This time of year is always good for reflection. There isn’t much going on, and it allows us to think back on the year and judge how well we did, what we did right, and what we did wrong. What did you learn? What did you forget? How can you better yourself in the new year?
For me, I learned to hold my tongue, to take a deep breath, to assess the situation and respond to negativity with simplicity and kindness.
In writing blog posts you come across many negative comments. It’s hurtful, and your defenses go up when you feel attacked. It’s easy to retaliate, but wisdom and grace comes in taking a minute to compose yourself, and take the moral high ground. What is the assailant’s premise? Chances are, if you’re posting something, you’ve taken the time to study the subject. Is there something that the assailant commentator knows that you don’t? Or have they simply over looked facts that you are privy to, that they are not?
There is much wrong with the world, there always is. Wars are fought, dictators made powerful, corrupt politicians elected to office.
We gain power in being gracious, being men of integrity and honor. We become masters of our own destiny when we take the moral high ground. When we fight for what is right, and respond with kind words to those who do not agree.
More is accomplished with neutrality and trade than with war. That is not to say to be passive. Oh no, passiveness will get you nowhere. Many heads have been stepped on for being passive.
After the war of independence, Thomas Jefferson opposed war with France, despite French insults to the newly founded United States of America. Instead of fighting the French, Jefferson ended up securing a deal for the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size and power of his young country.
Good will to all men does not mean you will not have legitimate enemies. It does not mean you should lay down and take whatever comes. It simply means that you will take the moral high ground by being a man of good character, of having integrity, and good grace. It means responding with civility and conviction, instead of emotion and disdain.
Civilization is built on civility, on calm, on trading. Civilization is destroyed with insults, mania, and theft.
During this Christmas season, and into the new year, I will practice civility, and to fight the good fight with integrity and honor. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Many voters on both sides of the political spectrum are currently experiencing ‘Stockholm syndrome’.
Mitt Romney has a terrible record as governor of Massachusetts, and so does US House Representative Paul Ryan. And yet now that they are on the campaign trail they say a few nice things that make us feel good, and the republicans support them.
The same is true with the Democrats. Barack Obama has been a terrible president, and yet his supporters still root for him as the lesser of two evils, even though he passed the NDAA act and kept our troops over seas.
George Bush was supposed to be a moderate conservative and yet he massively increased spending, the debts, government and he started two wars. Obama is a continuation of that presidency, and Mitt Romney is an expansion and continuation of that further. And yet we see people on both sides clinging strongly to their statist candidates because they are afraid of what ‘the other side’ might do if elected to office. Rather than realize that their own party is as damaging to their livelihoods and freedoms as ‘the other side’.
We are now expected to vote through fear of what the other side might do if allowed to get office, rather than realizing that both are wrong and will only harm us.
The republican establishment showed last week that it is not interested in your constitutional rights, they laid out in plain sight this year that they are only interested in unbridled power. The RNC prevented Ron Paul from speaking, and shut down any chance of him being nominated.
We have heard that “we need to vote in Romney in first! Then we can influence him!” which sounds like something Nancy Pelosi would say “we need to vote for it first before we read it”.
We’ve now got people thinking that Mitt Romney is a good manager and thinking outside of the box for picking Ryan as a fiscal conservative, which is completely unfounded, given his voting record.
Paul Ryan is not a good man, and is beginning to show his colors again while campaigning. Remember that Paul Ryan practically begged for the auto bailouts:
Mitt Romney chose to shun Ron Paul, who, if only he’d been allowed to speak, and his delegates been allowed to share their voices and concerns, may well have put their support behind him. Instead he choose to put up Clint Eastwood, whom I admire greatly. But Mitt Romney’s Dirty Harry stunt backfired. The liberal media of course derided the speech, but interestingly, so did the conservative media including Glenn Beck. This has helped to expose the fallacy of the left/right media paradigm, and has exposed that they are all corrupt. Not only that, but Clint Eastwood’s speech overshadowed Mitt Romney’s highly edited, polished and robotic speech which was very vague and didn’t specify how to actually fix the economy or return lost liberties to the nation.
It’s very telling of what the republican establishment is doing, when they’d rather have an old man talk to a chair in front of the crowd, than allow another old man to talk about the future of the party and how to restore liberties. I liked the things that Clint said as much as the things Ron say’s, but I’ll stick with Ron on not endorsing Romney.
In a time when information is available everywhere, ignorance is a choice.
I would encourage you to learn about the candidates, what they stand for, and to look at what the power structure is doing in each party.
The republicans are already showing their true colors again. They did nothing good for the country during the Bush administration, and now that they are close to having full power of the house, senate and presidency, they are showing once again what fumbling fools they are. They are simply a milder version of the democrats. Think of Bud light and Budweiser, there’s not much difference in the two of them.
Many people who are over sixty years old believe that anyone but Obama will be good for the country, but they cannot support their arguments with facts, only rhetoric, and memories from the good old days of Eisenhower and Reagan. On the opposite end of the spectrum you have the people who are under forty, almost all of whom support Ron Paul, and are beginning to understand that both parties are deeply flawed and do not follow the constitution.
The liberals were infiltrated by statist ideas a long time ago, and it has become very obvious. The infiltration of the right is less obvious, but it has happened.
The Overton window is a political theory that describes as a narrow “window” the range of ideas that the public will respond to as acceptable, and that the political viability of an idea is primarily defined by this rather than individual preferences of a given politician. It is named after its originator, Joseph P. Overton, former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. At any given moment, the “window” includes a range of policies considered to be politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too “extreme” or outside the mainstream to gain or keep public office.
So how do we escape the perpetual downward trend of statism? The first thing to do is to recognize the problem. This chart will help you figure out where you stand on liberties and freedoms:
Libertarians offer an alternative answer to our current problems. You might even be a libertarian yourself.
There is only one escape option left for the nation right now, and that is a 3rd party candidacy. Ron Paul was our last chance to steer the republican party from within.
FROM DR RON PAUL
8.27.12
As we enter the fall political season, we will hear a great deal of rhetoric from both major political parties and their many candidates for office. It’s important for us to remember, however, that words can be made meaningless by misuse or overuse. And when we as citizens allow politicians to obscure the truth by distorting words, we diminish ourselves and our nation.
For example, we’ve all heard politicians use the words “democracy” and “freedom” countless times. They are used interchangeably in modern political discourse, yet their true meanings are very different. They have become what George Orwell termed “meaningless words”. Words like “freedom,” “democracy,” and “justice,” Orwell explained, have been abused for so long that their original meanings have been eviscerated. In Orwell’s view, such words were “often used in a consciously dishonest way.” Without precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language. As just one example, Americans have been conditioned to accept the word “democracy” as a synonym for freedom. Thus we are conditioned to believe that democracy is always and everywhere benevolent. The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with freedom. While our Constitution certainly features certain democratic mechanisms, it also features inherently undemocratic mechanisms like the First Amendment and the Electoral College. America is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Yet we’ve been bombarded with the meaningless word “democracy” for so long that few Americans understand the difference. If we intend to use the word freedom in an honest way, we should have the simple integrity to give it real meaning: Freedom is living without government coercion. So when a politician talks about freedom or liberty–regardless of the issue being discussed– ask yourself whether he is advocating more government force or less. The words “liberal” and “conservative” have also been abused. “Liberalism,” which once stood for civil, political, and economic liberties, has become a synonym for omnipotent coercive government. Liberalism has been redefined to mean liberation from material wants, always via a large and benevolent government that exists to create equality on earth. “Conservatism,” meanwhile, once meant respect for tradition and distrust of active government. But in recent decades conservatism has been redefined as support for big-government grandiosity via military adventurism, corporatism, and inflationary monetary policy. The modern political right has redefined conservatism into support for an all-powerful central state, provided that the state furthers supposedly conservative goals. Orwell certainly was right about the use of meaningless words in politics. Our task, therefore, is to reclaim our language and reclaim our liberties. If we hope to remain free, we must cut through the fog and attach concrete meanings to the words politicians use to deceive us.
I hope my posts are somewhat of a counsel to those who are rubbing their eyes in disbelief. I know its hard to give up ideas you’ve held for so long about certain people and certain parties, but the cause of liberty and freedom is worth the sacrifice. I’d rather be told a cold hard truth and learn to live with it, than to be told a comforting lie, only to have its bitterness slowly seep in over time and rot from the inside out.
Do not be discouraged, do not be upset, once you have learned what has happened to both sides of the two party system, you can begin to rebuild your ideas and share them with others. There are many good intellectual libertarian websites out there where you can learn more, and do your part to return liberty and free market concepts to this once free nation.
The time for a third party has come. The time to restore liberties is now. We must restore this nation. Give me liberty or give me death!
We are currently more concerned with taxation and the economy and fluff issues such as gay marriage and immigration, that we are not concentrating on the biggest issue of all, which is our individual liberties.
Mitt Romney’s ‘running mate’ Paul Ryan voted for the NDAA act, multiple bailouts and to extend the patriot act. That doesn’t sound like much of a liberty loving patriot to me. As for his budget, it is a mere drop in the ocean as to what we face and need to do to reign in the horrifically ballooned deficit. A 30 year program? That’s pathetic. Is that the best we can throw at the democrats?
As for the republic ticket thus far, giving them ‘red meat’ is not going to work. Republicans are historically only elected when the appeal to both sides of the isle.
Ron Paul’s message would appeal to both sides because he wants to bring the troops home (which the democrats like) and cut the budget by 1 trillion year one (which the republicans would love).
If you truly want the republicans to win, it has to be Ron Paul. Even if Mitt Romney’s plan (does he even have one?) boosts the economy, do realize that you are not voting for liberty. None of the candidates but Ron Paul have any interest in your liberties.
There are so many issues created to keep us divided, that we only concentrate on the one thing that immediately effects us all, and that is the economy. We are distracted by that, all the while the politicians are stripping away our freedoms one by one. We still have a chance to elect a libertarian candidate to the GOP ticket, who will restore liberties. Ron Paul would not only restore the economy, but restore the freedoms that protect our lives.
Economies boom and bust all the time, but they can be rebuilt. If we lose our liberties, there will be nothing left to rebuild from. So the most important question to ask is, which is more important? The economy or your life?
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude” – Thomas Jefferson
After the Tea Party on Tuesday, I wrote the article about Rick Santorum. In my opinion, based on facts and common sense, Ron Paul is the only candidate who has the credentials necessary to lead this country and I endorse him for the presidency. Guys like Rick Santorum have no place in leading this country. Your political record stays with you forever, and his stinks!
After I posted the article on Wednesday, life caught up with me at breakneck speed. I have a draft post for an article on Glenn Beck and Israel. It is long and complicated. Basically; I do not believe we should pay any special interests to this UN mandated country which took over land formally held by Palestinians. Glenn talks about Israel being a bastion of democracy. But if anything it is a provoker of many of the wars in the Middle East, and does nothing to stabilize the region. I also find it very troubling that many of the presidential candidates are sponsored by the American Israel super pacs, all the while Israel and these Israel backed candidates are propping up and sponsoring the ideas of bombing Iran. As I have mentioned before, bombing Iran would be a very foolish thing to do, and could trigger WWIII, or simply a massive default on our currency.
There are many problems right now. And what troubles me is that Glenn may actually not be who we think he is. I see it as one of two ways; he is an agent of blatant misinformation, riding on the side of liberty while acting as its destroyer. Or he is simply and helplessly flawed in his thinking on the Middle East and the rationale behind supporting Israel and religious bigotry.
Like I said; the article I have drafted is long and needs a lot of work. But always keep in mind that the hero does often become the villain (read the hero with a thousand faces) and that many people can be wrong in some areas while right in many others.
I like Glenn’s exposure of progressives and all the links between those in power and the organizations and special interests that support them. But I find it troublesome that he supports special interests of his own.
Over the next week I will be extremely busy. I am designing a website and putting together an online store for a company I am helping to set up. Aside from Super Tuesday; where I’ll be gathering signatures for the Ohio Workplace Freedom Amendment, my time will be completely booked.
I’ll continue to contribute more blogs in the future, though not as many as previously at this point in time.
Always question everything around you. Never accept what others say simply because they are right on most issues. You never know for sure until you do the research for yourself.
“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.” -Thomas Jefferson
And Remember;
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” – Thomas Jefferson
Becoming American 