Lehigh Valley Conservative Voice

A couple of days ago, I received an email from a prominent “conservative” in the Lehigh Valley, addressing both the “incompetence” of Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, and the “stupidity of our bureaucrats” in their reaction to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted “panty bombing” of a US airliner. By now, we’re all aware of Napolitano’s promptly announcing that “the system worked” when a terrorist actually detonated a failed explosive device onboard a US airliner on Christmas day. And, by now, we’re also well aware of the new regulations placed on air travelers for potty breaks and where they place their hands and what they can put on their laps while “flying the friendly skies”. Hearing my friend’s concerns, I offer the following commentary in response:

On the issue of Janet, “yer doin’ a great job Nappie”, Napolitano, I’ve got to say she was right…the system did work just fine. Of course I’m not talking about the US Department of Homeland Security and our intelligence system. I’m talking rather, about the system envisioned by America’s founders, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison: When our corrupt and buffoonish federal government failed us yet again, “we the people” got up out of our seats, took effective measures, and took care of the so-called “Panty Bomber” ourselves. According to that same system, “We the People” are doing the same thing when it comes to the federal government’s so-called “healthcare reform”, the bogus threat of so-called “climate change” (formerly known as “global warming”), and the sham of so-called “government stimulated economic recovery”. On all of these issues, “We the People” are rising up from our seats, formulating and demanding effective measures based on reality, not on false crises invented by ruling class elitists like Barack Obama’s shadow-government czars and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. In 2010, “We the People” are poised to elect real citizen servant leaders to replace the self serving career politicians who occupy the seats of American federal government in Washington, D.C. The beauty of the “system” envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison is that, as a matter of “natural law”, the “system” of government they envisioned and put in place will always work as long as “We the People” are willing to assert our will to choose liberty over tyranny.

Second, responding on the “stupidity of our bureaucrats” in the aftermath of the attack of the “panty bombing” terrorist, “the government” is doing what it always does. When one individual or a very few do something stupid like wrecking an oil tanker or something heinous like gunning down innocent defenseless people, the government ALWAYS responds by cracking down on the liberty of the law abiding citizen. So of course, in the present case, their response is to turn the “friendly skies” into “Con-Air”, not for the terrorists, but for all law abiding air travelers. All they need to add are the handcuff belts and leg shackles!

Happy New Year to all! May 2010 be a year where “We the People” restore legitimate purpose to a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, which will once again reflects the spirit of our nation’s founding in a way actually worthy of our “own consent!”

The question came up on an Internet discussion whether healthcare is a right. The assertion was made that healthcare is not a right, but a “privilege”. I’d argue that it is neither:

I agree fully that there is no “right” to healthcare, nor to food, clothing, warmth, shelter, education, subsistence, or any material or physical human need. These claimed “rights”, created and granted by the “Statist” are simply an illusion and a diversion from the concepts of Liberty that actually are unalienable, “endowed” rights of all humanity. The concept and spirit of such rights was articulated in the Declaration of Independence–life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (virtue)–and in the Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the US Constitution–freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, the right to be secure in your person and your possessions, to be free from unwarranted search, seizure, and arrest, the right not to be compelled to be a witness against one’s self, the right to counsel and to be faced with witnesses and accusers, to not be subject to cruel and unusual punishment, the right to a speedy trial, etc., etc.

I disagree that healthcare is a right, but I also disagree that it is a privilege. Healthcare, and all the rest of the things on the list of “securities” are “responsibilities”, laid at the feet first of the individual, and then at the feet of the community engaged in free enterprise and the enjoyment of actual rights. With Liberty comes responsibility, and to forfeit Liberty to evade responsibility is to beg for tyranny.

The whole evil scam by political philosophers like Karl Marx and by career politicians in the US Congress and White House is to tempt free people to abandon their God given Liberty in exchange for relief, granted by the “rule of man”, from the “responsibility” for providing their own sustenance and the sustenance they owe to their families, and the aid and concern they owe to their peers. The aim of the ruling class offering comfortable relief from responsibility is to make it so that their subjects, little by little, lose their understanding of the concept of unalienable rights and Liberty, until the memory of Liberty disappears from their consciousness.

The aim of the “Statist” is to break the spirit of individual, and of civic responsibility, and replace it with dependence on, and obedience to, a ruling government occupied by an elite ruling class, the kind of government where the subjects do the work and produce goods and provide services, and the rulers collect both the bulk of the fruits of their labor and place burdensome taxes on everything that their subjects actually consume for themselves. As the paradigm shifts from Liberty to Tyranny, the ruling elite get richer and more powerful while the subjects become more and more burdened by regulation and taxation, and less and less likely to see in themselves the power to regain their Liberty, if they even remember what it Liberty is.

Six months ago my focus as a conservative was on reforming the Republican Party along the lines of its own credo. I was ready to purge the party of all apostates so that it could be reborn with a renewed purpose and commitment to the goals and beliefs of the founding fathers . That was then, this is now. What has transpired in the interval has caused me to broaden and re-assess what must be the priorities of the conservative movement. America’s largest political party, the Democratic Party, has used its filibuster proof majorities to ramrod radical leftwing legislation through both houses of congress to the awaiting hands of our Marxist President. They have betrayed their conservative campaign pledges of 2008 and have in 2009 made a mockery of our representative government. Large demonstrations, public opinion polls, phones calls and e-mail protests to congressional offices have failed to stem to the Democrats’ wild legislative run to socialist solutions. Clearly the new imperative for those who believe in individual liberty must be to stop the Democrats here and now. The new priority must be to defeat every Democrat candidate in every election in November of 2010. Only this tactic will serve to stem the nation’s plunge towards big government tyranny and American submission/subservience to corrupt UN treaties.
While we must not abandon our efforts to bring our Republican Party back to its principles and then hold it to a steady Reaganesque course we should at all cost avoid any actions that would have the effect of enabling any Democrat victory at the polls.
The Republican Party has been guilty of not living up to its principles and for this they have paid a heavy and well deserved price at the polls. It is unfortunate that as a result power has been transferred to an even more dastardly and determined Democrat Party.
Through/by their autocratic arrogance Democrats have proven themselves unworthy of the public’s trust. By their own lies and misdeed we must now hold them all to account. On this goal we must all unite. In time we, conservatives, will regain control of the Republican Party but for now we must focus on reclaiming the legacy of 1776.

Scott Armstrong

You gotta love Congress and of course you gotta love “The One”, President Barack Obama. As we shovel snow on a Sunday morning in December, the Sunday talking heads are all abuzz over Senate Democrats finally finding that precious 60th vote for “cloture”, permitting a full Senate vote on “health care reform”. God bless ‘em, because what they will reform is not healthcare, but the ideological leanings of candidates elected to Congress in the upcoming 2010 elections.

They’re acting as if it’s 2005, and America is chanting “throw out the bums”, pointing fingers and spewing venom at the Republican controlled Congress that started our country’s descent to its present lows. That’s not the case however, and folks like Reid, Pelosi, and SNL’s Al Franken fail to grasp that now that the Democratic controlled Congress has kicked the demise of American “exceptionalism” into overdrive, “we the people” are kindling an Election Day wrath set to dwarf New Gingrich’s Republican Revolution of 1994.

Yes, the US Senate finally has the 6 out of 10 senators needed for “cloture” on healthcare “reform”. Meanwhile, however, at the same time, nearly 6 out of 10 Americans (56% of voters polled) are opposed to the legislation (with 5 out of 10 “strongly opposed”). In fact, 6 out 10 of voters polled (57%) believe that America would be better off if this Congress passed nothing at all, rather than whatever “Obama Care” ends up to be. Add to that the realclearpolitics.com Congressional job approval average of 27% and Rassmussen polling indicating that only 30% of voters believe that America is “on the right track”, and you’ve got to wonder why the Democrats in Congress are continue to “follow the leaders”. It’s like a cult-like act of mass political suicide, when polling indicates that nearly 7 in 10 voters (66%) want a smaller government, that provides fewer services, and of course inflicts less taxation on the purses of its constituents.

But, maybe the Democrats are reading the polls. And maybe they actually do realize they’re sailing on the Titanic, headed for the iceberg of 2010. Maybe they see honor in sacrificing the outcome of the 2010 elections for the sake of achieving the biggest advancement of “Statist” government control of Americans’ “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” since Roosevelt’s “New Deal”. Maybe that could explain why they press forward against the people’s will, even when NBC/Wall Street Journal polling reveals that both the Democratic and the Republican Parties have fallen behind the “Tea Party” movement in terms of who’d best represent them in Congress. Maybe they see a “revolution” against the hapless failures of both the Democratic and Republican Parties on the horizon, and they’re making an “Alamo” commitment to do all they can do for the cause of “big government” before their inevitable demise. The NBC/Wall Street Journal numbers are ominous: 41% of voters now favor the Tea Party movement, while 35% stand with the Democrats, and a mere 28% still find faith in the waning Republican brand.

As he campaigned, Barack Obama and his supporters did all they could to suggest that “The One” represented the “Lincoln” of our day. One year in office, America sees nothing of substance supporting the hype. Yet, Obama’s presidency might provide a catalyst for significantly influencing America’s unfolding history. Thanks to Obama and his Democratic controlled Congress, paralleled by the lack of leadership and principle evident in the GOP, the conservative “Tea Party” movement threatens to displace the political power of the Democrat and Republican Party elite the same way the Party of Lincoln replaced the failed Whigs in that historic revolt against the disingenuous status quo of his day.

Obama garners the lowest first year approval rating of any president since the invention of television, replacing Jimmy Carter as the most disappointing president in the “baby boomer” era. He and the Congress of Pelosi and Reid can be credited with ramming their vision of paternalistic “Statism” down the throats of America’s citizens, granted license by the previous Republican controlled Congress whose failings aligned the stars to hand Obama and the Democrats “absolute power”. God bless them all for doing what they have done. For they’re also forcing the hand of that re-emerging patriotic spirit in America through which citizens like Jake Towne and Mathew Benol are answering the call to challenge the failed status quo, and where average “Tea Party” patriots are reviving the spirit of American “exceptionalism”, tied inseparably to the ideals of our nation’s founding roots.

While President Barack Obama hasn’t accomplished much of anything in his tenure in the White House (unless you count his Nobel Prize), he has done one thing that will certainly benefit the United States of America. In his successful bid to be elected President, he’s broken a significant barrier…not the barrier of race…but the barrier set up and defended by the status quo, two-party, good old boys network.

For a long time, presidential politics has been based on candidates getting the nod, when it was “their turn”. There have been a few exceptions to the rule, like perhaps Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan, but even these presidential candidates threw their hats into the ring having been governors first. Barack Obama, in contrast, announced his candidacy for President of the United States with little more experience in state and national government than some congressional interns, but with a firm grasp on “community organizing” as a means of taking control of power and commandeering public resources for “redistribution”. Much to the consternation of his Capitol Dome peers (especially those who had waited their turn), the “audacious” upstart turned the status quo of both the Democrats and the GOP on its ear and became the 44th President of the United States.

Despite the revelation that “audacity of hope” is really just the “audacity of hype”, the ascendency of “The One” to the highest office of the land should be a game changer to a good many patriots. Thanks to Obama, the glass ceiling of the failed two-party system is clearly shattered. As he has for the Nobel Prize, Obama’s candidacy and election has lowered the bar of presidential politics. Frankly, if he can get elected, there’s no reason why candidates from outside the standard “A list” of elephants and donkeys can’t be just as successful.

While Barack Obama ran and got elected as a Democrat, it should be plain by now that he’s anything but. With his subversive criticisms of the US Constitution, his penchant for socialist governing structures like “single payer” health insurance, nationalization of major private sector corporations, deficit spending and exponentially rising debt, and even his attempt to implement a curriculum to turn America’s school children into little Obamatons, it’s clear to more and more Americans that Barack Obama and his army of “avowed communist” czars are attempting a radical revolutionary coup. Their quest is truly to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”…in a model resembling Cuba or Venezuela.

But like a cancer caught in time, there’s good news for America in Obama’s presidency. And the good news is two-fold: First, now that we’ve had a taste of Obama’s fundamental transformation, a lot “Hope and Change” voters are deciding not to swallow the Kool-aid and spitting it back into the cup. Secondly, and more importantly, having seen what’s become of our government under the absolute control first of the Republican Party, then the Democrats, and now the Democrats and Obama, the grass roots of America is awakening like the proverbial sleeping giant, riled up and glaring with anger at the 537 beltway elitists and their “war chest” cronies who no longer serve our interests, but rule our lives and livelihoods from inside the beltway.

The recent elections are a forecast of things to come. On the local scene, the former “rising star of the Democratic Party”, Don Cunningham barely eked out a re-election challenge by political newcomer Scott Ott. Although Ott ran as a Republican, he ran as his campaign independent of the Lehigh County Republican Committee, lowering the stock of the old guard dictatorship. And while Ott lost his election, “Tea Party” patriots, involved in movements like Campaign for Liberty, The Lehigh Valley 9.12 Group, Concerned Citizens for the Bethlehem Area School District, Leadership for Liberty, The American Conservative Party, and myriad others are energized and ready to charge into the temple, slinging bullwhips and flipping over the tables of the money changers. If polling like Rassmussen’s recent generic congressional vote results are any indication, there may be a political realignment on the horizon. And that realignment will be catalyzed and stoked by the coming congressional elections of 2010, the presidential race in 2012, and the state and local elections along the way. Unlike the “audacity of hype”, that will be “Hope and Change we can believe in”.