Are we becoming Germany?...

some people think so.

From: Washington's Blog

Americans – Like Nazi Germans – Don’t Notice that All of Our Rights Are Slipping Away

Americans Are Acting Like Slowly Boiling Frogs

In the classic history of Nazi Germany, They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer writes:

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

The German citizens were boiling frogs … the water heating up so gradually that they didn’t realize they had to jump out of the pot to safety.

Because the exact same thing is happening to Americans (fear of terror makes people stupid no matter what country they live in), let’s remember exactly what we’ve lost in recent years …

Read the rest at Washington's Blog.  This article is long with a staggering number of links, but well worth the time.  

 

Tom Woods answers Bill O'Reilly about the Constitution...

because O'Reilly thinks the Constitution says the feds should provide healthcare - or something.

We don't have cable and so I don't watch Bill O'Reilly.  If we did have cable, I still wouldn't watch Bill O'Reilly.

From The O’Reilly Factor, email segment for July 5:

“Bill, you keep asking what the Republicans have to replace Obamacare.  Under the Constitution, there is no role for the Federal government in healthcare.”
–Felicia

O’Reilly:

“That’s not true, Felicia.  The opening paragraph of the Constitution says the welfare of the people must be promoted.  A just healthcare system comes under that banner.”

Where have I been?...

watching this.

Excellent!



Take the time...

Wandering in the wasteland called the Huffington Post...

and it's not pretty.

I wasted a few moments reading an article this morning over at Huffington Post by Frank Schaeffer, a failed film maker and mediocre author, in which he makes the assertion that the debt ceiling problem is a Born Again Religious Problem.

Mr.Schaeffer claims that he, along with his father, Francis Schaeffer, author of The Christian Manifesto, and other "influential" Christians, co-opted the Republican party back in the 1980's by stuffing it full of crazy "right wing" evangelical types who are surely going to bring down this country because they believe in Jesus - or something.  He takes credit for influencing his father to take on the issue of abortion. As a matter of fact, he takes credit for doing lots of things, and for being a major player in this take-down of the Republican party. Taking credit is what Schaeffer does best.

He starts off with a bang by throwing around the terms "educated" and "reasonable" because surely anyone who believes in a Higher Power is neither.  And the debt ceiling debate?  It's all the fault of crazy right-wing Christians.  This is, of course, on the heels of Shirley Jackson Lee informing us it's all about racism.  So confusing. 

"Foreigners, visitors from another planet and Americans living in a bubble of reasonable or educated people might not know this but the reality is that the debt ceiling confrontation is by, for, and the result of, America's evangelical Christian control of the Republican Party. It is the ultimate expression of an alternate reality, one that has the mistrust of the US government as its bedrock "faith," second only to faith in Jesus." 

 It doesn't take him long to invoke Michele Bachmann as the "head crazy" of all time.

"To understand why an irrational self-defeating action like destroying the credit of the USA might seem like the right thing to do, you have to understand two things: that the Republican Party is now the party of religious fanatics and that these fanatics -- people like Michele Bachmann -- don't want to work within our system, they want to bring it down."

He claims later on in this article that his father's books were a major influence of Ms Bachmann's decision to enter politics.

It appears that Mr. Schaeffer's real problem is with his father. He even wrote a book, "Crazy for God", in which he trashes his father, mother, the way he was raised, and, in particular, evangelical Christians.   

Allow me to sum up the main themes of Schaeffer's article.

• If you are pro-life and don't believe in chopping up a baby before, or even after, it is born you are crazy.
• If you believe in the Bible, you are crazy.
• If you believe in the Constitution, you are crazy.
• If you believe in limited government, you are crazy.

"To understand the extremism coming from the right, the fact that there are members of Congress who seem to be genuinely mentally unhinged leading the charge on the debt ceiling, you need to understand that this hatred of all things government has theological roots that have nothing to do with facts.

Theology is -- by nature -- not about reason but about faith. If God's will is to be served then so be it if America is plunged into chaos! This debt ceiling fiasco is just another chapter in the "culture" wars."

Actually, theology is rooted in both fact and faith.  Granted, for someone like Schaeffer, who for some reason seems to have lost his faith, and at 50 some odd years of life, is still rebelling against his father like some whiny teenager, the above statement makes perfect sense.

And the debt ceiling is not about "God's will", Mr. Schaeffer.  It's about a federal government that has ignored the powers enumerated to it in the Constitution, high-jacked the rights of the states and, by extension, the people.  It is about a government that no longer operates under the rule of law, but instead by regulation, fiat, and executive orders.  The debt ceiling is about a government that takes, by force if necessary, the earnings of Americans, to distribute as it sees fit,  without any real representation.  And that, Mr. Schaeffer, is unconstitutional.

The debt ceiling and the out of control spending of the government is rooted in the faith people place in the facts of math. Math doesn't lie.  If you spend more than you have you will go into debt. It's a fact. It's a fact in which even non-believers will place their faith. 

"The extreme language of Evangelical/"pro-life" rebellion has now been repackaged in the debt ceiling showdown. It is the language of religion pitted against facts.

And the anti-government charge is being led by people who are either true believers, thus unable to reason, or people catering to the true believers so that they can remain in the good books of the Tea Party, which is nothing more than the Evangelical far right repackaged and renamed"

Wow!  If you go to church on Sunday, say some prayers, and believe that maybe something more than a big explosion was at the root of creation, you "are unable to reason."  That's pretty harsh, Frank. 

It's time to wake up...

 and take a stand.


If the events of the past week are not enough of a wake up call to the citizens of this country of how far we have slid down the dark tunnel of socialism communism, then we are lost.

We have a president who decides to not enforce a law because he "doesn't think it's constitutional" while ignoring the courts decision on ObamaCare.  While he has the right to think whatever he wishes about some law or another being 'unconstitutional", he doesn't have the right to ignore it.

 While Idaho continues down the route of nullification of ObamaCare , a total of 26 states is suing the feds, calling the bill unconstitutional.  To repeat what I've said before; if you strip the states of their rights because of massive power grabs by the feds, we live in Amerika - not the United States of America.

The affairs that rightly belong to the states have been co-opted by the feds and the time for it to stop is now, not some vague future date.

The shame of this ObamaCare debacle is that real and meaningful change in the health care industry is shoved into the background while the feds continue to do not what the people want, but what will give them the most power.  Untold billions of dollars are being flushed down a rat hole while the will of the people is ignored by those who still have time to celebrate Motown.

Excellent article by Doug Powers ROSS (Argh!  that's what happens when you blog when tired!!  Sorry, Doug!) with some easy to understand history of governments - and we thank him!  That man's been on fire lately.

The Fork in the Road

[...]Today our federal government's most powerful branch is one never conceived by the Framers: the unelected fourth branch of government -- the enormous federal bureaucracy -- that acts at the president's behest. It defies a federal judge in Florida who has voided Obamacare. It ignores a federal judge in Louisiana who has held the Interior Department in Contempt of Court for failing to lift an unconscionable drilling moratorium. And it now decides which laws it will enforce and which it will not, the "Defense of Marriage Act" being only the most recent example. do yourself a favor and read the entire article

Is America skittering toward the great abyss?

This started out as a deeply depressing Sunday, courtesy of an article in the American Thinker (that Cicero of Washington Rebel likes,) by David Deming - America is Gone.  To sum it up, Mr. Deming sees our American way of life irrevocably gone and envisions a bleak and unhappy future.

"There is a whiff of anarchy in the air this morning. As I sit here writing, a conservative victory in the midterm elections looms. But I find no reason to be optimistic. The midterm elections will solve nothing. The plain fact is that conservatives have lost the battle for America. The country that many of us were born in has ceased to exist. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Nothing can or will change until we come to terms with the grim reality of moral degeneration. And I have no hope that this can happen, save by some terrible trial." entire article

The sad fact is, Mr. Deming is probably more correct than not.  Most of my readers are whippersnappers who don't remember much before the 1980's or at most, the 70's (which makes it all the more remarkable  you're the conservatives you are.)   Those of us a bit older remember a far different America than the one we live in now.  Was everything better?  No, it never is.  It is human nature to glamorize, romanticize, and gloss over the ugly parts.   However, each generation since the late 1800's has become progressively more morally corrupt.  I believe the only thing Mr. Deming managed to leave out of his article was our willingness to have a discussion over the moral rights of a woman to butcher her child in the womb, or administer a "hot shot" to an ailing senior citizen, let alone actually performing these odious tasks.

Next, I headed over to the Plantation Nation for a quick bit of John Stossel interviewing Angelo Codevilla, author of The Ruling Class, and Matt Welch, editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, about the coming elections.  Mr. Stossel believes, as does The Plantation Nation, that it will be "business as usual" after the elections.  And, in their own way, so do Mr. Codevilla and Mr. Welch. Again, I tend to agree.



Already we hear prominent Republicans talking about "working with" or "compromising" with the Democrats, which is exactly what the majority of the American citizens oppose.  True conservatives don't want to have the growth of Government "slowed"; they want the Federal government to be divested of the myriad of departments, czars, and unconstitutional activities it has co-opted over many decades.  Two major places they can start is with the bankrupt Medicare system, which is nothing more than a coercive form of welfare most seniors are forced into, and the reform and privatization of Social Security.  Once done, they can move on to defund the hundreds and hundreds of departments that have been formed unconstitutionally.

In "The Tea Party vs The Ruling Class" by Robert James Bidinotto, we see our first ray of hope on this Sunday morning.  Mr. Bidinotto elaborates on what Mr. Codevilla has to say about the "ruling class," while recognizing the Tea Party movement as a rising up of a conservative movement that will continue the good fight after the election. 

[...]Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been paying close attention to politics since I was a teenager in the 1960s. I’ve never been so optimistic about America’s future—and you are a major reason for that. For nearly half a century, I wrote and preached about our lost liberties and endangered rights, feeling like a lonely voice in the wilderness. But now, millions of voices are carrying that message.  read the rest

 So which camp is right; the glass-half-empty folks, or those who like viewing their glasses half-full?  Are we doomed, or will the country battle its way back to the vision of our founders?  Most days I think the possibility of pulling this country out of the sink-hole isn't very good.  Other days I have great hope, a theological virtue of, well, great hope - that we will return to the intentions of our founding fathers.  When Mr. Deming says he sees no hope (a sin against hope), save by some terrible trial, he has stated a historical truth.  It will take a profoundly disturbing, even ugly event, to make some people turn their hearts and minds back to our Creator and to the "truth that will set us free."

Where do we get our rights?

The article below from Big Government, points to a pervasive problem in this county - namely sloppy speech. Even people who may know what they are saying, produce words that do not convey the truth of what they are trying to articulate. The result of sloppy speech is sloppy thinking. I am as guilty of this as anyone, and try very hard to choose the right words.

Words make a difference. In the novel "1984" by George Orwell, changing language was one of the primary ways used to control the populace. By changing the meaning of words, or even eliminating them, subtle shifts of understanding can happen without the person affected even realizing a change has taken place.

Our current culture prides itself on the odious idea of "political correctness." Even though we make jokes about the movement, we still are led down it's insidious path, and soon we are incorporating the new language in our day-to-day speech.

You Don’t Have a Constitutional Right to Free Speech
by Derek Hunter

You’ve undoubtedly heard someone, maybe even yourself, say that you have a Constitutional right to free speech, right? While that seems to make sense, it’s not true, or at least wasn’t before the government got so big that it started intruding into areas of our lives in which it has no business; and it is part of a modern mentality that has the potential to harm our individual liberty. read the rest