Tag Archives: The Constitution of the United States of America

Robert Spencer: Mattis Wants Biden to Put America Last 4 (1)

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by Robert Spencer

Just what country is the top priority of the military and foreign policy establishment?

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who left the Trump administration amid mutual acrimony, has declared, in a Foreign Affairs op-ed cowritten with establishment foreign policy wonk Kori Schake, that he hopes a Biden administration won’t put America first. He didn’t say which country he thought a president of the United States should put first instead. But even so, it was one of the strangest statements a member of the U.S. government has ever made, and the bland reception it received is an indication of how deep the corruption is at the highest levels.

If Donald Trump doesn’t take the Oath of Office on January 20, 2021, one principal but little-noted reason for this may be that he crossed one of the most powerful and least accountable forces in the nation: the military-industrial complex. As Trump said last September, “the top people in the Pentagon…want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars, you know how we’re doing.”

Mattis and Schake revealed the self-serving nature of these wars, and how they are actively against the genuine national interest, when they wrote: “In January, when President Joe Biden and his national security team begin to reevaluate U.S. foreign policy, we hope they will quickly revise the national security strategy to eliminate ‘America first’ from its contents, restoring in its place the commitment to cooperative security that has served the United States so well for decades.”

This was so important, they asserted, because “in practice, ‘America first’ has meant ‘America alone.’ That has damaged the country’s ability to address problems before they reach U.S. territory and has thus compounded the danger emergent threats pose.”

That’s ridiculous. Trump’s travel bans, which Biden has pledged to repeal on his first day in office, are designed to prevent problems from reaching U.S. territory. Biden’s repeal of them will only make Americans more vulnerable. Also, Trump’s America First policy was not “America alone” by any means: the U.S. was instrumental in concluding peace deals between Israel and three of its Arab Muslim neighbors, deals that John Kerry, who will soon be back in a position of power, assured us back in 2016 would be absolutely impossible. Trump has also demanded more responsibility from our allies, asking them to pay more for their own defense.

The only way in which Trump’s America First policy meant “America alone” was insofar as it broke from the internationalist arrangements that have been in place since the end of World War II, to which Mattis and Schake refer as “the commitment to cooperative security that has served the United States so well for decades.”

But if a “commitment to cooperative security” doesn’t involve being able to put one’s national interests first, how is it good for the people of that nation? That question doesn’t apply just to America.

In reality, the president’s primary job is clear from the oath of office that every president recites in order to assume office, and it isn’t to provide “cooperative security” for other countries in the world, or free health care for illegal aliens, or to make sure that Somalia or Afghanistan isn’t riven by civil war, or to make sure America is “diverse.” It is simply this: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Or, to put it even more simply, as Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster explains, the primary job of the president of the United States is to put America first.

It is in large part because they reject that principle that the elites have hated Trump with such burning intensity, and have worked so hard to get him out of office. Someone has to pay for that “cooperative security,” and someone has to be paid, and that means that Trump was threatening some extremely wealthy and powerful interests.

The internationalist elite has reasserted its hegemony and beaten back a serious challenge. And it is not a good sign that in spiking the football after that victory, Mattis makes it abundantly clear that “cooperating with like-minded nations” means putting their interests before our own. No responsible national leader should do that, but of course soon, if the Left’s quest for open borders is successful, there won’t be any more responsible national leaders, and even nations themselves will be a thing of the past.

JW: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/mattis-wants-biden-put-america-last-robert-spencer/

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Bill Lockwood: Multiculturalism Destroys America 0 (0)

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by Bill Lockwood

First century Israel was a mixing pot of a variety of cultures. Ever since the fourth century B.C. the nation had been engulfed by Hellenization brought about by the Macedonian general, Alexander the Great. This western culture was completely different from the Asian world.

One of the most shocking elements of that Greek culture was the building of a gymnasium in Jerusalem where athletes would perform in the nude. “So they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem according to Gentile custom … They joined with the Gentiles and sold themselves to do evil.” So wrote the Maccabees (1 Macc. 1:14-15).

Rome
Then in 63 B.C. the Roman general Pompey took over the old Seleucid Empire of Syria. He defeated the forces of Antioch and stormed down toward Jerusalem. Thus began the turbulent rule of Rome over Judea.

The Romans appointed John Hyrcanus II as High Priest—a sacrilege to the Old Testament that mandated a son of Aaron to be priest for life. They also confirmed Antipater, an Idumean, to be the royal official representing Rome. It was his son, Herod the Great, who killed all the babes of Bethlehem at the birth of Christ.

With an Idumean line of kings ruling over the nation and its lands; and Hellenization of customs, language, habits, foods, and entertainment; and Rome overseeing the entire with its standing army stationed throughout Israel, which was deeply resented by the Jews; the stage was set for a huge conflict of cultures.

The chaos that ensued is well-known. Wracked by differences so wide as to never hope for healing, the Jews themselves were practically exterminated by Rome at the holocaust of 70 A.D. Rome was tired of the constant inner struggles and civil unrest that seemed to be the hallmark of Israel.

America
Rick Santorum, former candidate for president of the United States, related that his grandfather came from Fascist Italy to come to America to work in the coalmines of western Pennsylvania. Like most immigrants, he believed in the American ideal; that all men were created equal.

However, Santorum warns, “as a result of multicultural relativism, we fear seeing the American aspiration eroded, our common purpose lost, and the ‘re-appearing of tyranny and oppression’ that is not only poised against us abroad but is also pointing its dagger at us here at home.”

The real culprit here is the philosophy of multiculturalism. It threatens to destroy our once solid nation, just as it did Israel of old.

“The Master Principle” of our nation, as Dan Smoot wrote in 1994, is Christianity. The organic documents of our government—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, are based upon its presuppositions. Assimilation to these fundamental principles proved to be the glue that held diverse peoples and groups together.

Multiculturalism, however, which is being drummed into our students from elementary school through collegiate training, seeks to dissolve this glue by its flagrant teaching of relativism.

Charles A. Tesconi, dean of the College of Education at the University of Vermont, relates the following. “As a descriptor, multiculturalism points to a condition of numerous life-styles, values, and belief systems. By treating diverse cultural groups and ways of life as equally legitimate, by teaching about them in positive ways, legitimizing differences through various education policies and practices, self-understanding, self-esteem, intergroup understanding and harmony, and equal opportunity are promoted.”

As Alex Newman and Samuel Blumenfeld remark here, this “multicultural education embraces much more than mere cultural pluralism or ethnic diversity. It legitimizes different lifestyles and values systems, thereby legitimizing moral diversity—which is simply moral anarchy” (Crimes of the Educators, p. 229).

The concept of moral diversity “directly contradicts the biblical concept of moral absolutes based on the Ten Commandments, on which this nation was founded.”

Anarchy
As Newman and Blumenfeld state above, multiculturalism has led to anarchy. Lawlessness. And this itself, as if it is a legitimate philosophy, is being peddled in the university classroom. Liberal professorships across academia have routinely churned out young radical revolutionaries ready to revamp America.

Dr. Nathan Jun, for example, professor of Philosophy at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, TX, has specialized in Anarchist Studies. He has published numerous articles in Anarchist journals. Anarchist Studies, Radical Philosophy Review, and The Journal of Political Ideologies included among them. He is author of Anarchy and Political Modernity (2011).

He has written that “classical anarchism is arguably the first political postmodernism.” Postmodernism, of course, completely severs the concept of values and morality from any eternal standard. Nothing is right; nothing is wrong.
If one thinks this is simply an esoteric academic teaching that has no relevance to the current troubled America, Dr. Jun’s Facebook page features an “Abolish the Police” poster.

Christopher F. Rufo, a contributing editor of City Journal, writes that “The latest call to action from some criminal-justice activists: ‘Abolish the Police.’” Advocates and activists press not just to reform the police, but to do away with it altogether. It is a “concrete policy goal” of anarchists that has infected mainstream American radicals from Seattle to Boston.

“Police abolitionists believe that they stand at the vanguard of a new idea, but this strain of thought dates to the eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that stripping away the corruptions of civilization would liberate the goodness of man.”

This, of course, is nonsense. As Jun himself demonstrates, when anyone, even with legitimate questions on his Facebook thread asks why, in these days of violence, should we “abolish the police,” he tells them to “F____ off.” So much for “liberating the goodness of man.”

Alex Newman: Good Public-School Teachers Under Siege 0 (0)

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by Alex Newman

Public schools do hold good teachers who want to follow the best education practices and who object to the indoctrination of the LBGTQ agenda, but they are being penalized.

When the National Education Association (NEA) partnered with a radical homosexual and transgender group known as the “Human Rights Campaign” to create “welcoming schools,” a lot of public-school teachers felt uncomfortable, if not outraged. But when the groups sent out a mass e-mail encouraging teachers to ask young children what “pronouns” they prefer — he, she, they, z, tree, and so on — that was a bridge too far for many.

In a video produced as part of the campaign, two transgender children discuss their preferred pronouns with each other. One of the children prefers the plural pronoun “they,” while the other, who claims not to be a boy or a girl, prefers “zee.” Seriously. After that, the two children discuss the alleged need to “educate” their own teachers, especially substitutes, on the supposed importance of using the newly invented pronouns that students choose for themselves.

If that all sounds crazy, that’s because it is. Teachers are already finding themselves in hot water for refusing to play along with the madness. Indeed, teachers such as Peter Vlaming at West Point High School in Virginia have already been fired from their jobs for refusing to refer to girls using male pronouns, and vice-versa. In California, teachers say they are required to submit to the gender madness or be fired, too.

Polling data reveal that the number of Americans who recognize that children are being harmed by the government-school system is growing. Indeed, about seven out of 10 parents would prefer not to send their children to government schools at all. But it is important to recognize that it’s not just children who are victims of the education establishment. Increasingly, public-school teachers are being ordered to tolerate, aid, or perpetrate evil — or leave. And many good teachers are being driven out.

In interviews with The New American, almost a dozen current and former public-school teachers expressed serious concerns about the changes taking place in “education.” Some had already been ordered by superiors to violate their conscience and common sense in order to comply with outlandish statutes, regulations, or policies. Others know full well that the day is fast approaching when they will have to choose: Obey the system, or obey God and their conscience.

Transgender Locker Rooms

At Chasco Middle School in Pasco County, Florida, it was a day just like any other day for physical education teacher Rob Oppedisano — at least until his principal walked into the locker room, shut the door, and asked to have a chat. “There is a girl identifying as a boy who is going to be in here, changing and showering,” Oppedisano recalls the principal saying, adding that he was told he would have to be in there supervising it all.

Naturally, Oppedisano, a Christian, told his boss that there was no way he could stand in there and watch a minor girl get undressed. He explained that it would be inappropriate to subject the boys in his class to that, too — especially without even notifying their parents. “I told him, ‘I just can’t do that,’” Oppedisano told The New American in a phone interview. “He came back and said to me, ‘Rob, I don’t want you to lose your job over this. Why don’t you just think about it, and we can talk later.’”

Still, Oppedisano resisted, noting that there was no written policy on this, while asking that the school district get involved. Eventually, the district sent over an attorney, who held a two-hour meeting advising Oppedisano to comply — or else. The lawyer also claimed, falsely, that Oppedisano was the only one who had a problem with the idea of a girl changing and showering in the boys’ locker room.

The attorney said parents would not be notified and that the district was not at all concerned about lawsuits, Oppedisano recalled. “He said we are the largest employer in Pasco County and that we get sued all the time anyway,” the PE teacher said.

Then, the lawyer from the district offered a transfer, which Oppedisano declined. “What good would that do if the policy is the same?” he asked. The district operative then warned Oppedisano that he could lose his job and even his teaching certificate, meaning “I would never be able teach in Florida again,” Oppedisano recalled about that meeting. “I said ‘No, I don’t want to lose my job, but I’m not going to quit on these kids, and their parents need to know.’” The union representative, instead of standing up for teachers, also urged Oppedisano to surrender.

Then, the big day came. “She came in, just walked right by us, and the boys ran out half dressed, and said, ‘Coach, we have a problem, there’s a girl in the boys’ locker room!’” Oppedisano recalled about that day. “But there was nothing we could do. After that, throughout the whole semester, my principal or assistant principal would take the girl in the locker room with the boys, and I’d just sit in the hallway.”

Obeying God, or Men

And now, that is one of the issues the superintendent is upset about — he felt Oppedisano’s job duties required him to watch the underage girl undress, something that just a few years ago would have landed him in prison, and for good reason. Without the non-profit Christian legal group Liberty Counsel representing him, Oppedisano believes he already would have been fired.

While that gender-confused student has moved on, the unwritten “policy” remains firmly in place. So Oppedisano is just waiting until the next “transgender” student comes along to make similar demands, and for the administration to retaliate. He does not hold it against his boss, though, knowing full well that the demands came not from the school administration, but from “above their heads.” There have been claims of “federal mandates,” but Obama’s bizarre and flagrantly unconstitutional rules on the subject were promptly repealed when President Trump took office.

Either way, Oppedisano cannot watch a girl undress. “Between the morals and the safety issues, being a follower of Jesus Christ — and remember, innocent kids are being put in a really bad situation here — I wanted no part of that,” Oppedisano said, getting emotional. “I fought for the parents too. They should have been involved. This is a serious situation. And it wasn’t just the boys. What about the girl, being put in there with a bunch of boys? It is bad for the staff too. Any way you look at it it’s a bad situation. It’s just terrible policy.”

And girls in the boys’ locker rooms is just one part of the problem. “It’s all coming in,” he said. “More and more of the LGBT agenda is being put out there. I also teach a health class, and they are starting to present the LGBT stuff in a positive manner. It’s definitely coming. I don’t know why it’s happening or where it’s coming from or how it got started. All I know is these policies — we’re supposed to call children by the name they prefer, then we are supposed to try to hide it when their parents come in. It’s happening here, and in other places.” Most parents still have no idea, Oppedisano added.

For Christians and other faculty members of faith, the situation is looking increasingly grim. “If a policy is going to force you to go against what you believe in, you’re not going to have too many choices,” he said. “They wanted to put me out of work and they refused to tolerate my beliefs. If you’re a Christian and you stand up for something, you can rest assured that that would be looked upon as behavior that’s not going to be tolerated. That puts a lot of pressure on us — either we suppress our faith and give in, or we stand up and live by what we believe.”

Blatant Discrimination Against Christian Teachers

The hostility and discrimination against teachers in public schools is now a nationwide problem. When teacher Roxie Hunter decided to become the sponsor for the Christian club at her public school in Phoenix, Arizona, for instance, she never could have imagined the persecution that would be unleashed against her and her students. From trying to prevent them from wearing Christian T-shirts to seeking to ban Bibles on campus, government education officials went wild in the effort to suppress the Christian student club.

“We were discriminated against in many instances,” Hunter told The New American in Phoenix in an on-camera interview about the group, known as “Lions for Christ.” While teachers could actively participate in other student groups, including highly controversial ones, Hunter was barred from doing anything at all with her Christian students. “They said it was against the Constitution,” Hunter explained when asked what the school administration used as a pretext to persecute the Christian club.

Hunter was not buying it. “I explained to them that it was against the Constitution in the USSR, but not in the United States of America,” she said. “They also said the courts had ruled that we couldn’t do certain things. So I had to do the research, and I found that many of the things that were said were basically rumors that had been passed along.”

In reality, courts have consistently upheld the right of students and teachers to do precisely what Lions for Christ was trying to do. “Students have the right to assemble, they have the right to pray, and they have the right to bring their Bibles to school,” she said, adding that many of her students had been told they were not allowed to do those things by school officials.

Quackery Must Be Used, or Else

Aside from ordering teachers to violate their conscience, the education establishment is also forcing teachers to teach in ways that go against what they know is best for their students. In interviews with The New American, numerous teachers expressed serious concerns. Some left the public-school system altogether to avoid becoming complicit in harming children, while others are still fighting.

Kim Pendleton, who has been involved in education for over 15 years, saw firsthand the carnage being unleashed on children and educators by the Obama-backed national standards known as Common Core. “Many teachers feel the creators of Common Core were idiots who knew nothing about education and child development,” she told The New American, giving examples of the wildly inappropriate standards used to ensure that children fail to learn properly. “I know in my heart this is not true. The powers that be knew everything about child development and created a system for failure, frustration and illiteracy.”

After seeing firsthand the damage being wrought on children, Pendleton knew she had to get out. She now teaches at Freedom Project Academy. “The only reason that public education has not completely crumbled yet is one thing: educators who know better,” Pendleton explained. “I am acquainted with many of them, and they are priceless. However, they are leaving, either through retirement or abandonment. Their mental health is taking a toll. I am not sure how long it will be before it all collapses, but if we continue on this path, it will happen.”

Pendleton often felt conflicted between doing what was right, and doing what the system demanded — especially in reading and writing. The curriculum used for reading and writing, for instance, was a disaster. “The lessons were convoluted and were more akin to pep talks as opposed to actually teaching good writing and reading,” she explained, adding that Common Core and the dysfunctional sex-ed were not helping children at all. “The ones who did well usually had an educated family and had been ‘taught’ fundamentals long before they arrived at school.” Even experts involved in the writing of Common Core have warned that it does not reflect reality in terms of how students learn to read.

The modern classroom environment is also totally out of control, Pendleton explained, noting that student misbehavior consumes an enormous amount of classroom time and is getting worse. “I was often dealing with that as opposed to teaching,” she recalled. “I was sworn at by third and fourth graders and punched one year. There were little consequences for students, and when they figured that out, the behavior escalated.”

And when teachers go against the harmful system, they face retaliation, Pendleton said. Among other tactics, such teachers are given poor evaluations. Many of them are scared to speak out, too, because their salary and their retirement is at stake, forcing many teachers to remain silent even though they know all of this is wrong.

Getting Worse

Aaron Potsick has been teaching for almost two decades. During that time, he has seen things go downhill, fast. “There is much less value placed on quality teaching and more value placed on the newest pedagogy put forth by the state and curriculum companies — and it changes every year,” he told The New American. “It’s more of how well can you parrot what you’re told. Each year the newest ‘best practice’ is shown, and countless professional developments are given on how to teach better. Everything from the last month or year’s ‘best practice’ is thrown out the window. Teachers are constantly having to learn new curriculum and teaching strategies and leave behind proven models.”

Even the teaching of actual subjects is low on the priority list unless it is being tested, Potsick said. “The way to ‘perform’ is to get the testing topics covered and adhere strictly to those topics,” he explained, adding that which material is taught or not taught is controlled in this way. “Any additional information that the district or the state doesn’t deem as ‘important’ is not taught. To teach outside the guidelines means you are falling behind the others you are ‘competing’ against and then your class will not perform as well.”

“This all clearly leads to all of our students’ learning being a ‘mile wide and an inch deep,’” continued Potsick, who taught middle-school history in his final years in a public school before going on to teach through private alternatives, mostly online. “As you know, teaching something as intricate and important as Civics without context is to not really teach it at all. If there is no foundation for why, then there is no understanding, which leads to our students being easily politically misled and influenced — just what our country needs!”

The teacher training was often suspect, too. “There was always the underlying liberal mindset that was encouraged,” he explained. “The underlying idea of America as being characterized by slavery and Native American devastation was regularly covered as an underlying element of lesson ideas. This was clearly accepted by the vast majority…. At my school, we regularly had teachers telling the students how horrible Trump was and condemning his actions without anything close to the full story.”

Potsick also noted that there have been a number of things he was ordered to teach and do that made him uncomfortable. In history, for instance, he had a mandated textbook that included an entire factually challenged chapter on supposed “American Imperialism,” demonizing America and Americanism.

And then more recently, the system began pushing “Social and Emotional Learning” (SEL) that really made him uncomfortable. During his last two years, it even had “mandated SEL time in all classrooms,” he explained. “It started innocent enough: learning conflict resolution skills, dealing with anger, being a good friend, and so on. But then, it began overtly pushing ideology.” Indeed, teachers were even ordered to show videos glorifying homosexuality, transgenderism, bisexuality, and more. As a Christian, Potsick refused, but the school had not yet worked out a system to check on every class to ensure the LGBT propaganda was being foisted on students.

Even though he has witnessed the rapid deterioration of education since the beginning of the 21st century, Potsick also said very few teachers are willing to go against the status quo in a meaningful way. “The whole system from college classes in education to get your degree, to teacher training, to many administrators’ expectations; it’s such a monolith that not many challengers get through,” he said. “When they do, they usually just leave because they get worn down.”

Eventually, Potsick left, too. “I left because teaching became less about what I could bring to the table as a teacher and more about the extra stuff that was meaningless to a real education,” he said. Other concerns included not being able to give children the failing grades they deserved, having to deal with outrageous behavior including threats and flagrant disobedience only to have children lie about the teacher, and so on.

“Schools are developing more and more mindless, entitled future citizens that expect to get things their way, without any hard work, because that’s what they get at public schools!” he continued.

Teachers Not Valued, Scared to Speak Out

As an elected member of his local school board, teacher Ted Lamb has a unique vantage point from which to consider the “many problems” he sees plaguing the government education system. Being a teacher today “can be very challenging,” he told The New American after attending a “Rescuing Our Children” talk by this writer this summer. “The bureaucracy of mandates, policy, and standardized curriculum with assessments has destroyed many things in education.”

Like Potsick, Lamb has felt conflicted between doing what is right — and doing what the system demands. “Giving grades that students did not deserve has been the big one,” he said, pointing to decisions made by administrators that he knew would cause “significant issues.” Other problems include “the lack of teaching critical skills,” the “overkill of bureaucracy,” and the endless “unnecessary mandates” that represent an enormous burden. Another concern is Common Core and controversial sex-education programs, which Lamb said “absolutely” do not benefit students.

Teachers and their knowledge and experience are not valued by the system, either. “We are not asked about key and important policies,” he said. “Many times teachers are treated as though they are replaceable.”

But again, echoing a constant theme heard throughout The New American’s conversations with teachers across America, Lamb said teachers were scared to speak out about all the problems they see. “Teachers are scared to speak out across the nation because of perception of what has happened to their colleagues,” he said, noting that there can be “retaliation” when a teacher goes against or even questions certain policies. “If you do not agree with the policy of the district or division then you are ‘blackballed’ many times.”

Teachers Under Siege

Despite several generations of indoctrination and dumbing down — especially in colleges of education across America — there is still a large number of amazing teachers and administrators working in the public-school system. There are, for instance, still teachers who risk the ire of the education establishment or worse by ignoring Common Core mandates and secretly teaching children how to read using systematic, intensive phonics instruction. There are also those who ignore the mandates and teach their students real American history, including the Christian history of the United States and the fact that America’s Founders were fighting for God-given rights.

Unfortunately, the system is increasingly turning against those great educators, working to force them into submission or early retirement. Countless teachers, faced with those grim alternatives, have already left the system. Many more will be leaving in the years ahead as the system gets better at weeding out dissenters. While it is indeed true that there are still great men and women inside the system, it is also true that they are severely limited in what they can do.

Americans should encourage and pray for the brave teachers who are still holding the line, but no more children should be sacrificed to the false idol of government schools. To survive as a free society over the long term, the rest of America should follow the lead of public-school teachers who are far more likely than parents as a whole to educate their children in private schools or at home, according to a 2015 survey conducted by Knowledge Networks for the journal Education Next. That is because they know what is going on.

TNA: https://www.thenewamerican.com/print-magazine/item/34254-good-public-school-teachers-under-siege

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

Mike Maharrey: While You Were Obsessing Over Impeachment 0 (0)

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by Mike Maharrey

Well, they did it!

The House impeachment hearings were little more than political theater — a partisan fistfight with the majority party coming out the “winner.” In the process, it created the illusion of deep division and disagreement. Devoted Democrats and Republicans are both convinced that their team is fighting for their interests against a determined foe on the other side of the aisle.

But while everybody obsessed over the political theater playing out on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, they completely missed the sideshow that could actually impact their lives. Even as Democrats and Republicans engaged in a contentious public spectacle in the media spotlight, they worked in concert behind the scenes to steal your liberty and your wealth.

While you argued over the gory details of impeachment with your friends on Facebook, Congress passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The nearly 3,500-page bill authorizes $738 billion in defense spending in Fiscal Year 2020. It creates a “Space Force,” so the U.S. can expand its empire into the cosmos. And Congress rejected a provision that would have made it just slightly harder for the president to unilaterally send American troops into combat. In other words, Congress agreed that it would not bother to do its job and declare war before sending the U.S. military to conduct offensive combat operations as required by the Constitution. It will continue to let the president make that call on his own. You know – the president the House just impeached.

Even worse, the current iteration of the NDAA extended provisions written into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that effectively authorize government kidnapping. The vaguely worded sections purport to authorize the arrest and “indefinite detention” of anybody the president decides might be associated with “terrorism” and subject them to the law of war. In effect, the government can deem you a terrorist and lock you away without due process. Government kidnapping may sound like hyperbole, but that’s exactly what the NDAA authorizes in effect.

Speaking of war, while all eyes were glued to the three-ring circus in D.C., the Washington Post released documents revealing that the U.S. government has been lying to us about the war in Afghanistan for decades.

“A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

As one three-star general put it, “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking. If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction .?.?. 2,400 lives lost.”

This seems, maybe, just a tiny bit, significant. But the news barely saw the light of day. It was completely buried under an avalanche of impeachment reporting.

The sad truth is that these papers that have been mostly ignored provide legitimate grounds for impeachment – not just of Donald Trump, but Barack Obama and George W. Bush to boot. But when it comes to war, Congress maintains a bipartisan consensus supporting the endless, unconstitutional foreign interventions and the presidents who run them. And the media is complicit, focusing on the fake wrestling matches on Capitol Hill instead of reporting on real wars

And while we’re on the subject of bipartisan consensus, let me remind you that Congress reauthorized sections of the Patriot Act in the latest stopgap spending bill. This means the federal government will be able to continue to spy on you without a warrant and in complete disregard of the Fourth Amendment. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) predicted it would happen.

Today, while everyone is distracted by the impeachment drama, Congress will vote to extend warrantless data collection provisions of the #PatriotAct, by hiding this language on page 25 of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that temporarily funds the government. To sneak this through, Congress will first vote to suspend the rule which otherwise gives us (and the people) 72 hours to consider a bill. The scam here is that Democrats are alleging abuse of Presidential power, while simultaneously reauthorizing warrantless power to spy on citizens that no President should have… in a bill that continues to fund EVERYTHING the President does… and waiving their own rules to do it. I predict Democrats will vote on a party line to suspend the 72 hour rule. But after the rule is suspended, I suspect many Republicans will join most Democrats to pass the CR with the Patriot Act extension embedded in it.

And indeed they did.

And finally, while Congress-critters battled it out on the House floor, behind the scenes, congressional leaders worked with the Trump administration to hammer out a $1.4 trillion spending agreement. According to an Associated Press report, the deal “fills in the details of a bipartisan framework from July that delivered about $100 billion in agency spending increases over the coming two years instead of automatic spending cuts that would have sharply slashed both the Pentagon and domestic agencies.”

So, let’s review. While America was mesmerized by the pro-wrestling event on Capitol Hill, Congress agreed to maintain the government’s “authority” to kidnap you, to keep spying on you without a warrant, to continue unconstitutional wars, and to spend you deeper into debt.

Political theater makes for splashy headlines and heated debates, but it really has very little impact on your life. The political class, including the mainstream media, would prefer you pay attention to the fluff, not to the things that really matter. Perhaps instead of obsessing over impeachment or the latest debate over a Trump tweet, you would be better served to pay attention to what they don’t want you to pay attention to.

TAC: https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2019/12/20/while-you-were-obsessing-over-impeachment/

Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He is from the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky and currently resides in northern Florida. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE

Bill Lockwood: Lexington & Concord Again? 0 (0)

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by Bill Lockwood

In the early morning hours of April 19, 1775, the British regulars, stationed in Boston, marched up the quiet country road in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Their goal: to confiscate a cache of firearms that intelligence had informed them the colonists had stored in Concord. Patriot leaders, however, had sounded the alarm by horseback before dawn. Men such as Paul Revere and Samuel Prescott had roused the local militia’s who had been anticipating such an event.

As daylight was breaking the British regulars came out of the woods to a small village along the chosen route—Lexington. Major Pitcairn led the redcoats. Waiting for them were about 80 militiamen standing on the village “commons”—the town square, led by their Captain, John Parker. Determined to defend their God-bestowed right of self-preservation, even from a tyrannical government, the militia refused to disperse when Major Pitcairn ordered it.

Who fired the first shot is a matter left open to historical investigation. The result was that within the next few minutes 8 militiamen were killed during the confrontation. The Redcoats moved on to Concord but were met by several thousand farmers armed with their personal muskets as the news spread through the wooded communities. In the end, the Americans drove the British back to Boston. The Revolution had begun.

The entire event at Lexington was immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his famous poem, “Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride.”

The struggle actually had begun years before as the British government continually violated its own charters for the colonies that guaranteed them a free-hand governing themselves. One intrusive English law after another specifically violated those written promises. Colonial freedoms were being curtailed. In the end, these written guarantees in the form of charters were trampled by the gigantic growing British government that sprawled itself all over the world.

The United States

No one wishes to relive the bloody scenes of the past. Consider, however, the brewing trouble in our own nation and its similarities to 1775.

First, our Constitution was written for one specific purpose—to curtail the federal government. Our Founders felt so strongly about it that they included the 10th Amendment which in sum says that any power or authority NOT specifically delegated to the federal government by this Constitution remains with the people. All rights belong to the people by endowment from God. Government’s sole design is to protect these rights. Since governments throughout history have traditionally removed these rights, our national government was purposefully crafted to be limited.

The framers of the Constitution also realized from hard bloody experience that they must put into writing not only that the federal government needs to be restrained, but that individuals have a right of self-preservation from that government—even if by force. This is how America began. Thus, the 2nd Amendment. The primary reason for this Amendment—the right to keep and bear arms– is to defend rights that are historically lost by intrusive governments—not foreign invaders.

“The people” have a right to firearms. The ability of “the people” to defend themselves against dictators foreign and domestic is a divinely ordained right. As George Mason of Virginia put it, “to disarm the people—that is the best and most effective way to enslave them.”

The 2nd Amendment is, in effect, a “thou shalt not touch this” to the Federal Government. That includes whatever weaponry a citizen may deem necessary to maintain his or her freedom from authoritarian designs.

Second, the current slate of Democratic presidential hopefuls has sounded off about British-style confiscation of certain types of firearms. Beto O’Rourke has campaigned on the promise that the government will confiscate AR-15’s. In the ‘spirit of 1776’, Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain tweeted “My AR is ready for you Robert Francis.”

These words from Cain have simply enraged the statist-loving mob of the left who believe a person only has what rights a government may give. They see it as simply a threat to murder O’Rourke. But it is a far cry from that. Instead, it is exactly the same circumstances that were seen in 1775. Cain’s remark is no different than a Samuel Adams, or a Paul Revere, answering the arrogant British threat to remove this God-given right. At least we know where left stands when it comes to how we gained our freedom from Britain.

What should alarm the American people is the lawless, tyrannical, and totalitarian attitude from the O’Rourkes and Biden’s of the world that somehow the government can violate its own charters—the Declaration of Independence & Constitution—and impose its godless will on peace-loving American citizens. Beto and Biden sound no different than King George III.

Twitter removed Briscoe Cain’s “My AR is ready for you, Robert” tweet. That violates the rules of Twitter, it is said. Well, now we know what side of the Bill of Rights Twitter is on—King George’s. Making violent threats? No, that came from O’Rourke—“we’re going to take your AR 15” he repeated in the Democratic debate. If the socialist-Democrat party wishes to pursue this course, will we end up having another Lexington and Concord? I hope and pray not. But the lawless Democrats seem to push ahead wildly, regardless of whose rights they trample and the God from whom we own them.

 

Kathleen Marquardt: PUBLIC/PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS, REDISTRIBUTING OUR WEALTH BY THE MILLIONS AND BILLIONS. 0 (0)

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by Kathleen Marquardt

We have been railing against Public/Private Partnerships for many years. This is not a new issue. Many times in the past we’ve tried to inform the public of the dangers of PPPs, but they are complicated and most people today don’t want to take the time to delve deeply into anything that isn’t giving them pleasure. But now is the time to become educated on just one of the ways that we are being bled dry, that our money is being sucked off with huge vacuums and given to those conspiring to destroy America and the great American dream. They are winning because we are too busy, too lazy, too involved in other pursuits to stop them.

In a speech at the Freedom 21 National Conference in Dallas in 2007, Tom DeWeese, president of American Policy Center, noted:

During the first years of the Clinton Administration in the early 1990s, there was much fanfare about a new policy to “reinvent government.” It was sold as a way to make government more efficient and less costly. It would, said its proponents, “bring business technologies to public service.”

Pro-business, anti-big-government conservatives and libertarians were intrigued. The backbone of the plan was a call for “public/private partnerships.” Now that sounded like their kind of program.

Government, they said, would finally tap the tremendous power of the entrepreneurial process and the force of the free market into making government more effective and efficient. It sounded so revolutionary and so American.

Being open-minded and wanting to help us get back to what the framers of the Constitution had built for us, we wanted this to be true. But as Tom pointed out:

Today that “reinvention” has revealed itself to be the policy known as Sustainable Development, which is nothing more than a plan for a top-down managed society. Sustainable Development policy includes population control; development control; technology control; resource control; and in a great sense, thought control.

Sustainable Development is not freedom. Not one of the three principles apply. There is no individuality as it advocates group policies; there is no private property under Sustainable Development – period. And there is no free enterprise as markets and supplies are tightly controlled by the hand of government.

Yet, incredibly, much of the Sustainable policy has been embraced by the “free-trade” movement, which advocates open borders, free trade zones, and one-size fits all regulations, currencies, and the use of public/private partnerships. And many of the biggest proponents of the policy are conservative and libertarian think tanks.

But again, Tom nails it: Public/Private Partnerships = Government-
Sanctioned Monopolies

It is little understood by the general public how public/private partnerships can be used, not as a way to diminish the size of government, but in fact, to increase government’s power.

That’s because no one ever comes forward and tells the general public the entire plan for something as vast as the Security and Prosperity Partnership. No one ever calls for a debate or a vote to implement the plan with public approval.

Instead, it’s done incrementally, a piece at a time, in an easy to disguise program here – a suggestion there. There are few debates or discussions. Even elected officials rarely know the true agenda they are helping to put in place.

Slowly, the whole comes together. By the time people realize the truth, it’s already in place. Policy is set.(Note Randy Salzman’s article below.)

And Public/Private Partnerships are becoming the fastest growing process to impose such policy. State legislatures across the nation are passing legislation, which calls for the implementation of PPPs.

Beware. These bonds between government and private international corporations are a double-edged sword. They come armed with government’s power to tax, the government’s power to enforce policy and the government’s power to enforce eminent domain.

At the same time, the private corporations use their wealth and extensive advertising budgets to entrench the policy into our national conscience. Cute little jingles or emotional commercials can be very useful tools to sell a government program.

It is one thing to spell this out. At least it gives you a foundation for what Public/Private Partnerships are. But until you are exposed to an actual project (or rather the ‘conceived’ project), you cannot fathom the intricacies of deceit, collusion, and theft of taxpayer money with which these entities are swindling us, the people.

In a must-read article from Thinking Highways, Randy Salzman’s “A ‘Model’ Scheme? is enlightening and frightening. As the lead-in says, “Salzman’s work is most comprehensive look at the dangers of P3s to date. It’s a must read for citizens and policymakers alike.” Please take the time to read it. I offer some key points from his article:

In the media, congress and across the political world, promoters pushing design-build public-private partnerships (P3s) are still claiming that private innovation is saving taxpayer money, creating good jobs and easing congestion.

In wanting to institute an “Infrastructure Bank” to address America’s “crumbling highway infrastructure,” even President Obama, using New York’s Tappan Zee Bridge as a backdrop, recently encouraged P3 construction with a US$302 billion plan. The president had apparently not read Congressional Budget Office research into P3s, nor heard the Tappan Zee contractor speak at a congressional hearing.

In March, Fluor’s senior vice president Richard Fierce bragged that his company was saving taxpayers US$1.7 billion on the new bridge across the Hudson until one congressman offhandedly remarked that he’d heard the Tappan Zee project would cost US$5 billion, not US$3.1 billion as the contractor had claimed.

Salzman points out that the ‘private’ entities “put up tiny bits of equity, though they impy more becaue they borrow dollars from Uncle Sam that they likey will not repay”; that the state and federal taxpayers are ponying up the 95+% of the bill, and we are also stuck with the cost of the bonds when “the P3 goes bankrupt – as they almost inevitably do – about 15 years down the road.”

Media coverage of P3s over the past decade, furthermore, has been overwhelmingly positive, consistently following the contractor line that private innovation is offsetting significant amounts of expense, improving projects and freeing public dollars for other activities. However, the Congressional Budget Office indicates P3s provide little, if any, financial benefit to taxpayers.

“The cost of financing a highway project privately is roughly equal to the cost of financing it publicly after factoring in the costs associated with the risk of losses from the project, which taxpayers ultimately bear, and the financial transfers made by the federal government to states and localities,” the CBO’s Microeconomic Studies director told congress in March. “Any remaining difference between the costs of public versus private financing for a project will stem from the effects of incentives and conditions established in the contracts that govern public-private partnerships.”

In that congressional hearing, Boston’s Michael Capuano reminded congressmen that “people stole money” in prior equivalents of design-build P3s, and that’s why the highway construction paradigm became “inefficiency intended to avoid malfeasance.”

Read the article – it is eye-opening even for those who understand the concept of PPPs. We the taxpayers are having our wealth redistributed in so many ways, but this is one of the most egregious.

Back to Tom’s speech on Public/Private Partnerships and our Republic:

Further, participating corporations can control the types of products offered on the market. Witness the drive for solar and wind power, even though the technology doesn’t exist for these alternative energies to actually make a difference.

Yet, the corporations, in partnership with government to impose these polices, have convinced the American public that this is the future of energy. Rest assured that if any one of these companies had to sell such products on the free market controlled by consumers, there would be very little talk about them.

But, today, an unworkable idea is making big bucks, not on the open market, but in a controlled economy for a select few like British Petroleum because of their partnerships with government.

Public/private partnerships can be used by international corporations to get a leg up on their competition by entering into contracts with government to obtain favors such as tax breaks and store locations not available to their competition, thereby creating an elite class of “connected” businesses.

A private developer, which has entered into a Public/Private Partnership with local government, for example, can now obtain the power of eminent domain to build on land not open to its competitors.

The fact is, current use of eminent domain by local communities in partnership with private developers simply considers all property to be the common domain of the State, to be used as it sees fit for some undefined common good.

The government gains the higher taxes created by the new development. The developer gets the revenue from the work. The immediate losers, of course, are the property owners. But other citizens are losers too. Communities lose control of their infrastructure. Voters lose control of their government.

Using PPPs, power companies can obtain rights of way over private land, as is currently happening in Virginia where Dominion Power plans massive power towers over private property – against the strong objections of the property owners.

Private companies are now systematically buying up water treatment plants in communities across the nation, in effect, gaining control of the water supply. And they are buying control of the nation’s highway systems through PPPs with state departments of transportation.

Because of a public/private partnership, one million Texans are about to lose their land for the Trans Texas Corridor, a highway that couldn’t be built without the power of eminent domain.

Of course, it’s not just American companies entering into PPPs with our government. Foreign companies are being met with open arms by local, state and federal officials who see a way to use private corporations and their massive bank accounts to fund projects.

As the Associated Press reported July 15, 2006, “On a single day in June (2006) an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.6 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99 year lease on Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road for 50 years.”

In fact, that Spanish-American partnership in Texas and its lease with the Texas Department of Transportation to build and run the Trans Texas Corridor contains a “no-compete” clause which prohibits anyone, including the Texas government from building new highways or expanding exiting ones which might run in competition with the TCC. (note: the TCC is dead, but just recently I’ve heard it is going to be put forward again.)

So why do so many libertarians and conservatives support the concept of Public/Private Partnerships? By their words they profess to uphold the principles of freedom, limited government, individualism, private property and free enterprise. Yet they embrace a policy that eliminates competition, increases the size and power of government and stamps out the individual in the process.

A recent conference held in Virginia, just outside D.C. by such libertarians was titled “Restoring the Republic.” Yet, they called for open borders and “free trade.”

My question is this: What is the Republic? Is it just a notion floating on air? Something we can’t actually hold in our hand. Is the Republic just an idea? Or is it a thing? A place?

Only one nation was created by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: the United States. We were created as that Republic.” The Constitution defines a government that is supposed to have one purpose, the protection of rights we were born with.

It is true that every person on earth was born with those rights based on the principles of freedom. But only one nation was specifically designed to recognize and protect them: the United States.

If there are no borders, then what is the Republic they want to preserve? How can that be done? The Republic is the land of the United States. The laws of the United States. The judicial system of the United States. The sovereign states of the United States.

Our Constitution directs how we create laws by which we live, right down to the local level. It protects our ability to create a way of life we desire. Our resources, our economy, our wealth is all determined by the way of life we have chosen. And it’s all protected by the borders which define the nation – the Republic. And you can’t “harmonize” that with nations that reject those concepts! Canada is a commonwealth tied to the British Crown; Mexico is socialist.

So again, I ask, if you eliminate all of that by opening the borders and inviting nothing short of anarchy – then how do you preserve the Republic?

APC: https://americanpolicy.org/2019/09/09/public-private-partnerships-redistributing-our-wealth-by-the-millions-and-billions/

Read Kathleen Marquardt’s Biography

Tom DeWeese: Will Brett Kavanaugh Stand for Property Rights? 0 (0)

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Will Brett Kavanaugh Stand for Property Rights?-“The homeowner came under greater pressure to sell.”

by Tom DeWeese

There’s lots of talk about where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh stands on the Roe v Wade abortion decision and if he would vote to rescind it. There is another very controversial Supreme Court decision made just few years ago, supported by the Anthony Kennedy, the justice he seeks to replace. That is the Kelo decision that basically obliterated private property rights in America. So, where does Brett Kananaugh stand on protection of private property rights? With Kennedy or the Constitution?

In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down an opinion that shocked the nation. It was the case of Susette Kelo, et al. v City of New London, Connecticut, et al. The issue: “Does the government taking of property from one private owner to give to another private entity for economic development constitutes a permissible ‘public use’ under the Fifth Amendment?”

In 2000, the city of New London saw a chance to rake in big bucks through tax revenues for a new downtown development project that was to be anchored by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The company announced a plan to build a $270 million dollar global research facility in the city. The local government jumped at the chance to transform 90 acres of an area right next to the proposed research facility. Their plans called for the creation of the Fort Trumbull development project which would provide hotels, housing and shopping areas for the expected influx of Pfizer employees. There were going to be jobs and revenues A-Go-Go in New London. Just one obstacle stood in the way of these grand plans. There were private homes in that space.

No muss – no fuss. The city fathers had a valuable tool in their favor. They would just issue an edict that they were taking the land by eminent domain. The city created a private development corporation to lead the project. First priority for the new corporation was to obtain the needed property.

Purchase Tom’s latest book “Sustainable: The WAR on Free Enterprise, Private Property and Individuals”.

In July, 1997, Susette Kelo bought a nice little pink house in a quiet fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London. Little did she imagine that warm, comfy place would soon become the center of a firestorm.

She had no intention of selling. She’d spent a considerable amount of money and time fixing up her little pink house, a home with a beautiful view of the waterfront that she could afford. She planted flowers in the yard, braided her own rugs for the floors, filled the rooms with antiques and created the home she wanted.

Less than a year later, the trouble started. A real estate broker suddenly showed up at her door representing an unknown client. Susette said she wasn’t interested in selling. The realtor’s demeanor then changed, warning that the property was going to be condemned by the city. One year later, on the day before Thanksgiving, the sheriff taped a letter to Kelo’s door, stating that her home had been condemned by the City of New London.

Then the pressure began. A notice came in the mail telling her that the city intended to take her land. An offer of compensation was made, but it was below the market price. The explanation given was that, since the government was going to take the land, it was no longer worth the old market price, therefore the lower price was “just compensation,” as called for in the Fifth Amendment. It was a “fair price,” Kelo and the homeowners were told over and over.

Some neighbors quickly gave up, took the money and moved away. With the loss of each one, the pressure mounted. Visits from government agents became routine. They knocked on the door at all hours, demanding she sell. Newspaper articles depicted her as unreasonably holding up community progress. They called her greedy. Finally, the bulldozers moved in on the properties already sold. As they crushed down the houses, the neighborhood became unlivable. It looked like a war zone.

In Susette Kelo’s neighborhood, the imposing bulldozer was sadistically parked in front of a house, waiting. The homeowner came under greater pressure to sell. More phone calls, threatening letters, visits by city officials at all hours demanding they sign the contract to sell. It just didn’t stop. Finally the intimidation began to break down the most dedicated homeowners’ resolve. In tears, they gave in and sold. Amazingly, once they sold, the homeowners were then classified as “willing sellers!”

Immediately, as each house was bulldozed, the monster machine was moved to the next house, sitting there like a huffing, puffing dragon, ready to strike.

Finally Susette’s little pink house stood nearly alone in the middle of a destruction site. Over 80 homes were gone: seven remained. As if under attack by a conquering army, she was finally surrounded, with no place to run but to the courts. Under any circumstances the actions of the New London government and its sham development corporation should have been considered criminal behavior. It used to be. If city officials were caught padding their own pockets, or those of their friends, it was considered graft. That’s why RICO laws were created.

The United States was built on the very premise of the protection of private property rights. How could a government possibly be allowed to take anyone’s home for private gain? Surely justice would finally prevail.

The city was backed in its appeal by the National League of Cities, one of the largest proponents of eminent domain use, saying the policy was critical to spurring urban renewal with development projects. However, the Supreme Court had always stood with the founders of the nation on the vital importance of private property. There was precedent after precedent to back up the optimism that they would do so again.

Finally, her case was heard by the highest court in the land. It was such an obvious case of government overreach against private property owners that no one considered there was a chance of New London winning. That’s why it was a shock to nearly everyone involved that private property rights sustained a near-death blow that day.

This time, five black robes named Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Breyer shocked the nation by ruling that officials who had behaved like Tony Soprano were in the right and Susette Kelo had no ground to stand on, literally or figuratively.

These four men and one woman ruled that the United States Constitution is meaningless as a tool to protect individuals against the wants and desires of government. Their ruling in the Kelo case declared that Americans own nothing. After deciding that any property is subject to the whim of a government official, it was just a short trip to declaring that government could now confiscate anything we own, anything we create, anything we’ve worked for – in the name of an undefined common good.

Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, who opposed the Court’s decision, vigorously rebutted the Majority’s argument, as she wrote in dissent of the majority opinion, “The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing a Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”

Justice Clarence Thomas issued his own rebuttal to the decision, specifically attacking the argument that this was a case about “public use.” He accused the Majority of replacing the Fifth Amendment’s “Public Use” clause with a very different “Public Purpose” test. Said Justice Thomas “This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a public use.”

Astonishingly the members of the Supreme Court have no other job but to protect the Constitution and defend it from bad legislation. They sit in their lofty ivory tower, with their lifetime appointments, never actually having to worry about job security or the need to answer to political pressure. Yet, these five black robes obviously missed finding a single copy of the Federalist Papers, which were written by many of the Founders to explain to the American people how they envisioned the new government was to work. In addition, they apparently missed the collected writings of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and George Washington, just to mention a very few. It’s obvious because otherwise, there is simply no way they could have reached this decision.

So, in a five to four vote, the Supreme Court said that it was okay for a community to use eminent domain to take land, shut down a business, or destroy and reorganize an entire neighborhood, if it benefited the community in a positive way. Specifically, “positive” meant unquestioned government control and more tax dollars.

The Institute for Justice, the group that defended Susette Kelo before the Supreme Court, reported that it found 10,000 cases in which condemnation was used or threatened for the benefit of private developers. These cases were all within a five-year period after the Kelo decision. Today, that figure is dwarfed as there is seemingly no limit on government takings of private property.

The Kelo decision changed the rules. The precedent was set. Land can now be taken anytime at the whim of a power elite. So again, the question must be asked: if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, will he stand to protect private property rights against massive overreach by local, state, and federal governments? Will he support an effort to overturn the Kelo Decision?

APC: https://americanpolicy.org/2018/07/17/will-brett-kavanaugh-stand-for-property-rights/

Read Tom Deweese’s Biography

NATO is Operating as Designed—to Siphon Off American Wealth 0 (0)

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NATO is Operating as Designed—to Siphon Off American Wealth–“The blueprint for NATO was drawn by Nikolai Lenin, the Soviet dictator, and expanded by his successor Joseph Stalin.”

by Bill Lockwood

President Trump this week once more rocked the globalists and internationalists with his renewed criticism of what has been considered one of the cornerstones of American foreign policy: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Trump’s criticism focused upon the fact that the United States continues to pay the lion’s share of operating costs of the organization, while other member nations pay pittance by comparison.

For 2017, NATO’s military budget is $1.38 billion, the civilian budget is $252 million and its NATO Security Investment Program is $704 million. In this budget the U.S. contributes over 22 percent followed by Germany with a little over 14.65 percent, France at 10.6 percent and Britain 9.84 percent. There are 13 more members of NATO that pay less than 1 percent of their GDP to its budget.

Why Does America Pay the Lion’s Share?

Established in 1949 in the aftermath of WWII, NATO was sold to the American public as well as to the Senate as a necessity to keep the Soviet Union out of Western Europe. But as informed citizens are aware, NATO was specifically structured to be one of those “entangling alliances” to siphon off American wealth, as well as a stepping-stone to World Government. This is easily understood when one considers the roots of NATO.

The blueprint for NATO was drawn by Nikolai Lenin, the Soviet dictator, and expanded by his successor Joseph Stalin.  The basic 5-point plan for communistic global conquest is summarized in the following four points.

  1. Confuse, disorganize, and destroy the forces of capitalism around the world.
  2. Bring all nations together into a single world system of economy. [The United Nations’ International Monetary Fund as well as the World Bank helped achieve this goal. So also have the so-called “Free Trade Agreements.” BL]
  3. Force the advanced countries [read, United States] to pour prolonged financial aid into the underdeveloped countries.
  4. Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to total world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalties to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later, the regionals [such as NATO] can be brought all the way into a single world dictatorship of the proletariat. (Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, 1942, as quoted by G. Edward Griffin, The Fearful Master, A Second Look at the United Nations, 1964, p. 68)

One can readily see that the entire design or “regional” organizations was to be “transitional” to world government. More importantly, “regional governments”—or treaties—were necessary to bleed the American taxpayer to bankroll the entire scheme. This is exactly what is occurring and the frequent mantra that today’s world is a “new global community” plays directly into the orientation of Stalinist Russia.

Globalist Founders

Alger Hiss was one of FDR’s top advisors and was an ardent Soviet spy, having been convicted and sent to prison in 1950 for perjury involving statements relating to his communist activities. He was directly involved in the creation of The United Nations. His good friend, and advisor to later presidents, was John Foster Dulles. Dulles also was an avid globalist, pushing the United States towards Lenin’s world dictatorship. When Harry Truman signed America into the UN’s NATO alliance Dulles was enthusiastic. The “treaty” was part of the regional strategy towards globalism.

NATO involves first, a military “entangling alliance.” Article 5 of the NATO treaty binds the United States in an “agreement” that in the case of an “armed attack” against any NATO member other members of NATO, such as the United States, would consider it “as an attack against them all.” This contravenes the U.S. Constitution which assigns to Congress the power to declare war.

But NATO is not simply a military alliance. It is political as well (Steve Byas, article on John Foster Dulles, The New American, 3-5-2018). Dulles told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the treaty should be ratified “not as a military instrument but as a step in a political evolution that has behind it a long and honorable history, and before, it a great and peaceful future.” Note the language. NATO was considered by insiders to be a transitional stage toward a more solid global government.

The treaty itself states that member-states “will encourage economic collaboration between any and all of them.” Clarence Streit, Dulles’ fellow globalist, wrote in 1939 that he recommended the creation of regional groupings with the eventual goal of putting them together into a functioning world government. Streit pushed for the creation of NATO as a regional government within the framework of the United Nations. This is why Articles 51 and 52 of the UN Charter encourage the forging of “regional groupings” and cooperation.

United States Independence has always been in the crosshairs of the globalists behind NATO. In 1960, just 11 years after NATO’s founding, Elmo Roper of the Atlantic Union Committee stated:

For it becomes clear that the first step toward world government cannot be completed until we have advanced on the four fronts: the economic, the military, the political, and the social … the Atlantic Pact [NATO] need not be our last effort toward greater unity. It can be converted into one more sound and important step in working toward world peace. It can be one of the most positive moves in the direction of the One World. (Quoted by John McManus, in Changing Commands, The Betrayal of America’s Military, p. 20).

Jumping ahead to the Bush Administration of 1991, NATO was “reorganized.” Thousands of American soldiers were for the first time placed under German, British, and other blue-helmeted foreign commanders. Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary for the Administration, termed the move “an important milestone in the transformation of the alliance.” The transformation continues. Republican or Democrat, the goal is a world organization overriding the US Constitution.

Another precedent was established in during the Clinton Administration in 1994 when a British UN troop commander ordered US fighter planes from NATO to attack positions in Bosnia. Neither the British general, nor Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the UN Secretary-General, bothered to contact President Clinton nor our own Congress. The UN had already been given authority to employ US forces serving in NATO, a UN subsidiary, to utilize American military and money.

Now one can clearly see why Trump’s pressure on European countries to pay equivalent payments to NATO rattles socialist cages. Republican or Democrat, both sides of the aisle are grieved at the hindrance of their globalist designs. But the American people love President Trump, who has been the first president with backbone enough to lay it out for the American public by telling negotiators at the Brussels table that enough is enough.

The Constitution, Christianity, and Patriotism 0 (0)

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The Constitution, Christianity, and Patriotism– “…The Constitution is the civil Bible of Americans…“

by Bill Lockwood

Some suggest that biblical commands never enjoin one to be “patriotic” regarding America. Patriotism, it is supposed, is not commended in scripture; therefore, Christians need emphasize Americanism less.

This demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of America and Americanism; specifically, the God-inspired freedoms which form our core. It is true that most peoples love their own country, the place of their nativity. And if that was all that is involved in American patriotism–love of the fatherland–then the criticism might be well-founded. But America is different. It is unique in the history of the world. And it is not simply that it is unique that ought to cause Christians to be patriotic—but due to the substance of that uniqueness. This substance makes it superior.

John Adams, the second president of the United States, gives us a clue to the singular character of our nation. America is the first time in history, he noted, since even the time of Adam and Eve, that humanity might be able to enjoy, by the framework of governing principles, the freedoms which come from God. He was reflecting upon the sad fact that all governments and nations throughout history curtail the liberty which can only come from God since these governments do not begin with the fundamental premise of the sacredness of human life.

More to the point, a statement drafted first in 1922 by the Committee for Constitutional Government and signed by such dignitaries as Herbert Hoover, Alfred E. Smith, Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Mrs. William H. Taft and others, recommended a study of the Constitution on the following grounds.

Menaced by collectivist trends, we must seek revival of our strength in the spiritual foundations which are the bedrock of our republic. Democracy is the outgrowth of the religious conviction of the sacredness of every human life. On the religious side, its highest embodiment is the Bible; on the political, the Constitution. As has been said so well, ‘The Constitution is the civil Bible of Americans.’ Next to the Bible, the best book on the Constitution should be in every home, school, library and parish hall.

Our republic is the direct outgrowth of Christianity. The founding generation understood exactly what they were doing. For the first time in recorded history biblical values were enshrined as the basis of a limited government called a republic in which individual freedom was based upon individual worth.

This is why founder Noah Webster admonished, “Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion … and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.” For the same reason Patrick Henry, a long time preacher, insisted that our nation was actually founded upon Jesus Christ. Strange sounds for modern ears.

Practically every founder which wrote on the subject agreed with Henry. Alexander Hamilton observed, for example, that “The law … dictated by God Himself is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.”

Another signer of the Constitution, Rufus King, stated, “The … law established by the Creator … extends over the whole globe, is everywhere and at all times binding upon mankind….This is the law of God by which he makes his way known to man and is paramount to all human control.”

None of the above is to say that pulpits ought to draw their texts from particular Articles of the Constitution upon which to preach; for they are to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2).  But it is to say that a failure to recognize Christianity as the bulwark of our nation’s charter betrays a very limited understanding of America as well as the Bible. 

The very concepts of the sacredness of life, liberty, and private property—which the entire construct of the Constitution is designed to protect–are biblical in nature and are not traceable to any other source. The “transcendent values of Biblical natural law were the foundation of the American republic,” summarizes constitutionalist David Barton (Original Intent).

For this cause, Abraham Lincoln advised regarding the Constitution:

Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges, let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs, let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation, and, in particular, a reverence for the Constitution.

Again, it is education in the principles behind our founding charter which Lincoln was encouraging. The same is true for western culture as a whole. It is superior to other cultures precisely because of the undergirding concepts upon which it is based. As Herbert Schlossberg put it in Idols for Destruction,

Cultures are equal in value only if there is no standard against which to judge them. The culture of the West, infused as it is with Christian values, is superior to any other, and all the valid charges against the West are indications that it has betrayed its own heritage. It is not superior because it is wealthy; it is wealthy because it is superior, because it believes that work is a calling, that matter is important, that reason is a gift of God. This culture, God’s gift, transmits its material blessings along with its interpretation of reality.

America’s greatness is only assessed by the eternal standard of God’s Word. Alexis de Tocqueville is credited with this famous passage in which the Frenchman searched for the greatness of America. His answer was, “Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” (Ezra Taft Benson, God, Family, Country: Our Three Great Loyalties).

It is not commendable that many modern pulpits cannot seem to recognize that when they preach on the sacredness of an individual life they are preaching God-given values which, because of the Bible, became the foundation of Americanism—a unique event in world history. Is this not worthy of Christian homage?

Or, when preachers “invite” sinners to obey the gospel (1 Pet. 4:17) they are celebrating the concept of liberty and free choice protected by our wise founders.  Does this protection not call forth our reverence? Or, when pleading for donations they are assuming that God has invested people with private property which they can dispose of at their own volition; and because the founders believed in these biblical principles they constructed a lawful system of protection to guard that property. Should we not pay homage to this system?

Patriotism runs much deeper than love of my birthplace or attachment to the language I speak. It glories in God’s grace that enabled our founders to infuse the ideals of God into the framework of society. No other nation has ever attempted such a project. American patriotism is in reality a loyal adhesion to Christian principles which were grafted into a governing system.

The red, white, and blue therefore, evoke deep feelings not merely because I was born here—but due to the fact that these colors represent the fundamental godly doctrines which my forefathers died to protect. Not all of them lived in accordance with these values—to be sure– but they believed in them.   

America is not merely exceptional. This means “better than average; not normal.” It is that. But it is also unique in that it is unequalled. It is superior. And this distinction lies in its reliance upon Christianity by which our nation was forged.

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