There are always many issues that each generation faces on the political landscape that they live through.  Many are mundane orders of business that are a natural progression of an evolving, growing society, yet others stand out as hallmark issues that offer significant change one way or another.  At times these issues are so resoundingly clear, that their importance cannot be overlooked.  Other times the impact of these issues does not become clear until well after the decisions have been made and it is too late to undo what had been done.

The hallmark issues of yesterday are always easy to identify.  Those defining moments when a nation changed forever are easy to spot through the crystal clear view that we are fortunate to posses of history.  There is no doubt that the rejection of tyranny, taxation and violation of personal and property rights that spurned simple farmers, tailors and smiths to take arms against their distant masters was one of the most defining moments in not only American, but in world history as well.  Another clear hallmark in our own history was the abolition of slavery.  This forever changed the course of this nation and of an entire people in ways that could scarcely be imagined at the time.  Were you to tell a civil war soldier, even one fighting for the North, that we would eventually see black people in all walks of life, even holding the office of Commander In Chief, he might have not believed you.  In the years leading up to the Civil War, as the states in the North began to forbid slavery and reject the appeals of the South to return slaves, it might have just seemed like a simple State’s rights issue to them.  These states may not have even realized the impact that their decisions would have, bringing a nation to its knees on the brink of destruction, yet freeing an enslaved people forever.  However, looking back it is easy to see what an impact on this nation was made by their decisions. 

Some hallmarks in this nations history were clearly defined by others.  When the peaceful morning worship of Pacific island residents was shattered by explosions at Pearl Harbor or as an entire nation stood still, holding their breath, watching its people jump to their death rather than be burned alive from two stricken and doomed buildings, we changed as a people.  Other hallmarks were defined sometimes by the death of a single individual.  In a single decade, two great men fell to the shots of assassins.  One man’s legacy drove an entire species to reach beyond their planetary bounds and set foot upon another world, while the legacy of the other forced people to face the hatred and racism that still plagued this nation from a conflict that was over a hundred years old.  The deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were hallmark moments in the history of this nation that forever changed us as a nation and a people.

These clearly definable moments in history are easy to see and to recognize the effects they had upon this nation.  The ones not so easily defined are the one of which I wish to turn your thoughts today.  For starters, let us take one of the more contentious issues we face today, 2nd Amendment rights and gun control.  Can you tell me at what point in our history did it all of a sudden become illegal for a law abiding citizen to carry a firearm?  Can you tell me what the hallmark issue was that gave the government the right to tell you when, how and what type of gun you may buy, own or carry?  Probably not.  At the inception of our nation, carrying a firearm was not a privilege, licensed or otherwise. It was a fact, a way of life.  Fast forward a hundred years to the expansion of our nation into the West.  Again, no one ever would have challenged a citizen’s right to own or carry a gun.  Leap forward another hundred years, to just a few decades ago and now things have changed drastically.  At that time you couldn’t openly carry a sidearm, but long rifles and shotguns were still seen hanging from the racks of the pickup trucks that teenagers drove to school.  Now examin this today.  You may only carry a firearm under certain circumstances, with a license issued by a state that will allow the carrying of weapons and with a ton of restrictions upon that RIGHT.  Not upon the privilege, but upon the right to bear arms.  Now when did this happen?  What was the catalyst to cause such a drastic departure from the will our founding fathers?  What gave the government the ability to suppress your right as a citizen of this nation to carry a firearm.  Two hundred years ago if you walked into a local store, attended a political rally or just walked down the street with a weapon slung across your back no one would have paid you any mind.  Do so today and you are sure to be visited by the police and quite possibly told you cannot do that which is your basic fundamental right under the Constitution of the United States of America, bear arms.

The problem is that this did not happen in one critical defining moment in our history.  It happened slowly and deliberately over time.  Many years ago, laws began to surface that restricted where you could openly carry a weapon.  First it was in saloons, then churches, then entire communities, then states.  Finally, the Federal government stepped in and began to tell you what kinds of guns you could own, how many bullets they could hold and what type of attachments and accessories they could have.  Oddly enough, we just simply accepted these changes.  We sat back and justified our complacency with statements of how is was sensible for no one to have a gun in a saloon, or for that matter a church.  This just made sense, there was no need for a gun there.   Ah, well I guess if that city/county/state does not want people to carry guns then it is their business.  Surely we could not argue that anyone needed this certain banned type of weapon to hunt with, or that it was in anyway practical to have a clip that held more than ten bullets.  Slowly, in small steps and stages, we agreed to these restrictions and we allowed our view of what the 2nd Amendment meant to be twisted and warped into someone else’s vision, not that of the founders.  We forgot that this Amendment was never about self-protection, property protection or the ability to hunt.  Our forefathers would have seen no need to make an Amendment to convey such things as they were simply an absolute necessity and an understood way of life for them.  We have forgotten that the 2nd Amendment was designed to protect the freedom of the States against the biggest threat to life, liberty and personal property that the founders could see: the very government that they just created.  Therefore, we have allowed our rights to be stripped from us, not in one clarion moment as in the examples above, but through our apathy, complacency and willful acceptance that our government knows best.  I find it ironic that we have allowed the very entity that our founders saw as the biggest threat to our freedom, to strip away our only means of securing that freedom.

Another of these slow, creeping abrogation of rights is found in our system of taxation.  While the passing of the 16th Amendment is certainly a hallmark moment for this issue, it alone is not what has stripped us of our rights.  Can anyone tell me the percentage of taxation that prompted the colonist to throw tea into the Boston Harbor?  Was it a 30-40% tax like most of us face on our personal income?  Was it even an 8.25% tax like most here in Texas pay as a sales tax for all products?  Nope.  This nation practically started a blood war for independence over a meager 25% tax on one single item, which amounted to a tax burden of a bout 1.5% adjusted to the average earnings of a family at the time.  Now we face taxes levied on what we earn, what we purchase and even what we out right own.  This has not come in one large stroke, but again in small steps over time that have burdened us and made us beholden to the government that we are forced to surrender our personal labor to.  We are indentured servants, whether we want to admit it or not.  I hold that ANY tax on personal property is a direct violation of individual liberties and an assault on personal freedoms.  No one has the right to force you to work for free, we abolished that more than 130 years ago just to have it return in a government sanctioned method supported by an Amendment to our Constitution making it legal.  We are slaves.  Your labor is not income nor is the wage that you barter your labor for.  You have traded one hour of your labor, your personal property, for a amount of compensation that you agreed to with another party.  Taxation of this amount is a taxation of personal property and liberty.  No one has the right, other than the government, to forcibly take the money you have earned for you labor.  Should an individual walk up to you and force you to surrender 30% of the money that you made this week, threatening your very freedom if you do not surrender, you would call him a robber and you would have the right to resist him with deadly force.  When the government does this it is called taxation and you have no right to resist at all.  The same is directly true of property taxes.  If you are taxed upon the property that you own, under penalty of law and the potential loss of that property, then in reality, you own nothing.  You are merely renting that property from the government, by payment of said taxes.  Again these are direct violations of personal liberty.

So, now what are the issues that our generation faces that bear the weight of these mistakes of the past?  If healthcare is not immediately upon your tongue, then I pray for you and your children.  How people cannot understand that this is the clarion issue of our time, is beyond me.  We have already surrendered so much of our rights, piece by piece, to the control of our government, how could we ever consider giving them the control of our health and well being.  Just as many of the laws passed in our history must have seemed benevolent and wise, do not be fooled by those who tell you that they can act in your best interest far better than you can.  When a people surrender themselves to a government so wholly as to allow it to do for them what they can and should do for themselves, they become beholden to its will.  This is not a new thing upon this Earth.  It has been repeated many a time throughout history and has always ended in disaster for those who surrender their freedom so willingly.  This is the defining issue of our time.  The one that will pave the way of our future.  Will it be a future where my health or my very life is dependent on the will of a government for which I have no control or recourse?  Will it be one where the decisions of my children’s well being are taken out of my hands and made the domain of some distant, disconnected bureaucrat?  Will it become one where the decision to let my child live or die is one made by a budgetary committee that must weigh the value of my child’s life against the cost of the procedure needed?  No, it must not!  It cannot!  This must never come to pass, else the 234 year struggle for liberty dies with a pitiful whimper as we willingly surrender one of our last vestiges of freedom to the very entity that our founders new we would need to be armed to protect ourselves and our liberty from.

We must end this now.

It is a well know fact that once elected politicians almost immediately forget the very promises that got them elected in the first place.  This administration has been no different.  Of course they have kept some of the promises that they made, but those are only the ones that serve their purposes and drive their agendas. 

What promises have they kept?  Well that is easy, we were promised justice for those held in Guantanamo Bay, they have certainly delivered on that.  In fact those who are now held at Gitmo can rest assured that they will have far more legal rights then the very soldiers that captured them on a foreign battlefield.  You see the Obama administration promised them justice and they shall have it in the form of the American civil legal system, something actually denied our brave men and women who serve and die for this nation.  No, military tribunals or courts martial was not good enough for the illegal enemy combatants who fought our soldiers overseas.  They must have far superior legal rights, attorneys paid for by the American tax payer and access to all the case law, precedence and jurisprudence afforded each and every American citizen.  Who cares that our brave servicemen and women do not get this luxury, those terrorist suspects certainly deserve it.  You see when you become a soldier, airman, sailor or marine in service to this nation, you not only pledge your life to the defense of this nation and her Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic, you also waive your right to the very guarantees provided by the document that your are duty bound to protect.  You swear to surrender your rights and be governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).  However, now those who fight against American troops on the field of battle do not have to worry about such details.  Now they can have the same rights as any other American criminal, including the right for some sleaze ball attorney to find a legal loop hole to let them go free, because some bureaucratic bookworm did not fill out some piece of paperwork in triplicate or some soldier was insensitive to the cultural needs of a detainee.  Not to mention the fact that in their utmost lack of wisdom, the Federal government has decided to try some of these terrorist just miles from the scene of the ‘crime’.  I be New Yorkers will welcome any verdict that comes out of these trials that they will be forced to host, even if it is an innocent one, so long as the rights of these terrorist who killed 3,000 innocent New York citizen were not violated in even the slightest way.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is one promise that the Obama administration has kept: Far superior legal rights and proceedings for terrorist suspects than is afforded our very own soldiers, all at the expense of the American taxpayer.

You want an American trial for these jihadist?  Well, I agree.  Here is my idea.  Dress them in bright pink jumpsuits, pick a day and time to release them in Hoboken or Queens, broadcast the location and time of release to everyone in the Tri-State area, then let them go.  If they can make it out of the city alive, they are free to go.  It is a hell of a better fate than the three thousand innocent civilians that burned to death or were buried alive in the rubble so many years ago.

What other promises have they kept?  Ah, yes, healthcare.  They told us they would ram a Federally controlled healthcare plan down our throats whether we liked it or not.  Almost a year later they are close to succeeding, but here is where some of the broken promises come in.  Now I am not talking about the one we would have plainly been fools to believe, like that he would not have any activist or lobbyist as his advisors or that he would not sign any bill with a single piece of pork attached to it.  No, I am talking about those that he repeated over and over again that gave all the naive liberal votes hope that we would see the shining light of democracy from the unprecedented transparency promised by the Obama administration.  You see he knew this healthcare thing was poisonous.  He knew that the American people would not willingly sacrifice their choices, their rights and their control over their medical decisions if they really knew what was being planned.  No secrecy would be key to the success of this agenda.  The American people could not really find out what what in this healthcare bill or they would resist, but if he promised us that we would get to see each and every deliberation about this  live on CSPAN it sounded awfully good for the campaign.  Complete transparency, it seems, is just a bit more opaque than we thought.  Where has this CSPAN coverage been?  Why now that people are demanding that he live up to his promises is he hemming and hawing about allowing his bumbling press secretary to blurt out one half-witted excuse after another?  It is funny how those promises that you never meant to keep, come around and bite you in the ass, Mr. President.

On to other promises, how about that unemployment rate?  Hey, I know this one personally.  Both my wife and I had good productive jobs to start off 2009.  Nine months later neither of us did.  So what was this about if we passed the TARP bill, or was it the Omnibus, that we would not go over 8% unemployment?  What about the transparency promised with all of these bailout an stimulus programs?  Oh, sure there was a website created and job loss numbers spewed about, but then we find out that those numbers were complete bullshit.  They included thousands of jobs that had not even started yet and did you know that almost one billion dollars, that is right $920 million of your dollars cannot be adequately accounted for from the funds that were spent in the first six months.  Oh and did you also know that much of this money did not even go to create jobs?  Well that is of the money that has actually been spent of the staggering amounts allocated for these travesties that were voted into law.  That is another thing that apparently was just a flat out lie or just something that this administration does not care much about.  You see, for weeks we were told that we had to act now to avert a crisis.  We had to infuse the economy with these staggering trillions of immediately of face collapse.  Funny, that, because as of today only about 20% of the funds for first $890 billion so called stimulus packages has been spent with another 20% or so in process to be spent within the next six months.  That does not sound like a shot in the arm, but more like a long term prescription plan.  So why the rush if we are going to sit on more than $600 billion dollars until well into 2010?  Why did we have to pass this massive bill in its entirety right then?  Could we not have slowed down and voted to spend the roughly $160 billion dollars that we have so far, then taken our time on the rest?  Hell, now there is even talk of another stimulus package, because the first one was ineffective and the economy has not recovered.  Well no shit, Sherlock.  If $890 billion dollars in funds immediately injected into the American economy was the real answer, then spending $160 billion over six months won’t have the same effect.  That is the difference between a shot and a slow drip IV, not anywhere close to the same thing.

You know there is a question that I always hear thrown around at election time.  Are you better off today than you were four years ago?  It seems that is how we are to judge the effectiveness of our leaders, most pointedly the President.  Well, Mr. President, I am not better off that I was four years ago, nor even two for that matter.  Two years ago, my wife an I both had very profitable jobs in solid industries, hers in the middle of a growing boom.  We were making significant salaries, had good future prospects, good health insurance, large life insurance policies, a healthy stock portfolio and plenty of money in the savings.  Yeah, uhm, we don’t have any of that anymore.  My wife has spent the last nine months unemployed because her industry freaked out about Cap and Trade and I joined her for two months as the economy wore into my job as well.  Hell I even worked for a government contract regulatory lab.  People HAVE to have done what we did, but it still cut into our business enough that I am not even sure my former company will survive after being in business since it was founded in 1976.  No, Mr. President I am far, far worse off now than I was before you were elected and there are many Americans who are right there with me.  You have had a year and all your policies have done is make worse an already bad situation.  You have three years left.  The clock is ticking.

Since I am in an analogy mood, this evening I will give you another one.   Let’s say you take your car into a mechanic and he charges you $890 dollars to fix your engine.  A week later you have to take it back to him for the very same problem.  This is when you discover that he only spend $160 dollars to fix your car the last time, hides the invoice when you try to look at it, can’t explain to you what some of it was spent on and tells you that it should be running better because the flux capacitor is now in synch with the primary phase coil, but he promises that if you will give him another $1,000 he will make sure it runs right.  Now, ask yourself, how likely would you be to let this man work on your car again, provided you do not punch him out straight away and take your money back forcibly.  Now ask yourself how likely would you be to let him recommend a doctor for you and your family, or decide what medical procedure you need or do not need?  Scary thought isn’t it?

When do we realize that our system of government has failed to live up to the promises of our forefathers?  At what point do we fully comprehend just how far from that vision we have come?

Is it when our government completely fails to understand that it’s own power is derived from the consent of the governed and not by some ordained right for it to exist?  We can see plenty of examples of this today, be it the idea that the government has the right to demand, control and ultimately decide healthcare choices for each and every citizen or the false presumption that the will of the American people and the massive resistance to this idea is somehow irrelevant.  How do they respond to the demand by an even increasing segment of the population that the Federal government stay out of our healthcare and eliminate the public option from this reckless push to reform?  They pretend that we are idiots and simply change the name to something that sounds less ominous and more capitalist.  Now it is the consumer option!  That is better right?  Yeah, consumerism promotes capitalism, right?  Surely the unwashed masses will like that better, right?  Nah, none of them will actually read the changes and figure out that this new consumer option is basically the same damn thing as the previous public option.  They aren’t that smart. 

The problem is that we do read and understand far more than given credit for.  We do realize that, to quote our great leader, “putting lipstick on a pig, still makes it a pig”.  Our government honestly believes that the millions of people showing up at these TEA Party protests and 9/12 rallies are just common simpletons, spurned on by Fox News and a couple of conservative talking heads.  They are incapable of seeing that this is an underlying movement across this nations composed of average, everyday citizens who are finally finding their voices and who have had their fill of a bloated, inefficient, expansive and detached government who is no more in touch with the people that they govern than King George was with the Colonies.  Here in Texas, we do have some hope.  Our governor has already stated that Texas will not participate in any Federally back or controlled healthcare system to the point that the State of Texas will withhold her Federal tax contributions should she be forced to.  Our House of Representatives has already passed HCR 50 declaring Texas’ sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, hopefully our Senate will have the wisdom to follow course and our governor the strength of will and conviction to sign it into law.  We are not alone.  Many states have already passed such legislation and are demanding that the Federal government cease its interference with the governing of the States.  Should Texas decide to resist this healthcare option, others will surely follow.  Many have expressed similar objections and warnings directed towards Congress in the passing months.  What will happen if this comes to pass?

It is at this point that I grow concerned.  Texas is a fairly conservative state except for select pockets of liberal ideology.  We as a people in general value our traditions, our rights and our way of life free from the interference of others.  Yet recently we have seen them come under almost direct assault from the Federal government.  The opposition to the bailouts, the Federal manipulation of the free market, the refusal to allow domestic drilling, the re-investment act, the gun and ammunition control measures and the healthcare initiative has been powerfully strong here in Texas.  We will not take many more direct assaults on our freedoms.  Any one of these issues could be the straw, but issues like the Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009, various iterations of the Ammunition Accountability Act and nationalized healthcare are ones that I fear might push Texas to say enough if enough.  Should Texas finally stand its ground what will happen then?

If Governor Perry’s promise of refusing to participate in a Federally mandated healthcare system come to fruition and Texas attempts to withhold its Federal Income Tax contributions, what will be the consequences?  There is no possible way that the Federal government could allow this to occur.  Some states might get away with such threats, but not Texas.  Texas is a donor state.  This means that we pay in more Federal Income Taxes than we receive back from the government, and we are a large donor state at that.  If you compared the Texas economy against other nations in the world we would rank the 12th largest even in these poor economic times.  The Federal government could never allow the withholding of such a significant chunk of its income.  What if other states followed suit?  What then would Washington do if say just ten states refused to participate and threatened to withhold Federal tax dollars should they be forced to?  Would the Federal government finally come to grips with the fact that the States hold the power to be governed or would it come down to another civil war?  Would the Federal government try to take by force the funds withheld by states resisting such overarching legislation that is directly in contravention to Tenth Amendment? 

Had you asked me that question ten or twenty years ago, I would have automatically assumed that the Federal government would never even consider the possibility of force to strong arm a state to participate in a nationalized healthcare system.  Today, however, I am not so sure.  A friend of mine asked me an interesting question while we were discussing the foolish cancelation of the F-22 program earlier today.  The question was simply this, “What do you think we will see first, another civil war or another world war?”  Again, had this question been asked years ago, the answer would have automatically been that we are far more likely to see another world war, than we were to see another civil one.   When I was asked today, I honestly had to stop and consider the question before giving my answer.  My answer ended up being, “I am not sure.”  Unfortunately, I find that both are as easily possible in the world that we face today.  There are still serious threats outside our borders and as America continues to weaken it status and power across the globe, the likelihood that a major conflict between large nations could erupt and spread into a global one will continue to increase.  However, there is just as likely a chance that if our Federal government continues to grow and expand as it has been doing for far too long, makes reckless, wasteful decisions with our tax dollars, continues to interfere with the free market and continues to attempt to usurp rights from its citizens and its States, that some States will finally decide that they have had enough and refuse to comply.  What then?

I honestly do not know which is more likely for us to see in the future; a major world war or one bound within our own borders.  Human history has taught us that we will suffer long before finally deciding that we have had enough.  I see signs of it today.  Never before have so many States passed legislation declaring their own sovereignty and demanding their rights to govern themselves be restored, but never before have those rights been under assaults as they have been for the past fifty years.  Never before have the States been forced to watch their own power, individuality and sovereignty wither away under a slow, but persistent assault by a detached, distant central government.

So, enough…  When is it really enough and what will become of us then?

I have not had much time to write over the past few days. Some changes are taking place in my personal life that have had me quite busy and I have been working on getting a project off the ground that has taken some of my time as well.

However, I have been keeping a close eye on this healthcare debate and it is scaring the hell out of me. I cannot believe that this is even under consideration, until I look at those pushing this agenda. There is so much subterfuge and deception surrounding this issue that it is almost impossible for the average American to get their minds around and understand what is really occurring. This administration and many in Congress are trying to shove this legislation down the throat of the American people, yet do so with coercion and deception.

Lie Number One – 47 Million Uninsured

For starters, the number of uninsured Americans in this country is greatly inflated. The 47 million that the President claims he is trying to cover is not as clear as you might think. Within that 47 million exist around 10 million illegal aliens, around 17 million that make well over the median income of $46,300 annually who could afford health insurance but choose not to have it and a small percentage of people who lacked health insurance for short periods of time only. Even if you just take number of illegal aliens and those who could afford insurance, but choose not to, you more than cut the 47 million figure in half, leaving only 20 million Americans uninsured, just 7% of the population. Some estimated put the number of critically uninsured as low as 8.2 million or 3% of the total.

Lie Number Two – The Government is the Solution

While I acknowledge that some healthcare reform is needed in this nation, I flatly reject the notion that it is the right, duty or business of the Federal government to mandate or control it. Constitutionally, not only does the Federal government lack any and all power over this issue, but it is explicitly barred from action on matters such as these via the 10th Amendment. Not to mention that what they are currently proposing will be drastically harmful to the healthcare industry in this nation. Just look at the example that the government provides in Social Security, Medicare and the Veterans Administration. All dismal examples of government waste, corruption and bureaucracy at one time or another. Now we are told that the government can reduce healthcare cost, improve quality and not reduce services. Even when the Congressional Budget Office releases report after report disagreeing with this claim and greatly expanding the projected cost of this program, it is just ignored. Even when the very sections of the bill that point out planned cuts to Medicaid and Medicare are pointed out, excuses are made and those calling foul are branded as cold hearted obstructionists. The plan currently in the House would create twelve additional government agencies just to deal with this massive undertaking, creating more inefficiency, waste and bureaucracy.

Lie Number Three – You Will Still Have a Choice

This is one of the most grievous fallacies of this entire fiasco. You will lose your ability to choose, period. For starters, the President has already made it clear that you will be forced to have health insurance whether you want it or not. No choice there. Now we hear that doctors will be rated and paid based on how well they treat an illness, not per patient or per procedure. Really? I want to know who in the hell decides by what benchmarks to gauge my doctor? What if I think my doctor has performed admirably, but some distant, detached bureaucratic moron in Washington, who has no clue about me or my doctor, decided that he is not as ‘efficient’ as they would like and decides not to pay him? How to I have a choice in that? When my personal physician that I have had for well on twenty years has to quit his practice because he cannot afford to function on his government allowance, where is my choice?

Now we discover the horrible truth about other aspects of this bill such as end of life care. After a certain age you will be compelled to meet with a ‘counselor’ every five years to discuss your future healthcare needs. Really? Discuss what about them? Why would I need a counselor at the age of 65 and beyond to discuss my healthcare requirements, unless you are planning on restricting the services available to me due to my age and failing health? You see once you pass the age of 65, you are not as good of an investment as when you are young and healthy. You have less time to live and you consume more resources via the healthcare system, therefore it only makes sense to a cold, calculating government bureaucracy that they not spend money on you. Sure they will offer to make you comfortable, but will not approve the procedure that might extend your life because the return on investment will not be enough.

Lie Number Four – Not a Single Payer System

While this statement may be true at this point, it will not be so for long. As Barney Frank openly admitted a few days earlier, this is a gateway to a single payer system.

“If we get a good public option it could lead to single payer,” Frank said. “The best way to get single payer — the only way — is to have a public option and demonstrate the strength of its power.”

You notice the words he chose there? Power. This is after all what this is really all about. Power. Power to control. Power to have millions depending on the government for their very health and survival.

The other part of this lie is that the private insurance companies can survive this ‘public option’ when it is more likely that it will cause the failure of most major insurance companies, costing this economy precious jobs and destroying the healthcare industry as we know it. The government option could be as much as 20% lower in cost for private business, since it will use taxpayer money to support the implementation of this program. How many businesses do you think would love to get a 20% reduction in the cost of benefits they provide to their employees? Suddenly, millions of people will be shoved onto this government program, taking critical market share away from the private insurance companies. Without the monthly premiums, these companies will not be able to provide for their remaining insured parties and will quickly fold, leaving even more people with nowhere else to turn but the government. Of course, that it the real objective of this, not healthcare at all.

Those are just four obvious ones. There are multitudes of more that I could expound upon, but these should be enough to wave us off of this destructive past. With the example of failures in the States where these single payer models have been tried such as Wisconsin and Massachusetts, we should be scare to death of even discussing any government run options at all. I sincerely hope that the governor of my great State meant what he said early last week. Governor Perry stated that if the Congress was foolish enough to pass this destructive legislation, Texas would assert her right under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and flatly refuse to conform or participate in any way. God bless that man and give him the strength to stand his ground should this disaster find its way into law. Should Texas refuse Federal interference and further usurpation of her citizens right by the Federal government, I believe that others would follow her lead.

This is a battle of life and death. Either you control your life or the government will control both it and your death.

Welcome to the USSA.

Allow me to post a an article titled Flipped Flag Signals Distress found in Weatherford Telegram, a smaller community oriented publication by its parent paper the Fort Worth Star Telegram. I am not exactly sure I approve of the tone that the very first sentence sets up for this article. To me it is no joking matter that one of the most patriotic people I have ever know has been pushed to the point that he feels it necessary to fly the flag upside down that he laid his life on the line for. It almost seems as if this poor attempt at humor is being made at this man’s expense. I sincerely hope that is not the case. I would hope that a serious reporter for the Star Telegram would be above making fun of a man whom this nation should be eternally grateful to.

Weatherford’s most profound patriot and staunchest supporter of the American flag has flipped (his flag).
 
Chuck Katlic, Battle of the Bulge survivor and American Legion Post 163 chaplain, is flying his flag upside down to draw attention to what he perceives as the USA’s distressed circumstances.
 
“Section 8 Article A of the United States Flag Code says to display the flag upside down when there is dire national distress,” Katlic said. “Our Congress and president are not obeying the Constitution. The first step was taking the gold standard off our money. Roosevelt started it, Johnson continued it and Nixon closed the door. Everyone who feels our nation is in dire distress should fly their flags upside down.”
 
Katlic said he believes that President Obama is imposing Marxist, Socialist rule on Americans.
 
“At the suggestion of Russia and China, Obama said he would consider one world currency,” he said. “They’re taking away states’ rights. They’ve made schools a government cabinet position, limiting what public schools (I call them government school, now) can teach.”
 
Katlic also believes that such people in Congress as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Representative Barney Frank and Senator Ted Kennedy want to “take away our guns.”
 
Admitting that “Nothing personally has been done to me,” Katlic said that “what’s being done to our citizens is that they’re being taxed to death, losing their homes. [Congress is] violating people’s Fourth Amendment rights, stopping them and searching their cars without warrants.”
 
Katlic said that he also fears that because the federal government allows abortions, “next they will be euthanizing older people. This is to reduce the population.”
 
Another concern Katlic expressed is that concentration camps are being built in Arizona “to put us in when we misbehave.”
 
Katlic said that every president after George Washington wanted to be a dictator, and that all politicians care about is power. His daily front-yard gesture is intended to raise awareness.
 
“I’ll fly my flag that this until Obama and Congress obey the Constitution, or they’re out, even if I have to do for the next four years,” he said. “I pledge my life, my fortune and my honor to do my part to turn our nation back to the founding fathers’ principles that have preserved our nation for 250 years. I call on all my fellow Parker County residents to fly their flags upside down, too.”

I know this man. I have gone to church with him since I was a child and my children adore him. He is not your normal run of the mill citizen of this nation. He is one of the few surviving young men that saw such horrors in Europe that we can scarcely imagine. He survived the frozen forests near Bastogne and held out through one of the toughest sieges our armed forces have ever faced. He is a patriot through and through, caring greatly for his God, his country, his fellow soldiers and his fellow citizens.

Some may try to dismiss him as a radical, right wing nut and I guess under this administration’s definition of such I would be one too. After all I believe in the rights of the State’s and the individual. I believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the founding of this nation. I believe that the Constitution means exactly what it frakking says and needs no manipulation or interpretation. I believe that this is and always has been a nation founded on and rooted in Christian principles, so much so that our first President warned us against straying from this religious bedrock.

I believe that I will be following suit with Chuck and I encourage you all to do the same thing. This most definitely is a nation under duress and distress. What better way to show it that by following the lead of such a great patriot as Chuck Katlic and sending a clear message to our government. I will turn my flags this weekend. I hope that you will do the same.

Is no one getting tired of this crap yet?

Seriously, this man stands before this nation and lies through his teeth knowing full well that he cannot prove a single thing he says. At least when Clinton lied to the nation, he did so skillfully and made it so that you were never sure when he was shooting you straight or filling you full of bull shit. He was an artist when it came to dishonesty and misdirection. Obama simply does not care if what he says is true or not, much less who believes him.

Just days ago we were treated to a speech about how Americas was one of the largest Muslim nations in the world. Uhm, not true. If you take the latest CIA estimates of about 1.8 million Muslims in the country that would place us somewhere around 58th out of 60 ranked nations. I wonder how the 76.5% of Americans that identify themselves as Christian like to constantly hear that we are not a Christian nation. How do they feel when the President of this country tells us that the Muslim population in this country that is less than 1% of the whole makes us one of the biggest Muslim nations on the planet? How about the fact that we are the largest Christian nation on the planet? Or do we Christian simply not count anymore?

I have already covered the other lies in that speech in a previous article, so I will not dwell over the idiocy of expecting people to believe that Islam gave us modern printing, the compass, algebra or our base understanding of the spread of diseases and how to cure them. What I want to focus on today it the sheer arrogance that it takes to stand before the American people and promise to cut our non-defense based deficit in half on one hand, while you other hand spends this country into massive debt. Does he think we are that naive? Does he really believe that we are that stupid? Or does he even care?

Where is the recovery? Where is the stimulus? Where are the jobs that were supposed to be created by the trillions of dollars of our money that Congress has plundered from the already overdrawn coffers? Oh, I see. Those jobs have not been created, but they have been saved! All rejoice and hail the mighty one for he has saved however many jobs he claims he has.

How do you count a job as saved? This is pure conjecture. The economy either creates jobs or loses them. Since Obama has taken office millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Our unemployment rate has soared to 9.4% and is only beginning to show hopeful signs of slowing. I will consider jobs having been saved when the number of jobless claims stops increasing and the unemployment rate begins to decline. Only then will we be saving jobs by *gasp* actually creating them.

I can barely listen to this man speak anymore for knowledge that if his lips move, we should beware. While other nations raise their heads to test our will and resolve, he tours around countries that have teetered on the edge of hostility against this nation for decades apologizing for OUR behavior. He panders to regimes whose citizens cheered as the towers fell and thousands of innocent Americans perished. He wants to talk with nations who openly show their hatred of this nation and threaten everything that we stand for. He cowers at the feet of our enemies and hides in fear from his responsibilities to uphold the constitution of this nation.

I am through with this. I have never before even come close to thinking this before. I have often argued against this notion with good friends in the past, but it may be time for Texas to find its own path. I am sure that there are many other fine states that may like to join us. Maybe not, but for the first time in my life, I would actually consider it.

In a surprising decision this morning, the California Supreme Court ruled that the Proposition 8 definition that marriage is between a man and a woman and the subsequent ban on same sex marriage would stand. In a break with its traditional way of doing business, the Supreme Court in California upheld the will of its people and denied the attempt to circumvent the will of the people and the constitutionally legal process under which the proposition was made into law. It did allow that existing same sex marriages could stand, but no more would be allowed or recognized in the state according to the law.

I will be attending a Republican PAC meeting next week where the topic will be to define what a Republican is. I have given this topic much thought and feel that it will be a difficult task to perform unless you diverge from what a Republican is and move to defining what a Republican should be. While I have always identified myself not by political party, but by my ideological convictions, I am a long standing member of the Republican Party and tend to vote that way almost exclusively. The reason for why I do this should be evident in the disaster that can be clearly witnessed today from a Democrat controlled Congress and administration.

What a Republican is today and what it should be, what it was intended to be, are far different things. The Republican Party has deviated from what made it successful and has lost the will to fight. It has become paralyzed with ideas of political correctness, bi-partisanship and moderation. I am not sure I can clearly define what a Republican is today, but I can define what it should and should not be.

Sometimes today when you hear the word conservative spoken it is done so with distain. Many view this ideology as antiquated and out of date. They often use terms such as progressive to describe ideologies that oppose conservative values in an attempt to give them a more enlightened sound. However, if you follow these ideologies through to their conclusion you will see that they are the most regressive, leading people back toward servitude and tyranny. To fully appreciate this you must understand what it is that the conservative is trying to conserver, or rather preserve.

Conservatives value the principals laid out by the founding fathers of this nation. In the creation of the American society we witness some of the most enlightened, revolutionary and forward thinking concepts never before seen on this Earth. The concepts of individual personal liberty, maintained through an organized federalist society with minimal centralized control from a truly representative republic government. The founders saw this form of government as the only means to ensure the freedoms of the people not to be controlled by a select few. They knew that only through the individual power of the States’ ability to govern themselves, could the ensure that they would never be threatened by a distant, detached central government as they had suffered under the British Crown. The believed that certain rights were inherent to humanity’s existence and that those rights could not be denied by any government. They constructed separate but equal branches of government and divided the power among them to ensure that no one branch could invalidate the other. They founded a system of laws based on the natural law of God and rooted in Judeo-Christian principles. They believed that each citizen was accountable for their own actions, should be fairly treated under the law and bore certain responsibilities in exchange for the wonderful gifts of that citizenship. Finally, they believed that these rights and privileges were born from the basic unalienable rights that were bestowed upon us by our Creator.

This is what conservatives which to preserve. This is the most ‘progressive’ and successful form of government that has ever been tried on this planet. However, it is a far cry from what we actually have today and it is still a far cry from what most Republicans are calling for. We get glimpses of hope in people such as Governor Sarah Palin or Governor Rick Perry, but they are not yet the leaders of this Party and they hold nowhere near the sway that is needed to steer the party away from the liberal tendencies that it has adopted from its political opponents.

What Republicans should not be can easily be seen in examples of recent Republican leaders. Under the Bush administration the Federal government grew by leaps and bounds, our immigration laws were ignored and excuses were made for those who violated them, our Congress spent like they were their Democrat counter parts and the Federal government interfered with the private sector more under his watch than under the previous Democrat President. This is NOT what the Republican party is meant to be.

The last true Republican leadership was Newt Gengritch as the Speaker of the House and Ronald Reagan as President, but we are constantly told to forget those days. The era of Reagan is supposed to be gone. Really? I seem to recall that in the eighties California was a paradise. Business and people alike would flock to its low tax rates and thriving economy. Now it is a wretched cesspool of waste and ignorance. Witness the liberal legacy that is now California; a state with a $21 billion deficit who is threatening to open prisons, close schools and lay off police and firefighters, before it eliminates wasteful government spending. While the government of California soaks its citizens with high taxes to pay for illegal immigrants, outrageous environmental programs and a government bureaucracy that surpassed only by the Fed, its citizens a fleeing, leaving the state for less oppressive lands. This is a state that once was the envy of others that now disserves only their pity and it is lead by a Republican governor. No this is NOT what Republicans were meant to be.

When I go to this meeting next week, I am afraid I will not be able to define what a Republican is because I am convinced that they do not know themselves anymore. This party is like a defiant child, throwing a fit when it gets in trouble for not following the rules. How can it expect to gather people to its flocks when it ignores the principles that it is meant to uphold? You know the rules. If you break them, do not throw a petulant fit when you get your hand slapped in elections. Follow the rules.

I have been watching a growing trend among the right for the past few months and it is absurd at its best. There seems to be a fragment within the right that fancies themselves conservatives, but continuously pulls the reigns of the Republican Party farther and farther towards the left. They seem to want to redefine conservatism and modernize it somehow. They are the ones to you will hear decrying the nostalgia of the Reagan revolution and the legacy it left. They us that the era of Regan is over and now it is time that we move on. These people may clad themselves in conservative mantles, but they are nowhere near the mark of a true conservative. No matter what they left may tell you, they are nothing more than a fringe element of the right who have moved so far away from the core principles of the founders that it makes them uncomfortable to face what they have become and with to bring the rest of the movement in line with their ideology.

If you were to reform or redefine conservatism by adapting it to modern, secular ideas, it would cease to become conservative at all. Instead it would be the Democrat Party of years past, thinking itself as progressive and evolving to a more utopian state. To hold true conservative principals is a difficult thing. It means that you acknowledge that there are a strict set of rules to which you must adhere. It forces you to accept personal responsibility for your own actions and understand that these actions bear consequences. Conservatism does not allow you to arbitrarily change the rules or redefine the playing field as you go. It does not provide for concepts such as equality of outcome or the presumption of rights that do not exist. It does not change to suit the whims of its followers. By its own right, it is the ideology that cautions against such arbitrary and whimsical change and forces us to live by the laws that society has established and not reinterpret those laws to suit our needs and desires.

Many times you hear people claim that the founding of this nation was so long ago that these men could never have envisioned the challenges that we face today. While this may be the case, it does not in any way invalidate the structure that they put in place to deal with such challenges and adapt to them. It does not mean that the warnings that so many of them gave in their letters, journals, speeches and addresses did not specifically warn us against the very actions our government has taken to make this nation into something wholly unrecognizable when compared to what it was at its birth. Furthermore, it does not in any way diminish the fact that if we were to apply the standards set forth in the Constitution of the United States as it was written and intended, to today’s political environment, that such an application would completely destroy the power that the Federal government has amassed. Even the adherence to one single amendment laid out in the Bill of Rights, if applied today, would massively diminish the scope and power of the Federal government.

No, I believe that the men who founded this nation were inspired and possessed a level of insight not often seen in the history of this world. I believe that each and every principal laid down in those documents or amended there too, would apply perfectly in our world today. I also believe that the application of these principles would threaten the scope, reach and power of the Federal government and many of the politicians who hold themselves entitled to their positions and above the will of the people. This is why they fear conservatism. This is why they want you to think that these ideologies are dead and antiquated. This is why they portray the conservative movement as comprised of backwards, fearful people clinging to their guns and religion. They live in fear of losing this power that they have amassed.

Conservatism is not dead. It does not need to be redefined. It is a threat to those who hold dear their power and consider themselves above the law and above the people. It is the only way to preserve a true free society that offers equal opportunity and liberty to all.

I wrote an article titled Liberalism Leads to Communism about a funny thing I noticed in a video game the other day. However, I think the concept is a sound one. So if Liberalism leads to Communism, it must follow that Conservatism leads to the antithesis of Communism: freedom, liberty and individual prosperity.

Finally! After almost two weeks worth of database issues, I finally have the site back up. I apologize for the down time and the inconsistency in the displayed content during the last few days. I have managed to preserve all the content and the styling of the site, but some things I could not save. Articles and comments posted after March 31st, 2009 are gone as are all of my links and references. I will get those rebuilt over the next few days. So if I linked to your site before and forget to put it back, please let me know.

Now on to more interesting things. I was honored to be the guest of Parker County Judge Mark Riley on a local radio show this morning where we discussed the TEA Party rallies that will occur tomorrow. There are well over 300 communities in Texas and over 1,800 nationwide that will be hosting a Taxed Enough Already rally tomorrow, April 15th, 2009, to protest the reckless fiscal irresponsibility of our government. It has amazed me the involvement and interest that the community has shown over this issue. We are still getting emails and phone calls requesting information and the enthusiasm expressed by these people is definitely refreshing.

During the program we discuss many aspects of taxation and the extreme amounts of abhorrent Federal spending we have witnessed in the last few months. Allow me to expand upon this for a moment. In the last few months we have been subjected to massive expansions in the Federal government, enormous spending increases and rampant disregard for the public will. When you consider the $750 billion dollars for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the $787 billion dollars for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the $410 billion dollars for the Omnibus Appropriations Bill, this government has already spent and additional $1.947 trillion dollars above and beyond what was budgeted. If you divide that among every taxpayer in this nation it equates to $25,735 per person. These numbers get so staggeringly large that it is almost impossible to fathom the actual amount being spent, so let’s break this down into terms that most people are familiar with. We will start with $1,000 dollars, an amount not too high as to be unimaginable for most working Americans. If you started spending at $1,000 per second and continued to do so until you reached $1.947 trillion dollars, how long do you think it would take? Now realize that at that rate you are going through money at a staggering pace. It equates to $3.6 Million dollars an hour or $86.4 Million a day. By the end of your first month you breached the billion dollar mark at around $2.6 billion per month. At this rate it would take you about 62 ½ years to spend the amount of money that our Federal government has committed within the last six months. This staggering amount is just the money that we have already spent. There is more yet to come.

Congress just passed the new Federal budget, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will cost this nation $1.2 trillion dollars each year for at least the next ten years and increase our national debt to more that 5% of our GDP, a rate that the CBO itself has deemed absolutely unsustainable. Using the above formulas, that equates to $8,823 dollars annually from every taxpayer and would take you over 38 years , at $1,000 per second, to spend what our government will each year for the next ten years.

We have even heard talk of a second stimulus package being needed to bring this country out of its recession, yet just last week President Obama attend a European conference where he promised to contribute billions of your tax dollars to a trillion dollar fund to help other nations. What about our own? Where does he plan to get all this money that we obviously do not have?
Well, the sad truth is that it will not come from you or me, my friends. It will come from our children, their children and untold generations to come that will be saddled with this insurmountable debt and the crushing interest that it will bear. For those of you who have children, go home this evening, give them a hug and ask them to forgive us for not doing enough to protect them as we as parents should have done. Tell them we are sorry and we hope that they will not suffer to greatly for our apathy and indifference.

Or you can attend a TEA Party tomorrow and get involved with this growing movement to take our government back from politicians who feel entitled to govern you as they see fit, not as you will it. You can stand against those that have forgotten that they serve us, not the other way around. Remind those in Washington that by our will and consent alone does this government exist and we will no longer be ignored. We must make them and millions of others in this nation acknowledge that they have no power over us save that which we grant them ourselves. Their jobs are to govern as representatives of the People, not to rule in the name of the government.

It is not necessarily time for a new revolution, but for a reformation of ideals and principles that empower the individuals and the States and a return to the founding principles of this nation. It is time that we stand with one unified loud voice and demand that our government heed our call. It is time that the ever so silent majority lift their voices to shake the halls of Congress and be silent no more.