sacred and undeniable to the wording we know today; self-evident. However, it was when the edited draft reached the Committee of the whole that the chain saws came out and the butchering began.

To Jefferson’s horror the Committee of the Whole edited out a section Jefferson was quite passionate about; the fact that slavery existed in the Colonies. Edited out of Jefferson’s draft was the following wording which proves beyond a doubt that Jefferson believed slavery to be cruel and inhumane, “…he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce…”

Today Jefferson is reviled because he owned slaves and due to the fact that he most likely had a relationship with Sally Hemings after his wife Martha died; yet DNA proves that Sally Hemings was in fact half sister to his wife Martha; born from the relationship between her father and one of the slaves he had owned. Yet if one were to read through Jefferson’s other writings one would be unable to deny that Jefferson despised slavery; but was opposed to just freeing them without giving them the means to provide for their own needs. Unfortunately Jefferson’s sentiments were not shared by many of his time; and today he is reviled because people do not know the full history of the period.

Nonetheless, a finalized draft was presented to the delegates, it was voted upon, and the rest, as the old saying goes, is history. But what was contained in the wording of the final document they voted upon; was it merely a list of grievances against the King of England, or was it more?

Even with all the changes made to his original draft, the finalized version remains as one of the most eloquent things I’ve ever read, and it stirs in my heart sentiments that only a true lover of liberty can experience; and that’s true no matter how many times I read Jefferson’s masterpiece.

Jefferson not only laid out a concise list of grievances against King George III, he laid out the foundation upon which any form of government in America, and dare I say, the world should exist. I’m not going to discuss what Jefferson said, rather I’m just going to present to you what Jefferson said and let you decide for yourself if what he said even remotely resembles the attitudes of people today.
Here are Jefferson’s opening statements from the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

There are a few principles contained in that wording, wouldn’t you say? Chief among them are the facts that our rights come not from government, but from our Creator; that government derives its authority from the consent of the people; and that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established it is our right, nay our DUTY to alter or abolish it.

The remainder of Jefferson’s document lays out specific grievances against the King which led the Colonists to the only conclusion that complete and utter separation between the two nations was the only option left for restoring the liberty the Colonists felt was rightfully theirs; and which their government had proven it was intent upon destroying.

I could go on at length and discuss each of these grievances but that would make this too long, and I would probably lose most of my readers along the way. So in an effort to keep things short I will discuss but one single grievance Jefferson mentions. This is the tenth out of the 27 grievances Jefferson lists, and quite nicely compares to the actions of our current government, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

While the many agencies created by our government may not eat out of our substance, they certainly do harass us and there are swarms of officers sent out to enforce the many laws and regulations they pass; all of which we must obey or face fines, jail time, or death should we chose to resist. And people say we still live in the land of the free–since when?

Sure, America may be freer than many of the other countries in the world, but that isn’t the point. How free are we compared to the freedom enjoyed by those who fought for and secured their independence from England?

-Our land is taxed, and if we don’t pay those taxes it can be taken from us.

-We are required to obtain a license or permit to take of the many animals and fish that were here long before our government was even a twinkle in James Madison’s eye.

-We cannot take to the public streets and highways without a license and taxes upon our modes of transportation.

-What we eat is regulated and controlled from the time seeds are planted to the time we purchase them in the supermarkets.

-We are told what we can and cannot put into our bodies by a multitude of agencies including the DEA and the FDA.

-In some instances we cannot collect the rainwater that falls from the sky because the government claims control over that as well.

-We are told when, and under what circumstances we can use force to defend ourselves, our families and our property.

-Our government ignores our petitions for a redress of grievances; sending out form letters thanking us for our comments, then carrying on with the passing of laws that violate our most basic rights.

-Our privacy is being violated without our knowledge, and without a warrant specifically telling us what is being searched for or the reasons why these actions are being undertaken; cloaking them under the general umbrella of fighting terrorism.

And the list goes on and on and on. Yet American’s falsely believe they are free. As Johan Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “None are so hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

The sad thing about all this is that those who do realize that we are NOT free, and try to awaken others to this are laughed at or considered a danger to the public safety. Just look at what happened to Edward Snowden when he exposed the extent to which our own government is spying upon the American people; he was forced to flee to Russia or face imprisonment for espionage.

There was a time when Americans understood what their rights were, and fought against every intrusion upon them. That time has long ago passed; at least as far as I can see. Today far too many people are readily willing to sacrifice their rights for the promise of comfort and security the loss of those rights might provide. Our Founders would not have tolerated half of what we readily accept today; they would have did what they did in 1776; declared their independence from a tyrannical government, and taken up arms against their government should it have chosen to use force to compel their obedience.

Yeah, we’ve certainly come a long way baby…

So on this upcoming July 4th I would ask that you not celebrate what little freedom you have left; I would ask that you ponder the freedom you have lost, then ask yourselves what you are going to do to restore it.

That is my sincerest hope for this upcoming Independence Day, 2018…

While at the doctors office this morning I picked up a copy of the Territorial Dispatch, a small privately owned and operated newspaper. In it was an editorial written by a RW Gless about the Deep State. I just wrote this in response to his comments. Hope they publish it.

The May 30th edition of your publication contained an editorial written by someone by the name of R. W. Gless, regarding the Deep State. It certainly is refreshing to see that there are others in this state that actually gets it; it is something I do not encounter too often in my day to day interactions with the masses.

I have been trying to open people’s eyes about the Deep State for at least a decade, if not longer; all to no avail. All I encounter is the same old two party paradigm nonsense; “Gotta vote Republican so Democrats don’t get in” or vice versa. You can’t imagine the barriers people put up when you even suggest that there are forces in operation behind the scenes that actually control, manipulate and shape the policy of our government.
The sad thing is, the Deep State is not something new; it has been around for years; dating back AT LEAST to the early years of the 20th Century when Woodrow Wilson was president and signed the Federal Reserve Act, and when the 16th Amendment was ratified; tying us forever to the debt our government incurs.

Our public school systems have failed us miserably, and I might add intentionally; because they have come under the control of the Deep State as well. They do not want a well educated and well informed public; that simply won’t do for them. Instead they want a dumbed down apathetic and complacent people who accept, without protest, an ever increasing litany of laws, rules and regulations that control their lives.

Land of the free? Ha, what a joke!

Today the writings of our Founders are as foreign to most people as the hieroglyphs found on ancient Egyptian parchments. There were those among our Founder, most predominantly Patrick Henry, who warned us of the dangers of accepting the constitution and the government it established. He, correctly I might add, warned of the dangers to our liberty and the inability of the people to restrain it within the confines of that document.

In a speech delivered to the Virginia Ratifying Assembly Mr. Henry stated, “Where is the responsibility — that leading principle in the British government? In that government a punishment, certain and inevitable, is provided: But in this, there is no real actual punishment for the grossest maladministration. They may go without punishment, though they commit the most outrageous violation on our immunities. That paper may tell me they will be punished. I ask, by what law? They must make the law — for there is no existing law to do it. What — will they make a law to punish themselves? This, Sir, is my great objection to the Constitution, that there is no true responsibility — and that the preservation of our liberty depends on the single chance of men being virtuous enough to make laws to punish themselves.”

Our system was designed with the hope that the people would remain educated and informed, as well as preserving a love of liberty over the comfort provided by a government that cares over our every need from cradle to grave. None of these things have happened, and as a consequence we have allowed false and designing me to be elected and integrate themselves into the system and control it from the shadows.

The Deep State is a cancer, a gangrene that cannot be removed by the simple firing of a few key people within our government. The Deep State is symptomatic of a much larger problem, the unwillingness of the people to keep a watchful eye upon their government, and resist, with force if necessary, every single usurpation of power beyond those specifically granted them by the Constitution.

While I applaud President Trump for bringing the Deep State to the forefront of public discussions, I fear it is too entrenched for a single man to eradicate.
Neal Ross

Everyone has their own beliefs as to who was a great president of these States united. Some believe Ronald Reagan was a great president, while others believe Barack Obama was. Some believe Kennedy was a great one, while others believe Lincoln was. I know someone who believes John Quincy Adams was a great one, and another who believes Andrew Johnson, (the one who replaced Lincoln after he was assassinated) was a great one. I imagine that there will be those who will someday say that Donald Trump was a great president. Everyone has their own beliefs as to who was a great president, and that’s okay; if everyone believed the same thing, this country would be a pretty boring place.

However, if you want to know who I personally think was the greatest man to ever hold the presidency you are going to have to travel back in time to the election of Thomas Jefferson back in 1800. Even Kennedy, (who I happen to think was a pretty darned good president), said this about Jefferson when hosting 49 Nobel Prize winners at the White House, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” I don’t know what you make of those comments, but I consider them to be pretty high praise, considering the circumstances under which they were said.

Even James Madison, who is considered to be the father of our Constitution and would follow Jefferson into the Oval Office, had this to say about him, “He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age. It may be said of him as has been said of others that he was a “walking Library,” and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that the Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him.”

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson was fluent in Latin and Greek, and by age 16 could write the same sentence simultaneously with opposite hands in both languages? Did you know he taught himself to read Spanish by picking up a copy of Don Quixote in the author’s native language? Did you know he was both an inventor and an architect?

Had Jefferson not gotten involved in the politics of his time I still think he would have been one of the greatest minds America had ever produced. But Jefferson did get involved in politics; and they are his thoughts that tug at my heart strings as I read through the elegant prose of the Declaration of Independence; our nation’s birth certificate.

I have heard some criticize Jefferson due to his having owned slaves; labeling him a racist. I don’t mean to be insulting, but that only shows how truly ignorant people are about those who founded this nation. Yes Jefferson owned slaves, but did you know in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence he condemned slavery; laying the blame for it at the feet of the King of England?

Did you know that it was Northerners who removed Jefferson’s wording from the Declaration of Independence for fear that it might offend others, and they wanted unanimous, (or what we would call bipartisan) support for their document?

Did you know that in 1784 Jefferson proposed legislation that would have stopped the institution of slavery from spreading into new territories after the year 1800, but that his legislation failed to pass by one vote?

Did you know that Jefferson proposed gradual education and eventual emancipation and colonization of the slaves in a land they could call their own; the very thing Lincoln also felt was the best answer to slavery I might add; yet Jefferson is accused of being racist and Lincoln is praised as the one who drove a stake through the heart of slavery in America.

People don’t know these things because they haven’t taken the time to study the men these vicious rumors and innuendos have been floated about to erode their credibility regarding other issues. But isn’t that how American politics work these days; if you can’t defeat the message you attack the integrity of the messenger; for it is far easier to cause people to question a person’s integrity than it is to get them to contradict the facts.

Isn’t that why our Presidential Debates these days are more of a circus sideshow with the candidates attacking each other rather than laying out clear cut ideas and plans to deal with the nation’s problems; because America wants a Jerry Springer sideshow where they can be entertained, rather than an intelligent debate where they are forced to use their brains and deal solely with facts.

But I stray off course, and this is one time I do not wish to do that…

I was having a discussion earlier today with a friend on Facebook over political parties, and how Jefferson may have been the force behind the creation of the two party system America currently suffers under, (although those weren’t the exact words used during that conversation).

While it’s true that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were the force behind the early Democratic Party, there is/was a reason why they established an opposition party to those who held control of our government at the time.

If anything, Thomas Jefferson was a purist in regards to how he felt the Constitution should be interpreted. As Secretary of State for President Washington he saw firsthand how the government was quickly becoming something other than the one the Constitution authorized. This was primarily due to the influence the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, had upon the president. Congress may have enacted, and George Washington may have signed the laws which created our first national bank, assumed a massive debt, and began taxing to spend the money for the growth of the economy of the North, but these laws were the brainchildren of Alexander Hamilton.

I believe Jefferson, and to a lesser extent, James Madison, did what they did to halt, or at least slow down the corrupting influence of the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton. Americans, if they truly understood and loved the Constitution, should celebrate July 11th; the day Aaron Burr mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Unfortunately, the seeds that Hamilton had spread had taken root and the government we have today is the bastard child of Alexander Hamilton.

There is an interesting quote by columnist George Will that explains that in better terms than I could, “There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton’s monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton’s country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.” Now I don’t know for sure if Will is praising Hamilton or if he was mourning the fact that our country did not adhere to the Jeffersonian line of thought; I’ll leave it to you to form your own opinions on that.

As I said, I believe that Thomas Jefferson was, of all things, a purist in how he interpreted the powers granted government by the Constitution. By that I mean that if the Constitution did not specifically delegate a power to the central government, then that power did not exist. I suppose were Jefferson alive today he would be among those who society laughs at in the 10th Amendment movement; for he certainly wouldn’t want to have anything to do with either of the two bastardized political parties in existence in America today!

Just to give you an idea of how Jefferson felt towards the powers which our government should hold, allow me to provide a few quotes, along with the source material, that substantiate my claim that Jefferson was a purist.

-Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government . . . . and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. . . . that the government created by this compact [the Constitution for the United States] was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.. (The Kentucky Resolutions)

– If [as the Federalists say] “the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government,” … , then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de so. … The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they may please. (Jefferson in a private letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 1819)

-When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated (Jefferson in a private letter to Charles Hammond, 1821)

-Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction; to wit: by consolidation first and then corruption, its necessary consequence. The engine of consolidation will be the Federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments (Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821)

And finally…

-Still one thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. (Jefferson’s first Inaugural Address, 1801)

Those are just a few of the many quotes I could provide you containing the wisdom and knowledge of Thomas Jefferson.

It is truly sad that the beliefs Jefferson adhered to did not take root in America; we may not have found ourselves in the political mess we do today if they had. It is even more sad that when one such as myself attempts to share the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson with others I am laughed at or ignored because nobody wants to read a bunch of stuff written by a guy who has been dead for almost 200 years now. And it’s even sadder still that the American people are voting into office candidates who either don’t know, or don’t care what the Constitution says are the limits imposed upon our system of government.

But there is one final quote from Jefferson that I would like to share with you; one that I intentionally left out earlier. Thomas Jefferson had a personal seal made up to identify his correspondence and property. On that seal are found the words, “Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God.”

If tyranny is the unjust, or unlawful exercise of political power, then rebellion against such unjust use of power becomes the duty of every Christian living in America today. You see, Jefferson also said, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

If you think you are wiser than Thomas Jefferson, wiser than God Himself, then go ahead, keep on relying upon your discernment to make your political choices at the voting booth. But, if you love liberty, and if you profess to love God, then it becomes your obligation, your DUTY to resist tyranny wherever it may raise its ugly head.

Jefferson knew that, and that is why he, along with the 55 others, affixed their names to the Declaration of Independence; knowing full well that if they failed in defeating the army of Great Britain that they would be hung for treason.

America does not need more Donald Trump’s, it does not need more Barack Obama’s, it doesn’t even need more Ronald Reagan’s. What America needs is for more people to read the wisdom of men like Jefferson, Patrick Henry and the others who valued liberty above all else, and act upon the things they read. Anything less is a disservice to those who risked their all to secure liberty for themselves and for posterity, and an exercise in futility.

I have been writing a lot about categories lately. That is because there is always going to be someone, or something, that is opposite of you or your opinion; that is simply the way nature is. There will always be happiness and sadness; those with riches and those living in poverty; those who have extreme intelligence and those who exhibit abject stupidity; and–oh well, you see what I mean.

But in one area there are not just two categories, there are three. That category is politics; particularly American politics. There are those who wish to rule over us; there are those who wish only to be free from excessive governmental control; and then there are the willing dupes, or useful idiots as Stalin called them, who play the game of supporting government without regard for the limitations imposed upon it by the very document that created it.

I know I probably turned off the majority of my readers by calling them useful idiots; but if you still play the game; still believe that your vote matters; still believe that those running for office are doing so to serve you, then that’s what you are; a useful idiot who still believes in the illusion that America still has a Constitutional Republic.

Have you ever heard the term chumming? It refers to the tossing up of small chunks, or pieces of cut up fish or other meat into the water in the hopes of attracting larger fish to catch. That’s kind of like what I do when I write; I toss ideas and facts out there; hoping that they will sink in and cause people to bite upon them and start thinking on their own. Unfortunately, to use another fishing analogy, my livewell is empty; meaning no one has, at least no one that I’m aware of, has bitten and told me that I somehow inspired them to begin their own personal quest for the truth.

Years ago, when I first began writing these articles I thought that people would be overjoyed to learn the things I was writing about. I have since become rather jaded and cynical; having little hope that anything I say is going to make a difference in the institutionally lobotomized American voters. But as my friend Michael Gaddy once reminded me, I don’t do this for the people alive today, I do it for those who are yet to come; for posterity. Now I don’t know whether posterity will read these rants of mine, and I don’t know if they will take what I say to heart and try to learn from the mistakes we have made. I suppose the best I can hope for is that they see that there were those of us who did not willingly go into slavery without putting up any fight whatsoever.

You see, way back in 1771 Samuel Adams wrote something that I adhere to today. Adams writes, “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”

And boy, let me tell you, Washington D.C. is filled with false and designing men…and women for that matter. But it’s not just our nation’s capital that has been poisoned; it is the State governments as well; they all have abandoned the principle that people are born with certain rights, and that government is instituted to secure those rights. Of course some States, like my home State of California, are far worse than others; but make no mistake about it, they are all on the pathway that can only lead to abject tyranny and oppression.

Many years ago, back when America still had true Statesmen, not career politicians, a man you may have heard of, (Thomas Jefferson), wrote a letter to another man named Spencer Roane. In his letter Jefferson wrote, “Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.”

You see, that right there sums up all that has gone wrong in America; the people have not ‘ever been on the watch’ for a corruption of principles. Rather we have either supported laws which were in violation of the basic principles our system of government was founded upon, or we have remained silent because we were awaiting our turn so we could elect candidates from OUR party in the hopes that they would fix all that has gone wrong in America.

What has gone wrong is that the people of this country have not held their government to the limits the Constitution imposed upon it. What has gone wrong is that people have not resisted every single violation of their rights. What has gone wrong is that we have forsaken the principles that America was founded upon and replaced them with party loyalty. Today people bicker with each other over Republican vs Democrat issues and platforms, but I rarely hear the fact that neither party’s platform is in accordance to what the Constitution authorizes our government to do.

This isn’t something new, it has been going on for a very long time; so you’re not entirely off the hook. However, you are not helping things by perpetuating the status quo of flip flopping back and forth between Democratic and Republican control of our governments; both State and federal, rather than picking and choosing your candidates solely upon their proven desire to protect the liberty governments are supposed to be protecting. You can’t do that when you vote for candidates that promise to pass laws that tell others how they must live, or take from the earnings of those who have, and give it to those who profess a need. All you are doing when you do that is subjugating, or enslaving one class of people to benefit another class of people.

I have been asked by some, what can we do to fix America? People tend to not like my answer. I tell them to turn off their TV’s, get off Facebook, and pick up some books and start by reading the Constitution. Then read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers to see who said what in regards to what powers the two sides said the Constitution would give to the government. Then compare what was said to the government we have today. Then finally ask yourself, why do I support this government, in its current form, when it is clear that it is NOT the government the people of 1788 were promised it would be?

Oh, but that’s too much work they say. That takes too much time they tell me. Well, defending liberty is not something you set aside one day for, (July 4th), it is a lifetime obligation of all who wish to enjoy it. As Thomas Paine said, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

I am not telling you how you should vote; it’s a free world, (at least for the time being) and you are free to vote as you please. All I ask is that if you do not vote for candidates who pledge to support and defend the Constitution and Bill of Rights with all their being, don’t pretend that we still have a Constitutional Republic anymore. At least have the decency to admit that the only thing that matters to you is who gets to run this corrupt entity we call government.

Can you do that for me?

“THOSE who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must,
like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
~Thomas Paine~
The American Crisis
(1777)

When you break it all down to basics, I think there are but two types of people living in this country; those who love liberty and become upset when others attempt to restrict it, and then there is everyone else. If you truly loved liberty, to the extent that men like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson did, you would not vote for any candidate who did not share your love of it…and this is true regardless of whether the candidate had an R or a D in front of their name on the ballot.

You see, those who love liberty, and I mean truly love it, don’t care about the promises candidates make to improve the economy, provide them with benefits, keep America safe from terrorism, create jobs, or any of the other issues that fuel our political campaigns today; all we care about is government leaving them the hell alone to live our lives as we see fit. As Patrick Henry so perfectly stated, “Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings-give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else…”

The moment any of you cast your vote for a particular candidate hoping that they will fulfill any of their campaign promises you have already made the decision that what your government can do for you is of more importance than your government just leaving you the hell alone.

I want you to be honest with yourselves now; how many of you would vote for a candidate running for president who campaigned on the slogan, “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” I’m guessing not very many. Funny though, because that quote comes from the Inaugural Address of our nation’s 3rd President, Thomas Jefferson.

If I were to ask people to make a list of the top 10 issues which concern them in an election cycle, I’m guessing that the restoration of the freedom they have lost would not be among their concerns. Honestly, what does that say about the average American voter when the very thing for which our Founders risked their lives doesn’t make it into the top 10 concerns of the everyday citizen?

How much freedom have we, as Americans, lost because of our desire to feel safe and secure in our lives? Just look at all the laws we have passed restricting our right to keep and bear arms because we FEAR becoming a victim to a gun toting criminals and madmen. Look at how far we have allowed our government to intrude upon our personal privacy just to keep us safe from the big bad terrorists. Look at how many rules and regulations govern our lives, just to keep us safe from our own stupidity.

I wonder, how many people would get by, survive even, without some form of government subsidies or benefits? How many could handle the day to day decisions life forced upon them without the benevolent government providing safety rules and regulations which told them how, what, when and where they could do things? I truly believe that if our government were to suddenly vanish, within a month half the population of this country would die off due to natural selection and their inability to provide for themselves. Of course there would be rioting and looting as well, but the point I’m trying to make is that people rely too heavily upon government to do things which are ultimately their responsibility…at least they would be their responsibility if they were even close to being free.

In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIX, (or 19 for those of you who can’t read Roman Numerals), Thomas Jefferson writes, “Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”

Any people, anywhere, who depend upon government to provide for them become dependent upon that government and are highly unlikely to resist any encroachments upon their freedom; simply because people adhere to the old saying, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

When people go to vote they do so because of the campaign promises these politicians make; not because they care whether or not their rights are slowly disappearing no matter who gets elected. Patrick Henry once said that liberty ought to be the direct end of government, meaning that the preservation of that liberty should be the sole purpose for which government is instituted.

The thing about it is that government is an institution which is bestowed with power over others; even if that power was originally limited to certain specific things, and for certain specific reasons. History records how those in power have ALWAYS sought to expand their power, or how others have sought to influence government for their own selfish goals. For people to think that our system of government is immune from such corrupting influence is both foolish and naive.

Getting to the truth is often a journey that is wrought with obstacles; as there are a lot of lies one has to sift through to find it. A person seeking the truth may stumble, they may fall, but if the truth is of any importance to them there are two things they must decide to accept. First is that the truth is important enough to spend the time and effort seeking out. Secondly, and this is maybe even more important, you must be willing to accept whatever conclusions you come to based upon the truth. If you can’t do that you may as well go on living your life believing in lies.

I can’t help but laugh inwardly when I hear people make all these statements about how the problems our country faces now are due to Barack Obama. Obama is/was not the problem; he was merely a symptom of a much larger problem. I read a quote somewhere that said something like, “The problem in America is not a Barack Obama, but a people who would elect someone like Barack Obama.”

Had the people of this country adhered to the basic principles which led our Founders to seek their independence there is no way in hell that someone like Barack Obama could ever have gotten elected. It is because those founding principles are no longer of any importance that people like Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and even FDR have gotten elected.

If people cannot accept that their government no longer cares about the limits imposed upon it, or preserving their liberty, how can they be expected to believe that there are those behind the scenes who control and manipulate their government for their own selfish goals? If people won’t accept that the Civil War was not a war fought to end slavery, but a war fought to retain the power of government to subjugate the people, how are they to be expected to believe that there are controlling influences behind our government that control IT’S actions? If the people won’t accept that, then how are they going to begin tracing the lineage of evil that has led to the corruption of principles in this country; eventually leading them to the king of lies himself; Lucifer?

The former mayor of New York City, John Hylan, once wrote, “The Real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state, and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen. At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.”

Former President Woodrow Wilson also stated, “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

Those are quotes from two men in positions of authority who speak about some outside power influencing and controlling what really happens in America; yet people still think that, by virtue of their having the vote, they are in control of the direction this country takes. Even Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, (and yes that’s his real name), once said, “The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise their power behind the scenes.”

What people seem unable to realize is that these people who seek absolute control over us are the same ones who were in control of the English government in the period leading up to our war for independence; powerful banking and industrial interests. The British government was merely the tool they were using to attempt to control the fate of the Colonists living outside their immediate sphere of influence. Our Founders fought a war to free themselves from this controlling influence; and then less than two decades later established a system of government that opened the door for those controlling influences to walk right in and assume control of our system of government.

Whether it was by intent, or naiveté, (which I don’t think was the case), our Constitution was left open to all manner of evil and outside influence; all of which was designed to strip us of our sovereignty and liberty, and place us under the control of powerful people who choose to remain hidden behind the scenes and pull the strings which cause our elected officials to dance.

Patrick Henry, in his own way, foresaw the dangers this constitution carried for the liberty of the people and the sovereignty and independence of the States; but few, if any, listened to him and the constitution was ratified and put into operation.

If you believe in such things, it should then come as no surprise that many of our Founding Fathers were, in fact, Freemasons. George Washington was a Freemason, as was Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock and Robert Treat Paine.

Now I know that many of you probably don’t buy any of this; believing a conspiracy so large and so monstrous couldn’t be kept secret forever. But do you think they are going to come out and openly admit that they intend to deprive you of your liberty and reduce you to slavery? Of course not, they are going to disguise their real agenda under the guise of things such as providing for the public good, or the public security; while cloaking it all in the best interests of the nation.

Did not Thomas Jefferson say that our rights are a gift to us from our Creator, or God Himself? Then doesn’t it seem logical that anyone, or anything which seeks to limit those rights must be influenced by, or working for Lucifer himself? Do you think God, or the devil himself for that matter, cares whether or not you are a Republican or a Democrat when you seek to deprive others of their God-given rights?

But like I said in a recent commentary, this country is populated by 3 groups. There are those to whom the truth does not matter, only their allegiance to political party ideology; those who don’t care one way or the other about politics, only their own selfish interests and desires; and those who know and speak the truth.

I read a quote the other day by Alexis de Tocqueville that pretty much sums up the real problem in America today; which by the way isn’t the fact that either the Democrats or the Republicans are screwing things up. De Tocqueville states, “Not until I went into the churches in America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good it will cease to be great.”

So you go on, keep putting your trust and faith in corrupt politicians and a broken system; let me know how well that works out for you. My faith lies elsewhere; in the belief that God gave me my rights, and that anyone or anything that seeks to restrict or deprive me of those rights is in allegiance with the devil and is to be opposed with every ounce of my being.

For some reason or another I have been blessed, or cursed if you will, with the ability to see through the fog of lies and deception that blinds so many others; at least to a certain extent that is. I am still learning new things day by day; but at least I am willing to see the truth when I find it, and am willing to accept it when I do encounter it.

I realize that the problem America faces is not one based upon the battle between Republicans and Democrats; rather it is a battle between good and evil; between those who are willing to defend God’s gift of liberty to them and those who seek to enslave mankind. I have chosen which side of this battle I wish to be on, have you?

Choose your side well America, for you will be called to answer for your choice when the Day of Judgment comes upon you.

What has happened to you America? How is it that you can be provided with a preponderance of evidence which proves that our government is acting outside the law, yet you still support it? Even worse, how is it that there are literally millions of people in this country to whom football, NASCAR, Facebook, Twitter, and all the other things that keep you entertained are of greater importance than the obtaining of knowledge or the quest for the truth?

A person can’t drive 5 miles without seeing at least one of those ribbon stickers on another vehicle which states either, “Support the Troops” or “Support Law Enforcement.” I hear those things from people I associate with on a daily basis, and when I ask why should I support them I am told that we need them, and those who chose to make that their profession deserve our support.

Do they; especially when they are doing things that do not serve the purpose for which those institutions are supposed to serve? Our military was supposed to protect America from attack, not wage pre-emptive wars, or wars on conquest where we topple tin pot dictators and petty regimes that ‘MIGHT’ prove a problem for America’s interests in the future. Our law enforcement is supposed to provide justice and secure our rights, but instead acts as the enforcing arm of government for every law, no matter how unconstitutional, government passes.

And you ask me to support these entities without questioning or resisting them when they infringe upon my liberty? I don’t think so!!!

The other day I had an interesting conversation with a friend on Facebook about how people blindly support law enforcement, and consent to all these laws which violate our rights. One of the things we talked about was how people accept these laws that violate their rights simply because they are colored with the cloak of authority that comes with those charged with creating law, and how law enforcement officers are only doing their job when they enforce those laws upon the people.

That kind of attitude is the antithesis of the one held by our Founders, and is extremely dangerous to the rights and liberty of a people who wish to remain free. Did our Founders say, “Oh well, it’s the law, we can bitch about it but since it’s the law we have got to obey it.” Hell no they didn’t! Our nation was founded by those who resisted the law; by petitioning government to repeal laws which violated their rights, by acts of civil disobedience; and when all that failed, by taking up arms against those who sought to enforce the most egregious of those laws upon them.

Blind obedience to and passive acceptance of lawmaking and law enforcing authority always, and I mean ALWAYS leads to the absolute dissolution of your rights, and ends up leading to tyranny and oppression.

After all, wasn’t Hitler the lawmaking authority in Nazi Germany, and weren’t the Gestapo only enforcing the law; doing their jobs? Wasn’t Stalin the lawmaking authority, and weren’t those in the KGB only doing their job? Look at what happened in those instances when the people refused to, or were unable to resist; hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people lost their lives under those tyrants. If you think that things like that could never happen in America because you retain the right to vote, you are both naive and foolish. After all, Hitler was elected in a full democratic election.

That is why time and time again I offer up this quote from Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance, “It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties–we hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.”

Our system was based upon the principle that government derives its authority from the consent of the people. Yet it was also, supposedly, designed to secure the maximum amount of liberty for the people without devolving into anarchy and chaos. There is a fine line or balance, if you will, that separates legitimate lawmaking and law enforcing authority designed to secure your liberty from illegitimate lawmaking and law enforcing authority which deprives you of your liberty…and our system has stepped so far over that line that they can’t even see it anymore.

Yet the basic premise upon which our system rests is still there; consent of the people. As long as we sit back meekly and consent to unconstitutional laws, as long as we timidly obey those who enforce these unconstitutional laws, our government will continue to pass more such laws, until one day Americans wake up and wonder where their rights went.

Although it sometimes happens, more often than not that road to tyranny and oppression is one of gradual restrictions of the liberty of a people; so gradual that they hardly notice their freedom is being taken from them. It is only when a people understand their rights, and when they resist every single intrusion upon them, can tyranny be halted in its tracks. That’s what Madison was getting at when he made that statement way back in 1785; that the freemen of America did not wait until the laws had become so oppressive that they could not resist, they resisted from the get go and when all else failed they picked up their guns and fought those who sought to oppress them.

I know some people must inwardly cringe when I say things like ‘take up their arms against their government’, but if America does not pull its collective head out of its collective ass, it is probably going to come to that once again. You may say my words are treasonous, but weren’t those who signed our Declaration of Independence committing treason as well; yet we honor them; or at least we pay lip service to what they did every July 4th.

That is what distinguishes those men, what sets them apart from the people living in America today; they knew what their rights were, and they chose to resist those who sought to restrict them. Today America is populated by people who think that they can restore lost liberty at the voting booth, or worse, those who passively accept the laws being passed by their government which deprive them of the liberty it was established to protect.

I have been accused of giving up, letting evil win in America; simply because I choose not to vote. Why should I vote when the only candidates being offered are from the same slimy cesspool which has passed law after law after law that infringes upon my liberty or violates the constitutional limitations imposed upon government? How anyone could believe that by voting for the lesser of two evils will lead us back to greatness is beyond my ability to understand.

My respect for the ability of the American voter to do what is right went down the drain when I saw how few voted for Ron Paul when he ran for president. Not that Dr. Paul could have repaired the damage done to our Republic, but nonetheless it only proved to me that the people would rather a candidate who doesn’t know, or care about the constitution win rather than one who would at least try to govern within the limitations imposed upon government by that document.

I have a great many Republican friends who ask me why I refuse to support President Trump. It’s not that I disagree with some of the things he wants to accomplish; I don’t. It’s that I don’t think Trump honestly respects, or even understands the way our system is supposed to work; and that goes for many of his supporters as well. Trump is used to bullying people to get his way; and that simply is not very presidential if you ask me. Congress is supposed to write our laws…in pursuance of the specific powers granted them by the Constitution I might add…and the president can only suggest recommendations to them.

Unfortunately we have gotten so used to Presidents making all these promises, and then blaming Congress for impeding, or not acting upon them. Not once does the legality of these campaign promises enter into the discussion, it’s always either the Republicans or the Democrats are standing in the way of the president’s agenda.

Then we have Trump, promising to drain the swamp, and making a big noise about fake news and all the corruption aligned against him…and his faithful swallow it up. If Trump really wanted to drain the swamp he would hold a press conference and outline who and what the swamp really is for the American people so that they could see the width and breadth of its corrupting influence. Instead he provides innuendos, or leaves it up to our imagination to figure out, giving him the ability to say that he’s trying to drain the swamp, but there are people fighting him every step of the way; and his faithful believe in that rubbish.

Let me tell you something, and I am not, I repeat NOT threatening the president in any way; if Donald Trump were to go before the American people and explain who and what populates this swamp of his, and then truly make an effort to rid our government of their corrupting influence, he would be dead shortly thereafter…I have absolutely no doubt in my mind about that.

If our government was likened to a wooden house, and the swamp is likened to termites, you may be able to save it if you catch the termites early and exterminate them. But if you allow them to infest your home then the only solution is but to tear it down and rebuild it from scratch.

This swamp that Trump hints at has been in existence since 1789 with the corrupting influence of the Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton, and implemented by George Washington. Those who understood the corrupting influence of business and banking interests in government attempted to build a house of their own free of that corruption, but the government, fueled by its need of the precious revenues it had imposed upon the South, sought to hold the South in the Union at gunpoint; and yes, I’m talking about the Civil War. That was the last dying breath of true republican government in America, and ever since Lee surrendered at Appomattox the swamp has been in control.

And you think you can change all that by electing one man and by spouting off slogans like Make America Great Again? The only way to Make America Great Again is by learning what principles made America great to begin with; limited government and maximum liberty, and then having the courage to stand up to those who seek to abuse their power and deprive you of that liberty.

And I don’t see that happening anytime soon. People are too apathetic and complacent to spend the time required learning the truth about how our system of government was originally designed to operate. They are too lazy, too preoccupied with partisan politics or more concerned with being entertained to spend the time learning how, over time, our system was poisoned by the controlling influence of business and banking interests.

I want you to read quote, but before I provide it want to make sure you know I don’t know how historically accurate it is; I only know that it is factually accurate. The following quote comes from the film God’s and Generals, and is from the scene when Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson meets J.E.B. Stewart for the first time, “If the North triumphs, it is not alone the destruction of our property; it is the prelude to anarchy, infidelity, the ultimate loss of free and responsible government on this continent. It is the triumph of commerce – the banks, factories.”

Those who fought for the Confederacy understood that, but today we are told they fought only to keep their slaves; therefore anything they said is looked at from a racist standpoint. The truth was they were fighting to free themselves from tyranny; just as our Founders did in 1776. Unfortunately, they lost, and the authority of our government to violate our rights and liberty with impunity has not been questioned since.

I’d like for you to read one final quote from Patrick Henry. Read the following, but replace his references to the British with all the actions undertaken by our government to enforce their laws upon us; then tell me that our Founders would not have resisted our government with arms by now:

Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free– if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending–if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained–we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! (March 23, 1775, St. John’s Church, Virginia)

Yet you ask me to vote for candidates to fill a poisoned well and to support those who enforce the will of tyrants. I’ll get right on that…just don’t hold your breath while you wait for it to happen.