We all remember what happened last December in the Senate and then again in March in the House of Representatives.  After a full court press and in outright defiance of the clearly stated will of a majority of Americans, the Senate voted on Christmas Eve to approve so-called health care reform, now ubiquitously referred to as ObamaCare.  Even though solid majorities of Americans opposed the measure, every single Democrat voted for it, even the fictional “blue dog” Senate Democrats who were once able to claim adherence to fiscal conservatism.  In March the House then voted to pass their version of ObamaCare, once again in the face of clear opposition from the American public.

Even though these politicians should have been concerned with keeping their jobs after their next election, they disregarded the wishes of the American people in order to pass this sweeping new legislation.  Knowing that they were less than a year from the next election and while receiving quite a bit of feedback from their constituents at town hall meetings and rallies across America, they still pursued their agenda against the will of the people.  In fact, I remember seething when I heard Nancy Pelosi say that they had enough votes to allow some Democrats to “vote their district”.  These three dangerous statists – Obama, Pelosi, and Reid – are simply intoxicated by their ideology and have proven over the last 18 months that they will do anything and say anything to advance their agenda, which always seems to boil down to more dependency-based control over Americans.

Now consider this.  Given the likelihood of significant GOP gains in the November elections, just imagine what the fired congressmen will be willing to do in the interim period between receiving their pink slips from the voters and actually leaving office in January.  We have all been forced to recalibrate our government outrage meters in the Obama Age, but we should prepare ourselves for affronts that we simply cannot even imagine today.

Ask yourself a few questions.  Why aren’t they trying to pass Cap and Tax right now?  Why no push for amnesty for illegals Comprehensive Immigration Reform?  Further, have you heard that they have no plans to pass a real budget any time soon?  They are already clumsily tipping their hand to their plans.  They are saving everything for the lame duck session of Congress.  How many times have you been stunned at the audacity and gall demonstrated by this gaggle of statists?  Unfortunately, I think that we have not seen anything yet.

We all know from experience that when people get fired or laid off, they get shown the door immediately and there is a good reason for that.  When someone has been terminated, you can expect that employee to be worthless at best and damaging at worst, with a bit of revenge mixed in.  But in contrast with private sector people, the angry employees that we will terminate in November will retain significant power over our lives until January.  Perhaps more significantly, these “public servants” will feel a pressing need to cut deals to land their next government job.  They will throw us all under the bus and by now we should all accept that fact.

At first I naively thought about proposing a scenario in which every candidate would publicly ask for a pledge from the incumbent that he or she will not vote on any significant legislation during the lame duck session if they are defeated on November 2^nd.  But just thinking like that makes me look like someone who just fell off the turnip truck – in fact I surprised myself with that half-second of naiveté.  These dishonest charlatans have proven that they will do whatever they want even when they still have a chance at reelection.  They would violate any pledge without remorse.  Does the name Bart Stupak ring a bell?

Then I finally arrived at the obvious and unavoidable core reality of our situation, and wondered why it took me so long to figure this out.  When the rubber hits the road, there are 41 people in America who can stand between us and tyranny.  The only people who can stand in the way of truly significant outrages – potential death blows – against the American Experiment are the 41 Republican Senators who possess the so-called nuclear option of the filibuster.  If they stand together, and only if they stand together, we can weather the two dark and dangerous months between our national repudiation of the Obama agenda and the seating of our new Congress.

234 years ago the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged their “Lives, [their] Fortunes and [their] sacred Honor” to further our independence and begin the task of creating the American Experiment.  I honestly do not consider it hyperbole to argue that the 41 Republican members of the United States Senate will face a challenging period that could decide the future of our country.  Though it will not even begin to compare to the tribulations faced by the Signers, in duration or in danger, let us hope that they are up to it.  Given that their number includes weak links like Graham (SC), McCain, and Snowe (ME), I worry about whether they possess the principles and intestinal fortitude to stand up to the predictable juggernaut.  Further, imagine what an angry and resentful John McCain will be willing to do if he is defeated in his primary with J.D. Hayworth.  The future of the Republic could depend on whether these 41 Americans are willing to be pariahs for two months.

If they do the right thing, these 41 Senators may go down in history as having fought a holding action that helped save the nation and preceded the restoration of our Constitutional Republic.  The ancient Greeks who fought a desperate holding action at Thermopylae against Xerces’ invading Persians were dubbed The 300.

If they do the right thing, these 41 Senators should be remembered as The 41.

The only thing that will make this idea work is getting it out there.  Please pass this along to your conservative friends and even consider calling into a talk radio show with the idea.  Most importantly, pass it along to your Senators.  Let’s make it clear to The 41 that we understand the seriousness of our situation.  We are watching.  We will be sitting next to our children and grandchildren, the ones who will pay the biggest price for the selfish orgy of the Obama Agenda, and we will be watching The 41 to see if they are up to the challenge.

The new web site will be up soon…

[Note to regular readers: It’s not unusual for me to percolate on a blog post for a month or two, chatting with my wife about it regularly but not quite getting it typed up in a timely manner.  The observed downside to that slow process is that sometimes I end up throwing away a half-written blog post because I do not want to be a “back-bencher”, which is what Mark Levin calls the other pundits, commentators, and bloggers who borrow material from his radio show for their next-day offerings.  In the most recent case, I was mostly done with a blog post – ultimately the one that you just read - that I was going to call Lame Duck Tyranny or Lame Duck Danger in which I intended to discuss the real danger that we face between the next election and the seating of the next Congress.  But on Saturday I listened to Friday night’s Mark Levin show only to find that he was covering the same topic and making some of the same points. This is not the first time that he and I have espoused similar positions and it likely will not be the last – after all we both arrived at our very similar philosophy by reading the same things, studying the same history, and observing the same events.  However, this time I decided not to toss my blog post because this topic gets me worked up and worried.  Mark Levin would likely prefer that even more people are exposed to the idea of this lame duck tyranny anyway.  Finally, I am such a small time blogger that I do not even qualify as a back-bencher!]

Wallis is a political operative who wraps himself up in religion in order to gain some legitimacy so that he can then trash every conservative religious person for not being liberal.  Writing an article in the Huffington Post , Wallis demonstrates his mastery of dishonest sleight of hand.  Wallis first equates the Tea Party Movement with libertarianism and then immediately makes the jump to Rand Paul so that he can find some positions to use to make the Tea Party look bad.  He must have received the email from the Democrats on that one; it is a consistent talking point approach lately.

The basic gist of his article is an attempt to make the case that because he is an alleged reverend he is therefore qualified to pass judgment on “how Christian” the Tea Party movement is.  In fact, his incredibly weak arguments fall well short of convincing any intelligent person of the merits of his position and simply made me want to find out who this clown was.  It seemed clear that this guy was an Alinksy type, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Little did I know how true that was, but I will get to that later.

Wallis starts out by demonstrating his complete misunderstanding of compassion:

Loving your neighbor is a better Christian response than telling your neighbor to leave you alone. Both compassion and social justice are fundamental Christian commitments, and while the Christian community is responsible for living out both, government is also held accountable to the requirements of justice and mercy. Both Christians on the Right and the Left have raised questions about Libertarian abandonment of the most vulnerable — whether that means unborn lives or the poor.

Par for the course for those who revere government because they are utterly terrified of freedom, Wallis is not intellectually honest enough to understand the difference between individuals helping their fellow man when he truly needs it and the government seizing vast amounts of wealth to redistribute to those who have learned to game the system.  It is very important to note that it is never compassion when you are spending someone else’s money and that one can love one’s neighbor without feeling any requirement to pay his bills.

Because Wallis claims to be religious, I have to point out that millions of faithful Christians tithe ten percent of their money to their church.  But that sort of chump change is not enough for people like Wallis, whose agenda requires not only what he could raise under the ruse of religion but also necessitates confiscating the property of even non-Christians.  That is mighty Christian of you, Reverend Jim.

In fact, libertarians know that most poor people are poor not because they have encountered some misfortune in life but simply because they have made a series of stupid, short-sighted decisions.  Libertarians are not opposed to individuals helping individuals but are opposed to the government perennially transferring wealth from those who earned it to those who simply know how to harness poverty pimps like Jim Wallis.  Libertarians believe – with good reason – that people who do not suffer from the stupidity of their actions will continue to do stupid things.  Clearly Mr. Wallis thinks that one of the appropriate roles of government is to protect people from the consequences of their actions, but only if they are societal parasites.  That plants him firmly in the camp of the Nanny State Left.

Finally, to hear a member of the laughingly oxymoronic “religious left” criticize libertarians because many (though far from all) support abortion rights is a new level of hypocrisy.  As a member of the alleged religious left, Mr. Wallis is a card carrying stockholder in the abortion industry.  Sure, he may claim to be anti-abortion in front of certain groups, but the Democrat party has perversely elevated their vision of abortion rights to the level of a “canary in the gold mine” bellwether of individual rights.  As such, supporting the agenda of the Democrat party while claiming to be anti-abortion is like being a KKK member in the 1920s while claiming to be anti-lynching – you cannot be a part of the group without implicitly supporting one of its main agenda items.

For what it’s worth, this libertarian believes that the official Libertarian Party’s position on abortion is dead wrong.  That unborn human has just as many rights as the parent who wants to treat the child like an inconvenient mole, but uppercase-L libertarians are so caught up in wanting to be purists that they cannot see that they are just as wrong and selfish as the left is on this subject.  Furthermore, more libertarians should realize how unconstitutional Roe v. Wade is – under our system the judicial branch does not write laws, as Harry Blackmun did in his horrible decision.

Wallis also tries to make the contorted argument that simply because the bible happens to mention government, being anti-government therefore “just isn’t biblical”.  Statists like Wallis must pine for the days when government and religion were intertwined and even went so far as to prevent open inquiry in the sciences.

Then Wallis spews this tripe:

The Libertarians’ supreme confidence in the market is not consistent with a biblical view of human nature and sin. The exclusive focus on government as the central problem ignores the problems of other social sectors, and in particular, the market. When government regulation is the enemy, the market is set free to pursue its own self-interest without regard for public safety, the common good, and the protection of the environment — which Christians regard as God’s creation. Libertarians seem to believe in the myth of the sinless market and that the self-interest of business owners or corporations will serve the interests of society; and if they don’t, it’s not government’s role to correct it.

This is laughable.  The truth is that the left’s supreme confidence in big government is not consistent with the reality of human nature and corruption.  Their exclusive focus on wealth redistribution as the central goal ignores the real problem, which is that these people would not need to live off of the rest of us if the government had not created the lifestyle-subsidy welfare programs.  As an analogy, if you put out food for stray cats those cats will get used to it and will be there every morning.  Like our parasitic class in America, they will even get angry if the free food stops.  That entitlement mentality is at the core of those 47% of Americans who pay no taxes and are therefore living off of the rest of us.  Shockingly, liberals seem to believe in the myth of the blameless societal parasite and that giving someone else’s property to them will actually help rather than harm them.

Further, and I give credit to my brilliant wife for this angle, if Mr. Wallis actually took a clear look at the biblical view of human nature and sin he would realize that it in fact makes the best argument possible for limited government.  We simply cannot trust human beings with that level of control over their fellows.  They are too flawed to handle it without descending into power grabs and corruption and almost every shred of human history is a testament to that undeniable fact. This self-evident truth of government corruption was a main reason that the founding fathers realized that government should be limited to the role of umpire as opposed to the left’s desired role of mommy.  George Washington certainly understood this fundamental truth and put it as clearly as anyone ever has:

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.  – George Washington

Showing the complete lack of logical thought that so uniformly characterizes the American left, Wallis continues:

But such theorizing ignores the practical issues that the public sector has to solve. Should big oil companies like BP simply be allowed to spew oil into the ocean? And is regulating them really un-American? Do we really want nobody to inspect our meat, make sure our kids’ toys are safe, or police the polluters to keep our air clean? Do we really want owners of restaurants and hotels to be able to decide whom they will or won’t serve, or should liquor store owners also be able to sell alcohol to our kids?

After seeing such flagrant use of the false dichotomy logical fallacy, it’s getting easy to understand how this clown is a democrat.  But to be fair, being a leftist Mr. Wallis is unaccustomed to dealing with people who possess a command of logical thought, so we cannot blame him for attempting to foist tripe on us that works consistently with his normal bevy of parasitic myrmidons.

Finally, I am just going to say it. There is something wrong with a political movement like the Tea Party which is almost all white. Does that mean every member of the Tea Party is racist? Likely not. But is an undercurrent of white resentment part of the Tea Party ethos, and would there even be a Tea Party if the president of the United States weren’t the first black man to occupy that office? It’s time we had some honest answers to that question. And as far as I can tell, Libertarianism has never been much of a multi-cultural movement. Need I say that racism — overt, implied, or even subtle — is not a Christian virtue.

Claims of racism are the last refuge of the scoundrel, the trump card played by someone who is losing the debate.  Apparently Mr. Wallis had no problem with every black American voting for Barack Obama simply because of the color of his skin.  They certainly were not voting for the [bankrupt] content of his character!  Mr. Wallis proves that he is a full-fledged race-hustling poverty pimp with this clumsy attempt to play the race card.

Yes, Mr. Obama is a huge part of the rise of the Tea Party Movement, but even Mr. Wallis knows that it has nothing to do with his brown skin and everything to do with his red politics.  Mr. Obama is a Marxist and patriotic Americans would oppose him no matter how much melanin was contained in his skin.

Finally, though there is plenty to criticize in Wallis’ “The Bible Loves Tyranny” screed, one need only read this gem to see the true nature of this leftist propagandist:

But a power-hungry government is clearly an aberration and violation of the proper role of government in protecting its citizens and upholding the demands of fairness and justice. To disparage government per se — to see government as the central problem in society — is simply not a biblical position.

Mr. Wallis has the typically weak leftist knowledge of history and his world view clearly demonstrates that.  Anyone who can make the statement that “power hungry government is clearly an aberration” simply cannot be taken seriously in any context.  When the rubber hits the road, Mr. Wallis is simply dishonestly attempting to use religion to sell tyranny.  As always, that tyranny is disguised as false compassion and false security.

After writing this I wondered if I had been too hard on Reverend Jim Wallis, so I did some more digging in order to ensure that I was not just going off on an unfair rant.  I quickly found what I was looking for in the very place that I should have looked first: David Horowitz’ incredible site, Discover The Networks.

Wallis expressed his hope that “more Christians will come to view the world through Marxist eyes.”

In short, Jim Wallis is a long term left wing radical.  His basic shtick is to attempt to use his status as an alleged religious leader to bash conservatives and push his own agenda.  The entry on Wallis at Discover The Networks contains the following interesting items:

• His magazine, now called Sojourners’, was originally an anti-capitalist publication called Post-American.
• He is a lifelong champion of communism and an apologist for atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese.
• In a 1979 interview, Wallis expressed his hope that “more Christians will come to view the world through Marxist eyes.”
• In a January 13, 2006 radio interview with Interfaith Voices, Wallis was asked, “Are you then calling for the redistribution of wealth in society?” He replied, “Absolutely, without any hesitation. That’s what the gospel is all about.”
• In 1995 Wallis founded Call to Renewal, a coalition of religious groups united in the purpose of advocating, in religious terms, for leftist economic agendas such as tax hikes and wealth redistribution to promote “social justice.” 

The final quote from Discover The Networks lays bare the obvious truth of his screed in HuffPo, which is that Wallis simply wrote a hit piece on the Tea Party because he is a foot soldier in the progressive movement, a hard core Marxist who seeks more government control over the lives of Americans.

More than a mere religious leader, Wallis, a registered Democrat, is also an adroit political operative, publicly portraying himself as a politically neutral religious figure whose overriding allegiance is to God. Always with the disclaimer that neither major political party can claim to authoritatively represent the values of religious faith, Wallis passionately contends that Republican policies tend to be immoral and godless. — Discover The Networks

Jim Wallis is right to fear the Tea Party Movement.  We are taking our country back from freedom loathing charlatans like him and his intellectual soul mate in the White House.  We will once again attempt to toss Marxism back where it belongs, “on the ash heap of history” as a great President once said.

From the Cato article:

But wait: In the Wall Street Journal, Whitacre says the company has made a $5.8 billion payment to the governments of the United States and Canada. But don’t I recall that the GM bailout was $50 billion? Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation explains the whole story in Forbes: First, part of the bailout went into an “escrow fund,” and that government money is being used to pay back the small part of the bailout that was officially a loan. Second, GM is asking for another $10 billion loan to retool its plants to meet the stiffer Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, and paying back one government loan — with other government money — will make it easier to get another government loan.

And finally, of course, most of the bailout money was transferred to GM in return for a 60 percent stake in the company. And the taxpayers will get that money back if and when GM becomes a publicly traded company again, provided that the company’s market capitalization is eventually higher than it’s ever been in history. Don’t hold your breath.

These are called GM ads, but they could just as well be called BS ads.

General Motors and Chrysler are dead to me, even if they repay Big Brother for their bailouts.  This kind of dishonesty only underscores my dislike for GM.

Has the legislative branch ever so blatantly gone against the wishes of the American people with such landmark legislation that oh, by the way, increased their own power so exponentially?  I was already thinking what many pundits were saying, that this would prove to be a pyrrhic victory for the Democrats.

Like you I was really pissed off Sunday night after Stupak caved, and I am glad that being behind in my coding kept me from commenting on things before I had calmed down a little.  Don’t worry,  I am going to stay pissed off (I am southern), and I hope that all of you do as well.  But we need to redirect our justifiable anger and outrage.  Remember the old phrase: Don’t get angry, get even.  Freedom took one on the chin last night, but the people on our side are not the glass-jawed crowd, and we did not even merit the standing eight count.  It’s time to get the hell back up.  If it was just us guys, like the pro-gun movement in the early 90s, I would say that it is time to seriously man up, but this is bigger than that.  Every country has men, but only we have Americans.  It’s time to American Up.  I like the sound of that.

Last night when I was working and trying to avoid Twitter, which is hard to do in the best of circumstances, I saw one from a good guy by the name of @CalebHowe:

So it turned out to be Asculum rather than Waterloo.

I admit that even though I had been thinking that this was a pyrrhic victory for the Democrats, I could not place the battle to which he was referring.  It was of course the very battle won by Pyrrhus with such great cost, giving rise to the phrase so often uttered in the last few days.  Caleb’s point was that while this did not end up being Obama’s Waterloo – as was hoped by the excellent Sen. Jim DeMint – it will be his Asculum.  But I am absolutely certain that it will be up to us to make that a reality.

This challenge is about whether or not our children and grandchildren will enjoy a prosperity and freedom that was given to us by previous generations of Americans.

We need to stay focused and even more active.  I think that we all know that we are playing for keeps, and perhaps more importantly, we know the other side is.  This battle is not about some slight tax increase or a new regulation about how much water our toilets can hold.  This is about an attempt to redefine the historical American perspective on the appropriate relationship between the State and the Individual.  This is about a government that accepts absolutely no limit, constitutional or otherwise, on its spending or its acquisition of new powers over us.  This challenge is about whether or not our children and grandchildren will enjoy a prosperity and freedom that was given to us by previous generations of Americans.

There are always a few around who will talk about bailing and going to Costa Rica or New Zealand.  I invite them to go ahead now so that we do not foolishly count on them when things have gotten worse.   May posterity forget that you were our countrymen.  Many better men and women than me have sacrificed and died to hand me this America.  I’ll be damned if I am about to make it about me and walk away from the greatest country in the history of mankind.

The rest of you: enough said.  I know you’re with me.  I’ve got your back.  It is time for us to finally earn the label of American that we are lucky enough to share with people like Dr. Joseph Warren and Nathan Hale.  The actions and sacrifice of Americans like that are what gave the words patriot and American the very meaning for us that they possess.  Are we up to it now that our country needs us?

We can peacefully retake our country.  It’s finally time for us to reassert the United States Constitution.

It’s time to American Up!

So, Scott Matheson appears to have the credentials to be a judge, but was his nomination used to buy off his brother’s vote?

Consider Congressman Matheson’s record on the health care bill. He voted against the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee back in July and again when it passed the House in November. But now he’s “undecided” on ramming the bill through Congress. “The Congressman is looking for development of bipartisan consensus,” Matheson’s press secretary Alyson Heyrend wrote to THE WEEKLY STANDARD on February 22. “It’s too early to know if that will occur.” Asked if one could infer that if no Republican votes in favor of the bill (i.e. if a bipartisan consensus is not reached) then Rep. Matheson would vote no, Heyrend replied: “I would not infer anything.  I’d wait to see what develops, starting with the health care summit on Thursday.”

The timing of this nomination looks suspicious, especially in light of Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak’s claim that he was offered a federal job not to run against Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary. Many speculated that Sestak, a former admiral, was offered the Secretary of the Navy job.

Obama and his henchmen are corrupt Chicago thugs (which is odd given that they are a gaggle of beta males) who will stop at nothing to seize more control over the lives of Americans.

In the video below from Larry King Live, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) calls for an independent investigation while pointing out that this is just the latest in a line of underhanded deals wielded by a corrupt Democrat Party in their increasingly brazen attempt to ram their unpopular statist health care agenda down the throats of an angry citizenry.

We really need to have a independent investigation into this matter because we have seen the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Union Loophole, and now the big question is is the White House trading health care votes for judgeships?  This is a pretty serious issue, Larry.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) responds like the Kool Aid drinking one termer that he is, calling it simply a “distraction” and a ”tangent”.  I wonder if Mr. Grayson would have given the previous occupant of the White House the same benefit of the doubt?

Responding to Grayson’s trite dismissal of this as a “tangent”, Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air had this to say:

Besides, which candidate for President promised to change the way Washington works?  Which candidate promised “Hope and Change,” and a new era of transparency?  Which political party promised in 2006 to provide “Open, Honest Government”?  Those weren’t “tangents” in 2006 or 2008.

That being said, the likelihood of an independent probe into this is about the same as Barack Obama suddenly announcing that he’s converted to supply-side economics and proposing the elimination of the Department of Education.  The Department of Justice under Eric Holder will treat it with the same urgency as voter-intimidation tactics in Philadelphia, and the current Congress will get right on this obvious bribe immediately after looking into Nancy Pelosi’s power grab on Ways and Means.

Proposed changes to the North Carolina high school history curriculum have many people upset with critics correctly pointing out that the state is simply cutting out the first half of U.S. History.

This article on the Charlotte NBC affiliate’s web site includes the video of their news story on the controversy and gives a good synopsis of the controversy.

One quote from Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, really rubbed me the wrong way.  From an article at FoxNews:

We are certainly not trying to go away from American history.  What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it, where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day.

The changes being considered would apply to eleventh graders in the state, who currently study American history beginning with the nation’s founding.  Garland would seem to prefer that this “big idea” understanding of America and why it is special be formed by constraining the young people of North Carolina to examining the second, far more statist half of our nation’s history.  Educators are actually hurting their students and their country when they mislead our young people into believing that the Big Idea of America has something to do with labor unions or progressivism or redistributing wealth or the ideas of Fabian socialists like Wilson, FDR, or Obama.  In fact, the most important concepts of American history are the founding ideals, and the key to understanding American Exceptionalism is in knowing enough about our history and our founding principles to realize how special this country truly is.

Remember that many of these eleventh graders will soon be off to face progressive (Marxist) professors who seem to hate everything about America except their own cushy and often subsidized academic positions.  Authority figures like that are all too often a part of what Mark Levin correctly labels the counter revolution, with goals and ideologies that are diametrically opposed to our founding principles.  Knowing that today’s high school students will be facing off against this bevy of Ward Churchill types tomorrow, we should instead be teaching the incredible historical significance of the revolution on which our country is based.  It is vitally important to stress that the American Revolution was not simply a revolution against English rule.  It was a revolution against the idea that people were subjects at all.  It was a revolution against a long-standing and almost unbroken world acceptance of an inappropriate relationship between the State and the Individual.  If students have only one take-away from US History it should be that simple fact.  Many have correctly argued that the American Revolution was not truly complete until the abolition of slavery in 1865, and even that part of America’s history would be left out of the proposed curriculum.

An article by the Heritage Foundation argues that this history-finagling is SOP for the Progressives:

Early 20th century Progressives also taught that nothing before 1877 has meaning for today. In his new book We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future, Matthew Spalding recounts Progressives attack on America’s First Principles. The Progressives sought to remake America, so that the Declaration’s Founding Principles, the Constitution’s institutional structures, and the Civil War’s meaning as a victory for Founding principles would no longer ring true. The progressives argued that equal, natural rights were non-existent; government creates rights. They replaced representative government with the administrative, bureaucratic state.

There is no reason to believe that Ms. Garland or any others in the education establishment in North Carolina are part of a Progressive conspiracy to create adults without a deep appreciation for the Founding Principles.  The unfortunate case is that in many cases liberal thinking seems to naturally, even if unintentionally, flow in the direction of results that are favorable to those who seek to redefine our country and in many cases reject its traditions and institutions.  Whether sinister or just misguided, these proposed curriculum changes would force formative North Carolina students to build their perspectives of America – and their understanding of what makes America special – on a skewed view of America in which progress is presented as acceptance of Fabian socialist ideals and exponential increases in government involvement in the lives of individuals.

The potential changes involve more than just compartmentalizing the first half of American history out of the North Carolina high school curriculum.  As the FoxNews article points out, rather than studying world history ninth-graders would instead pursue something called global studies which would focus “in part on issues such as the environment”.  In a real sense this change seems to be an even wider version of the accompanying changes to the American history curriculum for eleventh graders.  An appreciation of what makes the American experiment so special requires an understanding of the historical evolution of the country’s founding and the principles underlying its formation.  Similarly, an educated understanding of the significance of western civilization requires a study of the history of the Greeks and the Romans and the British and their interactions with the other powers in their respective times.  Though I have not been able to locate details about this potential change to the world history classes, the fact that the name of the class would change from World History to Global Studies suggests that North Carolina’s ninth graders are not going to be learning of Pericles or Hannibal or William the Conqueror.  No, Global Studies sounds a little more… squishy.

In order for America to stay special, Americans have to know why they are special.  Anything that seeks to undermine the teaching and appreciation of the American founding is a threat to the American Experiment.  In fact, there should be an entire class on the American Founding including the Articles of Confederation and how its failures led to our incredible Constitution.  That would certainly prepare our young people to go defend their country against the counter revolutionaries that we inexplicably permit to mold the minds of our college students.

On a positive note, at least one elected official in North Carolina has said that the state legislature will step in if the state board decides to implement these changes.

Shapiro then points out the inherent dishonesty of how they are presenting this ”freeze”.

First of all, I hate the “we’re saving $250 billion over 10 years” line. It is a piece of crass political rhetoric and I’m disappointed that the administration would use it. If they actually implement a three year freeze on the portion of the budget they’re talking about (which is a big if, but let’s assume the best), why measure the effects in the space of 10 years?

The answer is “To make the freeze look bigger”. They’re basically just basing the extended savings off of projected interest payments and “savings” due to the fact that the baseline on that portion of the budget hasn’t moved. It is setting a dangerous data precedent where politicians realize that all they have to do is calculate a projection out as far as they need in order to get the numbers they want.

Seriously.  This is a three year freeze but they stretch it out to ten years in their calculations simply because 10x is a larger number than the real number, a mere 3x.  Your intelligence is being insulted and it should piss you off.  The statist triad of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi tell you that they believe that you are a moron every single day with their shallow obfuscations and pathetic word games, such as their tortured destruction of the word ‘reform’.  They clearly confuse us with their myrmidons.

Shapiro also points out how ridiculous it is to claim that you are saving money simply because you are not spending it:

As a slapdash example, a politician could project that they will increase spending by 5% next year and then decide at the last moment to increase it by 3%. They could then spin that decision to increase by a smaller amount as a decision to “cut” their spending (which wasn’t real spending, only projected spending) by 2%.

I remember a version of this audacious dishonesty back when the GOP held the house in the mid 90s.  Medicare spending was slated to increase by something like five percent and the republicans wanted to instead increase spending by only three percent.  The Democrats and their fawning media spun it as the GOP slashing medicare spending.  For the most part, the leftist scare tactics worked.

Check out the Political Math Blog, and follow him on twitter at @PoliticalMath.

Rush’s “fatherly” advice to Barack is worth the eight minutes, but there were a few good quotes that I picked out.

You’re going to keep plugging for the same agenda which is going to destroy this country even more.  It makes me think, Barack, that’s your objective.

So what Mr. Limbaugh seems to be suggesting is that there is a possibility that Mr. Obama feels that crises are times of opportunity.  That sounds somewhat like the Cloward-Piven strategy, doesn’t it?

Mr. President, I’ll tell you, you are not a leader.  You are an agitator and an organizer and a process guy.  But you are not a leader.  It is you who are doing something wrong.  The people in Virginia do not like it.  The people in New Jersey don’t like it.  The people in Massachusetts don’t like it!  The people in Massachusetts and around the country have the ability to inform themselves outside of your sycophant press corps.  And they are doing so.

Can you imagine where we would be without Fox News, talk radio, and the internet as alternate sources of information?  Most of us remember the days when our news choices consisted of one newspaper and the four television news sources, all of whom seemed to follow the lead of the New York Times when it came to deciding what and how to report.  Even people who dislike conservative radio or television have to admit that the diversity of news and opinion available today is good for political freedom and a good check on government.

Without the Counter Media combination of Fox News, the internet, and talk radio, many debates and decisions would have turned out very differently.  Without the Counter Media socialized health care legislation would have passed last summer.  In fact, Hillary Care would have passed in 1993 were it not for Rush Limbaugh and people like him who made up the only Counter Media in those days.  Back then, before the World Wide Web only we computer people were on the internet, and Fox News was still three years away.

Without the blogosphere Counter Media the attempt by CBS’s Rather and Mapes to use forged documents in an attempt to take down George W. Bush on the eve of the 2004 elections would have worked.  Were it not for the Counter Media, Al ‘Forrest’ Gore would likely have successfully stolen the Presidential election in Florida in 2000 and would have been sitting in the Oval Office on September 11^th, 2001.  Think about that one.  I do not support a lot of what Bush-43 did in office, but can you imagine what President Gore or President Kerry would have done?  Enough said.

Without the Counter Media, Americans would never have heard a whisper about the ACORN prostitution sting videos and consequently ACORN would still be participating in the census!  Most recently and perhaps most importantly, without the Counter Media we would never have heard about the Climategate scandal and therefore would not have so successfully pushed back against Cap and Trade and the Copenhagen Conference spectacle.

Has it occurred to you, Mr. President, even once, that you’re not as cool as you think you are?  Has it occurred to you that you are screwing up?  And if it has, are you happy about that?  Has it occurred to you that you have a great deal to learn and that you need to take your own measure?

One big problem with personality cults, beyond the obvious downside of influencing a large group of people to make poor decisions with dreadful unintended consequences, is that the object of the personality cult comes to believe in the myths surrounding his cult status.  President Obama is not only a True Believer when it comes to the tenets of Marxism.  Barack Obama is a True Believer when it comes to Barack Obama.  Like Tracy Morgan’s character on 30 Rock, Obama’s entourage of yes-men has intoxicated the President on his own Kool Aid, leaving him in a make believe world that shelters the President from genuine public opinion.  A month or two before the 2008 elections I heard historian Victor Davis Hanson warn of candidate Obama’s dangerous combination of hubris and naiveté.  As President, Mr. Obama has done absolutely nothing to disprove that spot-on observation.  In fact, every self-absorbed speech from the President only seems to underscore it more.

You seem to think that this country needs to be torn down so that YOU can rebuild it.  But you were elected to be President, not some kind of dictator.  You must operate within the confines of the Constitution.

Tearing it down to rebuild it, huh?  If you skipped reading about the Cloward-Piven Strategy above, I will give you another chance here.

You can listen to Rush’s “fatherly advice” to Obama here: