Exponentially Wrong

The piece I'm about to fisk can be found here.  I'm only going to deal with the first two paragraphs, because that's all I need.  When you start with an incredibly flawed premise, your conclusions can only be madness.

Read the piece below and see if you recognize the error before I deal with it.

When we practice the privileges granted to us by our governing documents, in this case, the Bill of Rights and bearing arms, we enter into an implicit agreement with the Union to recognize and act according to the State's rules and regulations for the use and ownership of arms. And as we agree to those rules, so does the government agree to act responsibly on behalf of our collective well-being.
In this manner, our relationship with our nation mirrors our relationship with our parents; both our parents and our nation raise us; both provide for our welfare; both teach us values and ethics; both act on our behalf for our well-being. And thus should we regard our nation; as a parental figure to be a moral example, an ideal to respect and to obey. For, if the dynamics of our relationship with our parents are mirrored functionally by the dynamics of our relationship with our country, so too should the convictions and loyalties that characterize the former persist in the latter.

Let me just start with the words before the first comma.  Privileges?   Where did you get such an idea Mr. Lelonek?  Our founding documents don't even mention privileges.  It speaks of inalienable rights that come from God.  It speaks of the purpose of a righteous government being to secure and protect those rights and never abrogate them.  Therefore, we don't enter into any agreement whatsoever to agree to any rules the State might make in direct violation of our God-given rights.

Has the government violated the Constitution by passing laws that infringe on our rights?  Oh yes.  We have an outlaw government.  This is pretty much beyond any question for those of us who have read history and understand it.

It is bad enough that this condition exists today, but for someone to come along and try to interpret it 180 degrees out of phase is infuriating.

To read the records of the founding fathers as they argued and hammered out the Constitution, as well as from reading both the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers, an intelligent human being understands that the founders understood government in all forms to be a necessary evil that must be chained down and guarded to keep it from doing the very things that you advocate in that tripe you call an opinion.  The Constitution was written to be the very set of chains that restrained government from being anything other than a servant to the people as sovereign individuals and the sovereign States who agreed to create the Federal government.

It was never intended for the government to see to any collective well being.  Any idea of a collective was diametrically opposite the goals of the founders.  Government was meant to stay the hell out of the way of individuals pursuing their own well being and happiness so long as they respected everyone else's rights to do the same.

To  draw an analogy to parenting in regard to government is outrageous.  I don't have enough words of contempt for such an idea.  Such is the language of totalitarian communist states such as North Korea, or Cuba.  Free people understand that human beings are flawed.  We understand that getting elected to office or being appointed to positions or getting hired as a bureaucrat does not bestow some super human understanding or intelligence for making better decisions in directing other people's lives.

In a more sensible time, it was understood that when a person reached the age to vote and be a responsible citizen, they would be capable of being a parent, not needing one.  It is not the job of government to provide me with welfare or anything else.  Even more important, it is not the job of government to take part of my life and liberty in the form of the fruit of my labor and my time in order to provide things for other people.

If you are genuinely ignorant of the true meaning of the founding documents, Mr. Lelonek, I suggest you get schooled on the matter.  If you can't comprehend the writings of the men who composed those documents over 200 years ago, then I suggest some courses at Hillsdale College in Michigan.  They specialize in teaching exactly what the founders were trying to and did accomplish and exactly why.

If you really do know the history and the meaning of the founding documents, then you are a most egregious liar and you would make the most perfect example of someone who deserves to be stripped naked, slathered with tar and dusted with feathers.  Then you need to be dropped off in one of the countries that attempts to govern according to the concepts that you espouse.
There are plenty of such places.  Please take as many other child-like folks with you who don't have the grown-up thinking and maturity to handle freedom and live in any of the countries with nanny-state government.

Let them tell you what is safe to drive, eat, and talk about.  Let them dictate to you what lightbulbs to use, whether or not you can pack your child's lunch for school, who you can associate with, how much money you should be allowed to make.  Go ahead, there's nothing stopping you.

We grown-ups who have worked hard and made good choices would like to be left alone.  We know how to handle sharp objects and things that go bang.  We've even been known to create fire on a regular basis and cook our own food.  Lot's of us actually can do math at levels high enough to balance multiple checking accounts.

Take you and your immature friends and find yourself a parent style government someplace else.  Leave us alone.

Hat tip to Joe Huffman.

Thoughtful Question

Col. Bunny over at Eternity Road asked the question at the end of a thoughtful piece.

"If life with the ridiculous, laughable, pathetic God of creation is so horrific and unbearable, what do you think it’s going to be like without God?"

 It is most interesting to me because he says he is not a Christian.  It is sad to me that over my life I have noticed that some of the most moral people I've met have refused to take on any religious label, and most often would make the point of saying that they weren't a Christian.  And here I am today, after a long time of wearing that label, now no longer able to, but for completely different reasons. I'm unable to wear that label because of the vast majority of people who wear it, but for whom it means little or nothing, and the resultant damage they do to it.  Perhaps I should one day post only on why I am not a "Christian."  I am a Messianic believer; a follower of "the way," as recorded in Luke's book of Acts.

In the developed world, we have so bought into scientism and materialism. Yes, scientism, not science. What used to be scientific endeavor has eroded into finding or making up data to support political agendas, rather than seeking the truth. The squashing of intelligent design theory and the global warming hoax have proved that in spades.  The modern world is so full of people who are so thoroughly confused about real science and the scientific method, that they simply accept anything the media tells them about "news" from the world of science.  Most people simply read or hear, "Scientists said . . ." or "Study revealed . . ." and they just buy it all, lock, stock, and barrel.  Then months or years later when it is revealed that the data was misinterpreted or the methods were sloppy or the conclusions incoherent and wrong, nobody pays attention.

In keeping with Col. Bunny's question, it is interesting to note that even many of the philosophers who doubted God's existence or denied it outright, at least thought about the consequences of their ideas. They reasoned that man is a wild beast and needs to be ruled by his superiors of the same species, and that using the concept of "God" is a good way to keep the herd in line.  I wish I still had all my files with the quote from one 19th century philosopher who said that if people didn't believe in a God, the elites would need to invent one to keep the people in line.   In the times of monarchs with absolute authority, this was known as "divine right," and was useful for keeping the people cowed. Philosophers all the way back to Plato have understood that people had to have some kind of belief in a cosmic being with ultimate authority or society would break down into anarchy. Of course, past tyrants would have salivated at the modern technology we have today that could make it possible to watch and threaten the masses into near complete submission.

Many who have dislike or outright hatred of Christianity love to ask, "What about the crusades?"  Young skulls full of state propaganda from government schools are convinced that "religion" is the cause of all the world's ills. Pay no attention to the fact that it was Nazi socialism, Lenin and Stalin's communism, Mao, Pol Pot, and others who adhered to a doctrine that specifically and militantly prohibited the God of the Bible from having any part in the ordering of their societies, and executed, -- not just killed in war -- murdered upwards of 50 million people combined.  I'd like to resurrect some of those people and ask them if they would prefer living under a king who believed he would eventually have to stand before the judgment of a righteous God, or if they thought the concept of living under the Ten Commandments was just too much of a burden.

The Hitlers and the Maos and those who would be our "progressive" leaders can't tolerate any fundamental, true belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Why?  To believe in the God of the Bible would lead to radical ideas about man being endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights.  People might start believing that man is not meant to be a slave to the state in order to serve the good of the masses. You true believers in the God of the Bible are a hindrance to our well-ordered society.

Life is hard. This is true for but a few buckets in the ocean of humanity. There is no system of human government which can change that fact. Not one. Whether you choose to work for material wealth like an Edison or a Ford, a Rockefeller or a Gates; or you decide to live on the streets and beg for your sustenance, life is a struggle. In a free society, men get to choose which struggle makes them happiest. In a totalitarian state, unless you are willing to lie, cheat, and murder, you will be told what struggle you will endure.

The founders of the United States may have disagreed on many doctrines of various denominations of Christianity, but they all agreed on the basics of morality as expressed in the Judeo-Christian Bible.  People like Bill Maher and others can make all the baseless claims they want to about the founders not being Christians.  A few exceptions do not alter the history as recorded in the deliberations in Congress or the federalist papers or in the personal correspondence of those founders. And I dare you to walk through Washington, D.C. and point to the words and pictures carved into the buildings and tell me that the founders didn't care about the influence of the Bible on government in the affirmative. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of the founders were indeed men of the Bible.  Dr. Benjamin Rush, signatory to the Declaration of Independence said that if the Bible ever got replaced as the basic primer for education in America, we eventually would not be able to build jails fast enough. How prophetic.  John Adams, the second president, said, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Something Col. Bunny alludes to but does not state specifically is that nature abhors a vacuum.  We are all going to live by somebody's set of values.  There is no such thing as a valueless society.  Muslims, and yes, I mean ALL muslims, adhere to the doctrine of their prophet Muhammed, and they can all claim various levels of adherence to the dictates of this Imam or that Imam, but when push comes to shove, and the powerful clerics who exercise the real muscle and  issue the fatwahs and direct how Sh'ria law is to be obeyed, the rest of the so-called "moderate" muslims will fall in line.  Muslims do not believe in "live and let live."  They believe that all the world is destined to be under Islam; under "submission," which is what Islam actually means.  If you are not prepared to fight to keep this ostensibly Judeo-Christian society from being overrun by muslim jihadis, then welcome to dhimmitude under an Islamic caliphate.

So, which system do you want to live under?  If you think Islam is the way to go, you can convert and move to a country which already has Sh'ria in place.  If you like the fully socialized Utopian dream, Cuba, North Korea, or Venezuela awaits you.  But how about doing the rest of us a favor and leave us alone.

A Form of Sacrifice

No, this post has absolutely nothing to do with religion.

This post was prompted by a post I read over at Questions and Observations.  The post is titled "The major tasks for the incoming GOP House."  It might be helpful for you to go read the brief post before continuing on here, but I trust what I have to say can stand on its own.

Before I go on, I need to stop and define who I'm talking to. Conservative voters.  All of my instruction and cajoling is directed at you.  If you are a leftist drone or someone who has given up on voting, you are welcome to stay, but I can't imagine why.

We the people who are not going to Washington to legislate have this terrible habit of merely showing up at the polls, holding our noses and voting for the lesser of two or three evils, and then doing little or nothing beyond that, other than complaining loudly about how the GOP sucks, and even then, we only do it with others who think the way we do.  While at parties or church or any other social setting, with rare exceptions, we will smile and nod and keep to safe topics of conversation for fear of getting that wilting look or sharp elbow from a spouse who doesn't want to risk being thought of badly by anybody in the room.

It has been my experience that the leftist drones and such have no qualms about speaking up at parties.  I can't count the number of times I've experienced this personally. I was married to a government school teacher for 21 years and saw it a lot, and most of the time I let her reign me in, and when I didn't "heel" I typically paid for my indiscretion for days afterward.  I even remember attending a wedding shower where there was a woman that I had once considered a friend, the wife of an Episcopal priest.  This was near the end of Bill Clinton's second term, when it was well established that the man was a womanizer, a rapist, and a pathological liar, and yet here was this woman talking about how great a man he was.  Three people who knew me well immediately turned in my direction, I presume to see if I was about to explode. Because it was a wedding shower, and out of respect for the guests of honor, I simply left the room.  I was told later that the mother of the bride made it clear she didn't want to hear Bill Clinton's name mentioned again.

There is a time and place for engaging in political debate, but I don't go looking for it where it doesn't belong. Now that we are over the cliff and dropping into the pit of hell known as socialism, the time for showing polite deference to people like my former friend is now well past.  Of course I have to admit that I've moved up into the mountains and so my exposure to such people in person is limited.  When we go to the feed store or such places as are frequented by folks who cherish freedom and self-sufficiency, it's doubtful that we are going to encounter those who are champions of the involuntary collective.  But if it happens, I will NOT be quiet.  Most of the people that I share DNA with really won't have anything to do with me for that reason.

How many of you know that the revolution that brought about this once great republic was really only supported by about a third of the population or less?  How many know that Benjamin Franklin saw his own son deported to England after the war for being a loyalist to the British crown?  Don't you think there was much anguish and tears in that relationship?  I can't see how any decent father would find any pleasure in being so estranged by his own son.

If there is to be any hope left that we can still live in a free republic, enjoying individual liberty under a rule of constitutional law rather than the whims of a ruling political elite, those of us who claim to be conservators of the principles that this country was founded on are going to have to shed our desire to be liked by those who would go along with a socialist agenda.  We are going to have to speak up.  We are going to have to learn to argue and debate and point out the flaws of the collectivist voodoo ideology that insists that a man-made Utopia can be created.

Don't you wait for the Rand Pauls and Marco Rubios to make the case for truth in the media.  You get in the fray.  Obama instructed his myrmidons to get in the faces of "our enemies."  Well, let's take them on where were we can't be edited like so much video on TV.  Ask your left leaning friends and family who still seem to have a couple of brain cells to rub together, why they think the methods and ideologies that created the conditions in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, and Greece will somehow magically work here.

Don't expect incoming Speaker Boehner to use his position to champion true conservatism.  He's already proven that isn't going to happen by how he handled the tax deal he did with Obama.  Boehner is just more of the same, lame, ostensibly loyal opposition to the hard left communist democrats.  Boehner believes that if he just seems to throw an occasional bone in the direction of the majority of GOP voters, they'll quiet down and go back to watching football or American Idol or whatever.  And I fear he may be right.

It isn't just about negative harping either.  The new guys that got elected by conservatives need to hear from you as well, because the media is going to constantly demagogue the issues as if to tell them they were wrong about why they got elected.  Let them know when they are getting it right.

Fighting Revisionist History

I have spent about 24 hours fighting the urge to fisk this one little section of the very long screed by Mark Ames. I mentioned it in this post earlier.  It had me going around the web and looking up information I already knew, but needed to check references on.


Let me just get on with it.  Mr. Ames' words are highlighted.  

"Ever read the preamble to the Constitution? There’s nothing about private property there and self-interest."

For those of us who actually know the history of the United States and actually read the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers; you read a statement like that and your mouth drops open. It's like the reaction you have to followers of Louis Farrakhan who believe in that mother-ship stuff, or that the Apollo moon landings were faked.  The statement is so ridiculously wrong.  It almost seems silly to point out why it is so wrong, but then I realized; if Mark Ames is this clueless, there's a good chance that others are as well.  I was watching Glenn Beck the other night and he pointed out that one in four Americans don't know who we won our independence from, so how could they know why?  So, in the off chance that one of them comes to this blog, I want them to be exposed to the truth.


The events leading up to the Revolutionary War, the war for independence from Great Britain, was all about liberty, and if there was one thing that the founders of the United States saw as a fundamental right, it was private property.  Don't believe me?  That's okay, they spoke for themselves.

"Among the natural rights  of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can."  -- Samuel Adams

"The constitutions of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press."

 -- Thomas Jefferson

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."  --  John Adams

"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, National Gazette essay, March 27, 1792

There are many more quotes, but that should suffice.  Even if I didn't have those, one of the most well known slogans of the Revolution was "No taxation without representation!"  What are taxes?  Taxes are a way to take some of the fruits of one's labor, their property.  If a person doesn't understand that simple concept, they'd better hope that someone else is going to be available to bring a tray of food on occasion and change their diaper regularly.


Then there's the issue of self-interest.  It would have been amazing enough had Ames only mentioned property, but to then assert that the Preamble was written without regard to or that it wasn't about individual self-interest is mind-boggling.  How much dope does one have to smoke to come up with that conclusion?  If the founders weren't concerned with self-interest, then what was it?  Ames is really begging the question.  What is the opposite of self-interest?  The collective?  All this talk about freedom and liberty is so we can then create a government powerful enough to enforce neighborhood covenants and deed restrictions?  Make sure that nobody earns too much money or eats what they want?   Are there some secret writings of the founders that we don't know about?  Is there a secret decoder ring or enigma box that tells us what the founders really meant?


The entire contents of the Declaration of Independence is about the freedom of the people as individuals to pursue their own interests without interference from government. In essence, freedom is about being left alone.  Freedom to associate or -- and this is important -- NOT associate with anybody you choose.  Liberty is about not having to worry that someone is going to demand part of your life, embodied in the fruits of your labor, for the benefit of others, regardless of your consent.


What taxes needed to be collected, were for very restricted and well defined purposes.  
 In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, 

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." 

-- James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

This was said by James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution because of his leading effort in writing the document.  He was also the 4th President.  Notice he is saying that such a right was not granted to Congress.  Yet we live in this upside down world today, where when someone asks the former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, where they [Congress] think it is in the Constitution that they have the authority to pass the totalitarian medical care bill known as "Obamacare,"  the best she can come up with is: "Are you kidding?" 

Mark Ames continues:

This country, by contract, was founded in order to strive for a “more Perfect Union”—that’s “union,” as in the pairing of the words “perfect” and “union”—not sovereign, not states, not local, not selfish, but “union.”

What would Thomas Jefferson say about that?  Here you go:

“The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government.”

That is a complete, in-your-face refutation of Mr. Ames' assumption or assertion.  There may have been some arguments among the founders early on about some details, but the States would never have ratified the Constitution had it been common knowledge that the purpose of the contract was to make them subject to a powerful centralized government that would forge them and hammer them into someone's utopian idea of a "perfect union" as seen through the eyes of a socialist.  It took three years of publicly pleading with the States via the Federalist Papers to get them to ratify the Constitution by 1789.

Now here is where Mark Ames really proves himself to be either totally ignorant about U.S. history, or he is a liar:

And that other purpose at the end of the Constitution’s contractual obligations: promote the “General Welfare.” That means “welfare.” Not “everyone for himself” but “General Welfare.” That’s what it is to be American: to strive to form the most perfect union with each other, and to promote everyone’s general betterment. That’s it.

"Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. "

-- Thomas Jefferson letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817 

 "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one...."

-- James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 

 "With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted."  

-- James Madison in a letter to James Robertson

It really doesn't take a lot of effort to go and read the words of the founders and understand the plain meaning of what they said.  In fact, they made it a point to be well understood by the populace precisely because they were counting on the populace to agree to the system of governance that they had created.  How important was this concept of making the law clear and simple?  Let's hear from James Madison:

"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 is will be tomorrow."

-- James Madison, Federalist no. 62, February 27, 1788

That tells me that if Mr. Madison were here today, he would be leading the march on Washington to burn the entire contents of the U.S. Code and dissolving every cabinet post and bureau save but maybe three or four.  It is with the utmost confidence from studying the words of the founders, that I can say that their concept of freedom was to only tolerate the most minimum of government.  The highest aim of this experiment in self-rule was for all men to be left alone to live  their lives as they saw fit, as long as they didn't encroach upon the rights and freedom of others.


So, now that we can see the truth in the words of the very men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, what should we do about it?  Let me use Mark Ames own words:

Now, our problem is that there are a lot of people in this country who have dedicated their entire lives to subverting the stated purpose of this country. We must be prepared to identify those who disrupt and sabotage our national purpose of creating this “more perfect union” identifying those who sabotage our national goal of “promoting the General Welfare”—and calling them by their name: traitors.

Mark Ames, if you are merely ignorant, and willing to admit it, then let us forgive you and help you to rectify your delusions.  If you insist on holding to your beliefs which are destructive and counter to all that the founders said and wrote, then you have made yourself to be a most loathsome creature in the eyes of those who yearn for freedom.  You have made yourself a lover and friend to the state and champion of the statist, and as such, you have made yourself an enemy of any people who wish to remain free.


Those of us who understand real liberty do not wish to impose anything upon you other than for you to leave us the hell alone.  If you can attract enough people to engage in your ideals of how a society should function, go and get it done. Take California or New York. They are almost completely there already.  I'm sure it won't matter to you if I tell you that it's been tried over and over and over, in places like the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. etc. etc.  The definition of insanity has never been a deterrent to those who believe in your cause.  As history shows, every time the schemes of creating a socialist utopian dream fails, the response of you and people like you is always to double down.  As Kevin Baker has elaborated:  "Do it again, only HARDER!"


Do what you have to do, Mr. Ames.  Just don't expect those of us with a sincere and lucid understanding of what this country was founded to be, to just roll over and let you do it.  Molan Labe.

Quoted Again

Whaddya know!  I was quoted again by Kevin Baker over at Smallest Minority

Here it is:

It's one thing to live among a populace that sees someone across an ocean as your enemy, it's another thing entirely to know that there's a 50% chance that every person you see day to day would be more than happy to use the government to crush you and take your stuff and give it to them, and are too damned stupid to realize that such action will eventually crush them as well.

Unfortunately it is true.  We have gotten this way through the indoctrination of the government schools and universities.  People tend toward laziness and politicians love taking advantage of that.  But let me give you another quote from the great Samuel Adams, a founding father who spoke eloquently to persuade his fellow colonists of the necessity of breaking away from the English tyranny.  This is just part of what he said in Congress while arguing for the independence of these United States.

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms.  Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you.  May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."