Posted on 12/24/2009 9:28:41 PM PST by aquapub
Now that we have been painted into a corner with the passage of this Constitution-trampling explosion of government, we have only 4 options left before things get ugly:
1) Vote them out in 2010. This option requires much patience and will not actually mean anything unless those elected actually reverse all the spending, bailouts and takeovers.
Most likely, Democrats will be punished for a few years while Republicans ride the tidal wave of public outrage into office, at which point they will throw us some symbolic scraps from the table, rather than making a serious commitment to uprooting federal tyranny. It is absolutely critical that we get actual conservatives into office and eject the RINOs in 2010.
2) Legal challenge in the courts. There is a chance that the Supreme Court could reverse this law based on the "Commerce Clause" debate (a few states being bribed and blackmailed into submission at the expense of all the others).
3) Nullification. This is where states stand up for their 10th Amendment rights and declare that, since this law is blatantly unconstitutional, they refuse to acknowledge that it was even passed.
And no, the Founders never intended for the federal government to be the sole determiner of the size and scope of its own power. State nullification was always intended as a natural check against federal encroachments.
4) Civil disobedience (the only option that requires no waiting). The politicians are now coming home to face their constituents. Escalate things by organizing a disruptive demonstration, like a sit-in.
While government creates 111 new federal bureaucracies and destroys the free market system that 84% of us are happy with, the politicians have exempted themselves from the rationed, inferior care the rest of us are left with. But they cannot exempt themselves from us.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, when government becomes adversarial to the people, it is both the right and the responsibility of the people to rise up and "alter or abolish" that government. Government gets its power from us.
It is time to step up and take back what is ours.
marker
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration of Independence
I’m wondering what the end game is for people who want to take the country back to liberty and freedom.
Don’t get me wrong, I desire liberty and this present rush toward collectivism is an outrage.
But let’s say we win the battle of the political trenches and awaken to a renewed moment of freedom. Are we in it for the money and prosperity? The material gain? The ability to watch our big screens? What’s the long-term spiritual and moral benefit of that?
Unless we use freedom to make the world a better place for many, it seems to me even something as noble as conservatism can be found merely a crass alternative equal in futility to collectivism. We end up crashing into Solomon’s conclusion in Ecclesiastes 1.
SO WHERE DO I SIGN UP?
Precisely why God gave the 10 Commandments after bringing His people into freedom from bondage in Egypt!
Bump for later reading
Why don't we try getting pizzed off and winning first, then contemplating the moral implications?
Tell you what. I will get pizzed off and figure out ways to kick the communists to the kurb.
You figure out what the moral responsibilities of actually winning this thing will be.
Together we can be a big can of fer-real wup-azz.
“What’s the long-term spiritual and moral benefit of that?
Unless we use freedom to make the world a better place for many...”
I’m going to reply to your post not as any self-proclaimed paradigm of conservatism nor, I hope, a naive idiot.
You/we cannot make the rest of the world, indeed, not even all of ourselves, happy, productive, fulfilled people. I would argue, that with some grotesque exceptions, we *have* made the world a better place. In some of those uglier cases, we made it pretty cruddy first. The discussion as to what we have done to make the world better and what we’ve done to make it worse also depends on what “better/worse” might mean. And how much of the historical chain we are expected to be responsible for. For example, “we” (actually more Britain) found and then developed oil in the mideast. In the case of Saudi Arabia, those resources were exploited, perhaps unfairly, but at this point in time the Saudis, at least the elite, are megabillionaires from this oil. Tremendous infrastructure improvements have been built in KSA, including the type of foolish excess we see in Dubai....and yet much of their population is underemployed and destitute. Our fault? Of course! In the case of Iran, British facilities were nationalized in the early 50’s, the Brits persuaded us to help overthrow the shah and install Pahlavi, who oppressed his people to the extent that the Iranian revolution came about in 1979, leading to the regime in place there now, whom we regard as a worldwide menace and who clearly finances terrorists working to kill our guys, right now, today. How much of either of these timelines are to be held responsible for? But that’s not the purpose of my reply, it’s just a rhetorical question.
We *have* made the world a better place for many, arguably, for more people than any other civilization or culture ever. By orders of magnitude. We did it by living the American model based upon the Constitution. We have provided more people with more wealth, more disease-curing drugs, more labor-saving devices, and yes, more American Idol-grade cultural putrefaction than any other source. A dirty litle secret is that we have also provided the *market* for many other countries to sell to. And where that market will go when we are capped and traded and taxed to bloody hell is a dynamic effect that isn’t being considered now. Without tallying all the negative and positive influences we have had upon the world in 234 years, I contend the balance is strongly to the positive side. Yet more than anything else, we have done it by providing a *model* of a society based upon law, not just a raw democracy. Like you, I’m seriously dismayed to see that being crassly overthrown at present.
As most of us probably believe and as I started out saying, we cannot directly create the nirvana we would like to see our fellow man live in. We cannot air-condition the mud hut of 0bama’s half-brother in Kenya without the availability of local power. We can, and we have developed and provided drugs and insecticides and nutritional things that have massively, massively improved the potentials of the people there. We’ve dug sewers and built hospitals and schools for some, but in many cases, when it looks like some modicum of organization starts to take root on that continent, a corrupt local leader emerges whose purpose is to steal the goods and avenge some goddam goat that the neighbor’s grandfather stole and then war breaks out and the hospitals are destroyed and looted. Naturally, that’s our fault, too. We cannot provide the Indonesian or the Tanzanian or the Tuvaluan a satisfying lifestyle until he himself has the idea for a product or service that he can market at a profit to his peers or to some export market, using that set of resources available to him. At present, I daresay, it appears we cannot even make this happen for our domestic population.
My point: Just like a badly depressed person in a group can be a real downer to the rest of the group, and a sparkplug of a person can light up a room; I believe our best course is to worry about ourselves right now, and try to get ourselves back to where we can be viewed as a model. I fanatically disagree that this is selfish. There is huge value in acting as a model, both for us and for the ROW, and we ought not to feel guilty about it. No, what we should feel guilty about is allowing our exceptional model to be trashed. Remember the Washington DC pictures of the aftermaths of the 0bama campaign rallies vs the teaparty rallies? Consider that as a metaphor. I do. It told me all I need to know about choice “A” and choice “B”.
Amen, brother. Awaiting orders.
“...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government...”
Judge Napolitano spoke on this. The Declaration of Independence is the first law of these United States and IS STILL IN EFFECT. We are actually legally required “to throw off such Government.”
None of that seems overly drastic. Once they sign this health care socialist takeover....
5) Don’t buy anything that you won’t really need. Become more independent (manufacturing skills, food, exercise, energy, tools, repair skills, building skills, other technical skills, defense and security skills, leadership skills). Become nonpolitical, until we see good and moral men presented as candidates.
And no violence, BTW. Violence, especially violence initiated by spoiled rotten people, is stupid in this scenario. Talk of such now is just talk anyway—stupid talk.
Hey - I like your tag line! :) (check mine)
That is so 60s. Organizing a disruptive demonstration, like an armed insurrection would be much more satisfying. Note to Mainstream Media: Under the laws of war Propaganda arms of governemnts are legal military targets.
I don’t know. I think we’ve just been nudged past “that awkward stage”.
See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZA0qNsf4m0&feature=pyv&ad=3723781624&kw=dollar
When people are starving, then there will be action against the government and its policies. As for something happening before there is major starvation in American cities, I do not know.
As an interesting tangent though, the Constitution defines Treason as levying war against the states or giving their enemies aid and comfort AND Washington DC is *NOT* a state. Therefore an armed invasion/siege of Washington DC by the People would _NOT_ be treason. (Sedition, maybe; but NOT legally treason.)
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