Tea Parties, Third Parties and the Republican Party

I have read that over 50 percent of the people in this country today are registered as independents.  The reasons for this are many.  The Tea Party crowd, made up primarily of conservative Americans will be an important part of the electoral equation come 2012.  Will the Republicans be able to garner their support?  This article suggests that they may not.

Big Government » Blog Archive » Tea Parties, Third Parties and the Republican Party.

The 10th Amendment Movement

The tenth ammendment of the constitution states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Our federal government’s march towards a greater centralization of power in Washington, D.C., are driving the consideration of of nullification among many of America’s citizenry.  The link below will take you to a site that can inform you of the nationwide attempts of the states to seek a stop to this intrusive behavior of our central government.

I encourage you to take a look.

Tenth Amendment Center |  The 10th Amendment Movement.

2010

The holidays are upon us, and a new year approaches.  There are wars and rumors of wars and revolutions.   Politics in America are fractious and factioned.  The United States of America, and indeed the world entire is threatened with potential economic collapse, and yet I see room for hope.

America is unique in the history of the world.  We are a nation founded on a fundamental ideology of economic and personal liberty, and limited government as described in our Declaration of Independence  and put into practice by our Constitution.    Some might ask “Why limited government.”   The answer to this question is simple.  Economic and personal liberty can only be achieved and maintained by means of a limited central government.  Justice Louis Brandeis understood this and remarked on this understanding when he wrote:

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial.  Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.  The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

Justice Lous Brandeis

And this is how government grows and becomes more intrusive of our liberties.  That is through the  “insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” That is men and women who would do good for others, and use the government to that end.

Wanting to do good for others is both commendable and laudable, but this is not natural or necessary, or in my view an acceptable role for the federal government.  This is a role for the states and the  communities within those states.  No government in Washington D.C. understands the  problems of the myriad of communities across this nation better than do the communities themselves.

Top down systems of government and economics simply do not work well.  Capitalism, as viewed by Adam Smith in his seminal work  Wealth of Nations, shows that an individual’s decisions based on his personal economic well being was led by “an invisible hand” to promote the well being of the greater community.  Well intentioned and intrusive governmental regulation often have consequences that are unintended by the lawamakers.  These consequences then require more regulation and intrusion and so on ad infinitum.

I smell a sea change, however.  America is disgruntled.  With near 20% of Americans un or under-employed, the realities of our government’s fiscal irresponsibility are beginning to be noticed and understood by a larger number of our citizenry.

Bills in congress and the senate to audit the federal reserve bank are but the first rumblings to bring under control a spending addicted government.  As our economic condition worsens, and  there are many  reasons to believe that it will, more and more of the people will begin to see that the statist road towards empire , along which both Republicans and Democrats  have been leading us for the last century, should be a road less traveled.

So, yes, there is hope for a brighter future, a new America, an America of principles,  freedom and liberty;  A nation where a free people can keep the fruits of their labor and involve themselves in community:  a country that serves as a beacon of liberty to the world while avoiding the hollow greatness of empire.

So, I wish you the best for the coming new year.  It promises to be a tumultuous one.  Guard your finances, your friends and family well, and above all, remain hopeful for the future.  We are a great people, a great nation, and we will, in the end, survive and I believe prosper.

Is Obama Really Preparing for Civil War?

The Russians see it coming!

From lewrockwell.com

Is Obama Really Preparing for Civil War? by Chuck Baldwin.

A Second American Revolution, Redux I

Since Washington’s first presidential term with Jefferson as his Secretary of State and Hamilton as his Secretary of the Treasury, a conflict of two competing visions for our great nation has existed:  Jefferson’s agrarian republic  filled with staunchly individualistic yeoman farmers, with broad states rights and a limited central government versus Hamilton’s dreams of a commercial society with a strong centralized government and limited state’s rights.

In his book Frederick Bastiat: A Man Alone, George Charles Roche III writes of these conflicting ideas:

For the past two centuries, the Western World has been torn by a continuing debate:  Does the well-being of society as a whole stem from the freedom of enlightened individuals to pursue their own interests; or must government intervene in the lives of its citizens to assure the greatest collective good?

During that period after the Revolutionary War and before the signing of our current constitution, much debate was had over the nature of the Constitution itself.  The Federal Farmer wrote:

The plan of government now proposed is evidently calculated totally to change, in time, our condition as a people. Instead of being thirteen republics, under a federal head, it is clearly designed to make us one consolidated government. … whether it can be effected without convulsions and civil wars; whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country — time only can determine (the italics are mine)

Early in our nations history, the conflict of these two ideologies  drove us to a great civil war as the seeds of of our long contention took root and flowered.  At that time, the United States was comprised of around 25 million freemen and women and nearly 4 million slaves.  In that war, between 600,000 and 700,000 men died, about 2 1 percent of the entire population.  More men were lost in that war than in all our other wars combined.  It was a terrible tragedy for our country.

What did this war accomplish?  The practice of slavery was abolished, and the south was through reconstruction firmly yoked to the now solidified central government, but the ideas that drove us to the conflict yet remained.

In America today these conflicting visions are with us still.   Hamilton’s star is currently ascendant, but will it always be so?  I wonder.

A Second American Revolution?

When Bush Jr. was president, I had liberal friends who were absolutely certain that he would not step down from office.  They were convinced that the Neo-Cons were going to have their own “Beer Hall Putsch,” and that, unlike Hitler,  they would most likely be successful.  Bush would be king.  King George… How fitting.

When I first heard this from them, the only thing I could think to say was, “Have you lost your mind?”

They assured me they hadn’t, that they believed this not only conceivable, but quite possible.  Whew.

Now that Obama is in office, there are those on the right that speak of him enslaving white people.  I have read of a secret pact he intends to sign with other world leaders that will abrogate our national sovereignty.  I have read of his association with the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission.  The list is endless.  Conspiracy upon conspiracy.   Possible layer upon layer of lies and dissimulations…

Or can these things be true?  I suppose it not inconceivable that there is a group of wealthy men who would, through craft and deception, attempt to upend America’s sovereignty.  However I am reminded of one of President Lincoln’s aphorism’s:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

I am also reminded of Machiavelli’s rejoinder in The Prince:

And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watch-word of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget.

Which leads me further to Jefferson who was in France  a mere two years before that  Revolution, and truly intoxicated with Liberty’s heady wine when he penned these words.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.  It is its manure.  (Much manure was spread in France  for liberty’s tree)

I have lived long enough to recognize that I cannot know everything.  Perhaps, just as my left wing friends were wrong about Bush Jr., the right-wingers are correct about Obama, but I think not.  And, I would encourage any one person or group that wished to destroy the American political system to ruminate long, and hard,  on the words that I have quoted.