I just stop sometimes, I just marvel, seriously marvel at what liberty has created on these shores. We have things that no civilization in the history of Earth, hell, in the known universe, going all the way back to the cantina bar on Tatooine, or Dantooine. No one has had access to the stuff that Americans take for granted. And all you have to do is go to a birthday party to see it on display. You have every manner of food that you could imagine. Every manner of it. You got chicken, you got fajitas, you got pulled pork, you got briskets, you got hot dogs, you got hamburgers. Not only do you have hotdogs and hamburgers, there are 35,000 different ways to get hotdogs and hamburgers. If you’re kosher, you can get a kosher frank. If you’re not, you can get an Oscar Mayer frank. You want hamburgers, you can make them yourself. You can buy Bubba burgers already pre-frozen. You could go to your local deli. They may be stamping them out, nice little cubed out round portions and what have you. It’s just amazing the things you can get.
Why is that? Is that because the government created a system to deliver hamburgers to birthday parties? Is it? Or is that because people had the liberty to go out there and practice this? They had the liberty to go out and make a better hamburger, to make a better hotdog, to make a better way to deliver party supplies. And it doesn’t just stop with the meats. You have all manner and every conceivable assortment of vegetable, from onions or red onions to Vidalia onions, you name it. You got white onions, all grown all over the place, some in Mississippi, some in California, some in Oklahoma, doesn’t matter where you grow them at. Potatoes, look at the potatoes that we have in this country and in this republic here. You can get Maine potatoes. You can get Idaho potatoes. You can get the little red new potatoes, as they’re known. You can get the mini potatoes. And then look what they process them into. You have the Ore-Ida factory out there cranking out all sorts of different fried potato concoctions. You got hash browns.
I mean, just think about the variety and the plentiful supply. We have – liberty on these shores has provided such an assortment and such an unbelievable supply of things we take for granted, we, most of us, don’t even consider whether or not to take that half-eaten hamburger that Steve down the street didn’t finish and throw it away. Don’t even think about it, do you. Just chunk that joker in the garbage can; right? Don’t even think about whether or not, well, there’s half a dozen chicken wings from Hooters left over from this party. Well, they’ve been sitting out for an hour or so. I think I’m going to pitch them. You don’t even think about that because there’s so much supply.
How does this happen without Obama? How does this happen without Pelosi? How do all these products make it onto our tables? How do all these foodstuffs make it into our pots and our ovens and what have you? Because we have liberty. So next time you’re at one of these parties, next time you’re at a restaurant and you’re looking at a menu that has 70 items on it, and every and all manner of concoction to prepare those items, oh, you got this with salt, without salt. You got cumin on this one. You have all sorts of spices from the orient or wherever they come from to season this one. We have this sauce and that sauce. Just think about how did that get to my table? Is that a miracle or what? No. It is the result of liberty. Yet we are constantly told that our republic sucks. We are constantly told by our President and his cabinet and anyone else that has a microphone and that’s in power, that there’s something wrong with us, and that there’s something wrong with you, and that there’s something wrong with this, and that there’s something wrong with our car companies, and there’s something wrong with our power companies, and there’s something wrong with our cow companies, and there’s something wrong with our aspirin and vitamin manufacturers and what have you. We’re constantly told that only through government could any of these things possibly get better.
Yet they get better all the time. All the time. The supply of these things is not going down. It’s increasing. The number of these things are not going down, they’re increasing. Isn’t it miraculous? Stop and think about that for a moment, just for a second. All the cheeses and variety of cheese you can get in this republic. Milk. You think your forefather ever dreamed, you think your great-grandpa ever dreamed he could have a nervous breakdown in the milk department? I don’t know what to – [silly old man with no teeth voice] “I don’t know what to buy. They got this 2 percent, they got 3 percent, they got 1 percent, they got homogenized, they got skim, I’m losing my mind here, Sonny.” That is the result of liberty. Liberty produces these things, not tyranny. Not command and control. Freedom to make individual choices.
Now, I ask you, if liberty produces all these wonderful assortments of foods and food products that we consume without batting an eye, without even thinking about whether or not there will be any more left tomorrow, why won’t that same liberty provide medical products? Doctors to administer them? Hmm? Why? Why won’t it? Because the laws and the rules of economics are the same when applied to medicine as they are to hotdogs. It is a naked economic transaction, regardless of what it is that is being transacted. This is what the Austrians teach us. The Austrians came along, von Mises and Hayek and the rest of them, and Hazlett and Rothbard and all those guys, Friedman, they came along and they said, hey, we used to know this stuff here. Apparently we’ve forgotten it. But this is the way we used to do it here. And so next time you’re presented with some idiot at a party that’s insisting that, oh, the government ought to do something about this, or the government ought to do something about that, did the government do anything about Nathan’s hotdogs? Huh? Did the government tell Chef Boyardee to make that four-cheese ravioli, or did Chef Boyardee think he could sell it? Hmm?
My pal Mike was watching the Food Network last night. They had a throwdown. Bobby Flay had a throwdown with the other Iron Chef, Chef Morimoto, Chef Cat Cora, and some other guy with a bald head. And they were having a big Thanksgiving turkey cook-off, or Thanksgiving cook-off. He said,"Did you see all the food that they were – all the stuff that they were concocting together here? did the White House order that competition? Did they? Is there a Iron Chef czar out there that I don’t know about? Is there?" My response to mike was, "of course not!"
Well, then why aren’t there all manner of automobiles for me to choose from? Now, think about the things that are hard to get and aren’t as readily available as they once may have been. And can’t be gotten and customized and what have you. What are they? They probably are automobiles, things that are large, and things that kind of lend themselves to the disastrous, despicable designs of designing men – politicians, they’re called. And they seize upon these opportunities to regulate. They seize upon these opportunities to seize power. They seize upon these opportunities to control. And then they will sell you or whoever will purchase it access to the control.
To restore and uphold the sovereignty and rights of the individual States as guaranteed by the tenth amendment of the United States Constitution, which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Monday, November 16, 2009
The American Socialist Party goals have been accomplished!
A new convention to amend the Constitution is needed. As Dr. Kevin Gutzman and Mike Church has said, the time has come to take the power our Founders left to us, seize the momentum of sentiment against Leviathan and repair the transgressions visited upon our Republics founding charter: The Constitution.
There are many folks who fear the Con Con because they irrationally believe it will be taken over by Pelosi and Obama and we will live under their Socialist redesign of the Constitution. Oooh shudder the though. There’s one problem with this fear, it has already happened.
Here’s the proof. The American Socialist Party wrote its goals down in the Party Platform of 1928. Every one of these goals has been accomplished including:
Nationalization of our Natural Resources - see the EPA and Interior Department.
A publicly owned power system- See the TVA and more recently the SMART Grid. (who knew the GE Scarecrow was a Socialist!?)
National Ownership of Railroads - See Amtrak
A system of unemployment insurance benefits - Hmmm, 7 million Socialists use that one as I speak
Securing to every worker a rest period of not less than 2 days per week
Increased taxation of high income levels - need I say more
A system of old age pension systems - See Social Insecurity.
A system of health insurance - see Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP
All of these things have been passed by our Congress and been made a de facto part of our Constitution so let me ask the question: Exactly what part of our beloved Constitution is still in effect and stands as a bulwark against “Socialism”? The fact of the matter Ladies and Gentlemen si that we are currently living under Socialsim and yet Republicans still raise millions of dollars to protect their “conservative” constituents from “Socialized Medicine”.
If you want to follow our Founders, defend Liberty and the original Constitution then follow me America to the 2010 Constitutional Convention
There are many folks who fear the Con Con because they irrationally believe it will be taken over by Pelosi and Obama and we will live under their Socialist redesign of the Constitution. Oooh shudder the though. There’s one problem with this fear, it has already happened.
Here’s the proof. The American Socialist Party wrote its goals down in the Party Platform of 1928. Every one of these goals has been accomplished including:
Nationalization of our Natural Resources - see the EPA and Interior Department.
A publicly owned power system- See the TVA and more recently the SMART Grid. (who knew the GE Scarecrow was a Socialist!?)
National Ownership of Railroads - See Amtrak
A system of unemployment insurance benefits - Hmmm, 7 million Socialists use that one as I speak
Securing to every worker a rest period of not less than 2 days per week
Increased taxation of high income levels - need I say more
A system of old age pension systems - See Social Insecurity.
A system of health insurance - see Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP
All of these things have been passed by our Congress and been made a de facto part of our Constitution so let me ask the question: Exactly what part of our beloved Constitution is still in effect and stands as a bulwark against “Socialism”? The fact of the matter Ladies and Gentlemen si that we are currently living under Socialsim and yet Republicans still raise millions of dollars to protect their “conservative” constituents from “Socialized Medicine”.
If you want to follow our Founders, defend Liberty and the original Constitution then follow me America to the 2010 Constitutional Convention
Welcome to Obama’s America
When Frank Sinatra famously sang about New York that “If I can make it there I’ll make it anywhere” I don’t think he had Khalid Sheik Mohammed in mind. Our Dear Leader has unleashed his anti-American views against the surviving families of the 9-11 terrorist attacks in a demented decision to move the plotter of that slaughter’s trial to “the scene of the crime”. There’s one huge problem with this: what KSM did was not a crime, it was an act of terrorism.
Imagine waking up everyday and turning the news on only to see one of history’s biggest villains shuttled in and out of a fancy New York Courtroom via limousine. Imagine his battery of defense attorney’s droning on for hours over “the infringement of Mr. Mohammeds Constitutional Rights.”
Imagine the TV talking heads arguing over the DNA evidence of KSM’s crime. Surely there will be a slick defense attorney who will pompously make the claim “if the turban doesn’t fit then you must acquit”.
Imagine children demanding to know of their parents why the man with the funny name is on TV boasting about past terror plots and their “success.”
Imagine the ACLU Lawyers for KSM putting all that juicy, formerly “top secret” evidence out there that lays bare for the whole world to see just how America’s intelligence corps finds the bad guys.
Imagine defenders of a former US President and Vice President made to explain why their bosses are NOT the war criminals on trial here.
Imagine KSM and his band of jolly Jihadis getting off the hook because their Miranda rights were violated. Did the CIA have the proper warrant it needed to search mister KSM’s terror cave?
You probably can’t imagine any of those things happening but let me assure you, you will not need imagination to see any and all of them being played, right in front of your disbelieving eyes.
Welcome to Obama’s America.
Imagine waking up everyday and turning the news on only to see one of history’s biggest villains shuttled in and out of a fancy New York Courtroom via limousine. Imagine his battery of defense attorney’s droning on for hours over “the infringement of Mr. Mohammeds Constitutional Rights.”
Imagine the TV talking heads arguing over the DNA evidence of KSM’s crime. Surely there will be a slick defense attorney who will pompously make the claim “if the turban doesn’t fit then you must acquit”.
Imagine children demanding to know of their parents why the man with the funny name is on TV boasting about past terror plots and their “success.”
Imagine the ACLU Lawyers for KSM putting all that juicy, formerly “top secret” evidence out there that lays bare for the whole world to see just how America’s intelligence corps finds the bad guys.
Imagine defenders of a former US President and Vice President made to explain why their bosses are NOT the war criminals on trial here.
Imagine KSM and his band of jolly Jihadis getting off the hook because their Miranda rights were violated. Did the CIA have the proper warrant it needed to search mister KSM’s terror cave?
You probably can’t imagine any of those things happening but let me assure you, you will not need imagination to see any and all of them being played, right in front of your disbelieving eyes.
Welcome to Obama’s America.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
A must read between an independent, a liberal, and a conservative
First, all the participates names have been changed to repect their privacy...
This is a conversation/debate that all citizens of this great republic should be engaged in....
Tha main aspect of this convo is the respect that all parties involved showed to each other!
Christopher: Hey Hussein Obama Administration, Still making excuses for this murderous muslim? Still covering up terrorism? WHY??? he has to cover it up because we were attacked on our own soil less than 1 year into his term, when bush kept us safe for 7 years after the last attack......it goes to show what damage he has done from cow-tying our cia from doing their job.......and they would have to admit it.
Tina: Exactly.
Michael: He was not charged with terrorism because the Army has no such charge and it's under their jurisiction. I had thought the same thing as you initially...One more time, whether you like him or not he is POTUS and deserves respect for that.
Debbe: This is the worst Terrorist attack on U.S soil since 9/11 under Obama's watch!! I don't recall Bush getting ANY respect when he was POTUS? Maybe, he wasn't and won't be charged with terroism but that's what it was and its beoming more and more clear each day. In the military its called treason punishable by firing sqaud under the UCMJ. Obama tied the hands of the CIA and that's on him!!
Greg: Once again, we need to impeach Hussein for failure to follow the constitution in protecting the US. He is just one abject failure after another after another.
Michael: You guys are way too extreme! I suppose you believe Cheney does not deserve to be prosecuted for all his wrong doing correct?
Debbe: Honestly, I'm still not 100% sure Obama was born in the U.S and is not muslim himself? What wrong doings did Cheney commit? I never heard about them. Besides, are we going to prosecute everyone who had held office? Barack and his admin are the peope who has pursued the previous admin for criminal activity AFTER they left office!! Ridiculous!! AND ... Read Morethey called the CIA liars and tried to pursue charges againist the CIA!! It's a high and mighty self righteous attitude and so therefore they too should be pursued on what theor currently doing which is, taking over the private sector, dictating CEO pay, firing private citizens, stealing tax payer money, on and on. How is what we're saying extreme? What this administration has done so far IS extreme!! Just my opinion.
Michael: That birther crap is why he may win re-election in 2012!!! The two newest GOP Governors gave you the blueprint to winning in 2010 & 2012. It's the economy....
If the GOP focuses more on the economy, the DEMS will fall hard beginning in 2010. Independents and moderates like myself do not care about the birther, and muslim drama because what's done is done as he is POTUS. As for Cheney, please don't tell me that you are blind to the fact that he was responsible for the torturing overseas of detainees, and leaking the name of a CIA operative. C'mon the evidence is there but he has very loyal followers such as Libby and Rumsfeld refusing to talk.
All this birther and tea party stuff is nothing but a major show being put on by the right wing of the GOP. Now before you form an opinion, let me say that I am a republican that has voted for the GOP nominee each time including 2000. I did not vote for the GOP in 2008 because I did not feel comfortable with Palin being the VP and I felt that McCain would ruin the economy more than it already is expecially with advisers such as Phil Graham in his corner.... Read More... Read More
Focus on the economy and that will be the ticket to reclaiming the WH in 2012. That's all 10% of the unemployed and true working people are concerned with.
Tina: The one thing you are right about is that it is the economy, and right now it is being picked apart and destroyed by a group of people who loathe capitalism. This is not going to get better until we get back to the founding of this nation. FREEDOM. So, while the POTUS picks apart our ecomony we are being distracted by this mammoth HCR bill and Cap and Tax. Both of which will absolutely create a nation that will need to suckle at the Government teet. I am a conservative libertarian. And I will refuse the daily does assigned to me. I will achieve at any level I see fit. That is what is guaranteed to all of us in the constitution.
In addition the POTUS is refusing to deal with the wars. It would devastate his base if we actually won a war. We can't have that. That would mean America is Great. And believe you me, according to the left, we are NOT great. The President tells us and the world just how awful we are all the time.
Telling us to be quiet is no longer going to cut it. Listening to the left tell us that our candidates need to be more moderate is what has gotten us into this condition. The sleeping giant is awake now. We are making time out of work schedules to speak up. We have every right to speak up and vocalize OUR disdain for the President. i have not decided if I am birther. I actually think I am. But, that still doesn't win our wars, or get us JOBS!... Read More
Torture is defined in your heart. i like it that you are alive, and I like it that I am alive. I am proud of the men and women doing whatever it takes to keep us safe. No one is perfect, but their mission is to face evil and ensure OUR safety. They have a job I would not want. God Bless them. Too bad we can't ask those aborted babies if what they just went through is considered 'torture'.
Michael: It's not that I disagree with everything that is being said from the right, but it's how you say it. Protesting with pictures of POTUS being hung from a tree, or photos of him eating chicken or collard greens, and constantly alleging that he is a member of the Taliban is just plain cruel. Look, you are entitled to state your opinons because that is... Read More a basic right afforded to all of us by our founding fathers. However, it's how they come across to the public expecially guys like me that causes concern.
I happen to agree with the basic principles of the GOP as I do not think that government should be invloved in every aspect of one's life. However, I am black and do not take kind to the radical racial references that are implied daily from the right and you cannot deny that they are being said. If you disagree, just take a look at the tea party footage which can be found on youtube.
I am very disappointed in POTUS and believe that he is in way over his head at the moment, but I respect the fact that he is a black man that became POTUS against all odds. I like to listen to the arguements on both sides as well as engaging in them from time to time, but the Hussein Obama and other rhetoric I believe is way out of bounds as his name is President Barack Hussein Obama. Once that type of talk starts, I tune out as well as most of middle America I believe. We can always agree to disagree but I will not stand by and allow certain things to be said without a rebuttal. I hope you can understand where I am coming from.
Tina: And I don't disagree with you on very much either. What I will say about the racial slurs, is that it is abhorrent. Normal working peeps like me - that isn't where we are coming from. And the Main stream media presents that and forwards that non existent position. Which is really why those networks are sooo failing. I implore you to move away from those outlets if you really want to see us out here. I am still amazed at how we can still have these racial undertones when we elected a black President. It is just one of those things that makes me scratch my head. And to that end, I have never heard anything or anyone accuse the POTUS of being a member of the Taliban. Yet another sickening thing to say. That is crap, and is coming from places where normal people just don't exist. We all had to turn our heads when an effigy of Sarah Palin was hung up in Los Angeles. I am a women, and took severe um bridge. But, I turned my head, and kept going.
About youtube, there is a lot of garabage on youtube. There is some good stuff. But, again I tend to stay away from the far wing of either group. I know Dems, and I know Libs. I don't always understand their hearts, and that is cool, they are free. Some are Loons and some are not. I tend to weed out the people who think they can actually convert me.
Hussien IS his middle name. The left turned President Bush's middle name to 'dubya'. And referred to him in exactly that way. That is the way I see that terminology. Those singing school kids use Hussein in their indoctrination. When can his middle name be said? ...
I don't chose to respect anyone by the color of their skin or their gender. I choose to respect those that earn it. Just getting elected to an office isn't enough. The job has to be done to my satisfaction. And right now no job in the WH or congress is being done to my satisfaction. I don't know what 'against all odds' means. We are all here by the grace of God, and make our lives what we set out to make our lives. I don't buy into the Sotomayor crap about how hard her life was. Whatever. Who's life isn't hard? Who doesn't have to look at themselves in the mirror and demand success. So, I don't care about the odds. I can work for whatever it is I want. Nothing has ever stopped me before. Where I am in my life is where i want to be. So, I don't buy into any of that for anyone. All he did was win an election. He had no political history. So, he could say whatever he wanted to win an election. George Soros funded him and we voted him in.
The original post made no mention of the color of his skin. Just stated the obvious about what a poor job he is doing.
So, I do understand where you are coming from. Where we are coming from has nothing to do with skin color. And I think we would all agree on that. I don't fb with bigots. But, just because someone disagrees with anyone doesn't make them a bigot. I don't remember that going on at all, when movies were made on how to murder President Bush. Back then it was patriotic to disagree..now to disagree you much be a bigots, tea bagger, neocon...extremist...
Debbe:Tina you Rock too!! Michael, I don't disagree with everything ypur saying but, it sounds to me like your NOT a kool-aid drinker and that's what matters! Your open minded and at least willing to listen to both sides sincerly. That's cool!! I never met a lib that ever did that before.
Debbe:Oh, Michael I dp want to add that the ONLY time I ever hear race being brought up is from the left!! Everytime I disagree with a lib I'm called a racist!! It's so old and boring anymore! I wish they would get a new card to play!!
Michael:I agree with you 100% on that Debbie....
Christopher:I did not feel comfortable with Palin being the VP and I felt that McCain would ruin the economy more than it already is expecially with advisers such as Phil Graham in his corner..?????? Really??? Hows obamas crew doing with the economy????Yeah, hes doing a great job! And i dont know if you remember(since you brought it up) bush was demonized for ... Read More6 straight years.....no president was ever damned like he was, ever and you know this to be true.....everyday i saw signs that didnt just suggest that he would be killed, the left asked for his murder on a daily basis, and if you dont believe me mike go to you tube, or google it! what radical right racial references??? I will agree with you about the road map to the white house......all the gop has to do is stick to a conservative platform and adopt the concept of repealing all these social programs, but alas you and I know they dont believe in their own platform and they have a way of sticking their foot in their mouths....and you know why? Because they are part of the leviathon beast we call the federal government, and they dont believe in limited government......
and mike i know you think obama deserves the upmost respect because he IS the president of the U.S., but he has to earn that respect too, his color or the office doesnt grant him a pass every time he screws up! He was hired to represent all of us and quite frankly, he hasn`t lived up to his own hype......and I say HIS OWN HYPE because this is the first time in the history of a presidential campaign that the voters were not allowed to question the canidate, and no one knew anything about him....we couldn`t without someone one the left calling us racists.....and you know this to be true!
@ deb, mikes not a lib.....hes what the media calls a moderate.....and thats not at all a bad thing as long as he stays rational and doesnt get caught up in obamas spell!
Debbe:Christopher, you Rock! Spot on with everything, I couldn't agree more. I hope Michael doesn't get lost in the sauce with Obama like so many others!
Michael:Christopher - Trust me when I say that I am not happy with the way this administration is handling the economy as I along with others was sold a bag of goods. Election 2008 was rough as the economy had almost hit rock bottom and I had just laid off 300 great employees from my company.
Based strictly on campaign talk, I bought into the idea of ... Read Moregovernment intervention to help get the economy back on track. I thought it was time to try something new, but now it is even worse as I am in my office this weekend trying to put severance packages together for another 250 employees that will be laid off in next week. I'm a Vice President of Human Resources and these are not good times.
Anyway, trust me when I say that I see the good but I also the major faults with the current President. He has a ways to go and much to accomplish and repair before I will even consider voting for a dem in 2012. Right now I don't trust anything that comes from 1600 one bit!!!!!! Lastly, I met President Bush and voted for him in 2004. I also worked for his brother Jeb during his first 3 years as Governor down here and still talk to him from time to time. I resigned from the NAACP because I did not agree with the Bush bashing that was being said. 2012 is the GOP's election to lose....
Christopher: Mike, we have chatted enough for you to know I hold no faith with the gop.....I am a conservative first, a family man 2nd, and god willing a patriot 3rd.....i dont care if an canidate is repub, dem, or independent...as long as they do the right thing and by that i mean I want them to cut back on all the spending, i want them to go back to following the constitution and what our founding fathers started,
and i want them to respect and listen to the people that sent them to washington.....I want to see real tax,and health reform, I want to see our polititions fight for this country and stop trying to transform us to france, or china.
This is america, our country, and our country should ALWAYS come first, NO EXCEPTIONS, EVER!!!
I want them to stop lying to us about our natural resources...stop paying the folks that hate us for energy that we could be harvesting for ourselves right here at home!
I want the racial and religous pc crap to stop once and for all, this is supposed to be the land where we are all created equal, lets start acting like it!... Read More
I want the government out of our classrooms, churches, banks, and the rest of the private sector!!!!!
Lets get back to hard work and sacrifice, lets get back to the way things used to be when communities helpped each other, without the government sticking their nose in our daily affairs and telling us what to do...
You said it yourself, your company is hurtting because the government is regulating every aspect of your business and the free market, from housing, to the food we eat......this must stop, one way or another!
sorry, didnt mean to rattle on and on.....but as you can see we are both passionate men when it comes to this great nation!
Michael: That was a good read my friend, a damn good read!!!!
Tina: I agree with Micheal, that was a good read! I too have no desire to know what letter someone is - just go to work for the US. I an sorry to hear Micheal that you are having to do what I would never want to do. God bless you and those on the other side of your desk. Christopher really did a great job with articulating all my political emotion. I ... Read Morelove this country. This place is iconic. We are a free people. As a war veteran I will not sit idly by and watch my countries leaders tell us that we need to be like everyone else. Where will the world go when America is now just like... Burma?
Christopher: mike, my heart goes out to your employees, and especially to you for the most difficult decision you have ahead of you, all you are trying to do is live the real american dream and support your family to the best of your abilities and true hard work and sacrifice!!!! Its a damn shame what you and thousands of other small business owners are forced ... Read Moreto endure because of a few political elitists who definatly think they know more about running your business than you do....
now what would help to save our republic is if everyone was privey to your story......people have to realize what our government is doing to us, and it has been going on for a while, it didn`t just start with obamas` admin or election, but if we are to save our form of government, our country, our freedoms and liberties then it must end with obamas administration!
GOD BLESS AMERICA AND ITS PEOPLE
This is a conversation/debate that all citizens of this great republic should be engaged in....
Tha main aspect of this convo is the respect that all parties involved showed to each other!
Christopher: Hey Hussein Obama Administration, Still making excuses for this murderous muslim? Still covering up terrorism? WHY??? he has to cover it up because we were attacked on our own soil less than 1 year into his term, when bush kept us safe for 7 years after the last attack......it goes to show what damage he has done from cow-tying our cia from doing their job.......and they would have to admit it.
Tina: Exactly.
Michael: He was not charged with terrorism because the Army has no such charge and it's under their jurisiction. I had thought the same thing as you initially...One more time, whether you like him or not he is POTUS and deserves respect for that.
Debbe: This is the worst Terrorist attack on U.S soil since 9/11 under Obama's watch!! I don't recall Bush getting ANY respect when he was POTUS? Maybe, he wasn't and won't be charged with terroism but that's what it was and its beoming more and more clear each day. In the military its called treason punishable by firing sqaud under the UCMJ. Obama tied the hands of the CIA and that's on him!!
Greg: Once again, we need to impeach Hussein for failure to follow the constitution in protecting the US. He is just one abject failure after another after another.
Michael: You guys are way too extreme! I suppose you believe Cheney does not deserve to be prosecuted for all his wrong doing correct?
Debbe: Honestly, I'm still not 100% sure Obama was born in the U.S and is not muslim himself? What wrong doings did Cheney commit? I never heard about them. Besides, are we going to prosecute everyone who had held office? Barack and his admin are the peope who has pursued the previous admin for criminal activity AFTER they left office!! Ridiculous!! AND ... Read Morethey called the CIA liars and tried to pursue charges againist the CIA!! It's a high and mighty self righteous attitude and so therefore they too should be pursued on what theor currently doing which is, taking over the private sector, dictating CEO pay, firing private citizens, stealing tax payer money, on and on. How is what we're saying extreme? What this administration has done so far IS extreme!! Just my opinion.
Michael: That birther crap is why he may win re-election in 2012!!! The two newest GOP Governors gave you the blueprint to winning in 2010 & 2012. It's the economy....
If the GOP focuses more on the economy, the DEMS will fall hard beginning in 2010. Independents and moderates like myself do not care about the birther, and muslim drama because what's done is done as he is POTUS. As for Cheney, please don't tell me that you are blind to the fact that he was responsible for the torturing overseas of detainees, and leaking the name of a CIA operative. C'mon the evidence is there but he has very loyal followers such as Libby and Rumsfeld refusing to talk.
All this birther and tea party stuff is nothing but a major show being put on by the right wing of the GOP. Now before you form an opinion, let me say that I am a republican that has voted for the GOP nominee each time including 2000. I did not vote for the GOP in 2008 because I did not feel comfortable with Palin being the VP and I felt that McCain would ruin the economy more than it already is expecially with advisers such as Phil Graham in his corner.... Read More... Read More
Focus on the economy and that will be the ticket to reclaiming the WH in 2012. That's all 10% of the unemployed and true working people are concerned with.
Tina: The one thing you are right about is that it is the economy, and right now it is being picked apart and destroyed by a group of people who loathe capitalism. This is not going to get better until we get back to the founding of this nation. FREEDOM. So, while the POTUS picks apart our ecomony we are being distracted by this mammoth HCR bill and Cap and Tax. Both of which will absolutely create a nation that will need to suckle at the Government teet. I am a conservative libertarian. And I will refuse the daily does assigned to me. I will achieve at any level I see fit. That is what is guaranteed to all of us in the constitution.
In addition the POTUS is refusing to deal with the wars. It would devastate his base if we actually won a war. We can't have that. That would mean America is Great. And believe you me, according to the left, we are NOT great. The President tells us and the world just how awful we are all the time.
Telling us to be quiet is no longer going to cut it. Listening to the left tell us that our candidates need to be more moderate is what has gotten us into this condition. The sleeping giant is awake now. We are making time out of work schedules to speak up. We have every right to speak up and vocalize OUR disdain for the President. i have not decided if I am birther. I actually think I am. But, that still doesn't win our wars, or get us JOBS!... Read More
Torture is defined in your heart. i like it that you are alive, and I like it that I am alive. I am proud of the men and women doing whatever it takes to keep us safe. No one is perfect, but their mission is to face evil and ensure OUR safety. They have a job I would not want. God Bless them. Too bad we can't ask those aborted babies if what they just went through is considered 'torture'.
Michael: It's not that I disagree with everything that is being said from the right, but it's how you say it. Protesting with pictures of POTUS being hung from a tree, or photos of him eating chicken or collard greens, and constantly alleging that he is a member of the Taliban is just plain cruel. Look, you are entitled to state your opinons because that is... Read More a basic right afforded to all of us by our founding fathers. However, it's how they come across to the public expecially guys like me that causes concern.
I happen to agree with the basic principles of the GOP as I do not think that government should be invloved in every aspect of one's life. However, I am black and do not take kind to the radical racial references that are implied daily from the right and you cannot deny that they are being said. If you disagree, just take a look at the tea party footage which can be found on youtube.
I am very disappointed in POTUS and believe that he is in way over his head at the moment, but I respect the fact that he is a black man that became POTUS against all odds. I like to listen to the arguements on both sides as well as engaging in them from time to time, but the Hussein Obama and other rhetoric I believe is way out of bounds as his name is President Barack Hussein Obama. Once that type of talk starts, I tune out as well as most of middle America I believe. We can always agree to disagree but I will not stand by and allow certain things to be said without a rebuttal. I hope you can understand where I am coming from.
Tina: And I don't disagree with you on very much either. What I will say about the racial slurs, is that it is abhorrent. Normal working peeps like me - that isn't where we are coming from. And the Main stream media presents that and forwards that non existent position. Which is really why those networks are sooo failing. I implore you to move away from those outlets if you really want to see us out here. I am still amazed at how we can still have these racial undertones when we elected a black President. It is just one of those things that makes me scratch my head. And to that end, I have never heard anything or anyone accuse the POTUS of being a member of the Taliban. Yet another sickening thing to say. That is crap, and is coming from places where normal people just don't exist. We all had to turn our heads when an effigy of Sarah Palin was hung up in Los Angeles. I am a women, and took severe um bridge. But, I turned my head, and kept going.
About youtube, there is a lot of garabage on youtube. There is some good stuff. But, again I tend to stay away from the far wing of either group. I know Dems, and I know Libs. I don't always understand their hearts, and that is cool, they are free. Some are Loons and some are not. I tend to weed out the people who think they can actually convert me.
Hussien IS his middle name. The left turned President Bush's middle name to 'dubya'. And referred to him in exactly that way. That is the way I see that terminology. Those singing school kids use Hussein in their indoctrination. When can his middle name be said? ...
I don't chose to respect anyone by the color of their skin or their gender. I choose to respect those that earn it. Just getting elected to an office isn't enough. The job has to be done to my satisfaction. And right now no job in the WH or congress is being done to my satisfaction. I don't know what 'against all odds' means. We are all here by the grace of God, and make our lives what we set out to make our lives. I don't buy into the Sotomayor crap about how hard her life was. Whatever. Who's life isn't hard? Who doesn't have to look at themselves in the mirror and demand success. So, I don't care about the odds. I can work for whatever it is I want. Nothing has ever stopped me before. Where I am in my life is where i want to be. So, I don't buy into any of that for anyone. All he did was win an election. He had no political history. So, he could say whatever he wanted to win an election. George Soros funded him and we voted him in.
The original post made no mention of the color of his skin. Just stated the obvious about what a poor job he is doing.
So, I do understand where you are coming from. Where we are coming from has nothing to do with skin color. And I think we would all agree on that. I don't fb with bigots. But, just because someone disagrees with anyone doesn't make them a bigot. I don't remember that going on at all, when movies were made on how to murder President Bush. Back then it was patriotic to disagree..now to disagree you much be a bigots, tea bagger, neocon...extremist...
Debbe:Tina you Rock too!! Michael, I don't disagree with everything ypur saying but, it sounds to me like your NOT a kool-aid drinker and that's what matters! Your open minded and at least willing to listen to both sides sincerly. That's cool!! I never met a lib that ever did that before.
Debbe:Oh, Michael I dp want to add that the ONLY time I ever hear race being brought up is from the left!! Everytime I disagree with a lib I'm called a racist!! It's so old and boring anymore! I wish they would get a new card to play!!
Michael:I agree with you 100% on that Debbie....
Christopher:I did not feel comfortable with Palin being the VP and I felt that McCain would ruin the economy more than it already is expecially with advisers such as Phil Graham in his corner..?????? Really??? Hows obamas crew doing with the economy????Yeah, hes doing a great job! And i dont know if you remember(since you brought it up) bush was demonized for ... Read More6 straight years.....no president was ever damned like he was, ever and you know this to be true.....everyday i saw signs that didnt just suggest that he would be killed, the left asked for his murder on a daily basis, and if you dont believe me mike go to you tube, or google it! what radical right racial references??? I will agree with you about the road map to the white house......all the gop has to do is stick to a conservative platform and adopt the concept of repealing all these social programs, but alas you and I know they dont believe in their own platform and they have a way of sticking their foot in their mouths....and you know why? Because they are part of the leviathon beast we call the federal government, and they dont believe in limited government......
and mike i know you think obama deserves the upmost respect because he IS the president of the U.S., but he has to earn that respect too, his color or the office doesnt grant him a pass every time he screws up! He was hired to represent all of us and quite frankly, he hasn`t lived up to his own hype......and I say HIS OWN HYPE because this is the first time in the history of a presidential campaign that the voters were not allowed to question the canidate, and no one knew anything about him....we couldn`t without someone one the left calling us racists.....and you know this to be true!
@ deb, mikes not a lib.....hes what the media calls a moderate.....and thats not at all a bad thing as long as he stays rational and doesnt get caught up in obamas spell!
Debbe:Christopher, you Rock! Spot on with everything, I couldn't agree more. I hope Michael doesn't get lost in the sauce with Obama like so many others!
Michael:Christopher - Trust me when I say that I am not happy with the way this administration is handling the economy as I along with others was sold a bag of goods. Election 2008 was rough as the economy had almost hit rock bottom and I had just laid off 300 great employees from my company.
Based strictly on campaign talk, I bought into the idea of ... Read Moregovernment intervention to help get the economy back on track. I thought it was time to try something new, but now it is even worse as I am in my office this weekend trying to put severance packages together for another 250 employees that will be laid off in next week. I'm a Vice President of Human Resources and these are not good times.
Anyway, trust me when I say that I see the good but I also the major faults with the current President. He has a ways to go and much to accomplish and repair before I will even consider voting for a dem in 2012. Right now I don't trust anything that comes from 1600 one bit!!!!!! Lastly, I met President Bush and voted for him in 2004. I also worked for his brother Jeb during his first 3 years as Governor down here and still talk to him from time to time. I resigned from the NAACP because I did not agree with the Bush bashing that was being said. 2012 is the GOP's election to lose....
Christopher: Mike, we have chatted enough for you to know I hold no faith with the gop.....I am a conservative first, a family man 2nd, and god willing a patriot 3rd.....i dont care if an canidate is repub, dem, or independent...as long as they do the right thing and by that i mean I want them to cut back on all the spending, i want them to go back to following the constitution and what our founding fathers started,
and i want them to respect and listen to the people that sent them to washington.....I want to see real tax,and health reform, I want to see our polititions fight for this country and stop trying to transform us to france, or china.
This is america, our country, and our country should ALWAYS come first, NO EXCEPTIONS, EVER!!!
I want them to stop lying to us about our natural resources...stop paying the folks that hate us for energy that we could be harvesting for ourselves right here at home!
I want the racial and religous pc crap to stop once and for all, this is supposed to be the land where we are all created equal, lets start acting like it!... Read More
I want the government out of our classrooms, churches, banks, and the rest of the private sector!!!!!
Lets get back to hard work and sacrifice, lets get back to the way things used to be when communities helpped each other, without the government sticking their nose in our daily affairs and telling us what to do...
You said it yourself, your company is hurtting because the government is regulating every aspect of your business and the free market, from housing, to the food we eat......this must stop, one way or another!
sorry, didnt mean to rattle on and on.....but as you can see we are both passionate men when it comes to this great nation!
Michael: That was a good read my friend, a damn good read!!!!
Tina: I agree with Micheal, that was a good read! I too have no desire to know what letter someone is - just go to work for the US. I an sorry to hear Micheal that you are having to do what I would never want to do. God bless you and those on the other side of your desk. Christopher really did a great job with articulating all my political emotion. I ... Read Morelove this country. This place is iconic. We are a free people. As a war veteran I will not sit idly by and watch my countries leaders tell us that we need to be like everyone else. Where will the world go when America is now just like... Burma?
Christopher: mike, my heart goes out to your employees, and especially to you for the most difficult decision you have ahead of you, all you are trying to do is live the real american dream and support your family to the best of your abilities and true hard work and sacrifice!!!! Its a damn shame what you and thousands of other small business owners are forced ... Read Moreto endure because of a few political elitists who definatly think they know more about running your business than you do....
now what would help to save our republic is if everyone was privey to your story......people have to realize what our government is doing to us, and it has been going on for a while, it didn`t just start with obamas` admin or election, but if we are to save our form of government, our country, our freedoms and liberties then it must end with obamas administration!
GOD BLESS AMERICA AND ITS PEOPLE
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Everything You Wanted To Know About Constitutional Conventions But Were Afraid To Ask...
This is a special treat today folks, a conversation between Mike Church and Dr. Kevin Gutzman about how to implement a Constitutional Convention to stop our runaway government.
Dr. Kevin Gutzman: We want to have a convention at which we would discuss revision of the Constitution.
Mike: And is this limited to any particular articles? Is it open-ended? How is it convened? How is it conducted? There are a lot of questions that people have out there.
Kevin: Right. Well, what Article 5 says is the states, if 38 of them call it, the Congress will have to convene a convention. And the short answer is, no, the matters that the convention could take up cannot be limited. However, the proposals the convention makes would not be law. That is, they would be only proposals. So just as in 1787 in Philadelphia there was a convention that proposed what supposedly was a federal constitution, so – and then that had to be sent to the states for their separate ratification. So in case a Constitutional Convention made proposed amendments, those would have to be referred to the states for their ratification.
Now, people commonly say, well, you know, they’re just going to – Pelosi will dominate it, and Das Kapital will become the Constitution of America. I think this is really absurd. It’s the kind of scare tactic that people have taken against the idea of constitutional amendment ever since the beginning of the 19th Century. It’s extremely unlikely to the point of a vanishing amount of likelihood that having called for a convention because you were worried that the federal government was grabbing unlimited power for itself, the state legislatures would then turn around and ratify some horrible, centralizing measure that had been proposed by the convention. So myself, I am sanguine about that. And of course what this worry also ignores is, what people who make this argument ignore is that we are going to have Pelosi’s Constitution anyway. We have it right now. [Audio glitch] will do to us whatever it wants and will legislate [glitch] they like. So the idea that there’s going to be some horrible eventuality that Pelosi and Company will get what they want as the result of a process in which we try to amend the Constitution to limit their power, that assumes that they don’t get what they want anyway. Right now they get exactly what they like.
Mike: True.
Kevin: So I don’t know how it could possibly be that having this kind of a convention could make things worse. And just to give you an indication of the extent to which the current constitutional culture in the United States has given centralizers like Pelosi and Obama, that is, people who want the federal government to have authority over everything you do, every minute of your life, how they have gotten what they want through a “we’ll never amend the Constitution to correct what the Congress is doing” attitude among conservatives, let me read for you a little bit of the appendix to Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.”
Mike: Okay.
Kevin: Milton Friedman was the leading advocate of liberty in American economics in the 20th Century. Now, I myself am not at root a Monitorist. I mean, people who are expert in economics know that he was also the leader of what was called the Monitorist school of economics. And I think he was mistaken at root about that. But the bottom line is Milton Friedman was a very prominent libertarian in the 20th Century, somebody who stood for freedom.
Mike: Right.
Kevin: And he had a bestselling book, coauthored with his wife Rose in I think 1978, called “Free to Choose.” It was a number one bestseller for months and months. And in the appendix to that book, Friedman reprinted the Socialist Party platform of 1928. And the reason why he reprinted the Socialist Party platform of 1928 was to show us that by 1978 we were living with the Socialist Party platform of 1928. That is, every single element of it has been adopted. So plank one in the Socialist Party platform of 1928, “Nationalization of our natural resources, beginning with the coal mines and water sites, particularly of Boulder Dam and Muscle Shoals.” And then in parentheses he says “Boulder Dam, renamed Hoover Dam, and Muscle Shoals are now both federal projects.”
Number two, “A publicly owned giant power system under which the federal government shall cooperate with the states and municipalities in the distribution of electrical energy to the people at cost.” And in parentheses he says, “We’ve made a regional start on this with the Tennessee Valley Authority.” There’s actually more to it now than there was in 1978.
But anyway, number three, “National ownership in democratic management of railroads and other means of transportation and communication.” Parentheses, “Railroad passenger service is completely nationalized through Amtrak. Some freight service is nationalized through Conrail. The FCC controls communications by telephone, telegraph, radio, and television.” And of course what Friedman didn’t know in 1978 was that now the federal government feels free to wiretap millions, literally millions of Americans, without ever identifying them, without ever getting a warrant from any kind of a judge. It’s even more problematic than it was when Friedman wrote this.
Mike: Right.
Kevin: Number four, Socialist Party platform of 1928, “An adequate national program for flood control, flood relief, reforestation, irrigation, and reclamation.” Well, Friedman in parentheses says, “Government expenditures for these purposes are currently in the many billions of dollars.” And of course they’re far greater now than they were when he wrote that. I mean, I could go through the rest of this platform from the Socialist Party of 1928. But my point is, for those of you who think the Constitutional Convention idea is dangerous because we’ll lose the republic that the founding fathers bequeathed us, wake up. We already...
Mike: We lost it.
Kevin: We don’t have the constitutional republic the founding fathers bequeathed us. We are living with 20th-century socialists’ idea of what a central government ought to look like.
Mike: Well, and Dr. Kevin Gutzman with us. It’s our first crack at this. It’s called “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About a Constitutional Convention but Were Afraid to Ask.” I might add a coda to number four, Doc. And that is, that since I live in a flood zone here in Southeast Louisiana, the only place I can buy flood insurance from is from NFIP, National Flood Insurance Program.
Kevin: Right.
Mike: Which has been taken over by the – it’s administered by the federal government. Now, your agent can broker it, but it is backed up by the full faith and credit of Uncle Sucker. Just so you know. So you can count number four in the Socialist Party Platform of 1928 as having been completed, absolutely completely. And just ask anyone in Florida how they get homeowners insurance if they live in Jupiter, Florida or below, and they’re probably going to give you a similar answer.
Kevin: Well, my point, and as I said, I could go on with the...
Mike: Right, I know you could.
Kevin: ...rest of the planks of this. But I omitted the planks about what became Social Security and Medicare and all this kind of stuff. So the bottom line is people commonly object to the idea of a Constitutional Convention by saying, oh, lord, the socialists will get control of the government. Well, you know, have you looked at the Democratic and Republican parties lately? And how do you think they behave? The idea that the federal Constitution is doing what it’s supposed to do, that it’s performing its only function, which is to limit the power of people in federal office, is absurd. You’d have to have been asleep. That you’re going to lose that by having an attempt to rein in the federal government – now, I think that if there were a federal Constitutional Convention, what they should take up should be the way the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause has been interpreted, the way the Commerce Clause has been interpreted, and the notion that the powers of Congress listed in Article I, Section 8 are exhaustive.
So there’s no reason why, if we had a Constitutional Convention, we couldn’t have three amendments saying the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is only procedural. It includes no grants of substantive rights. That the Commerce Clause is only about trade between the states. It has nothing to do with matters that are entirely internal to the states. And of course that’s the way it was intended in the first place, but federal judges and the Congress have completely remade it so that the other day, when Pelosi was asked where do you get authority to tell people who their doctor will be, she laughed because it assumed, you know, the question had underlining it the idea that there was something illegitimate about the way federal officials have been behaving since 1937. Well, of course, as you and I know, there is something illegitimate about the way that federal officials have been behaving since 1937. And the only way to slap some sense into them is to have a Constitutional Convention. That’s it. There’s no other mechanism.
Dr. Kevin Gutzman: When you want to become an attorney, you get a law degree from an accredited law school. And then you take a bar exam. Before you take the bar exam, you take a bar review class, several weeks of cramming to learn everything about being a lawyer that you didn’t learn in law school.
Mike: Right.
Kevin: And when I took the bar review class, getting ready to take the Texas bar exam, I took it from one of the popular national companies that give this kind of a class in states all over the country. When we got to the part of the bar review course in which the instructor was preparing us for the multistate multiple choice section, that is, for the section of the Texas bar exam that was multiple choice and that is given, not only in Texas, but in various other states in the country. She told us, if one of the options you’re given is the Tenth Amendment, you know that that is always wrong. You never choose the option Tenth Amendment on the bar exam because that is always incorrect. In other words, by the time I was taking the bar review class in 1990, everybody knew that Tenth Amendment is never enforced. It is never respected. The principle that the Congress has only the powers that are enumerated in the Constitution is completely absent from, quote/unquote, “constitutional law” these days. So, you know, there’s that.
Mike: This is how we...
Kevin: And then the other possibility, besides calling on the Tenth Amendment to limit the powers of Congress, is nullification. And there are people now who are talking about nullification, which is the idea that the state governments would stand up to the federal government and prevent them from doing something. We’ve seen that tried in American history. You know, the federal government has the weapons, has the army. It’s absurd. There’s no way that nullification is going to work
Mike: So nullification is not going to work. You can’t have...
Kevin: No.
Mike: ...a citizen-led – what Kevin’s question was, could the citizens call the Convention, and you answered no. It has to be called by the legislature.
Kevin: That’s right.
Mike: So then to clarify here – and “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Constitutional Convention but Were Afraid to Ask” with our special guest Dr. Kevin Gutzman here. What is needed is – and I believe there’s only two states left that need to call; right?
Kevin: I don’t know what the current number is.
Mike: There’s 34.
Kevin: I’ve read varying accounts of that.
Mike: Okay. Well, we can get an inventory on that, is to get to 38 states, three quarters of them necessary or needed to call the convention. And then the next question is, before I get back to your phone calls at 1-866-95-PATRIOT, my question, here’s the one that I have. So the state legislatures will then, I would assume, much as Madison and Hamilton were able to convince the various state legislatures and assemblies in 1787 to send delegations, they would then appoint delegations to go meet in a central place, say it’s Kansas City or wherever, and they would hold this convention. Is that how – that’s how you would envision the pragmatic, actual workings of it would take place; correct?
Kevin: Yes. It’s just a carbon copy of the process that yielded the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution in the first place.
Mike: Okay. So we may need to have a failure, then. We may need to go to Mount Vernon and lose. We may have to go meet in Annapolis in a bar and not accomplish anything other than commit that, okay, we’ve got to go back and redouble our efforts because they tried twice. Well, Maryland and Virginia tried to meet. And then Madison and Hamilton tried to conspire to get it together in Annapolis, and of course they were successful. But unlike Madison and Hamilton, though, let’s set the record straight, too. We learned this in “The Fame of Our Fathers” and learned this in Dr. Guzman’s books and in my movie, “The Spirit of ’76.” The advertised purpose for that convention, Dr. Gutzman, was amending the Articles of Confederation; right?
Kevin: Right.
Mike: And we wound up with an entirely new plan of government. Which we’re not seeking here.
Kevin: Again, the bottom line is, well, of course, in a sense we are seeking an entirely new plan of government. It depends how you want to look at it. If you want to say we like the original frame of the federal government, and we’d like to see it actually implemented, or if you want to say we’d like to have a different government from the one we actually live under, we’d like one that looks more like the one the founders gave us. So I guess you could say it’s new, or you could say it isn’t, whichever way you want to look at it. But, yes, it’s true that in the first place, people like Madison and Hamilton wanted to strengthen the central government. And we’ve had three major episodes in American history when the central government was drastically strengthened. One was when they ratified the federal Constitution. One was at the time of the Civil War and immediately after. And then the third one was the so-called Revolution of 1937, which was really the culmination of things that had been going on for 15 years before that.
So we live today under not the Constitution of 1788, but the Constitution of 1937. And we’ve seen where that’s taken us. We have an absolutely unbridgeable gap between the federal government’s revenue and its obligations. And the gap is growing as people in federal office see that every incentive for them leads to more spending, more borrowing, permanent enserfment of our descendents. I think that’s why this is the first time we need a formal effort drastically to reduce the power of the central government.
Mike: I concur. Curt is in Ohio with a great question, next up here on “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Calling a Constitutional Convention but Were Afraid to Ask.” The time has come, my friends. Curt, how are you?
Curt: Good, sir. How are you?
Mike: Fantastic. What’s your question?
Curt: My question, I think we already answered. Originally my question was, once the convention is convened, I’ve heard rumors that the entire document is at risk at that point, where anything could be amended by the convention. Is that correct?
Kevin: No, the convention can’t amend anything. This is a very important point.
Mike: Okay.
Kevin: The convention would be called to make proposals. But if there were going to be any actual amendment adopted, it would have to be adopted through ratification by the states. So it would take 38 states then to amend. That’s why this idea, this scare idea that people are floating out there, that there’d be a coup d’état, and we’d end up all singing the Marseilles, or May 1st would be our new national holiday because we’d all be wearing red all the time, this is just inaccurate. A convention cannot actually change the Constitution. It can make proposals. So if they came out of the convention with a proposal, you know, let’s get rid of the Congress and have a military government, bang, you’re stuck, that’s not what could happen. All it could do would be make recommendations to the states for their ratification. And again, I think that a Constitutional Convention that grew out of a movement to reassert state governments’ Tenth Amendment rights is highly unlikely then to say we want, you know, Nancy Pelosi to be our queen. That’s just not going to happen.
Mike: Right. And I get this question a lot, too. “You don’t know what you’re – this is dangerous.” But as you pointed out, and I think this needs to be part of the recap that we’re going to post online on our website, you can hopefully help us get it linked up on some other popular sites, that – and this is something that I’d never heard before. But that document that you cited that was in Friedman’s, the appendix to Friedman’s book, how much more evidence or how much more destruction, ignorance, and outright – what’s the word when you violate your oath? I mean, I get calls all the time, Kevin, from “Are they committing treason when they violate their oath, and they do this to the Constitution, and they do that?” And I always say, well, no, they’re not really conspiring with the enemy. They’re not making war with the enemy against us here. But yes, they are violating their oath. And apparently there is no penalty, and Bill Clinton can attest to this, for perjury anymore.
Kevin: Well, he paid a $90,000 fine and was disbarred for five years. So I guess that was some kind of penalty, although of course it was not nearly so stiff a penalty as you or I might have paid if we had been found to have done exactly the same thing as he did. Let me read you a little bit more of this Socialist Party platform of 1928 from the back of Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.” Plank nine, “A system of health and accident insurance and old-age pensions, as well as unemployment insurance.” So people who say, wow, we’re going to have socialism if we have a Constitutional Convention, plank nine is what they’re voting on in Congress right now. This is what they think they’re empowered to do by the current federal Constitution. In other words, they completely ignore the limitation on the powers of the central government that were supposed to have been created by the Constitution. And they are writing into law the Socialist Party platform of 1928.
Mike: Amazing.
Kevin: The whole thing is going to be what we live with. So people who say, oh, no, we can’t have a Constitutional Convention because it’ll mean the death of our beloved Constitution, signed by Washington and Franklin and Adams and, I mean, and Hamilton and Madison, you’re wrong. That frame of government is long gone. And what we’re talking about here is the question, is there any way to bring it back? Is there any way actually to have a limited decentralized government in which most decision making is done by elected state legislators? And I’m saying the only mechanism that the Constitution provides is the Constitutional Convention. There’s no other way effectively to limit the powers of Congress.
Want to learn more about Dr Kevin R.C. Gutzman(He received his BA, MPAff, and JD from the University of Texas and my MA and PhD in American History from the University of Virginia) and the real facts of the constitution from a real Constitutional Scholar?
I would suggest you read a couple of his books in the matter:
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution...
Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama...
Virginia's American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776-1840...
Its always refreshing to have a debate and actually have facts to back up your arguement....
I have to thank my good friends Mike and Kevin for this keen insight to the constitution
Dr. Kevin Gutzman: We want to have a convention at which we would discuss revision of the Constitution.
Mike: And is this limited to any particular articles? Is it open-ended? How is it convened? How is it conducted? There are a lot of questions that people have out there.
Kevin: Right. Well, what Article 5 says is the states, if 38 of them call it, the Congress will have to convene a convention. And the short answer is, no, the matters that the convention could take up cannot be limited. However, the proposals the convention makes would not be law. That is, they would be only proposals. So just as in 1787 in Philadelphia there was a convention that proposed what supposedly was a federal constitution, so – and then that had to be sent to the states for their separate ratification. So in case a Constitutional Convention made proposed amendments, those would have to be referred to the states for their ratification.
Now, people commonly say, well, you know, they’re just going to – Pelosi will dominate it, and Das Kapital will become the Constitution of America. I think this is really absurd. It’s the kind of scare tactic that people have taken against the idea of constitutional amendment ever since the beginning of the 19th Century. It’s extremely unlikely to the point of a vanishing amount of likelihood that having called for a convention because you were worried that the federal government was grabbing unlimited power for itself, the state legislatures would then turn around and ratify some horrible, centralizing measure that had been proposed by the convention. So myself, I am sanguine about that. And of course what this worry also ignores is, what people who make this argument ignore is that we are going to have Pelosi’s Constitution anyway. We have it right now. [Audio glitch] will do to us whatever it wants and will legislate [glitch] they like. So the idea that there’s going to be some horrible eventuality that Pelosi and Company will get what they want as the result of a process in which we try to amend the Constitution to limit their power, that assumes that they don’t get what they want anyway. Right now they get exactly what they like.
Mike: True.
Kevin: So I don’t know how it could possibly be that having this kind of a convention could make things worse. And just to give you an indication of the extent to which the current constitutional culture in the United States has given centralizers like Pelosi and Obama, that is, people who want the federal government to have authority over everything you do, every minute of your life, how they have gotten what they want through a “we’ll never amend the Constitution to correct what the Congress is doing” attitude among conservatives, let me read for you a little bit of the appendix to Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.”
Mike: Okay.
Kevin: Milton Friedman was the leading advocate of liberty in American economics in the 20th Century. Now, I myself am not at root a Monitorist. I mean, people who are expert in economics know that he was also the leader of what was called the Monitorist school of economics. And I think he was mistaken at root about that. But the bottom line is Milton Friedman was a very prominent libertarian in the 20th Century, somebody who stood for freedom.
Mike: Right.
Kevin: And he had a bestselling book, coauthored with his wife Rose in I think 1978, called “Free to Choose.” It was a number one bestseller for months and months. And in the appendix to that book, Friedman reprinted the Socialist Party platform of 1928. And the reason why he reprinted the Socialist Party platform of 1928 was to show us that by 1978 we were living with the Socialist Party platform of 1928. That is, every single element of it has been adopted. So plank one in the Socialist Party platform of 1928, “Nationalization of our natural resources, beginning with the coal mines and water sites, particularly of Boulder Dam and Muscle Shoals.” And then in parentheses he says “Boulder Dam, renamed Hoover Dam, and Muscle Shoals are now both federal projects.”
Number two, “A publicly owned giant power system under which the federal government shall cooperate with the states and municipalities in the distribution of electrical energy to the people at cost.” And in parentheses he says, “We’ve made a regional start on this with the Tennessee Valley Authority.” There’s actually more to it now than there was in 1978.
But anyway, number three, “National ownership in democratic management of railroads and other means of transportation and communication.” Parentheses, “Railroad passenger service is completely nationalized through Amtrak. Some freight service is nationalized through Conrail. The FCC controls communications by telephone, telegraph, radio, and television.” And of course what Friedman didn’t know in 1978 was that now the federal government feels free to wiretap millions, literally millions of Americans, without ever identifying them, without ever getting a warrant from any kind of a judge. It’s even more problematic than it was when Friedman wrote this.
Mike: Right.
Kevin: Number four, Socialist Party platform of 1928, “An adequate national program for flood control, flood relief, reforestation, irrigation, and reclamation.” Well, Friedman in parentheses says, “Government expenditures for these purposes are currently in the many billions of dollars.” And of course they’re far greater now than they were when he wrote that. I mean, I could go through the rest of this platform from the Socialist Party of 1928. But my point is, for those of you who think the Constitutional Convention idea is dangerous because we’ll lose the republic that the founding fathers bequeathed us, wake up. We already...
Mike: We lost it.
Kevin: We don’t have the constitutional republic the founding fathers bequeathed us. We are living with 20th-century socialists’ idea of what a central government ought to look like.
Mike: Well, and Dr. Kevin Gutzman with us. It’s our first crack at this. It’s called “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About a Constitutional Convention but Were Afraid to Ask.” I might add a coda to number four, Doc. And that is, that since I live in a flood zone here in Southeast Louisiana, the only place I can buy flood insurance from is from NFIP, National Flood Insurance Program.
Kevin: Right.
Mike: Which has been taken over by the – it’s administered by the federal government. Now, your agent can broker it, but it is backed up by the full faith and credit of Uncle Sucker. Just so you know. So you can count number four in the Socialist Party Platform of 1928 as having been completed, absolutely completely. And just ask anyone in Florida how they get homeowners insurance if they live in Jupiter, Florida or below, and they’re probably going to give you a similar answer.
Kevin: Well, my point, and as I said, I could go on with the...
Mike: Right, I know you could.
Kevin: ...rest of the planks of this. But I omitted the planks about what became Social Security and Medicare and all this kind of stuff. So the bottom line is people commonly object to the idea of a Constitutional Convention by saying, oh, lord, the socialists will get control of the government. Well, you know, have you looked at the Democratic and Republican parties lately? And how do you think they behave? The idea that the federal Constitution is doing what it’s supposed to do, that it’s performing its only function, which is to limit the power of people in federal office, is absurd. You’d have to have been asleep. That you’re going to lose that by having an attempt to rein in the federal government – now, I think that if there were a federal Constitutional Convention, what they should take up should be the way the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause has been interpreted, the way the Commerce Clause has been interpreted, and the notion that the powers of Congress listed in Article I, Section 8 are exhaustive.
So there’s no reason why, if we had a Constitutional Convention, we couldn’t have three amendments saying the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is only procedural. It includes no grants of substantive rights. That the Commerce Clause is only about trade between the states. It has nothing to do with matters that are entirely internal to the states. And of course that’s the way it was intended in the first place, but federal judges and the Congress have completely remade it so that the other day, when Pelosi was asked where do you get authority to tell people who their doctor will be, she laughed because it assumed, you know, the question had underlining it the idea that there was something illegitimate about the way federal officials have been behaving since 1937. Well, of course, as you and I know, there is something illegitimate about the way that federal officials have been behaving since 1937. And the only way to slap some sense into them is to have a Constitutional Convention. That’s it. There’s no other mechanism.
Dr. Kevin Gutzman: When you want to become an attorney, you get a law degree from an accredited law school. And then you take a bar exam. Before you take the bar exam, you take a bar review class, several weeks of cramming to learn everything about being a lawyer that you didn’t learn in law school.
Mike: Right.
Kevin: And when I took the bar review class, getting ready to take the Texas bar exam, I took it from one of the popular national companies that give this kind of a class in states all over the country. When we got to the part of the bar review course in which the instructor was preparing us for the multistate multiple choice section, that is, for the section of the Texas bar exam that was multiple choice and that is given, not only in Texas, but in various other states in the country. She told us, if one of the options you’re given is the Tenth Amendment, you know that that is always wrong. You never choose the option Tenth Amendment on the bar exam because that is always incorrect. In other words, by the time I was taking the bar review class in 1990, everybody knew that Tenth Amendment is never enforced. It is never respected. The principle that the Congress has only the powers that are enumerated in the Constitution is completely absent from, quote/unquote, “constitutional law” these days. So, you know, there’s that.
Mike: This is how we...
Kevin: And then the other possibility, besides calling on the Tenth Amendment to limit the powers of Congress, is nullification. And there are people now who are talking about nullification, which is the idea that the state governments would stand up to the federal government and prevent them from doing something. We’ve seen that tried in American history. You know, the federal government has the weapons, has the army. It’s absurd. There’s no way that nullification is going to work
Mike: So nullification is not going to work. You can’t have...
Kevin: No.
Mike: ...a citizen-led – what Kevin’s question was, could the citizens call the Convention, and you answered no. It has to be called by the legislature.
Kevin: That’s right.
Mike: So then to clarify here – and “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Constitutional Convention but Were Afraid to Ask” with our special guest Dr. Kevin Gutzman here. What is needed is – and I believe there’s only two states left that need to call; right?
Kevin: I don’t know what the current number is.
Mike: There’s 34.
Kevin: I’ve read varying accounts of that.
Mike: Okay. Well, we can get an inventory on that, is to get to 38 states, three quarters of them necessary or needed to call the convention. And then the next question is, before I get back to your phone calls at 1-866-95-PATRIOT, my question, here’s the one that I have. So the state legislatures will then, I would assume, much as Madison and Hamilton were able to convince the various state legislatures and assemblies in 1787 to send delegations, they would then appoint delegations to go meet in a central place, say it’s Kansas City or wherever, and they would hold this convention. Is that how – that’s how you would envision the pragmatic, actual workings of it would take place; correct?
Kevin: Yes. It’s just a carbon copy of the process that yielded the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution in the first place.
Mike: Okay. So we may need to have a failure, then. We may need to go to Mount Vernon and lose. We may have to go meet in Annapolis in a bar and not accomplish anything other than commit that, okay, we’ve got to go back and redouble our efforts because they tried twice. Well, Maryland and Virginia tried to meet. And then Madison and Hamilton tried to conspire to get it together in Annapolis, and of course they were successful. But unlike Madison and Hamilton, though, let’s set the record straight, too. We learned this in “The Fame of Our Fathers” and learned this in Dr. Guzman’s books and in my movie, “The Spirit of ’76.” The advertised purpose for that convention, Dr. Gutzman, was amending the Articles of Confederation; right?
Kevin: Right.
Mike: And we wound up with an entirely new plan of government. Which we’re not seeking here.
Kevin: Again, the bottom line is, well, of course, in a sense we are seeking an entirely new plan of government. It depends how you want to look at it. If you want to say we like the original frame of the federal government, and we’d like to see it actually implemented, or if you want to say we’d like to have a different government from the one we actually live under, we’d like one that looks more like the one the founders gave us. So I guess you could say it’s new, or you could say it isn’t, whichever way you want to look at it. But, yes, it’s true that in the first place, people like Madison and Hamilton wanted to strengthen the central government. And we’ve had three major episodes in American history when the central government was drastically strengthened. One was when they ratified the federal Constitution. One was at the time of the Civil War and immediately after. And then the third one was the so-called Revolution of 1937, which was really the culmination of things that had been going on for 15 years before that.
So we live today under not the Constitution of 1788, but the Constitution of 1937. And we’ve seen where that’s taken us. We have an absolutely unbridgeable gap between the federal government’s revenue and its obligations. And the gap is growing as people in federal office see that every incentive for them leads to more spending, more borrowing, permanent enserfment of our descendents. I think that’s why this is the first time we need a formal effort drastically to reduce the power of the central government.
Mike: I concur. Curt is in Ohio with a great question, next up here on “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Calling a Constitutional Convention but Were Afraid to Ask.” The time has come, my friends. Curt, how are you?
Curt: Good, sir. How are you?
Mike: Fantastic. What’s your question?
Curt: My question, I think we already answered. Originally my question was, once the convention is convened, I’ve heard rumors that the entire document is at risk at that point, where anything could be amended by the convention. Is that correct?
Kevin: No, the convention can’t amend anything. This is a very important point.
Mike: Okay.
Kevin: The convention would be called to make proposals. But if there were going to be any actual amendment adopted, it would have to be adopted through ratification by the states. So it would take 38 states then to amend. That’s why this idea, this scare idea that people are floating out there, that there’d be a coup d’état, and we’d end up all singing the Marseilles, or May 1st would be our new national holiday because we’d all be wearing red all the time, this is just inaccurate. A convention cannot actually change the Constitution. It can make proposals. So if they came out of the convention with a proposal, you know, let’s get rid of the Congress and have a military government, bang, you’re stuck, that’s not what could happen. All it could do would be make recommendations to the states for their ratification. And again, I think that a Constitutional Convention that grew out of a movement to reassert state governments’ Tenth Amendment rights is highly unlikely then to say we want, you know, Nancy Pelosi to be our queen. That’s just not going to happen.
Mike: Right. And I get this question a lot, too. “You don’t know what you’re – this is dangerous.” But as you pointed out, and I think this needs to be part of the recap that we’re going to post online on our website, you can hopefully help us get it linked up on some other popular sites, that – and this is something that I’d never heard before. But that document that you cited that was in Friedman’s, the appendix to Friedman’s book, how much more evidence or how much more destruction, ignorance, and outright – what’s the word when you violate your oath? I mean, I get calls all the time, Kevin, from “Are they committing treason when they violate their oath, and they do this to the Constitution, and they do that?” And I always say, well, no, they’re not really conspiring with the enemy. They’re not making war with the enemy against us here. But yes, they are violating their oath. And apparently there is no penalty, and Bill Clinton can attest to this, for perjury anymore.
Kevin: Well, he paid a $90,000 fine and was disbarred for five years. So I guess that was some kind of penalty, although of course it was not nearly so stiff a penalty as you or I might have paid if we had been found to have done exactly the same thing as he did. Let me read you a little bit more of this Socialist Party platform of 1928 from the back of Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.” Plank nine, “A system of health and accident insurance and old-age pensions, as well as unemployment insurance.” So people who say, wow, we’re going to have socialism if we have a Constitutional Convention, plank nine is what they’re voting on in Congress right now. This is what they think they’re empowered to do by the current federal Constitution. In other words, they completely ignore the limitation on the powers of the central government that were supposed to have been created by the Constitution. And they are writing into law the Socialist Party platform of 1928.
Mike: Amazing.
Kevin: The whole thing is going to be what we live with. So people who say, oh, no, we can’t have a Constitutional Convention because it’ll mean the death of our beloved Constitution, signed by Washington and Franklin and Adams and, I mean, and Hamilton and Madison, you’re wrong. That frame of government is long gone. And what we’re talking about here is the question, is there any way to bring it back? Is there any way actually to have a limited decentralized government in which most decision making is done by elected state legislators? And I’m saying the only mechanism that the Constitution provides is the Constitutional Convention. There’s no other way effectively to limit the powers of Congress.
Want to learn more about Dr Kevin R.C. Gutzman(He received his BA, MPAff, and JD from the University of Texas and my MA and PhD in American History from the University of Virginia) and the real facts of the constitution from a real Constitutional Scholar?
I would suggest you read a couple of his books in the matter:
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution...
Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama...
Virginia's American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776-1840...
Its always refreshing to have a debate and actually have facts to back up your arguement....
I have to thank my good friends Mike and Kevin for this keen insight to the constitution
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Those Who Need To Seek Protection Will Never Succeed
Welcome back to the plantation. Also known as the welfare state. Yeah, so let’s start making it easier by paying you to not work. Let’s start making it easier by paying you to not get married. Let’s start making it easier for you by paying you to have children that used to be called bastards and are illegitimate. Let’s start paying you to go to schools that you’re not going to learn anything you’re ever going to use. But we’ll pay you to go while you’re there for the four years. Let’s start doing all these things. And, that’s right. Well, the work ethic and the devotion to making yourself a better individual was thrown out the window in favor of what I just described here. And that’s what really has made this an unthinkable human tragedy. You know, you see these children all across the amber waves of fuel. You see these kids with no dad, no father.
And this is the other thing. “Oh, the President ought to do something about it.” No, the President shouldn’t do a damn thing about it. And the first thing that we ought to say, hey, before we start doing things, is it constitutional? Is this something that ought to be left to the states and to the local communities? And the idea here that we have this omnipotent, all-powerful President who must be consulted on all things that matter, no matter what they may be, is itself a symptom of the disease.
Robert Higgs has chronicled all this government largesse here, this massive monster known as, as I call it, Leviathan here, and how it must be dealt with and what have you here. And he’s asked the question, “Well, Higgs, what are we going to do about it?” And Higgs, says, “I wish I had a solution, but there isn’t a solution. There certainly isn’t one single magic bullet that will fix all this.” And on a daily basis we have these discussions. Now, we have suggestions for things that need to be done. Let me frame it to you like this. Think of it like this, and think of what’s happening today with unemployment 10.2 percent and the estimated number of people without a job standing now at 16 million souls. Let me ask you a question. How is it possible that we can reemploy 16 million people without a fundamental shift in the way we are currently doing business? Hmm? Explain it to me. And don’t tell me, Mr President,“Oh, we’re going to have green energy jobs...We’re going to build new highways.” You really think 16 million people want to go off and build a highway or a windmill? And how long is that going to last, after we find out that windmills don’t work as advertised, are exorbitantly cost prohibitive and don’t yield the results that they’re advertised to yield? What are you going to do then? So explain to me, geniuses out there, how in God’s holy name are we going to reemploy 16 million unemployed souls?
There is only one mechanism that I know of on the face of the earth that is possible. And don’t tell me, “Oh, yeah, we can give them all government jobs, 16 million people, new ones working for the government.” That takes 16 million people out of the productive sector, meaning that about 30 million people need to then work to support those 16 million people because there’s launderers of the money paid to the 16 million that would work for the government. So that’s not an option. So what then is possibly the option to employ those 16 million people? Ladies and gentlemen, we can discuss this ad nauseam. You can float your theories on economics all you want. There is only one mechanism in the history of humankind that could possibly employ – and it’s not a war, either – 16 million people. What is it? Liberty. Disband the apparatus that is suffocating the 16 million unemployed.
Let me ask you that are out there that are among the 16 million unemployed: Would you rather have free and open, honest, hard work competition to try and get a job, make the best product, be the best welder, be the best craftsman, be the best salesman, be the best baker, candlestick maker, would you rather have that, or would you rather stick with this monster that has been created to protect you from racism and to protect you from sexism and to protect you from minoritism and to protect you from illegal aliens who have to have a fair shake, too? Would you rather take your shot with Leviathan, which is producing the results all around you? Or would you rather take your shot with your founders? Would you rather take your shot with the Jacobins, as they’re known? Would you rather take your shot with the Jeffersons? And I don’t mean William, movin’ on up. Choose.
Some of you fools are going to, “No, I want to be protected from racism.” All right, well, then, you’re not going to find a job. Go sit down over there. “Mr. Reader, I want to be protected from sexism.” Well, you’re not going to find a job either. Go sit down over there. “Mr. Reader, I want to be protected from people who discriminate against Muslims.” Yeah, well, go sit down over there. You’re not going to find a job, either. “I want to be protected from not being able to work an eight-hour day because I have other things to do.” Well, then, go sit down over there. You’re not going to find a job, either.
Again, this is all going to end in tears. In tears. The only mechanism that exists on earth that can fix this problem that is growing as I speak is liberty. It is the pursuit, your pursuit, of being the best that you could be and competing with those who may not be as good as you at being that best. It is the unshackling and the deregulation of all these wonderful, God-given natural resources that we are so blessed with on this northern part of the American continent. That’s it. It’s not hard to figure out. If government and if the monopolists and the corporatists are fired, eliminated, gotten out of the way, then and only then – and I’m not talking about installing dictators. I’m not talking about Cuban Castro revolutions or Mao great leap forwards where it’s all planned. I’m talking about the opposite. I’m talking about dismantling that which is holding progress back. That means that that federal judge, or whoever it was that decided that that stupid fish needs to be protected in the San Joaquin Valley, that stupid little delta smelt, that that judge is recalled by the people, his order is taken back to the state legislature, it is overturned, and that water is used to promote human happiness. Screw the stupid fish. If it dies, so what. Eat it. Can the sumbitch and ship it to China. And unless you do that, you and I are going to be sitting here for years talking about this. That’s if you can still afford a laptop, desktop, newspaper, or a radio....
This has all conspired and accrued over the growth of our governments. Your states are suffering. All of your states are suffering. And the reason they’re suffering is because they got too big. They took too many people out of the productive sector and put them into being nonproductive, into micromanaging other people’s affairs and doing things that private people, citizens, individuals and communities ought to be doing. And if you’re not willing to erase that – “No, I want my unemployment extension benefit” – well, then, you’re probably not going to find a job. Go ahead and sit out there and wait for a Fortune 500 to come along and save your life.
Thanks to Mike Church and his fine informative Show,
and thanks to The Economist Robert Higgs
And this is the other thing. “Oh, the President ought to do something about it.” No, the President shouldn’t do a damn thing about it. And the first thing that we ought to say, hey, before we start doing things, is it constitutional? Is this something that ought to be left to the states and to the local communities? And the idea here that we have this omnipotent, all-powerful President who must be consulted on all things that matter, no matter what they may be, is itself a symptom of the disease.
Robert Higgs has chronicled all this government largesse here, this massive monster known as, as I call it, Leviathan here, and how it must be dealt with and what have you here. And he’s asked the question, “Well, Higgs, what are we going to do about it?” And Higgs, says, “I wish I had a solution, but there isn’t a solution. There certainly isn’t one single magic bullet that will fix all this.” And on a daily basis we have these discussions. Now, we have suggestions for things that need to be done. Let me frame it to you like this. Think of it like this, and think of what’s happening today with unemployment 10.2 percent and the estimated number of people without a job standing now at 16 million souls. Let me ask you a question. How is it possible that we can reemploy 16 million people without a fundamental shift in the way we are currently doing business? Hmm? Explain it to me. And don’t tell me, Mr President,“Oh, we’re going to have green energy jobs...We’re going to build new highways.” You really think 16 million people want to go off and build a highway or a windmill? And how long is that going to last, after we find out that windmills don’t work as advertised, are exorbitantly cost prohibitive and don’t yield the results that they’re advertised to yield? What are you going to do then? So explain to me, geniuses out there, how in God’s holy name are we going to reemploy 16 million unemployed souls?
There is only one mechanism that I know of on the face of the earth that is possible. And don’t tell me, “Oh, yeah, we can give them all government jobs, 16 million people, new ones working for the government.” That takes 16 million people out of the productive sector, meaning that about 30 million people need to then work to support those 16 million people because there’s launderers of the money paid to the 16 million that would work for the government. So that’s not an option. So what then is possibly the option to employ those 16 million people? Ladies and gentlemen, we can discuss this ad nauseam. You can float your theories on economics all you want. There is only one mechanism in the history of humankind that could possibly employ – and it’s not a war, either – 16 million people. What is it? Liberty. Disband the apparatus that is suffocating the 16 million unemployed.
Let me ask you that are out there that are among the 16 million unemployed: Would you rather have free and open, honest, hard work competition to try and get a job, make the best product, be the best welder, be the best craftsman, be the best salesman, be the best baker, candlestick maker, would you rather have that, or would you rather stick with this monster that has been created to protect you from racism and to protect you from sexism and to protect you from minoritism and to protect you from illegal aliens who have to have a fair shake, too? Would you rather take your shot with Leviathan, which is producing the results all around you? Or would you rather take your shot with your founders? Would you rather take your shot with the Jacobins, as they’re known? Would you rather take your shot with the Jeffersons? And I don’t mean William, movin’ on up. Choose.
Some of you fools are going to, “No, I want to be protected from racism.” All right, well, then, you’re not going to find a job. Go sit down over there. “Mr. Reader, I want to be protected from sexism.” Well, you’re not going to find a job either. Go sit down over there. “Mr. Reader, I want to be protected from people who discriminate against Muslims.” Yeah, well, go sit down over there. You’re not going to find a job, either. “I want to be protected from not being able to work an eight-hour day because I have other things to do.” Well, then, go sit down over there. You’re not going to find a job, either.
Again, this is all going to end in tears. In tears. The only mechanism that exists on earth that can fix this problem that is growing as I speak is liberty. It is the pursuit, your pursuit, of being the best that you could be and competing with those who may not be as good as you at being that best. It is the unshackling and the deregulation of all these wonderful, God-given natural resources that we are so blessed with on this northern part of the American continent. That’s it. It’s not hard to figure out. If government and if the monopolists and the corporatists are fired, eliminated, gotten out of the way, then and only then – and I’m not talking about installing dictators. I’m not talking about Cuban Castro revolutions or Mao great leap forwards where it’s all planned. I’m talking about the opposite. I’m talking about dismantling that which is holding progress back. That means that that federal judge, or whoever it was that decided that that stupid fish needs to be protected in the San Joaquin Valley, that stupid little delta smelt, that that judge is recalled by the people, his order is taken back to the state legislature, it is overturned, and that water is used to promote human happiness. Screw the stupid fish. If it dies, so what. Eat it. Can the sumbitch and ship it to China. And unless you do that, you and I are going to be sitting here for years talking about this. That’s if you can still afford a laptop, desktop, newspaper, or a radio....
This has all conspired and accrued over the growth of our governments. Your states are suffering. All of your states are suffering. And the reason they’re suffering is because they got too big. They took too many people out of the productive sector and put them into being nonproductive, into micromanaging other people’s affairs and doing things that private people, citizens, individuals and communities ought to be doing. And if you’re not willing to erase that – “No, I want my unemployment extension benefit” – well, then, you’re probably not going to find a job. Go ahead and sit out there and wait for a Fortune 500 to come along and save your life.
Thanks to Mike Church and his fine informative Show,
and thanks to The Economist Robert Higgs
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)