If You Love Public Schools, You'll Heart Huckabee

The title says it all. If you are completely satisfied with the current state of our public schools, Mike Huckabee is your man and reading this article will be of no use to you. Thanks for reading these first sentences, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

However, if you are not exactly thrilled with the results of our public school system but you think Huckabee is your man, I encourage you to (as Moderates are prone to suggest) keep an open mind and give me a chance to make my case. As a refugee from the public school system and having mastered the 12 Step Program of "Catcher in the Rye Syndrome" the attempt to save our culture one remedial reader at a time, I believe I have the credentials to challenge your populist love affair with Mr. Huckabee.

A good populist, as defined by Merriam-Webster is "a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people." And as Rush Limbaugh likes to point out, we common people know who we are. Common people are authentic and genuine and expect it in others. However, as evidenced by our failing public schools we might want to consider that the great guy sitting next to you singing "Bringing In The Sheaves" with robust enthusiasm who also serves as principal at the local zoo of a school might not be a living saint. A thoughtful consideration of the parable about the tree and good fruit and bad fruit might be your assignment for tonight. (Okay, so I haven't fully recovered from my teacher status.)

The point I want to make is that a person can be an authentically shallow person voicing the right platitude at the required time like the proverbial typing monkeys. Given time, an authentic commoner who needs real action in solving a problem can recognize trite platitudinous drivel for what it is: WORTHLESS.

Welcome to the school campus run by Mr. Fluffy. We teachers call our principal, Mr. Fluffy because we never know what's going to happen because emotions guide our helmsman. Parents may wonder how young girls cutting their "mystery meat" with a knife brought from home or boys who draw a gun on a piece of paper are arrested and then suspended from school. But yet a troubled student can walk into a class and shoot at will. The answer to your query is a local Mr. Fluffly who agonizes over everything petty while also extending Christian forgiveness to serious infractions or problems.

When a teacher has had it up to her French twist with a disrespectful student, Mr. Fluffy strives to prove he's more Christian than she is, forgiving our dear student of all his sins and infractions. Mr. Fluffy twists the golden rule sideways by loving the enemies of others. Mr. Fluffy grins and joshes with the classroom's little hellion, making said hellion promise to not cause Miss French Twist anymore trouble, and then Mr. Fluffy pats him on the back and sends him on his way. Mr. Fluffy then continues on down the hall with the air in his head making a whistling noise come out his mouth. This is your local zoo school and one prime reason of how it got that way.

But, how does this connect to Huckabee you might be asking yourself. Read the "brilliant" foreign policy thoughts of Huckabee and think not of foreign policy but of the state of our public schools.

The United States, as the world's only superpower, is less vulnerable to military defeat. But it is more vulnerable to the animosity of other countries. Much like a top high school student, if it is modest about its abilities and achievements, if it is generous in helping others, it is loved. But if it attempts to dominate others, it is despised.

Huckabee just gave truth to the upside-down world of our failing public schools by supporting the notion that successful students are to be despised. This is prime Mr. Fluffy territory. Do you know of a situation where the campus thug bully attacked the good and righteous student and both students were punished? Have you heard murmurs of a good and righteous student being lectured to not be so good and righteous because it only antagonizes the bad and unrighteous?

Well consider this: if the achieving student is urged to downplay his natural ability and the underachiever is not only forgiven his predatory tendencies but actually rewarded by seeing the gifted student degraded, then how on earth can worthwhile education be happening on that campus? Mr. Fluffy firmly believes the righteous will be persecuted by the unrighteous, but he mistakes his religion for his job assignment, which is to foster an environment of learning and safety on his campus - NOT to allow his religious beliefs foster a sort of fatalism that allows the big ones to eat the little ones with impunity. That's not Christianity, that's Christian/Nihilism!

To apply Mr. Huckabee's standard of public school principal to American foreign policy would be disastrous. Imagine Mr. Fluffy as President of the world's lone super-power; agonizing over the petty issues and good o'l boy-ing tyrants and dictators. Listen carefully to Huckabee's silly meaningless platitudes and realize that to a fluffy Principal/President, those brave students in Iran with the "Live Free or Die" banners are the same as the gifted student striving to succeed according to his God given ability. While professing that it "grieves his heart", a fluffy President knows it is the protesting students who must be quiet for the greater good.

This is simply the application of Huckabee's top high school student example put into practice on the world stage. A Fluffy President knows best and it's the bad guys with the weapons that must be pardoned for their sin, because a Fluffy President is able to love our enemies more than he respects his own common citizen.

If Mr. Huckabee never considered this application of his foreign policy statement, then I suggest his shallow introspection is not the quality of a great man much less that of a potential President of the United States of America. If you did your aforementioned homework assignment you now understand why you can't pick a ripe juicy fig from a thistle because there is a difference between benevolence - the desire to do good things - and beneficence - the actual accomplishment of something useful and good for another common man.

Class dismissed.

Stop Fighting, Start FixingOr, Don't Go Down Fighting, Just Go

When it comes to politics, I must admit to "fighting" fatigue. Hillary Clinton tells us she is fighting for families. Rep. Chet Edwards (D-TX 17) tells us he is fighting for veterans and families not wanting welfare, but some other vague non-welfare welfare so their children get health care through SCHIP. All this political "fighting for" never addresses the fact that the "fighter's" victims/opponents are simply other American individuals and families that basically want to mind their own business and have others do the same.

Even in high school I thought the "fighting" word pretty stupid. I remember standing at parade rest in the end-zone, Friday Night Lights glaring, as the stadium announcer welcomed the "J. Frank Dobie Fightin' Longhorn Band." What a stupid statement: fightin' Longhorn band. Were we some sort of uniformed gang standing in the end zone looking for an opportunity to march onto the field clubbing our opposition with our musical instruments? Even then the whole "fighting for this" or "fighting for that" seemed inane.

Don't people ever just talk, come to a conclusion of the best course of action, and then proceed in an amicable fashion? Or have common sense and civility left us entirely? Has the the "fighting" mentality of the Contrary Generation been going on so long that they are incapable of accepting defeat when it comes their way? When the President vetoed Congress' expansion of an approved expansion of the S-Chip Bill, Rep. Chet Edwards (D-TX 17) told his constituents in his weekly WTAW radio interview that Republicans and Democrats needed to come together in "good faith" and write an (obviously identical) bill. The reality that the Democrat position was overruled was completely ignored.

The "good faith" line always reminds me of the rite of sharing a campfire with the caveat that I disarm myself while allowing my comrade to remain fully armed and dangerous. Common sense is the casualty of this wall/head banging, creating a psychological disconnect to reality. Senator Kennedy's fighting seems to be obsesed with water. And does Senator Kennedy really think he can pontificate the "torture of water boarding" when a number of people remember a poor girl drowning in Ted's Cadillac as he wandered the shoreline thinking how to save his political career? The irony of such a situation has the makings of magnificent farce; yet it is accepted as not only normal but profound. The shrill, viper-tongued, lamp-throwing Hillary is the champion fighting with, er, for ... the family? David Mamet--even Shakespeare--could not have written a more sublime farce.

As we enter this next year of political campaigning in earnest, any candidate using the F-words ("fighting for") instead of ardent declarations to defend our American strengths and values (the Constitution, our troops, free enterprise, individual freedom and family) should be instantly and firmly advised to get back to specifics. Irresponsible rhetoric attempting to engage fighting between fellow Americans is just plain tiresome. The republican (little "r") ideal of the best idea winning upon its own merit must resoundingly rebuke the F-words mentality of boilerplate bludgeoning that passes for political discussion.

Respect Belongs To The Individual

Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word tells of his epiphany when viewing minimalist abstract art. Wolfe became aware that the black and white paintings of Barnett Newman or Mark Rothko were the result of a refining fire in the massive, world-wide, time-eternal libraries of spiritual understanding. The paintings, in a sense, distilled ages of literature. Wolfe was on to something. Professor of Fine Arts Robert Rosenblum wrote of Newman's Stations of the Cross series:

Here the ultimates pertain to death and resurrection, evoked by the primal duality of black and white, and of taut linear forces that, like paths of feeling, quiver and strain against a field of raw canvas, translating the sequence of Christ's martyrdom into irreducible, abstract metaphors, and totally transforming the corporeal Passion into a spiritual one.

This sentence is comprehensible if and only if the reader is steeped in the volumes that reveal that Passion. Even then, the physical realities of what actually happened when our Messiah was arrested and crucified escape us. What is missing is the true concept of respect.

The reasonable and proper understanding of the concept of respect remains the recognition of past personal development built upon the foundation of ultimate truths. It is complete foolishness to look upon the end results - wealth, power, or personality - and believe it worthy of respect any more than we can understand the Passion of the Christ simply by viewing a series of paintings at a museum.

The present Post Modern culture has not only reduced the inscrutable mysteries of meaning into mere painted black and white lines, but we project this attitude in our daily lives and think we have gained insight and understanding. Kind of like Clark Griswold's attitude of seeing the Grand Canyon (okay..okay...let's go!) before pointing the station wagon toward Wally World for a 'real' vacation. The post-modern mind shallowly accepts the final synthesized product as the lesson to be learned without the bother of exploring the volumes of thought the final product represents.

Those that demand true respect the most, deserve it the least. But how do we know this basic truth unless we explore the countless volumes of past commentary? The etymology of respect is English, from Latin respectus, literally, act of looking back, from respicere to look back, regard, from re- + specere to look. In Western thought, respect became a commodity of the free man. The feudal man was told whom he was to respect without choice and without the ability to regard the character of the man. If he did regard the character of the person of means, it amounted to nothing unless the entire system were to be overturned. Power in feudal times belonged to those that seized it or were appointed by divine right.

By the Age of Enlightenment, respect came to be a worthy commodity, granted and retained according to the free will of the individual. The American Declaration of Independence and Constitution declared the respect of the individual according to secular and political terms. Respect became an individual's raw material and this new Constitution provided the protection to develop that raw material in our personal pursuit of happiness. The respect garnered by the individual as he lived his life was valued at all costs by the owner. The gift of pledging personal respect to add to that of another individual was a sober event. Respect is only as dear as the individuals bearing it behave.

This is the freedom that the United States of America was created to protect and to nurture. A new order of men established according to the value of the individual. No worldly connections should be able to earn a man respect; this new order required men to build their own. The foundation stones of respect -- duty, honor, commitment, righteousness -- are the same for all men. All men were equal upon achieving the age of consent. From that point, development of personal respect was the deciding factor in the value of that respect. America was designed to reward choice, not connections. To decide or choose is to live in freedom.

The Post-Modern world has supposedly freed itself from all that baggage stored in the libraries of philosophical thought. They were all "out with the old/ in with the new." To ponder out the good from the bad, the enduring from the au currant, was so yesterday. The Post-Modernists are respect thieves. Anyone with integrity who operates in righteousness is vilified for doing so. Post-Modernists add up their stolen respect like notches on a gun. Every day they take aim at a new target and then proceed to destroy their prey.

Freed of the past form of constitutional respect, post-modernists can destroy the integrity of men of respect while being completely devoid of the characteristics of respect themselves. Stolen respect creates a wealth of power. Stolen respect is sold on the political table and we see such odd bedfellows as the burly guys of the labor union's support for girly-man presidential candidate, John Edwards. Freed from working out your own respect before an omniscient God, a Post-Modernist can answer the question, "Did you have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski?" with a transcendental musing on the legal meaning of "is".

These leaders spend so much political time destroying any opposition or buying respect back in the home district that they fail to do that which they were elected to do. Keep bridges from falling down, protect the border, defeat those who would do us harm, honor the Constitution -- these things require men of integrity, righteousness, honor, diligence, justice; all the historical aspects of respect. To expect anything of value, of worth and principle from a Post Modernist is complete foolishness. Without examination of the qualities that have stood the test of time, respect devolves back into a feudal age of power, coercion and compulsion. This is our future unless something is done.

Today's leaders are leaders because they were elected 20-30+ years ago. Most have never worked any other job other than politics. The current thought of accepting the end result of power in exchange for the age old qualities of personal respect has allowed the incumbent to rule rather than the Constitution. Our Congress is full of 'appointed' Lords and Ladies rather than men of respect. Why should we be surprised to find corruption, malfeasance, lack of character, and incompetence on both sides of the aisle?

We have allowed our leaders too much respect for the end result of position rather than observing the qualities of their own personal respect. Even worse, in doing so, we have devalued our own respect and become unwashed wastrels begging at the trough of government largess. We continue to vote for our appointed representative to keep the money flowing even though that representative's votes tell sensible constituents to go pound sand. When Chet Edwards (D-TX 17) was questioned about his vote not to fund the troops of the surge in Iraq, (a vote that had many of his constituents furious) he laughed and said, "That's what's great about a democracy." (!) This cocksure presumption comes from having purchased his position through distribution of taxpayer money. Such is the attitude of any elected official when citizens sell their self-respect.

The Post Modernist sees the black and white paintings of The Stations of the Cross and thinks himself a better person on the hierarchy of mankind, rather than having met the truth of his need to develop his own personal respect. When the '60's radicals did away with such arcane rules as respect for authority (i.e. police and military) or office (i.e. Republican Party) they paved the way for a legalistic regard for respect. If you doubt that the United States went through a cultural upheaval that has taken us backwards one need only look at the wall of a local classroom where they will see a poster put up by a teacher to describe how students are to treat her and how she will treat them. While these placards use the word respect, the behavior sought is better termed etiquette or common courtesy. Behavior is not respect. Not even good behavior. Treating someone kindly is not the same as respecting them. However, doing so is an investment in your own commodity of respect. Today, politically correct rules seek to enforce honor to those not willing to cultivate their own respect. All these Post Modernist views of respect are in opposition to the original intent of our Constitution.

To understand respect is to appreciate the value of your own existence and then that of others. A freeman's respect is qualified by his own ability to cultivate that raw material that makes us all equal. The process of developing these abilities are free and available to every man: discipline, work ethic, and integrity. To truly appreciate respect is to recognize and accept the rules and spiritual foundation that created it. The recipient cannot claim the final product as truly his own, unless he dares enter into the great volumes of the past to continue the qualities of men who have set us apart and put us on the road to establish community and civilization. It is to this end that the everlasting qualities of respect are revealed, not by viewing a canvas of end results and assigning upon them respect. Civilization suffers when respect is coerced or stolen from the holder by thugs or those holding political office and authority . The future of our nation depends upon respect remaining the commodity of freeman.

Time Out for the Pepsi Generation

When I was in 3rd grade or so, I remember a TV ad for Pepsi, showing what I thought of as "the older kids" playing touch football on the beach. They were the perfect "older kids" living some sort of 'lifestyle of the rich and famous' as they were to be later classified, whom the Pepsi ad presented as the "Pepsi Generation". They were the cool kids; the tuned-in, turned-on, tuned-out. But throughout the entire American culture the product this set-aside generation has created is akin to a toddler proudly, and rightfully so, presenting their parent with their poopy-bowl. The parent is filled with joy at this presentation of a bowl of excrement, and again rightfully so. But when immature adults are more concerned with their "right" to show their poopy-bowl in public and have the public struck dumb by the magnificence of that feat than in the defense of the Constitution providing the safety for their willful silliness, it behooves grown-ups to snap a chalk-line of cultural relevance and drop a plumb bob of acceptable behavior in our communities.

My point is that this self-anointed Pepsi Generation has been like the unrepentant generation that plagued Moses with their incessant murmuring and excuses as to why they couldn't just do what God told them to do - enter the Promised Land. Complicating simple tasks is the trademark of The Pepsi Generation. Health care, education, retirement, welfare, college tuition, insurance, energy production - each of these industries are being destroyed by a bureaucracy created to muddle the clear path and entrap unwitting passers by.

At present, all clear minds see the sublime beauty of our Constitution with its recognition of our God given rights and establishing capitalism as a course of individual freedom. The second year of the the Clinton Presidency, I declared that the Democratic Party dead. My friends declared the idea absurd at the time, but have realized the prescient qualities of the humble jackalope. The activities and the people excused by the Party cornered them in an unconscionable position. The "Pepsi Generation" must be sent to eternal political "time out", so that the thinking citizens can enter into the Promised Land defined by our forefathers. When integrity and righteousness are perceived as weak, the nasties of the world rise up to do their worst. When stupid behavior receives its swift and just reward, children can play with safety upon their front yards and sidewalks. That's the Promised Land and I say we can take it.

This post came from a comment made at The Breath of The Beast - Cultural Insanity III

We Have Statesmen!

The Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia declared the search of Rep. William Jefferson's (D-La.) Congressional office was unconstitutional. The House Republican Leadership received heat at the time from their supporters for declaring the search unconstitutional. Could we then extrapolate that the House Republican Leadership is in touch with the true interpretation of the Constitution; even to their own hurt? Isn't that the definition of 'statesman'? To defend the Constitution is a solemn oath. If we don't like what it could allow, then amendments are in order.

Bridges and Bureaucracy

A main lesson of the Minneapolis highway bridge collapse is that politicians don't spend our money wisely, because they are too busy spending it to get themselves re-elected. This can only be fixed by us, the taxpayers and voters.

As it is now, unless a bridge is "new and improved" a true bureaucrat would never fund it. Remember Texas Governor Ann Richards cuting the ribbon on the World Trade Bridge in Laredo, proudly proclaiming it as her "gift to the people of Texas"? So, since the first job of an elected official is to get re-elected, the money allocated to every congressional committee and sub-committee is nothing more than oil used to lather up the boys and girls for the political equivalent of WWF. A bureaucrat knows his constituents are fools and could never see something so obtuse as investment in the future continuity of the country if it's just plain keeping things functioning correctly. Unless, that necessary infrastructure is deemed bad ( new refineries? nuclear power? never!) and is to be build in your constituent's backyard; then the bureaucrat can ensure re-election by being against it.


Since some tax monies are meant to support the nation's infrastructure and our bridges are falling down, the logical solution of the bureaucrat is to raise taxes. Like children, they have no shame that they participated in frivolous spending and now have no money for essentials. Only when taxpayers identify - and reject - congressional pork in their own backyard will this silliness stop. My congressman, Chet Edwards (D-TX 17) , is proudly earmarking my district in a manner that enslaves his constituents to his beneficence with your tax money. Many children rebel against a parent that gives money instead of parental love and nurturing. Should we taxpayers be any different? Chet gives us your money, but he votes contrary to our values. I rebel! .

The question of whether the beat goes on, or the crumbling walls of the eminence front is knocked down on rests in the action of united individuals. Things crumble when what's everybody's business becomes nobody's business. This is also the stumbling block of uniting individuals. In contrast to the bureaucrat, statesmen spend tax funds first for essentials and only then consider either returning the money to the the taxpayers or investing in projects that would benefit the future. We need statesmen, but we must vote them in and support them when they are attacked by the Left and the MSM. The truth is that there are statesmen involved in a struggle for our liberty and freedom, much like the Minneapolis highway bridge victims who suddenly found themselves trapped in their cars and plunging into the dark water. The philosophical question for us is: Do we blame Bush and accept even higher taxes or do we bravely jump into the water to save lives and the future of our republic?

Proper Instruction Gets Proper Results

The jackalope has returned from a very well deserved and absolutely bodacious vacation. The joy of seeing my young niece and her rambunctious brothers play and enjoy life was most gratifying and relaxing. The absolute thrill I saw on my nephew’s face as he began to master his new “big” bike’s hand brakes in a curve was reward enough for an hour of coaching him in the high altitude sun that reddened my middle-age wild turkey waddle that used to be a svelte tower of a neck. I was young again, sharing in his joy of learning to do something big and intimidating. I saw it in his face: The world is conquerable! It is not something overwhelming and uncontrollable. It is an undeniable truth: Proper instruction gets proper results.

So when we traveled to Salt Lake City to visit my grown man nephew, wife and son, this thought was in my head. How wonderful was this visit. It was the first time we had seen Justin since his return from Iraq. What joy to see he and his wife, Heather, playing with little (almost) 3 year old Hunter in the front yard as they waited for us to drive up. To hug and kiss and see with your own eyes that everything is alright and getting back to enjoying the life he had fought to preserve for the rest of us. The secret of another child on the way being told first hand and in person to his childless aunt and uncle. The circle of love and family is ever expanding.

Then began the furious evening and following full day of getting the marrow and fat of enjoying each other's company. Absence had definitely made the hearts grow fonder. This time, we had a grand-nephew to listen to and observe and such funny things you learn. As evidence that youth is fleeting, little Hunter had already learned the retort, “I hate you” when reprimanded. Gee, it took me 14 years to come up with that childish rebuttal. As with most silly childish things, Hunter had learned this comment from an older cousin. Improper instruction gets improper results.

As we went about our shared adventure, the repartee in the car was quick and usually silly, but then came the moment for the sowing of salt along with the fun. This is the habit of a teacher: inserting something profound disguised as silliness into the conversation. The childish rebuttal — “Easy for you to say” — is the Liberal answer to anything confoundingly simple and logically concise. I listened with joy to the common sense my young nephew was relaying concerning his plan for the future of his family when, with childish cunning, I slyly slid in a lesson. “Easy for you to say, Justin.” He laughed because it was funny. I explained that the phrase was the catch-all phrase used by the sillies on the Left to excuse failure. He quickly rose to the bait.

“Get a job.” “Easy for you to say.” “Don't get pregnant before marriage.” “Easy for you to say.” “Learn to read and write.” “Learn to speak English.” “Don't drink and drive.” All easy for you to say! If the answer is anything but agreement, the adult/child is sowing seeds of silliness. We all had a great laugh, and then went to eat the most carnivorous hamburger ever invented: The Crown Burger of Salt Lake City. “Easy for you to say!”

Yes, proper instruction gets proper results!

There Is No I In Democrat

The collectivist ideas of the leaders in the Democratic Party are not a secret. Each Democrat Presidential candidate has announced plans of Big Government control of our health care. However, FEMA's response to hurricane Katrina revealed the sluggish, grinding wheels of entrenched bureaucracy. The truth of a bureaucracy is: process is more important than solution. Solution is feared because it could end the necessity of their position. Also, most bureaucrats vote for the party of collectivism either through ethos or job security. To a bureaucrat,fouling the plans of an opposing administration is an admirable task.

The constant murmur of the MSM credits the faults of a bloated government to theopposing administration as if a passing administration is synonymous with government. The MSM perpetuates this dark lie through its constant white noise murmur machine that seeks to obliterate contrary thought. Collectivist government, good; Republican administration, bad.

However, something tremendous happened when the Senate thought they could blithely pass another bureaucratic reform with the Immigration Bill. Our hierarchal government leaders were as soundly rebuked as King John at Runnymede. Rather than the simple-minded Michael Moore definition of a collectivist "We the People", the arrogant elected officials met the "We the People" of the individual. The united action of individuals shut down the Capital Hill phone system. The uniting idea was that the government was not trustworthy to do that which they promised. The power of individuals unified by an idea is unquantifiable.

Every day I hear the lament that Republicans have no leader. I discount that whine as a passing of responsibility. There is a great moment in the movie National Treasure when the character Ben Gates, frustrated because no one believes his warning of a threat to steal the Declaration of Independence, looks upon the revered document and reads the line:

…it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Not only do we have the right, we also have the DUTY — the responsibility — to do something to provide new guards, new representatives, for the future of national security from a fascist Caliphate and liberty at home in this war on the individual. The melting of the Capital Hill phone system is evidence that we have the power necessary for change.

Responsibility belongs solely to the individual. Each of us knows what must be done to stop this collectivist march. Their murmur has become a subversive clamor, declaring the nation broken. We know this argument only serves the purpose of entrenched bureaucrats acting in their collectivist best interest while stalwartly supported by intransigent Democrats. Their condescending arrogance is incongruous with the ideals that established this nation.

We do not need a leader to tell us this or to tell us what action needs to be taken in preparation for the next election. Pruning deadwood and rooting out bad seeds must be done before we can ever hope to plant a new course of action. The murmur machine must be humbled so that new seeds can take root in preparation for the intense change we are demanding. We must not allow our precious vote to continue the bad because the good isn't good enough. Such reasoning leads to cultural destruction and besides note it is the MSM murmur machine telling you of your dissatisfaction. The individual bears that responsibility. Our vote is required.

Because my own district was mad at the Republicans for playing the earmark game, Chet Edwards (D-TX District 17) is now earmarking himself into a lifetime seat in Congress, even though the man is the antithesis of our cultural values. Chet Edwards is the epitome of the absent father, buying off his children rather than representing the values that respect his constituents.
Every state has districts struggling to replace an entrenched Congressman. They are like Chet Edwards, bringing home the bacon, but are not the kind of man you’d be proud to call Daddy or follow as a leader. Lift your comrades up as they engage in the fight. Don’t let our front line falter when the negative accusations reach those shrill high notes. Press forward, keeping your eye on the prize - the establishment of a foundation for change. Just as we must crush the fascist Caliphate into the pit of hell from which it came, we must use the power of united individuals to crush collectivism and stun the murmur machine used against us. As individuals united by an idea we have the power to make a change. Just raise your hand in commitment in the fight for individual freedom. The Federalist Party ceased to be because of their arrogant condescending attitude toward the citizenry they tried to control with Federal power. The ideas of the Federalist were despised by the people. The Democratic Party was established on the ash heap of slavery and their collectivist ideas are real time slavery. They must be defeated because of their ideas. Remember there is no “I” in Democrat.

We Are At War!

I have been away for a long while and I apologize to my dear readers. The truth is that I suffer from intense depression and sometimes I just fall off the map for a while. However, I did do one thing in my absence and that was to write a piece for my dear Beast Tracking blogger friend, Yaacov Ben Moshe. YBM has made it his purpose in life to track the footprints of the Beast in an attempt to shine the light of truth upon the destruction left in the wake of its passing. YBM is a modern St. George and the jackalope applauds his work. I urge you to read my Beast story.

The Beast bears two horns: a horn of hatred and savagery and a horn of authoritarian subversion. The trumpet of the first horn calls individuals to immolation or acts of savagery upon other individuals so heinous and unconscionable that they defy civilized standards of behavior. The blood sacrifice of the immolator erases the individual. It is one of the methods the Beast uses to subdue the entire world. The promise of heaven for the immolator produces a living hell for the individuals left behind. Savagery destroys the connections between individuals. Fear petrifies and isolates. Retaliation against this must be sure and absolute. Civilized people must unite and be resolved or we are lost.

The second horn is a loud trumpet of murmuring. It is the horn of demoralization. It is the horn of authoritarian subversion seeking to imprison the soul and mind. The constant murmur discredits individuals that stand against it. This is the technique of Stalin or any dictator. Anyone disagreeing with Stalin was obviously insane until receiving a shot in the back of the neck for being a criminal. In many ways, the questionable mental characterization is worse than the bullet, since the discredited individual must continue to live in the world from which he is now separated.

This is the horn of the beast that pierced my soul and grieves my heart. This is the method the Beast is using to cause America to destroy itself.The source of the Beast’s power is big government – its politicians and bureaucrats. The Beast twists intelligence into business savvy, character into shrewdness, and virtue into the ability to be irresponsible and escape the consequences. The mark of the Beast is man trebled and an empty oblivion, which is the absence of God. The murmur is used to destroy the righteous man while upholding the acts of the wicked. The murmur believes the nation is broken. The conflict is simply big government, entrenched politicians and bureaucrats at war with the individual. The Beast with its mighty horns is at war with our American philosophy both within our nation and on foreign soils. But here comes the Beast’s main obstacle.

The murmur has created a void and nature abhors a vacuum. The more God is denied, the more He exists. What happens to victims of the Beast in the horror work camps of North Korea? God rushes in and feeds their individual soul with precious smuggled pages of the Bible. When the Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn contemplated walking into the darkness of the Siberian snow to lie down, to give up, and let the snow cover him into a frozen death it was another prisoner making the sign of the cross in the snow with his foot that restored a broken heart. Triumph over the Beast does not come from the death of the individual, but the blood of the perfect sacrifice, crucified but yet victorious over death and the Beast. God in his infinite wisdom understood that man must be free in order to make a choice to worship Him. Likewise in the American experience, we must be free in order to choose our future.

Every day I hear individuals clamoring for a leader, someone to call them to arms. This is simply passing the responsibility. We acted as individuals during the Immigration Debate and shut down the phone network on Capitol Hill. The power of focused, like-minded individuals is unquantifiable.

We recognize big government types, entrenched bureaucrats and politicians, and the purveyors of murmur. We can see that the Democratic Party is at war with America, the individual and ultimately at war with God. That they sense no danger in that endeavor only heightens the necessity of our action.We have the power to encourage others to shake off the self-imposed shackles of group think and the deafening murmur. We have a vote and we can empower individuals around us to vote. We can urge them to be not afraid.

Imagine an America where we are proud of our way of life and would defend it to death. Imagine an America without the false promises and incessant murmuring of the Democratic Party and their fawning media murmurers. Imagine an America not at war with the individual, but rather feeling great pride because of individual success.

We don’t really need a leader to tell us these things. We know it instinctively. When the French republicans stormed the Bastille, it wasn't really to free prisoners, but to gain control of the weaponry stored there. We must unite to rid ourselves of the weaponry of backroom deals, lies, fabrications and the senseless murmuring constantly used against us. If in this next election we were to send every elected Democrat home, can you imagine the instantaneous hush of the murmur? Can you imagine the fear our enemies would experience when the Americans who empower them every day lose both political power and also their murmur machine?

Yes, we have Republicans entrenched in political schemes, but let us concentrate upon the most ruthless adversaries to American individualism and send them packing with a smarting defeat. Individuals united can reject every collective socialist in Washington, and even to our city districts. The Revolution of 1994 was only the first volley. Victory has not been declared and we have been sucked into the black hole of stalemate. As individuals, we have the power to defeat collectivists as surely as we can crash the phone system of our leaders.

The 2008 election must be a resounding victory for the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and Bill of Rights. It must be a victory for the individual and a complete rejection of the murmuring poll-driven press.

Once we stop being at war with ourselves, America can defeat any foe on any continent. We just have to make the decision. I'm drawing the line in the sand. Are you with me?

Pirates vs Government Controlled Business

It is a curious fact that nothing is new and that every major event has a correlating story from history. The art of reading the tea leaves is not just the revelation of a possible true or false prophet, but also an important factor in this essay because in American History, The East India Company is the ultimate example of the merge between government and business. On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I signed a royal charter giving the Honourable East India Company a 21 year monopoly on trade with the East Indies.

This innocuous beginning in the early days of expanding global trade mutated into one of the most insidious mergers of government power with private business savvy that history has ever recorded. The more the government powers demanded, the more the businessmen demanded--and both powers received in abundance. With the company's success important to practically every royal and Parliament member along with company men and investors, the booty was in danger of being divided into mere piddles.

It was then that the Crown made it perfectly clear as to who actually owned the company. With the East India Act of 1773 the Crown declared that the "acquisition of sovereignty by the subjects of the Crown is on behalf of the Crown and not in its own right." Big government now controlled the East India Company, and because the company traded and owned factories and warehouses worldwide, the Crown now controlled practically the entire globe.

The English taxpayer was then tapped as a source of revenue to continue expanding the company so that its financial return could be as large as men of power and wealth would require. As the Pirates of The Caribbean movies have taught every young person with the ability to follow a plot line, The East India Company had a problem determining whether they were The Law or the Monopolistic Merchant of the Seas. Keira Knightly's character, Elizabeth Swann, realizes this fact and rallies the pirates to fight for freedom on both counts. Pirates were fighting for the right to be...well...pirates.

It was the East India Company and its monopolistic power backed up by the Crown that caused a sort of pirate event in the American colonies--the Boston Tea Party. Private colonial shippers like John Hancock were the target of this corporate/government behemoth. The attempt to restrict colonial harbors to ships and cargo belonging to the East India Company occurred because the company was in dire straits financially. The company needed to make as much money as possible, to pay not only the Crown and its investors but also the large Treasury debt. One of the abusive taxes that so angered the colonists was enacted to repay the English treasury which was being used like a bank to keep the golden goose financially afloat. That, along with the ability to enforce being the only fleet able to enter colonial harbors, pushed the American colonists to the point of war. Entrepreneurs like John Hancock were declared outlaw smugglers--and while a smuggler is not quite the same as a pirate, each would have suffered the same fate.

Therefore it is interesting that once again America finds herself being squeezed by a new business/government merger in this 2008 Presidential Campaign. Each Democratic Party candidate has promised a federal government solution to a declared "broken" Health Care System. This ideal is promulgated insidiously by Democrats through the failing pension funds of Detroit auto manufacturers. A government program, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, was created to supposedly protect pension plans--but unless the bankruptcy-prone corporations are able to put money in the PBGC, the pensions will remain empty. Like the East India Company, the PBGC has attempted to pass on this debt to the American taxpayer, thereby releasing the auto manufacturers or airlines of their financial responsibility. (If not for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner 's (R-Ohio) leadership, taxpayers would already be saddled with this burden.)

The federalization of health care would also release the same corporations of the debt of their agreed benefits programs. Therefore, it should be clearly obvious that whatever program the Democrats are proposing would start out deeply in the red. So their promise that the envisioned program would actually save money is preposterous.

Upon the signing of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, Senator Kennedy (D-MA) said: "This bill says to millions of Americans who fear their pensions will disappear that help is on the way.” He hopes with every fiber of his own trust fund that the holders of the pensions in question will hear his siren's call and not pay attention to the looming shoals beneath the water. The huge debt will not just simply transform into fluid cash.

Senator Clinton (D-NY), in a speech for Detroit's International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said "The creation of a universal health care system is especially important to union workers in the auto industry, who find currently find their jobs in jeopardy." The article continues: "Such workers have been battling with their employers regarding increased health care in an environment with rising retirement and health costs." But unless the average newspaper reader knows why auto workers are having problems with rising retirement and health costs, the assumption will be that everyone's costs are rising because of sinister actions by insurance and retirement fund corporations. And then comes her hard sell to the American taxpayer: "If we don't have a strong manufacturing industry, it won't be long before we don't have a strong economy."

Bill Clinton made a telling speech at the 2007 TED Prize Award: Make a Wish Come True. He was talking about a medical group he was working with to provide medical services in Rwanda. Mr. Clinton is negotiating lower pharmaceutical sales for this group. He talks about working with non-governmental organizations (NGO's) such as the American Heart Association:

"We started a childhood obesity initiative with the Heart Association in America by negotiating industry-wide deals with the soft drink and snack food industry to cutting the caloric and other dangerous content of food going to our children in the schools. We just reorganized the markets. And then it occurred to me that in the whole non-governmental world, somebody needs to be thinking about organizing the world's public goods market."

So much for capitalism and entrepreneurship providing the means to get the desired product to the desirous customer. A new entity, a monarch of the world, will now direct products to their correct place while deciding what is proper food for each of us according to our age and health or activity level.

The former President then rambled into his work in the global warming farce:

"And that is now what we are trying to do in working with these large cities which generate 75% of the world's green house gases to drastically and quickly reduce green house gas emissions in a way that is good economics. And this whole discussion as if it's some sort of economic burden is a mystery to me...

..I think it's a bird's nest on the ground.

Considering the Clintons came to Washington practically penniless, their newfound wealth should raise more than an eyebrow, because every pirate knows that the Pirate Code is really every captain for himself!

And so I warn those drawn in by the Democrat's siren song of a secure future without want or care, with a word from the leader of the first anti-Federalist movement - Thomas Jefferson:

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Deconstructive Nihilism and the Democratic Party

After the World Wars, a new social war began in earnest; the war upon the bourgeoise. As returning veterans were glad to be home, safe, and alive, relieved to do something easy and non-life threatening like buy a cute little tract home, get a job and raise a family, another group desired in every way to separate themselves from everything that smacked of Middle Class. The more avante-garde the rejection of middle class values, the more the fashionable set applauded as Tom Wolfe observed in New York art scene in The Painted Word.

As artistic realism was deconstructed, highbrow art became not the actual painting, but the action that created it. Likewise out in society, mass meetings such as Woodstock were not so much a method for musical bands to get recognition to sell LP records, but rather the entire event was the happening. Directed by leaders in the anti-American movement, the gullible partying attendees had their personal memory of the event shrewdly replaced. As historians tell us, Woodstock had nothing to do with the music, it was about the in-your-face rejection of the values of Middle Class America. While Woodstock certainly became that, it was a manufactured reality.

In deconstruction terms, the happening became less about being there and more about being there. If all this is true, then the attendees of the happening were just window dressing for the camera, the real artists of the painting were nothing more than manipulative tent revival hucksters preying upon the emotions of their clueless marks.

Happenings became the method to re-educate the masses into believing something happened other than the simple congregating at a specific place. Sometimes, riots were instigated because the manipulators were as shrewd as Jerry Springer in collecting the class of people bent on unruliness and then tossing a lit Molotov cocktail into the mix. The art was The Happening, the action, the riot. The intent was to scare the Middle Class into submission. The unwashed mass of actual attendees thought it was all about being there and enjoying the rowdy party.

This generation steeped in the art of manipulating their witless believers are now in charge of the Democratic Party and the MSM. Every action or sound-bite is a scheduled happening to direct the supposed stupid bourgeoise they have risen above. Meanwhile, the pretentious MSM gasp at the revelation of the happening like a hopelessly rich tech investor scouring the pits of bohemia looking for art that is both not middle class and ridiculously priced. How else could the MSM know the highbrow art authority other than by the event director's rejection of the opinion of Middle Class America or by the power they command? Deconstruction has removed all factual content and the ability of elementary prioritization from the entire process.

This is why I’ve come to fear Obama over Hilary. While the nation is fully aware that Hilary is a contrived, over-processed, structured event, Obama has the dangerously glib charisma of a happening. His campaign events are inflated with the helium of him being, as Joe Biden (D-DE) has described him, a “clean and articulate black man.” The attendants to these events are given to believe the only gravity Obama faces is prejudice. However, helium makes a voice sound funny as Obama strings together brainless platitudes about higher education, nonsensical foreign policy ideas and deconstructed religious ideas that devolve good or evil into a circular argument morass, unless of course the activity was done by George W. Bush. And the tout le monde MSM reports that the helium inflated event was heralded by applause! Oh, joy! The happening happened!

Everyone knows that Hilary Clinton’s moral compass doesn’t point due north, but it would appear that Obama doesn’t even have a moral compass. He is nothing but a deconstructed helium balloon, evidently giving Mrs. Bill Clinton a little more of a challenge than she expected. What is causing people to listen to gibberish and think it profound? It is because the ability to stage an event has nothing to do with content and everything to do with hype and the being-there mentality pumped up by the MSM. They have found the deconstructionist’s dream—a poor down-trodden half-minority who looks good in a suit and can perfectly pronounce every word in a sentence with no content. With Obama in the Oval Office, it would be like Jim Jones had been elected president. Where’s the cut glass punch bowl?

We Live In An Exciting Age

Several years ago, I read Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790's. The book so influenced me because I saw in history a fresh, invigorating vision for the future. We live in an exciting age, but to make these ideas work we must remain steady. We must keep our eyes set on the shining city on the hill, as we continue the path through the foothills singing Psalms of Ascent as we journey to the city of God.

In the 1790's the Federalist Party felt entrenched in a position of power. The elected officials felt it was their responsibility to explain the meaning of the Constitution to the people. The Federalists believed the Constitution to be flexible in regards to the power of government rather than for limiting government power over private citizens. Granted many of the elite had actually written the Constitution, but an attitude of superiority can accompany the desire to teach. Any university student can recall at least one arrogant professor during their scholarly journey.

Just because the people loved George Washington dearly, that did not make him infallible in their eyes. In two cases, the Washington administration was taken aback by the murmuring of the common citizen. The first is known today as The Whiskey Rebellion. Western settlers resisted an additional tax on the whiskey they made from the corn they were unable to get to market. The whiskey was easier to ship to market and they felt the tax was discriminatory toward their personal entrepreneurship in making a useful product rather than suffer a commercial loss. The second reaction came when the citizens were berated for their resistance. This further revealed the mindset of the Federalist elected elite, angering the common man even more.

That generation, having lived through the violence of the Revolutionary War, was not interested in recreating the same system of elitism they'd just rebelled against. Shifting to today, the comparison with the elitism of Democrat leaders, and their disconnect to the common man, could not be clearer. Remember that the generation that preached to us for years this mantra of peace, love, and tolerance gave us The Waco Tragedy.

It is an exciting time when two very clear and divergent visions for the future of America are being debated. The Republican Party platform has the best vision of fostering individual freedom along with a clear interpretation of the War on Terror. Yes, the Republican Party has some entrenched elitists far more comfortable with their Democratic opposition than with the great unwashed rabble whose votes they need to be elected. Well, that seems like an easy problem to solve as Republicans mark the final reign of Arlan Specter (R- PA), John Warner (R-VA) and John McCain (R-AZ). Like the ever-knitting Tale of Two Cities character Madame Dufarge, the jackalope has her list.

Republicanism's civic virtue is fueling alternative media such as talk radio, Fox news, and the rough and rowdy internet. Republicanism is the natural defense against an over-zealous authority. Every time the Democratic Party presidential candidates explain their fascist views of government control of a private industry like Health Care, the Republican Party is clearly the only choice for those interested in self-determination and liberty.

So vociferous was the argument between the Federalists and the newly formed Republican Party that the Federalist Party eventually ceased to exist. A new course of liberty was set and the new nation separated itself from European-style monarchy. Today, the argument between Democrats and Republicans is also vociferous. Democrats, like their Federalist predecessors, blame the citizenry of being too ignorant, and seek to silence their detractors.

If we remain true to the republican ideal of civic virtue and support our candidate for President, re-elect the worthy, and replace the entrenched, it is possible to send the Democratic Party and its socialist and fascist ideas—the negation of the individual—to the ash heap of history. We must vote at all cost; because civic virtue requires that we do the best a flawed human can do for the future of the republic. This is no time to "go wobbly" because as Margaret Thatcher also said:

Europe was created by history; America was created by philosophy.

We live in an exciting age!

Thank You, Discerning Texan

This past weekend I received the wonderful honor of being asked to be guest editorialist at The Discerning Texan. Here are the posts I wrote:

• District 17's Man in Washington
• WSJ's on "The Masses Problem"
• A Reasoning Idea from Reason
• Keeping Some Odd Knowledge
• A Peso for the RNC
• Thoughts on Changing Definitions
  

A Must Read Article

We all know people who make comments that make us wonder what planet they live on because of the complete disconnect to the group understanding. Unfortunately, the rise of political correctness has prevented our leaders from saying what they truly believe. The latest point being the second coming of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as he "drove in a long motorcade from Najaf to its sister city of Kufa to deliver an anti-American sermon to 6,000 chanting supporters at the main mosque." We can only imagine the deaths to follow as this man is allowed to spew venomous rants from his mosque bully pulpit.

But what is really astounding is the inability of our leaders to admit this unavoidable truth. I encourage everyone to read Andrew G. Bostom's article Ignorance, Cognitive Dissonance, and al-Sadr at the ever excellent American Thinker. Mr. Bostom is highly qualified to write about Jihad, as he is the author of The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.

It is important for everyone to realize the extent of power the Muslim world desires. Islamic control of the world is their ultimate desire. This is a war to preserve Western Civilization.

Terrorist Training Camp in Texas

Everyone likes to think they are safe in their own backyards, so imagine the creepiness of learning of a terrorist training camp for foreign students located in the woods just down the road.

The Houston Chronicle reports (emphasis added):

A Dallas college student who was linked to a Houston-area plan to aid the Taliban was found guilty Thursday of two weapons violations.

A Houston federal jury found that Syed Maaz Shah, 19, unlawfully possessed a firearm while in this country on a student visa.

After participating in firearms training staged by government informants last year at a campground north of Conroe, Shah was charged in a plot to fight for the terrorist organization overseas against U.S.-led forces. On secret recordings, he can be heard railing against the U.S. and quipping that his passport showed the face of a terrorist.

As a student-visa holder, the Pakistani, who attended the University of Texas at Dallas on a scholarship, was not allowed to have a firearm.

Thankfully, the jury didn't get hung up on the intellectual Left and Libertarian's "Why do they hate us?" carousel and returned a swift and sure verdict:

The jury returned its verdict after deliberating for slightly more than an hour. Shah, who is to be sentenced Sept. 14, faces up to 10 years in prison on each charge, plus deportation.

In another Houston Chronicle article we learn (emphasis added):

Syed Maaz Shah was arrested for firing weapons during two camping trips last year. Authorities said the trips were actually training camps organized by several men who wanted to engage in holy war against U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.

Presidential Candidate John Edwards (D) is a real man of genius award winner when it comes to foreign policy. His The War on Terror is Just a Bumper Sticker Slogan mentality allows others to base their defense on the notion that there is no war on terror. Shah's Defense Attorney, Frank Jackson believes the verdict was just anti-muslim sentiment in this post 9/11 world:

It was a difficult case because of the times we are in. This so-called war on terror is as phony as can be.

Shah was not the only terrorist in training arrested at this camp.

His cousin, Adnan Mirza, faces three firearms charges, in addition to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States by making donations to the Taliban. The 30-year-old Pakistani, who also was here on a student visa, is scheduled for trial in October.

Kobie Williams, 34, who pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge last year, is to be sentenced in October.

Thankfully, this local terrorist training network was captured and prosecuted. The question is: How many others are operating in the woods down the road from your backyard?

Maybe It Was About The Money After All

Over and over, financial planners tell us that the path to wealth is a balanced portfolio. Grandma pointedly reminded us to not put all our eggs in one basket. Grandma, being the wise woman she was, knew that counting on only one thing, one hope, one idea would leave her grandkids vulnerable to things outside their control. So, we wisely spread our precious savings across several different investment opportunities just in case something outside our control happens.

In a previous post, It's Not The Money It's The Message It Sends the jackalope described a certain shady deal between Chet Edwards (D-Tx. 17), our military, and the predatory insurance company American Amicable. This insurance company is located in Waco, Texas; Chet's home stomping grounds.

So, dear readers and fellow constituents, it might interest you to learn that Chet Edwards' portfolio is 100% invested in insurance. Maybe he knows how to control things a bit more than the rest of us when it comes to those things normally outside human control. How else to explain an intelligent person putting all his eggs in one basket?

Learning From History in the War on Terror

Last night I began the DVD series Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy. The story is about the British delivering a self-ruling government in India in 1946. The Jewel in the Crown, as India was described, then operated under a half system of self governance called the Raj. Under the Raj, tribal leaders ruled territories but ultimately answered to British authority. The Crown gave Lord Mountbatten authority to aide the Indian leaders in establishing a democratic Parliament and ultimately complete self-determination.

The comparisons to our work in Iraq are very interesting. One of the problems the blossoming Indian Parliament faced was religious animosity between Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu. Different leaders had their own desires for the future of India. Genocide followed as religion divided the nation into three parts. The British had been able to keep order, but as they discussed pulling out to allow self rule, factions sprung up to take advantage of the situation. There are historians that say the British set an unrealistic date for the Indian government to gain control and settle differences.

This sounds very close to the current situation in Iraq. The Iraqi government must have authority across the entire country and over each tribe and faction within their border. Some Indian Muslims, lead by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, wanted their own country; a complete Muslim state. Some Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus wanted to remain where they currently lived with the freedom to practice their own religion. If the United States were to pull out our troops too soon, could what happened in India happen in Iraq? There are even more comparisons.

The DVD shows Mohammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, stirring up a mob by declaring, "We will have Pakistan or we will destroy India!" It is hard for our pragmatic western minds to understand such thinking. However, when we recall the kamikaze pilots of WWII, Buddhist monks torching themselves in protest of the Viet Nam war, and the current crop of suicide bombers, we should realize that self immolation has been a route to paradise in the eastern mind.

The undeclared war between Muslim and Sikh along with the usually fate-driven Hindu in the Punjab is reputed to have killed between 200,000 and 360,00. This number could be higher if the 10 years before 1946 are counted. The migration of the different ethnic peoples to the portion of India they preferred to occupy was a dangerous journey because of violent attacks by other factions. The anger boiled over and blood flowed freely.

President Bush is wise to stand firm against any timeline for American departure in Iraq. The Congressional leaders that demand America pull out now have not studied their history and because of this educational lack, the blood of Iraqi innocents would be on our hands. It is very disturbing that the people that preach "caring" for others to their vassals here in the United States deride our military for being in Iraq and taking the time to empower this new democratic government.

Today India and Pakistan have joined us in The War On Terror. Maybe the memories of the brutality they endured spur them to action to join us. Whatever their reason, we welcome them in this fight. If the Democratic Party joined the fight maybe Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Assad, the Mohammad Ali Jinnahs of today, would not be openly supporting insurgent terrorists with money and tools of destruction or threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

Human nature dictates that when benevolent authority is perceived as weak, evil men will rise to fill the void. If the American troops leave Iraq and Afghanistan before self-rule is strong, evil will respond as it will. Most of America seems to understand this, but Bush-hating tunnel vision has destroyed the Democratic Party and innocents are being slaughtered every day because of their weak and selfish rhetoric. I suggest they be quiet, sit in their comfortable chair and read The Life of Reason by George Santayana because "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Well Worth Our Support

Too often, we complain when someone does something wrong while saying nothing if something is done right. It goes against our human nature to edify one another. The state of Texas has much to be proud of when it comes to debate in the Senate and House on the illegal immigration issue.

Both Texas Senators, Kay Baily Hutchison and John Cornyn are standing strong against the effort to pass this bill without debate. Serious issues are in need of debate and Congress has a bad habit of rushing headlong into legislation without proper consideration of the rule of unintended consequences. Pressure in Washington to get a "done deal" is a tough thing to resist.

District 17 cannot boast of its contribution to this debate. However:

• Jeb Hensarling (R-TX 5),
• Randy Neugebauer (R-TX 19),
• John Culberson (R-TX 7),
• Mike Conaway (R-TX 11),
• Kenny Marchant (R-TX 24),
• Joe Barton (R-TX 6),
• Michael Burgess (R-TX 26),
• Nick Lampson (R-TX 22),
• Michael McCaul (R-TX 10),
• Ted Poe (R-TX 2),
• Lamar Smith (R-TX 21),
• John Carter R-TX 31),
• Pete Sessions (R-TX 32) and
• Sam Johnson (R-TX 3)

all deserve a word of thanks and appreciation.

This list also clearly reveals the delineation between Democrats and Republicans on this issue.

Note: The jackalope visited the website of every Texas Representative to get this information. If a Representative is not listed, and is strong on border security and anti-illegal immigration, I was unable to find information supporting it.

Chet Edwards - Democrat First, American Second

Chet Edwards (D-TX17) has an unjustified reputation as a conservative Democrat. The reality is that he follows closely the far left ideas of the Democratic Party. He is careful to never be photographed with members of his party that would tarnish that carefully constructed persona, but his voting record mirrors theirs in most respects.

A major problem concerning the (il)legal immigration issue is that nothing is backed up by enforcement. Legislation is a great concept, but unless it is actually followed through in practice we only worsen the situation. Problems become a "make work" project for Congress allowing them to posture and prattle for the news camera rather than the hard work of solving a problem. If they were to solve the problem then they would have nothing to preen about before the Sunday Talking Head hosts. Making hard decisions is not always conducive to Congress' first job: re-election. And it goes without saying that pleasing their idiot hick constituents back home could make them persona non gratia with the tony Washington cocktail circuit. This is a problem for even some (most?) Republicans.

It is in this light we must contemplate the current (il)legal immigration bill because the law of human nature dictates that we get the behavior we reward. Any legislation that does not first address the problem of a porous border is doomed to be a future and much larger problem. If our schools and social programs are already overburdened, inaction concerning the open border issue means in mere months these taxpayer funded programs will be exponentially so. Tax funds are not some bottomless coffer regardless of how legislators may treat them.

It is not wrong for citizens to prefer to keep as much of their own money to provide for their own family and extended family. This is the intent of the proverb: Charity begins at home. Unbridled taxation to provide social services for illegal aliens will eventually make all native and naturalized citizens wards of the state because it will lead straight to poverty because the more services provided, the more people will come. To assert so is not to be anti-immigrant, but rather to recognize the reality of human nature.

That explained, this morning in his weekly radio interview, Chet Edwards (D-Tx17) distanced himself properly from the Senate's illegal immigration bill. He listed off his requirements: illegals must pay a fine, learn to speak English - even their children - so illegals can provide better for themselves rather than expecting to receive myriads of social welfare, and oh yeah that other thing, border security.

Wait a minute, he just described the current embattled Senate Bill. By listing border security last, Edwards makes clear his priority. After 16 years in the House, Edwards understands perfectly the reality of not enforcing the laws he passes. He has a history of not enforcing the laws he votes for. He is facile in speaking the "correct" talking points, knowing that those constituents who are not well-versed politicos will hear his words outside the context of political realities and nod their heads thinking the incessant bickering has been solved.

The political reality is that the Senate and House Democratic majority could pass the current bill and the President would sign it into law. Their dilemma comes when the people, realizing that the problem is not in fact solved, blame them for passing a problem intensifier. President Bush will not be running for office ever again. To blame him would be moot and the proverbial chickens will come home to roost infecting the Democratic Party with its political pox.

This is why the word bi-partisan is the key word. If the Republicans do not play this game, and fall into the sprung trap, Democrats will not pass this bill. This indicates that the bill was never in the best interest for the long run of the country, but rather another piece of legislation whose main purpose is the destruction of their political foes. The ugly truth is that our Representative is extremely adept in playing this game. It is Mr. Edwards' and his Party's behavior that constitutes a major loss to his constituents and to the nation.

The Revolution #4: A Modest Proposal: the Solution of Illegal Immigration and Foreign Terrorists Living in the United States

Note: This post was nominated for a Weasel Watcher Award during the week of May 23, 2007

In 1729, Jonathan Swift published the satirical pamphlet A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick. It was Swift’s proposal that Irish parents sell their children to be eaten to provide a family income.

“A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.”

Needless to say, the public did not see the humor in his modest proposal nor did they recognize Swift’s homage to the Roman tradition of satire that disparaged the solutions they actually supported. Swift lost nearly all the subscribers to his pamphlets. Today, this work stands as the greatest piece of satire ever written.

It is with true jacklope humility that I set down my own modest proposal. I hope you enjoy:

A Modest Proposal: the Solution of Illegal Immigration and Foreign Terrorists Living in the United States

Regarding the upcoming Illegal Immigration Bill, rejoice that Congress has at last streamlined the legislative process so much that the mere idea is passed into law without all that troublesome legal fine print ever being written. We already know we can’t possibly understand the yearly tax code, so why bother our stressed out brains with another piece of congressional mumbo jumbo? We can just jump to the obvious outcome: instant citizenship, a voter card in Spanish card with a preprinted “X” in the box next to “Democratic Party”, and a Pueblo, Colorado publication listing all the social services that come with citizenship.

And, by logical extension, the only natural conclusion to the immigration problem is for the United States to simply declare universal sovereignty over the entire globe, making all earthly inhabitants Americans. Think of the problems that would instantly be solved by expanding our borders to include every continent, island, peninsula, sandbar, and floating flotsam and jetsam! No more illegals dying in the brutal trek across the American southwest deserts, or sweltering in the back of 18-wheelers with no air, water, food, or bathroom facilities. Never again would we have to hear of such tragedies and risk having our free time and peace of mind disturbed.

Even if the new citizens stay in their current locations, now they wouldn’t have to work to change the governments they would otherwise desire to flee. The former nation of Mexico can cease in its almost-achievable quest to achieve a true two-party democracy. Hugo Chavez can offer symposiums for Democratic Congressmen on how to nationalize private business as he did Citgo Oil and how they aspire to do with our health care system. The reality of a fast track to making all citizens both wards and employees of the state would be created ipso facto. The Democratic Party is thinking small-time in its present goal of making only people residing within the current borders of the United States citizens. Imagine the possibilities for complete domination if the Democratic Party were able to make every single person on the planet their ward and vassal. Surely when they examine the absolute magnificence of this modest solution they will realize that this short proposal has barely begun to explore the possibilities.

The idea of annexing the entire world is so pregnant with opportunity that one could not even begin to list the benefits to the future power of the Democratic Party. Instantly the need to travel in order to receive the benefits of the United States becomes moot. Instead we can export government social workers and labor union members to provide all benefits accorded with citizenship. Like lawyers descending on the Bhopal tragedy, government agencies could be set up at the four corners of the world and incremental points in between to provide all benefits and necessities to new citizens at taxpayer expense. Furthermore, since we celebrate diversity already, no new citizen need suffer the burden of learning English (lest they assimilate into the bigoted and racist present American culture, developed as it was by dead white men). If this proposal were enacted, all people could continue to speak in their indigenous language and dialect. Because after all, that’s what being an American is all about: making America just like the place you fled.

So brilliant is this plan that Democratic Party leaders will be guaranteed voters and power for life, possibly even eternity. Their pursuit of wealth could then be expanded to include every tax-free offshore account or even the banks of the new state of Switzerland. All wealth will now be subject to the American tax code and every redistributionist PAC or 501(c) receiving federal funds. It is hard to believe that no one at the DNC has thought of this plan sooner. It appears there is not a political visionary in the entire party.

Even terrorists will receive incredible benefits by becoming American citizens. It goes without saying that now they will be able to kill Americans with greater ease, as they will not have to risk the sneaking and hiding, the plotting and scheming it currently takes to set up splinter cells bearing outdated visas over here. Why travel when just killing your own neighbor is a death of an American? Consider the double bonus when a terrorist's own child becomes a self-detonating bomb: an American child killing other Americans! Jews will be Americans, infidel Christians will all be Americans, Shi’ias will be Americans, Sunnis, Hamas, PLO, Chechen, all are Americans. Now they can really mean it when they drive a bomb-laden truck into a shopping mall with the cry, “Death to America!” The simplicity of absolute cultural nihilism borders on divine perfection.

Not to mention the benefit of outmaneuvering the United Nations, a bureaucracy that could be swiftly rendered null and void. Never again will we need to seek permission to establish democracies in terrorist states. Surely a nation that had no problem gassing and torching Branch Davidians would have no compunction about bombing itself, wherever and whenever needed. It’s good to have a frame of reference when it comes to the almighty state delivering justice swift and sure. Nothing keeps a citizenry in order better than them knowing their proper place in the power hierarchy.

The benefits of this modest proposal are so bold, so enlightened and radical, that to not put it into action immediately could blight humanity forever. Let us cease striving after such clearly unworkable legislation as building a border fence and increasing a well trained and equipped border guard. There is no sense wasting taxpayer money on high-tech satellite equipment, unmanned drones, and expensive gadgetry like night-vision goggles and infrared cameras. We all know it is impossible to track every person within the borders or defend ourselves indefinitely against a far more determined worldwide jihad. Why strive after mediocre stopgap half-measures when a self-evident solution exists? Why continue the suffering for one more second? Call your Congressman and Senators immediately and urge them to pass this simple proposal with all haste, and begin planning a family vacation to the new America—no visa, passport or papers required. Brilliant.

The Revolution #3: Federalist Democrats

In the 1790’s Thomas Jefferson was able revitalize the nation’s quest for individual liberty because ordinary citizens formed political discussion groups, newspapers and broadsides were printed to cover debates and forums, and pamphleteers wrote their ideas on how to further the individual’s right for self-determination. Today this same action is taking place with the popularity of political issue groups, talk radio, blogs, and other media alternatives. The old media of network news and printed newspapers that firmly support Democratic Party control is no longer the federalist monolith of power.

The reason Jefferson’s revolution against the Federalist Party was successful was because there was an important decision to be made about the future of the nation.

Today, the revolutionary ideas challenging the Democratic Party are of equal importance.

While Jefferson’s success was fueled in part by the French Revolution and its ousting of a hierarchical monarchy, today’s ideas are triggered in some part by the fall of communism.

America has something fundamental to decide: do we continue toward the socialistic future envisioned by the Democratic Party, or set a new course of republican liberty as envisioned by the Republicans?

Is liberty to be defined and passed down to the individual by the totalitarian elitism of the Democratic Party and their federalist sensibilities? Or will liberty continue to be defined as the ability of individuals through self-determination having their say in regards to the power delegated to the state and its intrusion upon their private lives?

The Democratic Party is failing in part because the various groups that support it have forsaken the common good in their quest to solidify power. They have acted in the worst of human nature. What else can be expected from a generation steeped in the belief that The Constitution was flawed from its very inception? So much is their belief that they govern in a manner diametrically opposed to its very words. The 1st Amendment has degenerated into a protection for selfish hedonism, while the 2nd Amendment has become the denial of the right to self-preservation. Words that don't even appear in The Constitution , separation of church and state, are now presented as absolute law.

The Federalist Party failed when it fundamentally reconnected its ideas of legislative power with monarchy. The Democratic Party must fail because of its connection with the failed atheistic communist state and the denial of the rights of man. These ideas deny the fact that man is a spiritual being, finding meaning in life in a relentless search for God, and that self-determination is an inherent part of being human. America’s very survival and its beacon of liberty to the rest of the world are at stake in these upcoming elections.

Just as the Federalists thought of government power in the manner of the English gentry, today’s Democrats consider their power in Stalinist terms. The “Fairness” Doctrine and the new rules of Campaign Finance Reform show that contrary speech is to be silenced. So ingrained is their thinking that any citizen disagreeing with them is derided with name-calling, vulgarities, and ultimately accusations of mental illness. All these methods of discrediting detractors come directly from Stalin himself. Leaders of the various Democratic Party support groups attained their positions through fraud and deceit. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, George Sorros, Cindy Sheehan to name a few leaders. NOW, NARAL, and PETA to name a few groups.

A revolution is the proper recourse when a government no longer serves the purpose of the people it serves.

What is needed today is a revolution that completely repudiates a political party that no longer represents the constitution it serves.

Like the Federalist Party before them, the Democratic Party must be repudiated with such vehemence in these next elections that the party and its socialist ideas are forever destined to be past history.