Where Greed Meets Envy — the Structural Foundation of the Political Left

The Left: Where Greed Meets Envy

By David P. McGinley | June 17, 2012 | American Thinker

In ascertaining the general hierarchy of sins, a good point of reference is the Ten Commandments.  While the Decalogue is not all-inclusive, God dictated these specific directives to Moses as the basis upon which His people should live.  Among the ten is the command not to covet: “You shall not covet … anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Ex. 20:17 [NIV]).

Covetousness (or envy), meaning the possession of a strong desire for what another has, does not get the attention that its close relation “greed” gets.  Greed, of course, is greatly derided in scripture, and for good reason, but God did not see fit to include it in the commandments He set out on Mt. Sinai.  Why?

For one thing, greed is not always destructive, while envy is.  Greed is the desire to have more and, depending how that desire is acted upon, can be beneficial or detrimental.  The profit motive has made the United States the most prosperous nation in history; but, conversely, the abuse of that motive was greatly responsible for the September 2008 financial collapse.  When envy, on the other hand, is acted upon, there is no good, only bad.  At its worst, it leads to mass theft and murder.

Liberalism Is Terminally Ill

By J. Matt Barber | June 11, 2012 | CNS News

It’s been a pitiful sight – a sad week for progressives and “Big Union” Democrat-shilling thugs. In the wake of last Tuesday night’s devastating recall smackdown in Wisconsin, tens of thousands of “Occupy” hippies across the nation have simply been too depressed to get stoned and not look for work.

On Wednesday the White House released President Obama’s detailed itinerary through October:

1. Worry

2. Lie

3. Obfuscate

4. Golf

5. Fundraise

6. Worry

Indeed, the president has much to worry about. No honest politico can deny that liberals’ Wisconsin debacle likely represents a shadow of things to come – a precursor to November.

Drones in America: Where’s the Outrage?

By Andrew Napolitano | June 6, 2012 | WND

Andrew Napolitano rips government notion ‘balance’ is required between safety, liberty

For the past few weeks, I have been writing in this column about the government’s use of drones and challenging their constitutionality on Fox News Channel where I work. I once asked on air what Thomas Jefferson would have done if – had drones existed at the time – King George III had sent drones to peer inside the bedroom windows of Monticello. I suspect that Jefferson and his household would have trained their muskets on the drones and taken them down. I offer this historical anachronism as a hypothetical only, not as one who is urging the use of violence against the government.

Nevertheless, what Jeffersonians are among us today? When drones take pictures of us on our private property and in our homes, and the government uses the photos as it wishes, what will we do about it? Jefferson understood that when the government assaults our privacy and dignity, it is the moral equivalent of violence against us. The folks who hear about this, who either laugh or groan, cannot find it humorous or boring that their every move will be monitored and photographed by the government.

The State at the End of the Universe

The current round of class warfare taking place in this country can hardly be called that because it is taking place within a single class. This is no great conflict between the construct of a 1 and 99 percent, this is a civil war taking place within the 1 percent. The very name of the “Buffett Rule” makes that all too obvious. When your class warfare bid relies on 1-percenters like Warren Buffett and Elizabeth Warren, then what you have isn’t a class war, it’s an internal conflict among some of the wealthiest Americans over whether the future lies with an all-encompassing state or a looser libertarian system.

Buffett’s position as the champion of the government class isn’t as irrational as it might seem. For the average taxpayer, the tax code is a vacuum cleaner, but, for Buffett, it’s an investment. The more money people pay in, the more money the government has available to salvage troubled banks that he can swoop in on at a hefty profit. The average taxpayer loses money to the government, but Buffett gets back money from the government.

Dennis Prager: Americanism is the Best Hope

By Dave Gordon | June 3, 2012 | Breitbart News

Dennis Prager is a popular and respected conservative radio talk show host, broadcasting since 1982 and nationally syndicated since 1999.

In his fifth book, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (Broadside Books) Prager maintains that the world must decide between American values and two oppositional alternatives: Islamism and European-style democratic socialism.

The reasons for America’s greatness lie in what he calls the American Trinity, imprinted on US coins: E Pluribus Unum, In God We Trust, and Liberty.

Born in Crisis

The Meaning Of The Constitution

By Edwin Meese III | September 16, 2009 | Heritage Foundation

The Constitution of the United States has endured for over two centuries. It remains the object of reverence for nearly all Americans and an object of admiration by peoples around the world. William Gladstone was right in 1878 when he described the U.S. Constitution as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

Part of the reason for the Constitution’s enduring strength is that it is the complement of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration provided the philosophical basis for a government that exercises legitimate power by “the consent of the governed,” and it defined the conditions of a free people, whose rights and liberty are derived from their Creator. The Constitution delineated the structure of government and the rules for its operation, consistent with the creed of human liberty proclaimed in the Declaration.

Justice Joseph Story, in his Familiar Exposition of the Constitution (1840), described our Founding document in these terms:

We shall treat [our Constitution], not as a mere compact, or league, or confederacy, existing at the mere will of any one or more of the States, during their good pleasure; but, (as it purports on its face to be) as a Constitution of Government, framed and adopted by the people of the United States, and obligatory upon all the States, until it is altered, amended, or abolished by the people, in the manner pointed out in the instrument itself.

By the diffusion of power—horizontally among the three separate branches of the federal government, and vertically in the allocation of power between the central government and the states—the Constitution’s Framers devised a structure of government strong enough to ensure the nation’s future strength and prosperity but without sufficient power to threaten the liberty of the people.

The Liberal Trojan Horse

Restoring the Constitution

By James W. Ceaser | May 22, 2012 | The Claremont Institute

A widespread sentiment today, especially among conservatives, holds that if America could just get back to the Constitution, the nation would go a long way to resolving its greatest challenges. This sentiment has produced celebrations of our Constitution at Tea Party rallies, the printing and distribution of tens of thousands of handsome pocket versions, and a solemn reading of the entire document in the House of Representatives last year.

Such displays of enthusiasm are heartening, but they are no substitute for hard analysis. If the Constitution is being offered as the solution, it is necessary to specify what the problem is and how a revival of constitutionalism would help to fix it.

America’s future well-being is threatened today by a federal government characterized by a stunning lack of discipline, as it piles up debt at an unsustainable rate. The symbol of this pathology in the public mind is Greece, a nation that has spent itself into bankruptcy without apparent shame or regret. By coincidence, the authors of The Federalist also pointed to the example of Greece, classical Greece in their case, to illustrate the greatest challenge to popular government in their day: majority faction. By this James Madison meant the enactment of policies, usually encouraged by demagogic leaders, that threaten “the rights of other citizens, or…the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Empowering Individuals or Bureaucrats?

By Rep. Paul Ryan | May 2012 | American Spectator

Also in Choice Symposium

• James Piereson – A Time for Choosing
• Stephen Moore & Peter Ferrara – The Road From Serfdom
• David N. Bass – The Millennial Perspective

The choice and the contrast in health care.

In March, as the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of President Obama’s partisan health care law, the American people saw an event that could mark the end of bureaucrat-controlled health care. At the same time, just across the street in the halls of Congress, they witnessed a powerful reaffirmation of the American Idea as the House of Representatives passed the Path to Prosperity—a budget for the federal government.

It’s the Culture, Stupid

By Tom Tancredo | May 25, 2012 | WND

Exclusive: Tom Tancredo asserts election is about worldview clash, not economics

There is a growing realization in political quarters that there’s more to the resiliency of the Obama regime and his re-election chances than voters’ shifting priorities or occasional upticks in the nation’s economy. But the resiliency of the Obama constituency should not be a mystery: It’s the culture, stupid.

Some very large segments of the population are immune from any evidence or real-world news of Obama’s failures. The challenge for Republican strategists and Romney advisers is that this problem is far deeper than traditional Democratic constituencies such as organized labor and ethnic minorities. The problem for Republican strategists is that they have great difficulty thinking outside the box of conventional economic issues. They fear “social issues” – which are, of course, cultural issues – and have no contingency plan for dealing with them.

The bad news for Romney is that at least 40 percent of the electorate shares much of Obama’s worldview; their support for Obama does not depend on the direction of the monthly unemployment numbers. That’s not a weak base to build on, and the Republican task of finding 51 percent who will resist the free-lunch demagoguery of the left grows more difficult with each election cycle.

Is GOP Headed for Ash Heap of History?

By Patrick J. Buchanan | May 17, 2012 | WND

Pat Buchanan applies latest racial data to realities of Republican Party policies

 Among the more controversial chapters in “Suicide of a Superpower,” my book published last fall, was the one titled, “The End of White America.”

It dealt with the demographic decline of the white majority and what it portends for education, the U.S. economy, politics and national unity.

That book and chapter proved the proximate cause of my departure from MSNBC, where the network president declared that subjects such as these are inappropriate for “the national dialogue.”

Apparently, the mainstream media are reassessing that.

For, in rare unanimity, the New York Times, the Washington Post and USA Today all led yesterday with the same story.

“Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S.,” blared the Times headline. “Minority Babies Majority in U.S.,” echoed the Post. “Minorities Are Now a Majority of Births,” proclaimed USA Today.

45 Signs That America Will Soon Be A Nation With A Very Tiny Elite And The Rest Of Us Will Be Poor

By Staff Report | April 2, 2012 | End of the American Dream

The middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States today.  America is a nation with a very tiny elite that is rapidly becoming increasingly wealthy while everyone else is becoming poorer.  So why is this happening?  Well, it is actually very simple.  Our institutions are designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a very limited number of people.  Throughout human history, almost all societies that have had a big centralized government have also had a very high concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite.  Throughout human history, almost all societies that have allowed big business or big corporations to dominate the economy have also had a very high concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite.  Well, the United States has allowed both big government and big corporations to grow wildly out of control.  Those were huge mistakes.  Our founding fathers attempted to establish a nation where the federal government would be greatly limited and where corporations would be greatly restricted.  Unfortunately, we have turned our backs on those principles and now we are paying the price.

Harvard Law, the Commerce Clause, and the Obamacare Mandate

By Jim Byrd | May 11, 2012 | Canada  Free Press

Harvard Law School Professor Einer Elhauge published an article in The New Republic titled, “If Health Insurance Mandates Are Unconstitutional, Why Did the Founding Fathers Back Them?” The foundation of his argument is the belief that the Militia Act of 1792 was a mandate to purchase a firearm, and the 1790 and 1798 acts by Congress requiring that ship owners purchase medical insurance for seamen, was a mandate forcing the citizens of the states to make a commercial purchase under the Commerce Clause.

Professor Elhauge presents as fact that these two mandates required engagement in commerce, thus setting 200+ years of precedent by the first Congress, “which was packed with framers,” as per his depiction. He then states, “Nevermind that nothing in the text or history of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause indicates that Congress cannot mandate commercial purchases.” The professor appears to subscribe to the oft employed licentious theorem of the Left that if it is not enumerated in Article 1, Section 8, then Congress can presume it has unfettered authority to mandate, tax, legislate, control, and dictate wantonly. But, plausibly, historically, and factually, that is neither the intent nor the spirit of Article 1, Section 8, as it was not an enumeration of what the government should or could do, but rather a very narrow set of limitations constraining what the government can do. What the government cannot do is mandate commercial purchases under the Commerce Clause, as that power was not enumerated, intended, nor would it have survived ratification. Perhaps a perfunctory history lesson of why the Constitution was created, and the purpose of the Commerce Clause, may be the antidote to apocryphal balderdash.

Liberals, progressives, and a particular genus of law professors are wringing their hands in animated intoxication regarding these two particular mandates cited by Professor Elhauge. And reinforcing Professor Elhauge’s theorem of mandated purchases under the Commerce Clause, the Left are evidencing case law functioning as unsanctioned amendments to the Constitution, or as unsanctioned legislation fabricated by American jurisprudence. This benighted infatuation with stare decisis, this judicial inbreeding of the Supreme Court assigning dominion of past Supreme Court rulings as surrogates for the Constitution, has resulted in the passing of deleterious and recessive traits to each Supreme Court progenitor. As with genetics, if the Supreme Court reaches a faulty decision, or flagrant political or agenda driven decision, this trait is passed down to each successive Supreme Court that is indentured by the judicial genetics of stare decisis. Professor Elhauge appears to be erroneously attesting that the first Congress, “which was packed with framers,” mandated that the citizens of sovereign states, states that ceded very few enumerated powers to the newly created federal government, were forced to engage in commerce ad libitum.

Before brandishing adulterate case law and phantom mandates, one question must first be answered: What was the purpose of adding the Commerce Clause to the Constitution?

One must delve much deeper than the burlesque Supreme Court assembled by FDR and its league of handpicked ideologues parading around as judiciously inclined justices. These robe wearing sycophants infected American constitutional jurisprudence with the New Deal, and especially Wickard v. Filburn. Wickard v. Filburn breached the boundaries of the Constitution by affording the federal government an almost immeasurable expansion of powers via the Commerce Clause. And if this unburdened scope of power was the original intent of the Commerce Clause, what was the point of the founders penning the remainder of the Constitution if it is subordinate to the Commerce Clause? Indeed, it is necessary to delve beyond FDR’s reign, beyond Professor Elhauge’s imaginary mandates of commerce, back to the Articles of Confederation and the commercial dysfunction between the states.

Prior to the ratification of the United States Constitution, the governing document of the United States was the Articles of Confederation. Of the myriad weaknesses of this document, the focus will be commerce and the militia, as these two areas are what Professor Elhauge perhaps employed in some fashion of palmistry to arrive at his supposition.

Prior to the American Revolution, colonial commerce was regulated by Great Britain, and to a greater extent in the years just preceding the Declaration of Independence. After independence was declared, the framework of colonial commerce changed, immediately going from regulated to unregulated. Without a structured and enforceable set of regulations to ensure the equitable and uninterrupted flow of the transportation of goods between the states, counterproductive trade barriers between the states arose and jeopardized the necessary commercial alliances of the states essential for sustainability of the nation. The states having the advantage of ports charged exploitative tariffs on goods that passed through their ports en route to and from the states without ports. This started a series of trade wars pitting states with ports against states without ports, with both sides charging counterproductive tariffs.

To compound the problems created by discordant commerce, the Articles of Confederation lacked the mechanism to provide and enforce a uniform monetary policy to protect commerce as well. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states had the authority to setup their own monetary systems and print their own currency.

Article III of the Articles of Confederation addresses the states entering into a “firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense,” while Article VII addresses the appointing of officers of the land forces raised by the states, and Article VIII addresses the expenses and funding of “All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare.” The government did not have to power to raise an army for defense, and the government did not have to funds to honor Article VIII regarding paying expenses of defense, as the government was unable to even collect the taxes due to pay off the debt from the Revolutionary War. The states generally ignored the federal government regarding taxes, and the Articles left the government powerless to collect taxes.

Even though the states maintained their militias after the end of the war, the inability of the federal government to raise an army left the newly sovereign states vulnerable without a united military front. Even after the Treaty of Paris was signed, the forts in Northwest Territory remained under British control and occupation. The states were not enforcing nor abiding by the provisions of the Treaty of Paris, and the government lacked the power to compel them to do so.

Read the full article here.

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Could George W. Bush Be the Last Republican President?

By Myra Adams | May 4, 2012 | PJ Media

Is it possible that George W. Bush could be the last Republican president ever, or at least for the foreseeable future?

Am I crazy to even formulate that question?

Maybe not and here are 10 reasons why.

1. Rapidly changing demographic trends that favor the Democrat Party.

2. An education system controlled by liberals that churns out young liberals.

3. A population with an ever increasing dependence on government in the form of entitlements and subsidies.

4. A mainstream media that is overwhelmingly comprised of journalists who subtly and not so subtly spin the news in support of Democrats and liberal causes.

5. The influence of Hollywood, which makes it cool to be a liberal Democrat.

6. The growing power concentrated in local, state, and federal government worker unions, whose members actively campaign against Republicans on the taxpayer dime.  (See WI Governor Walker’s upcoming recall election for an active example of this.)

7. A culture where non-traditional social and sexual behavior has become mainstream.

8. A hatred for Republicans in general and a tendency to blame the party for “the mess we’ve inherited.”

9. A Republican Party that is growing increasingly white, old, southern, and male, while alienating majorities of younger voters, Hispanics, African Americans, gays, teachers, young professionals, atheists, unmarried women, and even suburban married women.

10. The internet and the growing social media phenomenon that strongly tilts in favor of Democrats.

Together, all of the above reasons are reflected in the latest Obama vs. Romney Real Clear Politics Electoral College map.

Currently with 270 electoral votes needed to win, the states that are either likely or lean Obama total 253, while Romney’s likely or lean states total 170.

What is even more significant is the list of toss-up states.

Below is a list with their electoral votes and a hyperlink to the latest Obama vs. Romney polling averages in each state.

Arizona (11)

Colorado (9)

Florida (29)

Iowa (6)

Missouri (10)

New Hampshire (4)

North Carolina (15)

Ohio (18)

Virginia (13)

Together these 9 states total 115 electoral votes, of which Romney must win 100 if he is to reach 270.

Consult your nearest statistician for the odds of that happening.

Upon examining this lopsided electoral matchup, one could conclude that Romney is not the strongest candidate the Republicans could nominate to go up against Obama.

Sure, you could say that, but you would be wrong.

Read the full article here.

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So What Do You Think “Fundamental Transformation” Will Do? Just Ask Winston Churchill!

“A  love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.”  ~Sir Winston Churchill

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Reviving the Constitution: “The Administrative State and the Duties of Citizens” [Video]

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Why Congress Must Confront the Administrative State

By Robert Moffit, Ph.D. | April 2, 2012 | Heritage Foundation

Abstract: The triumph of the administrative state has been made possible by the emasculation of the legislative power. Washington’s problem is not merely federal spending and debt; it is the arrogance of centralized power. The time is therefore ripe for a major national discussion not only about the size of government, but also about the processes of government. Americans have a choice: to be governed by the rule of law, as hammered out in open legislative debate carried on by elected representatives who are directly accountable to us, or the rule of administrators who are most certainly not accountable to us. The rule of regulators is arbitrary and unaccountable government—exactly what the Founders wished to prevent in crafting the Federal Constitution.

Steve Kroft of CBS recently interviewed President Barack Obama. In response to a question on his job performance, the President ranked himself fourth among America’s chief executives (behind Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln) in the production of policy initiatives.[1]

Critics quickly ridiculed his self-assessment as narcissistic nonsense. They’re wrong.

President Obama is transforming American government. Few Presidents have enjoyed more success in enacting such a large policy agenda in such a short period of time.

• Within weeks of his inauguration, the President signed into law a major expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicaid.
• He quickly followed this up with the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the “stimulus” bill), adding $831 billion to our deficits.
• In 2010, Congress passed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd–Frank bill), providing for massive and far-reaching financial regulation.
• And on March 23, 2010, he signed into law the 2,800-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). It is the largest single piece of social legislation in American history, expanding federal control over one-sixth of the American economy and the personal lives of more than 300 million citizens.

Combine this massive legislative production with his zealous regulatory program. While Washington’s bureaucratic regime has been growing since the early 1900s, under President Obama its growth has exploded. In 2009 and 2010 alone, federal agencies issued 7,076 final rules.[2]

While the President insists that his regulatory output is less than that of President George W. Bush, a closer look reveals that his “major” regulations—those having an annual impact of at least $100 million each—were more numerous. Since President Obama took office in 2009, federal agencies have issued 75 major regulations with an annual additional cost to the economy of $38 billion.[3] Taken altogether, the Small Business Administration last year estimated that the total cost of America’s regulatory burden reached $1.75 trillion—more than twice what Americans pay in individual income taxes.[4]

The U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Treasury, and Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are at the center of this regulatory storm. They alone account for 43 percent of all rules in the federal pipeline.[5] Of the 43 major rules issued in 2010, 10 were based on EPA mandates.[6] With the President’s health and environmental initiatives alone, the Obama White House has dwarfed the regulatory agenda of its predecessors.

The national health law expands the administrative power of the HHS Secretary beyond anything previously attempted. The Secretary is required to act—indicated by the statutory language “shall”—1,563 times in the final language of the legislation, and 40 specific provisions of the law mandate or permit the issuance of regulations.[7] Senate Republican Policy Committee staff estimate that the new law creates 159 new agencies or entities, but the Congressional Research Service says that the exact number is “unknowable” inasmuch as certain powerful federal offices are created administratively without direct congressional authorization.

While the law’s schedule of implementation stretches out over eight years, the most far-reaching provisions—the mandates on individuals, employers, and states—take effect in 2014. Nonetheless, in less than two years, the national health law has already generated over 11,000 pages of rules, regulations, and guidelines and related paperwork in the Federal Register.

Just consider the law’s 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The powerful board will make its initial recommendations for detailed and specific Medicare payment cuts in January 2015, and the Secretary is empowered to put them into effect unless Congress enacts an alternative set of payment cuts to meet statutory Medicare spending targets.[8] The board’s automatic recommendations are subject to neither administrative nor judicial review, and the law further requires a three-fifths Senate majority to block IPAB’s prescriptions.

Peter Orszag, President Obama’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has observed that the extraordinary power of this new board is “the largest yielding of sovereignty from the Congress since the creation of the Federal Reserve.”[9]

In 2010 alone, Congress enacted 217 bills that became law, but that same year, federal agencies issued 3,573 final rules covering a wide variety of economic activities.[10] Today, more than at any other time in our history, we are less and less governed by the rule of law, hammered out in legislative deliberations as the Founders intended, and more and more governed by the rule of regulation. We are subject to edicts promulgated by administrators—persons we do not know and will never know, persons protected by civil service law and tenure who are not accountable to us and will never be accountable to us. Nonetheless, the administrators’ detailed decisions have the force of law.

Regulation, as law, can and does directly affect whether or not we can start or run our businesses, determine how many persons we can or cannot afford to hire, how we may or may not use our land or dispose of our property. Not only do administrators publish thousands of pages of regulations, but our fellow citizens can sometimes also go to jail for violating them.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE

Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing the triumph of the administrative state, but that conquest is only possible because of the emasculation of the legislative power. The Founders made Congress the lawgiver, as clarified in Article I, Section 1 of the Federal Constitution. So much of their focus, reflected in The Federalist and other writings, was on how to check and balance the predominant legislative power, to channel and contain personal ambition and factional interest, to restrain potentially tyrannical majorities and safeguard the rights of beleaguered minorities, to secure personal liberty and protect the rights of property.

Though federal power has grown steadily since President Washington took the oath of office, today the relationship between the individual and the government is changing in a qualitative way. Americans are increasingly the subjects of an administrative regime rather than the free citizens of a democratic republic with a limited government.

Picking Winners and Losers. This steady transfer of legislative power to administrators has another inescapable consequence: arbitrary rule. The champions of administrative power invariably couch their arguments in appeals to expertise. The more complex the economic sector to be planned or regulated, the more that strict uniformity in the application of the rules becomes problematic.

In broad congressional grants of power, lawmakers give administrators wide latitude in the development and enforcement of the rules, so those who make the rules can also unmake them by granting waivers and exemptions. In the case of the health care law, HHS has already granted over 1,722 temporary waivers to certain businesses, unions, and gourmet restaurants in San Francisco that don’t have to comply with national coverage rules that apply to other companies throughout the country.

Treating similarly situated Americans differently, either as individual citizens or as citizens of a particular state, amounts to arbitrary rule; and arbitrary rule is inherently unjust.

THE NEED FOR A HIGHER LEVEL OF PUBLIC DEBATE

Today’s debate over the powerful bureaucracy is usually framed in terms of economic impact: How will federal rules affect economic growth and job creation, the price of gasoline or electricity, the cost of health insurance or the quality of medical care? While this level of debate is necessary, it is insufficient. Yes, we cannot neglect the trees, but it is really the health of the forest that matters.

The big question is this: How does this bureaucratic ascendancy affect ordinary Americans? My answer: Our very civic life is at stake, not just our prosperity.

The current trend is an affront to our self-government. The tacit assumption: Millions of us are not smart enough to make our own decisions for ourselves. Rather, we need to be closely supervised by officials. They will prescribe for us, for example, what kind of light bulbs and washing machines we should use. The provision of nutritional or caloric information on restaurant menus, or food items dispensed through vending machines, is now a federal mandate under Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act.

Our supervision, though distant and impersonal, becomes more precise and detailed. We are to become increasingly dependent on government for our well-being. Today, almost half of Americans (48.5 percent) live in households that are getting some form of government assistance, largely funded from federal revenues, but nearly half (49.5 percent) of our citizens pay no federal income taxes. But today’s Progressives are still dissatisfied. In their view, the many are to be even more dependent on the few, and the few (the hated “rich,” however they are defined) should be paying even more in taxes than they do today.

Over time, these dynamics will change the character of our people, with corrosive consequences for our political culture and our economic prosperity. America will have a progressively larger class of dependent citizens, and that spirit of freedom and independence for which the Founders risked their lives and fortunes will be broken.

It does not have to be this way. Our task is to paint the big picture, the overarching framework of American civic life. The great medieval philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, the “First Whig,” defines law as an edict of reason, promulgated by the sovereign for the common good of the community.[11] The law instructs citizens in their rights and duties, and thus has a teaching function. That being the case, as lawmakers, you must become teachers of the Constitution, carriers of our rich political culture of republican government.

What must we do to preserve and protect the constitutional traditions of limited government, individual liberty, the separation of powers, and the unique advantages of federalism? James Madison, “the Father of The Constitution,” was not a lawyer, but he was a Congressman. And in that role, he was also a teacher: He routinely employed his formidable talents in the education of his colleagues and fellow citizens on the first principles of government.

In my reading of the public mood, you also have an eager audience. More and more Americans hunger for the wisdom of the Founders, are reading their biographies, and seek to understand their tightly reasoned arguments for the adoption of our Constitution. They are also becoming aware that there is something deeply wrong with the way in which they are being governed and that this process deviates from the intentions of the Founders. They correctly sense that modern government is ever more distant and disconnected from them. They are right.

HOW WE GOT HERE

President Obama, like President Woodrow Wilson, is a real “Progressive,” but what does that mean? In his recent speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, he recalled President Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism.”[12] A genuine Progressive, TR favored the imposition of inheritance taxes and the income tax and became the standard bearer of the Progressive Party in 1912.

Reflecting that tradition, President Obama and his ideological allies are also vigorous champions of aggressive executive power.[13] Commenting on President Obama’s governance, New York Times columnist David Brooks predicts, “When historians look back on this period, they will see it as another progressive era…. It’s a progressive era based on faith in government experts and their ability to use social science analysis to manage complex systems.”[14]

Welcome to the “100 Years War” of American politics. Progressivism, after all, was America’s dominant political movement from 1890 to 1920. While the Progressives are identified with social reform and the reining in of corporate interests and trusts, they focused intensely on structural reform of government, particularly civil service reform and the democratization of our politics.

No modern American political movement has been more successful. Within a relatively short span of time, progressives backed the adoption of four transformative amendments to the Constitution. They fostered the income tax (Sixteenth Amendment) and secured direct election of U.S. Senators (Seventeenth Amendment); many backed Prohibition (Eighteenth Amendment); and they allied with the suffragettes (Nineteenth Amendment). In the several states, they broke the power of the political bosses and enacted initiative and referenda and the recall of public officials.

Long before the New Deal of the 1930s, Progressives concentrated power in Washington. With the backing of the Progressives, Congress created the Federal Reserve System (1913) and the Federal Trade Commission (1914). Federal employment soared.[15] During the Great War, Congress (in the Overman Act of 1918) gave President Wilson enormous discretionary power to consolidate and rearrange executive offices and agencies. Meanwhile, dissent, especially criticism of America’s entry into the war, was suppressed.

“Permissiveness,” the hallmark of the Sixties, was never welcome among Progressives, old or new. Under the rule of the new Progressives, if you want to just “do your own thing,” you won’t. You will do what you are told. If you think you can just “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” think again. You will be forced, for example, to buy government-approved health benefits—including federally certified abortifacients—or pay a fine. You will behave. You will conform. You will comply. You will not march to a different drummer.

The old Progressives were earnest and well-intentioned—old-fashioned “do gooders.” They were also stern and sober social reformers. During the Progressive Era, Congress suppressed the lottery business and interstate prostitution. They enforced prohibition on the sale and manufacture of alcohol,[16] and they imposed taxes on narcotics. Personal vice had become a public enemy. Professor Charles Beard, a leading Progressive historian, wrote in 1930: “Perhaps no country in the world, except Russia, places so many restraints on what is called ‘personal liberty,’ the right to do as one pleases in personal conduct and on the use of property.”[17]

Because Progressivism is an old and recurrent stream in our public life, its influence on public policy is so immense that it is a given: part of our national landscape. Progressive intellectuals generally had—and still have—a profound faith in social science, a conviction that scientific expertise was the key to social progress, especially in a social and economic order that was increasingly complex. Administration was to be the change agent. Again, Beard: “Thus, in our day, a new social science is being staked out and developed—the science of administration in a ‘great society.’ If the ‘great society’ is to endure, then it must make itself master of administration.”[18]

For Progressives, true liberty was not merely freedom from, or “negative” liberty, meaning freedom from arbitrary rule or tyrannical coercion, as embodied in the venerable natural rights tradition of the American Revolution. True liberty was the freedom to be, to act, to grow personally and to fulfill one’s potential.

This was “positive” liberty. It was to be achieved by the removal of economic and customary restraints, creating fairness in social and economic relations, liberating all persons, regardless of class or condition, from the unwelcome vicissitudes of the market and providing child care, education, universal health care, and pensions: in short, security. Justification for government action would be grounded, as Beard argued, not in power, but in service. This new liberty would be secured through broad-scale central planning and social and economic regulation.

Positive liberty, therefore, was to be achieved through the positive state. Think personal “growth” in a straitjacket.

Such ideological assumptions justified a federal role in health care and a national system of social insurance (based on the German model) for pensions in the Progressive Party platform of 1912. They explain the passion for centralization of power, particularly in the executive branch of national government, where scientific expertise would be able to work its will. “Progressivism,” wrote Professor Ralph Gabriel of Yale University, “was an aspect of the rising cult of science.”[19]

But Progressivism carries within it the seeds of contradiction. While Progressives long championed the democratization of our institutions, sunlight in government, and the elimination of the baneful influence of corporate interests, they clung stubbornly to a faith that public problems could be effectively solved through bureaucratic decision-making: little bands of experts appointed to an expanding number of government boards, commissions, or panels. That is at the heart of the Progressive conception of modern government.[20]

Populist rhetoric notwithstanding, the reality of Progressive rule is profoundly undemocratic, precisely because it takes crucial decision-making that directly affects the lives of millions of citizens “out of politics.” Thus, you have the administrative state: the rule of administrators.

Read the full article here.

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How to Think About the Foundations of American Conservatism

By James Ceaser, Ph.D. | December 10, 2008 | Heritage Foundation

Contemporary American conservatism, which is notorious for its internal factionalism, is held together by a self-evident truth: conservatives’ shared antipathy to modern liberalism. Their main objections are well-known.

Almost to a man or woman, conservatives oppose using government authority to enforce a vision of greater equality labeled by its supporters, with great seduction, as “social justice.” Nearly as many conser­vatives object to the use of government authority–or, alternatively, to the denial of government authority where it is natural, legal, and appropriate–to pro­mote a worldview of individualism, expressivism, and secularism. Finally, most conservatives want nothing to do with an airy internationalism, frequently suspi­cious of the American nation, that has shown itself so inconstant in its support for the instruments of secu­rity that are necessary in the modern world.

No shame attaches, or should, to relying in politics on the adhesive property that comes from the senti­ment of common dislike. That sentiment is the heart that beats within the breast of the conservative move­ment, supplying much of its unity. This heart sustains four heads, known generally as religious conserva­tives, economic or libertarian-minded conservatives, natural-rights or neoconservatives, and traditionalists or paleoconservatives.

The four heads comprise a coalition of the willing that came together during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The remarkable diversity of this coalition has been both a source of strength and a source of weak­ness for the conservative movement. Each part came into existence at a different time and under differ­ent circumstances, and each has been guided by a different principle by which it measures what is good or right.

• For religious conservatives, that principle is biblical faith.
• For libertarians, it is the idea of “spontaneous order,” the postulate that a tendency is opera­tive in human affairs for things to work out for themselves, provided no artificial effort is made to impose an overall order.
• For neoconservatives, it is a version of “natural right,” meaning a standard of good in political affairs that is discoverable by human reason.
• Finally, for traditionalists, it is “History” or “Culture,” meaning the heritage that has come down to us and that is our own.

There are refinements and subdivisions that could be added to this schema, but it represents, I think, a fairly standard approach to discussing the different intellectual currents inside the conserva­tive coalition. Recently, however, a number of com­mentators have fallen into the practice–I use this expression advisedly–of replacing this four-part schema by a two-part division based on a distinc­tion between the concepts of “Culture” and “Creed.” The new system of categorization derives from a book published last year by Samuel Hun­tington, entitled Who Are We? in which the author offers these concepts as the two basic modes in any society for establishing national identity.[1] The cate­gories are meant to refer to the whole nation, but conservatives have applied them to discussions of their own movement.

My argument in this essay will be that introduc­ing this new categorization schema represents a huge error, especially as a way of discussing conser­vatism. The Culture-Creed distinction does not sim­plify; it distorts. Built into its categories are premises that attempt by fiat to order and arrange the different parts of the conservative coalition. Not only is this arrangement “partisan,” in the sense of favoring the Cultural category, but it also attempts, with no basis either in principle or in fact, to place faith inside of Culture, thereby suggesting a natural grouping of traditionalists and religious conservatives in opposi­tion to natural-rights or neoconservatives. Whether this attempt was undertaken consciously or not is of little matter; what counts are its effects, and these could have serious and negative implications for the conservative movement.

The Concepts of Culture and Creed

Let me now take a step back and describe the concepts of Culture and Creed. Huntington initial­ly provides a social science definition of Culture that is so broad as to be meaningless. Culture con­sists of “a people’s language, religious beliefs, social and political values, assumptions as to what is right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, and to the objective institutions and behavioral patterns that reflect these subjective elements.”

Huntington is less interested, however, in social science than in recovering a basis today for patrio­tism and for securing unity in America. It is our Culture that concerns him. He labels that culture “Anglo-Protestantism,” which refers to everything that Huntington elects to emphasize among the first New England settlers. His selection boils down to four main elements: our language (English); our religion (dissenting Protestantism); our basic polit­ical beliefs (a commitment to liberty, individualism, and self-government); and our race (white).

Since Huntington wants Culture to work as a source or standard of identity, and identity in a pos­itive sense, he allows it to evolve in order to per­form its function. In its evolved form, the Culture to which we should look refers–still–to the English language and to the same commitment to liberty and self-government; the notion of religion is broadened slightly from dissenting Protestantism to Christianity insofar as it has been Protestantized. Race as a criterion of distinction drops out.

As for Creed, Huntington initially defines it in a social science fashion as the taking of bearings from theoretical claims that are offered in principle as universal or applicable to all. Examples of Creed that he identifies are communism and classical lib­eralism. The use of these broad-based theoretical concepts is what Huntington means by Creedalism as distinguished from Culturalism. As he says at one point:

People are not likely to find in political principles [i.e., a Creed] the deep emotional content and meaning provided by kith and kin, blood and belonging, culture and nationality. These attachments may have little or no basis in fact, but they do satisfy a deep human longing for meaningful community.

Once again, however, Huntington’s interest in Who Are We? is more in our own Creed than in Creeds in general. Our Creed consists of an idea of nature, specifically of natural rights, as articulated in documents like the Declaration of Independence.

How does the binary distinction between Cul­ture and Creed replace and subsume the four-part division of conservatism? The implication is the following. The category of Culture consists of tra­ditionalists and religious conservatives–the first for the obvious reason of their emphasis on our his­tory and culture and the second because Hunting­ton identifies dissenting Protestantism as first or original. The category of Creed consists of natural-rights or neoconservatives and libertarians–the former because they regularly reference natural rights and the Declaration of Independence and the latter because they think in terms of general princi­ples of economic reasoning.

An example will help to illustrate how this bina­ry mapping of conservatism has entered into con­temporary discussion. Lawrence Auster, an outspoken conservative, publishes an instructive blog entitled “View from the Right.” Never one to mince words, he begins a spirited entry of October 25, 2005, with an attack on President George W. Bush (one of his frequent targets) in an article iron­ically entitled “Under Bush and the American Creed, America Continues Its Bold Progress”:

At President Bush’s annual Ramadan dinner at the White House this week–did you know the President has an annual Ramadan dinner?–he announced for the first time in our nation’s history we have added a Koran to the White House Library. Yippee.[2]

Arguing that this recognition serves unwisely to legitimize Islam in America, Auster finds further evidence of this same error in a passage from a speech given the previous week by Senator John McCain at the Al Smith Dinner:

We have a nation of many races, many religious faiths, many points of origin, but our shared faith is the belief in liberty, and we believe this will prove stronger, more enduring and better than any nation ordered to exalt the few at the expense of the many or made from a common race or culture or to preserve traditions that have no greater attribute than longevity.[3]

In Auster’s view, the McCain-Bush position rep­resents the perfect expression of creedal thinking:

According to McCain, the meaning of America is that we have no common culture and no coherent set of traditions but give equal freedom to all cultures, traditions and religions. Such a cultureless society is stronger and more enduring than any other.[4]

Auster may have taken some liberties with the strict claims of Bush and McCain, but his general point could not be more clear: The end result of the Creed is at best indifference, at worst hostility, to Culture.

The Problem with the Culture-Creed distinction

This application of the Culture-Creed distinc­tion to the conservative movement contains two assumptions. The first is that Creedalists are not true conservatives, but conservatives on their way to becoming liberals, if they are not there already. The other is that religious conservatives–meaning those concerned with biblical faith–fall inside the category of Culturalists. Here would seem to be the main gambit involved in this analysis: to define those of faith as closer to cultural traditionalists than to proponents of natural rights.

In light of this questionable mapping of the con­servative movement, it is fair to ask whether Creed and Culture make up helpful categories that assist in understanding reality, or whether they force the analyst to describe reality in a way that satisfies these categories.

Thomas Hobbes, that puckish British philoso­pher, has a chapter in Leviathan in which he reminds us that abstract categories are human con­structions, born either of men’s efforts to compre­hend the world or of the aim of some to dictate how others will think. The result very often is that these terms are imprecise, conflating different things under the same label and producing ever-growing confusions. Hobbes was a very timid man, and as is not infrequent with personalities of this kind, he was also a bit of a sadist. The trait served him well in describing how an individual, when employing a poorly circumscribed category, will soon find him­self “entangled in words as a bird in lime twigs, the more he struggles, the more belimed.”

Have we become “belimed” by adopting the Cul­ture-Creed distinction?

I bear some slight personal responsibility for popularizing this distinction. Last year I wrote a review essay on Huntington’s Who Are We? for The Weekly Standard.[5] In contrast to the avalanche of reviews from the Left attacking the book, mine was in many ways very appreciative. I followed the Golden Rule of discussing the work of a major thinker, which is to treat it initially on its own terms. Hence my lengthy discussion of the Cul­ture-Creed distinction, on which I offered two observations.

First, I pointed out that more than 20 years ago, Huntington wrote a previous book on America–a fact he all but hides in this one–in which he invoked the Culture-Creed dyad.[6] In both books he argues that forging our national identity requires relying on both Culture and Creed. But whereas in the earlier book he contends that America should emphasize the Creed, in the current one he argues that it should identify more with the Culture.

Second, I asked what reason could account for so fundamental a change. A higher ordering idea of some kind, contained either within one of the two principles or coming from a new one, ought to have been supplied to account for how to regulate the appropriate mix of Culture and Creed. I offered a couple of speculative comments of my own on this issue and suggested that it would be a nice question for others to consider.

In the past year, this theme has been taken up by two well-known political scientists. In a recent issue of The Claremont Review of Books, the editor, Charles Kesler, has a fine essay on Huntington’s work. He begins with some cogent criticisms of how Huntington allows the concept of Creed to slide from its specific and original American mean­ing (a support of natural rights) to its more general social scientific meaning (any kind of broad type of theoretical reasoning). The result is a category that encompasses everything offered in the name of rational principles, from the position of limited government and individualism of the Founders to the Big Government position of the Progressives.

Following this clarification of the concept of Creed, Kesler goes on to argue that we need both concepts, but that the standard of regulation must stem from the Creed (properly understood). He concludes his essay:

The American creed is the keystone of American national identity; but it requires a culture to sustain it. The republican task is to recognize the creed’s primacy, the culture’s indispensability and the challenge which political wisdom alone can answer, to shape a people that can live up to its principles.[7]

Another very perceptive article appeared this fall in Society, written by Peter Skerry. Skerry takes Huntington to task for much of his treatment of the status of the Hispanic community in America and for his analysis of the process of immigrant integra­tion into an American identity. On the major theo­retical distinction of Culture and Creed, however, Skerry embraces Huntington’s analysis and shares his Cultural emphasis. America needs both Creed and Culture, but the senior partner today is–and should be–Culture, which Skerry observes is “at the core of Huntington’s understanding of Ameri­can national identity.”[8]

Both of these essays, each critical in its own way of Huntington’s work, make use of the Culture- Creed distinction. In doing so, they, along now with many other writings, lend credibility to the view that these categories are adequate to define the terrain of this inquiry. It is this position that now needs to be challenged.

Before turning directly to this question, it is worthwhile to observe that for many “Culturalists,” there appears to be as much politics as social sci­ence in the Culture-Creed categorization scheme. No sooner is the distinction introduced than Cul­turalists put it to work to argue for their positions on two major issues of the day.

The first is the previously mentioned matter of immigration policy. Culturalists are deeply con­cerned with the current rate and character of immi­gration. Huntington devotes a large portion of his book to warning of the threat to national unity posed by the influx of Hispanics, largely Mexican. We are in danger of establishing two different cultures in the United States: one English-speaking and Anglo-Protestant, the other Spanish-speaking and, I sup­pose, Latin Catholic. Not only is it said that a Cultur­al approach makes us more aware of this problem, but also Creedalists are charged with being incapa­ble of taking this problem seriously. Their reasoning in universal terms about all human beings makes them “a-Cultural” or anti-Cultural, which for practi­cal purposes means, for immigration politics, multi­cultural. The Culture-Creed distinction is put to use as the proverbial stick with which to beat certain (alleged) foes of immigration restriction.

The other issue on which Culturalists insist today is foreign policy, where many of them are highly critical of the Bush Administration’s position on the war on terrorism. The Administration’s pol­icy in launching the Iraq war and in emphasizing democracy is again said to be a consequence of Creedal thinking, which in its universalistic per­spective leads to a naïve belief, often labeled “Wil­sonianism,” in the possibility of exporting Western democracy to the rest of the world. Creedalism blinds one to the factual primacy of Culture. If the Creedalists who have designed the current foreign policy appreciated the strength and soundness of Culture at home, acknowledging that every other nation or civilization has its Culture just as we have ours, the folly of their grandiose project of nation building would quickly become evident to them.

Culturalists here, incidentally, have their closest allies among those on the Left, including the mul­ticulturalists, who on this issue adopt the Cultural­ist and realist position. Again, the Culture-Creed distinction becomes the weapon of choice in attacking a policy even though a good number of natural-rights conservatives have expressed reser­vations about this policy of their own.

A Better Foundation

Huntington’s inquiry is concerned with cohe­sive­ness and justification–with what enables Americans to be a people, in the sense of possessing unity, and with what makes this people good or worthy in its own eyes. Creed and Culture are said to provide the categories that cover this terrain and allow for intelligent investigation of these ques­tions. But these categories, I have argued, are nei­ther adequate nor exhaustive. Even as defined, they are hugely asymmetrical. Creed refers to a doctrine or set of principles; Culture is presented as a com­pilation of existing sociological facts and realities. But as should be obvious by now, Culture is used to do far more than reference pure facts. It is itself a doctrine that selects facts and bids us to judge the world in a certain way.

It seems to me that a more rewarding approach to the study of unity would begin by separating the study of pure sociological facts–the analysis of what is (or has been) our language, our customs, beliefs, and the like–from all doctrines meant to supply an idea of unity and of right. It would then be possible to examine these doctrines without built-in presup­positions to see how they conceive of cohesiveness and deal with certain sociological facts.

Given my time limits here, I will restrict myself to three major doctrines that were put forth in the early period of our history and that remain impor­tant for contemporary politics and the modern conservative movement: natural rights, traditional­ism, and faith.

Read the full article here.

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Why the Supreme Court Will Strike Down All of Obamacare

By Peter Ferrara | April 5, 2012 | Forbes

Barack Obama made a national laughingstock out of himself with his recent comments on the Obamacare law now before the Supreme Court. Obama said on Monday, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” (emphasis added).

President Obama is not stupid. But he thinks you are. He knows the Obamacare health care takeover was not passed by a strong majority. But he figures you’re so dumb he can rewrite recent history in plain sight. The law passed a House with a huge Democrat majority at the time by only 219-212. It did not get a single Republican vote, but the opposition was bipartisan.

The law also barely squeaked past a Senate filibuster despite an overwhelming 60 Senate Democrats, and even then humiliating buyoffs were necessary. Public opposition was so strong that the ultraliberal Democrat controlled Massachusetts, the only state to go for George McGovern in 1972, elected a Republican in a special election for Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, to terminate the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. That required final passage of the law improperly in violation of Congressional rules as a reconciliation measure, which is only to be used to clean up the budget and so cannot be filibustered.

And given that Obama is so certain you can’t remember what happened just two years ago, he is more than certain that you have never heard of the ancient history of Marbury v. Madison, where the 14-year old Supreme Court in 1803 took the then unprecedented step of overturning a provision of law adopted by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress, in the Judiciary Act of 1789. That case was where the Supreme Court first recognized its power of judicial review, under which it is empowered to strike down laws found unconstitutional. As the Wall Street Journal observed on Tuesday:

“In the 209 years since, the Supreme Court has invalidated part or all of countless laws on grounds that they violated the Constitution. All of these laws were passed by a ‘democratically elected’ legislature of some kind, either Congress or in one of the states. And no doubt many of them were passed by ‘strong’ majorities….probably stronger majorities than passed the Affordable Care Act.”

As a former constitutional law professor and President of the Harvard Law Review, Obama no doubt knows all about Marbury v. Madison and judicial review. But he figures he can safely assume a majority of you know nothing about it, and his party controlled media will not tell you anything concerning it at this inopportune moment. Hence, another classic example of what I have called Calculated Deception.

President Obama further assailed any Supreme Court decision ruling his Obamacare health care takeover unconstitutional as “judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” Alexander Hamilton disagreed over 200 years ago in Federalist 78, writing, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. . . .”

Or, as the Wall Street Journal explained on Monday:

“Judicial activism is not something that happens every time the Supreme Court overturns a statute. The Justices owe deference to Congress and the executive, but only to the extent that the political branches stay within the boundaries of the Constitution. Improper activism is when the Court itself strays beyond the founding document to find new rights or enhance its own authority without proper constitutional grounding.”

The Journal added, “Far from seeking an activist ruling, the Obamacare plaintiffs aren’t asking the Court to overturn even a single commerce clause precedent.”

In my role as General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union, I filed 3 amicus curiae briefs with the Supreme Court in the Obamacare litigation. I also filed amicus briefs in the lower federal courts in the cases in Virginia and Florida.

Read the full article here.

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“If I wanted America to fail”

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Expert Warns: 100% Certainty of Total Catastrophic Failure of the Entire Power Infrastructure Within 3 Years [Video]

By Mac Slavo | April 20, 2012 | SHTF Plan

As smart grid metering systems expand across the developed world, many are starting to ask whether the threats posed by the new devices, which officials promise will save energy and reduce end user utility costs, outweigh their benefits. In addition to documented health concerns resulting from radiation emissions and no cost savings being apparent, opponents of the technology argue that smart meters are violative of basic privacy rights and give the government yet another digital node of unfettered access to monitor and control personal electricity consumption.

Now, an alarming new documentary suggests that security problems with the inter-connected and seemingly convenient smart grid may be so serious that they could lead to a catastrophic failure of our nation’s entire power infrastructure.

In an interview for the upcoming documentary titled Take Back Your Power, Cyber defense expert David Chalk warns that our nation is in crisis. Not only are our smart power grids susceptible to hacking, but they may very well already be infected with Trojan viruses and back doors that will ultimately lead to disastrous consequences:

(Video interview follows excerpts)

The front door is open, and there is no lock to be had.

There is not a power meter or device on the grid that is protected from hacking, if not already infected with some sort of Trojan horse than can cause it to be shut down, damaged or completely annihilated.

We can’t take a massive outage all at once.

When we say ‘it goes down,’ we’re talking about generators burning out. We’re talking about coal plants being damaged. We’re talking about destruction of equipment. This isn’t just a matter of electrons going around and shutting off the moving data.

Physical equipment can be damaged… watch some of the videos of cyber attacks on generators and other devices. You’ll see they’re actually damaged. Multi million dollar machines are hacked into.

We look at corporations. We look at the very companies like Symantec that are there to protect us having been hacked, and their code is in the public domain.

…

Bring forward a technology and I will show you that it’s penetrable. I’ll do it on national TV, I’ll do it anywhere… I can guarantee you 100% that there is nothing out there today – nothing – that can’t be penetrated.

We need safety and security, and today that does not exist in the smart grid.

—

Via Business Wire

“Unless we wake up and realize what we’re doing, there is 100% certainty of total catastrophic failure of the entire power infrastructure within 3 years,” said Chalk.

“This could actually be worse than a nuclear war, because it would happen everywhere. How governments and utilities are blindly merging the power grid with the Internet, and effectively without any protection, is insanity at its finest.”

Preview Take Back Your Power:

As Mr. Chalk points out, even the top security firms in the country have been hacked, and the head of US Cyber Security confirms that military systems are under constant attack and have been broken by hackers who have gained access to sensitive military and space agency systems (including active Jet Propulsion Labs spacecraft). Our entire drone fleet, yet another node in the ever expanding control grid, was recently compromised by a virus that was able to log access commands and passwords for high security military systems. The vulnerabilities of these systems became starkly clear when Iran’s military broke global positioning encryption and took control of a U.S. military drone over their airspace.

This is no longer about a single computer going down or file directories being accessed. Cyber conflict is moving into an entirely new realm, where rogue hackers or state-sponsored cyber operations are capable of targeting physical grid infrastructure like power, water,  and oil refineries, commerce and transportation systems. According to one expert, such an attack has the potential bring down life as we know it in America in a matter of just 900 seconds.

Some would argue that we need more governance over the grid system, or stricter penalties for those who compromise it, or further yet, more monitoring and tracking so attacks can be prevented.

The other option, however, is that we take individual Americans off the traditional grid altogether by empowering them through tax credits and de-regulation, so that every one of us can have their own personal smart grid in their home, independent of intervention from government or traditional energy industry players.

Only this limited government, personal responsibility solution is capable of providing a truly impenetrable level of power grid safety and security for each and every person in the United States.

However, like all things government, the narrative seems to be to first create the problem, then move to fix it by more centralization, control and dependence. It’s a trend we see not just in our energy sector, but every aspect of our lives.

Hat tip Satori

Author: Mac Slavo
Views: 13,973 people have read this article (new feature)
Date: April 20th, 2012
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to http://www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.

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Guess Who Rejects America’s Founding Ideas?

By Alan Keyes | April 20, 2012 | WND

Exclusive: Alan Keyes charges GOP with pushing despotism over gov’t constraints

During the GOP primary season, people vying to be the Republican nominee for this or that office in most parts of the county will routinely give pro-forma respect to the republican ideas of America’s founders and posture as champions of the Constitution framed in light of those ideas. Especially when attacking their Democratic opponents, most will pose as champions of liberty, free enterprise and limited government. Such posturing makes sense as a matter of purely selfish political calculation since the overwhelming majority of the GOP’s voter base consists of pro-American patriots (as evidenced by the conservative tone of the GOP platform).

Yet despite the rhetoric they cynically deploy to manipulate their party’s pro-American constituency, these days most GOP politicians are pressured into acting on an understanding of politics that fundamentally rejects the republican concepts of the founders. As I have elsewhere discussed, America’s founders acted on the assumption that justice is the end or aim of human society and government.

“It may accurately be said that the people most responsible for the American founding were obsessed with justice. They saw it as the overriding purpose of political life, to which the freeways of passion would ultimately be forced to submit. But if, by deliberation, people recognize and submit to its requirements, their freedom of choice becomes the basis for government, rather than forced submission. The extent and degree of their self-determination with respect to the requirements of justice establishes the extent of individual freedom in their society. In this respect, the more good individuals are willing to do of their own volition, the less the force of government will be called upon to do for them. Conversely, the less justice they reflect in their individual choices, the more the force of government will be called upon to dictate and impose upon their actions. Freedom depends on individual responsibility. ”

As stated in the Declaration of Independence, the republican ideas of America’s founders start from the premise that human beings are creatures of God, naturally governed by laws that reflect the will of their Creator. They are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, which are the routines of natural conscience (i.e., knowledge inherent in the way they are made; the special information by which the activities that correspond to their particular way of being are revealed; the program or choreography of the movements by which God intends to dance His way through their existence) by which reason promulgates those laws to all humanity. As they are translated into action, the routines of natural conscience constitute the exercise of natural liberty in which each and every human being peacefully does and/or enjoys all that the Creator’s law for their nature makes it necessary and appropriate for them to do or to enjoy.

Read the full article here.

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Presidential Power Explained

By Bob Greenslade | Tenth Amendment Center

Let’s cut to the quick. I am sick and tired of hearing people get excited over the Republican presidential debates that seem to take place every other day. For the most part, they are a pathetic joke because they only perpetuate the usurpation of power. The general election debates in 2012 will be more of the same.

Under our system of government, the powers of the federal government and the president are defined and limited by the Constitution. You would never know that listening to the questions and analysis by media pundits. What’s next? Asking the candidates if they can use the powers of the federal government to part the Red Sea or resurrect the dead?

The group discussions that follow are equally troubling because they focus on perceptions and misconceptions concerning the powers and duties of the president. Hasn’t any one of these people taken a moment to review the Constitution before participating in a focus group or have they been so dumbed down by the education system that they are incapable locating the clauses in the Constitution?

Since presidential debates are an ongoing series of job interviews, how can the candidates apply for the office of president of these United States unless they know the 13 powers and duties of the president? If I were running the debates, each candidate would be given a piece of paper at the first debate and asked to write down the constitutional powers and duties of the president. The results would be announced before the first question was asked. Not only would it expose any imposters and tie ignorance to their tail, but it would educate the audience and frame the debate. It would also shine the light of usurpation on the sitting president for his transgressions.

That being said, the 12 original powers and duties of the president are:

Read the full article here.

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Defeating Obama’s Socialist Propaganda

By Mark Alexander | February 2, 2012 | The Patriot Post

The Fallacy of the Left’s ‘Fairness’ Doctrine

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.” –John Adams, 1787

Barack Hussein Obama centered his recent State of Disunion campaign speech on the worn socialist refrain of “fairness.”

“We can go in two directions,” Obama said. “One is towards less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for … building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.”

His subsequent 2012 stump speeches include a variation of these words at his most recent whistle stop in Michigan: “I want this to be a big, bold, generous country where everybody gets a fair shot, everybody is doing their fair share, everybody is playing by the same set of rules.”

Let’s briefly review our nation’s history in regard to Liberty, taxation and “fairness.”

The first American Revolution was galvanized by a Tea Party protest against a small three pence tax surcharge on imported tea.

Our Founders were uniformly concerned about government power to lay and collect taxes and, accordingly, enumerated specific limitations on taxing and spending.

James Madison addressed the issue of unlimited spending, and his words are applicable today: “It has been [said], that the power ‘to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States,’ amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defence or general welfare.” Rejecting that “misconstruction” of our Constitution, Madison went on to write, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one.”

To ensure that federal taxation would be limited to these constraints, Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of our Constitution (the “Taxing and Spending Clause”), as duly ratified in 1789, defined the “Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” but Section 8 required that such, “Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” This, in effect, limited the power of Congress to impose direct taxes on individuals, as further outlined in Section 9: “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”

That Constitutional limitation survived until 1861, when the first income tax was imposed to defray costs of the War Between the States. That three-percent tax on incomes over $800 was sold as an emergency war measure. In 1894, congressional Democrats tested the Constitution, passing a peacetime tax of two percent on income above $4,000. A year later, that tariff was overturned by the Supreme Court as not complying with the limitations set forth in Article 1.

However, the greatest historical injury to economic Liberty was dealt in the presidential campaign of 1912, when the father of Democratic Socialism, Woodrow Wilson, was elected on his mastery of class warfare rhetoric, as outlined in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in the mid-19th century. He used Marx’s populist redistribution theme, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” to gain passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, which stated, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

Read the full Article here.

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International Democrat Union: Why the Republican Establishment Behaves as it Does

By Tom DeWeese | October 15, 2005 | Gun Owners of America

Meet The International Democrat Union

Not many Americans, particularly conservative Republicans, have heard of the International Democrat Union (IDU), but most would be very surprised to learn the names of its membership and its true goals.

Formed in 1983, the IDU says it’s a “working association of over 80 Conservative, Christian Democrat and like minded political parties of centre and centre right.” Some of the political party members of the IDU include the German Christian Social Union; British Conservative Party; Norway Conservative Party — and the U.S. Republican Party.

In the IDU’s 2005 Declaration, issued after a recent meeting in Washington, D.C., it stated:

Our common goal is of free, just and compassionate societies. We appreciate the value of tradition and inherited wisdom. We value freely elected governments, the market-based economy and liberty for our citizens. We will protect our people from those who preach hate and plan to destroy our way of life. Free enterprise, free trade and private property are the corner stones of free ideas and creativity as well as material well-being. We believe in justice, with an independent judiciary. We believe in democracy, in limited government and a strong civic society.

Such a statement gives one the impression that the IDU is on a mission to spread the ideals of the American Revolution around the globe. Here, at last might be an international organization that brings the good news of our own Declaration of Independence to the far corners of the oppressed world. No other document on earth more strongly declares the principles of liberty that made the United States the guiding light of the world. With the Republican Party as an active member, it would certainly be expected that American documents and principles would be the basis of policy for an international organization that declares it promotes “free enterprise, free trade and private property.”

But a careful look at the IDU’s founding Declaration of Principles reveals a very different message. The second Paragraph of the IDU Declaration states: “Being committed to advancing the social and political values on which democratic societies are founded, including the basic personal freedoms and human rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights….” That, of course, is the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights that the IDU document is promoting.

There are two conflicting philosophies of governing in the world. One, the American view, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, states that all people have rights they are born with and that government’s only job is to protect those rights at all costs. The Declaration says that these rights are forever and unquestioned. It is the foundation for human freedom. The other says that government decides the rights we should have, professing that all such rights give way to an undefined, common good whenever the situation is warranted. That means that all so called rights are subject to the whim of whatever gang is currently in power at the time, making the definitions of what constitutes the “common good.”

As an example of how this second philosophy works in practice, the Constitution of the Soviet Union said that Soviet citizens had most of the same rights as Americans, except it also said individual rights were secondary to the common good. In the case of the Soviet Union, the common good was defined as creating a worldwide communist utopia.

The UN’s Declaration of Human Rights takes this second approach, outlining specific rights it says we should all have. It says nothing of unalienable rights and refers to the “rights under the law.” Who or what is the law, according to the Declaration? It says “the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.” Now, at first look, that sounds like America. Democracy. People voting — the end of dictatorship. But such a concept ignores the very root of American freedom — that our rights are guaranteed, no matter what the majority thinks.

Read the full article here.

Tom DeWeese is the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and president of the American Policy Center, an activist, grassroots think tank headquartered in Warrenton, VA.

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Alarms Over Obama Coup Against Constitution Surging

By Bob Unruh | April 13, 2012 | WND

‘2nd term free of electoral restraints may be a frightening prospect’

There always have been those few who have launched diatribes over the dictatorial actions of any given U.S. presidential administration, over civil rights, foreign affairs, the economy, the draft or a dozen other topics – even though the Constitution was written specifically to prevent the collection of too much power by one branch of government.

Now, again, there are words like “egocentric megalomaniac” being ascribed to the White House, and warnings about detention camps and government surveillance of its citizens.

But where previous generations of warnings emanated from lone wolves with their fax machines in dusty spare rooms, the current alarms are being issued by the likes of Investors Business Daily, First Amendment authority Nat Hentoff, New York Times best-selling author Robert Ringer and their equals.

“A second term free of electoral restraints [for Obama] may be a frightening prospect,” IBD wrote in a commentary in the last week. “This is, after all, a president who has said he can’t wait for Congress to act and will govern by executive order and regulations if necessary. He has questioned the Supreme Court’s ‘unprecedented’ review of Obamacare.”

The publication pointed out that the Obama administration already is in contempt of court – in a court dispute over its ban on oil drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

When U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman ruled that the Obama Interior Department unconstitutionally imposed an offshore drilling moratorium, the agency “simply established a second ban that was virtually identical.”

“Judge Feldman was not amused. ‘Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,’ Feldman said in his ruling. ‘Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second moratorium …. provides this court with clear and convincing evidence of its contempt,’” the editorial said.

The issue recently was brought into the headlines by comments from Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News analyst who said, “I think the president is dangerously close to totalitarianism. A few months ago he was saying the Congress doesn’t count. The Congress doesn’t mean anything. I am going to rule by decree and by administrative regulation. Now he’s basically saying the Supreme Court doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter what they think. They can’t review our legislation.

“That would leave just him as the only branch of government standing,” Napolitano said.

His comments came after statements from Obama that the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn’t take the “unprecedented” action of actually overturning the Obamacare law, even though that is exactly what courts do when justices determine the legislation is unconstitutional.

“I think he [Obama] has some problems with understanding the Constitution, or accepting limitations on his power,” said Napolitano. “Look, they’re equal branches of government, but with respect to what the law means and what the Constitution means, the court is superior to the president.”

His comments came recently on Neil Cavuto’s program, when the discussion turned to the U.S. Supreme Court’s discussion of the unconstitutionality of Obamacare and Obama’s verbal attack on the court shortly after the oral arguments.

Here are Napolitano’s comments:

Read the full article here.

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What if the Government Rejects the Constitution?

By Andrew Napolitano | April 11, 2012 | WND

 Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and anchor of “FreedomWatch” on Fox Business Network. His most recent book is “It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong.”To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

Andrew Napolitano asks rhetorical questions about all 3 branches dishonoring charter

What if the government never took the Constitution seriously? What if the same generation – in some cases the same human beings – that wrote in the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech,” also enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize the government? What if the feds don’t regard the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land?

What if the government regards the Constitution as merely a guideline to be referred to from time to time, or a myth to be foisted upon the voters, but not as a historic delegation of power that lawfully limits the federal government? What if Congress knows that most of what it regulates puts it outside the confines of the Constitution, but it does whatever it can get away with? What if the feds don’t think that the Constitution was written to keep them off the people’s backs?

What if there’s no substantial difference between the two major political parties? What if the same political mentality that gave us the Patriot Act, with its federal agent-written search warrants that permit unconstitutional spying on us, also gave us Obamacare, with its mandate to buy health insurance, even if we don’t want or need it? What if both political parties love power more than freedom? What if both parties have used the Commerce Clause in the Constitution to stretch the power of the federal government far beyond its constitutionally ordained boundaries and well beyond the plain meaning of words?

What if both parties love war because the public is more docile during war and permits higher taxes and more federal theft of freedom from individuals and power from the states? What if none of these recent wars has made us freer or safer, but just poorer?

What if Congress bribed the states with cash in return for their enacting legislation Congress likes, but cannot lawfully enact? What if Congress went to all states in the union and offered them cash to repave their interstate highways, if the states only lowered their speed limits? What if the states took that deal? What if the Supreme Court approved this bribery and then Congress did it again and again? What if this bribery were a way for Congress to get around the few constitutional limitations that Congress acknowledges?

Read the full article here.

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OLSEN: Dangers of academia’s ‘indoctrination mills’

By Henry Olsen | April 6, 2012| The Washington Times

Young Americans emerge from college favoring socialism over free markets

Illustration: Liberal grad by Greg Groesch for The Washington Times

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum caused a bit of a stir last month when he labeled college campuses “indoctrination mills” that enforce a strict adherence to “politically correct left doctrine.” For conservatives, Mr. Santorum might as well have called the sky blue. But from the way the media and liberal pundits pounced on his remarks, you’d think he had said something profoundly indecent.

For decades, conservatives have documented and criticized how liberal ideology runs rampant throughout higher education. Hence William F. Buckley’s famous quip from the 1960s: “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” Fifty years later, few conservatives would disagree.

But could the problem be getting worse? The Pew Research Center released a study in December showing that more Americans age 18 to 29 have a favorable view of socialism over capitalism. In fact, this demographic has a net positive view of socialism (49 percent positive to 43 percent negative) and net negative view of capitalism (46 percent positive and 47 percent negative). When Pew released an earlier version of the same study two years ago, this demographic’s views on socialism were exactly the opposite (43 percent positive and 49 percent negative).

Clearly, more than one’s college education goes into one’s opinions on economic systems. But just as clearly, few would deny that a college graduate’s opinions are shaped during his or her four years at college – that’s why they’re called the formative years. So when we engage in a spirited debate about the liberal dominance of college, let’s also remember that there are real-world consequences to this imbalance within academia.

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State Nullification

By Tom Woods | TomWoods.com

What Is It?

State nullification is the idea that the states can and must refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal laws.

Says Who?

Says Thomas Jefferson, among other distinguished Americans. His draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 first introduced the word “nullification” into American political life, and follow-up resolutions in 1799 employed Jefferson’s formulation that “nullification…is the rightful remedy” when the federal government reaches beyond its constitutional powers. In the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, James Madison said the states were “duty bound to resist” when the federal government violated the Constitution.

But Jefferson didn’t invent the idea. Federalist supporters of the Constitution at the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788 assured Virginians that they would be “exonerated” should the federal government attempt to impose “any supplementary condition” upon them – in other words, if it tried to exercise a power over and above the ones the states had delegated to it. Patrick Henry and later Jefferson himself elaborated on these safeguards that Virginians had been assured of at their ratifying convention.

What’s the Argument for It?

Here’s an extremely basic summary:

1) The states preceded the Union.  The Declaration of Independence speaks of “free and independent states” that “have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.” The British acknowledged the independence not of a single blob, but of 13 states, which they proceeded to list one by one. Article II of the Articles of Confederation says the states “retain their sovereignty, freedom, and independence”; they must have enjoyed that sovereignty in the past in order for them to “retain” it in 1781 when the Articles were officially adopted.  The ratification of the Constitution was accomplished not by a single, national vote, but by the individual ratifications of the various states, each assembled in convention.

2) In the American system no government is sovereign.  The peoples of the states are the sovereigns.  It is they who apportion powers between themselves, their state governments, and the federal government.  In doing so they are not impairing their sovereignty in any way. To the contrary, they are exercising it.

3) Since the peoples of the states are the sovereigns, then when the federal government exercises a power of dubious constitutionality on a matter of great importance, it is they themselves who are the proper disputants, as they review whether their agent was intended to hold such a power.  No other arrangement makes sense.  No one asks his agent whether the agent has or should have such-and-such power.  In other words, the very nature of sovereignty, and of the American system itself, is such that the sovereigns must retain the power to restrain the agent they themselves created.  James Madison explains this clearly in the famous Virginia Report of 1800.

Why Do We Need It?

As Jefferson warned, if the federal government is allowed to hold a monopoly on determining the extent of its own powers, we have no right to be surprised when it keeps discovering new ones. If the federal government has the exclusive right to judge the extent of its own powers, it will continue to grow – regardless of elections, the separation of powers, and other much-touted limits on government power. In his Report of 1800, Madison reminded Virginians and Americans at large that the judicial branch was not infallible, and that some remedy must be found for those cases in which all three branches of the federal government exceed their constitutional limits.

Read the full article here.

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Founding Fathers Were ‘Wrong And Immoral’

By Tom Tillison | April 3, 2012 | Florida Political Press

In a brief respite from the joys of the circular firing squad fondly known as conservative politics, today’s column focuses on the left… the far left… the ‘progressive left‘, a.k.a. the Democratic Party.

The Florida Progressive Coalition Blog put out a piece yesterday titled The Constitution Is NOT the Bible. Typically, I avoid the drivel coming from the far left for selfish reasons, namely to keep my head from exploding, however, this piece so accurately captures the state of mind of the far left that it makes an excellent case study.

Before I get into the content, a little background on the FPC Blog.  It’s the product of Kenneth Quinnell, who describes it as “a network of concerned citizens, bloggers and activists that believe in a commitment to equality, fairness, justice, effective and efficient government, protecting our natural resources and moving our state and country forward.”

Quinnell is a professor at Tallahassee Community College who teaches American history and political science – surprise, surprise.  According to ‘Rate My Professor’, he’s “strict”, “very liberal”, “bitter” and “extremely anal about grammar” – he’ll have a field day with this column should he stumble across it.

He identifies himself as a “political activist” and has been an active blogger here in Florida for some time.  He has written for Daily Kos, Crooks & Liars and a few other left wing outlets, occasionally under the moniker T Rex.  He also advocates on behalf of SEIU and other union organizations.

He is also listed as a ‘Senior Advisor’ for Progress Florida, a nonprofit organization that promotes progressive values such as social justice, health care reform, environmental protection, economic fairness and strengthening public education.

In short, fellow tea partiers, this individual is the epitome of what we have been up against for the past three years.

If you click on the ‘About’ tab on the Florida Progressive Coalition Blog web page, you will find the word ‘progressive’ used 6 times in a short description listed – and a cheap shot at Republicans.  Typical of the left, there seems to be an intentional avoidance of defining what ‘progressive‘ means.  Look the word up in the dictionary and here’s what you’ll find;

pro·gres·sive

[pruh-gres-iv] – adjective

1. favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing tomaintain things as they are, especially in political matters: a progressive mayor.

2. making progress toward better conditions; employing or advocating more enlightened or liberal ideas, new or experimental methods, etc.: a progressive community.

Now I’m sure that’s exactly what our progressive friends want you to think when you hear the term, but in reality, ‘progressive‘ stands for social justice, reparations, wealth redistribution and  cradle to grave entitlement, the belief that the state is far more capable of caring for your needs than you are as an individual.

Clearly, there’s little compatibility with Reagan’s view that “if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”

Read the full article here.

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Law School Humbug

Heather Mac Donald | Autumn 1995 | City Journal

Law schools across the country have taken on a new function: cleansing students’ souls. The taint to be extirpated, of course, is racism and sexism, and in many classes the sometimes dramatic measures needed to root out such blights have driven away the more mundane task of teaching legal analysis. “I was going home crying every day,” says Linda P., a law student at New York University. The source of her unhappiness was her “Race and Legal Scholarship” course. “No matter what I said, the response was: you don’t know because you’re white. Some students wouldn’t speak to me after class. It scared me, because I thought I was this big liberal, and I was treated like the devil.”

Linda’s professor, Paulette Caldwell, practices the hottest form of legal scholarship today: critical race theory. While therapeutic courses such as Caldwell’s remain a small portion of the curriculum at most law schools, the theory behind them has nevertheless shaken up the legal academy. Only ” feminist jurisprudence” rivals critical race theory in influence and sheer sex appeal; both fashions are cut from the same cloth.

The impact of critical race theory and feminist jurisprudence doesn’t stop at the ivy-clad walls of the legal academy. Feminist jurisprudence has revolutionized the law of sex discrimination and rape. Courts across the country, persuaded that legal practice is deeply racist and sexist, are conducting costly studies of their own alleged biases. Both movements are trying to limit First Amendment guarantees in order to protect female and minority sensibilities; their first success, beyond campus speech codes, has been in the workplace. These repercussions are all the more remarkable when you consider that critical race theory and feminist jurisprudence are fundamentally antithetical to the very notion of law.

Back in the law school classroom, Linda P. is not the only student crying these days. Law professors in many schools boast that their courses have reduced students to tears, sent them fleeing to the dean, and created crosscurrents of hostility in the classroom—proof that the professors are ” touching a nerve.” Frances Lee Ashley, a University of Tennessee law professor, faced numerous charges from students that her “Discrimination and the Law” class was simply a forum for white-bashing, that she favored black students, and that the class exacerbated racial tensions. Ashley was unrepentant. “If teachers intend to open this scary space,” she writes in the California Law Review, “they need to be ready to make it reasonably safe and bearable for all members of the enterprise. . . . As a teacher in a predominantly white but desegregating institution . . . you [cannot] consistently do the right thing if by that you mean behavior that allows the average white student to avoid any feeling of being personally accused or defensive when matters of race are discussed.”

Charles Jones, a professor at Rutgers-Newark Law School, asks students in his critical race theory seminar to write an essay about race relations, challenging, among other things, “the assumption that blacks, Jews, and Latinos are allies.” When a black student wrote about her indelible dislike of white people, Jones knew he had struck gold. He asked the student to read her essay aloud in class; an Italian-American woman burst into tears and fled the room. Fortunately, critical race teachers are prepared for such disruptions. “Getting in touch with your feelings is difficult,” explains Jones. “We let [the Italian-American woman] experience out her grief. She sat out a class or two, and when she came back, she wouldn’t talk.” It was a useful lesson, Jones concludes: “She was naive to think there’s not a lot of cross-racial hatred.” (However open-minded critical race teachers may be about “cross-racial hatred,” it is difficult to imagine this story coming out as it did had a white student written of his dislike for blacks.)

The core claim of both critical race theory and feminist jurisprudence is that law is merely a mask for white male power relations. Law, in other words, is indistinguishable from politics; the purported objectivity and neutrality of legal reasoning is a sham.

However crude the multicultural trappings of these theories, their fundamental argument has a respectable pedigree. For over a century, American legal scholars have challenged the traditional distinction between legislative and judicial action. According to the traditional view, legislators make the law; judges merely apply it. Judicial decisions, this tradition holds, are determined by preexisting legal rules, not by the judge’s own whims.

The stakes riding on the accuracy of this conception are enormous. For if rules do not in fact determine the outcome of cases, if judges inevitably enjoy such enormous interpretive discretion that they are virtually creating law as they go along, then the legitimacy not just of the judiciary but of governmental power itself is thrown into doubt.

The first American thinker to question the conventional understanding of law was also America’s greatest legal scholar: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose ideas foreshadowed virtually all of twentieth-century American jurisprudence. Holmes was reacting against the late-nineteenth-century view of law as a fixed system of unchanging, quasi-Platonic principles.

Bunk! replied Holmes; “law is no brooding omnipresence in the sky.” To equate it with a set of timeless legal principles ignores the fact that judges have always transformed the law in accord with changing opinions and social conditions. In fact, argued Holmes, there are no legal principles in any meaningful sense. Law is simply a prediction of “where the axe of the state will fall.”

By the twenties and thirties, Holmes’s skepticism about legal rules had expanded into one of the most powerful movements in American legal scholarship. The “Legal Realists” developed detailed exposés of the malleability of legal reasoning in every kind of judicial decision making. Since precedent can always be found on either side of a case, they claimed, judicial decision making and even fact-finding are often determined by unconscious, irrational factors or by the judge’s political and economic beliefs. Legal rules, in other words, don’t determine outcomes; judges do.

Men of letters as well as the law, the Legal Realists produced a witty and urbane corpus of work—unlike that of the current crop of legal critics. The Realists argued that law should rest on a rational basis, such as the emerging discipline of social science, not on abstractions. Accordingly, they urged judges to sweep away archaic common-law rules that no longer made sense.  Their criticisms were unimpeachable—many of the traditional distinctions determining when someone was liable for an injury, for example, were wholly artificial. But the skeptical judicial housecleaner often turns into the sorcerer’s apprentice. “Gradually, every limitation [on legal liability] begins to seem arbitrary,” warns Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Once a precedent has been established for ignoring existing case law, decisions that follow the law require justification just as much as decisions that depart from it, says Johnson.

Legal Realism lost much of its glamour after World War II. But in the 1970s, leftist law professors dusted off the Realists’ critique and dressed it up in German and French literary and critical theories. Their favorite phrase to describe their work—”trashing”—reflects their nostalgia for the anti- establishment 1960s. The result of their efforts was Critical Legal Studies (CLS), a diverse, sometimes impenetrable mix of Marxist analysis, postmodern literary criticism, and American legal skepticism. CLS dominated the academic left for well over a decade, gaining widespread media attention in the 1980s for tearing up Harvard Law School. (Concurrently, “Law and Economics”—equally iconoclastic—moved in from the right, creating, together with CLS, a pincer offensive on traditional jurisprudence.)

Like many of the Realists, the Crits (as CLS practitioners called themselves) argued that law is just politics wearing robes. But the Crits’ real gripe was not with law but with liberal society. They berated liberalism’s emphasis on individual freedom and limited state power. Many called for a world without distinct public and private spheres, in which the individual would not be “alienated” from the collectivity. The Crits were particularly scornful of “illegitimate hierarchies,” a phrase that included every possible type of ranking or distinction among individuals. Harvard’s Duncan Kennedy, the original bad boy of CLS, infamously called for breaking down law school hierarchies by rotating all law school jobs from dean to janitor on a regular basis and paying all employees the same salary.

According to the Crits, the real purpose of law is to make an oppressive capitalist system appear inevitable. Law does this by duping people into believing that the rules that govern the distribution of property, the performance of obligations, and the relation between the state and civil society are “natural” and necessary. We forget, say the Crits, that law is man-made and could as easily be constructed quite differently—property need not be private, for example; or an employer could have no right to control his employees’ behavior; or responsibility for deviant behavior could be assigned not to the individual but to social forces.

Unlike the Realists, the Crits seldom ventured into the practical world of law reform, preferring instead to generate anti-bourgeois theory in academic comfort. To the extent they did make practical proposals, these consisted of familiar Old Left prescriptions: public ownership of banks and insurance companies, rent control, union control of business, and vigorous housing-code enforcement.

Read the full article here.

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The Ryan Test: Demagoguery Versus Ideas

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Jonathan S. Tobin | August 11, 2012 | Commentary Magazine As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted […]

Smoking Obama’s Crack and Yearning for the Mud

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Vanderleun | August 10, 2012 | American Digest [From 2008. Only the names have been changed because the target has changed.] This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it’s a fall, not […]