Neal's Soapbox

I think there is a great deal of misunderstanding among those, especially those on the left side of the political spectrum, who call me a conservative. Please, do not lump me in with those who support the Republican Party or President Trump; as those are not what I consider to be true representations of conservatism; and I’ll get to my definition a bit later.

People today align themselves along what they believe to be either conservative or liberal ideologies; and they vote for candidates from the party which they believe best forwards those ideologies. I know I’m going to upset a great many on the political left, but I believe their logo, or motto if you will, should be; I prefer to live in a society where people are equal in slavery over one in which they are unequal in liberty.

A large part of the liberal ideology is that those who have more should be required to pay more in taxes so that our government can, in turn, redistribute that money to those in need. This shows a woeful misunderstanding of the purpose for which our federal government was established. Our government was not established in 1789 to be the caregiver and provider of all things to the people. Instead, it was primarily established to be the mediator between the sovereign entity that were the States and the protector of all from external attack.

As our system was established all those years ago, the burden and responsibility for providing for the needs of the people fell upon the State governments, not the entity which is our federal government. If one were to read through the arguments for the creation of our federal government they would find that two of the primary reasons the Federalists felt the need to establish a stronger central government were; first, the inability of the federal government to effectively regulate commerce, and secondly its inability to collect the taxes needed from the States to fund its operations.

By regulating commerce our Founders did not mean that the government could force people to purchase things they did not want to purchase, or control every aspect of a products production; rather they meant that all restrictions or hindrances to the free flow of goods from one point to another within the Union be removed; so that trade could flow freely from one end of the country to the other. Now the Commerce Clause has been perverted to expand the powers of government to all manner of mischief.

This whole, the more you make the more you should be required to pay, philosophy permeates liberal thinking. Take for instance labor unions, the bastions of liberalism in America. I have little use for labor unions, but am required to maintain membership in one where I work. Why is it that should I decide to bid on another, higher paying job, that if I get it my union dues will go up? If I decide to move up the company ladder into a higher paying job is the union going to provide me any better service than it is to those making less than I am? If it provides the same service to a highly skilled and highly paid mechanic as it does to someone in an entry level position, why do they charge MORE in union dues for those making more?

Look at vehicle registration fees. If I drive a 1967 car my registration fees are going to be substantially lower than those someone driving a 2017 car will pay. Why; does someone driving a newer vehicle get more bang for their buck?

Why is it that so many believe that if you make more you should be required to pay more in taxes? Should that not entitle those who pay more to receive more in government services, and those who pay less to receive less?

The entire platform of those professing a liberal ideology shifts the responsibility for ones actions from the individual to society. It is best summed up by saying, if one person screws up, pass a law which affects everyone; if one person is in need, create a program that takes from everyone who produces and gives to those in need.

How anyone cannot see that this breeds slavery and destroys individual freedom is beyond me.

And I’m not giving the Republicans a free pass either. Both parties use the apparatus that is government as a tool to benefit specific portions of society. The Democrats use it to benefit those causes which they believe bring about social justice, while the Republicans use it to benefit big business.

Think about it, what would happen to the military industrial complex if our government pulled our troops out of every country they were stationed in and brought them home ONLY to defend the U.S. from attack? What would happen to all those companies whose sole existence depends upon military contracts for their survival if the government used the military in the manner it was intended we have an Army and a Navy for?

The same goes for Big Pharma; look at how they are intertwined with the Food and Drug Administration, allowing government to decide what is legal, and what is illegal in the treatment of disease. How much money would Big Pharma lose if it were made known that cancer could be prevented by a few simple lifestyle changes and a diet consisting of certain naturally occurring substances? The cancer industry is just that, an industry; and industries exist for one purpose only; to make a profit. They do not want to cure cancer, no matter how much they say they do; they would lose billions if they found a cure for it. They want to manage cancer; treat those who get it and justify the existence of all these cancer clinics across America.

The liberals in America, as much as I oppose their position on the issues, are at least honest in who and what they are. These so-called conservatives on the other hand are not. They go about calling themselves conservatives when they are simply seeking to use government in different ways to benefit others; this time the others being big business.

To me a conservative is defined as one who best promotes the individual liberty of every man, women and child in America. I oppose anyone who seeks to deprive me of my rights or the fruit of my labors to benefit anyone else. I do not care if you tax me to fund programs which provider services to the poor or those in need of healthcare, or if you tax me to fund endless wars which make military contractors rich. To me there is no difference between the two; you are taking my money, or depriving me of my rights, to benefit a select segment of society.

America was founded upon one single principle, the idea that people held certain unalienable rights and that governments were instituted to protect those rights. But rights are like a coin; on the one side you have the right, and on the other there is the responsibility that comes with each right. Take for instance the freedom of speech. Any person anywhere is free to say whatever they want, so long as they do not harm the reputation of another; such as in cases of libel or slander. Yet today certain things, certain images or beliefs are considered politically incorrect, or offensive; therefore the freedom to say or express one’s self is being restricted because others cannot handle what is being said.

Our right to own guns is being attacked because certain individuals abuse that right. So society demands that stricter gun laws be enacted which restrict the people’s right to own certain classes of weapons. This shows me that people do not understand WHY we even have a 2nd Amendment. It was not so we could HUNT, it was so we could defend ourselves against our government.

These people’s hearts may be in the right place, but they miss the point for which our government was established and why certain rights were protected from infringement. Daniel Webster once said, “Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.”

I don’t care who you are, or what your beliefs are, the reason why our Founders established our federal government should be paramount in your decision making process, not how your party can use government to benefit a specific class of citizens.

In his Inaugural Address Thomas Jefferson provides us with his definition for ‘good government’, “…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.”

In 1791 Founder James Wilson 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.”

Our government, over the course of its existence, has gone from one which sought to preserve freedom to one which seeks to destroy it. It has gone from one that exercised a few specific powers for the benefit of the nation as a whole to one which exercises an endless list of powers designed to benefit the broad spectrum of society.

The two political parties are things which give you the illusion that we still have a Republican form of government because we still have the ability to go to the polls and choose between Republicans or Democrats. Yet the truth is both parties no longer produce candidates who seek office for the reasons our government was established; they only seek to further their party’s agenda.

Does it matter if the boot on your neck is on the left foot or the right when it still is choking the life out of you? Why should it matter then if the party which is depriving you of your freedom goes by the name of liberal or conservative?

Someone told me last night in a Facebook post that we should hold our politicians to a higher standard than we should the general public. I think this person has it backwards. I think we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. How can we expect those we elect to have higher standards when the pool from which they come from is polluted? If we do not have any standards, how can we be expected to choose a candidate who does, or even recognize one when they appear on the political stage? One look at how both the political right and left treated Ron Paul ought to be sufficient to prove that point, as he was the closest thing to a true conservative we’ll ever see again, and we, for the most part, rejected his message.

If we want to fix what’s wrong in America we need to begin with the individual. We need to maximize the freedom of the individual and at the same time hold each of us accountable and responsible for our own life. We can either choose the path which leads to true freedom or we can choose the path which leads to equality in slavery, but we can’t have both.

And the sad thing is, as long as we continue to play that two party paradigm we are doomed to stay on the path which leads to slavery.

My first exposure to political correctness came many years ago when they changed the name of the people who collected refuse from garbage men to waste management specialists. Back then we thought political correctness was both silly and harmless; I sure wish we had taken it more seriously and recognized it for the threat it posed.

But it was just this morning that I think I heard the pinnacle of politically correct speech when I read the following on a Facebook thread; “Women deserve control of their reproductive rights.” Reproductive rights huh? Boy, that’s a good one; they outdid themselves with that one, that’s for sure.

I agree wholeheartedly by the way; a woman should be given the right to decide whether or not she wants to reproduce or not. BUT, and there’s always a but, it is not always your choice, and your choice alone. Reproduction takes two people, does it not? So what about the person who donates the sperm to this little process; do they not have rights?

And what about that little life growing inside your womb; do they not get a say in deciding whether they want to be born? Let’s not kid ourselves here, reproductive rights is just a touchy feely way of saying that a woman has the choice of whether or not to murder an unborn child.

As with all subjects today, it seems, the subject of the right of a woman to obtain an abortion is one that stirs up deep sentiments on both sides of the issue. So I know that what I’m about to say is going to piss some people off, but honestly, I don’t care. Why is it that for many women the idea of having a doctor reach up inside them and terminate a life growing in their womb is perfectly acceptable, and morally justifiable, but at the same time the putting to death of a violent criminal is reprehensible and considered cruel and unusual punishment?

In one instance you are taking the life of a person, who more often than not, has a long history of violent crime and who, if were they not put to death, would either rot away in prison costing the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to care for, or be released into society and most likely harm someone else. In the other instance you are terminating the life of an innocent fetus that has done nothing other than inconvenience your life.

While I will admit that I could at least understand why a woman might choose an abortion when the pregnancy was due to rape or incest that does not mean it still is not the taking of an innocent life. However, there is absolutely no justifying the termination of a pregnancy simply because it was unwanted.

Just the other day I went to watch a YouTube video and there was a teaser for a 2016 film called The Thinning. The plot revolves around a high school were population control is enforced via an aptitude test given the students; those that don’t achieve a high score are put to death. Apparently the film goes into how the system is rigged and people are being killed who shouldn’t be, but that is besides the point for my discussion.

How would people like it if there were some sort of a board, or a group of men and women in some government agency, that got together and went through the files of every man, woman and child in America and compared them to a set of standards they had established to determine whether each individual deserved to go on living?

Who would get to set those standards and what would they be? What if all the homeless and unemployed were decided to be among the undesirables? What if it was everyone who voted Republican…or Democrat? What if the sole crime which condemned you to death was that you liked a certain style of music? How would you feel if your name where chosen to be terminated?

Wouldn’t you be saying, “Why me, I didn’t do anything wrong!” What if the standard they set for terminating a person was simply whether or not they had had an abortion? Did you know that if that were the case 3,000 women per day would be killed off in America? That’s right, according to statistics there are 3,000 abortions performed each and every day in America. That’s almost 2 million abortions per year…in America alone. While some of them may be somewhat justifiable, the majority of them are simply due to unwanted pregnancies.

I was laughed at in regards to, and have not been spoken to since I made the comment that if a woman can’t accept the responsibility of giving birth to a child then she should take proper precautions to prevent pregnancy. I was called old-fashioned when I even hinted that if a woman is not ready to shoulder the responsibility of motherhood that maybe she ought to abstain from having sexual relations.

And if you ask me, that right there is the biggest problem in this country today; the lack of a large portion of society which refuses to adhere to old fashioned values, morals and ethics. I could go on for days in regards to that, but simply stated the values that were held by the generation that raised me as a youth are no longer being instilled in our youth. What this does is it creates entire generations with loose morals, or no morals at all.

If it feels good, do it. Why should I have to work to deserve my pay? Why should I have to accept responsibility for my decisions? My rights matter but yours don’t. The list goes on and on, and it, above all other things, is what is truly wrong with America today; and no constitution, no government, and no law can fix that.

Anarchy is defined as a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority. (Source: Merriam Webster’s Dictionary) The word anarchy traces its roots back from the French word anarchie, meaning absence of government, to the Medieval Latin word anarkhia, which means lack of a leader, the state of people without a government.

The word anarchy presupposes that government itself is a necessity for human survival, as without it society devolves into anarchy; that government somehow brings order out of chaos. If that is true then it is a sad statement regarding mankind. Think about it, if people need government to bring order to their lives then that must mean that people themselves are unable to control their baser human instincts and NEED some form of governing body to do it for them and to punish those who violate the rights of others.

In establishing a system of government, especially one such as ours that claims its purpose is to protect our liberty, there has to be a fine balance between what power the government exercises and the freedom of the people it governs to act without restraint. If you go too far to one extreme you get…ANARCHY. If you go too far to the other extreme you get…TYRANNY AND OPPRESSION.

In speaking of governments, 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.”

Without using the words themselves, Paine speaks of this balance between anarchy and tyranny, and how government is but a necessary evil whose job is to maintain order. Yet the important part of Paine’s statement is the following: our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

What does Paine mean by that? To me the answer is obvious; it is because under our system, government derives its powers from the consent of the people; it was created by the people, it’s members are chosen by the people, and it is supposed to be restrained from overstepping its just authority by the people. Therefore, if government becomes venal and oppressive, whose fault is it? Again, the answer should be obvious; it’s ours because we have allowed government to deviate from its intended purposes.

It boggles my mind that people would take the words of the very people in government as to the definition, or description of the powers government should exercise on behalf of the people. You may as well tell a thief that he is free to choose what he will steal from you before you take measures to protect what is rightfully yours.

Yet people flock to the polls by the millions to cast their votes for the candidates for office based solely upon the things these candidates say while campaigning. Not once do people pull out a copy of the Constitution and check to see if the things these candidates promise to do are among the specific powers granted the office which they seek.

If anarchy is the chaos that ensues due to a lack of governmental authority, what word would you use to describe a government that disregards the authority which created it? If the job of government is to prescribe laws to maintain order in society, then what would you call a government which violates the very law which gave it its existence?

What does it say about a people’s willingness to live under the control of a government which routinely violates the limits imposed upon it by the charter which created it? What does it say about a people who are totally ignorant, or uncaring as to what the Constitution says are the specific powers given their government?

Are people today so trusting, (and that is the polite word for how I feel), in regards to the benevolence of their government that they feel that it knows better than they as to what laws should be enacted to maintain order and keep them safe? Are people today so willing to allow government itself to be the one which decides what powers it shall exercise on the people’s behalf?

If so, then they have not studied their history, for that idea is exactly what Thomas Jefferson opposed when he wrote the following words, “…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…” (Source: Kentucky Resolutions, 1798)

With increasing frequency I am hearing from people that our Founders could not have foreseen the changes which have transpired and therefore their ideas and beliefs as to the powers given government, and the limitations upon those powers, are irrelevant in today’s modern world.

HONESTLY!?!

If that truly is the case, if people are so unable to manage their own lives, to control their instincts, and need the governments benevolent hand in managing their lives down to the minutest detail, what makes people think that they are capable of voting for who will do the best job of it? If the limits imposed upon the powers granted our government are old and outdated, then maybe the very form which our government takes is old and outdated. Why don’t we just admit that we need a dictatorship, or some other form of government where the leaders do whatever they feel is in the best interest of the people, and that the people have no say in choosing who those leaders will be?

Dammit, either we have a Constitution or we don’t; you do not get to pick and choose which portions of it you wish to adhere to and which ones you choose to disregard! And therefore, if you cannot be bothered to learn what that Constitution says, or means, then maybe you don’t deserve the right to participate in choosing who will fill the various seats of power within that government!

Anyone today with a smart phone can find a copy of the Constitution online and read it, should they choose to do so. It is only due to sheer apathy that people do not know what that document says are the specific powers granted our government. Apathy breeds ignorance and complacency. If you don’t care what the Constitution says you are basically saying you are content to be ignorant. If you don’t care to see our government held to the limits that document says are the powers given our government, well that says something altogether different about you; something I’ll refrain from voicing at this time.

Yet reading the Constitution is not enough, one must know why it says what it says, what the intent of those who wrote it was when they put those words to paper all those years ago. Trusting those seeking to expand their powers beyond those which the Constitution prescribes is, not only foolish; it is like letting criminals expound the law regarding the extent of their crimes.

The only way one can truly understand the purpose and intent of our Constitution is by going back to the words of the very men who lived during the period it was written and ratified. One needs to read the writings of the men who were alive when it was drafted, and read the words of those who spoke both for and against its ratification.

Unlike today where people send text messages that bastardize and pervert the English language, those who wrote our Constitution, and argued both for and against it, had a deep respect for the meaning of words; how they were used and how they conveyed intent. That is why one of my favorite quotes of a fictional nature comes from the film V For Vendetta, “Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.” The problem in this instance is that not enough people are listening to what our Founders said.

When the delegates gathered together and wrote our Constitution each Section, each Clause, each Word was chosen for a reason; and it is that reason which should be the underlying pursuit of anyone who studies the Constitution. In 1938 the Supreme Court stated that premise thusly, “To disregard such a deliberate choice of words and their natural meaning, would be a departure from the first principle of constitutional interpretation. “In expounding the Constitution of the United States,” said Chief Justice Taney in Holmes v. Jennison, 14 U.S. 540, 570-1, “every word must have its due force and appropriate meaning; for it is evident from the whole instrument, that, no word was unnecessarily used, or needlessly added.” (Source: Wright v. United States, 302 U.S. 538)

Then, as recently as 1969, the SCOTUS held, “The values of the Framers of the Constitution must be applied in any case construing the Constitution. Inferences from the text and history of the Constitution should be given great weight in discerning the original understanding and in determining the intentions of those who ratified the constitution. The precedential value of cases and commentators tends to increase, therefore, in proportion to their proximity to the adoption of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or any other amendments.” (Source: Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 547)

People today do not want to spend the hours of research which would be required to gain a true understanding of the intent of those men who drafted our Constitution. That is where people such as me step in; we provide a means to bypass the hours of searching and study that would be required to find the truth. Yet for our words to have any usefulness the people reading them must be willing to accept them and put them to use in their decision making processes. As von Goethe said, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply.” What good is an understanding of the Constitution if people continue to vote for candidates whose campaign promises show that, if elected, they will not uphold their oaths of office to support and defend said Constitution?

Writing in the North American Review, 1911, Justice Horace H. Lurton stated, “The contention that…the Constitution is to be disregarded if it stands in the way of that which is deemed of the public advantage…is destructive of the whole theory upon which our American Commonwealths have been founded.”

Therefore, I beseech of you, study the Constitution…study the writings of those who were alive when it was written and those who participated in putting it into action in the ratification assemblies. If you cannot do this, do not presume to lecture me on what our government needs to do; what laws it needs to pass in order to keep us safe.

There is one other thing I would like for you to consider. In Federalist 51 James Madison wrote, “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

If we are so pathetic and incapable of providing for our own needs and safety that we need an institution such as government to do it for us, what does that say about us as a people, or a species? We talk about corruption in government from the standpoint of the high moral ground, but if government truly is the greatest reflection of human nature, what does that mirror show us about ourselves?

We should not NEED government to do these things for us in the first place; not if we truly understood the concepts of liberty and self reliance. Teddy Roosevelt once said, “If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.” What this means is that I am responsible for me and you are responsible for you. Do not seek to place the burden and responsibility for your problems upon my shoulders and I will promise not to do the same. Or, as John Galt said in Atlas Shrugged, “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

All you people who keep saying that government needs to do this, or do that to take care of this group of people or that group of people do not understand the simple concept of self reliance and of accepting sole responsibility for your actions and choices, and the ensuing consequences of those decisions. To expect, no, to demand that government pass laws which make society accountable, or responsible, for providing for all those in need is NOT freedom, it is slavery; and I REFUSE TO LIVE AS A SLAVE!

In closing I’d like to leave you with a quote from Prince Peter Kropotkin, from his book The State: It’s Historic Role, 1896. Ponder this, if you would; “Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is … death! Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement. The choice lies with you!”

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. (And I mean

Although there may be a great many people who are politically active, and have firm political beliefs, I do not think that there are as many who have a keen interest in political science; the study of the various types of governments and their finer points of construction and operation. This is, in all truthfulness, a shame. First of all, in a representative form of government such as ours, it is essential that those whom the government represents have a thorough understanding of the shape their government shall take, the powers granted it, and the restrictions imposed upon it.

It is only by understanding how a system of government was designed to function that one can be aware when that government begins to assume undelegated powers or alter its very nature; such as what has occurred over the course of the past 228 years with our government.

Besides, I find this stuff fascinating; it keeps the gears turning in my brain which keeps it from atrophying.

Quick question for all of you reading this; what type government do we have in America? Please, let there be at least one or two who did not answer with DEMOCRACY! Our Founders both despised and feared democracies. In Federalist #10 James Madison had this to say about democracies, “Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security and the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

People today say that America is a democracy because that is what they have been taught, but I would venture to guess that many don’t even know what a true democracy is. A true democracy, or a pure democracy as Madison called them, is when the people gather together themselves to vote upon which laws shall be enacted; with a simple majority being sufficient to enact any law.

As an example, let’s say you have a small town with a population of 500 people. During one of their town meetings a proposal is made that all citizens MUST attend church services on Sundays. A vote is taken and 251 vote in favor of the proposal, while 249 vote against it. By two votes the proposal passes and becomes the law; forcing the remaining 249 to do something they disagree with.

That is a pure democracy, and under such a system of government the rights of the minority are always threatened. Democracies were feared so much that our Founders put a check against them in the Constitution as it pertains to the election of the Chief Magistrate, or President; the Electoral College. That is why there have been times when a candidate may get a majority of the popular vote, but STILL lose the election.

So, if we don’t have a democracy, what do we have? To fully answer that question one must understand the nature of our country prior to the adoption of our Constitution. Each State, or Colony, was essentially a distinct and separate political entity from the others. Each was sovereign in the way in which it governed the internal policies and how it enacted laws which affected the residents living within each of them. In short, each State was a sovereign and independent nation of its own right.

Prior to the Revolution, although each State was relatively free to govern itself internally, all were governed from above by the laws passed by Parliament. Yet the Colonies joined together in a loose confederation of sovereign States to fight a common enemy; the King. A confederation, or a confederacy, as defined by Bouvier’s Dictionary of Law, is, “An agreement between two or more states or nations, by which they unite for their mutual protection and good. This term is applied to such agreement between two independent nations, but it is used to signify the union of different states of the same nation, as the confederacy of the states.”

Our nation’s first constitution, although it wasn’t called that, was the Articles of Confederation; thereby proclaiming that each State retained its sovereignty and independence, but had aligned with each other for the mutual defense and good of all. However, with such varying laws being enacted by each of the States, many felt that this confederation was not strong enough to hold the newly established United States together for any length of time. Laws were being passed which interfered with the smooth flow of goods, or commerce as it is called, and it was difficult to collect the revenue, [taxes] to fund the central government established by the Articles of Confederation.

Therefore a convention was called for to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation to make them better able to govern the affairs of the fledgling young nation. However, there were certain men who had ulterior motives; they wanted to completely do away with the Articles of Confederation and come up with an entirely new system of government. In doing so they overstepped the authority granted them by their State legislatures who had sent them to Philadelphia ONLY to amend the Articles of Confederation.

Could this be one of the reasons why it was decided that the finished document they produced was to be ratified by the people of the United States instead of the State Legislatures; because they feared that the Legislatures would shoot it down because the delegates had overstepped their authority and sought to diminish the sovereignty of the States?

It is at this point in time that I wish to draw your attention to two words as they pertain to systems of government; federal and national. Today those words are used interchangeably, but back in 1787 they meant entirely different things. A federal form of government was one that denoted a confederation, or confederacy of States; with each State retaining their sovereignty. A national, on the other hand, applied to a complete consolidation of the individual components into a single entity; in this case the United States of America.

Although there were many esteemed Founders who opposed the proposed Constitution for various reasons, it was Patrick Henry who argued most vehemently against the Constitution due to the fact that it created a national form of government over the existing federal one.

During the ratification proceedings for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Patrick Henry argued incessantly against the dangers he felt the Constitution, and the system of government it outlined, posed to the States and to the liberty of the people. On June 5, 1788 Mr. Henry arose to give a lengthy speech, which he began with the following words, “The fate of this question and of America may depend on this: Have they said, we, the States? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation: It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, Sir, on that poor little thing-the expression, We, the people, instead of the States, of America.”

That may not mean much to you, but it denotes a world of difference between the two forms of governance for me. In a confederation the central government’s sole authority was in regards to the interaction of the individual States with each other. Therefore whatever laws they passed applied only to the States themselves, not directly to the people who inhabited them.

In a consolidated or national form of government, such as the one Mr. Henry feared the Constitution established, the laws would bypass the State authority and apply directly to the people.

To combat this fear, and it was a well founded one as many still feared a strong centralized government after having just fought a war to obtain their independence from one, James Madison, and two others, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton wrote a series of articles with the hope of calming any fears as they pertained to the extent of the power given this new form of government, and the threat it posed to both the State sovereignty and the liberty of the people. These articles became known as The Federalist Papers.

In Federalist #39 James Madison begins by assuring the people that a Republican form of government, such as the one proposed by the Constitution, was best to protect against the dangers of an aristocracy, and that the best way to ensure this was to have its fate decided by the body of the people, not the State Legislatures, “If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.”

A few paragraphs later Madison continues by saying, “”But it was not sufficient,” say the adversaries of the proposed Constitution, “for the convention to adhere to the republican form. They ought, with equal care, to have preserved the FEDERAL form, which regards the Union as a CONFEDERACY of sovereign states; instead of which, they have framed a NATIONAL government, which regards the Union as a CONSOLIDATION of the States.” And it is asked by what authority this bold and radical innovation was undertaken? The handle which has been made of this objection requires that it should be examined with some precision.”

Now we begin to get into the question posed by Patrick Henry, and we also note that even Madison accepts that there is a difference between the two forms; national and federal.

Madison then goes to great lengths to explain how, in some instances the government created by the Constitution has national characteristics, while in others it has federal characteristics, “The next relation is, to the sources from which the ordinary powers of government are to be derived. The House of Representatives will derive its powers from the people of America; and the people will be represented in the same proportion, and on the same principle, as they are in the legislature of a particular State. So far the government is NATIONAL, not FEDERAL. The Senate, on the other hand, will derive its powers from the States, as political and coequal societies; and these will be represented on the principle of equality in the Senate, as they now are in the existing Congress. So far the government is FEDERAL, not NATIONAL. The executive power will be derived from a very compound source. The immediate election of the President is to be made by the States in their political characters. The votes allotted to them are in a compound ratio, which considers them partly as distinct and coequal societies, partly as unequal members of the same society. The eventual election, again, is to be made by that branch of the legislature which consists of the national representatives; but in this particular act they are to be thrown into the form of individual delegations, from so many distinct and coequal bodies politic. From this aspect of the government it appears to be of a mixed character, presenting at least as many FEDERAL as NATIONAL features.”

But then in the very next paragraph Madison gets to the root of the difference between a national and a federal form of government, “The difference between a federal and national government, as it relates to the OPERATION OF THE GOVERNMENT, is supposed to consist in this, that in the former the powers operate on the political bodies composing the Confederacy, in their political capacities; in the latter, on the individual citizens composing the nation, in their individual capacities.”

Madison would later, in Federalist #45, using different words, attempt to prove that the government created by the Constitution was NOT national, “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.”

In typical political form, Madison and the other writers of the Federalist Papers, used doublespeak and direct avoidance of the question to answer the questions posed by men such as Patrick Henry. Instead of saying that the system was not national, they said it was part national, part federal.

But for a system to be federal in nature the sovereignty of the States must be respected, and some manner of allowing the States to have a say in what laws the central government passes must be part of the system. This is why the lawmaking body, or Congress, was divided into two houses, the House of Representatives which was to represent the great body of the people, and the Senate which was to represent the State authority.

In Federalist 62 Madison explains the importance of having the members of the Senate chosen by the States thusly, “It is equally unnecessary to dilate on the appointment of senators by the State legislatures. Among the various modes which might have been devised for constituting this branch of the government, that which has been proposed by the convention is probably the most congenial with the public opinion. It is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former, and may form a convenient link between the two systems.”

For our system to remain federal, if that’s what it even was from the beginning, it was crucial that the States have some say in what laws the central government enacts. The moment that authority is taken away, the system becomes national; in that the laws are passed solely by the representatives of the people.

Also, if a system truly is federal in nature, this means that it is only by agreement between the entities which comprise the confederation, or Union should you choose to use that term instead, that they remain a part of the confederation. If, at any time, the system becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, or violates the rights of certain classes of people, it is the right of that State, or portion of a State, to leave the Union. This is the fundamental principle enshrined within our Declaration of Independence. It is also something a young Congressman from Illinois once said in an 1848 speech regarding the War with Mexico, “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, most sacred right- a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to excercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize and make their own, of so much territory as the inhabit.” What was the name of this young Congressman? Why, it was none other than Abraham Lincoln, who in 1861 would do a 180 and deny the Southern States the very right he said was the right of any people anywhere; which of course was the cause of the Civil War.

Whether the Southern States chose to secede because the North was attempting to interfere with the institution of slavery or if they left because of the oppressive tariffs imposed upon them is irrelevant. The fact is that they had every right to leave if they felt remaining a part of the Union was harmful to them. Lincoln had no right to force them into remaining, and it goes against all that a federal form of government stands for; the sovereignty of the States remaining intact.

By choosing to use force against the Southern States, Lincoln put the will of the federal government; particularly that of the President, above the will of the States and the people who inhabit them. He essentially declared that the government created by the Constitution was no longer federal, it was national. One look to his Gettysburg Address is all that it takes to confirm this, “…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” There is no mention of State authority or State sovereignty, only the will of the people as a consolidated body; just what Patrick Henry feared.

The final nail in the coffin to our federal form of government came in 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment, which states, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years…” (My emphasis)

No longer do the States have any say in what laws the central government passes. And with the extensive ignorance regarding the powers given the central government among the general public, and their selfishness and greed, we have evolved from a group of sovereign States to an elective democracy where the voice of a majority of the people, or members of Congress for that matter, is all that it takes to enact laws, however egregious they may be.
Again, with the ignorance of many, and the disregard for Constitutional limitations upon government by many more, the only thing stopping our government from becoming totally venal and oppressive is the hope that we are electing wise and virtuous men and women to the seats of power within it.

And as Patrick Henry said in regards to that, “And, Sir, would not all the world, from the Eastern to the Western hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad. Shew me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty? I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.”

And finally, as our government has deemed to makes its will supreme, we have no recourse to fight all manner of unconstitutional laws, or laws which violate our most sacred possession; our liberty. How are we to fight them, in court? How effective is that when law enforcement enforces the most reprehensible laws upon the people and the court system routinely prosecutes people for merely exercising their rights as freemen? Again, as Patrick Henry warned, “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.”

This is why I study, this is why I write, to share with you the things you have not been taught in school and to lift the veil of ignorance which shrouds you from the truth; that truth being that the government we have now is far worse than the one our Founders fought to gain their independence from. Yet the people today are far too concerned with which party is going to win the next election; never stopping to think that both parties are equally guilty of crimes against the people, and the document which gives them any authority in the first place; the Constitution.

I know this was rather lengthy, but it is my sincerest hope that you read it with an open mind, and re-read it again if the points I have made are not clear in your minds. Maybe, just maybe I will get lucky and a few light bulbs will go on in people’s minds and they will stop supporting this abomination that you call our government by refusing to participate in choosing who will sit in the seats of power within it. After all, did not Jefferson say that government derives its just authority from the consent of the governed? The only power it has over us is because we consent to it. If we remove that consent to a large enough degree, they become powerless over us.

And that is when we will once again begin to know what it means to be truly free.

Depending upon which dictionary you use, tolerance may be defined many different ways; but they all tend to say basically the same thing. For instance, Merriam Webster’s defines it as: sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own, while if you simply type in the word tolerance into a search engine you may come up with something like; the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.

You hear a lot of people today demanding tolerance for their views, but how many of them reciprocate and show tolerance for the views of those they disagree with? Not very many if you ask me; and that right there is a big part of the problem today; far too many people have closed their minds off to any ideas or beliefs which conflict with their own.

Take for instance all these people running around saying that Trump isn’t their president, and all those pushing forward the, as yet, unsubstantiated and unproven claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election which caused Hillary to lose. If that can be proven, that there was some sort of alliance, or agreement made between the Trump campaign and Russia that the Russians hack into the DNC and then release files that would prove damaging to Hillary, then yes, I would say Trump should either resign, as Nixon did, or be removed from office.

But, it this is only a smear campaign, designed to throw a monkey wrench into Trumps term as president, then those behind it should be held equally accountable, and face possible libel or slander charges.

But where the intolerance comes in, and this is primarily from those on the political left, is when facts can be presented which prove Obama was ineligible to hold the office of president and they ignored them and called those making these claims all manner of insulting names.

Article 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution states; No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.

That right there implies that there is a distinction between a regular citizen of the United States and a Natural Born Citizen. The question then arises, what is a Natural Born Citizen?

Did you know that another word for magic is sleight of hand; the ability of a practitioner to distract what is really happening by subterfuge or obfuscation? What we witnessed during the period when Obama’s citizenship status was under question was a bit of political sleight of hand. While it appeared that those questioning Obama’s eligibility were playing along with those doing the questioning, what they were truly doing was diverting our attention away from the definition of the term Natural Born Citizen to the location of Obama’s birth; be that Kenya or Hawaii.

The issuance of a birth certificate, however fraudulently produced it may have been, seemed to settle the question of Obama’s eligibility and the calls for his resignation, or impeachment, died down; thus allowing an ineligible individual to serve not one, but two terms as president.

So what is a Natural Born Citizen? To answer this we must go back to the proceedings which produced our Constitution…way back in 1787. In attendance at these proceedings was one Ben Franklin, who just happened to have brought with him a copy of the book Law of Nations, by Emer de Vattel, and I find it highly unlikely that Franklin would have brought a book he did not intend to reference during such important proceedings.

So what does Vattel say about the phrase Natural Born Citizen? Well, according to his book Law of Nations, a Natural Born Citizen is defined as follows: The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.

Therefore, according to Vattel’s definition, and most likely the one intended by those who drafted our Constitution, a Natural Born Citizen is one who is born to two parents who are both citizens of a country. Barack Obama’s, or Barry Sotero if you prefer, mother was Ann Dunham, an American citizen born in Wichita Kansas. His father, on the other hand, was Barack Obama Sr, a Luo Kenyan who was NOT an American citizen at the time Barack Jr was born; making Obama merely a citizen, but not a Natural Born Citizen.

Barack Obama is no more a Natural Born Citizen than is my own son; who was born when my wife still retained her Philippine citizenship. Now had my son been born after the year 2000 when my wife became a naturalized citizen, my son would have been a Natural Born Citizen. But since my wife was still a Philippine National on a Green Card at the time my son was born, he IS NOT a Natural Born Citizen according to the definition found in Vattel’s book; and neither was Barack Obama!

Yet I can hear the moaning now; Neal’s talking this conspiracy theory nonsense again. No, I’m speaking facts I have uncovered from my own research into the intent of our Founders when they wrote our Constitution. Just because people refuse to accept these facts does not mitigate their truthfulness.
I have provided my argument that Obama never was eligible to hold office, yet he did…for 8 years. Yet people refute my argument, but then expect me to accept theirs that there was some kind of agreement made, or collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians to steal the election from Hillary. In short, they expect me to have tolerance for their claims, but show no tolerance for mine.

While this particular point was directed primarily towards those on the political left, the political right is no less guilty of showing a great deal of intolerance towards the truth. I can’t count the arguments I have gotten into, or the friends who have abandoned me, because I staunchly oppose the expansion of our nation’s intelligence gathering apparatus and its intrusions into our right to privacy.

These people give me all manner of justification for what our government is doing, yet when I provide the reasons why the 4th Amendment was included into our Bill of Rights they shrug it off and say that times have changed and that we need to change with them. Fine, if that is the case, why don’t they ratify a Constitutional Amendment revoking the 4th Amendment; Americans did that with Prohibition, they can do it with our right to retire to our homes and be free of prying eyes and ears. Until then, however, our right to privacy is sacred and not to be infringed upon.

Yet when Edward Snowden released to the Guardian the files showing the extent of our government’s spying upon us, he was crucified by the press and forced into exile; being charged with treason. How, if I may ask, is exposing the crimes of your government considered treason?

I could go on for pages with examples of the intolerance of both the political right and the political left; but what good would it do when people have no tolerance for the truth? Either we have a Constitution, which is the Supreme Law of the Land, or we don’t. Either we have a government that uses that Constitution as a guide for what they can and cannot do, or we have something else.

Far too many people in America today align themselves along political party lines, or certain stances on the issues than they do with whether what our government does conforms to the specific powers given them by its creators. In that manner they keep us fighting over the issues, while we ignore the fact that it was never intended that government become involved in a majority of these issues; they were to be left to the States to deal with. (See the 10th Amendment)

I honestly don’t know what I can do or say to convince people that they are being duped; played for fools. When the people’s eyes are so closed to ideas that conflict with their existing beliefs you cannot convince them that they have been lied to, or they believe in things that are untrue.
If the consequences weren’t so high for me I would say to hell with you all, let the country go to shit. But your ignorance, your intolerance affects me too, and therefore I cannot, with clear conscience anyway, sit idly by without attempting to pull your heads out of your asses.

Yeah, that may upset you, but you refusal to look at the facts with an open mind upsets the hell out of me too. And there again we come full circle to the concept of tolerance. You expect me to tolerate your ignorance, but you have no tolerance for the truth.

There may be more of y’all out there than there are those like me, but we have the truth on our side, and eventually we will be vindicated. Where that leaves you is anyone’s guess.

“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”
~John F. Kennedy~

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance
and conscientious stupidity.”
~Martin Luther King Jr.~

If you want my honest opinion, (and I know that many people don’t), I feel that the biggest problem in America, as it pertains to politics and our system of government, is the simple fact that people do not know, nor do they care to know, why our system of government was created. It is far easier for most to continue believing that, although our government from time to time violated the Constitution, if fundamentally is doing the job it was established to do.

At the core of this problem is the basic fact that in a representative form of government, such as ours, those we elect are accountable to us, (the people), and that we are responsible for keeping those we elect in line as it pertains to violations of the Constitution. It is far easier to believe that our government is authorized to do all the things it currently does than it is to spend hours educating themselves on the finer points of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

In 1822 James Madison wrote, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” Although some don’t come out and say it to my face, I know that I often anger some people when I make the comment that the American public is fundamentally ignorant when it comes to knowing their country’s history and understanding how their system of government is supposed to function.

I have acquaintances on both sides of the political aisle; Democrats and Republicans, and I can recall times that they have applauded me when I criticized the actions of our government when the party they oppose is in control, yet become angered when I criticize the actions of our government when their party is running the show. What this shows me is that people place more importance upon party than they do upon principle. When people do this it releases them from the responsibility of knowing what principles this country was founded upon, and then working to ensure that those principles continue to thrive in America.

I can’t count the times people have told me that our Founders could not have foreseen the advances made in society, and that therefore the Constitution must be interpreted differently now in comparison to how it was interpreted when it was written. Pardon the vulgarity, but that is utter bullshit, and it shows that people don’t know the first thing about what our Constitution is.

I know that facts and evidence don’t mean much to a great many people today, but to those of you who believe our Constitution is a living document that must change with the times, I have a few facts that prove that YOU’RE WRONG!!!

When George Washington refused a 3rd term as president and decided to retire from public life, he wrote a lengthy letter to be circulated in the papers throughout the nation. This was to become our nation’s first Presidential Farewell Address. In his letter President Washington said, “If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

Then, in 1866, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of Ex parte Milligan, which in part declared that, “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of men than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism.”

Finally, in more recent times, the recently deceased former Justice, Antonin Scalia, said the following, “The Constitution is not a living organism. It is a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.”

Our Constitution is a legal document, a charter of sorts, between the people and the States which comprise this Union to form a system of government to act on their behalf. It bestows upon that government certain specific powers; with each branch of the government having distinct and separate functions and spheres of authority. As the Supreme Law of the Land, it is binding upon both our government and the citizenry as it pertains to what they can ask their government to do on their behalf.

Although the Constitution is binding upon all, it does provide an avenue by which it can be modified, or amended, if enough people believe that changes need to be made to it. However, until those changes are formally accepted by a 3/4 majority of the States, no act of the federal government can exceed the specific powers given them without being considered a crime.

America does not have a democracy, no matter how many times you have been told we do; we have a Republic where the people elect representatives to enact the laws of the nation, while these representatives are limited by a law which governs what laws they may enact upon the entities they represent. Because the majority of the people want laws to be passed which violate the Constitution is not justification for them to be enacted; or what’s the use in even having a Constitution which clearly outlines the powers our government shall exercise?

This is why an in depth study of our nation’s history; particularly the arguments both for and against ratification of the Constitution should be required before any child can graduate from high school; and more importantly, before they be allowed to exercise the right to vote. How can anyone honestly say that they are making informed decisions when they don’t know, or at least don’t care, what the Constitution, or our Founders say are the powers given government, or the purpose for which it was established? Yet vote these people do…in droves…and all for party over principle.

The government we have today is far more oppressive than the one which our Founders took up arms to free themselves from. The boundaries which separate the powers our federal government was instituted to exercise, and those which would remain the responsibility of the States have been torn down and now all federal law, however repugnant, or how far it exceeds the specific powers granted government, reign supreme.

The government we have today micromanages and regulates almost every aspect of our lives; from the production and sale of goods to how much water your toilet uses when you flush it. That is not what our Founders had in mind when they presented the finished Constitution to the States for their consideration!

This micromanaging of our lives stifles freedom; makes sheep of us all. As Alexis de Tocqueville explains in his book Democracy in America, “After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

I don’t know, do people think that if our representatives aren’t passing some law to make our lives better or to keep us safer they aren’t earning the money we pay them; that is why we accept all these new laws which only end up depriving us of more of our freedom? One would think that after nearly 230 years our government would have passed every law conceivable in support of the few specific powers granted them; but that seems not to be the case as they continue to pass law after law; many of which are so incomprehensible it takes an entire team of lawyers to decipher them.

In 1788 James Madison spoke of that exact scenario, “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow.” (Source: Federalist 62)

I don’t know about you, but even as accustomed as I have become to reading the documents pertaining to the founding of our nation, I still get a headache trying to figure out what the pieces of legislation our government passes actually say. Whether this is intentional, to discourage people from trying to find out how corrupt their lawmakers are, or whether the laws they have passed have become so complicated, and amended so many times that this is the only way they can do things, is beyond me. All I know is that making sense of a single piece of legislation is damned near impossible.

Not only do most people continue to put their trust and faith in a government that routinely violates the law which governs what it can and cannot do, but we also support those who enforce these unconstitutional laws upon the general citizenry. Not only that, we denigrate and condemn those whose sole crime is the asserting of their rights. It has gotten to the point where when one tries to be free, and I mean truly free, they are found to be guilty of violating the law.

It is a sad statement about society that the exercise of a person’s rights is now considered a crime. People forget that Jefferson once said that law is often but the tyrants will, especially when it violates the right of the individual.

I truly believe that people wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they didn’t have big government watching over them all the time. Yet were government to limit its acts to the specific powers granted it by the Constitution it would be one I might finally be willing to throw my support behind.

But that would mean that people need to assume the responsibility for their own lives; their own decisions, and the consequences of their actions; and not seek to place the blame upon society when they fail, or screw up. But that’s exactly how Jefferson described ‘good’ government, “…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 it wasn’t that long ago that another president expressed similar sentiments. On January 20, 1961, the newly elected President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy said the following during his Inaugural Address, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

What a novel concept; stop asking your government, the country, or society for that matter, to do things for you, and start accepting sole responsibility for your lives. Or, as Theodore Roosevelt said, “If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.”

It is unfortunate that, in today’s society, one who expresses sentiments such as those is considered cold and uncaring. Expecting people to assume responsibility these days is politically incorrect; and that applies equally to accepting responsibility for their ignorance. To me it is pretty simple, if our government is screwed up then it is the fault of the people who voted for the people who screwed things up. If these people screwed things up so badly, why are there over 200 of them who have served more than ten years in Congress? If they screw things up so badly why do we keep re-electing them; and more importantly, why don’t we hold them to the specific powers outline by our Constitution.

Ah, that’s right, because nobody knows, nor do they care, what the Constitution says or means.

And that my friends, is the very definition of ignorance. Yet, Isaac Asimov once warned, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” And it is simply impossible to hold an intelligent conversation with people when one side refuses to accept, or provide any kind of factual evidence to support their position.

So go on, keep voting for your Republicans and Democrats, if that’s what makes you happy. Just don’t ask me to participate in the fraud of voting for any of the charlatans posing as candidates for office; I refuse to participate in their game anymore. Do those who own a football stadium care who wins the game being played inside? No, as long as they sell plenty of tickets to the game they don’t care who wins. The same goes for our elections, those who really control things in America don’t care who wins, as long as enough people continue to believe that their votes matter and that they can effect real change by swapping out a few bad apples from time to time.

Einstein described y’all best when he said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

But that’s okay, you’re not gonna believe a damned thing I see, your indoctrination into servitude has been too successful. As Dresden James said, “When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”

So you tell me, who is the crazy person, me for trying to expose the lies, or you for continuing to believe them?

Yesterday morning I had to take my son in to Urgent Care to have his thumb checked out after it had gotten smashed in a closing door the previous evening at work. Why his employer did not fill out an accident report or ensure that he have it checked out when it happened is another issue altogether, and one I won’t delve into now. While my son was in with the PA, (Physician’s Assistant), I struck up a conversation with a Korean War veteran and his wife; and of course the subject quickly turned to politics and current events.

Seeing as how this was all occurring early in the morning and since I work Swing Shifts I had not yet had the chance to turn on the TV to catch up on any Breaking News. It therefore came as news to me that another shooting had occurred; this time at a Republican practice for the annual charity baseball game between Republicans and Democrats.

Although the identity and motive of the shooter was not known at the time, the couple, especially the wife, spoke at great length about the vitriol and aggressive behavior of the political left in America today towards President Trump, anyone who supports him, or traditional conservative values for that matter.

As a passing comment I told them that there was a very good chance that the news media would not call this what it was; a hate crime. After all, how many times have they reported that those calling themselves liberals, or Democrats, have been accused of hate crimes for attacking Trump supporters? It would seem the category of hate crime only applies when the one guilty of bringing harm to another is of a conservative slant.

There are a great many things that both anger and sicken me; traits such as laziness or compulsive lying being just two of them. However, at the very top of my list of things that piss me off is hypocrisy and double standards.

What exactly is a hate crime? If one were capable of intelligent thought, (which it appears a great many aren’t) it would take less than two seconds to come up with an answer to that question. A hate crime is a crime which is committed by one person against another or one group against another, because those committing the crime hate the victim/s, or what they stand for.

Hate works both ways; conservatives can hate liberals and liberals can hate conservatives. Yet why is it that you rarely hear of a liberal being charged with a hate crime; yet whenever one is charged with such a crime they are typically found to have been committed by those with conservative leanings?

If I attack you because you are wearing a Gay Pride T-shirt, I will be charged with a hate crime. Yet if you attack me because I wear a Trump T-shirt, or a T-shirt bearing the image of the Confederate Battle Flag, the odds are very high that you will not be charged with a hate crime. Oh, you may be charged with assault, but the added weight to the charge that goes with calling it a hate crime will not apply to you.

Why is that? Why is it that those on the political left can get away with attacking people or groups because the dislike, or hate, what they stand for, yet if those on the political right were to act in the same manner they would be charged with hate crimes? What gives liberals any special treatment under the law?

I’ll come right out and say it, I hate government and what it has become; but I don’t go around assaulting those who hold the various positions within government, nor do I assault those whose political beliefs differ from mine. That is not to say that I would not use deadly force to protect my life, my family, or my property; I’m only saying that it is ridiculous to attack someone else simply because their beliefs differ from mine.

I’m all for open debate and an exchange of ideas, but the problem seems to be that those on the left believe themselves justified in using force to impose their beliefs upon those who disagree with them.

You see there is an underlying battle going on here that many seem not to notice. I do not consider Republicans to be true conservatives; not by a long shot. A true conservative could not stomach voting for any of the candidates who run on a Republican platform as the Republican Party does not adhere to the Constitutional limitations upon government any more than do the Democrats. It is only in how they exceed their authority that the two parties differ.

But underneath all that there is a battle waging between conservatism and liberalism. The liberals, or progressives if you will, have fought for decades to enact certain policies and programs which benefit the special interests that make up the base of the Democratic Party. True conservatives, and to a lesser extent, Republicans, threaten the gains they have made in pushing forward their liberal agenda; and they react with violence towards those who threaten what they believe themselves entitled to.

I truly think that they do not see what they are doing as a hate crime; I believe they see themselves acting the way they do out of self defense. Anything hinting of true conservatism threatens what they believe they are entitled to, or have a right to, and they are acting with what they believe to be justifiable self defense.

The news media is complicit in this because, let’s face it, they are predominantly liberal, or progressive, and haven’t been conservative in quite some time; and this goes for FOX News as well. If the news media were truly unbiased they would not support the actions of one president, or administration, yet condemn the same actions of another president or his administration simply because they are Republican.

Listen, I am no fan of President Trump, but look at how the news media keeps the furor going over the supposed Trump/Russia collusion into the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election. We are told that there is evidence that Russia did hack the DNC and release e-mails to Wikileaks that were damaging to the Clinton campaign. Yet where is the evidence to support that claim?

For instance, recently fired director of the FBI, James Comey refused to press charges against Hillary Rodham Clinton for her handling of classified material as Secretary of State. There was sufficient evidence to prove that Ms Clinton did violate the law in regards to her use of a personal server and the storage of classified material on an unsecure device. Yet Comey refused to press forward with charges. Yet the media refuses to address the actual crimes committed by Ms. Clinton, a liberal, and at the same time continues to fuel speculation and innuendo that there is some sort of tie between President Trump and the Russians, and that played a role in Trump’s winning the election.

You want to know what all this reminds me of? It reminds me of a million little sperm cells circling an ovum trying to find a weakness. The news media’s constant reporting on the Trump/Russia collusion, these Senate Intelligence Committee hearings, they are all like those sperm cells, circling around trying to find someone who will be found to have obfuscated the truth, or committed perjury; just so they could say, “Ah ha, we told you so.”

I honestly can’t tell whether I am more amused by this whole thing, or more sickened by it. If you want my honest opinion it is hypocrisy at its finest; or as the old saying goes, “The pot calling the kettle black.” You have a committee comprised of United States Senators who are universally corrupt, investigating corruption as it pertains to the Executive and election fraud.

I honestly don’t know how they can keep a straight face for the CSPAN cameras. Let’s just say the Russians did hack the DNC; that they did release what they found to Wikileaks, just to damage the Clinton campaign; what about the content of the information they released? Whether it was obtained illegally does not diminish the fact that the information may have been of such a nature that it discouraged some voters from casting their vote for Ms Clinton. I know; the fruit from a poisoned well thing. But if that doesn’t convince you, I have more.

Again, what if the Russians did somehow interfere in our election process; how many times has the U.S. interfered in the internal politics of other countries? How many democratically elected leaders have we ousted by coup, or attempted to oust; such as all the times we tried to get rid of Castro down in Cuba? What about the US/British led coup that saw the brutal Shah of Iran installed after the CIA played a significant role in having the democratically elected President removed from office? Oh, but that was in America’s best interests you say, so that makes it okay. Well maybe it was in Russia’s best interests to ensure Hillary did not win the election; but I suppose what’s good for the goose is good for the gander doesn’t apply, does it?

And if you really want to talk about voter fraud, how about all the confirmed reports of illegal aliens voting Democrat, or people long dead voting for Democratic candidates? But again, there again you see those double standards, which I hate so much, coming into play.

If you want to know a truth, and I think a great many people don’t, the fact is that the closer one comes to being a true conservative, the more they find themselves under attack for their values and beliefs. This is true whether those doing the attacking are Republican or Democrat. While I had my doubts about Ron Paul because of his refusal to address the ineligibility of Barack Obama to serve as president, (and that’s another subject unto itself), the fact remains that those running on the GOP side ridiculed him and their party refused to endorse him; preferring that a Democrat win over someone who was the closest thing to a true conservative this country has seen for a long, long time.

Conservatism, and by conservatism I mean those that adhere to the same principles held by Founders such as Thomas Jefferson are under attack and, if you ask me, face extinction in America. Maybe we ought to have the Environmental Protection Agency add conservative Americans to the list of Endangered Species.

How many so-called conservatives do you know who would dare repeat Jefferson’s words as stated in his first Inaugural Address, “… 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…”? Yet people who support the Republican Party, and it’s big government agenda, have the audacity to call themselves conservative. If you say so!

It’s all one big screwed up mess here in the land of the meek and the home of the slaves. People care less about the Constitutional violations committed by both parties than they do the loyalty to their party’s platform. The only difference between the two is that those on the left are using violence as a means to fight against anything which threatens their agendas.

They are also a great deal more hypocritical, and display far more double standards than do their counterparts, the so-called conservative right. So while the Republicans and the Democrats wage their little battles against each other, do not forget that there remains a remnant of true conservatism in America that is grows tired of the crimes committed against us, and our Constitution and Bill of Rights by both parties.

You may not care about us, or our beliefs, but if you had any understanding or our nation’s history you would realize that we are those who best represent the intent and desire of those who originally founded our Republic; and we are tired of your double standards, your hypocrisy, and your faith in a system that has been corrupt and broken for over a century.

Thomas Jefferson once said that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, and if you do not take heed you may live to witness such a cleansing of political debris and misfits during your lifetimes.

Tread lightly, but more importantly; Don’t Tread on Me!

“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
(Anonymous But Often Attributed to Thomas Edison)

It is a sad reflection of American society today that very few people actually perform the vital task of critical thinking anymore. Everyone thinks, but not everyone critically thinks. Critical thinking is a discipline which must be taught, or at least nurtured for it to become habit. But what exactly is critical thinking?

In researching for this article I found dozens of definitions for critical thinking, but each of them had certain similarities. My definition for critical thinking is as follows: Critical thinking is the unbiased, thorough study of information; facts and evidence, which is then used to formulate an opinion or belief system.

Using that as your definition, how many of you can honestly say that you think critically? How many people base their beliefs, not upon facts, but upon emotional responses to the issues? How many people take as gospel the things said by others in positions of authority, supposed experts in the field, or worse, the comments made by celebrities who support certain causes? Next, how many people can honestly say that they have the courage to examine evidence which conflicts with their existing beliefs with anything close to an open mind? Finally, and probably most importantly, how many are willing to change their beliefs entirely if the facts prove them wrong?

If people had any intellectual integrity they would not shun the truth when it conflicts with their beliefs, rather they would embrace it and change their beliefs to conform to what the evidence dictates is truth. I suppose, as the saying goes, that’s a rather big IF…

I get the impression sometimes that people assume that I’ve always known all this stuff I know now; if only that were true. The fact is that I too was as ignorant as the next guy, but I made a conscious decision to become informed. My own personal learning curve was anything but smooth; in fact there were periods when I stagnated when I was forced to face facts which caused a severe amount of Cognitive Dissonance, or the stress created when one confronts facts which contradict an existing belief.

I could very easily have ignored those facts and kept on going, but that would have been dishonest and the mark of a coward; at least in my book. So therefore I would struggle over what I had learned until I came to terms with the fact that I had been lied to about certain things; and once I did this it became easier and easier to accept the fact that I had been lied to about so many other things, and the Cognitive Dissonance became much easier to handle.

The problem in America, as I see it, is that far too many are not willing to even entertain the idea that they may have been lied to; let alone accept that it is true, and change their belief systems accordingly. If one cannot, (with an open mind), examine contradictory evidence which proves their opinions and belief systems to be based upon lies, then that person IS NOT thinking critically. It’s that simple.

How often do people in this country believe things simply because they have been repeated over and over again by people in positions of authority, or by people who are supposed experts in the field being discussed? Wasn’t it Joseph Goebbels who said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth”?

Take for instance the pseudo-science of global warming; much of which is based upon conjecture. How can they accurately predict climate change hundreds of years into the future when they cannot accurately predict the weather 36 hours into the future?

Sure, these global warming proponents will pull out all manner of charts and data to prove their point, but that only shows that the ice caps may be melting off at a higher rate than normal, or ocean temperatures may be rising. But studies show that our Earth has undergone many a change in climate; in fact, according to some scientists, we are on our third atmosphere. Our first atmosphere consisted primarily of hydrogen and helium; released after the Earth was first formed.

The second atmosphere came from the evolution of the Earth itself; primarily through volcanic activity. Volcanoes released steam, carbon dioxide, (yes that same compound we are being told causes global warming now), and ammonia. The carbon dioxide was dissolved in the sea water and was consumed by simple bacteria which thrived on it and sunlight; producing what…OXYGEN.

The third atmosphere was a balance between beings which produced carbon dioxide and those which produced oxygen. Animal life, including humans, produce carbon dioxide, which the plants need to survive. They in turn, consume the carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

I could go into the various ice ages and periods of rising temperatures the Earth has undergone as well, but the fact is that the global warming crowd only presents you with one side of the story and they expect you to believe it without examining all the data. That is not critical thinking, it is biased manipulation of your thoughts to effect control over you and your lives.

I simply can’t believe that people will accept this pseudo-science as fact, yet reject an abundance of evidence that there are those who are spraying heavy metals into our atmosphere, (chemtrails), and then bombarding them with high frequency radio waves to control weather patterns.

But Neal, that’s just one example; we still think about other things. Is that so; what about 9/11? Did you know that the Twin Towers were engineered and built specifically to withstand the impact of a jet aircraft? The dual rows of internal and external columns, and the way the outer layer was constructed was almost like a window screen in that if an airplane were to strike it, it would punch a hole into it, but still retain its structural integrity.

Those repeating the ‘official’ story would have you believe it was the heat of the fires from the jet fuel which weakened the steel frames enough to bring the towers down. Possibly, but those aircraft hit the towers in the upper levels, floors 93-99 of the North Tower and 75-85 of the South Tower.

Now I’m no structural engineer, but I have read reports and statements by engineers who have closely examined the events of 9/11 and many of them also question the ‘official’ story. Some say that it might be possible that the fires weakened the steel structure in the vicinity of the fire, but that would not explain the fact that both towers collapsed at free fall speed; the speed at which something falls without any resistance whatsoever.

You have to remember, that in the case of the North Tower there was still almost 1,000 feet of structurally sound steel beneath the fire, and somewhere around 800 feet of structurally sound steel beneath the fire of the South Tower. How could they fall to the ground in less than 15 seconds; into their own footprints by the way? For them to do so would defy the laws of physics.

Let us not forget Building 7, which wasn’t hit by a plane, which also came down at free fall speed; supposedly from the damage it sustained when the planes hit the other two buildings. And then there is the Pentagon…

The Pentagon is one of the most heavily surveilled buildings in the country. Why is it that we’ve never seen any footage of a plane striking it? Believe me, I’ve searched for footage and the only footage I’ve encountered shows a streak and then an intense explosion; far different from the footage of the Twin Towers where the planes are clearly visible as they impact the buildings.

Then there is the fact that CNN’s Jamie McIntyre reported from the scene, and I quote, “From my close up inspection there’s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon.” McIntyre had walked along the outside of the Pentagon while firefighters fought to control the fire and saw no trace of the wings, engines, tail section, or fuselage, only small fragments of steel scattered in the immediate vicinity of the hole in the side of the building.

Also, there is the fact that the supposed hijacker of Flight 77, Hani Hanjour was such a poor pilot that the New York Times reported him as being, A Trainee Noted For Incompetence. (May 4, 2002)

Yet we are expected to believe that this guy who had never spent a minute behind the controls of a commercial airliner was able to pull off a 330-degree descending spiral and skim just over the ground above a parking lot and hit the Pentagon, a feat which experienced pilots say would have been next to impossible. (All this being done without a single second of footage being released of the plane performing this miraculous maneuver over one of the most heavily surveilled building in the U.S.)

Experienced pilots say that first, Hanjour simply did not have the experience to pull of such a maneuver, and secondly, the stress it would have placed on the plane would have caused it to come apart, and remember, CNN reported that there was no visible remains of an aircraft anywhere near the Pentagon.

Yeah, we’re expected to ignore all the evidence to the contrary and believe what we have been told by our government and by the news media. Again, a complete lack of critical thinking, just believe what you’re told and go on about your lives; or as the old saying goes, “Move on people, nothing to see here.”

Yet everything that has happened since that day; the passage of the Patriot Act; the birth of the Department of Homeland Security; the expansion of the TSA; the expansion of the NSA’s spying upon us, happened due to the ‘official’ story of what occurred on 9/11.

I could go on and on with this; providing facts which contradict existing beliefs, but which people refuse to consider because it threatens to shatter their reality and force them to face the truth.

-Everything they’ve been taught about the Civil War? A lie; Lincoln did not fight a war to free the slaves, he initiated war against a sovereign nation to protect his precious Union and keep the tariffs flowing into the treasury. The slavery thing was later thrown forward to give the moral high ground to the North, when in fact they were the aggressors and they were in the wrong.

-The fact that people still think their votes matter when both parties are controlled by the same small group of special interests that don’t care what simple laws our government passes which affect our lives, as long as they continue to protect their bottom line and keep the profits flowing.

The rabbit hole goes pretty damned deep if you have the courage to go down it. The lies and deceptions most accept as truths are so numerous that I can’t even begin to count them. Yet, as Morpheus tells Neo in the Matrix, “You have to understand. Most people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured and so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”

But as the series the X-Files so prominently displayed in their opening credits; “The truth is out there.” All it asks is that it be given a chance; for people to examine it with an open mind. After all, that is what critical thinking is all about.

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear–
kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor–
with the cry of grave national emergency.”
~Douglas MacArthur~

There is an old saying, which has been taken out of context, which states, “Ignorance is bliss.” The full quote comes from Thomas Gray’s poem Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, where he writes, “Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.” I only mention this because I just finished reading an article which stated six reasons why highly intelligent people tend to be unhappy.

Before I go any further, I want to make it perfectly clear that by no means do I consider myself to be highly intelligent, or of above average intelligence for that matter. I’m just an average guy who has taken the time to research our nation’s past and the founding of our system of government. That does not make me smarter than anyone else; only better informed.

I only wanted to take a moment discussing this because one of the reasons the author claims intelligent people are unhappy is because they are unable to find others with whom they can hold an intelligent conversation with. I certainly can relate to that. I have never asked that anyone just flat out accept that what I say is true; that would make me no better than the news media that expects people to take their word that the propaganda they spread is true. I only ask that they read what I write, and listen to what I say with an open mind, then do some research on their own to see who is telling them the truth.

But it certainly does get lonely sometimes; having all this knowledge spinning around inside my head and not having anyone to hold an intelligent conversation, or debate with. So yes, I can see how one might come to believe that being highly intelligent can lead to unhappiness. I have lost track of how many times people at work tell me I should smile more often. I can’t count the times I’ve had to refrain myself from saying, “I would if I wasn’t surrounded by idiots!”

I know that some may find that insulting, but what word would you use to describe it when you are surrounded by people who let emotions, rather than facts, guide their decision making process? And what is the most powerful of our emotions? If you ask me, fear is the most powerful of all the emotions; if you can instill fear into a people you can get them to do almost anything to make them feel safe and sound again; even sacrifice all their liberty.

In his first inaugural address, Franklin Roosevelt uttered to oft repeated line that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I have read that people fear that which they don’t understand. If that is true, then the best way to combat fear is through knowledge. In a letter to W. T. Barry, James Madison once said, “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.”

I find it absolutely astonishing that people cannot see that those in power prefer an ignorant populace over an informed one. People believe they are informed because they watch the news and keep up with current events; but how does that help them understand the true purpose for which our government was established? The only way by which people can obtain that knowledge is by reading the words of the people directly involved in writing, and then ratifying our Constitution; something which too few people are willing to do.

Therefore the only word that can be used to describe most people in this country is ignorant; not stupid, simply ignorant; and there is a difference. Ben Franklin once said, “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” If that offends or upsets you, maybe it is time to do a little soul searching and ask yourself how much you really know about why your government was established all those years ago, and how well you have sought to keep it within the limits imposed upon it by the Constitution.

When a people are ignorant it then becomes easy to manipulate and guide them through…wait for it…FEAR. You see, although fear is a powerful emotion, knowledge can do a lot to dispel that fear; take away its ability to control your decision making process and return it to one based upon facts and evidence. But that can only happen if people take the time to become truly informed. But that takes time and effort; two things many are unwilling to give in order to become knowledgeable.

So what happens is that they are cleverly manipulated, or led around by the noses by those who use their fear against them. How many of you have heard of Hegel’s Dialectic, or the Hegelian Dialectic as it is commonly called?

According to Wikipedia the Hegelian Dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. Say, for instance, I want you to do something which, under normal circumstances, you would not normally do. Under Hegel’s Dialectic I would create a conflict; known as the thesis, which causes an expected response; the antithesis, leading to the acceptance of the predetermined solution; the synthesis.

Although I did not know it at the time, I was born into a world of fear; fear of the spread of communism after the end of World War II and the establishment of the Soviet Union. This country had just experienced the McCarthy hearings and the fear of the threat posed by communism and global thermonuclear war was pervasive throughout America. I was four years old when it reached its peak during the Cuban Missile Crisis and I recall quite clearly the somber mood with which my parents watched the news every evening.

How does all this tie together; fear and Hegel’s Dialectic? Well those who rule this country need a reason to pass laws which justify their existence. In short, they need an enemy to fight which justifies their enacting new, more stringent laws which restrict our freedoms.

If you look at America’s history going back to the beginning of the 20th century you will see that there have been numerous instances in which the people’s fear led to government taking steps to alleviate that fear, or arouse their sense of patriotism behind their actions.

Look at the days and weeks immediately following 9/11 and how the nation pulled together in a sense of outrage and unity; determined to find those responsible and enact some form of vengeance. Fear and anger took over and anyone who thought things through and questioned the steps being taken by our government to protect us was said to be supporting the terrorists.

It’s not the first time those who have opposed our government have been considered unpatriotic, and it certainly won’t be the last. It happened early on with the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts by President John Adams, and it happened again with the jailing of the editors of certain Northern newspapers by Abraham Lincoln for their opposition to his war against the South.

Even now, sixteen years after the events of 9/11, those who question the ‘official’ story are labeled conspiracy nuts, and those who oppose our government’s endless intervention in the internal affairs of other nations are told we are soft on terrorism.

The hypocrisy comes when those who tell us we are soft on terrorism demand we provide sanctuary for all the refugees our intervention in the internal affairs of these nation’s have produced. They say we are the ones who are soft on terrorism, but they want to allow an endless stream of refugees into this country, many of whom share the same radical ideology which breeds terrorists.

You see that’s what happens when you let emotions guide your thought and decision making processes; you believe the stupidest things. When one lets their emotions run rampant without utilizing their thinking side of the brain they are so easily led around by the noses, and support almost any manner of laws the government promises will keep them safe.

As an example let’s go back in time to the early 1900’s before the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. A series of bank runs had caused many banks, which were leveraged beyond what would be considered sound policy, caused many customers to run to their banks demanding their money. Of course, the banks were unable to pay. In 1907 banker Paul Warburg posted an article in the New York Times warning the people that unless they allowed the government to adopt a central bank that these bank runs would become the norm.

Then one of Warburg’s banking pals gave a speech to the New York City Chamber of Commerce wherein he said that if the U.S. didn’t adopt a central bank it would experience a far reaching crash of our economy.

The seeds of fear had been planted, and all they needed now was to be proven right. A bunch of friends of banker J.P. Morgan began a stock run on one of Morgan’s competitors at Union Copper; causing the stock prices to plummet. This set off a panic which spread throughout Wall Street. Bankers friendly to Morgan and Warburg pulled their money and the stock market crashed by almost 50%. Then J.P. Morgan stepped in and invested his own money to ease the panic; but the damage had been done. People saw that what Warburg had said was true; the two steps of Hegel’s Dialectic were complete. Now all they had to do was propose the synthesis, their cure for the crisis they had orchestrated.

The result was the Federal Reserve Act, a piece of legislation written by, and meant to benefit those in the big money houses of America by giving them absolute control over our monetary system. Since the passage of the Federal Reserve Act the U.S. dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power. This is the true nature of inflation; not the cost of goods going up, but the value of your money going down.

All because the people feared something they did not understand, and asked that government do something to protect them, or in this interest, their money.

What have we lost because people are afraid of supposed threats? We have lost much of our right to keep and bear arms because people fear crime or public shootings. We have lost almost all of our right to retreat into our homes and be free from the prying eyes and ears of government; all because we fear terrorism more than we value our rights. I could go on and on with the laws our government has passed because the people clamored that something must be done.

How many people vote, not because a candidate is truly qualified for the office they seek, or because they will uphold their oath to the Constitution, but because they fear the other person getting elected? Democrats who hated Hillary after the way the DNC treated Sanders flocked behind her just to make sure Trump didn’t win. The same is true for those on the Republican side who voted for Trump just to ensure that Hillary didn’t win.

Fear caused them to vote the way they did, not critical thinking over the issues or the constitutionality of the things these candidates promised to do. George Carlin once spoke of how we are fooled into voting when in fact voting makes no difference, “Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that’ve long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them…”

We are ruled by fear; led around by the noses by it; often without our even realizing it is happening. The whole crux of what you have just read comes from something I recently read in a fiction novel by Michael Crichton, State of Fear, wherein he writes, “I am leading to the notion of social control, Peter. To the requirement of every sovereign state to exert control over the behavior of its citizens, to keep them orderly and reasonably docile. To keep the driving on the right side of the road―or the left, as the case may be. To keep them paying taxes. And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.”

You may think that we still have some say in how our government governs, but do we when the reasons we vote the way we do are due to fear over a whole myriad of issues; many of which were created by our governments ineptness or on purpose to manipulate our thought processes?

If you want to be free, and I mean truly free, you are going to have to stop being afraid and start educating yourselves as to the crimes being committed against you by the people whose job it is to represent you; not be your masters. Freedom comes with a price; the willingness of the people to first, understand the limits upon their governments power and authority, and secondly to hold those they elect accountable to those limits.

If you cannot educate yourselves and stand for your rights, then if you ask me, you aren’t worthy of them; nor are you worthy of the title of patriot, or American for that matter.

America was founded upon the principle of liberty, but as Patrick Henry said in 1788, “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.”

That was almost 230 years ago, and people’s regard for their liberty has only diminished with the passage of time. I honestly don’t know what can be done when the people refuse to study, to examine the facts, and to make their decisions based upon what they have learned, rather than what they are told to believe by the news media, their elected officials, and those who are supposed to be educating them as to the true nature of and purpose for our government.

It’s like we are on a runaway train for tyranny and the conductor and anyone else capable of stopping it has jumped the train; leaving us no choice but to ride it to its final destination. I am reminded of the quote, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” People today are completely oblivious to the path this country is on; the whole time they care more about their favorite sports teams, what’s trending on Facebook, or what some stupid celebrity is doing.

You can ignore reality for only so long, and then it is going to come up and bitch slap you all. I just hope for posterities sake that the people of America pull their heads out of the sands before that wakeup call comes.

On Wednesday Senator Bernie Sanders spoke the following words during confirmation hearings for Russell Vought who is Donald Trump’s nominee for Deputy Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, “I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about, I will vote no.”

Sanders became incensed after Vought refused to renounce his Christian belief that anyone, including Muslims, who have rejected Jesus Christ stand condemned and will not enter heaven. During his red-faced tirade Sanders asked the nominee, “Do you believe that statement is Islamophobic?”

Sanders may be representative of the mainstream views regarding Christians and Christianity in general, but if you ask me I’d throw his own words back in his face, “Mr. Sanders, I believe that you are really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.”

It seems that nowadays every value, every principle, every belief that was held by those who founded this country has come under attack; including the ability of Christians to openly profess their faith. Yet at the same time the values and beliefs of so many others are righteously defended against any who would speak out against them. If you speak out against Israel, or the Jews you are labeled anti-Semitic. If you speak out against Islam you are Islamophobic. Yet it seems it is perfectly acceptable to go on verbal tirades against anyone who openly professes their Christian faith.

One could choke on the hypocrisy and double standards…

It wasn’t so long ago, fifty-seven years to be exact, that the qualifications of a presidential candidate were questioned due to his religious beliefs. If you are not familiar with your history, I’m talking about John F. Kennedy and his Roman Catholic faith. In response to these questions Kennedy stated, “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

What Kennedy spoke of is the concept of religious freedom; the freedom to worship as one sees fit. However, as with all freedoms, or rights, there also comes the responsibility that one does not infringe upon the rights of anyone else. I can believe whatever I want in regards to whether there is a God or if there isn’t; and how I choose to worship Him. At the same time I cannot force you to accept my beliefs. That’s the beauty of freedom; each person is free to make their own choices, but at the same time accept the consequences that come with those choices.

The Constitution makes no mention as to whether any person seeking, or being nominated for any office in the federal government must believe, or not believe in the existence of God; it only states, “… but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” What this means is that a person’s religious beliefs should not come into play when being considered for any office within our government; even the office of Deputy Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

There should be only two things which determine whether anyone is fit for public office; first their qualifications for the job they are seeking, and secondly, their willingness to uphold their oath to support and defend the Constitution. That’s it!!!

How would YOU like it if you were deemed unfit for a certain job simply because of the style of music you like to listen to? What difference does someone’s religious beliefs make when it comes to how well they are capable of performing their duties in the job they seek? As long as in the performance of their duties they do not try to impose their beliefs upon the people they work for, (the voters), then what difference does it make if they believe in God or not?

In his personal notes and writings, Thomas Jefferson spoke of his feelings on religion as follows, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg…”

So how does Mr. Vought’s religious beliefs as they apply towards Muslims even play in to how well he will perform his duties should he be approved for the office he was nominated for? The fact is they shouldn’t; that is if our government is to remain a free representative republic and not a theocracy; which by the way is what many Muslims want to see imposed upon America.

In case you don’t know what a theocracy is, it is a system of government which is run by the religious leaders of a country and their theological texts, or doctrines become the law which all people must obey. An example would be if the Pope were president and he imposed Catholic Doctrine upon the people of America by statute and law.

The whole concept of separation of church and state has become so twisted that it is barely recognizable from what it meant way back when Jefferson first spoke of it. What it meant back then was that a barrier was to be established between religion and government so that neither could influence the affairs of the other, and at the same time neither could impose their views upon anyone else.

For instance, priests should not become involved in telling their parishes what candidate to vote for any more than the president should tell people what church to attend; or whether they even had to attend church services. The idea was to preclude any preference for a single religious belief system; including atheism or agnosticism. Yet at the same time it allowed for the maximum freedom to worship, or not worship for that matter, as one sees fit. This is why the 1st Amendment’s protection was included in the Bill of Rights, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

It does not say that any mention of God in public is prohibited, it only says that government, via acts of Congress, shall not pass any law which prefers one religious sect over another; while at the same time ensuring that people are free to worship as they see fit.

Today people believe the separation of church and state is the total obliteration of God from public discourse; especially when taxpayer funds are used to support specific institutions such as schools. But by telling our children that they cannot pray, or discuss God in school, are we not violating their freedom of speech? The freedom of speech, as I have said many times before, does not protect one from hearing things which they find offensive. Hell, if that were the case then every time I left the house everyone I encountered would be required to shut up; because most of the things I hear people say offend me!

You may have the right to question the things I say, and vice versa, but you do not have the right to silence me because you disagree with what I say, or if what I say offends you. Nor can anyone demand that no one speak of God, or their religious beliefs in public places simply because others do not share their beliefs. That violates all the 1st Amendment stands for. As Thomas Jefferson said, “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.”

That said, there was a time when it was not considered politically incorrect to even speak of God in public schools. In fact, the Supreme Court, in 1844, ruled, “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.” (Source: Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, Justice Joseph Story delivering the Courts unanimous decision)

Why is it that religious values, especially Christian values, have come under such intense attack? I can fully understand if one chooses not to believe, and even accept their insults should others choose to believe. What I cannot abide is the outright attacks to completely denigrate those who believe, and the attempts to silence the voices of those who profess their Christian faith.

Does the truth frighten people so much that they would silence speech to avoid it? Do the principles contained in the Bible frighten the forces of darkness in our public places and government so much that they seek to banish them?

There was a time when the majority of the people living in this country were members of any number of Christian faiths. There were Anglicans, Protestants, Baptists, Catholics, Quakers, and many other beliefs scattered throughout the land. Yet they all had one thing in common, the belief in the Christian God and in the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Our nation may not have been founded to force religious beliefs on anyone, but it certainly was founded by men of faith. Not all may have come out and openly said it, but many a Founder believed, as did Patrick Henry, “It is when people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.” Our country may have been established on religious freedom; the ability of each of us to choose whether to believe or not believe, or how we go about exercising our faith, but I think it was commonly understood amongst our Founders that for this country to endure it would have to hold on to some sort of moral and ethical belief system; such as the principles found in the Bible; particularly the New Testament.

Thomas Jefferson may have been a Deist; one who acknowledges the presence of a God, but believes it does not interact with humanity, but he never rejected the idea that there was a God and that our freedoms come from Him. The Declaration of Independence proves this, “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…” as does his Summary View of the Rights of British America, “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?”

To Senator Sanders, and all those who profess to support him, I have but one thing to say. It is not the people, such as Mr. Vought, whom you claim do not represent what America is supposed to be about; it is all of you who do not represent what America used to be about.

Your ideologies, your beliefs that the will of the majority is sufficient to deprive a minority of their rights, that the theft of income from one category of Americans is justified if it is used to ease the suffering of those in need, that the right of people to defend themselves against crime makes them a criminal, these are all things you believe in, yet run counter to what our Founders believed.

In closing, I’d like to leave one final quote for you to consider; again from Thomas Jefferson, “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.”

Well, the gangrene has certain taken hold and the corruption of principles is all but complete. And just out of curiosity, do you know what the medical treatment for gangrene used to be? If you do not, it was amputation; they cut off the affected area so that it would not spread throughout the body. You may want to consider that before those who still adhere to the principles of self reliance, liberty, and freedom decide to amputate the gangrene which is spreading through America today.