A republic, if you can keep it

And so does Scott Adams, his creator.  Here’s the Dilbert comic strip for today

Satan is known as The Father of all Lies, in part because he was the first to lie, and also because he is so good at it.  What makes someone “good” - as in talented - at lying is the ability to make it sound like truth.  That is what Satan excels at.  Take this exchange between Satan & Eve:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

If you look at that exchange, you’ll see there is some truth included in his statement.  That little bit of truth makes it difficult to discern the lie, and to be honest, the lie isn’t an outright lie, it is a statement that has multiple meanings.  In modern day terms, it would be called spin.

“Good” politicians have the same talent, and the video below shows one of the best doing what he does best

Listen to what he says.

• He inherited a 1.3 trillion deficit. That is spin.  He campaigned for that deficit.  Remember last Fall, he urged the Bush administration to bail out the banks, which is where most of that deficit came from.  While that deficit was created by someone else, and he now has responsibility for it, he was a major factor in getting that passed, so to say he inherited it is not entirely accurate.  He asked for it.
• He states, “We cannot and will not sustain deficits like this without end.” That is absolutely true, by mixing in some truth, it makes it tougher to sort out the lies.
• He quotes some numbers to make his case. Those may or may not be true, but are probably based on facts.  Anyone who has taken financial or accounting classes understands that it is easy to make numbers say whatever you want.  When you quote them like he does, it makes him look smarter and more capable of using the numbers to fix the problem.  It also legitimizes what he is saying.
• Of course he takes a few shots at Bush. And in this case, Bush deserves it.  But the reason he takes those shots is because Bush acted more like a liberal/socialist Democrat rather than a fiscally conservative Republican.  One of the most effective things that liberals have done is associate George Bush’s domestic and social policies with conservatism, and since those policies are terrible, people dislike him and the conservative brand.  What they have done so brilliantly is fool people into thinking that Bush (and really the entire GOP) are conservative, when in reality they are socialists-lite.  This is a very subtle lie that most Americans fail to see, it was created and perfected by the Father of All Lies, and his pupils have learned it well.
• He uses the numbers to prepare people  for more upcoming spending. Not only does he use the numbers to show how much debt we have, he uses the numbers to make a plug for two of his party’s pet projects: education and socialized medicine.
• He then goes from quoting some numbers to a little bit of fear mongering, using our common sense as a weapon against us. Conservatives have been harping on the fact that spending this much money will saddle future generations of yet unborn Americans with a huge debt, and that doing do is immoral.  He talks of this as if he agrees.  Again, he uses just a little bit of truth to play on our fears.  By using just a bit of truth and mixing in emotions - in this case fear - he is able to fool many into thinking that he has a plan that will work.  Then he announces what he plans to accomplish to fix the problems and allay our fears.
• Here is the biggest whopper. Listen to him from 1:29 to 1:37.  I’ll admit I missed it until someone pointed it out on the morning talk show I listen to.  He says he plans to cut the deficit in half.  In fact that’s the title of the You Tube video. But that is NOT what he said he would do.  He said he would cut the deficit HE INHERITED by half.  He said nothing of reducing the debt he has strapped us with during his first month in office, nor any of the other debt he will heap upon us during the rest of his administration.  He has learned his lessons well, and he serves his master well.
• He then finishes with one bit of truth and a couple more lies that sound good and speak to our senses. He says it won’t be easy, and he’s right.  Then he says he doesn’t want to leave our children with a debt they can’t repay.  He also says we have to take responsibility now to get spending under control, which is also very true.  So the question is, if he wants to be responsible, control spending and not leave an enormous debt to our children, why then has he basically doubled the national deficit he “inherited” in only one month? Why does he plan on spending more so quickly?  By his own admission it is not sustainable, yet he has promised to work on the inherited deficit, while apparently creating his own deficit that dwarfs Bush’s.

This is what a liar looks like, and this is what he does.  These are not little white lies; these are the types of lies used by Satan to strip away liberty and freedom, and make us as miserable as he is.  Our government seeks to strip liberties and freedoms, and they are employing the same tactics that Lucifer uses.  If they act like the devil, if they talk like the devil, what else could these politicians be but devils?

If we as a nation are to remain free, we have to work for it.  Things don’t look good right now, but there are some glimmers of light.

I have found two in text that Glenn Beck & Mike Church have created.

Beck has what he calls The Nine Principles

1. America is good.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

Mike Church has gone further than that and drafted what he calls the America Again Resolves.  They are based on the Thomas Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolves.  Click the link & it will take you to a 10 page document.  It takes a few minutes, but is worth the time.  I do have a few questions about this resolve, but overall I support it & think that we must do something now, or simply watch the candle of liberty go out.  If you want to get involved, go to these websites and say so.  The time is now & the window is closing.

Straight from Drudge:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

That’s right, by reducing the number of people who are born - and you have to assume that she means with both pre- & post-conception contraception (cough cough abortion) - there will be fewer resources consumed.  Fewer people is better for poor planet earth, which can barely support us anymore.

Call this not just a foot but an entire leg in the door for eugenics, sign of the times or whatever you will.  We have been warned of this type of evil, and it is here in plain sight because it feels it is strong enough that it no longer needs to hide in the shadows.  We need to wake up & put a stop to it now.

Here is a report on a fascinating study conducted by two economists at UCLA. It shows that **GASP** government intrusion and regulation of the free market makes things - are you ready for this? - WORSE!!!

In case you don’t want to read the whole thing, at least read the last paragraph.

“The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes,” Cole said. “Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”

But since the vast majority of Americans won’t read this, nor take the time to try and understand, we stand a good chance of repeating what they studied. How’s this for ominous (emphasis mine)?

“This is exciting and valuable research,” said Robert E. Lucas Jr., the 1995 Nobel Laureate in economics, and the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. “The prevention and cure of depressions is a central mission of macroeconomics, and if we can’t understand what happened in the 1930s, how can we be sure it won’t happen again?“

Has our government been completely taken over?  Are our elected officials - regardless of their stunning incompetence - merely puppets for some other group of power brokers?  A few months ago, I would have - in fact I did - dismiss these sorts of statements as crackpot conspiracies, but watching how the financial bailout has unfolded, I have to wonder.

Most of you have probably read an article or email that stated that if the amount of money in the financial bailout was divided up equally among US citizens (or taxpayers, or sometimes among all people in the US), each person would receive a large amount of money.  The actual figure would vary, but it was usually a high 5 or low 6 figure number.  I remember thinking that in most of those scenarios, my household would have been able to pay off our mortgage and still have enough cash for some substantial landscaping.

A coworker forwarded this article to me today that provides an interesting read.  It explains how Wall Street brokers have stolen money from every American taxpayer, and used the useful idiots (useful to them at least) in Washington DC to legally do it.  With America now strapped with that much debt, Americans cannot be truly free.  Not only is this a huge money grab, but it is a enormous reduction of our liberty.  A person who is strapped with debt is little more than an indentured servant.  An indentured servant, while not technically a slave, is NOT a free person.  Because of our elected officials, we are all now indentured (which by the way is a violation of the 13th amendment, but who’s keeping track of Constitutional violations anymore?), and many generations of Americans will be born into this servitude.

But ultimately, who is responsible for this mess?  Since our leaders are democratically elected, who is to blame, if not ourselves?  On the other hand, many people did try to tell their congressmen that they were opposed to the bailout, yet the reports were that both the congressional switchboard and email servers were shut down.  I don’t know if that’s true or not.  I do know it was impossible to get through.  It’s tough to know who is to blame, but it appears that most people are sick of Washington elitism and simply don’t know what to do to fix the problem.

We are not in uncharted waters here.  This sort of government corruption has happened many times throughout history, and there is one way that has been successful in resolving this.  Thomas Jefferson called it refreshing the tree of liberty with its natural manure.  That has been shown to work sometimes, not always though, and it comes with a steep price.  I don’t think that Americans are willing to pay it, now or ever.  We have become too lazy and spoiled.  I know I would rather exhaust all other avenues, but what are those avenues?  Also, while persuing those avenues, we make it harder & harder to ever refresh the tree of liberty.

So what will we do?  Will we reach a breaking point, or will we as a nation go quietly into the night?  We are currently on course to go quietly into the night, is there anything that can change us from that course?

James Madison was the fourth president of the United States.  He was one of the primary authors of both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and came to be known as the “Father of the Constitution.”

In 1817, Congress sent the Internal Improvements Bill to President Madison.  It called for spending money on roads, canals and making other infrastructure-type improvements.  Madison felt that the bill was unconstitutional, and so he vetoed it.  His explanation for the veto can be found here, but the meat of his opinion is this paragraph:

To refer the power in question to the clause “to provide for common defense and general welfare” would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms “common defense and general welfare” embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared “that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.

Just like the enumerated powers of the Constitution didn’t give authority to Congress to spend money on roads then, there is nothing in the Constitution that gives Congress any authority to bailout the financial industry, the American auto industry, or any other industry.

I think it’s safe to say that Madison would have been opposed to these bailouts.  Boy could we use someone like him today.