Racism, Racism, Nothing But Racism

"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, 1792

Investigators were trying to determine Sunday what may have motivated a 30-year-old man [Shannon Miles, black] accused of ambushing a uniformed suburban Houston sheriff’s deputy [Darren Goforth, white] filling his patrol car with gas in what authorities believe was a targeted killing.

Well, I can help them with that. Let’s start with the obvious. Shannon Miles (a black man) is a crazy guy, just as Dylann Roof (the white man from the Charleston church shootings) is a crazy guy and Vester Lee Flanagan (the black man who killed his white co-workers at a Virginia TV station the other day) was a crazy guy. The latter two claimed they wanted to start a race war. No word yet on Miles, but if we believe in what our grandmothers told us — that actions speak louder than words — he’s already more than half way there.

Also obvious, Barack Obama and Eric Holder (and now Loretta Lynch) are to blame for encouraging an atmosphere of racial divisiveness and, yes, hatred in our society. Anyone honest can see — and the polls have reported — a serious increase in racial tension and violence (Baltimore, Ferguson, etc.) since the beginning of the Obama administration. The racist-to-the-core “Black Lives Matter” movement is quite simply their evil spawn.

Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin (a regular on Fox News) calls the “Black Lives Matter” movement the “Black Lies Matter.” In an interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro a few nights ago on Justice with Judge Jeanine Clarke said that Obama and Holder laid the groundwork for “this war on police” by supporting ‘activists’ who have disparaged law enforcement based upon a set of lies.”

He continued by saying “I am too pissed off tonight to be diplomatic with what’s going on and I’m not going to stick my head in the sand about it. I said last December war had been declared on the American police officer led by some high profile people, one coming out of the White House, and one coming out of the United State Department of Justice. And it’s open season right now. No doubt about it…

…I’m tired of people calling these black activists. They’re not black activists. This is black slime and it needs to be eradicated from American society. I need every law abiding person in America to stand up and start pushing back against this slime. (It should be noted that Sheriff Clarke is black and elected as a Democrat)

 

On August 31^st Sheriff Clarke said during an interview on Fax and Friends. Clarke pointed out that the headline of that tragic story should be “Black Man Shoots White Defenseless Police Officer,” since Black Lives Matter activists always point out when it’s a white officer shooting a black man.

“President Obama has breathed life into this ugly movement,” Clarke stated. “It is time now for good, law-abiding Americans to rise up like they did in Houston around that Chevron station, an outpouring. But it can’t just be symbolic we now have to counter this slime, this filth coming out of these cop haters.”

Clarke asserted that the Black Lives Matter movement is nothing more than an attempt to weaken the institution of policing.

“If there’s anything that needs to be straightened out in this country, it is the subculture that has risen out of the under-class in the American ghetto,” Clarke said. “Fix the ghetto, and you will see a lesser need for assertive police officers or policing in these areas, and then you’ll see less confrontation. Stop trying to fix the police. Fix the ghetto.”

Illinois grandmother Peggy Hubbard blasted the Black Lives Matter movement last week in an emotional Facebook video, which has gone viral.

Hubbard said that Black Lives Matter activists are focusing on police brutality instead of incidents like the tragic death of Jamyla Bolden, a 9-year-old Ferguson, Missouri, girl who was fatally struck by a stray bullet in her mother’s bedroom while doing her homework.

“You say black lives matter? Her life mattered. Her dreams mattered. Her future mattered. Her promises mattered,” Hubbard said. “Police brutality? How about black brutality?”

On the Hannity show Hubbard said “that anti-police activists don’t want to face reality.”

“We want to glorify the criminals, the bad guys. We want to glorify them and give credence to their life. What contributions did they make?” Hubbard asked.

“It’s not a black issue. This is not a white issue. It’s a human issue. It’s an accountability issue. It’s a responsibility issue. That is what it is,” Hubbard said. “They made this about race. This was never about race. This was about right and wrong.”

Milwaukee Country Sheriff David Clarke joined the program and said that 75 percent of the problems in the black community are self-inflicted.

He pointed to things like father-absent homes, drug and alcohol abuse, poor schools and failure to stay in the workforce.

“The other 25 percent are inflicted by the Democratic Party with their modern liberalism, which is conduct without borders,” Clarke said. “They reward underachievement, they make excuses for criminal behavior like black-on-black crime, and they blame everybody else for the problems that go on within our community.”

When we talk about growing violence in America’s larger cities we frequently focus on New York and Baltimore (and for good reason). But the nation’s capital has been experiencing its own problems along those lines lately. A rather chilling recounting of some of these “local stories” provides the backdrop for a recent column in the Washington Post by Colbert I. King.

Due to the lack of coverage by the mainstream media on the goings on in the nation’s capital I’ll confess that some of the stories of violence and mayhem King is talking about were completely unknown to me, leading King to compare Washington to “the wild west.” One example is the case where the Metro had decided to wave the white flag and stop running bus lines after dark to a particular section of Elvans Road SE because somebody had been shooting at the bus. (After public outcry, the Metro retreated from their decision and sent the buses back anyway.) This was followed by more people being gunned down in the streets and in their homes this month.

King notes that a greater police presence might not make much of a difference because the criminals really don’t seem to care. In one of the most shocking bits of evidence presented, three people were shot one night on Missouri Avenue NW. Sadly, that might not have been a notable enough event these days to raise an eyebrow if it weren’t for one thing… it happened within eyesight of the 4th District police headquarters.

So what’s the solution if you can’t just throw more cops at the problem? Mr. King offers some tough medicine which certain high profile activists these days aren’t going to want to hear. Read this portion carefully.

“Not to get all existential, but the problem is much deeper than synthetic drugs, high-capacity gun magazines, turf wars, rejiggering police deployment or keeping an eye on repeat violent offenders.

We have on our hands — in our neighborhoods, on our streets and maybe living next door — walking disasters: individuals who believe that their lives matter, but not yours or mine. Neither do our laws and institutions.

The Wild West’s outlaws felt that way, too. But it didn’t turn out so well for them. Won’t for ours, either, in the long run.

The challenge, as always: to keep our potential outlaws from going down that path. That’s not up to the police. Look at the faces of the killers and their victims. It’s on us — parents, preachers, politicians, community pontificators — all who profess that black lives matter, to prove it.”

For some reason it’s always tough for anyone taking part in the public discussion to try to bring up the staggering amount of violence which takes place in our cities. (See my blog: Fact vs. Fiction) Because the phenomenon occurs largely in the most economically depressed areas, this largely falls within the black community. Rather than focusing strictly on violence which happens between the races, conversations such as this need to keep in mind that the FBI’s homicide data for 2013 (the latest year available) shows that 2,491 black Americans were murdered. Of those, only 189 were committed by whites while 2,245 (90%) were done in by black suspects. (It should be noted that the same report will show that the vast majority of white homicide victims (83%) were killed by other whites and 14% by blacks.) The vast majority of this can be chalked up to gang activity in the cities. There’s a big problem with violence inside the community, but these conversations are generally cut short any time a white politician or journalist tries to bring it up.

Note that of these 5,723 homicides (not 30,000 as the left-wing media reports) between 64.7% (West region) and 72.1% (Midwest region) were committed with firearms. This 2013 FBI report is loaded with statistics and one could spend hours perusing it. This should be the job of the mainstream media and their talking heads, but it seems that they don’t have time for the facts!

When an analysis from an African-American writer like King treads into these waters, specifically name checking the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s sure to raise a fuss. But it’s also a reality that needs to be dealt with. Reforms in some police procedures, better training and body cameras are all positive steps, no doubt. But if you really want to cut down on the number of deadly encounters between black citizens and the police, it’s never going to happen until a way is found to drive down the crime rates significantly and we start giving the cops a reason not to be policing those high crime communities so heavily. That’s not race war talk, folks. It’s just math.

Kurt Schlichter writes in Townhall.com:

“In the wake of yet another killing spree by an Obama voter, there were the predictable calls to “do something” about guns. It was no shock that the liberals’ preferred solution to the problem of Democrat mainstream media personalities murdering people because of their racial and sexual grievances was to disarm everyone who isn’t a Democrat mainstream media personality who murders people because of his racial and sexual grievances. But what was shocking was how quickly the anti-civil rights left moved on to pursue other tyrannies.

Liberals initiated their “guns are bad” mental macro before the killer had even botched his suicide – the serial bungling of enterprises like the VA becomes more understandable when you see how a liberal can’t even blow his brains out right. Liberal media types immediately started blaming the NRA members who did not do it instead of their fellow media liberal who did. An unconfirmed rumor has it the first reporter who actually finds a mass shooter who is a member of the NRA will get a new Prius from Michael Bloomberg.”

…

“Yet within 24 hours of the hideous murders, the liberals stopped talking about gun control. Obama was back dodging the Senate’s treaty approval power to give the Iranians the bomb. Hillary, whose campaign strategy is to try to out-nationalist and out-socialist Bernie Sanders, was busy comparing GOP candidates to national socialists – though this time, she did not mean it as a compliment. Even Mia Farrow had fallen silent again, taking a break from lecturing her fellow citizens and returning to her usual pastime of making good romantic choices.

Clearly, had the killer not checked the box for every key demographic the Democrats depend on – black, gay, media, liberal, loser – we would be hearing a lot more about it. But there is another reason the liberals moved on besides the inconvenient fact that, as usual, it was one of theirs doing the killing. The left has lost on gun control.”

Let me just say first of all that anyone who thinks I am being callous with the above headline hasn’t spent most of their day the last week watching cable news, like I have. Obviously, the deaths of Alison Parker and Adam Ward were a tragedy and I don’t want to minimize the loss and suffering of their family and friends. But the media’s treatment of this story has long since passed honest respect for the untimely passing of two young people and wandered into obvious sermonizing on the evils of guns. What’s happening now isn’t news coverage; it’s ghoulish capitalizing on a tragedy for ratings and politics.

The reason for the obsession with these two particular crimes is obvious, and has nothing to do with the crimes themselves – it has to do with what the crimes are useful for. The victims are telegenic people and their families and friends all appear to be media savvy. They were killed by a gun and therefore this story provides a perfect vehicle for the activists in the media to push their narrative on gun control.

Consider that Adam Ward’s father has been given almost pro forma coverage throughout this entire ordeal, and that his remembrances of his son have been completely ignored. Meanwhile virtually the entire country can now identify Alison Parker’s dad. Both have similar stories to tell. Why is one on camera perpetually while the other might as well not exist in this story? Because Alison Parker’s dad dutifully stumps for gun control every time the lens is on him and Adam Ward’s dad stated the obvious in his one interview on the subject: stricter gun control laws wouldn’t have kept guns out of the hands of his son’s killer, since the Vester Lee Flanagan successfully passed a mandatory background check before purchasing his gun in the first place.

The media does not give a damn about Alison Parker and Adam Ward, nor the grief of their families. They are using both them and everyone around them because of the spectacle value and because it helps promote a political agenda they believe in. This transparent emotional manipulation at the expense of the legitimate grief of a family that has suffered loss is absolutely sickening to me.

Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman says that Deputy Sheriff Darren Goforth was targeted because of his uniform. Hickman is referring to the wild, violent, hateful rhetoric coming from black activists who have called for the murder of police in recent weeks.

According to Reuters

“Hickman linked the shooting to anti-police rhetoric following protests against deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white officers. Goforth was white, the suspect is black.

He said the department assumed Goforth was a target because he wore a uniform, and bluntly addressed protests against police violence and mass incarceration of blacks.

"We've heard black lives matter; all lives matter. Well cops' lives matter too," Hickman said. "At any point where the rhetoric ramps up to the point where calculated cold-blooded assassination of police officers happen(s), this rhetoric has gotten out of control," said Hickman.

The fatal shooting comes eight months after two New York police officers were ambushed by a gunman who had said he wanted to avenge the deaths of black men in confrontations with police.

Hundreds of people attended a vigil on Saturday night.

"I wanted to demonstrate that all lives matter, regardless of color," Carol Hayes, an African American woman, told a local NBC News affiliate.”

There is no comparison between charges of conservative "hate speech" leading to shootings and the ultra-violent, nauseating calls for the outright murder of police by black activists:

“Two teenage girls told Breitbart Texas they saw the shooter fire one shot into the back of the head of the deputy who was simply getting gas for his vehicle. After the deputy fell, they heard three or four other shots. According to the first witness, those shots were fired into the deputy’s back.

The execution of the deputy came just days after black radicals went on an internet radio show hosted from Texas and called for the lynching of white people and the killing of cops to “turn the tide” against blacks being killed by cops. Breitbart Texas reported on Friday morning the details of the radio show and the comments that were made.

One black man spoke up saying they needed to kill “cops that are killing us. The other black male on the show said, “That will be the best method right there.”

On August 29, 2015 Chuck Ross wrote in the Daily Caller:

“Black Lives Matter protesters marching on the Minnesota state fair on Saturday spewed violent anti-cop rhetoric just hours after a Harris County, Tex. sheriff’s deputy was ambushed and executed at a Houston-area gas station.

“Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” activists with the St. Paul, Minn. branch of Black Lives Matter chanted while marching behind a group of police officers down a highway just south of the state fair grounds.”

The White House hasn't deemed it proper to comment on the killing of Deputy Goforth - what's the life of one more policemen more or less seems to be the attitude. Of course, if they acknowledge the deputy's death, they have to answer questions about what role their encouragement of this violent rhetoric had on the execution.

The silence on the left about Deputy Goforth's execution speaks to a towering hypocrisy that reveals their concern about violent rhetoric only applies to their political enemies.

Barack Obama won’t be saying, “If I had a psycho son, he’d look like Vester Lee.” But he might as well. Because Vester Lee Flanagan II, the bigoted maniac who murdered the WDBJ reporter and cameraman on live TV, was a philosophical offspring of the Left.

It’s well known now that Flanagan was a professional victim, nurturing grudges against all and sundry based on his “status” as a homosexual black man. He had an axe to grind with white women because they supposedly made racial statements to him, and against black men because they supposedly directed anti-homosexual remarks his way. And it didn’t seem as if he liked anyone very much.

Of course, most of the bigotry he perceived from others was in his head, a function of his own prejudice, inculcated via decades of liberal indoctrination. When you dislike others, you view them through tinted lenses and ascribe negative motivations to everything they do. Where a fair-minded individual might interpret a comment as innocuous, simply a misunderstanding or an example of the issuer merely having a bad day, you see malice. “Of course it was racial! That’s the way white people are.” And, “That had to be ‘homophobic’ in this society, which macro and micro-aggresses against everything that I am!” (of course, certain things are supposed to be stigmatized). These notions, again, were put in Flanagan’s mixed-up head by liberals and liberals alone. They disgorge hateful, pure and utter nonsense such as micro-aggression theory, “white privilege,” critical-race theory and 1000 other things designed to divide with lies. It is evil.

To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, “Goods look a lot better when they come wrapped as gifts.” Everything is a gift, but the Left teaches just the opposite: to have a sense of entitlement, to believe you’re owed, to ever and always view our very large glass as half empty. Some have asked, quite naively, how it is that despite Flanagan’s pathetic performance as a reporter, he was hired by more than one media outlet and given chance after chance to right the ship. Well, golly gee, Cletus, it’s a mystery.

Flanagan was clearly an affirmative-action hire, enjoying the daily-double victim status of being black and homosexual. And that was part of the problem: too much was given to him on a silver platter — because of liberalism.

There have been many articles in recent years about how college graduates today enter the workforce with unrealistic expectations about their economic self-worth and starting salary. We hear about how so many of them can’t tolerate criticism and rejection; act as if their own feelings are inordinately important and should command respect; and how they lack a sense of propriety, a grasp of their place in a workplace’s hierarchy. As a consequence, they may barge into an office to vent their feelings, even if it’s neither the time nor the place.

This is all the result of liberal parenting, of the psychobabble disgorged by the likes of Dr. Benjamin Spock. It’s no wonder many young people today have little sense of just hierarchies — their permissive liberal parents didn’t establish a just hierarchy in the home. Instead, they acted as if their family was a dysfunctional democracy and junior a special-interest group that political correctness dictated must be coddled and catered to. Junior seldom heard the word “No!” uttered in exclamatory fashion; junior seldom had to delay gratification; junior got participation trophies just for showing up. He was treated as a little prince around whom the world revolved. He was marinated in “self-esteem” pap in schools, telling him how great and special he was. The result? Junior and many of his peers (not that he imagined he had any peers) grew up to be narcissists.

For the past 100 years our society has been under attack by the progressive liberals. This attack has escalated in the last 20 years and has skyrocketed since 2008. Liberals have managed to get God out of schools so there are no more absolutes of good and evil. The Ten Commandments are considered outdated and in many cases banned from the public square. These commandments have been the basis for are laws for the past 239 years. The rule of law is being replaced by the rule of the majority.

Everything is gray and moral equivalencies rule the day. University deans and professors threaten students with failing grades if they do not pledge allegiance to their agendas. Even speech is being regulated with the banning of certain words such as “alien” and “illegal” when referring to immigrants who unlawfully entered the country. Other words like “him” and “her” are even being banned from many university classrooms as the progressive liberals constantly attempt to alter the narrative to conform to their agenda.

Every good progressive liberal will tell you that given enough money and power they can make our Constitutional Republic into the Utopia of Sir Thomas Moore and not our Founders belief in the self-government of John Locke. Since Cain killed Able with a stone evil has existed in this world. This evil has manifested itself through history in many ways. It has shown itself from attacks by individuals on other individuals to the democide of governments.

[Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel (1932-2014) as "the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder." Most of this democide was carried out under the banner of liberalism in the aim of creating their version of Utopia, i.e., Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, and today’s radical Islam.]

Today’s progressive liberals just cannot face the fact that evil exists. To do so would force them to realize that there must be good and if there is good there must be a God. They just can’t wrap their minds around this concept. Instead they look for moral equivalents to justify their beliefs.

When a deputy sheriff, TV reporters, theater audiences, grade school students and teachers, or church goers are murdered by evil or insane people the progressive liberal cannot look to the person behind the gun, knife, or ax. Liberals will blame guns. This is partially because, unlike with Dylann Roof, they can’t blame Confederate flags or 19th-century statues. But it’s also because they’re incapable of putting the blame where it really belongs: the man in the mirror.

Guns don’t kill people. Liberalism does.

We Have Been Grubered

"These socialist writers look upon people in the same manner that the gardener views his trees. Just as the gardener capriciously shapes the trees into pyramids, parasols, cubes, vases, fans, and other forms, just so does the socialist writer whimsically shape human beings into groups, series, centers, sub-centers, honeycombs, labor-corps, and other variations. And just as the gardener needs axes, pruning hooks, saws, and shears to shape his trees, just so does the socialist writer need the force that he can find only in law to shape human beings. For this purpose, he devises tariff laws, relief laws, and school laws." — Frederic Bastiat, The Law, 1848

Bastiat explains the call for laws that restrict peaceable, voluntary exchange and punish the desire to be left alone by saying that socialists¹ want to play God. Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations. To them — the elite—“the relationship between persons and the legislator appears to be the same as the relationship between the clay and the potter.” And for people who have this vision, Bastiat displays the only anger I find in The Law when he lashes out at do-gooders and would-be progressive rulers of mankind, “Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.”

1. In 1848 Bastiat referred to socialist. If writing today he would no doubt change that reference to liberal/progressive. When reading The Law keep this change in mind and Bastiat’s words will ring current.

Bastiat was an optimist who thought that eloquent arguments in defense of liberty might save the day; but history is not on his side. Mankind’s history is one of systematic, arbitrary abuse and control by the elite acting privately, through the church, but mostly through government. It is a tragic history where hundreds of millions of unfortunate souls have been slaughtered, mostly by their own government. A historian writing 200 or 300 years from now might view the liberties that existed for a tiny portion of mankind’s population, mostly in the Western world, for only a tiny portion of its history, the last century or two, as a historical curiosity that defies explanation. That historian might also observe that the curiosity was only a temporary phenomenon and mankind reverted back to the traditional state of affairs—arbitrary control and abuse.

I came upon the writings of Frederick Bastiat about 10 years ago and they clarified many of my long held beliefs regarding progressives. Bastiat’s writing show how the liberal progressive mend works. It firmly believes that they are superior in the thinking and believe themselves to be members of an elite cadre that should be our rulers. This is a far cry from what our Founders believed and expressed in the Declaration of Independence and codified in our Constitution.

Last week this condition was demonstrated in spades when the media exposed the statements of Jonathan Gruber regarding his involvement in constructing and selling ObamaCare and was paid handsomely for it — $400,000 to be “a paid consultant to the Obama.

Much has been made of Jonathan Gruber insulting American voters by calling them stupid. Though worthy of contempt, that comment is one of the least interesting aspects of this short statement, which is otherwise chock-full of revelations with respect to the modern liberal mindset. Insulting the American voter is bad. Demonstrating altogether one's disregard for democratic principles is far worse.

First, Gruber says that the bill was written in a tortured way to make sure that the Congressional Budget Office did not score the mandate as a tax because, had it been scored as a tax, the bill would have died. The fact that the bill was written “in a tortured way” implies more than mere difficulty or complexity in the drafting process. When Gruber said “the bill was written in a tortured way,” he was saying that the drafters intentionally distorted or perverted the bill’s real meaning in order to fool the Congressional Budget Office.

Modern liberalism operates on expediency exclusively. Nothing matters but winning. The democratic process can be – must be – sacrificed to win. Gruber willingly proclaimed his disregard for the democratic process when he declared that “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.” He demonstrated with perfect clarity that modern liberalism is indeed an “ends justifies the means” ideology driven by expediency when he said, “I wish that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.” This is a perfect example of the elitist progressive view of the world. We know better and you, the people are stupid sheeple.

For one brief moment, videotaped for posterity, Jonathan Gruber personified the modern liberal mindset. In an instance of perfect irony, he pontificated on the political advantages of avoiding transparency while simultaneously shining the bright light of day on the black heart of modern liberalism in the most transparent way possible. His perspective would be no clearer had he said, it would be nice if we could tell the public the truth, but only if we get our way. If the only way we can get the bill passed is by perpetrating a fraud on the CBO and on the American people, so be it. Transparency and the democratic process be damned.

Because modern liberalism as reflected by the actions of its establishment flag bearers is entirely policy driven and has no regard for our constitutional rule of law, the democratic process, or the truth, it is bankrupt of any guiding principle other than expediency. It is the pure reflection of the tyranny of the administrative state. Its approach to governance and the acquisition of power is ultimately tyrannical because it seeks to impose its policies and obtain the political power necessary to do so by whatever means possible, without regard for any of the fundamental principles of our founding; principles which they no doubt deem outdated the democratic process, limited government constrained by a constitution created by a sovereign people, and the unalienable rights of free individuals.

Since the Wilson administration this administrate state has grown. Experts now replace the peoples representatives, something our Founders were fearful of. There have been a few curbs on this growth such as the Coolidge administration where Silent Cal was criticized for not being an active president. It should be noted that during his administration the United States experienced phenomenal growth, prosperity, and personal liberty.

Since Coolidge’s tenure the U.S. has seen a gradual growth of a government by bureaucrats and experts. Liberal progressives love to claim that government by the “best and the brightest” is the way to rule the American people. All that is required is for them to use any means, including deception and lies, to retain their power.

Our Founders wanted three branches of government beset with checks and balances on each. They wanted an executive to enforce laws passed by Congress and a Congress to pass laws that the people who elected them wanted. They wanted a Supreme Court to settles disputes between states and make sure laws passed by Congress were in step with the Constitution — not to make new laws. Our Founders wanted a bicameral Congress consisting of a lower house responsible for the nation’s purse strings and an upper house (Senate) to take a longer view and be responsible for treaties and government appointments. As Madison stated the lower house with its two year terms would be subject to the passions of the day and the Senate would take a longer view and curb the passions of the lower house.

Jonathan Gruber certainly never intended to expose modern liberalism’s tyrannical approach so completely – but expose it he did. The revelations he provided should be often remembered and never forgotten. He has now added a new word to our lexicon — “Grubered” to be deceived by someone.

What is a Liberal?

"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 to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow." — James Madison, Federal No. 62, 1788

Classical liberalism (also called laissez-faire liberalism) is a term used to describe the following:

1) The philosophy developed by early liberals from the Enlightenment until John Stuart Mill

2) The philosophy developed by early liberals from the Age of Enlightenment until John Stuart Mill and revived in the 20th century by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The contemporary restatement of classical liberalism is sometimes called "new liberalism" or "neo-liberalism"

Classical liberalism is a political philosophy that supports individual rights as pre-existing the state, a government that exists to protect those moral rights, ensured by a constitution that protects individual autonomy from other individuals and governmental power, private property, and a laissez-faire economic policy. The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that in an environment of laissez-faire, a spontaneous order of cooperation in exchanging goods and services emerges that satisfies human wants.

Classical liberalism is a philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets. This is the basis for our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. It can be said with confidence that our Founders were Classical Liberals and the Tories, loyal to King George were the Conservatives. Today these terms have been reversed by our media and education system.

Classical liberalism is a political philosophy and ideology belonging to liberalism in which primary emphasis is placed on securing the freedom of the individual by limiting the power of the government. The philosophy emerged as a response to the Industrial Revolution and urbanization in the 19th century in Europe and the United States. It advocates civil liberties with a limited government under the rule of law, private property rights, and belief in laissez-faire economic liberalism. Classical liberalism is built on ideas that had already arisen by the end of the 18th century, including ideas of Adam Smith, John Locke, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo. It drew on a psychological understanding of individual liberty, natural law, utilitarianism, and a belief in progress.

In the early 20th century, liberals split on several issues, and in the United States in particular, a distinction grew up between classical liberals and social liberals.

There was a revival of interest in classical liberalism in the twentieth century led by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for government to be as small as possible in order to allow the exercise of individual freedom. In its most extreme form, it advocated Social Darwinism. Libertarianism is a modern form of neo-classical liberalism.

The term classical liberalism was applied in retrospect to distinguish earlier 19th-century liberalism from the newer social liberalism. The phrase classical liberalism is also sometimes used to refer to all forms of liberalism before the 20th century, and some conservatives and libertarians use the term classical liberalism to describe their belief in the primacy of individual freedom and minimal government. It is not always clear which meaning is intended.

The term "liberal" changed meaning in the 1890s. Men like Theodore Roosevelt, John Dewey, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Roosevelt changed the meaning previous meaning of “Liberal” to include bigger and more intrusive central government. They called there political philosophy and programs “Progressive.” They believed “progress” meant more government programs at the cost of increasing the tax burdens on those that had been successful. This change began at John Hopkins and Princeton Universities in the 1890s with the influence of Frank Goodnow and John Dewey. For a further discussion of this change see my blogs: The Progressive Rejection of the Founding, Voting Obama Out of Office is not Enough, and The Rise of the Progressive Mind.

Since then Classical Liberals are called "Conservatives" or "Libertarians" in the United States; in the rest of the world, especially Europe and Japan, classical liberals are still called liberals.

This progressive philosophy was not common to one political party. There were Democrats like Grover Cleveland and Republicans like Calvin Coolidge who would be called Classical Liberals (or in today’s lexicon Conservatives or Libertarians). On the other hand there were Democrats such as Woodrow Wilson (the father of the administrative state), Franklin Roosevelt (who believed in the Second Bill of Rights where government was to provide new rights for citizens through redistribution of wealth and property) and Lyndon Johnson (the father of the Great Society). Republicans also fell into this category. Men such as Theodore Roosevelt (who called himself a Progressive), Herbert Hoover, and George W. Bush. Remember that Hillary Clinton is a self-proclaimed dyed-in-the wool Progressive.

So what do we call those who believe in the traditional Classical Liberalism and those who subscribe to the philosophy of Progressivism and the administrative state today?

To help you understand the mind of the Progressive, called Liberal today here are a few metrics to assist you in making that determination:

1) Liberalism is college professors and documentary filmmakers accumulating vast fortunes in a capitalistic system by decrying the evils of capitalism.

2) Liberalism is claiming that the "border is secure" while saying we shouldn't deport anyone who illegally crosses the border.

3) Liberalism is "environmental activists" flying across the world to ride together in SUVs to posh environmental conferences where they call for everyone else to live like cavemen in order to save the planet.

4) Liberalism is spewing hatred and profanity at conservative women, calling for gun control that leaves women defenseless against rapists and murderers, and celebrating misogynistic pigs like Bill Clinton while accusing other people of being engaged in a "war on women."

5) Liberalism is people who say that asking for voter ID is racist while claiming that black Americans are too uniquely stupid and lazy to get an ID.

6) Liberalism is forcibly taking money they believe you don't deserve from the people who earned it and calling them greedy for not wanting to give even more. This is called redistribution of wealth.

7) Liberalism is saying that the government should confiscate guns from NRA members and kill them if they resist and then claiming that you have no idea why they think that they need guns to defend themselves.

8) Liberalism is people who sneer at displays of the American flag, tell the world America isn't exceptional, and criticize the country non-stop while getting offended if their patriotism is questioned.

9) Liberalism is calling for higher taxes while you cheat on your own taxes.

10) Liberalism is bitter, race-obsessed people who see everything in racial terms, accusing other people of being racists.

11) Liberalism is saying you're for "choice" because you support abortion while opposing giving Americans choices about their health care, schools, whether they want to bake cakes for gay weddings, or even the light bulbs they have in their house.

12) Liberalism is calling everyone who disagrees with you a racist, bigoted, homophobic Nazi and then calling other people hateful.

13) Liberalism is considering yourself compassionate for wanting to forcibly confiscate other people's money to give away to constituent groups you hope will vote for you in exchange for the loot.

14) Liberalism is saying George W. Bush is a monkey who started the war in Iraq to "steal their oil" while becoming furious if anyone criticizes Obama.

15) Liberalism is pretending that Christians are dangerous while radical Islamists chanting "Death to America" and advocating Sharia law are harmless little lambs.

16) Liberalism is calling for guns to be taken away from Americans while you're protected by armed guards.

17) Liberalism is millionaires who have more money than they could spend in a lifetime railing against the horrors of "income inequality."

18) Liberalism is "animal rights activists" who eat meat and wear leather shoes screaming profanity at women who hunt.

19) Liberalism is black pundits who got their jobs solely because they're black and willing to call other people racists going on TV and claiming that white gas station attendants and fast food workers are benefitting from "privilege" because of their race.

20) Liberalism is thinking of yourself as an independent, open-minded free thinker for mindlessly parroting whatever the Democrat Party line is on every issue.

21) Liberalism is the belief in the administrative state and that government is the source of your rights.

22. Liberalism is where when they lose at the ballot box they find sympathetic, like-minded judges to overturn the will of the people.

So with this in mind we have to be careful how we define ourselves if we subscribe to the philosophy of the Classical Liberals of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. I like to use the term Constitutional Conservative. This means I believe in and accept the words of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution as written by our Founders. This could be called a “Strict Constructionist.” As for those liberals defined above I like to use the term “progressive-liberal” or just plain liberal. This means I deem them as progressing away from the philosophy of the classical liberalism of our Founders.

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League, despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer;" a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, often he voted "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.

He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor;" a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? There is no evidence that he ever attended or worked for any university or that he ever sat for the Illinois bar. We have no documentation for any of his claims. He may well be the greatest hoax in history.

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: “To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day”. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of progressive-liberals to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were 'a bit' extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass - held to a lower standard because of the color of his skin.

Podhoretz continues: And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?”

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon — affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white progressive-liberals, feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Progressive-Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Progressive-Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin — that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.

And that is what America did to Obama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the U.S. Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.

What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people - conservatives included - ought now to be deeply embarrassed and ashamed.

The man thinks and speaks in the stalest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompters in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth — it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years. (An example is his 2012 campaign speeches which are almost word for word his 2008 speeches)

The most recent example of his total incompetence is his dealing with the shoot down of ML-17 by Russian and Ukrainian separatists. In his public press conference 24 hours after the facts came in he was lack-luster in his words and demeanor which cold only mean he didn’t have the slightest idea of what to say or do. As a leader he fails. As an eternal campaigner and fund raiser he excels.

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. Remember, he wanted the job, campaigned for the task. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerless-ness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. (The other day he actually came out and said no one could have done anything to get our economy and country back on track). But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In my view Obama is neither a Progressive-Liberal nor a Constitutional Conservative. He is a hollow caricature filled with sound bites written by others who has been pampered and groomed by Liberal handlers and Chicago politicians who are the power behind the throne. His depth is no greater than a saucer half filled with water.

I received this email that I will share here. All of the so called coincidences have been verified many times in reputable blogs, articles, and books. Any one of these 'coincidences' when taken singularly appear to not mean much, but when taken as a whole, a computer would blow a main circuit if you asked it to calculate the odds that they have occurred by chance alone. Sit back, get a favorite beverage, and then read and ponder the Obama-related 'coincidences' ... then super-impose the bigger picture of most recent events i.e. Fast and furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal and the NSA revelations ... then pray for our country.

“Obama just happened to know 60s far-left radical revolutionary William Ayers, whose father just happened to be Thomas Ayers, who just happened to be a close friend of Obama’s communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who just happened to work at the communist-sympathizing Chicago Defender with Vernon Jarrett, who just happened to later become the father-in-law of Iranian-born leftist Valerie Jarrett, who Obama just happened to choose as his closest White House advisor, and who just happened to have been CEO of Habitat Company, which just happened to manage public housing in Chicago, which just happened to get millions of dollars from the Illinois state legislature, and which just happened not to properly maintain the housing—which eventually just happened to require demolition.

Valerie Jarrett also just happened to work for the city of Chicago, and just happened to hire Michelle La Vaughan Robinson (later Mrs. Obama), who just happened to have worked at the Sidley Austin law firm, where former fugitive from the FBI Bernadine Dohrn also just happened to work, and where Barack Obama just happened to get a summer job.

Bernardine Dohrn just happened to be married to William Ayers, with whom she just happened to have hidden from the FBI at a San Francisco marina, along with Donald Warden, who just happened to change his name to Khalid al-Mansour, and Warden/al-Mansour just happened to be a mentor of Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and a close associate of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and al-Mansour just happened to be financial adviser to a Saudi Prince, who just happened to donate cash to Harvard, for which Obama just happened to get a critical letter of recommendation from Percy Sutton, who just happened to have been the attorney for Malcolm X, who just happened to know Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, who just happened to be a close friend of Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., who just happened to meet Malcolm X when he traveled to Kenya. Obama, Sr. just happened to have his education at the University of Hawaii paid for by the Laubach Literacy Institute, which just happened to have been supported by Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who just happened to be a friend of Malcolm X, who just happened to have been associated with the Nation of Islam, which was later headed by Louis Farrakhan, who just happens to live very close to Obama’s Chicago mansion, which also just happens to be located very close to the residence of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who just happen to have been occasional baby-sitters for Malia and Natasha Obama, whose parents just happened to have no concern exposing their daughters to bomb-making communists.

After attending Occidental College and Columbia University, where he just happened to have foreign Muslim roommates, Obama moved to Chicago to work for the Industrial Areas Foundation, an organization that just happened to have been founded by Marxist and radical agitator Saul “the Red” Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, who just happened to be the topic of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s thesis at Wellesley College, and Obama’s $25,000 salary at IAF just happened to be funded by a grant from the Woods Fund, which was founded by the Woods family, whose Sahara Coal company just happened to provide coal to Commonwealth Edison, whose CEO just happened to be Thomas Ayers, whose son William Ayers just happened to serve on the board of the Woods Fund, along with Obama.

Obama also worked on voter registration drives in Chicago in the 1980s and just happened to work with leftist political groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist International (SI), through which Obama met Carl Davidson, who just happened to travel to Cuba during the Vietnam War to sabotage the U.S. war effort, and who just happened to be a former member of the SDS and a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which just happened to sponsor a 2002 anti-war rally at which Obama spoke, and which just happened to have been organized by Marilyn Katz, a former SDS activist and later public relations consultant who just happened to be a long-time friend of Obama’s political hatchet man, David Axelrod.

Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), whose pastor was Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a fiery orator who just happened to preach Marxism and Black Liberation Theology and who delivered anti-white, anti-Jew, and anti-American sermons, which Obama just happened never to hear because he just happened to miss church only on the days when Wright was at his “most enthusiastic,” and Obama just happened never to notice that Oprah Winfrey left the church because it was too radical, and just happened never to notice that the church gave the vile anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan a lifetime achievement award.

Although no one had ever heard of him at the time, Obama just happened to receive an impossible-to-believe $125,000 advance to write a book about race relations, which he just happened to fail to write while using the cash to vacation in Bali with his wife Michelle, and despite his record of non-writing he just happened to receive a second advance, for $40,000, from another publisher, and he eventually completed a manuscript called Dreams From My Father, which just happened to strongly reflect the writing style of William Ayers, who just happened to trample on an American flag for the cover photograph of the popular Chicago magazine, which Obama just happened never to see even though it appeared on newsstands throughout the city.

Obama was hired by the law firm Miner, Banhill and Galland, which just happened to specialize in negotiating state government contracts to develop low-income housing, and which just happened to deal with now-imprisoned Tony Rezko and his firm Rezar, and with slumlord Valerie Jarrett, and the law firm’s Judson Miner just happened to have been a classmate of Bernardine Dohrn, wife of William Ayers.In 1994 Obama represented ACORN and another plaintiff in a lawsuit against Citibank for denying mortgages to blacks (Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank), and the lawsuit just happened to result in banks being blackmailed into approving subprime loans for poor credit risks, a trend which just happened to spread nationwide, and which just happened to lead to the collapse of the housing bubble, which just happened to help Obama defeat John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

In 1996 Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate and joined the “New Party,” which just happened to promote Marxism, and Obama was supported by Dr. Quentin Yong, a socialist who just happened to support a government takeover of the health care system.

In late 1999 Obama purportedly engaged in homosexual activities and cocaine-snorting in the back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair, who claims he was contacted in late 2007 by Donald Young, who just happened to be the gay choir director of Obama’s Chicago church and who shared information with Sinclair about Obama, and Young just happened to be murdered on December 23, 2007, just weeks after Larry Bland, another gay member of the church, just happened to be murdered, and both murders just happened to have never been solved. In 2008 Sinclair held a press conference to discuss his claims, and just happened to be arrested immediately after the event, based on a warrant issued by Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who just happens to be the son of Joe Biden.

In 2003 Obama and his wife attended a dinner in honor of Rashid Khalidi, who just happened to be a former PLO operative, harsh critic of Israel, and advocate of Palestinian rights, and who Obama claims he does not know, even though the Obamas just happened to have dined more than once at the home of Khalidi and his wife, Mona, and just happened to have used them as occasional baby-sitters. Obama reportedly praised Khalidi at the decidedly anti-Semitic event, which William Ayers just happened to also attend, and the event Obama pretends he never attended was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network, to which Obama just happened to have funneled cash while serving on the board of the Woods Fund with William Ayers, and one speaker at the dinner remarked that if Palestinians cannot secure a return of their land, Israel “will never see a day of peace,” and entertainment at the dinner included a Muslim children’s dance whose performances just happened to include simulated beheadings with fake swords, and stomping on American, Israeli, and British flags, and Obama allegedly told the audience that “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” and there has been “genocide against the Palestinian people by (the) Israelis,” and the Los Angeles Times has a videotape of the event but just happens to refuse to make it public.

In the 2004 Illinois Democrat primary race for the U.S. Senate, front-runner Blair Hull just happened to be forced out of the race after David Axelrod just happened to manage to get Hull’s sealed divorce records unsealed, which just happened to enable Obama to win the primary, so he could face popular Republican Jack Ryan, whose sealed child custody records from his divorce just happened to become unsealed, forcing Ryan to withdraw from the race, which just happened to enable the unqualified Obama to waltz into the U.S. Senate, where, after a mere 143 days of work, he just happened to decide he was qualified to run for President of the United States.”

In short: our president is a small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make any sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such an impostor in the Oval Office.

Has America Changed Too Much?

Has America Changed Too Much?“Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.” — Barry Goldwater

In 1960, Barry Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative. In it, he noted:

“Conservatism is not an economic theory, though it has economic implications. The shoe is precisely on the other foot: it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to man’s material well-being. It is Conservatism that puts material things in their proper place — that has a structured view of the human being and of human society, in which economics plays only a subsidiary role.

The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man’s nature.”

Fifty-three years later that remains a constant. Unfortunately for conservatives, much of the hand-wringing over paths forward to victory involve haggling over taxes and balanced budgets and spending and debt to GDP ratios, etc.

Writing in Real Clear Politics Ben Domenech gets to the heart of this:

“The choice for the Republican Party is whether to invest more in the 2010 strategy of this populist strain, to refine it and connect more policy proposals to it … or to embark on an effort to restore the party’s standing as the adult in the room – the competent, clean cut, good-government technocracy that sees the chief appeal of Republican politicians as combining agencies and seeking out efficiencies rather than rolling back government power and draining bureaucratic swamps. The GOP swung back to this technocratic approach on a national scale in 2012, and let’s just say the electoral results left much to be desired.”

The budgetary and economic wonkery only gets the GOP so far and that isn’t far enough to victory.

In truth, I think it will take a magnetic personality to pull the GOP out of the gutter. We live in an age of personality politics. But that personality will have to have a message that resonates with the American public. What resonates right now with the American public is a deep-seated distrust of government. Any Republican way forward must capitalize on this. In other words, the faces in Washington who can play the role are very limited to people like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and — if immigration can go away as an issue and the base forgives him — Marco Rubio.

The message to seize on is pretty straight forward. Under Republican and Democrat policies in Washington, particularly accelerated in the past five years, the United States meritocracy has given way to an aristocracy.

Only those of means can get ahead. Increasingly, they view their role as making life comfortable for the less well-off instead of enabling the less well-off to become well off. Wall Street, banks, major corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and the rich are the only ones who can prosper because they are the only ones who can either navigate the system or afford to pay others who can figure out how to navigate the system.

For the rest of Americans, from small business to the middle class, the only path is one of dependence on a governmental structure too byzantine to figure out and, should one be smart enough to figure out, too costly through litigation, regulation, and complication to navigate through.

An America where, as Lincoln said, every man can make himself, is replaced by an America where men are made by how the government takes cares of their individual circumstances. Students are no longer trained to be creative, entrepreneurial citizens, but to be workers for others. The self-employed are encumbered to the point of needing to be employees of others. The nuclear family is disincentivized and destabilized.

The America where one could work hard and get ahead is less and less possible because Democrats wish to force us all onto a safety net on which all are entangled, ensnared, and punished if we escape. Republicans, for fear of being disliked, would rather nibble at numbers than paint a picture of a better America for everyone.

Just one fact worth noting: under the present system, enabled by Republican and Democrat alike, a single mother on $29,000 a year and government benefits would have to get to $60,000 in salary to make it worth her getting off the safety net. This is a bipartisan construct, but one only an outsider conservative can build a campaign around fixing to the betterment of the single mom and everyone else.

Ideas of the 1960s have now grown reactionary in our world that is vastly different from a half-century ago.

Take well-meaning subsidies for those over age 62. Why are there still senior discounts, vast expansions in Social Security and Medicare, and generous public pensions?

Five decades ago all that made sense. There was no such thing as double-dipping. Seniors often were physically worn out from blue-collar jobs. They were usually poorer and frequently sicker than society in general. The aged usually died not long after they retired.

Not now. Seniors often live a quarter-century or longer after a mostly white-collar retirement, drawing subsidies from those least able to pay for them.

Seniors are not like today's strapped youth, scrimping for a down payment on a house. Most are not struggling to find even part-time work. None are paying off crushing student loans. In a calcified economy, why would an affluent couple in their early 60s earn a "senior discount" at a movie, while the struggling young couple with three children in the same line does not?

Affirmative action and enforced "diversity" were originally designed to give a boost to those who were victims of historical bias from the supposedly oppressive white-majority society. Is that still true, a half-century after these assumptions became institutionalized?

Through greater intermarriage and immigration, America has become a multiracial nation. Skin color, general appearance, accent or the sound of one's name cannot so easily identify either "oppressors" or "victims."

So who exactly should receive privileges in job-hiring or college admissions — the newly arrived Pakistani immigrant, or the third-generation, upper-middle-class Mexican-American who does not speak Spanish? Both, or neither? What about someone of half-Jamaican ancestry? What about the children of Attorney General Eric Holder or self-proclaimed Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren? What about the poor white grandson of the Oklahoma diaspora who is now a minority in California?

Even if the 21st-century state could define who is a minority, on what moral grounds does the targeted beneficiary deserve special consideration? Is his disadvantage defined by being poorer, by lingering trauma from his grandparents' long-ago ordeals, or by yesterday's experience with routine racial prejudice?

If Latinos are underrepresented at the University of California, Berkeley, is it because of the stubborn institutional prejudices that also somehow have been trumped by Asian-Americans enrolling at three times their numbers in the state's general population? Are women so oppressed by men that they graduate from college in higher numbers than their chauvinist male counterparts?

Of all the consequences that would result from amnesty, one that hasn't been discussed enough is the expansion of affirmative action.

Affirmative action takes existing racial grievances, institutionalizes them, and then magnifies them. Affirmative action encourages "a victim-focused identity in minorities" and fosters "a parasitic diversity industry"

Affirmative action policies will benefit minority immigrants, and minority immigrants will naturally support affirmative action policies. How do we know? Because Hispanics are telling pollsters so.

Sixty-five percent of Hispanics believe that affirmative action should be used to ensure that more Hispanics get to college or university, and 68% support affirmative action in employment, according to a 2011 Angus Reid opinion poll. A 2012 Georgetown University poll showed that 63% of young Hispanics (18-24) support affirmative action to "redress past discrimination," along with 75% of young blacks, but only 19% of whites.

Of course, making up for past discrimination doesn't apply to people whose ancestors never set foot in this country, but fairness was never the goal of racial preferences; former Democratic Senator James Webb famously noted that affirmative action simply favors "anyone who does not happen to be white."

The policy is bad enough. The greatest harm is the poisonous racial grievance reinforced by the policy.

People who believe that their racial group is often discriminated against will support affirmative action. On this point, the open-borders Republicans have done an extremely poor job of understanding Hispanic viewpoints about how this country treats them. Sixty-four percent of Latino adults claim that discrimination against Hispanics in schools is "a major problem," and 58% said the same of the workplace, according to a recent Pew poll.

There are very few policy issues that liberals don't reduce to supposed racism. Even "righteous indignation against diversity and reverse discrimination" is one of the "implements of racism" for upper-class whites, according to law professor Mari Matsuda, a founder of the highly influential critical race theory

It's safe to say that when a racial group perceive a high degree of supposed discrimination, they will not be voting for limited government, but will instead favor reverse discrimination. Those who assert the contrary — pro-amnesty Republicans — have the extraordinary burden of showing some basis in history or logic for believing that groups with a racial victim mindset will reject racial preferences.

It is a false hope that any significant number of those who receive amnesty will vote Republican, unless the GOP gets in the affirmative action game. Give a group amnesty, and they'll be thankful to all Democrats and a few Republicans, but Democrats will give them more of what they want from the state. The choice will be simple.

Consider also the calcified assumptions about college education. The expanding 1960s campus was touted as the future gateway to a smarter, fairer, richer and more ethical America. Is that dream still valid?

Today, the college-educated owe a collective $1 trillion in unpaid student loans. Millions of recent graduates cannot find jobs that offer much chance of paying off their crushing student debts.

College itself has become a sort of five to six-year lifestyle choice. Debt, joblessness or occasional part-time employment and coursework eat up a youth's 20s — in a way that military service or vocational training does not.

In reaction, private diploma mills are springing up everywhere. But there are no "diversity czars" at DeVry University. There is no time or money for the luxury of classes such as "Gender Oppression" at Phoenix University. Students do not have rock-climbing walls or have Michael Moore address them at Hillsdale College.

The private-sector campus makes other assumptions. One is that the hallowed liberal arts general-education requirement has been corrupted and no longer ensures an employer that his college-graduate hire is any more broadly educated or liberally minded than those who paid far less tuition for job-training courses at for-profit alternative campuses.

Scan the government grandees caught up in the current administration's ballooning IRS, Associated Press and Benghazi scandals. In each case, a blue-chip Ivy League degree was no guarantee that our best and brightest technocrats would prove transparent or act honorably. What difference did it make that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, President Barack Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had degrees from prestigious universities when they misled the American people or Congress?

The now-aging idealists of the 1960s long ago promised us that a uniformly degreed citizenry — shepherded by Ivy League-branded technocrats -- would make America better by sorting us out by differences in age, gender, education and race.

It is now past time to end that fossilized dream before it becomes our collective nightmare.

But, to begin, the Republicans must be able to relate. With distrust in government at an all-time high, a relevant Republican is probably going to be a guy who hates the status quo, not one who talks Washington wonkspeak.

As Domenech concluded:

“The Republican Party needs to understand that shrinking its policy aims to more modest solutions is not going to be rewarded by the electorate. Yes, they need to tailor their message better and find policy wedges which peel off chunks of the Democratic base (winning political strategy is built on an understanding that every drama needs a hero, a martyr, and a villain). But what’s truly essential is that the party leadership rid themselves of the notion that politeness, great hair, and reform for efficiency’s sake is a ballot box winner, and understand instead that politicians who can connect with the people and deliver on their limited government promises – not ones who back away from them under pressure – represent the path forward.”

Unless the Republicans can find candidates who can eloquently express true conservative they will not win. Just putting up candidates like Mitt Romney who had one note to play is not enough. They must convince the majority of the electorate that only through a return to the values of our Founders and the Constitution can this Republic be saved from the tyranny of bigger and bigger government.

Progressivism is Dangerous for Your Life, Liberty and Property

“In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words; industry and frugality—that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary expenses excepted), will certainly become rich, if that Being who governs the world, to whom all should look for a blessing on their honest endeavors, does not, in his wise providence, otherwise determine.” — Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748

Benjamin Franklin was raised in a typical Puritan home in Boston, but migrated to Philadelphia as a teenager. In the freer atmosphere of the Quaker city he prospered; everything he touched became successful, including a printing business, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and the little almanac he named Poor Richard’s. He retired at forty-two, became famous for his scientific experiments and inventions, received an honorary doctorate from Oxford, and later somewhat reluctantly entered politics.

Franklin grew with Philadelphia. He was the great American success story and did more than any one person to show the world that America was the “Land of Opportunity.” He wrote this little occasional essay soon after his retirement from active management of his business affairs. It would be reprinted hundreds of times. Although much of its advice seems to later generations to be simple common sense, his ideas about time, money, and credit were new and wondrous to a world just awakening to entrepreneurial ways of thinking. The “Way to Wealth” reflects the celebration of material accumulation and concern for individual accomplishment that became culturally acceptable in the eighteenth century.

When it came to issues of the civil society, government, work, taxes, and finances Franklin was by today’s political labeling a Libertarian. But Franklin also expressed a belief in a Creator from which all rights emanated, He called these rights “unalienable” and suggested to Jefferson that he use this word in the Declaration of Independence.

James Madison, like Franklin, held these same beliefs and so states in his 1792 essay on Property where he states:

“This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual." In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, 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.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in various rights

of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his.”

With the historical record of the last century and a half of political and social experimentation behind us, the fundamental question for Western civilization has come down to this: How free do people want to be? Partially free or completely free? Furthermore, is it even possible to be considered truly free if one is only partially free? Democratically based societies around the globe need to decide which they value more — liberal/Progressive equality or liberty. There is no happy medium that will sustain both. One need only observe the contention, the hyper-partisanship, and the social and economic decline of societies that have attempted to balance the two concepts to recognize that it is a fool's errand.

The concept of freedom used here means that each individual owns his or her own life (body and mind, including that which he produces with his body and mind) while existing in a condition in which voluntary courses of action can be chosen without physical compulsion, coercion, or interference from others.

It is obvious that freedom is meaningless in a society without rights to protect it. A right has, therefore, been defined as a moral principle defining and sanctioning a person's freedom in a social context. Past Supreme Court justice George Sutherland stated it eloquently when he said:

"The right to life, liberty and property are bound together to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but to deny him his liberty is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him liberty but to take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty is to still leave him a slave."

Both freedom and rights are futile without the principle of equality of rights. Though people possess a vast array of individual differences, all members of a free society should be treated equally in two respects: in the equality of their individual rights, and in their equality of treatment before the law. Freedom cannot exist for those whose rights are subordinated to the rights or objectives of others. Observing the equality of rights also means that any alleged "right" of one person, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right. For example, no person can have the "right" to impose an un-chosen obligation, an unrewarded duty, or involuntary servitude on another person. Armed with this understanding, we can begin to clear the fog of Progressivism and understand how its agenda of collectivism and redistribution is corrosive to freedom.

Another way to state this axiom was put forth by 150 years ago by Frederick Bastiat in his easy on the Law where he termed those un-chosen obligations as “plunder.” He stated:

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law—which may be an isolated case—is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system. The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen. Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism.

Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.

…

This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:

1. The few plunder the many.

2. Everybody plunders everybody.

3. Nobody plunders anybody.

We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three.”

In order to be acceptable in a culture that valued individual liberty and self-reliance, Progressives realized that collectivism had to be cloaked in "the common good of society," and egalitarian redistribution disguised as "fairness" necessary to achieve "social justice." Unconcealed, these objectives are offensive to a free society in which individuals follow their own values and preferences and are not bound to follow someone else's. This principle is founded on the belief that adult individuals of sound mind are the ultimate judges of their own well-being and that their own views should be paramount in governing their actions.

The proponents of liberal/Progressive equality, on the other hand, want to govern the actions of others in order to organize society and its resources to achieve their specific objectives, which are often loosely defined as the "common good." The writings of many liberal/Progressive academics and thinkers have pointed out that, in a free society, the common good can mean only the sum of the various goods of all of the individuals involved. When the common good is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some takes precedence over the good of others. A free society does not require the sacrifice of anyone's interests, be it to another powerful individual or even to a majority. It leaves no possibility for any person to serve his or her interests by subordinating the interests of others.

Herein is the equality paradox, the central contradiction of liberal/Progressive ideology. Though the Progressive version of equality is presented to society as "fairness," it paradoxically requires unequal treatment by the force of government to subordinate the rights of some to the dictates of others in order to facilitate the latter's aims. The objective rule of law is bent to accommodate preferential treatment of chosen groups who, in turn, reward their government benefactors with electoral support.

In this sense Bastiat might have added a fourth to his list of plunders; The many plunder the few.

Once established, a "system" such as this eventually becomes the inverse of the one prescribed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. A democratically based, constitutionally limited republic is replaced with statism, where authoritarian government masterminds know few limitations and obedient citizens are cultivated through increasingly restricted freedom of action and a diminution in the protection of individual rights. The consequence, which is lost on many good-intentioned people who support Progressive policies, is that it matters not if individual rights and freedom of choice are subordinated to the arbitrary whims of a monarch, a dictator, or to a government under the banner of societal good — they are subordinated nonetheless.

Committed Progressives will often concede that the rights of some may be subordinated and freedoms abridged, but they defend this as necessary in the transformation into a fairer society. Once the transformation is complete, they say, everyone will enjoy equality and live in a society where material needs will be met through cooperative effort guided by benevolent government action. Their assertions demand an answer to these questions: Of all the societies that have attempted similar transformations, are there any examples where this has gone to successful completion? Furthermore, does the modern Progressive welfare state represent such a completion?

Interestingly, social scientist and author Charles Murray has referred to the last century of experimentation with collectivism and egalitarianism as modern civilization's era of adolescence -- an era when parental advice, based on the practical lessons learned through life experiences, is discounted as irrelevant to the "modern times" in which the adolescent and his or her cohorts live. Intellectual immaturity, hubris, naivety, and the youthful rebellious desire to be uninhibited by conventional standards eventually give way to an appreciation of the value of one's parents' timeless wisdom.

Will America mature in a parallel fashion through this Progressive-influenced phase of societal development and regain an appreciation for the timeless wisdom of her founding principles? Or will America venture farther away from freedom and down the path toward liberal/Progressive equality?

Committed Progressives will often concede that the rights of some may be subordinated and freedoms abridged, but they defend this as necessary in the transformation into a fairer society. Once the transformation is complete, they say, everyone will enjoy equality and live in a utopian society where material needs will be met through cooperative effort guided by benevolent government action. Their assertions demand an answer to these questions: Of all the societies that have attempted similar transformations, are there any examples where this has gone to successful completion? Furthermore, does the modern Progressive welfare state represent such a completion?

Interestingly, social scientist and author Charles Murray in his book “Coming Apart” has referred to the last century of experimentation with collectivism and egalitarianism as modern civilization's era of adolescence — an era when parental advice, based on the practical lessons learned through life experiences, is discounted as irrelevant to the "modern times" in which the adolescent and his or her cohorts live. Intellectual immaturity, hubris, naivety, and the youthful rebellious desire to be uninhibited by conventional standards eventually give way to an appreciation of the value of one's parents' timeless wisdom.

Will America mature in a parallel fashion through this Progressive-influenced phase of societal development and regain an appreciation for the timeless wisdom of her founding principles? Or will America venture farther away from freedom and down the path toward liberal/Progressive equality?