An Open Letter To Congress

Dear Friends,

Below is a letter to Congress. These should not just be my words, but the words of every liberty loving American in this country. What I would like you to do is take this letter, copy and paste it into a word document, fill out your Congressman/woman's and/or senators names (choosing the correct prefix of sir or madam) and then find out their fax numbers and then print and fax this letter in to them. I would recommend sending it to your representative or senator who you know will vote for the impending health care bill. But also write, call or fax your rep. or senator if they are against it, and thank them for standing for liberty in this country. We are the power of government in this country, and some in Congress must be called to account. That is your duty, my friends. Hold them to their jobs, and let them know your displeasure if they are not doing it. Let them know they are there by the good graces of us, the good people of the United States of America, and let them know we will not be dictated too! Stand up for your rights! Stand firm in your resolve! Do not yield one inch of your moral rectitude! We will be heard!

Publius

 

To the Honorable _____________________

Dear Sir/Madam,

I sincerely believe, as an American citizen, that by passing this health care "reform" bill through Congress, you will have destroyed every principle that this country was founded upon. This is a country of liberty, of freedom, and of the choice to take whatever path in life that one wants to take. Government was not instituted in this country by the generation of 1776 to impose upon people what they were going to do. That is exactly what the Founding Fathers separated from England to get away from.

In 1765, the Stamp Act, one of a long line of reprehensible taxes, and one that caused an uproar throughout the colonies, was passed, placing a tax on a commodity, in this case, paper. No newspaper, letter, legal document, and other papers, were legal unless it had the stamp, meaning the tax had been paid. This caused mass protest among the colonists, as this tax was placed upon them without their consent, and they saw it as unlawful and infringing on their rights as Englishmen. This would start the cries of "No Taxation Without Representation." The act was later to repealed, only to be followed soon after by the Townshend Acts of 1767, which placed taxes on tea, glass, and other such commodities. Once again, this was imposed upon the colonists without their consent, and they once again protested, leading to a partial repeal of the Acts. However, Parliament again did not learn their lesson, and when the colonists protested against the remaining tax on tea, by throwing the Boston Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts were passed, taking away from the citizens of Boston and to a larger extent, the colonies, certain rights that they were guaranteed as British citizens. When it was realized that they would never get fair treatment, because Parliament did not represent their interests, they stood for their rights, fought and created the country that we live in today.

When the Founders created government, they created it for a very explicit purpose, which can be found throughout the writings of many of these brave and wise men. Thomas Jefferson said it best in his First Inaugural, when he stated: "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. That is the sum of good government." (emphasis added) That statement, from the man who so eloquently stated the cause of freedom in the Declaration of Independence, sums up what the purpose of the men and women we send to Congress is.

Unfortunately, the purpose of government has seen a change over the two hundred years since it was founded. Instead of citizen legislators who have been elected by their constituents to represent their interests as a nation in Congress assembled, it has become about power and pushing one's own agenda, instead of listening to the people of this great nation. The Founders did not mean for the power to rest in the hands of 435 House members and 100 Senators; they left the power in the hands of the citizens of the United States. Thomas Jefferson wrote that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." George Mason wrote in the Virginia Declaration of Rights that "all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the People; that magistrates are their trustees, and servants, and at all times amenable to them." John Adams said that it was a '"most excellent maxim that the original and fountain of all just power and government is in the people."' Do you know why that is? Because we the people of this country know what is best for us. I as an individual know what is best for me, and I have the God given right to make the decisions that affect my life. I did not vote for a person to go to Washington to tell me what is best for me; only I know what is best for me. If I make a bad decision, and there are adverse effects, that is on me. I will hopefully learn from my mistakes, and be a better person for it. But I need to make that decision, not some politician in Washington. It is on each individual person to make the decisions that affect their lives. That is not your job. That is not what you were elected to do.

James Madison stated: "Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the sovereign in every free one." If this is to be so, then why do you not listen to the people of this country? Why do you instead insult them as being a group of uneducated, dispassionate and hateful people who cling to their "guns and religion?" Are they not doing what it is their Constitutional right to do, and dissenting? Are they not allowed to make their voice heard as to what they think of the national government? It is a fundamental right that cannot be denied. To refute it is a footstep onto the path of despotism. All year, thousands upon thousands of Americans have made their voices heard, from protests all across the country, to standing up at town hall meetings and making their opinions known. Yet they are maligned, told that they are a mob, uninformed, and stupid, by the ones that claim to represent them. When the approval rating of Congress stands at 25%, and when 56% of Americans think that this country is headed in the wrong direction, it is time to listen to them, instead of attempting to force upon the people a partisan agenda that it is quite clear a majority of American citizens disagree with.

You are in your position by the good graces of the people of your district and/or state. They put you in the office, and they can remove you from it just as easily. By attempting to push a partisan, political, and all too often personal agenda upon the people, you have failed in your duty as a national legislator. You have lost the confidence of the American people, as is becoming quite clear. It is time that you stepped back from this agenda of legislating how people should live, and start doing what is right for this country, by getting us back on the right track to the liberty that we were endowed with by our Creator. Only then can you regain the confidence of America. Only then can we be the country that we were created to be.

Sincerely,

A Concerned American Citizen.

 

 

I Have Been Silent Far Too Long

I have been silent for too long. But today, as I was watching the television, I had my eyes opened to what is going on in this country. And it is truly and utterly despicable. I am sickened by watching what is becoming of the country that I so dearly love, and that our Founding Fathers fought and died so hard for. But sadly, too many Americans do not listen any more to their words. Those words spoke truth, and it came from a knowledge that what we have and what was given to us comes from a higher power, one not of this earth. "Freedom," Benjamin Franklin said, "is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature." But nobody acknowledges this wisdom any more. It is forgotten and ignored by far too many, and remembered by so few.

Too many Americans are buying into the thought that only the government can bestow freedom upon the people. Have they not read the Declaration of Independence which states that we are endowed by our Creator with certain, unalienable rights? And yet they expect a group of people who have promised them "Hope" and "Change" to secure that freedom to all Americans, when all that these people are going to do is try and level the playing field, so to speak, and make all people "equal." That is not what freedom is about. Equality is not freedom! Equality is being the same as the person next to you, and every single person having everything in common. That is what the Soviets tried. Everybody had the same kind of clothes, and the same type of housing, and, if they could afford it, the same kind of car! Is that freedom? No!!!!!!

Freedom, or liberty, as it is also known, is about having choices, and the ability to live one's life without outside interference from others. John Adams said: "I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by." That is how this country was founded! The men who founded it believed that freedom was the ability to do what we want to do, and to make a better life for oneself, and not have anybody else tell us otherwise. Adams then goes on to say that the "definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory." To Adams, and to the other Founders, freedom through the law isn't enough, because laws aren't meant to give freedom! Laws are meant to restrict. That is their purpose. But that is exactly what the majority in government want to do. They want to pass laws that give freedom to all. For example, they want to pass a massive health care bill that gives everybody the right to health care. But what they will not say is through this law, if you make a certain amount of money, well, we are going to take more of it from you, because you are impeding on other people's rights. How are they infringing? They can't give a real reason, because there isn't one. What they are doing is impeding, through laws, on a person's right to be successful and make a living for themselves. Laws can't give freedom folks. It is not only improbable, but impossible. Don't buy into it.

But unfortunately, too many Americans are buying into it, and the ones that are standing up for their Constitutional freedoms and remembering the words of our Founders are being ridiculed, and called a mob, and accused to clinging to their guns and religion. What so many Americans don't understand can be best stated in the words of James Madison. He said: "I believe that there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." And it is true! We are not seeing a violent overthrow of the Founders ideals and what this country was founded on. No, we have been watching this happen slowly for almost a century, starting with the trust busting of Teddy Roosevelt, the era of Woodrow Wilson, the New Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and then moving to the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson, and now, we come to the modern era. The government is now trying to tell us, the American people, how to live, and what to say. They are trying to pass bills to make certain things that were once "commodities" into "rights." But by doing that, they are taking other freedoms away from other individuals. And that is not liberty at all. That is tyranny.

These politicians are also attempting to silence those who do not agree with them by trying to push forward a revamped "Fairness Doctrine" and trying to create so-called "net neutrality" by governing the usage of the internet. This also is another blatant, though quiet, attempt at infringement on American liberty. Thomas Jefferson wrote that our "liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot by limited without being lost." It does not matter that a certain newspaper, talk show host or news network does not agree with your political point of view. They have the right to their opinion, just as the opposing party has the right to theirs. It is the right of every American to hold and form their own opinions without being told that they cannot think that way. It goes back to what Adams said about liberty being the right to do as you would be done by. If you want to have your opinion, that is great. You have that right, as do all 300 million Americans, and those other 299,999,999 have the right to disagree with you as well. That is how liberty works.

Those who are undertaking this underhanded usurpation of American liberties do not want you to know what they are doing. They are holding backroom meetings and shutting anybody who opposes them out. But once again, that goes completely contrary to what the Founders intended, because John Adams said that "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right . . . and a desire to know, but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers." But they don't want you to know their conduct, because they know that if you knew, they would be voted out as soon as the next election cycle comes around. And there would go their grasp on power. And they don't want to lose the power that the Founders never meant for the national legislature to have.

So, my dear friends, we must all stand up to the, dare I say, tyranny of government that has arisen in Washington, and say that enough is enough! We must tell them that we are tired of them telling us what we should do, and instead they need to listen to us, the people who vote, and who are the real authority in this country. They are there representing us, and they need to do their job, or they are getting the proverbial pink slip next November. Let us do what John Adams said, and "dare to read, think, speak, and write." Because, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the immortal words that define what this nation was founded to be: "The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." It doesn't rest in the halls of Congress, friends, but in your hands alone.

Publius

You Should Not Fix What Is Not Broken

The Democrats in Congress are now beginning their push for one of the most socialist programs yet to come out of that august body in forty years. Their plan: to broaden healthcare coverage so that by the year 2019, 97% of all Americans would be covered under public socialized healthcare. By doing this, President Obama says that we will "begin the process of fixing what is broken." The question is: What is broken?

 

The answer is nothing! There is nothing that is broken in the healthcare system that needs to be fixed. What does need to be fixed are American values. The values of hard work that this nation was built upon are beginning to vanish, and this has led us to this moment. Too many Americans now have the attitude that "everything should be given to me; I don't want to work for something that I can easily just ask the government for." And they know that the government will indeed give it to them, for if they don't, these people will, like little children, begin to cry, kick and scream if they do not get their way.

 

In order to appease these temper-tantrum throwing "children" that make up a part of American society, the government must give them what they want. So they give the child what they beg for, in this case government provided healthcare. And it isn't enough to just give a treat to one child, but they must give one to all of the children to keep them from throwing a fit as well. And by doing this, they defuse the situation, and everybody is happy, right?

 

That is what this push toward socialized medicine really is. It is a way to gain the upper hand over the average American citizen. The government telling us that they are looking out for our best interests. But are they really? I submit that they are not. They are not looking out for the interests of the people, but their own interests instead! They are looking only to push their political agenda and to hold onto the power that they have as a member of the American government, so that they can stay there as the all caring Big Brother.

 

How might Congress pay for this program of progressively socialized healthcare, one might ask? The answer is quite simple, really: they will increase taxes on those Americans who make a living through hard work, of course. They are going to punish the successful in order to fund this "solution" to the so-called healthcare "crisis." Congress's plan is to add on a 5.4% surtax on those households that bring in $1 million or more per annum. On households that bring in between $500,000 and $1 million per year, there will be a 1.5% tax increase. And for houses that bring in $350,000 per year, their taxes will increase by 1%. And if that is not enough, if this tax increase does not bring in the target $544 billion by the year 2019, then there will be a second tax increase down the road in order to fund socialized healthcare. So not only are they going to punish those who are successful, but if it isn't enough, they are going to appropriate more from the American people in the future!

    

By doing this, Congress is stifling the ability of Americans to achieve the American Dream of being successful and making a better life for themselves. Isn't this the reason that so many people want to come to this country in the first place? To fulfill their dream of making money so that they can live a better life than in the country they were living in previously? Instead, by becoming successful and living out the American Dream, they are going to have to actually shell out money that they have worked hard to earn in order to help fund another person's laziness. By punishing people who have been successful in business, or other trades, they will create a dearth of people who want to actually become successful business men and women. When they realize that they are going to have a great majority of their hard earned gains to the government, just because of their success, they will decide that there is nothing wrong with subpar. They will make the maximum they can without having to pay the tax. And by doing this, it will have an adverse affect on our economy. Without the monetarily wealthy, a society will deteriorate. Soviet Russia is a perfect example. Everyone becomes (supposedly) equal, and the country fails.

    

So instead of Congress further pushing this country down the road to socialism and destroying the American Dream, it is time that they took their hands off and let Americans live as they want to. Let us be successful and make a way for ourselves! Let us make the decisions that affect the lives of us and our families! Let those who set themselves up for failure fail! Do not destroy the free-market system because through it some succeed and some fail. That is the way it was meant to work! The American government must realize that you can please some people some of the time, but it is absolutely impossible to please all of the people all of time. Until they realize that, they are going to continue leading this country down the path to destruction, for by taking this road, that is where we are unfortunately headed.

    

This is not to say that all people who need help are lazy. Do not think that is where I am going with this. There are the elderly who need some help, as they no longer can work, the physically and mentally handicapped, and others. We should be benevolent to them, and do what we can to help, and the government can, and should, reach out a hand to its helpless citizens. But there must be a strict demarcation of who gets help, and who doesn't. If a person who is perfectly capable of working isn't, benefits may be withheld. The problem of children paying for the sins of the parents is sad, and something should be done, but that is a topic for another post. Something can and should be done. That is a given. But rewarding one group by punishing another is unacceptable. We cannot let a one party autocracy take over this country. And if we let this bill pass, that is what is going to happen.

America, It Is Time to Wake Up!

It is time for American's to wake up and smell the proverbial roses, because, quite honestly, they stink to high heavens! It seems that we really don't care as a country anymore what direction we are going in. My friends, America is on the decline, and unless something is done about it, it will soon fall.

America has become a laughing stock to the world. No countries can take us seriously anymore. Our currency has become greatly devalued. Our morals and standards have become vastly degraded. And our politicians are just downright laughable. It does not seem that any of them can seriously stand up there and be a beacon of morality and virtue anymore. None of them have that ability. In the past week we have had two high ranking Republicans admit to affairs and resign the lofty stations they once held. We have seen men and women who have been nominated for high positions within the government have to decline the nomination because they have been delinquent on their taxes, some to the tune of over $100,000, a gross violation of the law. And that is just the tip of the ice berg.

The Constitution was put in place for more than building a government. There is so much more behind it that people don't see. If one were to pick up a copy of The Federalist and read what the men who wrote it said about the function of the Constitution and how government was to be run, you would also find a part which talked about the Constitution's higher purpose, one that goes beyond government structure. In Federalist 57, Publius, who is listed as James Madison, but could possibly have been Alexander Hamilton, writes this: "The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." The whole purpose of a document such as the Constitution is to hold the politicians accountable to the office that they hold. When a man or woman is elected to hold an office of public trust, whether it is on a local council or as a member of the federal government, they are now accountable for their actions, and when they do something that is wrong and not in keeping with the standards of virtue, how can they be trusted?

How can the public trust a governor, senator, congressman/woman who has an affair and cheats on their spouse? How can we trust a person who has been appointed over a certain government office, or committee in Congress, if they have cheated on their taxes when the rest of us hard working Americans have been shelling out hundreds of dollars of our pay checks every April 15? How can we trust a government official who takes bribes in order to line their pockets with money? The answer is quite simple: we cannot. They have betrayed the public's trust and are now no longer deserving at all of the office that they hold. It does not matter if they be Republican, Democrat, American Socialist, Green, or whatever party. The fact of the matter is that they should no longer hold that office. Now, impeachment is not necessary if no law is broken, but if they run again, do not elect them back into office. How can you trust them? The answer is, you cannot.

Virtue has got to make a comeback in American politics if this country is to get back on the right footing. I am not saying that it is the only thing that will bring this nation back from the brink, but it is one factor that desperately must be looked at. Americans no longer trust their politicians. As the old joke goes, the definition of politics comes for the Greek "poly," meaning many, and tics, blood sucking creatures. Americans don't trust politicians and hence, they don't go out and vote, because they know it will likely just lead to one more corrupt person in Washington DC who is in it only for the power and the glory. Politicians are truly seen as blood sucking party hacks that are in it only to pass an agenda, and not to do what is best for their country or their constituents back home. And there is only one way for virtue to make a comeback in politics, and that is if men and women run for office who promise to uphold the values they stand for, and who are accountable. And the only way they can get into office is if the people recognize that this is what the country needs most, and they vote for those candidates. It is time to say no to the money grubbing, corrupt, immoral, non-virtuous politicians and yes to those who will stand up for what is right and bring America back to where it once was.

Time for the European Love Affair to Die

It is high time that the Statist Democrats love affair for all things European was set aside for good and that America go in the direction that it was meant to from the beginning. In 1776, the United States declared independence from a foreign power that was holding back the potential that they saw for the country that they, not their colonial masters in England, had worked so hard to achieve. And now, the men and women who seem to think that they hold all the power of the American government want to revert back to the European way of thinking. They want to follow a European model of government that really is not necessary for the United States, and will only do more to drag it down than to lift it up.

The countries of Europe are of a different ilk than the United States. They are smaller, and as their populations grow, there is less and less space for them to expand. They can go to other countries within the EU, but then there is a language barrier that must be overcome and immigration laws that must be adhered too. In the United States, we still have a great deal of space that can be utilized for expansion if it is needed, which it most likely will be, as the population has doubled in the past half century. Different needs require different solutions, and our needs are not the same as those of Europe. So why look to them when we don't need to?

What does America need most of all in these troubled times? We need to return to the model of the Founders, though somewhat modernized. But this modernization, mind you, should not detract from the fundamental principles of liberty and popular authority that those men held so dearly to. While times have changed, the idea of a free society has not, nor should. All American citizens should be free to make a life that helps them to succeed (within legal bounds, mind you) and to make their own decisions, not have the government make them instead and dictate how a person should live. It seems that those who hold the majority think that in order for this nation to prosper, they are the ones who must have control over everything, and that is simply fallacious. When the government dictates to the people how they should live, liberty dies, and tyranny reigns supreme.

Let us look at economic regulation, for example. Now, one must understand that there will always be rules that must be adhered to, such as workplace safety standards, just wages and the like. However, then the government begins to intrude into businesses, such as the automakers, and tell them what they are going to do and how they are going to do it, then you begin to have problems. You have situations like that of General Motors, which for all intents and purposes has become Government Motors. The president of the United States actually forced out the former CEO and had him replaced by a man who has no experience working in the business he now runs. They are forcing standards upon the automakers to make the cars more fuel efficient. Now, do not get me wrong, I don't mind a car that can get more miles to the gallon, as long as the quality does not suffer because of it. But that is exactly what is going to happen, due to the fact that Congress has presented a time table to make cars get over 35.5 miles/gallon or more by the year 2012.

So they have three years to figure out a solution to this "problem": How do they make a car that is fuel efficient and will still keep the occupants safe in a collision? Let us go back in time real quick to the first oil crisis in the 1970's. During this crisis, something called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (or CAFE for short) Standards were passed in 1975. Now, while this increased the fuel economy of vehicles in America, it also meant that car makers had to begin making smaller, lighter cars, because they could not meet these standards with the larger, heavy metal cars they previously made. After this, cars began to have many more plastic parts that break easier (and for some reason are more expensive, it seems) and the bodies were constructed of lighter metals. And while this helped with meeting the CAFE standards, it also had an unintentional side effect, and that was the increase in deaths due to vehicular collisions, which, if one looks at the statistics, have been on the rise since CAFE standards were put in place. Now, let us come back to the present and put this situation in a modern light. In order to meet the 35.5 MPG, what are American automakers going to do? Instead of making a secure, safe car and creating an engine that has power and fuel efficiency, they will lighten the car so that the engine can remain the same and yet still meet the fuel efficiency standards. Another side effect is that though one will be purchasing a car with less substance, the price tag will increase, on average, by $1,300.

This is only one example of European style regulations that the Statist Democrats are attempting to implement in the United States today. They are doing their best to end the free market economy that has propelled America for decades and to replace it with a government run economy that does not allow for free thinking and the making of a profit for the business owner. Is this the liberty that the Founding Fathers were thinking of when they created this nation? I think not. Even the citizens of the European countries that have these forms of government that the Democrats are so enamored by are fed up with them. They are seemingly all for an economic union between the countries of Europe, but when it comes to all of the land use regulations and increasing calls to hand over more and more of their rights to the European Union, they are much more skeptical. And if they are skeptical of their own forms of government, shouldn't Americans be even more so if this is what the majority in power want for us?

It is time that this love affair for all things European was buried six feet in the ground, in an unmarked grave, to be forgotten forever. The men who met in Philadelphia in 1787 gave us a form of government that works, and they came from a generation of men who fought for freedom, and not just political freedom, but economic as well. The regulation and over taxation of American industry must be put aside and the free market, capitalist economy that this nation was built upon must be allowed, once more, to roam free and be allowed to flourish, or else this country will eventually fall away into the annals of history as a has been, a once mighty superpower that is not longer what it used to be. Is this truly what we want for our country? I should think, and hope, not.

Ancient Advice for Modern Times

    So many people today ignore the words of men who lived centuries, even millennia, before us. This is such a shame, for they offer words of wisdom that should well be heeded. Their words echo from ages past with advice we could well use today.

    One of these great thinkers in particular comes to mind. Pericles was a renowned Greek general, politician and orator. He made a speech to the people of Athens in honor of the men who had recently fallen in battle, and he said something in that oration that applies to us today in America. He said:

 

"We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters, for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensible preliminary to any wise action at all."

 

    These are words which many of our Founding Fathers would most likely have been familiar with, as they were all intimately aware of what the ancients had said, and were well versed in the classics. Some probably had even read Thucydides, from whose writings we have the account of what Pericles said. And it should have an impact on us today as it did to those men over two hundred years ago. America could very well look to the example of the ancient Greeks as to how we should live today, and how we should be involved in all things that pertain to society and politics.

    Since its founding, America has come to be one of the most prosperous nations on earth, as was Greece in the days of Pericles. This nation has a better standard of living than many other modern nations, and that is a great blessing. However, Americans can be prosperous without showing it off. This has become a habit for those who have come into money. But we do not need to buy multi-million dollar homes and $100,000 cars to show off our prosperity. There is just no need for it. It shows that Americans are putting precedence on material wealth, and not on the good things that wealth brings and the responsibility it holds. By showing off ones prosperity, it shows that a person is immature and likes to show off, and not do good things with the blessings they have been bestowed with. Do not think that what is being said here is that prosperity is a bad thing, because it is not. What is being said is that living an opulent life is not a necessity, for it gets a person nowhere. You can't take it with you when you die. Instead, use wealth for good and not show. You can live a comfortable life, and have nice things, but extravagance is unnecessary.

    When it comes to poverty, the real disgrace is not being poor, but in not doing all one can to get out of it. So many Americans today throw themselves a pity party because they don't have enough to live comfortably, and instead of trying to work hard to rise above their current economic level by using their God given capacity to overcome, they attempt to pass the blame on to others. They complain that because there are others who have more, those people are in some way being unfair and not giving them their fair share of the American dream. People who do this need to stop wallowing in their self-pity, for this is a nation of vast opportunities. Stop complaining, pick yourself up, get to work and make a better life for yourself. Many Americans have had to work difficult, low paying jobs before they have been able to climb out of the hole of impoverishment. One should not think that they are above working in a low wage job. If that is what it takes to climb to the next level, then that is what must be done. One cannot start climbing a tree in the middle. He or she has to start from the bottom to get to the top.

    When it comes to public matters, we should all be involved in some way. This goes beyond dragging ourselves to the polls in November. Pericles spoke of the Athenians as a people who all had a stake in the government of their city-state. Now, we live in a different day with a similar, yet not entirely the same, form of government. But we should all still be involved in one way or another. We vote for a person to represent us in Congress, but we should continue to make our voices heard after the election is over. All civic minded citizens should pay attention to what is going on in Washington D.C. and voice their opinions. That is what the Founders envisioned. They wanted the people to be involved, because they understood that the everyday citizen knew what he or she wanted and what was best for them better than any politician sitting at a desk, in a capital a thousand miles away. When the people voice their opinions, the government should listen accordingly. Though republican in representation, this is still a democracy; the people still have a say.

    And finally, there is the idea of the free flow of ideas and opinions. This can in no way be stifled or impeded. It is the exchange of thoughts in a free forum that makes a government like that which the Founders created work, and it keeps a nation free. When one person or party attempts to put a stop to another person or party from voicing their views on a matter, it is the beginning of tyranny. Some will claim that halting dissenting voices will put a stop to divisiveness. Others will claim that it will in fact help to encourage instead of hinder the free flow of ideas. Both are wrong, for where one begins to put walls around a person's right to free speech, it breeds discontent and makes only one opinion freely available to the people instead of many. It is like a farmer growing crops. The crop he is planting is liberty. Crops need both sunlight (one opinion on an idea) and water (the opposite opinion) in order for the plant to grow. If either sunlight or water is withheld (the voicing of an opinion is silenced), then the plant liberty cannot grow. Both are a necessity. No matter how much people may disagree on a subject, no person or party has the right to deprive others of the right to voice their disapproval or dissent. As Pericles said in his speech, the free flow of ideas is necessary in order for wise actions to be taken by those who make the decisions that affect our lives.

    Listen to the words of the ancient philosophers and orators. Much of what they said pertaining to virtue, government and freedom still applies today. Their words influenced the men who founded this nation, and they should be an influence on all Americans today as well.

Let the Fear Mongering Begin

Well, it looks as if the new administration has it out for anybody who is opposed to their policies. In a newly declassified report put out by the Department of Homeland Security, their is a "possible" threat of an increase in right-wing extremist groups taking action now that the Democrats have regained power and the White House. The problem is, there is no credible threat.

In a recently declassified and released DHS Intelligence assessment, it was stated that the Department of Homeland Security has "no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues." These "emergent issues" include the economic downturn and the election of Barack Obama to the presidency.

What there is a lack of is proof of anything really happening. There is no real evidence that these extremist groups are planning anything on the scale of Oklahoma City in 1995, which was, by the way, only carried out by two men. Not really a "group" of right wing radicals bent on a violent overthrow of the government. It is just a ploy to say that anybody who is opposed to the policies of the president and Congress are, well, right wing radicals. There is no naming of specific groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or specific militia groups. There is instead a broad generalization being made. It is not even saying ultra-right wing factions, just right wing. This includes conservatives, libertarians, Constution party members, and the like.

It is time for the government to stop playing on the peoples fears. It is pithy and wholly impolitical for them to be even doing this kind of thing. The left complained about wiretaps and the like during the previous administration, but now the new administration is looking like it is going to do the very thing they decried for eight years. Where is the logic in this? If we are not careful, this nation will turn into a police state, with one party controlling the actions of all citizens. I doubt that is what the Founding Fathers would have wanted for this country.

Link to DHS assessment: http://images.logicsix.com/DHS_RWE.pdf