"For the study of political economy you need no special knowledge, no extensive library, no costly laboratory. You do not even need text-books nor teachers, if you will but think for yourselves."
- Henry George American economist (1839-97)
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.
Sir Josiah Stamp(1880-1941) President of the Bank of England in the 1920's, the second richest man in Britain
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Sunday, October 4, 2009
General Patton talking about cowards and libs in general
“Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.”
Patton paused, took a deep breath, and continued, “Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, “Fixing the wire, Sir”. I asked, “Isn’t that a little unhealthy right about now?” He answered, “Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed”. I asked, “Don’t those planes strafing the road bother you?” And he answered, “No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!” Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the road to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren’t combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.”
Patton paused, took a deep breath, and continued, “Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, “Fixing the wire, Sir”. I asked, “Isn’t that a little unhealthy right about now?” He answered, “Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed”. I asked, “Don’t those planes strafing the road bother you?” And he answered, “No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!” Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the road to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren’t combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.”
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
paul and nero Why we don't have to respect goverment
Some Christians believe and teach that we should always honor and respect those in authority, regardless of the evil that they commit. This persuasion is often based on some text found in one of Saint Paul’s (aka the Apostle Paul) letters, Romans 13. However, as we examine one of the last acts of Saint Paul’s life, we find a very different story. Let’s consider the case of Paul and Nero.
Just about everyone has heard of Nero, the infamous Roman Caesar who supposedly played the fiddle while Rome burned. After he was widely suspected of setting fire to Rome himself, Nero cowardly deflected the blame and punishment onto Christians. The Roman historian Tacitus described the situation as follows:
"To get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
"Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind [a hate crime?]. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to torture-stakes, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car."
The preceding gives us a hint regarding two of the emperor's compulsions; he loved chariot racing, and he hated Christians. His participation in chariot racing was initially limited to silly board games which he designed, but eventually that did not prove enough to satisfy Nero. He soon began practicing chariot driving in his garden, in front of a forced audience, his slaves. Even that, however, did not prove enough – Nero wanted nothing less than to win the chariot races at the Greek Olympiad. Another Roman historian, Suetonius, describes how that he worked that plan in his favor:
"Nero’s best idea, however, was to postpone the 211th Olympiad from 65 to 67 AD to allow him more time to practice and train his teams of horses so that he himself might win at Olympia.…"
So Nero went to Greece, where he entered his ten-horse chariot in the tethrippon event in the Olympiad, which was a dream come true for Nero. There was the minor problem that the teams were supposed to consist of four horses rather than ten, but Nero overcame that issue, most likely through bribery. During the race Nero was thrown off of his chariot, was helped back on by spectators, and was subsequently thrown again. Unable to continue the race after the second fall, Nero nevertheless was proclaimed the victor! The duly bribed judges decided that Nero deserved to be declared the victor, because he certainly would have won if he would have finished the race!
Nero returned to Rome a self-proclaimed hero:
"Returning from Greece … he rode in the chariot which Augustus had used in his triumphs in days gone by, and wore a purple robe and a Greek cloak adorned with stars of gold, bearing on his head the Olympic crown and in his right hand the Pythian, while the rest were carried before him with inscriptions telling where he had won them and against what competitors…. His car was followed by his claque as by the escort of a triumphal procession, who shouted that they were the attendants of Augustus and the soldiers of his triumph. Then through the arch of the Circus Maximus, which was thrown down, he made his way across the Velabrum and the Forum to the Palatine and the temple of Apollo. All along the route victims were slain, the streets were sprinkled from time to time with perfume, while birds, ribbons, and sweetmeats were showered upon him."
Nero’s glory was not long-lived; a few months later (in AD 68) he had to resort to suicide in order to not suffer at the hands of Galba, who overthrew him. The Greeks quickly eliminated Nero’s dubious "Olympic victories."
"Soon after his death in 68 AD, Nero’s name was scratched from the lists of the Elean officials, and the counterfeit 211th Olympiad was declared as ‘Anolympiad’ [non-Olympiad] by the ten Hellanodikai judges."
Meanwhile, much the same was occurring in Rome.
"In Rome, Nero's successor, Galba … proposed to the senate that every statue erected in honour of Nero's Olympic victories be destroyed and that the huge bribe Nero was purported to have paid the Elean judges should be returned to Rome. It appears that the venerable emperor had in fact bribed the Hellanodikai with a ten thousand drachmae "package deal" (one thousand per judge), an exorbitant sum by today's standards. The anti-Neronian measures were carried out to the last detail by his Roman successors."
During that short period of time (AD 67–68) between Nero’s "victory" in an unfinished race, and his inglorious death, he was widely considered a buffoon. As the victory memorials went up around the city of Rome, and Nero’s self-composed songs about his exploits were performed, the common people were just as aware as Galba and others that his victory was false. One can imagine the parodies, graffiti, and jokes which circulated throughout Rome, ridiculing the "hero" Nero. Some examples of this are recorded by Jürgen Malitz, who states:
"… he was treated with the utmost abuse and scurrility. On top of one of his statues was placed the figure of a chariot with a Greek inscription that ‘Now indeed he has a race to run; let him be gone.’ A little bag was tied about another, with a ticket containing these words: ‘What could I do?’ – ‘Truly thou hast merited the sack.’ Some person likewise wrote on the pillars in the Forum ‘that he even woke the cocks with his singing.’ And many, in the night-time, pretending to find fault with their servants, frequently called for a Vindex."
[Note: This call for a Vindex was a double entendre, which could be understood either as a request for arbitration (with the servant) or a call for Gaius Iulius Vindex to liberate them.]
Into this scene enters the Apostle Paul, a Greek-speaking Jewish Roman citizen. Paul was arrested in Jerusalem for "disturbing the peace" (or something like that … Acts 21:27–28), and fearing for his life, he appealed for an audience before the highest Roman civil authority, Caesar (Acts 25:11–12). Unfortunately for Paul, the Caesar to whom he appealed was Nero, who as we have seen above, was not particularly fond of Christians, nor was he completely sane. Even the Romans soon realized the error (humanly speaking) of Paul’s appeal, for Acts 26:32 says, "Agrippa said to Festus, ‘This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.’" But the appeal stood; Paul was sent to Rome.
The timeline of Paul’s life is a little fuzzy; some scholars place his death as early as AD 60, and others as late as AD 68. In the later death scenario, Paul was put to death by Nero in spring AD 68, after Nero’s "victorious" return to Rome and shortly before Nero’s own death through suicide that summer.
During this imprisonment in Rome, whenever it was, Paul wrote his last epistle, which was his second to Timothy. Shortly thereafter, the Saint was put to death. While held in Rome by Nero, Paul wrote (2 Timothy 4:7–8):
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing."
Note the sous entendu meaning – "I, unlike Nero, have finished the race, in completing the course I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness rather than a cheater’s crown, which the Lord, the righteous and incorruptible judge, will award to me …" [all text in italics added by me]
Was this Paul’s intent? Did he really mean to poke Nero in the eye? Paul was certainly aware of all the anti-Nero talk and activity going on around him. The contents of his prison letters surely were reviewed by the emperor’s officials; could he have unintentionally penned his words that carelessly? As a Christian, I believe Paul’s choice of words was intentional and God-honoring; God’s Word is inspired, not a word of it was written by accident.
Assuming the late timeline is correct, the only conclusion I can make is that the Apostle Paul, for whatever reason, and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, intentionally penned these inflammatory words, which very likely contributed to his condemnation. The fact is, a few short weeks later Saint Paul was dead, martyred by Nero.
The Apostle Paul’s example makes it clear to us that it is not a person’s rank in the state which determines whether he is worthy of respect and honor. As we hear the chorus of statists saying that "we should respect our [sic] president" (here, here, here, ad nauseam) or any other government official, we can remember the Apostle Paul who, like the Lord Himself, was "no respecter of persons."
Sometimes resistance, or just a good poke in the eye, is exactly what is needed; Christians can follow the example of Saint Paul in good conscience, and in good fun. Though there may be consequences, we need to have confidence in the rightness of our cause and in the goodness of the Lord, and let the chips fall where they may.
Just about everyone has heard of Nero, the infamous Roman Caesar who supposedly played the fiddle while Rome burned. After he was widely suspected of setting fire to Rome himself, Nero cowardly deflected the blame and punishment onto Christians. The Roman historian Tacitus described the situation as follows:
"To get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
"Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind [a hate crime?]. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to torture-stakes, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car."
The preceding gives us a hint regarding two of the emperor's compulsions; he loved chariot racing, and he hated Christians. His participation in chariot racing was initially limited to silly board games which he designed, but eventually that did not prove enough to satisfy Nero. He soon began practicing chariot driving in his garden, in front of a forced audience, his slaves. Even that, however, did not prove enough – Nero wanted nothing less than to win the chariot races at the Greek Olympiad. Another Roman historian, Suetonius, describes how that he worked that plan in his favor:
"Nero’s best idea, however, was to postpone the 211th Olympiad from 65 to 67 AD to allow him more time to practice and train his teams of horses so that he himself might win at Olympia.…"
So Nero went to Greece, where he entered his ten-horse chariot in the tethrippon event in the Olympiad, which was a dream come true for Nero. There was the minor problem that the teams were supposed to consist of four horses rather than ten, but Nero overcame that issue, most likely through bribery. During the race Nero was thrown off of his chariot, was helped back on by spectators, and was subsequently thrown again. Unable to continue the race after the second fall, Nero nevertheless was proclaimed the victor! The duly bribed judges decided that Nero deserved to be declared the victor, because he certainly would have won if he would have finished the race!
Nero returned to Rome a self-proclaimed hero:
"Returning from Greece … he rode in the chariot which Augustus had used in his triumphs in days gone by, and wore a purple robe and a Greek cloak adorned with stars of gold, bearing on his head the Olympic crown and in his right hand the Pythian, while the rest were carried before him with inscriptions telling where he had won them and against what competitors…. His car was followed by his claque as by the escort of a triumphal procession, who shouted that they were the attendants of Augustus and the soldiers of his triumph. Then through the arch of the Circus Maximus, which was thrown down, he made his way across the Velabrum and the Forum to the Palatine and the temple of Apollo. All along the route victims were slain, the streets were sprinkled from time to time with perfume, while birds, ribbons, and sweetmeats were showered upon him."
Nero’s glory was not long-lived; a few months later (in AD 68) he had to resort to suicide in order to not suffer at the hands of Galba, who overthrew him. The Greeks quickly eliminated Nero’s dubious "Olympic victories."
"Soon after his death in 68 AD, Nero’s name was scratched from the lists of the Elean officials, and the counterfeit 211th Olympiad was declared as ‘Anolympiad’ [non-Olympiad] by the ten Hellanodikai judges."
Meanwhile, much the same was occurring in Rome.
"In Rome, Nero's successor, Galba … proposed to the senate that every statue erected in honour of Nero's Olympic victories be destroyed and that the huge bribe Nero was purported to have paid the Elean judges should be returned to Rome. It appears that the venerable emperor had in fact bribed the Hellanodikai with a ten thousand drachmae "package deal" (one thousand per judge), an exorbitant sum by today's standards. The anti-Neronian measures were carried out to the last detail by his Roman successors."
During that short period of time (AD 67–68) between Nero’s "victory" in an unfinished race, and his inglorious death, he was widely considered a buffoon. As the victory memorials went up around the city of Rome, and Nero’s self-composed songs about his exploits were performed, the common people were just as aware as Galba and others that his victory was false. One can imagine the parodies, graffiti, and jokes which circulated throughout Rome, ridiculing the "hero" Nero. Some examples of this are recorded by Jürgen Malitz, who states:
"… he was treated with the utmost abuse and scurrility. On top of one of his statues was placed the figure of a chariot with a Greek inscription that ‘Now indeed he has a race to run; let him be gone.’ A little bag was tied about another, with a ticket containing these words: ‘What could I do?’ – ‘Truly thou hast merited the sack.’ Some person likewise wrote on the pillars in the Forum ‘that he even woke the cocks with his singing.’ And many, in the night-time, pretending to find fault with their servants, frequently called for a Vindex."
[Note: This call for a Vindex was a double entendre, which could be understood either as a request for arbitration (with the servant) or a call for Gaius Iulius Vindex to liberate them.]
Into this scene enters the Apostle Paul, a Greek-speaking Jewish Roman citizen. Paul was arrested in Jerusalem for "disturbing the peace" (or something like that … Acts 21:27–28), and fearing for his life, he appealed for an audience before the highest Roman civil authority, Caesar (Acts 25:11–12). Unfortunately for Paul, the Caesar to whom he appealed was Nero, who as we have seen above, was not particularly fond of Christians, nor was he completely sane. Even the Romans soon realized the error (humanly speaking) of Paul’s appeal, for Acts 26:32 says, "Agrippa said to Festus, ‘This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.’" But the appeal stood; Paul was sent to Rome.
The timeline of Paul’s life is a little fuzzy; some scholars place his death as early as AD 60, and others as late as AD 68. In the later death scenario, Paul was put to death by Nero in spring AD 68, after Nero’s "victorious" return to Rome and shortly before Nero’s own death through suicide that summer.
During this imprisonment in Rome, whenever it was, Paul wrote his last epistle, which was his second to Timothy. Shortly thereafter, the Saint was put to death. While held in Rome by Nero, Paul wrote (2 Timothy 4:7–8):
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing."
Note the sous entendu meaning – "I, unlike Nero, have finished the race, in completing the course I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness rather than a cheater’s crown, which the Lord, the righteous and incorruptible judge, will award to me …" [all text in italics added by me]
Was this Paul’s intent? Did he really mean to poke Nero in the eye? Paul was certainly aware of all the anti-Nero talk and activity going on around him. The contents of his prison letters surely were reviewed by the emperor’s officials; could he have unintentionally penned his words that carelessly? As a Christian, I believe Paul’s choice of words was intentional and God-honoring; God’s Word is inspired, not a word of it was written by accident.
Assuming the late timeline is correct, the only conclusion I can make is that the Apostle Paul, for whatever reason, and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, intentionally penned these inflammatory words, which very likely contributed to his condemnation. The fact is, a few short weeks later Saint Paul was dead, martyred by Nero.
The Apostle Paul’s example makes it clear to us that it is not a person’s rank in the state which determines whether he is worthy of respect and honor. As we hear the chorus of statists saying that "we should respect our [sic] president" (here, here, here, ad nauseam) or any other government official, we can remember the Apostle Paul who, like the Lord Himself, was "no respecter of persons."
Sometimes resistance, or just a good poke in the eye, is exactly what is needed; Christians can follow the example of Saint Paul in good conscience, and in good fun. Though there may be consequences, we need to have confidence in the rightness of our cause and in the goodness of the Lord, and let the chips fall where they may.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
John Wayne
I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them.’"
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Keynote speech at the Ohio Rally for state Sovereignty, August 1, 2009 Andrew Napolitano
Keynote speech at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty, August 1, 2009
Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.
I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.
I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.
I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around. And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government – they can take back.
When we were colonists, and the King and the Parliament needed money from us, and they always seemed to need money, they devised ingenious ways to tax us. One of them was called the Stamp Act. The Parliament decreed that every piece of paper that the Colonists had in their homes; every book, every document, every deed, every lease, every pamphlet, every poster to be nailed to a tree had to have the King’s stamp on it. You think going to a Post Office is bad? You had to go to a British Government office and buy a stamp with the King’s picture.
Question. How did the King know that his picture was on every piece of paper in your house? The Parliament enacted a hateful piece of legislation called the Writs of Assistance Act which let the king’s soldiers write their own search warrants, and bang down any door they chose to look for the stamps or anything else that they were looking for.
It was the last straw.
We fought a revolution. We won the revolution. We wrote the Constitution. The constitution doesn’t grant power, it keeps the government off our backs.
When they were debating the Constitution in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, there were two great arguments – one by the Jefferson and Madison crowd and one by the Adams and Hamilton crowd. Jefferson argued, though he wasn’t physically there in Philly, as he did in the Declaration of Independence that our rights are ours by virtue of our humanity. That as God is perfectly free, and we are created in his image and likeness, we too are perfectly free. The big government crowd – yes they had them even in those days – argued that you can’t have freedom without government, and that government gives us our rights, and therefore, that government can take them away. This is not an academic argument. Jefferson and the natural law argument prevailed because the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our natural rights.
And so, your right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to travel where you want, to worship as you see fit, to keep and bear arms to defend yourself against a tyranny. And, after the right to life, the greatest and most uniquely American of rights – and I say this in front of the seat of the government – is the right to be left alone.
We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights. Think about it – if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away. But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.
This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem. It’s a problem with government today. There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as the democrat version of big government.
We fought a revolution because British soldiers could knock on our doors and demand that we house them, and demand that we turn over property to them because they could write their own search warrants. In the Patriot Act, the most hateful piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, a republican congress and a republican president authorized federal agents to do the unthinkable – to write their own search warrants. And the republican administration didn’t even let members of the House of Representatives read the Patriot Act before they voted on it.
Why should the government be able to spy on us? We should be able to spy on them!
When some judge is rationalizing away our liberty, or some congressman is plotting to take away your freedom or your tax dollars, we should know what they do every minute that they do it.
I was speaking to a group of congressman from a neighboring state – I won’t tell you which state it was, but they don’t play football there – and they came up to me and said “this is the first time we have heard that the Patriot Act allows federal agents to write their own search warrants.” Remember, in the Constitution, we put in the 4th Amendment, the right to be left alone, to make sure that if the government had a target, no matter how guilty the target, no matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, no matter how dangerous is the target, the government has to go through a neutral judge with a search warrant before it can get to that target. These members of Congress said, “we didn’t know that the Patriot Act allowed the government to bypass the courts and write any search warrant they wanted.” Then I asked them a question I knew the answer to already – did you read the Patriot Act before you voted on it? The answer – no. What were you voting on? A summary we received. Let me guess who wrote the summary – some lawyers in the justice department, right? Of course.
Would you hire anybody to run your business that committed you to a violation of the very reason you’re in business if they didn’t even read the document by which they were making that commitment? Of course not.
The camera is the new gun. There’s nothing that government dislikes more than the light of day, and cameras recording what the government is doing, whether it’s on a street corner, or in there, or in Washington D.C., we have the right to know everything that they do and why they do it, and when they do it, and how they are taking our freedoms.
I have another one of my basic core beliefs. The individual has an immortal soul. Every individual is greater than any government.
Your government is based on fear and force. You don’t have to take my word on it. The 2nd president on the United States, John Adams, said “Of course the government is based on fear.” And the first president, George Washington, said “Government is not reason, it is force.” I think they knew what they were talking about.
Now fast-forward to modern times. Whenever the government wants something, it scares us. During the civil war, Lincoln tried civilians in this state where no battles occurred, by military tribunal. After he died the Supreme Court invalidated everything the military tribunals did. During the first world war, the Wilson administration locked up 2000 people called anarchists – same thing as enemy combatants. No trial, no charge, just jail for the duration of the war. In World War II, FDR locked up 150,000 Japanese Americans, people born in the United States, who got no trial and had no charges, and when the war was over were given $25 and told to go home.
Today we have federal agents. You know I get in arguments with my friends at Fox News, and one of them, I don’t have to tell you who it is, but is truly the most irascible person there. And he said to me, you know you have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, and you have a problem with the Patriot Act, what will you do if I get sent to Guantanamo Bay, will you visit me? And I say, Bill – no, because they’ll probably keep me there as well.
Government likes to say that it’s taking an oath to uphold the Constitution. In the years that I was on the bench, it seemed that every time government lawyers were in my courtroom, if the government was prosecuting someone who was legitimately guilty or whether it was a mistake, or whether somebody was suing the government because government contractors or government doctors, or government workers made a mistake – the government doesn’t come in to the courtroom to enforce the constitution, it comes into the courtroom to evade and avoid it. That, ladies and gentlemen, must be stopped.
This is a great moment in our history. A crowd of this magnitude on a beautiful day, in the boiling sun, in the most middle-American of great middle-American states…comes together not because the president is a democrat, not because his predecessor was a republican, not because a war is just or unjust, not because the Fed is stealing or printing – you’re here because you believe in human freedom.
It is the essence of our existence that we should be free. But remember this: the government hates freedom. It is an obstacle to every one of their designs. Whenever they write laws, whenever they take your tax dollars, whenever they regulate your private behavior, whenever they tell you how to spend your money, whenever they tell you what medicines to take, whenever they tell you what food to eat, whenever they tell you with whom you may or must associate, they are taking away your freedom and they love to get away with it. And they cannot get away with it any longer.
In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms.
Jefferson was no saint but he was the greatest of our American presidents. He believed that the individual was greater than the state. He believed that the states were greater than the federal government. And when he wrote that our rights come from our creator, and that our rights are inalienable, he forever wed the notion of natural rights to the American experience and the American experiment. We must be vigilant about every right that the government wants to take away from us.
You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.” He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free.
Shortly before he died, Jefferson lamented, that in his view of the world it was the natural order of things for government to grow and freedom to be diminished; how ardently he wish that that wouldn’t happen. And in order to prevent it from happening he had a very simple remedy, “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny. When the government fears the people, that is liberty!”
Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.
I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.
I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.
I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around. And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government – they can take back.
When we were colonists, and the King and the Parliament needed money from us, and they always seemed to need money, they devised ingenious ways to tax us. One of them was called the Stamp Act. The Parliament decreed that every piece of paper that the Colonists had in their homes; every book, every document, every deed, every lease, every pamphlet, every poster to be nailed to a tree had to have the King’s stamp on it. You think going to a Post Office is bad? You had to go to a British Government office and buy a stamp with the King’s picture.
Question. How did the King know that his picture was on every piece of paper in your house? The Parliament enacted a hateful piece of legislation called the Writs of Assistance Act which let the king’s soldiers write their own search warrants, and bang down any door they chose to look for the stamps or anything else that they were looking for.
It was the last straw.
We fought a revolution. We won the revolution. We wrote the Constitution. The constitution doesn’t grant power, it keeps the government off our backs.
When they were debating the Constitution in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, there were two great arguments – one by the Jefferson and Madison crowd and one by the Adams and Hamilton crowd. Jefferson argued, though he wasn’t physically there in Philly, as he did in the Declaration of Independence that our rights are ours by virtue of our humanity. That as God is perfectly free, and we are created in his image and likeness, we too are perfectly free. The big government crowd – yes they had them even in those days – argued that you can’t have freedom without government, and that government gives us our rights, and therefore, that government can take them away. This is not an academic argument. Jefferson and the natural law argument prevailed because the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our natural rights.
And so, your right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to travel where you want, to worship as you see fit, to keep and bear arms to defend yourself against a tyranny. And, after the right to life, the greatest and most uniquely American of rights – and I say this in front of the seat of the government – is the right to be left alone.
We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights. Think about it – if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away. But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.
This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem. It’s a problem with government today. There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as the democrat version of big government.
We fought a revolution because British soldiers could knock on our doors and demand that we house them, and demand that we turn over property to them because they could write their own search warrants. In the Patriot Act, the most hateful piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, a republican congress and a republican president authorized federal agents to do the unthinkable – to write their own search warrants. And the republican administration didn’t even let members of the House of Representatives read the Patriot Act before they voted on it.
Why should the government be able to spy on us? We should be able to spy on them!
When some judge is rationalizing away our liberty, or some congressman is plotting to take away your freedom or your tax dollars, we should know what they do every minute that they do it.
I was speaking to a group of congressman from a neighboring state – I won’t tell you which state it was, but they don’t play football there – and they came up to me and said “this is the first time we have heard that the Patriot Act allows federal agents to write their own search warrants.” Remember, in the Constitution, we put in the 4th Amendment, the right to be left alone, to make sure that if the government had a target, no matter how guilty the target, no matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, no matter how dangerous is the target, the government has to go through a neutral judge with a search warrant before it can get to that target. These members of Congress said, “we didn’t know that the Patriot Act allowed the government to bypass the courts and write any search warrant they wanted.” Then I asked them a question I knew the answer to already – did you read the Patriot Act before you voted on it? The answer – no. What were you voting on? A summary we received. Let me guess who wrote the summary – some lawyers in the justice department, right? Of course.
Would you hire anybody to run your business that committed you to a violation of the very reason you’re in business if they didn’t even read the document by which they were making that commitment? Of course not.
The camera is the new gun. There’s nothing that government dislikes more than the light of day, and cameras recording what the government is doing, whether it’s on a street corner, or in there, or in Washington D.C., we have the right to know everything that they do and why they do it, and when they do it, and how they are taking our freedoms.
I have another one of my basic core beliefs. The individual has an immortal soul. Every individual is greater than any government.
Your government is based on fear and force. You don’t have to take my word on it. The 2nd president on the United States, John Adams, said “Of course the government is based on fear.” And the first president, George Washington, said “Government is not reason, it is force.” I think they knew what they were talking about.
Now fast-forward to modern times. Whenever the government wants something, it scares us. During the civil war, Lincoln tried civilians in this state where no battles occurred, by military tribunal. After he died the Supreme Court invalidated everything the military tribunals did. During the first world war, the Wilson administration locked up 2000 people called anarchists – same thing as enemy combatants. No trial, no charge, just jail for the duration of the war. In World War II, FDR locked up 150,000 Japanese Americans, people born in the United States, who got no trial and had no charges, and when the war was over were given $25 and told to go home.
Today we have federal agents. You know I get in arguments with my friends at Fox News, and one of them, I don’t have to tell you who it is, but is truly the most irascible person there. And he said to me, you know you have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, and you have a problem with the Patriot Act, what will you do if I get sent to Guantanamo Bay, will you visit me? And I say, Bill – no, because they’ll probably keep me there as well.
Government likes to say that it’s taking an oath to uphold the Constitution. In the years that I was on the bench, it seemed that every time government lawyers were in my courtroom, if the government was prosecuting someone who was legitimately guilty or whether it was a mistake, or whether somebody was suing the government because government contractors or government doctors, or government workers made a mistake – the government doesn’t come in to the courtroom to enforce the constitution, it comes into the courtroom to evade and avoid it. That, ladies and gentlemen, must be stopped.
This is a great moment in our history. A crowd of this magnitude on a beautiful day, in the boiling sun, in the most middle-American of great middle-American states…comes together not because the president is a democrat, not because his predecessor was a republican, not because a war is just or unjust, not because the Fed is stealing or printing – you’re here because you believe in human freedom.
It is the essence of our existence that we should be free. But remember this: the government hates freedom. It is an obstacle to every one of their designs. Whenever they write laws, whenever they take your tax dollars, whenever they regulate your private behavior, whenever they tell you how to spend your money, whenever they tell you what medicines to take, whenever they tell you what food to eat, whenever they tell you with whom you may or must associate, they are taking away your freedom and they love to get away with it. And they cannot get away with it any longer.
In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms.
Jefferson was no saint but he was the greatest of our American presidents. He believed that the individual was greater than the state. He believed that the states were greater than the federal government. And when he wrote that our rights come from our creator, and that our rights are inalienable, he forever wed the notion of natural rights to the American experience and the American experiment. We must be vigilant about every right that the government wants to take away from us.
You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.” He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free.
Shortly before he died, Jefferson lamented, that in his view of the world it was the natural order of things for government to grow and freedom to be diminished; how ardently he wish that that wouldn’t happen. And in order to prevent it from happening he had a very simple remedy, “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny. When the government fears the people, that is liberty!”
Sunday, August 2, 2009
What does it mean to be free? Do you know what liberty's make you free. We all know about our warrant rights, gun rights, free press rights. Have you ever thought about the right to have children, how many and with whom. What if the government said you can only have one child or none. Maybe only with someone from a certain race or religion. Tyranny is a idea that we oppose emphatically, but we vote for repeatedly. How many times has freedom slipped through peoples fingers while the tend to their everyday needs and wants voting like sheep's for the same despots that have already taken you through the spin cycle. What about the right to be friends with whoever you want. I have friends that are liberal, conservative, anti-political, hippies, we have to stand against the oppression of the powerful, obedience to the elite. They care neither for me or you. When will people wake up to the reality that the liberty's we have taken from the clutch of a tyrannical colonial government pushing confiscatory taxation on a people who were semi-autonomous, intelligent, industrious and moral. The law that was written on their hearts told them that to be a slave to the state is the ultimate and most permanent form of slavery. The founders would have hated what we have become. We just want to suckle at the tit of the state. Weak, lazy, scared and whiners. This country was built on people willing to take a chance, to forge there own way into the river of life. We will find out soon if the people will stand for the freedom's our founders fought and died for. Will you stand with this new band of brothers, this group of freedmen. The battle will come, it is not a matter of if, our you ready, will you choose to beleive in this idea that we call freedom.
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