The March of the Hoodies

“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well as speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.” — James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10, November 22, 1787

In Federalist Paper 10 Madison wrote of the danger factions (or as we call them today special interests) posed to the formation of the new republic. Madison wrote:

“Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished, as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements and alarm for private rights which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administration.”

Madison feared that factions would be extremely dangerous to a democratic form of government and argued for a compound republic where the rights and interests of all the people would be protected.

Today we live in an era where factions rule our republic. We have the factions of race, sex, women, corporations, environmentalists, farmers, immigration, and a score of others all posing a clear and present danger to our liberties.

This is evident in the case of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. We are being bombarded by the traditional and factional race baiters, such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, to take a stand for Martin and demand the arrest of his shooter even though the evidence in the case points in another direction. We have members of the Black Panthers raising money and threatening a bounty on Zimmerman’s head and possible vigilante action. It was Mikhail Muhammad of The New Black Panther Party who stated:

“You tell our justice department and Eric Holder and our President Obama to get off up their ass and do the work and the rest is done!” Muhammad went on to say. When pressed by Cooper on the legality, he responded that he could make a citizen’s arrest of Zimmerman, who has not yet been charged for anything, because the New Black Panther Party member doesn’t “obey the white man’s law,” but rather the “street people’s law.”

All of this while the mainstream media fuels the fires of this race hatred with incomplete and inaccurate reports and opinion columns. We also have the left-wing politicians using this case to feather their nests for reelection. This is what they do, they use the issue of race to control their constituents and remain in power. It is a tyranny of the minority.

The roots of this are found in something called the Critical Race Theory. When asked by CNN's Soledad O'Brien about the definition of critical race theory (CRT), Emory Law Professor Dorothy Brown offered the following: "Critical race theory seeks to explain judicial decisions by asking the question, what does race have to do with it?" CRT simply "looks at race in America," professor Brown stated. That's a bit like saying that a religious zealot just "looks at" theology.

Critical race theorists do not merely look at racial questions. Like zealots, they give answers; they preach a doctrine, seek converts, and condemn nonbelievers. Indeed, CRT is the primary source of Orwellian "hate speech" proposals.

On CNN, O'Brien next asked Professor Brown whether CRT is "all about white supremacy," as Joel Pollak of Breitbart.com asserted previously. Brown replied, "No, it's nothing about white supremacy."

Yet Professor Brown should know precisely what role white supremacy plays in CRT. In her own published work on CRT, Brown wrote that CRT "seeks to highlight the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective, but designed to support White supremacy and the subordination of people of color". She then cites Emily Houh, who defined CRT thusly:

“First, critical race theory seeks to expose the entrenchment of White supremacy and the reality of the continued subordination of people of color in the United States (and throughout the world).”

CRT, as Prof. Brown wrote and cited, certainly does have something to do with white supremacy.

According to the Derrick Bell Reader, edited by CRT proponent Richard Delgado, CRT's "founding members" are professors Delgado, Derrick Bell, Kimberle Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, Charles Lawrence, and Patricia Williams3. Following is just a flavor of the doctrine they transmit to countless students every day. Keep in mind that these are relatively tame assertions, by CRT standards, and are all taken from assigned readings.

The late Derrick Bell, a Harvard and NYU law professor tied to President Obama, wrote that CRT "goes well beyond civil rights, integration, affirmative action, and other liberal measures". What is "beyond" those measures? Specifically, Bell calls for a "commitment to radical emancipation by the law". He describes the unifying theme of CRT: "We use a number of different voices, but all recognize that racial subordination maintains and perpetuates the American social order". Bell proudly writes that CRT is characterized by "an orientation around race that seeks to attack a legal system which disempowers people of color". What does it mean to "disempower people of color"? If an institution does not provide for explicit racial preferences and favoritism, it will be deemed to "disempower people of color." [Source American Thinker]

Kimberle Crenshaw, a UCLA law professor, provides the much-needed feminist branch of CRT, because focusing on race alone neglects the "multidimensionality of Black women's experiences". Black women are "multiply-burdened" since patriarchy is yet "another source of domination to which Black women are vulnerable". Of course, "the social experience of race creates both a primary group identity as well as a shared sense of being under collective assault". In response to the awful "collective assault" of living in America, Crenshaw has a policy recommendation at the ready: she calls for "economic or social reorganization that directly empowers and supports" her most favored group: "single Black mothers". Not just mothers, not just single mothers, but single black mothers. [Source American Thinker]

Mari Matsuda, Georgetown law professor, also insists that "part of the special harm of racist speech is that it works in concert with other racist tools to keep victim groups in an inferior position". Matsuda postulates "three identifying characteristics" of hate speech which she proposes to regulate: the "message is of racial inferiority," the fact that said message is "directed against a historically oppressed group," and the fact that said message "is persecutorial, hateful, and degrading". Just what kind of speech will be considered racist? One clue comes from Matsuda herself, who claims that "righteous indignation against diversity and reverse discrimination" is one of the "implements of racism" for upper-class whites. [Source American Thinker]

The nightmarish possibilities of hate speech codes are obvious to anyone with the slightest grasp of human nature and politics, yet such codes are seriously considered as a legal reform in universities and particularly law schools

Finally, Columbia law professor Patricia Williams offers a disturbing glimpse into the logic of CRT. Williams recounts the story of a hypothetical question that she was once asked to consider, where X and Y apply for a job with firm Z, which is all white. X and Y are equally qualified. One is black; the other is white. The questions asked: Who should get the job? Williams' answer is worth repeating at length, as a window into an ideology that is not taken as seriously as it should be: [Source American Thinker]

“The black person should get the job. If the modem white man, innocently or not, is the inheritor of another's due, then it must be returned.”

Williams continues:

“If a thief steals so that his children may live in luxury and the law returns his ill-gotten gain to its rightful owner, the children cannot complain that they have been deprived of what they did not own. Blacks have earned a place in this society; they have earned a share of its enormous wealth, with physical labor and intellectual sacrifice, as wages and as royalties. Blacks deserve their inheritance as much as family wealth passed from parent to child over the generations is a "deserved" inheritance. It is deserved as child support and alimony.”

So whites should collectively be treated as the children of thieves, and blacks collectively deserve to have returned to them what was stolen from their black forebears by those white thieves. This is the seething, irrational ideology at the foundation of CRT.

While in law school, Barack Obama told an audience, "Open up your hearts and your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell." Bell is the same man who famously said, in a recorded television interview, "I live to harass white folks," and proudly advocated what he called a "radical" ideology. Even if Bell exerted no influence on Obama's thinking, which is unlikely, it should be a national scandal that critical race theory is so widely sermonized at American colleges.

The racist flames licking at the political discourse in the Trayvon Martin shooting needed no fanning, but President Barack Obama fanned them anyway when he waded in and claimed: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

Perhaps his racist white half was saying all blacks look alike to him. After all, his grandmother, according to Obama, “once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made [Obama] cringe.” Or perhaps, it was just another rush to judgment, much like when he waded into the Henry Louis Gates Jr. incident and claimed police in Cambridge, Mass., “acted stupidly.”

Make no mistake. Neither Obama nor his fellow race hucksters Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson care one wit about justice or Martin. If they did, they wouldn’t have convicted George Zimmerman without first knowing the facts. But the facts aren’t interesting unless they promote a certain narrative. We all seem to forget want John Adams said in defense of the British soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre — “Fact are stubborn things.” They also don’t give tinkers damn about the Sixth Amendment.

Now the facts are beginning to trickle out. Far from the media’s initial portrayal of Martin as an innocent, hoodie-wearing candy snacker, Martin’s Twitter account — his handle was “NO_LIMIT_NIGGA” — reveals he was probably a promiscuous, dope-smoking thug who had been suspended from school and caught with a burglary tool and a bag of women’s jewelry, and who may have recently attacked a bus driver.

I don’t know exactly what happened that night, so I’m not ready to blame Zimmerman or Martin. But there are enough agencies investigating it now that I’m sure the truth will eventually come out. I just hope it happens before the New Black Panther Party is able to pay out its $10,000 bounty on Zimmerman’s carcass.

Obama is not interested in justice. If he were, he’d tamp down the vitriol, denounce the talk of bounties and encourage the justice system to run its course. On average, 30 homicides with a gun occur in the United States each day. Almost two-thirds of them are either black on black or black on white. If Obama were interested in justice, he might say something about those.

No, Obama is interested only in ginning up his base and diverting your attention. After all, there’s an election coming up. And even if the mainstream media have to come up with a new ethnic group for Zimmerman — white Hispanic — this one fits the correct narrative. (I wonder when the MSM is going to refer to Obama by his true ethnicity: white black?)

And keeping attention focused on the Martin/Zimmerman affair keeps the people’s attention focused on an ancillary issue rather than important ones. Those would be issues like ObamaCare before the U.S. Supreme Court, crony capitalism benefiting bankrupt green energy companies, rising gas prices and the EPA’s latest power grab that will put onerous and costly regulations on new coal-fired electrical plants, drive up the cost of electricity and put more people out of work.

The Cirque du Soleil-style media coverage and over-the-top racial rhetoric being spewed by family supporters about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin hides a more disturbing problem that continues to grow in our urban centers across America: the crime rate within the African-American community.

In Chicago, like other major urban centers across the nation, you can't turn on the nightly news without hearing either about a child being gunned down by a stray bullet from some gang-banger or about other young adults caught up in violent crimes. From the president to African-American church and community leaders, the statistics of African-American crime and its causes are well-known. And yet, crime continues unabated and innocent children continue to die.

The president was in Chicago for a re-election fundraiser March 16. The weekend that followed, 49 shootings were recorded. Of the 49 people recorded shot, 10 died, including one 6-year-old girl. Granted, not all shooting victims were African-American — others were Latino — but the most recent Chicago Police Department 2010 Annual Report paints a grim picture nonetheless.

The report breaks down crime by type and race. According to this report, the African-American community suffers most frequently from violent crimes committed (62.8%). Of these violent crimes citywide, for murders, 26.5% of victims are between the ages of 11 and 20, 40.2% between 21 and 30. For the offenders, 31.6% are between the ages of 11 and 20, 46.1% between 21 and 30 (Exhibits 8b and 8c of the report, respectively).

More disturbing is the racial breakdown of total crime citywide, as shown in Exhibit 12b, "Arrests by Offense Classification, Race and Gender, 2010." Of the 165,541 recorded arrests, 120,189 (almost 71.7%) were African-American

As more information comes out about the shooting, we learn that the victim was not just a normal teenager as his parents have claimed, unless normal is defined by multiple school suspensions, marijuana possession, and possible burglary, as recently reported in the Daily Mail. At the same time his parents are crying that the press is now "demonizing" their son's reputation, we learn his mother has applied for trademarks on "digital materials, namely, CDs and DVDs featuring Trayvon Martin," and other products. When reading the aforementioned statistics and articles, is there any wonder how and why George Zimmermans come to be created.

I live in a middle class neighborhood of relatively new single family homes. Several years ago, when the housing bubble burst some of the houses became vacant and vandalism began to occur. I and my neighbors establish a neighborhood watch with the sanction, advice, and support of the county sheriff department. We had monthly meetings with deputies briefing us on what to watch for. One of the things they always told us was to keep an eye on people walking the streets, especially at night, wearing dark hoodies hiding their features. It is very difficult to determine the race or ethnicity of a person wearing a hoodie at night. We were not profiling race, we were profiling the actions of people with hoodies. I guess the elites who live in upscale gated communities do not have such problems, but thousands of neighborhoods similar to mine across the nation do.

Last week, when asked to comment on the Trayvon Martin tragedy, President Obama remarked, "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon." With all due respect, Mr. President, your son would not look like Trayvon. Instead, he would look like the other African-American students attending Sidwell Friends with Sasha and Malia.

Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama made a remark about white police officers who "acted stupidly" when they arrested Harvard professor Henry Gates, Jr. In response to the outcry over his comments, he invited the professor and the arresting officer to a meeting, which would become known as the "beer summit." Perhaps we need a bratwurst summit for the shootings in his old neighborhood.

President Obama's achievement as the first African-American president is not to be discounted for its significance. However, he has wasted the opportunities and the bully pulpit his office provides in not calling for another summit to address the issues that are facing his people. Taking all his recent comments and actions in context, it appears that the president is interested in the African-American community only because he needs to shore up his base for re-election, and not because he's interested, or ever has been, in addressing the root causes — single parents, education, unemployment — that are responsible for the continuing problems that produce Trayvon Martins and similar tragedies. Consider that Illinois has the highest high school drop-out rate in the country.

The president went to Columbia and Harvard. He's an educated man and should be a role model for African-American parents and children alike. In the three years of his presidency, that he's chosen not to act, not to speak, not to rally African-American leaders and challenge them to act, is why the silent tragedy behind Trayvon Martin and the continuing crime in the urban black neighborhoods is Barack Obama. The march of the hoodies will go on and the race baiters will continue to pimp race to maintain their factional power.

The Last Chance for the Constitution to Survive

“In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.” — James Madison, On Property, March 29, 1792

The hottest topic in America right now — as I write this, the Supreme Court is about to begin hearing three days of oral arguments — is the constitutionality of several aspects of the legislation called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better-known as "ObamaCare." Much of what has been written about this case is predicated upon the idea that it is "settled law" that Congress has "broad powers" to regulate interstate commerce. Supporters of ObamaCare jump from that premise to the conclusion that the Court must uphold the law, while opponents argue that although Congress has that "broad power," ObamaCare goes too far and exceeds the authority granted to Congress.

What must be challenged is the premise that the Constitution actually does grant Congress "broad power" over interstate commerce. The fact is that the language of the Constitution itself does not confer such power. Anyone who reads the document in search of a clear statement — and the drafters were nothing if not clear, careful writers — that Congress or the executive branch is supposed to have any power at all to dictate to individuals and businesses how they must act when engaged in "interstate commerce" searches in vain.

Instead, the supposedly broad powers to dictate to Americans how they must act, even to the point of demanding that they purchase particular products, is entirely an artifact of constitutional law. That is to say, in a number of its rulings about the meaning of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has said that the federal government has those "broad powers." It is easy to show that those rulings were erroneous, creating a wide divergence between the Constitution's plan for a republic with a separation of powers between the federal government and the states, and the people with strict limits on the latter.

At the heart of the current dispute is "the Commerce Clause." Included in Article I, Section 8 under the enumerated powers specifically given to Congress, we find this language: "To regulate Commerce with Foreign nations, and among the several States..." Why was that inserted? James Madison later explained that "the Commerce Clause grew out of the abuse of power by the importing states in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the states, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the general government."

Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 42:

“The defect of power in the existing Confederacy to regulate the commerce between its several members, is in the number of those which have been clearly pointed out by experience. To the proofs and remarks which former papers have brought into view on this subject, it may be added that without this supplemental provision, the great and essential power of regulating foreign commerce would have been incomplete and ineffectual. A very material object of this power was the relief of the States which import and export through other States, from the improper contributions levied on them by the latter. Were these at liberty to regulate the trade between State and State, it must be foreseen that ways would be found out to load the articles of import and export, during the passage through their jurisdiction, with duties which would fall on the makers of the latter and the consumers of the former. We may be assured by past experience, that such a practice would be introduced by future contrivances; and both by that and a common knowledge of human affairs, that it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serious interruptions of the public tranquillity. To those who do not view the question through the medium of passion or of interest, the desire of the commercial States to collect, in any form, an indirect revenue from their uncommercial neighbors, must appear not less impolitic than it is unfair; since it would stimulate the injured party, by resentment as well as interest, to resort to less convenient channels for their foreign trade. But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.”

Thus, the purpose of that clause was to remedy a problem that had arisen in the new nation — namely, that some states were impeding the flow of commerce with laws favoring producers within their borders. To keep commerce "regular" meant that Congress could enact laws to prevent that abuse of power by the states. It was never meant, as Madison wrote, as a grant of power for whatever future Congresses might want to do to control everything relating to people's commercial affairs.

For a long time, that was how the Supreme Court understood the Commerce Clause. As late as 1935, the Court refused to accede to the "progressive" notion that the clause meant that Congress could intervene in business operations. In Schechter Poultry Corporation vs. The United States, the Court declared unconstitutional the National Industrial Recovery Act on the grounds that Congress had no authority to dictate to businesses how they must operate, or to delegate such decisions to unelected bureaucracies.

Late in 1936, however, President Roosevelt, angered at a Court that had struck down many of his progressive and statist plans for controlling the nation's economy, issued his infamous threat to pack the Supreme Court. That plan met with a great deal of opposition within his own party, but it apparently worked on two members of the Court: Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Associate Justice Owen Roberts. When it came to deciding the test case involving FDR's extraordinarily authoritarian National Labor Relations Act in 1937 (more commonly known as the Wagner Act after its author), they switched from supporting the old, correct understanding of the Commerce Clause to supporting the "progressive interpretation" that the clause gave Congress power to enact any law that would somehow "affect" interstate commerce. The funny thing about that decision, the Jones & Laughlin Steel case, is that the majority never bothered to mention the Court's previous Commerce Clause decisions. It was as if Schechter disappeared into a black hole.

The Court continued along that same line, allowing Congress to do whatever it wanted by calling it "regulation of interstate commerce" until reaching the utterly absurd case Wickard v. Filburn in 1942. Under the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a farmer in Ohio was fined for having grown more wheat than federal regulators and masterminds permitted him to. He argued that the law was unconstitutional (at least as applied to him) because all of the wheat had been consumed on his own property. None had been sold at all, so there was no commerce, much less "interstate commerce." But, eager to uphold the "progressive" ideal of unlimited federal control over every aspect of the economy, the Court fashioned a remarkable justification. Since the farmer might have purchased some wheat in interstate commerce if he had not illegally grown his own, his conduct therefore could have "affected" the interstate market for wheat, and therefore his action was subject to federal punishment.

“The man who challenged the act's wheat quotas was Roscoe C. Filburn, a small Ohio farmer. Filburn maintained a herd of dairy cattle, raised poultry, and sold milk, poultry, and eggs in the open market. He planted a small acreage of winter wheat that he fed to his chickens and cattle, ground into flour for his family's consumption, and saved for the following year's seed. Filburn did not sell a single bushel of wheat in the open market. In 1941, Filburn sowed twelve acres of wheat more than he was permitted by Second Agricultural Adjustment Act's regulations. This unauthorized planting yielded 239 bushels of wheat, on which the federal government imposed a penalty of 49 cents a bushel. Filburn contested the government's assessment, arguing that the federal power to regulate commerce did not extend to the production and consumption of wheat that was never marketed

When Filburn's challenge reached the Supreme Court in 1942, the tribunal had been dramatically refashioned by the appointments of President Roosevelt. The only justice whom Roosevelt had no hand in appointing to the Court that reviewed Filburn's case was Owen Roberts, the individual who had undergone the famous “switch in time that saved nine” in 1937. So, by 1942 the Supreme Court was very much the Roosevelt Court.”

Nowhere in the Constitution is there any express power to control agricultural prices. The justices merely assumed that Congress was supposed to have such authority, then leaped from there to the constitutionality of punishing an individual for having used his own labor and property in a peaceful manner. (See James Madison on Property)

It was precisely that kind of high-handed disrespect for individual liberty that catalyzed the American Revolution, but according to the Supreme Court, penalizing farmers for growing more of a crop than some federal bureaucrats decided they were permitted to do was perfectly in keeping with the Constitution. Within just five years, the United States had gone from strict limits on the power of the federal government to virtually no limits (a point made in the dissent to Jones & Laughlin) — not because the Constitution had changed, but because "constitutional law" had changed. It was just as if the Supreme Court had amended the Constitution to radically alter its meaning.

The backstory to this history is that American "progressives" had long yearned to dump America's tradition of individual liberty and limited government in favor of extensive, "scientific" control by the elite — i.e., masterminds like themselves who would take into consideration "the public good." Inspired by utopian visions of a far more rational and equal society, such as Moore’s Utopia and Hobbs’ Leviathan, the progressives wanted a centrally planned nation in which obedience to authority would be the rule and freedom the exception. The trouble was that the Constitution was written to put strict limits on government power, especially when it comes to the federal government.

Rather than taking dead aim at federalism and the limits on government power, which most Americans favored, the progressives went about subverting the Constitution by getting their allies appointed to the bench, especially in the Supreme Court. Those were the jurists who thought that the Constitution means whatever a majority of the Court says it means, and they rarely missed an opportunity to decide a case in a way that expanded the scope and power of the federal government. Much of what we call "constitutional law" today is the accumulation of decisions that departed farther and farther from the language of the Constitution in favor of the progressive theory that increased government control over almost every aspect of society is good. After all it was Obama himself who said the Constitution was a document of negative values and said what the government could not do rather than what the government could do for the good of the people.

The alleged constitutionality of ObamaCare is based upon a series of missteps that began with Jones & Laughlin Steel. If ObamaCare is held to be constitutional, it will serve as another step toward...what? It is impossible to know where the "progressives" will push their agenda of increasing federal domination after they take over the market for medical care. Will the government mandate what car you will buy? After all don’t we travel the interstate highways for pleasure and commerce? Perhaps they can dictate what you eat as it is good for your health. Don’t food stuffs travel across state and international boundaries?

We the people of the United States are suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. For the past 80 years our liberty, the inalienable rights stated in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution or 1787, has been under attack by the masterminds and statists of all three branches of our government. We, like the hostages referred to in the phycology of the Stockholm Syndrome have become so beaten down we are now looking to the Supreme Court for one small bit of mercy so we may continue our lives in the bondage of the utopian world they have bound us to.

There can be no doubt that once it becomes "settled law" and that the vast increase in coercion under ObamaCare is constitutionally valid, we will see other offensives that go still farther.

What if Trayvon Had Been White, and the Shooter Black?

“If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon.” — Barack Obama March 23, 2012

In response to the shooting of Trayvon Martin near Orlando Florida by a Hispanic neighborhood watchman last week President Barack Obama said on the Whitehouse lawn last Friday that if he had a son he would look like Trayvon.

Urging Americans to "do some soul searching," President Barack Obama injected himself into the emotional debate over the fatal shooting of a teenager in Florida, turning the racially charged case into a personal matter for the nation's first black president.

Obama said the parents of Martin, who was shot on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., a suburb of Orlando, have a right to expect "that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened."

Martin was shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who said he was acting in self-defense. Zimmerman's father is white, and his mother is Hispanic. The shooting has stoked debate over race as well as other issues. Obama did not mention Zimmerman in his comments.

Before continuing I would like to present a few known facts about this case not generally reported in the mainstream media. According to an article published in the Charleston Conservative Examiner by Kyle Rogers on March 21^st Zimmerman was on the ground being punched when he shot Trayvon Martin:

“Last weekend in the city of Chicago alone, gangbangers slaughtered ten people and wounded another forty. The youngest fatality is only six years old. The youngest person wounded is only one-year-old. Many of the victim were pedestrians sprayed with bullets in drive by shootings. The national news has said nothing about this.”

Before continuing with Kyle Rogers’ report I must divert for a moment to mention the little reported bloodbath in Chicago.

Chicago has one of the strictest gun control laws in the nation; it is almost impossible for anyone to legally own a gun. So as a result of this prohibition of gun ownership, this unilateral disarmament Chicago must be as peaceful, as calm, as safe as well — a kindergarten in paradise.

Uhm.no! While law abiding citizens don't own guns and struggle to overturn laws banning them, those who laugh at such niceties as following the law, purchasing guns through authorized dealers and even stopping at stop signs, manage to obtain guns. And they use them in a brutal war being played out in some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods, including the one so ably organized by our present president and the one about a mile from his ill-gotten home. The shootings are done mainly by Hispanic and black gang members, mowing down the innocent, the passersby, the children in addition to the occasional opposition gangbanger.

Over St. Patrick’s Day weekend as Chicagoans enjoyed three record breaking sunny, 75 degree and higher seemingly summer days in this winterless winter, some Chicagoans set a shameless record of their own — 10 dead, 49 others wounded in 46 shootings, mainly in the city's high crime districts.

“At least 10 people were killed, including a 6-year-old girl, in shootings over the weekend in Chicago.

The slain were among at least 49 people wounded in shootings from 5 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Monday, according to information compiled by the Chicago Tribune.”

Not confined to the week end, the shootings continued Monday morning. And for diversity in murder, a man died after being punched. No word yet if Chicago lawmakers will outlaw fists; punching people without their permission is already illegal.

So how is that gun control brainwashing working out Eric Holder?

“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes."

Holder added that he had asked advertising agencies in the nation's capital to assist by making anti-gun ads rather than commercials "that make me buy things that I don't really need." He had also approached local newspapers and television stations, he said, asking them to devote prime space and time, respectively, to his anti-gun campaign.

Local political leaders and celebrities, Holder said, including Mayor Marion Barry and Jesse Jackson, had been asked to help. In addition, he reported, he had asked the local school board to make the anti-gun message a part of "every day, every school, and every level."

Many of Chicago's shootings take place at or near Rev Jesse Jackson's neighborhood. (When he's there and not attending the high profile protest of the day.) And didn't this Eric Holder grow up to supply guns to thugs and drug dealers in Fast and Furious as part of his job as Attorney General of the United States?

Kyle Rogers continued:

“So why does one shooting in Florida warrant weeks of national news? Why has there been thousands of articles a day, for the last four days, about one single shooting?

Almost all of the news items about George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin contains a combination of false statements, opinions presented as facts, transparent distortions, and a complete absence of some of the most relevant details. Almost all news items are written solely from the point of view of the grieving family. The media also fills their articles with outdated baby-faced pictures of Trayvon. Very few include that he was a towering 6'2” football player. Is the media really reporting the news, or is this classic agitation/propaganda to advance a political agenda.

Literally thousands of articles contain at least one false statement in the first couple of lines. They usually read "George Zimmerman, a white man," or "shoot by a white man." Zimmerman is described by family as a multiracial Hispanic. His appearance is clearly that of a Latino/Mestizo individual. However, the media wants him to be white because that better fits the political narrative they are trying to artificially create. Many news articles have also claimed the neighborhood is "mostly white." This is also a lie. The neighborhood is only 49% white. It is over half non-white.

All the way back on February 27th, the local Orlando Fox station interviewed the witness who dialed 911. Almost none of the thousands of articles since have mentioned any of the details described by the witness. Some, however, have attributed false statements to this witness. On March 16th, the Sanford police department released new details to the Orlando Sentinel. Once again, these details have been ignored or changed by the media.

1. The witness reports that George Zimmerman was on the ground and Trayvon is on top of him punching him.
2. The witness says that George Zimmerman was screaming and yelling for help.
3. Police arrive and find Zimmerman bleeding on his face and the back of his head. He also has had grass stains on his back. All this confirms the story told by Zimmerman and the witness.
4. Police play the 911 tape for Trayvon Martin's father, who tells police that the voice screaming is not the voice of his son.

The neighborhood this took place in has seen a lot of crime. Would you be surprised to learn that there were eight burglaries, nine thefts, and a shooting just in the past year? In fact, the local homeowners' association reports that George Zimmerman actually caught one thief and aided in the apprehension of other criminals. The Miami Herald wrote about this on March 17th. None of the thousands of articles and cable news segments that came after, thought this was important.

In fact the Miami Herald goes on to interview neighbor, Ibrahim Rashada, who is black. Rashada confirms that there has been a lot of crime in the neighborhood and indicates to the reporter that the perpetrators are usually black.

The media also characterizes Trayvon as a "model student." In fact, he was under a five day suspension when the shooting took place. That is why he was staying at a house so far from his school on a school night. A lawyer for Trayvon's family has blocked access to his school records. However, you have to do something pretty bad to get suspended for five days.

Now that you know the suppressed facts of the case, you can for form a better more balanced opinion. Maybe you still think Zimmerman was wrong to pull the trigger. However, I think you will come to the conclusion that the "mainstream" clearly is pushing an agenda. Even when they have to grossly alter and adjust a story to fit that agenda.”

What would happen if a black man armed with a handgun confronted "suspicious persons" in his neighborhood? What would happen if the "suspicious persons" were unarmed white teens, one of them was shot dead, and the shooter claimed self-defense?

This is not an exercise in mere speculation. We know what would happen in such a case. There would be no white mobs in the street chanting "No justice, no peace!" There would be no whites holding a "million hoodie march" in New York City. There would be no white equivalent of Al Sharpton, the professional race-baiter behind the 1987 Tawana Brawley hoax, leading marches in the streets of the shooter's hometown. There would be no Federal civil rights investigation by the Justice Department. There would be no comments from a president who seems congenitally unable to keep his mouth shut on matters involving left-wing political correctness. And there would be no national media attention from biased, left-wing "reporters."

We know this because in fact, such an event occurred in 2009 in Greece, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester. Roderick Scott, a black man, shot and killed an unarmed white teen, Christopher Cervini, whom he believed was burglarizing a neighbor's car, with a licensed .40 cal. handgun.

There are many similarities between the Scott-Cervini case and the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case in Florida. In both cases, there had been a spate of criminal activity in the neighborhood. In both cases, the shooters called 911 to report suspicious activity, yet chose to confront the unarmed suspects outside their residence and off their own property prior to the arrival of the police. In both cases, the shooters claimed that they felt threatened, and fired in self-defense. In both cases, local law enforcement applied relevant state law.

Unlike Florida, New York does not have a "stand your ground" law. New York law allows a person to use deadly force to defend his residence from home invasion only as a last resort. It does not allow the use of deadly force to prevent a property crime, and requires retreat if possible. Thus, while Zimmerman was not arrested under Florida law, Scott was tried for manslaughter and acquitted.

New York law does allow a person to use deadly force anywhere, including off his own property, if he feels that his life is in imminent danger and retreat is not possible. Despite the fact that he left his own property, confronted, and shot dead an unarmed white person thought to be committing a petty property crime, Scott was acquitted by a majority-white jury after claiming that the Cervini charged at him, putting him in imminent fear of his life.

Despite the racial difference between the shooter and the decedent, there were no allegations of racial bias. Scott was not charged with a hate crime. There was no Federal civil rights investigation. There were no white protests. The case was settled for what it was: a tragedy caused by a series of poor decisions on behalf of the shooter, and a split-second decision that will forever be second-guessed.

In all probability, the actions of Zimmerman in Florida were also based on a series of poor decisions: the decision to follow a suspect after a police dispatcher told him not to, the decision to confront a suspect with a firearm off his own property, and a split-second decision to shoot an unarmed person when Zimmerman felt his life was in imminent danger, resulting in tragedy. But a tragedy is not necessarily a Federal civil rights case — unless the mobs in the streets and their allies in the media and government want to make it one.

The truth of the matter is that "civil rights" cases are often little more than reverse lynch mobs. In the Old South of the past, white mobs would drag black suspects out of jail and lynch them in the streets if they felt the wheels of justice were turning too slowly. Today, black mobs, often led by the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other race pimps lead street protests or riots, and the Federal government comes after white suspects with the "rope" of "civil rights" charges. And just like the old Southern sheriffs with ties to the Klan who turned a blind eye to the illegal actions of whites, the Department of Justice often refuses to act on "civil rights" violations when the perpetrators are black and the victims are white. In the eyes of the Federal government and the political Left, all whites are forever suspected of being gap-toothed Klansmen with shotguns and nooses in their pickup trucks, and all blacks are perpetually innocent, doe-eyed victims of white oppression.

This dynamic was made perfectly clear twenty years ago by the Los Angeles riots. Rodney King, a convicted felon, allegedly intoxicated, led police on a high-speed car chase and resisted arrest when he was finally cornered. Most people agree that the cops gave Rodney a few more licks than department procedures called for. But given King's background and the extenuating circumstances, the cops were acquitted of assault charges under state law. The black population of L.A. erupted in riots that killed 53 people, ignited thousands of arsons, and saw widespread looting. Korean merchants were racially targeted for arson, and resorted to defending their property with arms. Reginald Denny, a hapless white truck driver who inadvertently drove into the riots, was pulled from his vehicle by black rioters who smashed his skull in 91 places with a brick (inflicting far worse injuries than the cops had inflicted on King) and danced a jig over his prone body.

Long before Eric Holder became Attorney General and refused to prosecute black voter intimidation, and referred to blacks as "my people," the Department of Justice caved in to the pressure of the rioters by charging and convicting the L.A. cops with "civil rights" violations and sending them to Federal prison. But no such Federal charges were levied against the blacks who targeted the Koreans and attacked Reginald Denny.

Two years later, O.J. Simpson, a black defendant with a history of domestic violence, was accused of slashing the throats of two white people. But no "civil rights" or "hate crimes" charges were filed against him. No white protests erupted against Simpson or against the black community. Simpson, a black millionaire who had a career in sports, money, and fame that most white people can only dream about, was portrayed as a "victim" of the "racist" police. Blacks from coast to coast whooped and danced with joy when he was acquitted of double murder.

Certainly it's true that in the past, blacks have been victims of whites. But today the reality is quite different from what the street mobs, the government, the media and the P.C. crowd would have us believe. Far from being victims of white oppression, blacks today are disproportionately perpetrators of violent crimes against whites and against other blacks. According to data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in 2009, "whites" — a category that includes Hispanics — were known to be responsible for 5,286 murders. Blacks, a mere 13% of the population, were known to be responsible for 5,980 murders. In 2005, the New Century Foundation's "Color of Crime" report found that "Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black" (emphasis mine). Also in 2005, the Department of Justice reported that one-third of rapes committed against white women (approximately 37,000) were perpetrated by blacks, while less than ten — statistically zero — rapes of black women were committed by whites.

Whatever happened in the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case, one thing is perfectly clear: it's high time this country quit the racial dog-and-pony show, and judged each criminal case on its individual merits instead of allowing the race-baiting demagogues to leverage each incident for political advantage in the streets and in the media.

The Administrative State

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair

Current conventional wisdom about the November elections says the biggest issue will be "jobs" and who can best revive the economy. However, emerging out of the rhetorical fog is the shape of something far more fundamental: a stark oncoming clash of worldviews demanding resolution.

It's becoming increasingly clear that Barack Obama, unable to run for re-election on a record of positive economic accomplishments during his first term, has decided to reframe the election debate as a final choice between two worldviews. If he hadn't done so, the same debate would have been forced upon him by those terrified by what they see ahead.

In his recent State of the Union speech, Mr. Obama sought to define the conflict as being between two irresolvable opposites of his choosing:

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

He goes on to present a false choice between doing nothing and creating an economy in which achievers must be pulled down rather than the poor raised up — all in the interests of "fairness." At no point does Obama consider reducing the cost, size, and reach of government.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) makes clear that Obama's worldview has never had an underlying economic argument. Instead, in a recent interview published in The Wall Street Journal, Cantor claims that it is "all about social justice."

“The "philosophical starting point" of today's Democrats, as Mr. Cantor sees it, is that they "believe in a welfare state before they believe in capitalism. They promote economic programs of redistribution to close the gap of the disparity between the classes. That's what they're about: redistributive politics."

In a speech on the Senate floor last summer, Marco Rubio (R-FL) made clear that the competing worldviews to be settled in the upcoming election will be between those who believe that the government's job is to "deliver economic justice" and those who believe that the government's job is to "promote economic opportunity."

Are these views reconcilable? Senator Rubio thinks not.

“Ultimately, we may find that between these two points there may not be a middle ground, and that, in fact, as a nation and as a people, we must decide what we want the role of government to be in America, moving forward.”

Interestingly, the conflict between freedom for individual wealth-creation at all economic levels and government-enforced wealth-redistribution has roiled since the earliest days of our nation's founding. As students of world history know, the dominant governing model worldwide for thousands of years involved a strong central authority usually led by a ruling individual, be he king or tribal chief or dictator by some other name. Not until the 17th century would groups of individuals escaping the tyranny of Europe's top-down rule settle on the shores of a new continent to try a different way.

On a ship to the new land, Pilgrims so adverse to the old ruling model voted to adopt a new one — a "Commonwealth" — where each family would provide common goods for the community to be shared equally. As documented by their first American governor, William Bradford, the Plymouth colony suffered mightily as a result. Some refused to contribute equally. Basic human nature kicked in as top producers refused to assist slackers, and the colony almost perished from disease and hunger. In desperation, they established a private property model, with individuals free to profit from the results of their efforts. Prosperity returned within a year. We now celebrate Thanksgiving as a result.

In his article for the Ludwig von Mises Institute on the Great Thanksgiving Day Hoax Richard Maybury writes:

“After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, "they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop." They began to question their form of economic organization.

This had required that "all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, "all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock." A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.

This "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that "young men that are most able and fit for labor and service" complained about being forced to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children." Also, "the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak." So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.

To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.”

The wonders which result from releasing individual human effort to develop private property and wealth unshackled from collective limits enforced by others became a lesson not lost on following settlers. Yet, a hundred years later, the prospering colonies came under oppressive domination by the king and parliament of England. In response, a movement for full independence grew as reaffirmation of the basic need for individual freedom in economic and religious endeavor.

The Declaration of Independence formally challenged the worldwide governing model. Its opening sentence presents a humble pronouncement that common people poorly governed are free to pledge obedience to governance under a power higher than human rule to secure "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

With the War for Independence over a year old and hope for a peaceful resolution nonexistent, the Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Five—including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin—to draft a document “declaring the causes which impel the American colonies to the separation.” Thirty-three-year-old Jefferson composed the initial draft, completing it in seventeen days. The committee submitted its draft to Congress on June 28, 1776, and on July 2, Congress voted for independence. Two days later, after numerous edits, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence by unanimous vote.

The opening words of the Declaration were one of the most powerful statements on government ever put to pen:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

It was this statement that became the vision statement for the United States and the basis of our governing principles. The first part of the Declaration sets forth the vision. The second part lists the grievances against the King and the mother country and the third part states what we will do about it.

One of the grievances listed stated: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” This was our Founder’s rebuke of the Administrative State.

It took another decade and a hard-fought war to secure political independence and write a constitution enshrining the concept of limited central government within a representative republic composed of separate sovereign states intended to spread over an entire continent. Even then, adoption of the Constitution was not secured without the inclusion of ten amendments further driving home the concept of restricting central-government’s encroachment on individual liberty.

For over another hundred years, through tumultuous times of financial booms and busts, westward exploration and emigration, foreign wars, and a devastating civil war, the nation survived and prospered. But then came Woodrow Wilson, the first American president elected to office after declaring the Constitution "obsolete" in the modern world of industrial growth, dense urbanization, and massive immigration. The founding of the nation, according to Wilson, was a "simple age," and humans had evolved beyond that time. He called for "progressive" reforms, resurrecting the notion of a stronger central government, greater regulation of private enterprise, and a need for international collectivism. It was Wilson who stated “the Constitution was written in the age of Newton — now we have Darwin.” I will take Sir Isaac Newton over Darwin any day of the week.

For a time, some of the "progressive" reforms made sense to check monopolies and other forms of unethical behavior within the private enterprise system. However, in the last sixty years, an ever-growing effort has evolved, bringing the nation closer again to governance by a crushing central government mandating a collectivist egalitarian model of wealth redistribution not unlike that which failed for the early Pilgrims. The Great Recession of 2008 has spawned a full assault by Barack Obama and his Democrat Party on the private-enterprise system and individual liberty. Their policies now threaten without apology to end the great experiment embodied in the country's founding and has brought to a pint where they have erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

Wilson’s progress and the statism and progressive policies that have followed, has been paid for with our liberty. All of this so called progress has been implemented on the American people by the coercion of government by taking from the liberty and property of one group to give it to another group. In essence every ounce of this progress has been paid for by an equivalent ounce of someone’s liberty.

James Madison stated in Federalist Paper No.47:

“No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny”

Madison was talking about the power of the legislative, executive, and judiciary. This is the reason he advocated a “Compound Republic” where these powers would have checks and balances.

Madison stated in Federalist Paper No.62 regarding the legislative process:

“The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?

It was the intent of our Founders that each of the three branches would govern with the consent of the other. What Madison and our Founders feared was the development of a fourth branch of government; the Administrative Branch.

This administrative branch answers to virtually no one. They are part and parcel of the executive branch and even after an election that causes a change in the executive the administrators or bureaucrats remain in power. They are the elites and masterminds who interpret the voluminous laws enacted by the legislative branch with little or no accountability to the American people. Just look at ObamaCare, a 3,000 plus page law that no one understands and is left to the bureaucrats to interpret and enforce with the full force of government.

With every shift of power from the local and state to federal level government becomes less representative and prey the special interest groups (or as Madison called them “factions”) and big corporations on both the left and the right. These swarms of bureaucrats have replaced the natural rights of liberty granted by God with the sentimentality and statism of the utopians and masterminds. This is pure Wilsonian progressivism. This progressivism permeates every aspect of our life today from education, taxes, and the use of energy to environmental regulations. I sometimes think that if the colonist had electricity they would have tossed a boat load of those curly cue light bulbs into the Boston Harbor rather than their breakfast beverage.

Obama exploits the citizenry's concerted blindness, cloaking his views under veneers of "social justice," "fairness," and "progress." Unadulterated Marxism attracts few votes. In rare candor, sans teleprompter, Obama lectured Joe the Plumber that his prescription for widespread prosperity is "spreading the wealth around."

Before catapulting to prominence, the president complained that thanks to constraints instituted by our Founders, "The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice." Obama's justice ensures not that transactions are freely entered and fairly measured, but that bureaucrats enforce results fancied per the fluttering fashions of political correctness.

Still, most Americans would deny Obama's Marxist outlook, mistaking the term's meaning as synonymous with Stalin or Mao. Marxist theory informed many of history's most murderous tyrants, but Obama's brand is the emasculated theorizing of the faculty lounge. He neither intends similar mayhem nor has such means in our constitutional republic.

Obama perceives society through lenses skewed by this modern version of Marxism. Obama's proposals inevitably leverage left-wing radicals or government organs to redistribute wealth, power, or caches of moral superiority under pretense of combating prejudice. Power shifts from private to public — or from parties previously seen as oppressors to those whom progressives deem oppressed.

In a recent speech at Hillsdale College entitled "The New Road to Serfdom: Lessons to Learn from European Policy" Daniel Hannan, a British Member of the European Parliament warned America of the impending disaster if we followed the course the European Union has taken for the past 30 years on their march to a socialistic and utopian society.

A clear sign of troubling impact on American society, the Heritage Foundation reports that 70 percent of government spending now goes to individual assistance programs. One in five Americans (more than 67.3 million) — the highest number in the nation's history — relies almost entirely on government and not himself for everything from housing, health care, and food stamps to retirement assistance — all paid for by others. This is clearly not what our Founders envisioned when the pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

To make matters worse, estimated government spending by states and local jurisdictions nearly matches the federal outlay. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, in a recent interview, reveals what this means:

“The GDP is near $15 trillion while government spending at all levels is $6.7 trillion. So; we're $800 billion away from half, and health care is coming. That means that government will become greater than the rest of society. How can the rest of society watch it? There are endless possibilities of corruption in such a situation with resulting loss of public morality.”

Clearly, spending on such a gigantic scale has hit home for many terrified Americans. They see the future for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren doomed to an era of continued low prosperity and massive corruption. Taking money by coercion from one to give to another has been historically called "theft" — not "fairness." Receiving largess without effort crushes the drive and work ethic of each able-bodied recipient. The current turmoil in Europe, even now being copied on a smaller scale by the "entitled poor" of the Occupy Wall Street crowd, clearly shows the ugliness ahead.

Will the Obama administration, by dispensing largesse on a massive scale in exchange for votes, subvert the limited central government model inherent in our Constitution? Will we revert to governance under the age-old model of strong central authority maintaining top-down power and control as demonstrated by King George? Can the Republican candidates for president and Congress articulate the blessings of widespread wealth and prosperity resulting from unleashing individual liberty with individual responsibility versus powerless masses scrambling to just get a piece of the dole? Or have Democrats convinced a sufficient number of voters to let "economic justice" replace "economic opportunity"?

Our own historic Plymouth colony and the European collapse today reveal lessons for all to see. The coming election provides voters the first real opportunity afforded by our Constitution for Americans to render their decision on which worldview they wish to adopt, since Mr. Obama has made the choice so clear. Resolution of this coming clash of worldviews will have profound significance for us all.

Obama vs. Our Founders

“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison, Federalist Paper 51

A political regime has three dimensions: the ruling institutions, the rulers, and the way of life of the people. In America, the rulers—the people themselves—and their ruling institutions—staffed by the people’s representatives aim at securing the Creator-endowed natural rights of all citizens. The Framers did this in two ways — Vertical and Horizontal.

In the American regime, the Constitution is the “supreme law of the land.” No one branch is superior to it; all three branches have a duty to abide by it. While each of the three branches plays a unique role in the passage, execution, and interpretation of laws, all of the branches must work together in the governing process.

The Vertical form of our ruling offices or institutions is called Federalism — it includes the states, counties and municipalities. This structure prevents the United States government from becoming overbearing — every citizen can participate in self-government. It prevents American from becoming utopian.

The Horizontal framework is how our Founders separated the powers of the elected and appointed representatives.

Madison wanted a “Compound Republic” where passion of action would be impaired. A weak government would be too weak to secure our rights from an overbearing legislature. Jefferson said ”one hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one, a few or many”. Compound Republicanism makes government more moderate and just by forcing it to act slowly and deliberately.

Madison stated in Federalist No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

In 1690 John Locke published his Second Treatise of Civil Government in which he stated:

“And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave.”

With Locke’s thoughts in mind James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 47:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Madison stated in Federalist 57:

“If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and, above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America—a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.

If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty.”

Continuing this line of thinking Madison stated in Federalist No. 55:

“As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.”

If the people are the sovereigns, if we want to govern ourselves, we must make our own laws This sensible self-government was to be and for years was our way of life.

All the above was debated in 1787 and was the thinking that went into the formation of our Constitution.

Throughout modern history, those who sought to control and expand the reach of government often resorted to exploiting mankind's most dominant trait: an innate desire to survive and prosper. To that end, the people would be promised a utopia on earth — a promise that could never be fulfilled. This is not only the most cynical of all political tactics, but also one whose proponents are interested only in self-aggrandizement and the accumulation of power, in other words they would be the “masterminds” of our lives and fate.

This strategy has three component parts: 1) promise the populace "fairness" and lifelong personal security; 2) create out of whole cloth villains who must be dispatched, as they are determined to make certain that there is no "fairness"; and 3) never fail to reassure the people that everything is under control. Unfortunately, these tactics have often succeeded in their initial stages, as there is a willingness among the people to accept the guarantees of the political class, but in the long term, a catastrophe has resulted for those societies who wholeheartedly embraced these transparent and fallacious precepts. Such recent examples would be Germany under the Nazi regime, Italy under Mussolini’s Fascist government, and the Soviet Union under the communism of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. This is also the Eurocentric socialism that has existed in Western Europe and Great Britain for the past 40 years. It is the utopian socialism once described by the post-war German economist Ludwig Erhard as “Socialismus mit Herz” (Socialism with a Heart).

Nonetheless, this game plan was the foundation of the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama. Now facing failure and defeat in 2012, Barack Obama and his minions are accelerating the demonization of their political opponents, often in the most vile and false ways possible, and pulling out all the stops in pitting various segments of society against one another regardless of the potential damage inflicted upon the American culture.

This desperation by the left and Barack Obama is indicative of the reality that both do not have a clue as to why their socialist/Marxist approach and theory are not and will never be successful, as the primary focus of this ideology has been to manipulate the base nature of mankind to the advantage of its proponents.

While some may willingly choose to pursue subsistence on their own terms, to the vast majority of the human race, the path of least resistance for survival and prosperity is the most desired. Thus, mankind is susceptible to financial scams, gambling, crime, and resentment, or to violence towards those who may have more. But above all, the preponderance of humanity is very open to the concept of a central authority providing people with the means of livelihood, and said people are thus willing to be swayed by the siren song of cradle-to-grave security.

A fatal characteristic of human race is the need, by some within the group, to conquer or maintain total control over their fellow man. Those who considered themselves masterminds superior to the masses — and who, in the distant past, may have achieved ruling status through the power of intimidation over the illiterate — now have to look to other means to achieve control of the levers of government.

The easiest course to assume this power is to promise that the state, in return for the support of the people, will provide the citizenry cradle-to-grave economic security. Thus, a Faustian bargain encompassing the desire by the majority for ease of survival and others for the need to rule is entered into. The populace, having committed itself to this compact, will expect never-ending freedom from adversity.

However, within this arrangement is the seed of its own destruction. For socialism to succeed, it must have an economic underpinning that can provide the foundation for massive social spending. The Soviet Union, as early as the 1920s and '30s, proved that complete state control of the means of production was a colossal failure, as the USSR could not produce sufficient wealth to support the population. Today, many nations in Europe are facing insolvency and social chaos as they had pursued a version of socialism wherein the state has de facto control over wealth-creation through regulations, taxes, and mandates necessitated by the unrestrained spending on guaranteed social programs coupled with unachievable promises.

Only an unfettered capitalist economic system, which is anathema to a powerful central government and its attendant oligarchy, can produce sufficient wealth necessary to underwrite a basic social safety net for the general public, finance the national security of a country, and provide an ever-increasing standard of living for the people.

Capitalism, reflective of that portion of mankind choosing to seek subsistence on their own terms, does by its nature celebrate the success of the individual, not the collective. Individuals, separately or together, driven by the motive of self-enrichment, produce goods or services desired by others. In the process, jobs and wealth are created, thus benefiting society as a whole.

A massive tension exists between those who adhere to central government control and fealty to socialist or Marxist philosophy and those who produce the wealth of a nation. As the state inherently has more power than the individual, and once the left-wing element of the ruling class assumes power, government begins an inexorable process of injecting itself into the affairs of the individual and producer class (which is always a minority in any society).

Those who believe they have a manifest destiny to rule and are faithful to socialist tenets have a predisposition to control the populace and economic activity through laws, regulations, taxes, and intimidation. Despite the lesson of the Soviet Union and its state control of the economy and the failure of modern day Euro-Socialist democracies, every new generation of adherents to socialist ideology believes that he can make this fallacious philosophy work and maintain socialists' arrangement with the citizenry.

Madison warned of this in Federalist No. 62:

“The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.”

But the reality is no one can do this, as the economic engine of capitalism will not continue to produce wealth if it is increasingly put under the thumb of bureaucrats and central planners inevitably attempting not only to institute state control of the economy, but also to regulate the day-to-day activities of all citizens. The motivation of the producer class will be stifled, and that class's members will then drop out, join the dependent class, or simply move on to other, more hospitable countries — leaving behind a stagnant and ultimately declining economy and diminished national wealth.

As history has shown, (most recently in Europe and now in the United States), left-leaning governments will inevitably turn to excessive and unsustainable borrowings as well as inflation to finance their societal obligations. The unwritten contract between the statists masterminds and the citizens who were promised cradle-to-grave security cannot be maintained; the economic underpinning of this arrangement will be quickly eroded.

Social and economic chaos resulting in a dramatically lower standard of living will inexorably ensue and, in some cases, lead to violence or revolution. No amount of promises; demonization of capitalism; or seizure of the means of production, confiscatory taxes, or the printing of money will reinstitute prosperity or security for the people.

This is the path on which President Obama and his fellow travelers have placed the United States. After just three years, the nation faces an unsustainable growth trajectory in national debt, a deteriorating economy, and a society in decline. The American people have been repeatedly told that Barack Obama is the most intelligent and empathetic person to ever occupy the Oval Office. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as he is incapable of understanding — or else unwilling to understand — why his unshakable belief in Marxist socialist ideology, as well as his actions as president, has placed the nation in such jeopardy.

The Obama re-election strategy of not defending or acknowledging these failures, but instead doubling down on the dishonest demonization of the opposition and further polarizing the populace by creating and exploiting race, class, and gender fissures in society, is beneath contempt. It is reflective of the tactics used by many of the despots during the past century, whose only interest was to accumulate and retain power. Barack Obama and the Democratic Party cannot be allowed to succeed with this line of attack; they must be rejected by the American people in November.