Free Republic

Like Pig-Pen’s characteristic pall of dust, a stink of greed and fear hangs about America’s currently ascendant public elite. This is nowhere more evident than in the reaction to the Ground Zero Mosque project. As I showed in a previous post, it’s not hard to demonstrate the absurdity of the argument that disapproving the location of the proposed Islamic “community center” somehow violates religious rights. “Practitioners of a religious cult that sacrifices innocent people cannot cloak their practice of murder as the free exercise of religion. Neither can practitioners of Islamic terrorism who assault innocent people as part of their...

I doubt that most people would be shocked to learn that sometimes the influence of power can interfere with and even derail the course of justice in our legal system.  Behind the scenes, a phone call from a powerful politician, or a corporate mogul often affects the actions or judgments of people whose personal ambitions they are in a position to help or hinder.  Usually though, people giving heed to such considerations have enough sense to cloak what they do with words or actions that give their corruption at least the appearance of probity.  Maybe its the tribute that vice...

*excerpt* As a matter of public policy, the issues on which Ken Mehlman exerted his retrograde influence within the GOP are not about his personal behavior. They are about the truth or falsity of the great principles, the self-evident truths, from which the liberty of the American people derives. If there is no natural right, no natural family, no ways of God reflected in the nature of mankind, then there are no unalienable rights; no principle of justice that requires their security; no authoritative basis for the rightness of government based on consent; no claim to self-government, of, by and...

By design or incompetence, Obama appears to be intent on creating a quagmire in which to dissipate America's military strength and resources. Most Americans have no objection to seeing their loved ones in the military risk and give their lives to fulfill the oaths that preserve the liberty of our people. It is deeply wrong to ask that they do so when the strategy that makes moral and military sense of their sacrifice has been cast aside.   As I indicated in the above quoted article posted at Loyal to Liberty in May 2009, almost as soon as he entered the...

In chemistry a reagent is defined as “a substance used to detect or measure another substance or to convert one substance into another by means of the reaction which it causes.” With this in mind, the Ground Zero Mosque (GZM) project is turning out to be an effective political reagent. In their reactions to it America’s political and other public figures are taking stands that reveal their core priorities and motivations. In my last posting I discussed this in regard to Ron Paul’s slashing attack on the GZM’s opponents, among them the families and friends of those murdered in the...

According to Newsmax “Ron Paul unleashed a lengthy and at times angry statement on his website Friday that supports the rights of Muslims to build what’s become known as the “Ground Zero Mosque.” As they read about it, I’m sure not a few of his admirers will disagree with him. But as usual they’ll dismiss it as another aberrant outburst from someone whose views they otherwise applaud. If Newsmax is right about his feelings, though, it makes sense to ask why he feels anger at the people opposing the GZM project. I think it’s because he accepts the view that...

The title of this post obviously alludes to Herman Kahn’s book, Thinking About the Unthinkable . Kahn is famous for his contributions to strategic thought at the onset of the age of thermonuclear war. With the G-string concealed bias one comes to expect there, the Wikipedia article about him suggests that his influence contributed to “the fallout shelters, evacuation scenarios, and civil defense drills now seen as emblematic of the paranoid 1950s”. Paranoia implies an irrational sense of threat and persecution. Yet given mid-twentieth century realities, the real madness (or is it wickedly calculated deception?) appears evident in the left’s...

This morning I noticed a link to a posting from the FreedomWorks website in which Freedomworks Chair Dick Armey presents their endorsement of David Malpass in the GOP primary for the special U.S. Senate election in New York. I then paid a visit to the candidate’s website, which headlined a recent endorsement by Sue Kelly, formerly a New York Congresswoman, and a prominent so-called “pro-choice” Republican. The quote from her endorsement statement tells us that “David…has the experience and skill set to grow the economy and create jobs.” Such enthusiasm from someone who aligns with the Democrat party’s abandonment of...

I always find it repugnant when Barack Obama pretends to articulate and apply America’s moral values. As products of Saul Alinsky’s finishing school for Marxist protégés, Obama and his crew have no respect for the self-evident truths in which those values originate. It’s not that they have no use for them. On the contrary, they refer to them only when they are useful for ideological warfare. Obama’s reference yesterday to religious tolerance, and America’s respect for religious freedom, is a case in point. According to an AP report, he “is weighing in forcefully on the mosque near ground zero, saying...

When given the chance to register an opinion, the majority of Americans express their desire to keep intact laws and government policies that respect the God-ordained natural family. The people of California did so in Proposition 8. Many of them are justifiably outraged at the decision taken by federal Judge Vaughn R. Walker that purports to invalidate their will. The key to Judge Walker's assault on the constitutional sovereignty of the people of California is found in these words: A state's interest in an enactment must of course be secular in nature. The state does not have an interest in...

A couple of days ago I read a story reporting Brian Bilbray’s remarks about the issue of Obama’s constitutional eligibility to be President. Bilbray denied that the phrase ‘natural born citizen’ has anything to do with birthplace. He asserted that “a natural born citizen is someone who is born in the U.S. or overseas if the birth is registered with the government.” Bilbray’s statements prompted one commentator to ask “Where is this guy from? Is he dealing with a full deck?” But the whole tenor of Bilbray’s obtusely wrong and dismissive statements is consistent with the Republican Party’s derelict response...

Almost all conservatives profess greatly to admire America’s founders. They also declare their allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. Yet some are also vocal in their condemnation of “democracy”, and their conviction that the United States is not a democracy but a republic. When stated with proper precision, I understand and agree with this view. Sadly, such precision is rarely in evidence these days. This was not so when the Constitution was written.

Daily Brief #7 In his vote favoring the confirmation of Elena Kagan, and the statement he made to justify it, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham again marks himself as the kind of politico people must drive from office if they mean to restore and preserve republican, constitutional self-government in the United States. While pretending that Kagan is not the sort of person he would have nominated for the Supreme Court, Graham slyly violated the second of the Bibles Ten Commandments when he suggested that Christ’s articulation of the “Golden Rule” (Do unto others as you would have them do unto...

Daily Brief #6 Every day brings some new evidence that even people who are supposed to be conservatives are unable or unwilling to think through rudimentary features of the Constitution. Today I for example I came across this declaration in a commentary piece at WND. The commentator wrote “I am not pleased to see Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan sitting on the bench, but I would have voted to approve them. That’s because I believe the president is entitled to appoint whomever he wishes, whether it’s Ruth Bade Ginsburg or Robert Bork.” As I read this what came to mind...

In an article I just read at the American Thinker website, Cindy Simpson reacts to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s opinion that “Birthright citizenship I think is a mistake.” She says “Although Graham talked about “changing” the Constitution to outlaw the practice, many experts say the Constitution as written does not authorize birthright citizenship in the first place.” Both Graham’s statement and Simpson’s comment describe the situation in an inaccurate and misleading way. The problem is not “birthright citizenship.” Most American citizens are birthright citizens, meaning simply that at birth, and without need of any process of naturalization , they are natural...

Speaking of unalienable rights, the GOP’s handling of the Kagan nomination thus far offers new evidence that the Party’s current leadership remains obtusely indifferent to the tragic watershed Kagan’s nomination represents for the American republic. In response to a question by from Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, she refused to support the fundamental notion that all people have unalienable rights. With the deceitful pseudo-cleverness now characteristic of those hostile to the principles of the Constitution, she pretended that as a Supreme Court justice she would be obliged to deal only with the rights enumerated in the Constitution. Of course this seemingly...

Back in 2008 I went to Des Moines, Iowa to participate in the debate among candidates for the Republican presidential nomination sponsored by the Des Moines Register. During a radio interview I was doing in that context, the interviewer made a remark (while we were chatting off air, as I recall) that came back to me today as I read Professor Angelo Codevilla’s eye-opening piece, America’s Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution.  The interviewer bluntly observed that given my commitment to God and liberty, the GOP leadership must look upon me as a traitor to my class. I think...

I just read a piece by Dick Morris, the former high level Bill Clinton operative now seen accepted as a politically savvy “conservative” pundit. In “The End of the Post-racial Presidency” he appears to lament the fact the “Obama is letting his supporters strip away his image of a post-racial president by their increasingly racial rhetoric and his support for radical black activists.” Then he joins the pack of GOP partisans that has gleefully played up “Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to prosecute the new Black Panther members so obviously guilty of racial intimidation at the Philadelphia polling places in...

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of one another fifty years to the day after the Second Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence. Was that "a remarkable coincidence" or a providential exclamation point? Though today we think of July 4 as the day on which we celebrate the fateful step that severed Great Britain from the thirteen colonies that would become the United States of America, that act of Congress actually took place on July 2. July 4 was the day the Congress adopted The Declaration of Independence, the statement drafted to explain its action...

I can think of many good reasons why GOP Chairman Michael Steele should resign. His recent remarks casting doubt on the viability of the Obama faction’s continued deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan are not among them. Almost as soon as Barack Obama took up residence in the White House he declared an end to the war on terror. He thus destroyed the strategic context for the military activities to which President G. W. Bush committed American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In that strategic context Afghanistan was never intended to be the main focus of the war effort....