Consider the fact that the average household income in the United States is somewhere around $55,000 a year while the current base salary for a member of Congress stands at $174,000. Then remember that the $174,000 a year salaries for all 535 members of the US Congress, plus all the perks lavished on top are funded by taxes extracted from the industry of those whose household income averages less than 1/3 that of its “elected representatives”. It appears my fellows, that “we the people” have consented to the re-establishment of an aristocratic “ruling class” that governs every aspect of our being, funded by the confiscated fruits of our labor, and fortified by all the machinations of gerrymandering advantage available to protect incumbency from interference and influence by the governed.
Now consider the words of Frederick Douglass, one of our nation’s greatest icons for human equality and individual liberty, as he draws reference both America’s great Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:
“We hold it to be self-evident that no class or color should be the exclusive rulers of this country”…”If there is such a ruling class, there must of course be a subject class, and when this condition is once established this Government of the people, by the people and for the people, will have perished from the earth.”
This Memorial Day weekend, let us remember not only the sacrifices made for Liberty, but also let us remember Liberty itself, what it looks like, what it feels like, what it is and what it is not. Let us look at the histories of those who have handed LIberty to [b]our[/b] generation still intact , and remember what Liberty requires of those who enjoy it as an “inalienable right”. On this Memorial Day weekend, consider true American Liberty and ask whether we actually know it or not and whether we actually still have it as a possession, or have finally traded the tenets of our great Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address for apathetic comfort and a false sense of security as “subjects” to what Douglass rightly defines as an “exclusive ruling class”.
…and then consider what “we the people” will do to get Liberty back so that we can at least hand it on to the next generation who will remember us some Memorial Day weekend.
I’ve been party to a couple of discussion this week on the issue of voting one’s conscience, also known as the dilemma of being stuck between “choosing the lesser of two evils” at the polls, voting for third party candidates, or even withholding one’s vote altogether when one’s own party fails to put forth a candidate worth voting for. In discussions on this topic, a good object lesson is always the presidential election of ’92, where 19% of the electorate voted for Ross Perot, essentially handing the election to Bill Clinton, who won the presidency without a majority of the votes cast. It’s a valid object lesson, pointing out the “down side” to voting based on “principle” and “conscience”. Acknowledging that I understand the implications, here’s still the way I’m starting to see it.
Yes the folks who stood on principle and voted for Perot essentially handed the presidency to Clinton in ‘92. But…after that election, their momentum continued to build. And by ‘94, voters and candidates of principle and conscience were electing the best Congress—probably—in the history of the US. We had Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House, the “Contract with America”, balanced federal budgets, welfare reform, and folks like J.C. Watts and Pat Toomey in the House, and Fred Thompson in the Senate. The “saviors” of our Republic were all “citizen servants”, all of whom served “heroically”, and then returned to private life after a few years of true “public service”. Unfortunately, when they left, we were left once again with the career politician “stagnant quo” who have since brought us to the lowest point in America’s “great experiment” at “self governance” where we find ourselves today.
It’s a battle between those who stand on the side of “we the government” elitist rule, and those willing to stand up for “we the people” governance, based individual liberty and constitutional limits on government. The folks on the side of “we the people” stood up with Pat Toomey to challenge Arlen Specter six years ago, and were castigated by the “stagnant quo” of the GOP establishment. Back then they said “we the people” were risking a loss in the general election, or perhaps worse, causing campaign cash to be spilled from the GOP war chest in a primary election. The message read between the lines was, “the movers and shapers are the ‘deciders’ on who GOP general election candidates will be, not the primary voting unwashed masses”. Now, in 2010, after forfeiting two US Senate seats, losing majorities in both the state and federal legislatures, losing numerous seats in local office, and leaving debt and deficits piled high at all levels of government, the “stagnant quo” has fallen quietly in line behind “we the people”. And now they’re ready, albeit in their usual Machiavellian way, to “make nice” with the miscreants they used to disparage.
There’s always “risk” in challenging the “stagnant quo”…risk that you might lose, but lose what…an election? If you don’t challenge the “stagnant quo” who systematically and pragmatically forfeit more and more of our individual liberties for the sake of their own personal gain, advantage, and security, then we’re guaranteed to lose, not just “an election”…but “blood won” liberty itself.
To each generation of our nation, responsibility for the stewardship of liberty has been passed: responsibility to trim the lamp of liberty and replenish its reservoir, to preserve, protect, and sustain that beacon and “shining light”, and to dutifully hand it on, fully intact and glowing brightly for the next generation of Americans. My generation is the closest in US History to being the generation that stood silent, watching as the lamp was finally snuffed out. Thankfully, the spirit of liberty is still alive in the hearts of Americans. Though it may be hardly yet present in the failed Republican and Democratic parties, it is certainly and more importantly present in what we’re calling the “Tea Party” movement of the early 21st Century, a movement made up of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who still remember the tenets of Liberty and of government limited by a Constitution and its Bill of Rights—May these patriots meld into a political renaissance to become the last best, and the freshest revival, of hope for American Liberty!
Thomas Jefferson, the leader of America’s first Revolution made this statement: “When the people fear the government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty”.
With that in mind, I’d ask you to take a few seconds to watch this incredibly sick and disturbing video produced for the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, and then ask yourself this question: “Why is the government of the Keystone State attempting, as blatantly as any tyrant in the history of the world, to instill raw fear in the hearts of its citizens?
People all over the Commonwealth and for that matter all over the country are becoming swept up in a political renaissance, coming together to study great works of American political thought like the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, writings by John Locke, Thomas Payne, and the Founders, and more contemporary works from the likes of Ayn Rand and W. Cleon Skousen. And what is the response of today’s corrupt political establishment? Blatant attempts to “define” these enemies of the status quo as neo-Nazis, members of the lunatic fringe, and even as potential domestic terrorists. One has to find it all amusing, if it were not so disturbing in light of this threatening government produced video, to think that the reaction of the establishment status quo is a virtual re-enactment of the reaction that loyalists “to the Crown” must have had to the rebels Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hancock, and the rest, as political discontent in the colonies began to smolder into the revolution that established the United States of America.
I have said it many times and it’s worth repeating now. If I thought empowering the government would solve our problems I would be a liberal too. History, however, proves the opposite, and those of us who see the world objectively take to heart Thomas Paine’s words that “government is but a necessary evil.” The private sector has its problems and is far from perfect, but in general it can be said that the market serves to keep its level of service up and its prices competitive. The same cannot be said of government, especially on the federal level. Federal bureaucrats annually receive ever expanding budgets, are immune from the need to provide customer service, and audits of efficiency and performance are the anomaly rather than the rule. With these dynamics it should come as no surprise that the federal government’s response to the oil spill in the gulf has been inadequate. A quick review of the government’s reactions to previous natural disasters proves this is the rule and not the exception.
For now we may anticipate the routine government responses of news conferences that say and achieve nothing, new important sounding committees that will in time produce reports telling us what we already know, and politicians who simplistically demand more government authority to insure “this never happens again.”
I hear my liberal friends talk of their desire for social justice as their motivation for empowering the state. Does “social justice” spring from big government’s bloated and expensive bureaucracies, and a general failure to provide services and relief in a cost effective or timely fashion? Evidence indicates that society rather than government is the proper and preferable vehicle for social justice. So, for the cause of “social justice” I am a conservative.
Scott Armstrong
Several years ago the country was rocked by a sex scandal that involved the president of the United States and a young female intern. This president was already being investigated for an allegation that he used state troopers to bring a state employee into his hotel room under false pretenses in order to have sex with her. In time other women came forward with credible claims of sexual assault with the president as the perpetrator.
Fast forward to April 2010 when a quarter back for a national football team has been accused of similar behavior. Contrary to what happened in the case of the president no criminal or civil charges have been filed but nonetheless the media appears outraged by the player’s behavior and the NFL may move to punish the player with a suspension. Curious that this same media was much less concerned when the president was involved in similar activity and portrayed the matter as private. We were told by the national Organization of Women that they agreed that this was not a problem as the sex was consensual. Suddenly sex in the work place between a woman and her superior boss was “no problem”. Even with the other women’s corroborating stories the media and the woman’s groups stood by their man.
So is the lesson that a Democrat president can do as he pleases with women but football players can’t? One can’t help but notice the selective outrage here.
Scott Armstrong