After the first World War, we were walking tall as a nation.  Proud to be Americans, we were supremely confident in our government, and with such a willing citizenry it was just a matter of time until a civil servant, or two, recognized a golden opportunity.  An almost natural progression began from service to serious trespass, with the trespasses dressed as public safety... or national defense... public necessity... national security.  Whatever the name, these trespasses were universally aimed at bureaucratic convenience and a hunger for power and personal security.  Today, these bureaucratic sins have mushroomed to such epic proportions, we feel helpless, as individuals, to respond.
     Complaining about "the government" has become a national pasttime.  Conversation about the sorry state of our government is as commonplace as a discussion of the weather.  In fact, finding someone who approves of the government is now the exception rather than the rule.  If this complex problem could be reduced to one solution, it would be letting our Constutition once again guide us, our government employees and elected officials.
     Granted, our Constitution has changed over the years.  Of necessity, it expanded with the needs of the people and the times.  In fact, the drafters of the Constitution made allowances for change and even spelled out how these changes should take place, always with an eye on protecting the citizenry from an over zealous or corrupt central government.  Starting in the 1920's, however, certain governmental employees figured out how to get around these constitutional protections, the most notable being a small-time civil servant named, J. Edgar Hoover.
     Hoover discovered that he could move unfettered, so long as he had the press on his side.  By the sixties, this once small potatoes bureaucrat had taken over the United States, holding even Presidents at bay with the illegal dossiers he compiled on any person he deemed a threat to the country or his personal ambitions.  He by-passed the very laws he was supposed to uphold (wire-tapping, use of private documents from the IRS, and the list mushroomed through the years) but always comfortable in the protective cocoon provided him by a rabid and naive press corps.  Once Hoover proved it was possible, other bureaucracies climbed on board... Ever heard of the IRS?  Certain IRS employees, then most of them,  took bureaucratic power and abuse to new levels, no longer concerned about the citizens they were employed to serve, but the homage and financial security they felt was due them.
     I'm not sure how, but we need to reverse the process of bureaucratic rule and return to being ruled by people we have elected.  Maybe it would help if we knew how they got control in the first place.  not, history tells us there will be a revolution, and I'm not looking forward to that.

 

Separate the church and state?

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence - it is force."
                                George Washington

     For two hundred years we survived war, depression, civil unrest and a variety of other national challenges, while maintaining a government of, and by, millions of unshackled and self-sufficient individual citizens.  Each of us, different in his or her unique way, has managed to blend that individuality with the individuality of others, united in a love of freedom... a common bond of patriotism... a profound respect for the rights of others, and a deep national loyalty.  Over the last fifty years these good things have changed, and the fear of our forefathers (fears so eloquently expressed in our Constitution) have begun to be realized.  We have acquiesced in certain freedoms (though bought for a precious price - the blood and bullets of the first Americans) being routinely given away in exchange for creature comforts.  "A government that is big enough to give you everything you want," Barry Goldwater warned, "is big enough to take it away." And take it away they have, leaving dissatisfaction, confusion and paranoia in the wake.  Our dependence on governmental services has become an effective surrender of the independence guaranteed by the Constitution... an independence claimed for us by men and women who sacrificed limbs and lives for a fair share of it.
     At this point in time, the cumulative loss of our freedoms constitutes a significant percentage of those we started with.  How did that happen?  Apathy?  Carelessness?  Misplaced trust?  In our defense, in the early 1900's a belief in the integrity of our government had become inbred.  Uncle Sam had earned our trust for two hundred years, and custom, if not convenience, dictated a blind faith in any governmental cause or catchphrase.  Perhaps it was justifiable that we didn't keep at least one eye open, but with such a willing and confident citizenry, it was only a matter of time until an unscrupulous government official, or two, side-stepped from service to serious trespass in the area of individual rights. (more about that in December) After a point in time, the federal courts, especially the United States Supreme Court, stepped up to the window for their piece of the "freedom-stealing" pie.  You tell me if it makes sense.
     The next few paragraphs are taken (in pertitinent part) from an article by Alan Keyes on www.RenewAmerica.us
     The First Amendment to the Constitution plainly states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.  Since there can be no federal law on the subject, there appears to be no lawful basis for any element of the federal government - including the courts - to act in this area. Add to this the Tenth Amendment - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.  This means that the power to make laws respecting an establishment of religion, having been explicitly withheld from the United States is reserved to the states or the people.
     This leaves individuals free to make their own choices with respect to religion, but it also secures the right of the people of the states to live under a government that reflects their religious inclination.  As in all matters subject to the decision of the people, the choice of the people is not the choice of all, but of the majority as constitutionally determined, in conformity with the principles of republican government.... When, by their careless and contradictory abuse of the 14th Amendment the federal judges and justices abbrogate to themselves the power which by the 1st and 10th Amendments, the Constitution reserves to the states, they deprive the nation of this prudent and logically balanced approach to the issue of religious establishment. 
     Whether through carelessness or an artful effort to deceive... They have, in consequence, ursurped this right of the people... (reserving) to a handful of un-elected individuals the power to impose on the entire nation a uniform stance on religion at every level of government... They have insisted that government adopt a stance of strict agnosticism, which in effect drives from the public realm all things that smack of religious belief.  This establishes, in the literal sense, a uniform regime of atheism in government affairs.  (In the literal sense, atheism simply means the absence of God, and this, in the public realm, is what the federal judges and justices insist upon.)... Thus, in the guise of a judicial effort to protect religious freedom, they destroy it - not for this or that individual, but for the people as a whole.
     Even where ordinary citizens are concerned, however, it is not hard to imagine situations in which they would be morally obligated to refuse a plainly unlawful court order.  If, for instance, a judge issues an order requiring that at random an innocent person be shot when entering the courtroom, no person, including an officer of the court, is required to obey this order... It is of no consequence whether the unlawful order comes from one judge or many, from a lower court or the Supreme Court - it must be refused.
     The text of the Constitution easily allows us to see and understand the federal judiciary's abuse of power and its usurpation of the rights of people in religious matters.  It also provides a remedy for this abuse.  The Congress must pass legislation that, in order to assure proper respect for the First Amendment, excepts from the appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts those matters which, by the conjoint effect of the First and Tenth Amendments, the Constitution reserves to the states respectively and to the people...  This legislation would restore observance of the Constitution by preventing the federal courts from addressing any issues related to religious establishment.
     The following is taken from an article at http://www.noapathy.org
     "The people (our forefathers) did not want freedom from religion, but freedom of religion.... Our founding fathers were God-fearing men who understood that for a country to stand it must have a solid foundation; the Bible was the source of this foundation.  They believed that God's ways were much higher than man's ways and held firmly that the Bible was the absolute standard of truth and used the Bible as a source to form our government... to say Biblical principles should not be allowed in government and school is to either be ignorant of the historical intent of the founding fathers, or blatantly bigoted against Christianity. "
     I guess it's time for you to do your part.  Write to your senator and your representative.  Send them a copy of this article if you like, or just ask them to take away the issue of religion from the Supreme Court.  However, you see fit, let your representative know how you feel.  Here's how to contact your senator and your represenattive (by phone, regular mail and e-mail)

http://www.senate.gov/index.htm Click on the subheading "Senators"  Your senator and all his/her relevant "contact" info will come up.  Get to it.

http://www.house.gov - Enter your zip code and your representative will come up.  Click on the name and you will go to their individual web site.  Click "contact me" and let them hear from you.

 [sung to the tune of the 60's hit song "War"] Bureaucrats, what are they good for ?)


 Alan Keyes - A great American                             

"Too bad all the people who know how to run the government are busy driving cabs or cutting hair."
                                                                                               George Burns

If you don't know Alan Keyes go to http://www.renewamerica.us/keyes/whois.htm

Alan Keyes on Bureaucracies:
     Bureaucracies are inherently anti-democratic.  Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve.  The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients.  They receive its services, but only insofar as they conform to its authority.  The bureaucracy is like a computer; it responds only to those who address it in the proper form.  In this sense, a bureaucratic government program has a double meaning:  The program serves its clients, but it also programs them.

Preferential affirmative action:
     Preferential affirmative action patronizes American blacks, women and others by presuming that they cannot succeed on their own.  Preferential affirmative action does not advance civil rights in this country.  It is merely another government patronage program that secures money and jobs for the few people who benefit from it, and breeds resentment in the many who do not.  It divides us as a people.
     I read American sagas (of the west) and I do not see people who went in search of material things.  I see people who wrote down that what they sought was an escape from an old world which dictated their conscience and established their merit based on who their parents were.
     That is one of the reasons I oppose this whole Affirmative Action business.  We are not supposed to be judged based on what our ancestors did or suffered.  We are supposed to be judged as individuals, based on what we are able to achieve.
     And when you tell me that somebody's skin color or gender is going to determine their prospects in this world, that is turning the clock back hundreds of years.  Back to a time before this nation declared that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator; not by their ancestry, not by their skin color, not by their gender, not by Congress, not by the Constitution, and not by the laws.

The budget:
     How phony can you get? ... Do they ever ask us before they raise taxes?... I say let's not wait to see if their budget can take it.  Let's just cut the taxes and have them figure it out like we have to figure it out after they take our money.
     We must take away the government's credit card.  With limits on both tax revenue and borrowing, the Federal government would finally be forced to get serious about spending cuts.  That's why a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, with barriers on both borrowing and spending, is the best way to secure budget discipline.

Welfare:
     It is a concept that emphasizes human needs while neglecting human capacities.  It stresses individual helplessness and weakness, underminig the sense of personal responsibility.  It justifies even greater concentrations of power in the hands of the state, leaving people each day more powerless to effect and improve their own condition.  This bad concept leads to institutions and policies that disable individual initiative, motivation and creativity.  Faced with political and social structures that embody the assumption of individual impotence, individuals acquire the passive habits and expectations that go with it.

Second Amendment:
     The Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a long train of abuses, a government envinces a methodical design upon our natural rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights.  That is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights.  In fact, if we make the judgment that our rights are being systematically violated, we have not merely the right, but the duty to resist and overthrow the power responsible.  That duty requires that we maintain the material capacity to resist tyranny, if necessary, something that is very hard to do if the government has all the weapons.
(taken from http://www.fightthebias.com )  -

Don't know who wrote this, but it smacks of the truth.
     "Nations richer and more powerful in their day than we are in this, have been sabotaged, defeated, enslaved.  Babylon was the largest and richest nation of its time, but its lust for luxury made it an easy mark for the Medes and Persians who overran it and divided its land and enslaved the people between them.  Rome was a greater military power than we ever were, but when bread and circuses became more important to the people that hard work and patriotism, Rome was invaded and looted by the tougher Vandals.  The Incas were the most civilized, richest people in the Americas, but ruthless, better-armed invaders destroyed them as a nation, and looted everything they owned and had spent generations in creating.  In every case it was the self indulgent weakness of the victim which made victory of the invader easy.  Undoubtedly there were Babylonians, Romans, and Incas who warned of overindulgence and weakness; who warned that each citizen is responsible for his nation, and that that responsibility cannot be shrugged off on officials.  But to those who warned of impending trouble, there was then as now, the smug sneer, "It can't happen here."  But it did.
(Taken from http://www.coolmedia.net/cbg/) -