A Nation of Paper, Not of Men

By Andrew C. McCarthy | June 18, 2012 | PJ Media

In continuing the dramatic shift from American constitutional democracy to rule by executive fiat that has marked his tenure, President Barack Obama now claims that the illegal aliens, to whom he purports to grant what effectively is amnesty, are “Americans … in every single way but one — on paper.” That is false. They are not Americans under the only thing that matters, the thing the Obama administration has chanted like a mantra — while riding roughshod over  – since its very first day in power: the rule of law.

The Constitution and congressional statutes are written on parchment. That is the only relevance of “paper” in this equation — as the “hard copy” of our social contract and of the laws enacted pursuant to it. Under the Constitution, Congress, not the president, is endowed with such a power: “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Congress exercises this power by passing laws. Under the Constitution, which Obama took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend, and under the laws it is his duty to execute faithfully, illegal aliens — no matter how sympathetic their plight, no matter how blameless they may be for the illegality of their status — are not citizens of the United States. They are not Americans. Period. It is not “paper” that separates them from our body politic, it is the law, of which Obama is supposed to be servant, not master — as I argued in this September 2011 essay for The New Criterion: “The Ruler of Law — On ‘Justice’ in the Age of Obama.”

28 Signs That U.S. Public Schools Are Rapidly Being Turned Into Indoctrination Centers And Prison Camps

Staff Report | December 30, 2011 | End of the America Dream

It has been said that children are our future, and right now the vast majority of our children are being “educated” in public schools that are rapidly being turned into indoctrination centers and prison camps.  Our children desperately need to focus on the basics such as reading, writing and math, but instead a whole host of politicians, “education officials” and teachers are constantly injecting as much propaganda as they possibly can into classroom instruction.  Instead of learning how to think, our children are continually being told what to think.  Not only that, our children are also being trained how to live as subservient slaves in a Big Brother police state.  Today, nearly everything that children do in public schools is watched, monitored, recorded and tracked.  Independent thought and free expression are greatly discouraged and are often cracked down upon harshly.  If students get “out of line”, instead of being sent to see the principal they are often handcuffed, arrested and taken to the police station.  In addition, law enforcement authorities are using weapons such as pepper spray and tasers against young students in our public schools more than ever before.  Children in U.S. public schools are not learning how to live as strong individuals in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”.  Rather, they are being trained how to serve a Big Brother police state where control freaks run their entire lives.  If we continue to allow all of the liberty and freedom to be systematically drained out of our school children, then there is not going to be much hope for the future of this nation.

The following are 28 signs that U.S public schools are being turned into indoctrination centers and prison camps….

#1 All 50 U.S. states are now constructing federally-mandated databases that will track the behavior and performance of all public school students in America throughout their entire school careers.  According to the New York Post, the Obama administration wants to use the information that is gathered for a wide array of purposes….

The administration wants this data to include much more than name, address and test scores. According to the National Data Collection Model, the government should collect information on health-care history, family income and family voting status. In its view, public schools offer a golden opportunity to mine reams of data from a captive audience.

#2 All over America, school children are being immersed in the radical green agenda.  In fact, in many areas of the country children are actively trained to watch how their parents behave and to correct them when they are being “environmentally unfriendly”.  The following is from a recent New York Times article about this phenomenon….

“I have very, very environmentally conscious children — more so than me, I’m embarrassed to say,” said Ms. Ross, a social worker in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. “They’re on my case about getting a hybrid car. They want me to replace all the light bulbs in the house with energy-saving bulbs.”

Ms. Ross’s children are part of what experts say is a growing army of “eco-kids” — steeped in environmentalism at school, in houses of worship, through scouting and even via popular culture — who try to hold their parents accountable at home. Amid their pride in their children’s zeal for all things green, the grown-ups sometimes end up feeling like scofflaws under the watchful eye of the pint-size eco-police, whose demands grow ever greater, and more expensive.

Later on in that same article, a district superintendent is quoted as saying that they try to inject the green agenda wherever they can into the curriculum….

“We’re trying to integrate it into anything where it naturally fits,” said Jackie Taylor, the district’s superintendent. “It might be in a math lesson. How much water are you really using? How can you tell? Teachers look for avenues in almost everything they teach.”

#3 One 13-year-old student down in New Mexico was recently handcuffed and forcibly removed from a classroom just because he burped in class.  In all, over 200 students in Bernalillo County “have been handcuffed and arrested in the last three years for non-violent misdemeanors”.

#4 All over America, students are being taught that the First Amendment does not apply in public schools.  Expressions of free speech in school are often cracked down upon very hard.  For example, one group of high school athletes was recently suspended for “Tebowing” in the hallways of their school.

#5 Many public school sex education classes have totally crossed the line.  Instead of just “educating” children about sex, many sex ed courses are now “indoctrinating” children about sex.  One recent example of this was detailed in the New York Times….

IMAGINE you have a 10- or 11-year-old child, just entering a public middle school. How would you feel if, as part of a class ostensibly about the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, he and his classmates were given “risk cards” that graphically named a variety of solitary and mutual sex acts? Or if, in another lesson, he was encouraged to disregard what you told him about sex, and to rely instead on teachers and health clinic staff members?

That prospect would horrify most parents. But such lessons are part of a middle-school curriculum that Dennis M. Walcott, the New York City schools chancellor, has recommended for his system’s newly mandated sex-education classes. There is a parental “opt out,” but it is very limited, covering classes on contraception and birth control.

#6 Sadly, this “sexual indoctrination” appears to be working.  According to one recent study, sexual conduct between teen girls in the United States is now at the highest level ever recorded.

#7 Putting kids in jail has become standard operating procedure in the United States.  Today, nearly one-third of all Americans are arrested by police by the time they reach the age of 23.  At this point, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe, and yet our society just continues to become more unstable.

Read the full article here.

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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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Obama’s Secret Plan to Seize Americans’ Land

By Kevin DeAnna | April 18, 2012 | WND

Revealed! Confidential memos from inside administration

Brian Sussman, author of “Eco-Tyranny: How the Left’s Green Agenda will Dismantle America,” has exposed Barack Obama’s secret plan to seize land from the American people, on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.”

In an interview with Steve Doocy, Sussman said the scheme was “secret no longer” because of his new book, “Eco-Tyranny,” which reveals confidential memos from inside the administration.

Sussman explained to Doocy’s audience that the plan revealed in “Eco-Tyranny” was “concocted by Obama’s Department of the Interior to take over hundreds of thousands of acres of private land, take it off the books for development.”

Doocy observed that federal landholdings are already considerable, with the government owning more than half of some Western states.

Agreed, Sussman said.

“The government owns seven hundred million acres and they want more.”

He added, “This plan must be stopped because it’s antithetical to what America is all about. It’s not about the federal government owning land, it’s about we the people owning land and allowing us to do whatever we would like to do with that land, especially when it comes to natural resources.”

Sussman believes that the Obama administration is deliberately trying to restrict America’s energy production in order to keep the country dependent on foreign foes. He drew laughter from Doocy when he commented, “If we started drilling for oil in our own country the way we should, the Saudis would soil their tunics.”

Sussman also made the point that environmentalists explicitly seek to prevent energy production, even clean nuclear energy, which Doocy referred to as a no brainer.

Finally, Sussman laid out the case that rising population requires not just additional energy but additional water supplies that are not being developed. Sussman asked, “Who is standing in the way of our water resources? The environmentalists and the Department of the Interior.”

“This is a long running plot, quite frankly concocted in the minds as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – use the environment to hammer capitalism,” he said.

Read the  full article here.

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Stand Your Ground, America

By Peter Ferrara |  April 18, 2012 | American Spectator

A sober look at the case against George Zimmerman.

How do you stand your ground if you are lying on your back getting pummeled in the face?

That one question alone shows that Stand Your Ground laws are not at issue in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin controversy. But the tragic death of young Trayvon is only seen by those on the left as a valuable media opportunity to further exploit the millions of gullible Americans to advance the left’s political interests and agenda. Indeed, we have some people in positions of influence, both leading politicians and figures in the major media, who see their interest as exploiting the death to incite race unrest across America.

There is only one solution to this budding insurrection. Enforce the damn law!! That applies most directly in Florida now, where conservatives are in power, and they have to start acting like it.

The Perfect Resolution for Zimmerman

Enforcing the damn law is exactly what is happening now in the Zimmerman case, and it’s the perfect resolution for all concerned.

This case needs to be resolved by a jury, and can only be resolved by a jury, which is the only way to satisfy the public interest in this matter. There are too many people in America today who will not listen to the evidence, and will follow only their own racial prejudice.

But the evidence needs to be laid out in a court of law, and resolved by a jury of Zimmerman’s peers. That is the only way to satisfy the fair minded that justice has been done. I will discuss those who are not fair-minded below.

Despite what I say about the evidence below, this is not too much of a burden for Zimmerman. Even staunch advocates of gun rights and self-defense need to recognize that if someone is shot and killed even in self-defense, the ensuing investigation is not going to be easy for the shooter, in any event. Indeed, it should not be. Moreover, a jury trial gives Zimmerman the opportunity he needs to clear his name.

But based on what the established evidence on the public record indisputably shows, Zimmerman is going to be easily found innocent of the charges. That is more than well proven by eyewitness testimony and the physical evidence, despite what those who think they will benefit politically or socially from race turmoil want to believe.

Zimmerman himself is from a ethnically mixed family. He has a history of positive relations with African-Americans, even voluntarily tutoring black children at his own expense. He also has a distinguished history as a neighborhood watch captain, providing evidence leading to the capture, arrest, and conviction of criminals before.

On the night of the shooting, Zimmerman going to the store himself observed a black youth, 6 foot plus, high school football player walking alone in the rain and looking around, possibly for opportunity, in a gated community that had been robbed many times before. Zimmerman knew the community’s residents, and correctly identified the youth Trayvon Martin as not one of those residents.

Zimmerman properly called 911 to report a suspicious person in the neighborhood. When Zimmerman indicated he was following the youth, the operator told him, “You don’t need to do that.”Zimmerman was not legally obligated to obey that suggestion.There is nothing illegal about following what you think is a suspicious person in your neighborhood. Based on these facts, this is not even a case of racial profiling.

But Zimmerman obeyed the suggestion anyway. The taped conversation with the operator showed he left the trail to go find an address so a cop could come by and pick up the investigation. While Zimmerman was walking back to his car after reporting the address to the 911 operator, as he later told police, Trayvon Martin came up behind Zimmerman and asked Zimmerman if he had a problem with him. Zimmerman whirled to say “No.” Martin replied, “You do now,” and proceeded to punch him in the nose, breaking the nose and knocking him down.

Martin then jumped on top of Zimmerman, grabbing his head and repeatedly slamming it into the ground. Zimmerman is recorded on a 911 call repeatedly screaming “help!”

Zimmerman was licensed with a conceal and carry permit to carry a handgun, which he had with him that night inside his waistbelt. One news report stated that Martin saw the gun and said, “Now you’re dead,” going for the weapon. But Zimmerman got there first, using it to shoot Martin in the chest once, killing him.

These facts are corroborated by the physical evidence as well as eyewitness testimony, medical and police records, and taped recordings, including Zimmerman’s own uncontradicted testimony, which is part of the record. The police report recorded the broken nose and head injuries, which are apparent in a video tape of Zimmerman at the police station thereafter. The police report also records grass and grass stains on the back of Zimmerman’s shirt. The coroner’s report stated that the gunshot was at close range.

Read the full article here.

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Sharpton Should Have Been Shunned Long Ago

By Aaron Goldstein |  April 18, 2012 | American Spectator

We’ll know who to thank if Florida explodes.

Imagine a white preacher from the South.

Let us suppose this white, Southern preacher utters words full of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Mormon and homophobic venom.

Let us suppose that the hateful words uttered by this white, Southern preacher incited violence which resulted in the deaths of innocent people.

Let us further suppose that this white, Southern preacher bore false witness and accused a man of raping a girl and that this man successfully sued the white, Southern preacher for slander only to refuse to recompense his victim.

Today, this white preacher from the South would be a despised figure. He would not be welcome in polite society. He would be regarded as a hatemonger with neither credibility nor legitimacy. He would be persona non grata. He would be shunned.

But it is today and Reverend Al Sharpton has uttered words full of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Mormon and homophobic venom. Sharpton’s words have incited violence that resulting in the deaths of innocent people. Sharpton did slander an Assistant District Attorney for committing rape and was successfully sued but got others to pay that debt. And yet if a preacher is black instead of white and is based in Harlem instead of Hattiesburg, that preacher isn’t shunned but rather showered with praise and power. Consider what Jeff Jacoby wrote about Sharpton in the Boston Globe:

If Sharpton were a white skinhead, he would be a political leper, spurned everywhere but the fringe. But far from being spurned, he is shown much deference. Democrats embrace him. Politicians court him. And journalists report on his comings and goings while politely sidestepping his career as a hatemongering racial hustler.

Now consider that Jacoby wrote these words in January 2003.

Nearly a decade later little has changed and in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, Sharpton’s power might very arguably be at or near its zenith despite the dubious and incendiary nature of his statements regarding the case.

Here is what Sharpton said during a rally in support of Martin in Sanford, Florida on March 22, 2012:

Read the full article here.

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Obama Politicizes Trayvon for Latino Audience

by Tony Lee | April 17, 2013 | Breitbart

In an appearance on the Spanish language station Univision’s “Al Punto” Sunday show, President Obama, with the help of host Enrique Acevedo, appealed to Latino voters by tying the Trayvon Martin case to the “anti-immigrant” sentiment Obama said Hispanics have recently faced.

In his final question to Obama, Acevedo asked, “Finally, Mr. President, why is it that half a century after the civil rights movement and after the American people elected their first African-American president do I have to stand today here in front of you and ask you about racial tensions in the U.S.? And of course, I’m referring to the Trayvon Martin case.”

It is worth noting that Acevedo–on a Spanish language network–made no mention of the fact that Zimmerman identified himself as a “Hispanic,” which would pierce the meme and narrative Acevedo wanted Obama to advance, which Obama obligingly did.

Obama could have noted that Zimmerman was as Hispanic as he is Black and could have said that since the facts of what happened on the night Martin died are still unknown, Americans shouldn’t hastily use the Trayon Martin tragedy as a symbol of “racial tensions in the U.S.,” as Acevedo suggested.

Of course, Obama did not respond this way for politicizing the Martin tragedy works to his political advantage and drives home the misconceived notion that America is a nation of systemic inequalities that needs to be fundamentally transformed.

Here is how Obama responded.

Read the full article here.

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Back to Back: Advice from former victims of Communism & Food shortages and death in Russia [Video]

Back to Back: Dial ‘O’ for Murder & Sheriff Arpaio’s Press Conference – Obama Birth Certificate Forgery

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The Debt Bomb Showdown

By Mark Alexander | February 10, 2011 | The Patriot Post

Future Shock Debt Bill

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.” Thomas Jefferson

There’s currently a lot of talk about deficits and debt among the new House Republican majority; much of it is contentious intraparty debate about whether to raise the “debt ceiling,” and if so, how to leverage that in order to get Democrats to approve more cuts.

This month, the central government accrued a $223 BILLION record deficit. Republicans are trying to scrape together a few more cuts, but Senate Democrats indicate they will only approve $4.7 billion in additional cuts to the whole year’s expenditures, when what is needed is $4.7 billion in additional cuts everyday of the next year.

For the purpose of clarity, let me reiterate a few definitions.

The national budget deficit is the difference between the total spending budget (including interest on debt) authorized by Congress for each year, and total tax receipts. For this fiscal year alone (October 1, 2010, to September 30, 2011), the shortfall is projected to be 1.15trillion dollars.

The national debt is the total of all outstanding U.S. Treasury obligations held by domestic and foreign individuals, institutions and governments, and is currently 14.05 trillion dollars.

The debt ceiling is the self-imposed limit Congress sets for what it can legally borrow to pay for all the government services that it can’t afford. A year ago, Congress increased that limit to 14.29 trillion dollars. But since Congress has authorized spending almost five billion dollars a day more than it takes in, that debt ceiling will be hit sometime between the end of March and mid-May.

Complicating matters further, the then-Democrat-controlled Congress failed to set a new budget for the current year, instead opting for continuing resolutions (CR) that authorize the prior year’s spending levels. They utilized this budget ruse in order to avoid greater accountability (greater losses) in the midterm election last year. The current CR expires on 4 March, and House Republicans are using that expiration date to force Barack Hussein Obama into budget-cutting submission.

Here is how the key Republican players in this crisis — and it is a crisis — have positioned themselves on the issue of deficits and the debt ceiling.

House Speaker John Boehner notes, “We have to work our will in the House. We have to work with our colleagues in the Senate and put something on the president’s desk. If the president is going to ask us to increase the debt limit, then he’s going to have to be willing to cut up the credit cards. … [Default] would be a financial disaster not only for our country, but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs. You can’t create jobs if you default on the federal debt.”

Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA), president of the powerful freshman class of the 112th Congress, adds, “If there is a vote put forward to increase the national debt ceiling and that is all the legislation does, I think it will fail overwhelmingly.”

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) is advancing a budget plan with $32 billion in spending cuts for the current budget year (FY11), well short of the Republican Pledge to America’s “$100 billion in the first year alone.”

But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) explains, “It fulfills the pledge because we said in a year’s time we were going to cut spending by $100 billion. As you know, we are five-twelfths of the way through the fiscal year by the time the expiration occurs. We will be proposing this again in the next fiscal year, and if you look at it on an annualized basis, I assure you it will be over $100 billion.”

It better be!

Read the full article here.

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Democratic Socialism

By Mark Alexander | March 10, 2011 | The Patriot Post

The Democrat’s Design to Demolish Free Enterprise

“I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared.” –Thomas Jefferson

Paraphrasing the esteemed classical liberal economist, Friedrich von Hayek, Future Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger wrote, “There is no difference in principle, between the economic philosophy of Nazism, socialism, communism, and fascism and that of the American welfare state and regulated economy.”

Not only is there no economic distinction between socialist systems in different political wrappers, ultimately there is no consequential societal distinction between Marxist Socialism, Nationalist Socialism, or the most recent incarnation of this beast, Democratic Socialism. The conclusion of socialism by any name, once it has replaced Rule of Law with the rule of men, is tyranny.

Noted Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, no stranger to the consequences of statism, wrote, “Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit.”

Democratic Socialism, like Nationalist Socialism, is nothing more than Marxist Socialism repackaged. Likewise, it seeks a centrally planned economy directed by a dominant-party state that controls economic production by way of taxation, regulation and income redistribution. The success of Democrat Socialism depends upon supplanting Essential Liberty — the rights “endowed by our Creator” — primarily by refuting such endowment.

Notably, regardless of the populist variant of Socialism, the consequences of of all three are tyranny. For those who are offended by the comparison of Democratic Socialism to Marxist and Nationalist Socialism, neither Stalin nor Hitler were guilty of exterminating “enemies of the state” until they had ascended to political positions affording consolidation of power in their respective Socialist states. The terminus of Socialism under any label, is tyranny. As Von Hayek observed, “Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.”

So what do these observations have to do with the current state of economic and political affairs in our great nation? Unfortunately, more than most Americans currently realize.

However discomforting this fact might be, there is abundant and irrefutable evidence that Barack Hussein Obama and his socialist cadre are endeavoring to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” with a debt bomb, the future shockwave of which, they surmise, will break the back of free enterprise. From the ashes of that cataclysm, Obama and his ilk envision restructuring our national economy as a Democrat Socialism State.

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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Judicial Review v. Judicial Activism

By Mark Alexander | April 12, 2012 | The Patriot Post

SCOTUS and Constitutional Authority

“No legislative act … contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.” –Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78 (1787)

Last week, seeing that his signature legislative achievement was in jeopardy, Barack Hussein Obama fired a shot across the bow of the Supreme Court as it considered the constitutionality of his so-called “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (a.k.a., ObamaCare). Obama warned the court against “judicial activism.”

“I am confident,” proclaimed Obama, “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. I just remind conservative commentators that for years what we have heard the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example and I am pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step. … [T]hat’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who have examined this law.”

Actually, as Obama knows well, the Supreme Court’s consideration of ObamaCare is not an example of judicial activism as Obama erroneously claims, unless the Court actually upheld the institution of socialized medicine as constitutionally compliant.

In fact, SCOTUS is exercising appropriate judicial review as outlined in Article III of our Constitution, and established as precedent in 1803 with the Court’s Marbury v. Madison decision under Chief Justice John Marshall. In that fundamental case, Marshall wrote, “The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. … [T]he framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument, as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature.”

Marbury v. Madison is often derided as the beginning of the end of Liberty. However, it certainly was consistent with our Framers’ intent, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78: “[T]he courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges as, a fundamental law. It, therefore, belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.”

The unfortunate consequence of the Marbury precedent is that it rendered the Constitution vulnerable to broad extra-constitutional interpretation, should the courts ever become highly politicized — as indeed they did in the 20th century, from FDR forward.

Judicial review was and remains a foundational component of republican federalism and was instituted to preserve Liberty. However, as Thomas Jefferson feared when warning the judiciary could become the “despotic branch,” the federal court’s checks and balances have been adulterated by judicial activists who, in the words of the venerable Senator Sam Ervin, “interpret the Constitution to mean what it would have said if [they], instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.”

Thus, now, as Jefferson warned, “The Constitution [will be] a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

Read the full article here.

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Standing MLK on His Head: The New Civil Rights Movement [Video]

The following comparison between the “old” (MLK) and “new” (Sharpton/Jackson) civil rights movements is from Bradlee Dean’s blog at You Can Run International.

“In light of the recent mainstream media-created outrage over Trayvon Martin’s death, I couldn’t help but notice how far off the modern-day civil-rights leaders are from the creed of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, led by a great man of God, Martin Luther King Jr. He was a prophet to the nation – a molder of consensus to guarantee equal rights under the law for all men, “endowed by their Creator,” as the Declaration of Independence rightly states.

Let me take you back to the 1960s. Every participant in the civil-rights marches was required to sign the following pledge before they could participate:

• 1. Meditate on teachings of Jesus daily.
• 2. Remember that the non-violent movement seeks justice and reconciliation, not just victory.
• 3. Walk and talk in the manner of love/charity, for God is love.
• 4. Pray daily to be used by God.
• 5. Sacrifice personal needs. Greed has to go out the window.
• 6. Observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy.
• 7. Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world.
• 8. 
Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue or heart.
• 9. Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health.
• 10. Follow the directions of the movement and of the captain of the demonstration.

However, the self-made civil-rights leaders of today, such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, have left out their Bibles and their morals, as they debase themselves and reap nothing but mockery and reproach. Let me contrast the original pledge with the modern version of the pledge, as demonstrated by their actions:

• 1. Meditate on the media and anything but the teachings of Jesus.
• 2. Practice civil disobedience to just laws, through force, in hopes of an unjust victory.
• 3. Walk and talk in the manner of thuggery/pride!
• 4. Play the race card as you are enslaved through deception by a godless administration daily.
• 5. Sacrifice the needs of others, gain is the goal.
• 6. Send threats to those who disagree with you.
• 7. Seek to have it your way at all costs, lie if necessary.
• 8. Use fear and force.
• 9. Strive to take from others, because you deserve what you take!
• 10. Follow the directions of an unconstitutional and unlawful administration.

These modern civil-rights leaders are demoralizers of the faithful. They have turned civil rights into uncivil distribution of privileges, derived by the state. They have left off the Declaration of Independence, therefore throwing off freedom. Under their directives, racism is being taught to a new generation under the guise of decrying racism.”

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Journalists’ Panel Discussion Shows Critical Race Theory Mainstream to Left

By Tony Lee | April 12, 2012 | Breitbart

On Monday, the Aspen Institute held a discussion about race and the 2012 elections, and its panel featured a roster of liberals.

Touré, one of the most prominent members of the media who has tried to exploit the Trayvon Martin tragedy to push his political agenda, Carlos Velez-Ibanez, a liberal professor of transborder studies, and José Antonio Vargas, a liberal ex-reporter and illegal immigrant who now is a prominent founder of an organization whose objective is to have a “conversation” about immigration, made up the panel, which FOX News’ Juan Williams, another liberal, moderated.

The panelists, in their comments and biases through which they saw America, revealed the wide reach of the legal discipline known as “Critical Race Theory,” which teaches students to see essentially all institutions in America as being the product of a white power structure that has to be systematically disassembled. Derrick Bell was the godfather of Critical Race Theory and, as Breitbart.com revealed, President Barack Obama was one of his many acolytes.

As the Trayvon Martin case begins to go to trial and the Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in immigration and affirmative action cases, the left will continue to use these events to attempt to start national dialogues on race. Of course, such dialogues will have subtle — and not-so-subtle — undertones that paint Republicans as intolerant and bigoted. And this will not be by accident, as the panel revealed, for even if those in the liberal media and intelligentsia did not formally take any classes on “Critical Race Theory,” they have been influenced by its tenets and have internalized them.

Exhibit A: Touré

Touré again tried to exploit the Martin case by saying it is about the “ability for us to exist as one America” because “we are very much two Americas, separate and unequal.”

“It is a scar on the American soul, an extraordinarily important moment in American history, and some people are not even recognizing that,” Touré continued. “We are angry this is happening and this is continuing to happen to our young boys.”

Touré said people ask him, “some black boy got killed in Florida and this is a major moment in American history?”

Touré answered that the Martin case is such a moment because it represents “the continued dehumanization of Trayvon and, by association, all black men.”

Speaking about white privilege, Touré said that he was frustrated with whites on the subject, noting that ones he spoke to kept telling him, “I don’t know what you are talking about — show it to me, or prove it to me.”

Touré, whether he knew it or not, was parroting a “Critical Race Theory” tenet that says an absence of specific examples of racism does nothing to disprove that America is a nation based on a power structure that perpetuates white privilege.

Touré then said other whites he spoke to claimed to have no power or privilege; he mockingly said their mindset was, “clearly it must not exist because I have nothing.”

Touré then noted that whenever blacks received rights in America, those rights were then creatively taken away. In the case of Jim Crow following emancipation, Touré was correct.

But Touré took it two steps further.

He referenced an academic hypothesis that after the civil rights bills of the 1950s and 1960s were passed, America tried to restore Jim Crow through other, more creative means by purposely incarcerating blacks. Touré then said that the rise of Obama will lead to another period where rights will be in danger for minorities.

Touré cited the “rise of voter ID laws” as an example of minority rights being in danger, even though voter ID laws are colorblind. He then said that the recent tragedy in Tulsa, Oklahoma — in which gunmen who individually were prejudiced shot and killed five blacks — was proof of whites being angry at blacks in general.

Read the full article here.

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Obama Thinks America as Founded is Unfair

Rush Limbaugh | April 10, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me tell you what’s going on. I mentioned this in the third hour of the program, but I want to mention it again just as an overall explanation of Obama and Obamaism. For the past couple of years max, maybe past year and a half, Obama… And he started this at a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, on an anniversary of a speech given at the same place by Winston Churchill.

And he went out in that speech and basically said that the nation, as founded, had never worked; that this “you’re on your own” economy has never worked. And, by that, he means capitalism. By that, he means rugged individualism, self-reliance. That’s never worked. Obama’s point, ladies and gentlemen, is that the founding of the country was unjust and immoral economically, that it was set up by the equivalent (in those days) of today’s 1%: a bunch of really exclusive, elite, wealthy, old white guys. And they set up this country so as to ensure their own wealth and prosperity while denying opportunities to others. And the way they did it was with this social Darwinism. This “you’re on your own.” They knew that the vast majority of people couldn’t take care of themselves. They knew…

This is Obama’s thinking now. He’s never said this, but I’m telling you this is what’s the foundation for his current campaign strategy at the root of his speeches. So it’s never worked, by design, ’cause the founders are smart enough to know that the vast majority of people are not capable of fending for themselves. And they purposely set up a system where those people would suffer. And that’s what happened! That’s what Obama’s trying to say: “It’s never worked. This country has never worked. Capitalism, this ‘you’re on your own’ business has never worked, and it’s all coming to a head now. It’s finally showing itself as the recent failure it is now.”

Read the full article here.

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The Poverty of Equality

By Stephen Moore & Peter Ferrara | April 2012 | The American Spectator

Fairness requires that President Obama read up on his Kurt Vonnegut.

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

So began Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron.” In that brave new world, the government forced each individual to wear “handicaps” to offset any advantage he had, so everyone could be truly and fully equal. Beautiful people had to wear ugly masks to hide their good looks. The strong had to wear compensating weights to slow them down. Graceful dancers were burdened with bags of bird shot. Those with above-average intelligence had to wear government transmitters in their ears that would emit sharp noises every 20 seconds, shattering their thoughts “to keep them…from taking unfair advantage of their brains.”

But Harrison Bergeron, who was far above average in everything, was a special problem. Vonnegut explained, “Nobody had ever borne heavier handicaps.… Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses.” To offset his strength, “Scrap metal was hung all over him,” to the point that the seven-foot-tall Harrison “looked like a walking junkyard.”

The youthful Harrison did not accept these burdens easily, so he had been jailed. But with his myriad advantages and talents, he had broken out. An announcement on TV explained the threat: “He is a genius and an athlete…and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”

Harrison broke into a TV studio, which was broadcasting the performance of a troupe of dancing ballerinas. On national television, he illegally cast off each one of his handicaps. Then he did the same for one of the ballerinas, and then the orchestra, which he commanded to play. To shockingly beautiful chords, Harrison and the ballerina began to dance.

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the laws of gravity and the laws of motion as well.…The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it. And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

SOCIAL SAFETY NETS that provide basic help for the needy to prevent human suffering are easily justifiable on moral grounds. Nearly everyone supports them to prevent severe hardship among those disabled, widowed, orphaned, or even just temporarily down on their luck. In modern and wealthy societies like ours, there is broad voter consent to such policies, which ensure people do not suffer deprivation of the necessities of life: food, shelter, and clothing. This recognizes we have a moral obligation to help our fellow man. It’s always an open question how much of that should fall to private charity and how much should be done through government taxation. That said, the truth is, such safety nets, if focused on the truly needy and designed to rely on modern markets and incentives, would not be costly compared to the immense wealth of our society.

But once such policies are established, going further—taking from some by force of law what they have produced and consequently earned, and giving to others merely to make incomes and wealth more equal—is not justifiable. Vonnegut’s story helps explain why.

First, achieving true and comprehensive equality would require violating personal liberty, as the talented and capable must be prevented from using their advantages to get ahead. Under this philosophy, the most productive must be treated punitively through high tax rates simply because they used their abilities to produce more than others. What we have just described is a progressive tax system. Work and produce a little bit, and we take 10 percent. Work and produce more, and we take 20 percent, and so on. Some societies take as much as 90 percent of the marginal output, as the U.S. did after World War II.

In a society where men and women are angels who always put the welfare of others ahead of their own, this system—from each according to his ability, to each according to his need—might even work. High tax rates wouldn’t have any negative consequences because everyone would work for everyone else’s benefit. Society would be like one, large commune, with everyone working for the common good. The ambitious, hard worker would get the same pay as the one who sleeps in and lives a lazy lifestyle. Output would be high, and we would have almost complete equality of outcome.

The problem, of course, is that men are not angels. We are driven by self-interest-not entirely, of course, but enough that giving everyone an equal share despite unequal contributions would severely deter work incentives. This is why in all those societies that have tried to enforce the more extreme vision of mandatory equality, totalitarian governments and poverty have emerged. And, by the way, in practice these societies are not very equal either. Richer and freer countries tend to have smaller income disparities than poorer and less free nations.

Moreover, as Vonnegut’s story illustrates, inequalities of wealth and income are not the only important differences in society. If equality is truly a moral obligation, then inequalities of beauty, intelligence, strength, grace, talent, etc. logically all should be leveled as well. That would require some rather heavy-handed government intervention. It is not fair that LeBron James has a 40-inch vertical leap, and we have a 4-inch vertical leap (combined). It is not fair that some have high IQs, and others are below average. It is not fair that Christie Brinkley is beautiful, that some people are born with photographic memories, that one person gets cancer and the next one doesn’t. We Americans were born in a land of opportunity and wealth, while billions around the world are born into poverty and squalor. We won the ultimate lottery of life just by being born in this great and rich country. Where is the justice in that?

THE GOAL OF A SOCIETY should not and cannot be to make people equal in outcomes, an impossibility given the individual attributes with which we were each endowed by our creator. It is the opposite of justice and fairness to try to equalize outcomes based on those attributes. It is not fair to the beautiful to force them to wear ugly masks. It is not fair to the strong to punish them by holding them down with excess weights. It is not fair to the graceful and athletic to deprive them of their talents. In the same way, it is not fair to the productive, the risk taking, or the hard working, to deprive them of what they have produced, merely to make them equal to others who have worked less, taken less risk, and produced less.

Read the full article here.

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Cicero: Power and law are not synonymous

“Power and law are not synonymous. In truth, they are frequently in opposition and irreconcilable. There is God’s Law from which all equitable laws of man emerge and by which men must live if they are not to die in oppression, chaos and despair. Divorced from God ís eternal and immutable Law, established before the founding of the suns, man ís power is evil no matter the noble words with which it is employed or the motives urged when enforcing it. Men of good will, mindful therefore of the Law laid down by God, will oppose governments whose rule is by men, and if they wish to survive as a nation they will destroy the government which attempts to adjudicate by the whim of venal judges.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 B.C.

Hat Tip: Roger S. Sayles, From Sovereign to Serf

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