If successful, twenty-first century constitutionalism will entail the diminishment of deliberative and representative government. The twenty-first century constitutional debate has already been engaged; the only question is whether ordinary citizens, and their representatives, will be participants in this debate, or whether it will take place within the exclusive province of judges and lawyers.
One of the little monthly pleasures of mine is going to the mailbox and finding my latest copy of Imprimis, from Hillsdale College. This neat publication always features a condensed version of a thought provoking speech sponsored by Hillsdale.
From the College website:
Imprimis is the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College and is dedicated to educating citizens and promoting civil and religious liberty by covering cultural, economic, political and educational issues of enduring significance. The content of Imprimis is drawn from speeches delivered to Hillsdale College-hosted events, both on-campus and off-campus. First published in 1972, Imprimis is one of the most widely circulated opinion publications in the nation with over 1.8 million subscribers.
As we have embarked on a journey of learning about our Constitution, with the Constituting America project, I felt this month’s featured speech quite appropriate.
Stephan J Markman is a Justice on the Michigan Supreme Court and served as Assistant Attorney General under Ronald Reagan. Below Justice Markman takes us through a real crisis that is looming on the horizon. Conservatives have long warned of the dangers of activist judges, of any stripe, and the damage to Freedom and Liberty, as well as the very fabric of our nation, these judges cause.
From Imprimis:
**The Coming Constitutional Debate
Stephen Markman was appointed Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court in 1999, and was re-elected in 2000 and 2004. Previously, he served as United States Attorney in Michigan; as Assistant Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, where he coordinated the federal judicial selection process; and as Chief Counsel of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution. He has published in such journals as the Stanford Law Review and the University of Chicago Law Review, and has been a distinguished professor of constitutional law at Hillsdale College since 1993.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered in Washington, D.C., on February 25, 2010, at an event sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship.
AS ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL under President Ronald Reagan, I prepared a report for Attorney General Edwin Meese entitled "The Constitution in the Year 2000: Choices Ahead." This report sought to identify a range of areas in which significant constitutional controversy could be expected over the next 20 years. As critical as I believe those controversies were, they pale in significance before the controversies that will arise over the next several decades. The resolution of these emerging controversies will determine whether the Constitution of 2030 bears any resemblance to the Constitution of 1787—the Framers’ Constitution that has guided this nation for most of its first two centuries and has rendered it the freest, most prosperous, and most creative nation in the history of the world.
Proponents of a "21st century constitution" or "living constitution" aim to transform our nation’s supreme law beyond recognition—and with a minimum of public attention and debate. Indeed, if there is an overarching theme to what they wish to achieve, it is the diminishment of the democratic and representative processes of American government. It is the replacement of a system of republican government, in which the constitution is largely focused upon the architecture of government in order to minimize the likelihood of abuse of power, with a system of judicial government, in which substantive policy outcomes are increasingly determined by federal judges. Rather than merely defining broad rules of the game for the legislative and executive branches of government, the new constitution would compel specific outcomes.
Yes, the forms of the Founders’ Constitution would remain—a bicameral legislature, periodic elections, state governments—but the important decisions would increasingly be undertaken by courts, especially by federal courts. It will be the California referendum process writ national, a process by which the decisions of millions of voters on matters such as racial quotas, social services funding, and immigration policy have been routinely overturned by single judges acting in the name of the Constitution—not the Framers’ Constitution, but a "constitution for our times," a "living constitution," resembling, sadly, the constitutions of failed and despotic nations across the globe.
This radical transformation of American political life will occur, if it succeeds, not through high-profile court decisions resolving grand disputes of war and peace, abortion, capital punishment, or the place of religion in public life, but more likely as the product of decisions resolving forgettable and mundane disputes—the kind mentioned on the back pages of our daily newspapers, if at all. Let me provide a brief summary of six of the more popular theories of the advocates of the 21st century constitution. In particular, it is my hope here to inform ordinary citizens so that they will be better aware of the stakes. For while judges and lawyers may be its custodians, the Constitution is a document that is the heritage and responsibility of every American citizen.
1. Privileges or Immunities Clause
Since shortly after the Civil War, the privileges or immunities clause of the 14th Amendment has been understood as protecting a relatively limited array of rights that are a function of American federal citizenship, such as the right to be heard in courts of justice and the right to diplomatic protection. In defining the protections of the privileges or immunities clause in this manner, the Supreme Court in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) rejected the argument that the clause also protects rights that are a function of state citizenship, asserting that this would lead to federal courts serving as a "perpetual censor" of state and local governments. This decision has served as a bulwark of American federalism.
Although a considerable amount of federal judicial authority has since been achieved over the states through interpretations of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, many proponents of a 21st century constitution seek additional federal oversight of state and local laws. Their strategy in this regard is to refashion the privileges or immunities clause as a new and essentially unlimited bill of rights within the 14th Amendment. The practical consequences of this would be to authorize federal judges to impose an ever broader and more stultifying uniformity upon the nation. Whatever modicum of federalism remains extant at the outset of this century, considerably less would remain tomorrow.
2. Positive Rights
For the 21st century constitutionalist, perhaps the greatest virtue of redefining the privileges or immunities clause is the prospect of transforming the Constitution from a guarantor of "negative liberties" into a charter of "affirmative government," guaranteeing an array of "positive" rights. As President Obama has observed in a radio interview in criticism of the legacy of the Warren Court of the 1950s and 1960s, "[It] never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and . . . more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. . . . [T]he Warren Court . . . wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. . . that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf."
President Obama is correct. The Framers’ Constitution defines individual rights in terms of what the government cannot do to you. For example, the government cannot inflict cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore the individual has a constitutional right not to be subject to such punishment; the government cannot engage in unreasonable searches and seizures, and therefore the individual has a constitutional right not to be subject to such searches and seizures, and so forth. By contrast, the Framers’ Constitution does not guarantee rights to material goods such as housing, education, food, clothing, jobs, or health care—rights that place a related obligation upon the state to obtain the resources from other citizens to pay for them.
Proponents of a 21st century constitution have many grievances with the individual rights premises of our Constitution as written—such as the largely procedural focus of the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, with its old-fashioned conception of such rights as those to "life, liberty, and property"; the negative cast of the specifically-defined rights in the Bill of Rights; and the limited application of the equal rights clause to things that have been enacted by legislatures (as opposed to things that they should have been required to enact). Each of these "limitations" poses significant barriers to what 21st century constitutionalists hope to achieve in reconfiguring America. This explains their interest in employing the privileges or immunities clause, which seems to them open-ended and susceptible to definition by judges at their own discretion.
As various advocates of a 21st century constitution have urged, a privilege or immunity might be interpreted to allow the invention of a host of new "rights," and thus be construed to guarantee social or economic equality. However pleasing this might sound to some people, there should be no mistake: adopting this interpretation will supplant representative decision-making with the decision-making of unelected, unaccountable, and life-tenured judges. Should the privileges or immunities clause be used in this way, as a charter of positive rights, ours will become an America in which citizens are constitutionally entitled to their neighbors’ possessions; in which economic redistribution has become as ingrained a principle as federalism and the separation of powers; in which the great constitutional issues of the day will focus on whether porridge should be subsidized and housing allowances reimbursed at 89 or 94 percent of the last fiscal year level; and in which a succession of new "rights" will be parceled out as people are deemed worthy of them by berobed lawyers in the judiciary.
3. State Action
A barrier posed by both the due process and the privileges or immunities clauses, and viewed as anachronistic by 21st century constitutionalists, is the requirement of state action as a precondition for the enforcement of rights. In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), another post-Civil War precedent, the Supreme Court asserted that these provisions of the 14th Amendment prohibited only the abridgment of individual rights by the state. "It is state action of a particular character that is prohibited. . . . The wrongful act of an individual is simply a private wrong and if not sanctioned in some way by the state, or not done under state authority, the [individual’s] rights remain in full force." However, for advocates of 21st century constitutionalism, if fairness and equity are to be achieved, the Constitution must become more like a general legal code—applicable to both public and private institutions.
Consider, for example, Hillsdale College. Despite being the embodiment of a thoroughly private institution, government officials have sought to justify the imposition of federal rules and regulations upon Hillsdale by characterizing the college as the equivalent of a state entity on the grounds that it received public grants-in-aid. When in response to this rationale, and in order to retain its independence, Hillsdale rejected further grants, the government then sought to justify its rules and regulations on the grounds that Hillsdale was the indirect beneficiary of grants-in-aid going to individual students, such as GI Bill benefits. Once again in response to this rationale, Hillsdale asserted its independence by barring its students from receiving public grants, even those earned as in the case of GI benefits, and instead bolstered its own private scholarship resources. We have witnessed a steadily more aggressive effort by governmental regulators to treat private institutions as the equivalent of the state, and thereby to extend public oversight.
However, it would be more convenient simply to nullify the state action requirement altogether. Professor Mark Tushnet of Harvard Law School, for example, would reconsider the Civil Rights Cases:
The state-action doctrine contributes nothing but obfuscation to constitutional analysis. It works as a bogeyman because it appeals to a vague libertarian sense that Americans have about the proper relation between them and their government. It seems to suggest that there is a domain of freedom into which the Constitution doesn’t reach. We would be well rid of the doctrine.
If Professor Tushnet succeeds in this mission, Hillsdale’s policies concerning such things as tuition, admissions, faculty hiring, curriculum, and discipline will each have to pass the scrutiny, and receive the imprimatur, of judges.
4. Political Questions
In areas that were once viewed as inappropriate for judicial involvement, federal courts have begun to assert themselves in an unprecedented and aggressive manner. The limited role of the judiciary, for example, with regard to matters of national defense and foreign policy is not explicitly set forth in the Constitution, but such matters have from time immemorial been understood to be non-justiciable and within the exclusive responsibility of the elected branches of government. As far back as Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall recognized that "Questions in their nature political . . . can never be made in this Court."
Yet just in the last several years, the Supreme Court, in a series of 5-4 decisions, has overruled determinations made by both the legislative and executive branches regarding the treatment of captured enemy combatants. Most notably, the Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush (2008) that foreign nationals captured in combat and held outside the United States by the military as prisoners of war—a war authorized by the Congress under Article I, Section 8, and waged by the President as Commander-in-Chief under Article II, Section 2—possess the constitutional right to challenge their detentions in federal court. Thus, in yet one more realm of public policy—one on which the sovereignty and liberty of a free people are most dependent, national defense—judges have now begun to embark upon a sharply expanded role.
If there is no significant realm left of "political questions," if there are no longer any traditional limitations upon the exercise of the judicial power, then every matter coming before every president, every Congress, every governor, every legislature, and every county commission and city council can, with little difficulty, be summarily recast as a justiciable dispute, or what the Constitution, in Article III, Section 2, describes as a "case" or "controversy." As a result, every policy debate taking place within government, at every level, will become little more than a prelude for judicial resolution.
5. Ninth Amendment
Another looming constitutional battleground concerns the meaning of the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Many 21st century constitutionalists understand this amendment to say that there is some unknown array of unenumerated rights that lie fallow in the Constitution, waiting only to be unearthed by far-sighted judges.
Professor Thomas Grey of the Stanford Law School has suggested, for example, that the Ninth Amendment constitutes a "license to constitutional decisionmakers to look beyond the substantive commands of the constitutional text to protect fundamental rights not expressed therein." Rights to abortion, contraception, homosexual behavior, and similar sexual privacy rights have already been imposed by judges detecting such rights in the Ninth Amendment. The problem is that, in the words of Justices Stewart and Black, this understanding of the amendment "turns somersaults with history" and renders the courts a "day-to-day constitutional convention."
The more conventional understanding of the Ninth Amendment has viewed it in the historical context of the Bill of Rights, of which it is a part. By this understanding, it was written to dispel any implication that by the specification of particular rights in the Bill of Rights, the people had implicitly relinquished to the new federal government rights not specified. Like the Tenth Amendment—which serves as a reminder that powers neither given to the federal government nor prohibited to the states in the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people—the Ninth Amendment was adopted to emphasize that our national government is one of limited powers. Its principal purpose was to prevent an extension of federal power, not to provide an open-ended grant of judicial authority that would have the opposite effect.
6. Transnationalism
Professor Harold Koh of the Yale Law School, and now State Department Legal Counsel, is perhaps the leading proponent of what he calls "transnationalism," which he contrasts with the "nationalist philosophy" that has characterized American constitutional law for the past 220 years.
Transnationalists believe that international and domestic law are merging into a hybrid body of transnational law, while so-called nationalists persist in preserving a division between domestic and foreign law that respects the sovereignty of the United States. Transnationalists believe that domestic courts have a critical role to play in incorporating international law into domestic law, while so-called nationalists claim that only the political branches are authorized to domesticate international legal norms. Professor Koh predicts that these disagreements will play out in future Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and that these appointments will be "pivotal" in determining by 2020 the direction in which the jurisprudence of the United States proceeds.
In practice, transnationalism would legitimize reliance by American judges upon foreign law in giving meaning to the United States Constitution; it would bind federal and state governments to international treaties and agreements that had never been ratified by the United States Senate much less enacted into law by the Congress; it would render both the domestic and international conduct of the United States increasingly beholden to the review and judgment of international tribunals in Geneva and the Hague; it would expose American soldiers and elected leaders to the sanctions of international law for "war crimes" and "violations of the Earth"; and it would replace the judgments of officials representing the American people, and holding paramount the interests of the United States, with the judgments of multinational panels of bureaucrats and judges finely balancing the interests of the U.S. with those of other nations—including authoritarian and despotic governments—throughout the world.
* * *
It is with the intention of generating debate, and of providing a roadmap to help us better navigate the constitutional forks-in-the-road that will soon be facing our nation, that I offer these thoughts. While there has never been a time in our history in which there was not serious constitutional debate among our people, I would submit that there have been few times in which this debate was more fundamental in defining the American experiment.
Some truly frightening prospects, if this trend isn’t stopped. Unfortunately, with the most radical President we have ever had, a Marxist who was trained to usurp the power of the Constitution through the courts, the chances of a serious constitutional crisis, as described by Justice Markman are almost assured.
This is one more reason that we, as Americans, must come together like never before, and stop the Obama regime in it’s tracks. It will take a generation, or more, to reverse the damage already done by activist judges, who knows what we will face if Obama succeeds in his efforts to make the Constitution irrelevant.
In Federalist 6, Hamilton picks up on the theme of the dangers of becoming disunited as a nation that was started by John Jay. This time Hamilton notes that while there would be many dangers posed to a disunited people by foreign powers, perhaps the most danger would be fighting among the several states.
Hamilton gives real world examples of just such infighting, and how it negatively effected the nations involved. The main point being: The continuation of a United States, combined with a solid Constitution, would serve to prevent many of the issues that would naturally occur between neighboring nations.
This serves as a remainder that a united people can defeat any enemy, both foreign, or domestic, while a divided people are easy prey for those who would seek to harm them. As we all know, we now have a federal government ran by the most radical of men who seek to harm us all through various programs, and gain almost unlimited power and glory for themselves.
This is the most dangerous time in our nation’s history, at no time have Freedom and Liberty been in more danger of extinction. Never has Tyranny gained such a foothold. This is why we have called out to all people to set aside petty differences, at least momentarily, and focus on our mutual goals, for the preservation of the nation.
Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States
For the Independent Journal.
Author: Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
THE three last numbers of this paper have been dedicated to an enumeration of the dangers to which we should be exposed, in a state of disunion, from the arms and arts of foreign nations. I shall now proceed to delineate dangers of a different and, perhaps, still more alarming kind--those which will in all probability flow from dissensions between the States themselves, and from domestic factions and convulsions. These have been already in some instances slightly anticipated; but they deserve a more particular and more full investigation.
A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.
The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion--the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed though an equally operative influence within their spheres. Such are the rivalships and competitions of commerce between commercial nations. And there are others, not less numerous than either of the former, which take their origin entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class, whether the favorites of a king or of a people, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquillity to personal advantage or personal gratification.
The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute, [1] at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the SAMNIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the MEGARENSIANS, [2] another nation of Greece, or to avoid a prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice of a supposed theft of the statuary Phidias, [3] or to get rid of the accusations prepared to be brought against him for dissipating the funds of the state in the purchase of popularity, [4] or from a combination of all these causes, was the primitive author of that famous and fatal war, distinguished in the Grecian annals by the name of the PELOPONNESIAN war; which, after various vicissitudes, intermissions, and renewals, terminated in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth.
The ambitious cardinal, who was prime minister to Henry VIII., permitting his vanity to aspire to the triple crown, [5] entertained hopes of succeeding in the acquisition of that splendid prize by the influence of the Emperor Charles V. To secure the favor and interest of this enterprising and powerful monarch, he precipitated England into a war with France, contrary to the plainest dictates of policy, and at the hazard of the safety and independence, as well of the kingdom over which he presided by his counsels, as of Europe in general. For if there ever was a sovereign who bid fair to realize the project of universal monarchy, it was the Emperor Charles V., of whose intrigues Wolsey was at once the instrument and the dupe.
The influence which the bigotry of one female, [6] the petulance of another, [7] and the cabals of a third, [8] had in the contemporary policy, ferments, and pacifications, of a considerable part of Europe, are topics that have been too often descanted upon not to be generally known.
To multiply examples of the agency of personal considerations in the production of great national events, either foreign or domestic, according to their direction, would be an unnecessary waste of time. Those who have but a superficial acquaintance with the sources from which they are to be drawn, will themselves recollect a variety of instances; and those who have a tolerable knowledge of human nature will not stand in need of such lights to form their opinion either of the reality or extent of that agency. Perhaps, however, a reference, tending to illustrate the general principle, may with propriety be made to a case which has lately happened among ourselves. If Shays had not been a DESPERATE DEBTOR, it is much to be doubted whether Massachusetts would have been plunged into a civil war.
But notwithstanding the concurring testimony of experience, in this particular, there are still to be found visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the States, though dismembered and alienated from each other. The genius of republics (say they) is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humors which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.
Is it not (we may ask these projectors in politics) the true interest of all nations to cultivate the same benevolent and philosophic spirit? If this be their true interest, have they in fact pursued it? Has it not, on the contrary, invariably been found that momentary passions, and immediate interest, have a more active and imperious control over human conduct than general or remote considerations of policy, utility or justice? Have republics in practice been less addicted to war than monarchies? Are not the former administered by MEN as well as the latter? Are there not aversions, predilections, rivalships, and desires of unjust acquisitions, that affect nations as well as kings? Are not popular assemblies frequently subject to the impulses of rage, resentment, jealousy, avarice, and of other irregular and violent propensities? Is it not well known that their determinations are often governed by a few individuals in whom they place confidence, and are, of course, liable to be tinctured by the passions and views of those individuals? Has commerce hitherto done anything more than change the objects of war? Is not the love of wealth as domineering and enterprising a passion as that of power or glory? Have there not been as many wars founded upon commercial motives since that has become the prevailing system of nations, as were before occasioned by the cupidity of territory or dominion? Has not the spirit of commerce, in many instances, administered new incentives to the appetite, both for the one and for the other? Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.
Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage were all republics; two of them, Athens and Carthage, of the commercial kind. Yet were they as often engaged in wars, offensive and defensive, as the neighboring monarchies of the same times. Sparta was little better than a wellregulated camp; and Rome was never sated of carnage and conquest.
Carthage, though a commercial republic, was the aggressor in the very war that ended in her destruction. Hannibal had carried her arms into the heart of Italy and to the gates of Rome, before Scipio, in turn, gave him an overthrow in the territories of Carthage, and made a conquest of the commonwealth.
Venice, in later times, figured more than once in wars of ambition, till, becoming an object to the other Italian states, Pope Julius II. found means to accomplish that formidable league, [9] which gave a deadly blow to the power and pride of this haughty republic.
The provinces of Holland, till they were overwhelmed in debts and taxes, took a leading and conspicuous part in the wars of Europe. They had furious contests with England for the dominion of the sea, and were among the most persevering and most implacable of the opponents of Louis XIV.
In the government of Britain the representatives of the people compose one branch of the national legislature. Commerce has been for ages the predominant pursuit of that country. Few nations, nevertheless, have been more frequently engaged in war; and the wars in which that kingdom has been engaged have, in numerous instances, proceeded from the people.
There have been, if I may so express it, almost as many popular as royal wars. The cries of the nation and the importunities of their representatives have, upon various occasions, dragged their monarchs into war, or continued them in it, contrary to their inclinations, and sometimes contrary to the real interests of the State. In that memorable struggle for superiority between the rival houses of AUSTRIA and BOURBON, which so long kept Europe in a flame, it is well known that the antipathies of the English against the French, seconding the ambition, or rather the avarice, of a favorite leader, [10] protracted the war beyond the limits marked out by sound policy, and for a considerable time in opposition to the views of the court.
The wars of these two last-mentioned nations have in a great measure grown out of commercial considerations,--the desire of supplanting and the fear of being supplanted, either in particular branches of traffic or in the general advantages of trade and navigation.
From this summary of what has taken place in other countries, whose situations have borne the nearest resemblance to our own, what reason can we have to confide in those reveries which would seduce us into an expectation of peace and cordiality between the members of the present confederacy, in a state of separation? Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses and evils incident to society in every shape? Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?
Let the point of extreme depression to which our national dignity and credit have sunk, let the inconveniences felt everywhere from a lax and ill administration of government, let the revolt of a part of the State of North Carolina, the late menacing disturbances in Pennsylvania, and the actual insurrections and rebellions in Massachusetts, declare--!
So far is the general sense of mankind from corresponding with the tenets of those who endeavor to lull asleep our apprehensions of discord and hostility between the States, in the event of disunion, that it has from long observation of the progress of society become a sort of axiom in politics, that vicinity or nearness of situation, constitutes nations natural enemies. An intelligent writer expresses himself on this subject to this effect: "NEIGHBORING NATIONS (says he) are naturally enemies of each other unless their common weakness forces them to league in a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC, and their constitution prevents the differences that neighborhood occasions, extinguishing that secret jealousy which disposes all states to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their neighbors." [11] This passage, at the same time, points out the EVIL and suggests the REMEDY.
PUBLIUS.
1. Aspasia, vide "Plutarch's Life of Pericles."
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. Phidias was supposed to have stolen some public gold, with the connivance of Pericles, for the embellishment of the statue of Minerva.
5. P Worn by the popes.
6. Madame de Maintenon.
7. Duchess of Marlborough.
8. Madame de Pompadour.
9. The League of Cambray, comprehending the Emperor, the King of France, the King of Aragon, and most of the Italian princes and states.
10. The Duke of Marlborough.
11. Vide "Principes des Negociations" par 1'Abbe de Mably.
It’s interesting to note that Hamilton slips in the tale of Holland, a once powerful player on the world stage, and how overwhelming debt, and high taxes, resigned them to a minor role. This absolutely applies to today in America, and was a none to subtle warning for the United States not to spend beyond it’s means, or tax it’s people into oblivion.
We say this a lot, but it truly is funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Please take time to stop by Constituting America’s website and read more essays and join in on the discussions.
It is the Responsibility of the Patriot to protect his country from it’s government.
~Thomas Paine
$10,000,000,000,000
Ten trillion dollars. That’s the conservative estimate of the amount of money Barack Obama, Albert Gore Jr., and a whole cast of criminals stand to make yearly (gross) off of the greatest scam in human history: "global warming."
If you have ever sat back, scratching your head and wondering why the Marxists are pushing for a "cap and trade" bill that would not only make energy costs "necessarily skyrocket," to quote Barack Obama, but do absolutely nothing to effect fictional "climate change, " one way or the other, you are about to find out.
We have long known this Marxist idea was nothing more than a continuation of the communist desire to "spread the wealth" by forcibly stealing from those who create and earn, and giving to those that don’t. This is an inbred mental defect that can’t be cured, only contained, the most effective way being: not to elect these evil, corrupt bastards in the first place!
When we first learned of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) we smelled a rat. No one has been more radical than Barack Obama when it comes to pushing the "global warming" hoax, and the "cap and trade" scheme. Being based in Chicago, common sense told us that Obama was somehow involved, and it was as corrupt as the day is long.
It took Glenn Beck to put it all together, and he has done a remarkable job of spelling it all out. In the videos below, Glenn documents Obama’s ties to the multi-trillion dollar carbon trading scam, Goldman Sachs, the Joyce Foundation, domestic terrorist Bill Ayers' brother, Al Gore, George Soros, Maurice Strong and a whole cast of nerdowells.
Beck does a great job of connecting the dots here, as well as spelling out the scam itself. It’s quite interesting to note that all of the Marxist-democrats were pounding Goldman Sachs in their "show trial" for their handling of derivatives, a "synthetic" financial product, created out of thin air. Never mind it was the Marxist-democrat Party controlled Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac who were involved in the creation of this product, and President Bill Clinton who sanctioned it.
And yet, this is what carbon trading is, in a way. You are not buying a real product, or producing a benefit. Trading carbon credits can best be described as a "sin tax" with the "sinner" being able to purchase the ability to continuing "sinning," without stopping the "sinful behavior" in any way whatsoever. You are simply redistributing wealth. In this case, those who actually produce will be forced to purchase the right to continue to produce from those who don’t produce. A real triumph for the glorious communist revolution!
But stealing money from the producers, and giving it to the non-producers is only half the story. These carbon credits will have to be tracked and traded. These credits will be treated as any other commodity, and traded on the open market. This is where the Chicago Climate Exchange comes in. They will be the only exchange for trading these credits and will make hefty commissions buying and selling these credits. (They get paid coming and going)
Energy prices will "necessarily skyrocket" because of two factors. One, because producers will have to purchase these credits, adding to the cost of doing business, a cost that will be passed on to the consumer, and two, these producers will be forced to buy the privilege of continuing to produce, from the Chicago Climate Exchange, which will raise the cost of doing business even more, again this will be passed on to the consumer.
This is where Obama, and the rest of what Beck is calling Crime, Incorporated come in. Conservative estimates are Obama, Gore and the other scam artists involved in this deal will gross ten trillion dollars yearly, selling nothing but thin air.
They are lengthy, about 10 minutes each, but watch Glenn as he systematically spells out the entire scam. Pay particular attention to the "shadowy figure" he introduces partway into all of this.
As you see it’s pretty easy to understand why, despite mounting evidence that every single "scientific calculation" declaring the existence of "global warming" is fraudulent, much of it deliberately skewed to show a result that doesn’t exist, Obama, Gore, and a whole host of corrupt-o-crats are pushing harder than ever for a "fix" to a non-existent problem.
Ten trillion dollars is a whole lot of money to be made for essentially doing nothing.
Beck offers more insight into this swindle and the criminal activity the Obama regime is engaged in here:
I know what the radical left is going to say, "Glenn Beck is crazy" or something. Well, we did some research and found this article from March of 2009 that appeared in the Canada Free Press written by the unflappable Judi McLeod:
Obama’s involvement in Chicago Climate Exchange—the rest of the story
Good news to know that the truth will always out—even when you’re Barack Obama.
"Obama Years Ago Helped Fund Carbon Program He Is Now Pushing Through Congress" is a FOXNews story by Ed Barnes. In short, "While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president."
The charity was the Joyce Foundation on whose board of directors Obama served and which gave nearly $1.1 million in two separate grants that were "instrumental in developing and launching the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange, which now calls itself "North America’s only cap and trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide."
And that’s only the beginning of this tawdry tale, Mr. Barnes.
The "privately-owned" Chicago Climate Exchange is heavily influenced by Obama cohorts Al Gore and Maurice Strong.
For years now Strong and Gore have been cashing in on that lucrative cottage industry known as man-made global warming.
Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Wikipedia-described as "the world’s first and North America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil."
Gore, self-proclaimed Patron Saint of the Environment, buys his carbon off-sets from himself—the Generation Investment Management LLP, an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 with offices in London and Washington, D.C., of which he is both chairman and founding partner. The Generation Investment Management business has considerable influence over the major carbon credit trading firms that currently exist, including the Chicago Climate Exchange.
Strong, the silent partner, is a man whose name often draws a blank on the Washington cocktail circuit. Even though a former Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the much hyped Rio Earth Summit) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations in the days of an Oil-for-Food beleaguered Kofi Annan, the Canadian born Strong is little known in the United States. That’s because he spends most of his time in China where he he has been working to make the communist country the world’s next superpower. The nondescript Strong, nonetheless is the big cheese in the underworld of climate change and is one of the main architects of the failing Kyoto Protocol.
Full credit for the expose on the business partnership of Strong and Gore in the cap-and-trade reduction scheme should go to the investigative acumen of the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).
The tawdry tale of the top two global warming gurus in the business world goes all the way back to Earth Day, April 17, 1995 when the future author of "An Inconvenient Truth" travelled to Fall River, Massachusetts, to deliver a green sermon at the headquarters of Molten Metal Technology Inc. (MMTI). MMTI was a firm that proclaimed to have invented a process for recycling metals from waste. Gore praised the Molten Metal firm as a pioneer in the kind of innovative technology that can save the environment, and make money for investors at the same time.
"Gore left a few facts out of his speech that day," wrote EIR. "First, the firm was run by Strong and a group of Gore intimates, including Peter Knight, the firm’s registered lobbyist, and Gore’s former top Senate aide."
(Fast-forward to the present day and ask yourself why it is that every time someone picks up another Senate rock, another serpent comes slithering out).
Second, the company had received more than $25 million in U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research and development grants, but had failed to prove that the technology worked on a commercial scale. The company would go on to receive another $8 million in federal taxpayers’ cash, at that point, its only source of revenue.
With Al Gore’s Earth Day as a Wall Street calling card, Molten Metal’s stock value soared to $35 a share, a range it maintained through October 1996. But along the way, DOE scientists had balked at further funding. When in March 1996, corporate officers concluded that the federal cash cow was about to run dry, they took action: Between that date and October 1996, seven corporate officers—including Maurice strong—sold off $15.3 million in personal shares in the company, at top market value. On Oct. 20, 1996—a Sunday—the company issued a press release, announcing for the first time, that DOE funding would be vastly scaled back, and reported the bad news on a conference call with stockbrokers.
On Monday, the stock plunged by 49%, soon landing at $5 a share. By early 1997, furious stockholders had filed a class action suit against the company and its directors. Ironically, one of the class action lawyers had tangled with Maurice strong in another insider trading case, involving a Swiss company called AZL Resources, chaired by Strong, who was also a lead shareholder. The AZL case closely mirrored Molten Metal, and in the end, Strong and the other AZL partners agreed to pay $5 million to dodge a jury verdict, when eyewitness evidence surfaced of Strong’s role in scamming the value of the company stock up into the stratosphere, before selling it off.
In 1997, Strong went on to accept from Tongsun Park, who was found guilty of illegally acting as an Iraqi agent, $1 million from Saddam Hussein, which was invested in Cordex Petroleum Inc., a company he owned with his son, Fred.
These are the leaders in the Man-made Global Warming Movement, who three years later were to be funded by the man who was to become President of the United States of America.
If we follow the time line on where Obama was during the funding of the Chicago Climate Exchange, he was still a professor at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law, with his law license becoming inactive a year later in 2002.
It may be interesting to note that the Chicago Climate Exchange in spite of its hype, is a veritable rat’s nest of cronyism. The largest shareholder in the Exchange is Goldman Sachs. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is its honorary chairman, The Joyce Foundation, which funded the Exchange also funded money for John Ayers’ Chicago School Initiatives. John is the brother of William Ayers.
What a flap when it was discovered that the senator from Chicago had nursed on Saul Alinsky’s milk, had his political career launched at a coffee party held by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, and sat for 20 years, uncomplaining in front of the "God-dam-America" pulpit of resentment-challenged Jeremiah Wright.
Folk were naturally outraged that the empty suit who would go on to become TOTUS was spawned from such anti-American activism.
But the media should have been hollering, "Stop Thief!" instead.
The same Chicago Climate Exchange promoting public rip-off was funded by Obama before he was POTUS.
Even as man-made global warming is being exposed as a money-generating hoax, Obama is working feverishly to push the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme through Congress.
Obama was never the character he created for himself in the fairy-tale version in "Dreams of My Father". He’s the agent of Change and Hope for cohorts making money down at the Chicago Climate Exchange.
The Barbarians are pushing at the gate of the Global Warming fraud, and to borrow a line from children playing Hide and Seek, Here they come, ready or not!
These are world class crooks we are dealing with here, and these plans have been in motion for quite some time. As you can easily see, hyping the "global warming" scam is nothing more than a scheme by a very few über corrupt Marxists who want to gain unbelievable wealth for themselves and their cronies, as well as the complete and total domination over all mankind.
This is nothing short of pure evil, and this group wishes to build a worldwide power base that absolutely no one will be able to escape the reach of. It’s a diabolical scheme that will not only destroy the United States, but every civilized nation on earth. It will wipe out the very concept of personal Liberty and Freedom world wide. The entire world will be little more than slaves to the whims of a few deranged sociopaths whose desire for wealth and power is without limit.
Cap-And-Trade: While senators froth over Goldman Sachs and derivatives, a climate trading scheme being run out of the Chicago Climate Exchange would make Bernie Madoff blush. Its trail leads to the White House.
Lost in the recent headlines was Al Gore's appearance Monday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Council of Foundations, an association of the nation's philanthropic leaders.
"Time's running out (on climate change)," Gore told them. "We have to get our act together. You have a unique role in getting our act together."
Gore was right that foundations will play a key role in keeping the climate scam alive as evidence of outright climate fraud grows, just as they were critical in the beginning when the Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, essentially, air. More specifically perhaps, hot air.
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) advertises itself as "North America's only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide." Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 when the CCX startup grants were issued. As president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities. Now isn't that special?
Few Americans have heard of either entity. The Joyce Foundation was originally the financial nest egg of a widow whose family had made millions in the now out-of-favor lumber industry.
After her death, the foundation was run by philanthropists who increasingly dedicated their giving to liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes.
Currently, CCX members agree to a voluntary but legally binding agreement to regulate greenhouse gases.
The CCX provides the mechanism in trading the very pollution permits and carbon offsets the administration's cap-and-trade proposals would impose by government mandate.
Thanks to Fox News' Glenn Beck, we have learned a lot about CCX, not the least of which is that its founder, Richard Sandor, says he knew Obama well back in the day when the Joyce Foundation awarded money to the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, where Sandor was a research professor.
Sandor estimates that climate trading could be "a $10 trillion dollar market." It could very well be, if cap-and-trade measures like Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer are signed into law, making energy prices skyrocket, and as companies buy and sell permits to emit those six "greenhouse" gases.
So lucrative does this market appear, it attracted the attention of London-based Generation Investment Management, which purchased a stake in CCX and is now the fifth-largest shareholder.
As we noted last year, Gore is co-founder of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets of dubious value that let rich polluters continue to pollute with a clear conscience.
Other founders include former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood, as well as Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris, also of Goldman Sachs. In 2006, CCX received a big boost when another investor bought a 10% stake on the prospect of making a great deal of money for itself. That investor was Goldman Sachs, now under the gun for selling financial instruments it knew were doomed to fail.
The actual mechanism for trading on the exchange was purchased and patented by none other than Franklin Raines, who was CEO of Fannie Mae at the time.
Raines profited handsomely to the tune of some $90 million by buying and bundling bad mortgages that led to the collapse of the American economy. His interest in climate trading is curious until one realizes cap-and-trade would make housing costlier as well.
Amazingly, none of these facts came up at Senate hearings on Goldman Sachs' activities, which may be nothing more than Ross Perot's famous "gorilla dust," meant to distract us from the real issues.
The climate trading scheme being stitched together here will do more damage than Goldman Sachs, AIG and Fannie Mae combined. But it will bring power and money to its architects.
Lest you forget the communistic "spread the wealth" and "economic justice" angle to all of this, here’s a bit of video of Obama’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson. Notice, she isn’t saying much about actually protecting the environment, but sure is interested in "gettin’ paid!"
Some recap:
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is projecting a $10 trillion a year gross profit if the Obama regime’s cap and tax scheme passes. It will destroy the nation’s economy.
Barrack Obama, while a board member of the Joyce Foundation, provided the funding for the formation of the CCX. Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s top adviser, still sits on the board. The money to form the CCX was funneled by Obama to the brother of a murdering domestic terrorist, who declared war on the United States and set off bombs in the Capitol, the Pentagon, as well as police stations, Army recruiting centers, and other government buildings nationwide.
London-based Generation Investment Management (GIM), realizing this was a license to print money, purchased a significant stake in CCX. (fifth largest shareholder) GIM was founded by none other than former Vice President, and chief "global warming" hoaxer, Albert Gore, Jr., along with a cabal of former and present Goldman Sachs people such as David Blood, a former Goldman executive, as well as Mark Ferguson, and Peter Harris, who are still part of Goldman Sachs, just to name a few. Read more here.
Franklin Raines, perhaps one of the most crooked men alive, the man who stole $90 million dollars, for himself, while head of Fannie Mae...by cooking the books, a deed that most certainly helped cause the housing collapse and economic hardships we are in now, used taxpayer money to buy the technology to measure and manage "carbon." The "big board." The patent for this nonsense was granted the day after Obama won the presidential election. More reading here.
GIM, the collaboration between Al Gore and the Goldman Sachs people owns 10 percent of CCX, and it’s potential $10 trillion yearly take, Goldman Sachs also owns 10 percent of CCX. This is an incredible weave of corruption, deceit, and greed. Remember when Obama said last week that at some point one has "made enough money" ? Obviously this vile concept doesn’t apply to Obama himself or his crooked friends.
There is only one way to stop this nightmare from reaching it’s full potential, and the destruction of civil society as we know it, and that is to make sure no legislation mandating cap and tax, or any other "climate change" tomfoolery ever comes to fruition.
With the enviro-moonbattery that is being ginned up over the tragedy in the Gulf, you can bet Obama and his co-conspirators will be working at breakneck speed to get the legislation in place that will make them wealthy beyond all description, and enslave mankind to their will for all eternity.
This must be stopped and stopped now. In a just society, men like Al Gore, George Soros, Barack Obama and the rest of this criminal enterprise, would be thrown in a dark prison to rot, never to see the light of day again.
I’m not sure we can make that happen, but we can expose these people and make sure none of their plans come to fruition. We can then start voting all of those who sympathize with this nonsense out of office until there are no more Marxists, progressives, or any other corrupt beings serving in any elected office, at any level. This is the only way we can save the nation, and the world.
The future of our country, the direction that we go as people, whether we move ahead to meet the challenges of the future or slide back into the irresponsible policies of the past, will be determined by those who get involved.
~Ronald Reagan
When I look at Sarah Palin, when I think about Sarah Palin, when I write about Sarah Palin, one thing stands out: This woman has cojones. Grande cojones!
One of the most frustrating things about the modern day Republican Party is, for the most part, they are gutless wonders. Even the ones who you find appealing, the ones that look like they may have some fight in them, will let you down at some point.
We are at war in this country. We have been at war for the soul of this nation for over 100 years. A minority group of Marxist-progressives have slowly, but methodically infected this nation with an ideology of hate, division, and failure. Over the decades they have eroded many of America’s greatest strengths.
With the tragic election of Barack Obama, the war has escalated to thermonuclear status. Not only is every tradition, every custom under assault, so is the Rule of Law, and the very Constitution that protects us from a tyrannical government. So far the Obama regime is winning this war, aided by their media partners who serve as little more than a Ministry of Propaganda.
We are on the verge of losing America, as we know and love it, forever. If not curtailed, the Obama regime will soon have America destroyed, and what will be left will more resemble a third world Banana Republic, than the world’s only Super Power.
Sarah Palin understands this.
Only one person has really shown the ability to stand up to the regime and take it to them on a steady basis, and that’s Sarah Palin. The radical left hates her for it. The Obama regime has tried ever dirty trick in the book, everything it learned from Alinsky, as well as decades immersed Chicago corruption and thuggery, and yet, not only is Sarah still standing, she has gotten stronger.
Justin Miller has written a fine take on this for The Atlantic magazine. While I don’t agree with everything Justin writes, he does get one thing right, for sure: Sarah Palin brings the Macho.
The Macho Primary:
Republican primary voters like macho candidates and no one is more macho than Sarah Palin.
In a way the fashionista and mother of five evokes more toughness than any man regularly mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in the GOP. Palin is visceral, in your face, relishes combat, and won't be shamed. (Her hobbies include ice fishing, snowmobiling, running, and hunting.) These are traits usually and stereotypically associated with men - and they're especially endearing to Republicans, who like to see President Obama hit with the most force possible.
The basis of her popularity says nothing about whether she will or won't run for president or even if she could win. It does show that she's passing the Republican test of who is the toughest person on Democrats and Obama. It's a "macho primary" of sorts.
Palin goes after Obama at every opportunity and hits him hard. She doesn't use a politician's favorite tactic of saying at least one nice thing about the opponent's character before shredding a man's past, questioning his judgment, beliefs, and priorities. Palin shows as much mercy as Jack Bauer.
Not only is Palin tough on Democrats, she seems to genuinely enjoy beating them up. Crowds get behind Palin's attacks of Obama because she makes being mean fun by using humiliation, sarcasm, cutesy catchphrases, and smiles.
Republicans know she won't bow to what they think are elite sensitivities or political correctness. Say she was "going rogue" as a diss? She'll make it the title of her book. Dismiss the GOP as the "party of no?" Palin will rename it "the party of hell no!" Argue that her slogan, "Don't Retreat, Instead RELOAD" is a call to violence? She'll repeat it and then add "that is not a call for violence."
In 2008, John McCain was tough but not merciless on Obama. If he got energized by crowds, it was because he was ad libing and going back-and-forth with questioners--not because they were cheering his peroration. (Palin doesn't really take questions.) McCain occasionally took his party to task for outrageous rhetoric. Even this modicum of restraint left Republicans dejected -- until the pit bull with lipstick came aboard and started mauling Obama.
Who else is as macho as Palin? Tim Pawlenty? Too nice. Mitt Romney? No fun. Plenty of Republicans refuse to apologize, but none appropriate negative accusations quite like Palin does.
The last person to be loved by Republicans as much or more than Palin was George W. Bush. While he can't run for president again, another Texas governor full of swagger could run and do very well in the macho primary: Rick Perry.
Perry campaigned as a Tea Partier in everything but name during the Texas Republican primary this year. He used anti-Washington, right-wing rhetoric as hot as anything Palin has said--and went on to demolish Kay Bailey Hutchinson (he'll win the general election). Get a taste of the rhetoric and see how much Perry gets fired-up going after Washington here.
Republicans don't want a passionate reformer or soothing reconciler--they want a fighter.
It’s not just Republicans who want a fighter...Americans want a fighter!
Another thing...Sarah isn't afraid of taking wayward Republicans to task either. Just ask the Alaska Republican Party!
While I agree in principle that Rick Perry is also a fighter, and a great Governor, who will indeed win re-election, even he is a bit timid at times compared to Sarah Palin. He sure would make a great Vice President in the Palin administration though!
If I had to make a real comparison to Sarah, with someone in the Party, it would have to be Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. This woman also has cojones. In fact, it seems that only Conservative women are blessed with any real testicular fortitude nowadays. Like Sarah, Michelle is absolutely hated by the left, and she wears that as a badge of honor. Michelle has grilled top people in the Obama regime, asking them to point to the part of the Constitution that allows them to do what they do. (and left them a quivering mass of humanity) Michelle has called the Obama regime and Marxist-democrat Congress "gangster government." The girl’s got game.
Where are the rest?
Sarah seems to thrive on the attacks thrown her way. I know a lot of this has to do with her strong, unwavering faith in God, but it also has to do with a serious competitive streak. This is a woman who led her high school basketball team to a championship, playing that championship game on a broken ankle. She earned the nickname "Sarahcuda!"
Sarah has carried that competitive urge with her all through life. Sarah is a take no prisoners, in it to win it, kind of person. Look at her reaction when the McCain campaign decided to pull it’s efforts out of Michigan late in the game. She was ready to go, on her own dime if necessary, to keep campaigning there. She wasn’t about to concede a single acre of ground to the Obama campaign. You can bet your last dollar that come 2012 she will have a solid 50 state strategy. No one is better at retail politics than Sarah Palin.
But there is more to it than just guts and a competitive spirit. Sarah Palin stands for things, and there is very little grey area in her positions. Sarah doesn't do nuance.
When Sarah started speaking out about ObamaCare, she zeroed in on the fact that health care would be rationed under the government system, just as it is in every nation on earth that has government run health care. She coined the term "death panels" to vividly describe the boards of bureaucrats who, in place of you and your doctor, would decide who gets what care. The left, as well as the establishment Republicans, lost their minds. When they called her a liar, she wrote another op-ed and doubled down! In fact, Sarah made absolutely certain the term "death panels" became a household word, a part of the American lexicon.
Of course, she was proven right, as we recently wrote, Peter Orszag, the Obama regime’s budget director admitted that yes, there were "death panels" (though he didn’t call them that) and yes, there would be health care rationing. You can read more, and see video of the guy in his own words, here.
Name me another person who could have stood up to the intense ridicule and hatred Sarah Palin faced on this one issue, never mind the insanity the mere mention of her name causes on the left and among the establishment GOP.
You think a Mitt Romney could withstand a daily assault from the Obama regime, their media partners, as well as the loser wing of the Republican Party? Don’t think so. Of course, as the establishment’s choice, I guess the country club GOP’ers would leave him alone.
Let’s look at the latest "controversy" out there: Illegal immigration. Arizona just passed a tough law that mirrors the FEDERAL law, and simply empowers local law enforcement to enforce the laws that are already on the books.
Obviously the left is going nuts, as they are counting on the support of all of those illegals. Why do you think they are pushing for amnesty? Instant Marxist-democrat voters baby! That and the Marxists get to play their favorite card, the race card. Identity politics ‘till the bitter end.
Some of the establishment GOP is going nuts as well, with Connie Mack, a Congressman out of Florida, comparing all of this to "Gestapo tactics."
What was Sarah’s stance? First she said: "What part about the word ‘illegal’ don’t YOU understand." She appeared on the Sean Hannity Show and talked about the issue. She also touched on something the rest of the GOP seems too timid to talk about, Obama’s continual playing of the race card, and his attempts to divide the nation along racial lines, rather than bring the nation together. You can see Stacy Drake’s report here.
Something else Sarah did, she went and supported Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, as well as the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team, who have been targeted by vile communists wishing to stir up trouble.
This was a real "in your face" to those who find it troubling that we should actually FOLLOW THE LAW!
Phoenix, Arizona is the kidnap capital of the United States, and ranks number two in the world. This is all due to illegals who come here, the human trafficking it takes to get them here, and the drug trade. It amounts to no less than an invasion by foreign forces. An incredible amount of violence has been visited on the Arizona people, and the federal government has failed to respond. The federal government has failed to carry out it's number one constitutional duty, protecting the American people from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Instead, politicians have tried to use this issue for their own political gain. It borders on treason.
Since the federal government refuses to enforce it’s own laws, and protect it’s people against this invasion of violence, the state of Arizona was forced to take action. Arizona must protect it's people.
I’m sure Mitt Romney will weigh in as soon as all of the polling is done.
Speaking of polling, Arizona voters overwhelmingly support this action, with 70% approval, and over 60% of voters nationwide approve as well.
The Obama regime dithered for nine days while a possibly containable oil spill in the Gulf turned into a disaster of epic proportions. They couldn’t find they time as they were too busy demonizing everything that makes America great. This is Obama's Katrina. Actually it's worse, because there is simply no excuse for waiting so long to act. Stacy Drake weighs in on this mess here.
Of course, once Obama and his crew did get involved, it was purely political, with the regime using this as an excuse to halt America’s efforts toward energy independence. The GOP has been totally silent on this, but not Sarah Palin.
Sarah knows first hand what this tragedy will do to the effected area, having lived with the damage from the Exxon Valdez disaster. She writes extensively about this heartbreaking event in her book. One can tell it shaped her stance on tough standards for oil companies.
Instead of knee jerk panic, or political opportunism, Sarah calmly addressed the situation, showing the true leadership this nation requires. Both as an energy and environmental regulator, as well as Governor, Sarah has proven her expertise in the field. She has shown clear judgment where others have failed. You can see her statement here.
This is the story of Sarah Palin. She is a strong leader who, as Ronald Reagan would say, "paints in bold colors." There are no "pale pastels" in Sarah’s pallette. Sarah Palin stands unwavering and true, where others are too timid to tread.
Quite simply, leaders lead.
Though this doesn’t have anything to do with Sarah. A friend sent me this video that reminds us of the strong bold leadership the Republican Party used to stand for, especially under Ronald Reagan. Though not President, yet, I think Sarah Palin, like the great men portrayed in the video, is the right leader at the right time. Someone who truly understands American greatness, American exceptionalism, and will never apologize for wanting America to remain The Shining City on a Hill.
In Federalist 5, John Jay continues to discuss the need for a United States vs 13 individual states, or several groups of states.
This time Jay brings us practical lessons from the nation American had just won it’s freedom from, Great Britain. Here he speaks of the time when a union was being formed between England and Scotland, and how many issues and conflicts were solved through this union.
Jay rightfully warns that a divided America would experience these troubles, and then some. One must remember that trouble was already brewing at the time, with the several states often arguing amongst themselves over trade, and other issues. With the British to the north, and the French and Spanish to the south and west, it would be very easy for foreign interlopers to interfere and insight trouble between the divided, but sovereign, states.
Just as self important men nowadays think only of their own power, and not of the nation they pretend to serve, so too did these types exist during our new nation’s earliest days. Many were advocating a different solution than the one finally agreed to, hoping to build on their own power base. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The Same Subject Continued: Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence
For the Independent Journal.
Author: John Jay
To the People of the State of New York:
QUEEN ANNE, in her letter of the 1st July, 1706, to the Scotch Parliament, makes some observations on the importance of the UNION then forming between England and Scotland, which merit our attention. I shall present the public with one or two extracts from it: "An entire and perfect union will be the solid foundation of lasting peace: It will secure your religion, liberty, and property; remove the animosities amongst yourselves, and the jealousies and differences betwixt our two kingdoms. It must increase your strength, riches, and trade; and by this union the whole island, being joined in affection and free from all apprehensions of different interest, will be ENABLED TO RESIST ALL ITS ENEMIES." "We most earnestly recommend to you calmness and unanimity in this great and weighty affair, that the union may be brought to a happy conclusion, being the only EFFECTUAL way to secure our present and future happiness, and disappoint the designs of our and your enemies, who will doubtless, on this occasion, USE THEIR UTMOST ENDEAVORS TO PREVENT OR DELAY THIS UNION."
It was remarked in the preceding paper, that weakness and divisions at home would invite dangers from abroad; and that nothing would tend more to secure us from them than union, strength, and good government within ourselves. This subject is copious and cannot easily be exhausted.
The history of Great Britain is the one with which we are in general the best acquainted, and it gives us many useful lessons. We may profit by their experience without paying the price which it cost them. Although it seems obvious to common sense that the people of such an island should be but one nation, yet we find that they were for ages divided into three, and that those three were almost constantly embroiled in quarrels and wars with one another. Notwithstanding their true interest with respect to the continental nations was really the same, yet by the arts and policy and practices of those nations, their mutual jealousies were perpetually kept inflamed, and for a long series of years they were far more inconvenient and troublesome than they were useful and assisting to each other.
Should the people of America divide themselves into three or four nations, would not the same thing happen? Would not similar jealousies arise, and be in like manner cherished? Instead of their being "joined in affection" and free from all apprehension of different "interests," envy and jealousy would soon extinguish confidence and affection, and the partial interests of each confederacy, instead of the general interests of all America, would be the only objects of their policy and pursuits. Hence, like most other BORDERING nations, they would always be either involved in disputes and war, or live in the constant apprehension of them.
The most sanguine advocates for three or four confederacies cannot reasonably suppose that they would long remain exactly on an equal footing in point of strength, even if it was possible to form them so at first; but, admitting that to be practicable, yet what human contrivance can secure the continuance of such equality? Independent of those local circumstances which tend to beget and increase power in one part and to impede its progress in another, we must advert to the effects of that superior policy and good management which would probably distinguish the government of one above the rest, and by which their relative equality in strength and consideration would be destroyed. For it cannot be presumed that the same degree of sound policy, prudence, and foresight would uniformly be observed by each of these confederacies for a long succession of years.
Whenever, and from whatever causes, it might happen, and happen it would, that any one of these nations or confederacies should rise on the scale of political importance much above the degree of her neighbors, that moment would those neighbors behold her with envy and with fear. Both those passions would lead them to countenance, if not to promote, whatever might promise to diminish her importance; and would also restrain them from measures calculated to advance or even to secure her prosperity. Much time would not be necessary to enable her to discern these unfriendly dispositions. She would soon begin, not only to lose confidence in her neighbors, but also to feel a disposition equally unfavorable to them. Distrust naturally creates distrust, and by nothing is good-will and kind conduct more speedily changed than by invidious jealousies and uncandid imputations, whether expressed or implied.
The North is generally the region of strength, and many local circumstances render it probable that the most Northern of the proposed confederacies would, at a period not very distant, be unquestionably more formidable than any of the others. No sooner would this become evident than the NORTHERN HIVE would excite the same ideas and sensations in the more southern parts of America which it formerly did in the southern parts of Europe. Nor does it appear to be a rash conjecture that its young swarms might often be tempted to gather honey in the more blooming fields and milder air of their luxurious and more delicate neighbors.
They who well consider the history of similar divisions and confederacies will find abundant reason to apprehend that those in contemplation would in no other sense be neighbors than as they would be borderers; that they would neither love nor trust one another, but on the contrary would be a prey to discord, jealousy, and mutual injuries; in short, that they would place us exactly in the situations in which some nations doubtless wish to see us, viz., FORMIDABLE ONLY TO EACH OTHER.
From these considerations it appears that those gentlemen are greatly mistaken who suppose that alliances offensive and defensive might be formed between these confederacies, and would produce that combination and union of wills of arms and of resources, which would be necessary to put and keep them in a formidable state of defense against foreign enemies.
When did the independent states, into which Britain and Spain were formerly divided, combine in such alliance, or unite their forces against a foreign enemy? The proposed confederacies will be DISTINCT NATIONS. Each of them would have its commerce with foreigners to regulate by distinct treaties; and as their productions and commodities are different and proper for different markets, so would those treaties be essentially different. Different commercial concerns must create different interests, and of course different degrees of political attachment to and connection with different foreign nations. Hence it might and probably would happen that the foreign nation with whom the SOUTHERN confederacy might be at war would be the one with whom the NORTHERN confederacy would be the most desirous of preserving peace and friendship. An alliance so contrary to their immediate interest would not therefore be easy to form, nor, if formed, would it be observed and fulfilled with perfect good faith.
Nay, it is far more probable that in America, as in Europe, neighboring nations, acting under the impulse of opposite interests and unfriendly passions, would frequently be found taking different sides. Considering our distance from Europe, it would be more natural for these confederacies to apprehend danger from one another than from distant nations, and therefore that each of them should be more desirous to guard against the others by the aid of foreign alliances, than to guard against foreign dangers by alliances between themselves. And here let us not forget how much more easy it is to receive foreign fleets into our ports, and foreign armies into our country, than it is to persuade or compel them to depart. How many conquests did the Romans and others make in the characters of allies, and what innovations did they under the same character introduce into the governments of those whom they pretended to protect.
Let candid men judge, then, whether the division of America into any given number of independent sovereignties would tend to secure us against the hostilities and improper interference of foreign nations.
PUBLIUS.
Then, as now, a strong UNITED States, was the best defense from foreign entanglements of all sorts. Our founders were practical men, and understood what caused wars, and while they knew some were unavoidable, they hoped to make those situations rare indeed. They also understood the best route was to remain united in one common cause.
There are all sorts of lessons to be learned from John Jay’s wisdom, but this is one of the finest, and one that applies today, just as well as it did in his day.
While we are indeed at war with radical Islam, with fighting forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we are also at war with radical Marxism that exists within, and actually controls our federal government, and has elements scattered throughout the 50 states.
The goal of the radical Marxists, from Barack Obama on down to the lowliest Marxist-democrat bureaucrat drone, is to divide America, to pit American against American. Barack Obama, using the vile ideology he learned studying Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky seeks to divide us all by stoking race wars, class wars, and gender wars.
If Obama and his evil regime can get the various races at one another's throat, while creating massive class envy, by painting the "rich" as evil, and those not so well off as noble, while turning men against women, and gays against straights, he and his regime know the people will be too distracted fighting their own little battles to realize they have lost the war!
It is Obama’s stated intention to destroy America. To tear down the very fabric of modern civil society and remake it in his own psychotic image. Unfortunately, the greatest nation the world has ever known, the gold standard for Freedom and Liberty around the globe, the only nation that has ever celebrated Individual Freedom and Self Reliance, is about to be no more.
Obama is simply the culmination of a century’s worth of Marxist infiltration into every area of our lives, our media, our schools. Unfortunately, Obama and the radical Marxists are winning this war. They have successfully divided us.
At least half the country has been conditioned to hate anyone who makes more money than they do, rather than to try and move up the ladder of success themselves.
The Obama regime, and it’s media partners, play the race card at every opportunity. Not only that, but if someone, say a Black, or Hispanic, happens to not fall in line with the teachings of Marx and Alinsky, and doesn’t bow to the almighty Obama, they are branded a "race traitor" by the very people who purport to be for them.
Of course the gender wars have been carried out for decades with disastrous results, not only to relationships between men and women, but for the family unit as a whole, the destruction of which being a stated goal of Marxist ideology.Marxism teaches the State in the family.
Just as John Jay warned the American people in his day of the danger of a divided America, we need to stop and realize what the divisions, encouraged by the radical left, have done to us.
There’s a reason why the bible warns of envy. I don’t care who you are, you will always find someone smarter, stronger, better looking, and making more money. It’s time for ALL Americans to realize the beauty of America, The guarantees afforded to all by our Constitution, is the promise we all have an equal chance. We do not have the promise of equal results however. The results you achieve out of life are based on the effort that you, and you alone, put in.
But Gary...that isn’t FAIR! Life isn’t fair, get over it. Buy a helmet! Some people have it easier than others, so what? The American story is filled with tales of people who came from nothing, sometimes less than nothing, who would reach the very pinnacle of society. They have faced unspeakable hardships, and yet, excelled to the highest levels possible. We have to remind people that you are only limited by the effort you wish to expend.
If we don’t do that, the Obama regime will succeed in remaking society to a point when no matter how much effort you put out, you will never succeed, as success will be outlawed and in it’s place will be nothing but mediocrity for all.
We must stop the racial nonsense. We must not allow those whose living is predicating on the continuous racial strife to remain.. They must be expelled from society, thrown out of the country, if that’s what it takes. We simply can’t afford to indulge the race baiters any longer. We have two problems, the good old fashioned raced baiting by the usual suspects, and multi-culturalism.
Much of the first issue can be traced back to the previous ailment, stoked by class warfare and the myth that the world somehow owes some people something. It’s that simple. The other is more synthetic, than organic. Somewhere during the course of time, we stopped being Americans. All of a sudden, people who couldn’t find Africa on a map, and whose families have been Americans for generations, became "African-Americans." Even worse, this label was soon applied to any black person, no matter where their ancestors may have come from. We have "Mexican-Americans" "Native-Americans" and so on.
Frankly, and this will get some letters, the "Native-American" label particularly strikes me as wrong. I realize this is used to describe "Indians" the folks who were here before the Europeans showed up. I’m part Cherokee myself, but the thing is, ANYONE born in America is a "Native-American"
Here’s the thing, whether by birth, or through naturalization, we are all simply Americans. The hyphen is quite distasteful, as it is used. This multi-culturalism is yet another way to further divide us and make us weaker.
This is not to say we shouldn’t celebrate the diversity of our people. Quite the contrary, the rich traditions that not only the natives, Indians, have, but traditions from people from all over the world have brought with them, are what has helped make America great. The thing is, while we mustn’t allow anyone to lose their tradition and personal identity, we must remember why America is called "the world’s great melting pot." People come here from all over the world, with the desire to become Americans! We must encourage these people to assimilate, to learn our national customs and traditions, and to participate as an American. No hyphen required.
We must also develop the notion that we are all one race, the human race, and move on. As long as we allow the radical left to divide us, they can and will conquer us all. We all will be equal for sure then. Equally enslaved and equally miserable.
As for gender, well, men and women have tried to figure one another out since the beginning of time. Somehow I doubt they ever will. I do think we can all agree that men and women should treat each other with respect, and in the workforce be paid an equal day’s wage for an equal day’s work. Past that, there are fundamental differences between men and women, and yes, that can lead to great frustration at times, but it’s part of the mystery of life that makes it worth living.
As a deeply divided nation, Obama and his minions are beating us. We are easy prey for whatever they wish to impose on us. In order to survive, we must find a way to come together and unite on the things that make us all the same, and work on the things that make us different. If not, we as a nation, and a people, will perish from the earth.
As always, please visit Constituting America for further discussion, and more thoughts on the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.
