I guess somebody owes someone an apology...

Some nearby neighbors of mine are about to get the shock of their lives. They voted for Obama in the misguided conviction that his agenda was to make the country more “fair” by pillaging the “rich.” And despite the fact that they live in a home valued at nearly a half-million dollars and enjoy retirement income approaching $100,000, they do not consider themselves “rich.”

Frankly, neither do I. Their home’s value is a consequence of where they were able to purchase back before the area became a Vermont “gold coast” town. It’s native beauty and rural character, located near two prime ski resorts, has driven its value to nearly 8 times its value 25 years ago when they bought. And, let’s face it, $100,000 income is solidly middle class these days — perhaps a bit less if you live in a major metropolitan area.

Nevertheless, in the world of multi-millionaire Obama, my neighbors are “rich” because they make more than minimum wage and have never been on welfare. Which is decidedly unfair of them, and for which they are about to pay a hefty price. Because, despite Obama’s campaign promise that nobody earning under $250,000 would see a dime’s increase in their taxes, my neighbors are about to get hit with a string of new taxes that they thought would only be levied against those nasty Republican fat cats who, as everybody knows, have got more than their fair share. Probably dishonestly.

These retirees’ personal income tax rate will rise; they will be hit with higher taxes for being married nearly 60 years; their dividend income will be taxed at nearly 40% (it’s 15% now), and they will likely be caught up by the Alternative Minimum Tax for the first time.

And that’s just at the Federal level. Vermont, like most states, is running a budget deficit. We have been so successful at creating social services that poor and unemployed people are now targeting Vermont as a sweet-spot state. Those services are paid for by increasing fees and taxes on business; the climate for business development is so bad that large employers are leaving while small businesses struggle to hang on, slowly releasing their few employees. Several local Tea Party/pro-business candidates for state office have identified themselves as “the last man [or woman] standing,” by which they mean they are the last of their family to remain in Vermont, all the others having fled in order to find work.

Today, ironically the fourth of July, I was speaking to my current state representative. He said his family have been in their town in Vermont since the state was founded; his two sons are telling him to sell the 10-acre plots he has carved out for each of them from the family farm because they could never afford to pay the taxes on them. Building is totally out of the question, they are each squeaking by in the big cities of Vermont and wondering if they will have to migrate out of state. The taxes Obama and the Democrats are proposing for next year will tip the scale. Unfortunately, there will be no safe haven on these shores.

And that’s just the beginning. Obama is making noise about confronting Republicans and Tea Party people about the deficit. Next year. Rush Limbaugh makes the point that the President was completely unconcerned about the rising debt load as he and his Democrat supporters rammed the health care and stimulus bills through Congress. They told us not to worry, the rising economy that would result from all of the “savings” in these plans would wipe out the debt.

Now he’s telegraphing that he’s going to ask the country to go on a plan to reduce the heavy debt burden in 2011. That is, in the same year that the new taxes take effect. How does he plan to reduce debt? By reducing expenditures? Of course not; the plan will be to increase taxes even more. We will be asked to go along with additional tax increases — over and above those already slated to go into effect on January 1 — for the good of the country. And Republicans and Tea Party people who object will be attacked as being two-faced. If you complained about the debt, Obama and the Dems will argue, you should be in favor of reducing it; hence, increasing taxes.

But the problem, as The Wall Street Journal has pointed out, is not one of insufficient taxes. The problem is insufficient wealth generation. That is, the task ahead of us is not to reduce the debt by increasing the theft of private earnings; the task is to reduce the debt by making it easier and more profitable for companies and individuals to make large amounts of money — which can be taxed reasonably. And, in addition, the task is to reduce government-level spending so that new spending does not eat up all of the new taxes generated by increased business activity.

Step one is to stop government spending. That stops debt accumulation.

Step two is to reduce tax rates. That leaves money in the pockets of private individuals and companies with which to stimulate real economic activity — which is creating value out of thin air, or transmuting lower-priced raw materials into higher-priced commodities — that is the source of real economic growth.

Step three is to tax the new revenue at sustainable levels. That is, as Reagan demonstrated, a sure path to economic stability.

Step four is to further reduce government spending. As more jobs are created and more people have the opportunity to go to work, the government needs to reduce its support of non-workers. It also needs to reduce the number of public sector workers — whose pay comes from taking money out of the till of business and the pockets of productive sector workers.

Of course, none of this is going to happen. Obama is going to try to split the Republicans by guilt-tripping the economically ignorant among them into supporting a VAT tax along with new taxes on business. He and the mainstream media (whose members are just as ignorant about how the economy actually works) will talk about “debt reduction” instead of “spending reduction.”

Because we have been so rich that we have been able to absorb the increasing taxes levied upon individuals and businesses by various levels of government, government has concluded that there is no level of taxation that will break the productivity cycle. But we have reached the tipping point, and the breaking has already begun. Just as steadily increasing taxes on cigarettes has done more than discourage smoking, but has also led to decreases in revenue from cigarette taxes, so increasing business taxes has led to the point where business tax revenue is beginning to fall. And increasing personal taxes is making it more lucrative to be one of those who receive services from the government than to be one who provides the money that pays for those services.

The incentive to have a value-generating job, or to start a business, or to own and keep a home, the incentive to be productive is being destroyed. And, as with cigarette income, it will lead to reduced revenue to the government.

My neighbors don’t see it. They don’t understand business economics. They don’t comprehend the fact that too much tax — even if just on the “wealthy” — will cause economic stagnation and national decay.

They also don’t understand that once you give government the power to define who has “too much,” and is therefore a fair target of re-distributive taxation, your own wallet is open to their never-ending avarice.

But they will learn these lessons first-hand, beginning in 2011 when the new tax and health care laws go into effect. Here is a summary of just the first round of taxes that will be coming in the third year of the Obama Administration: New Taxes.

Round two will destroy your lifestyle. Watch for it next year.

Meanwhile, who is John Galt?

This is why some pundits are asking whether returning Congress to Republican control in November will help change our current, economically and socially destructive national direction. Of course, those Republicans who want your vote say it will. But that’s rhetoric. The question is: will a re-empowered GOP have the courage to follow rhetoric with action?

Because real change requires dismantling not only what Obama and the Democrats have created in the last eighteen months, but also many of the policies and structures put in place by prior administrations and Congresses of both parties. What’s needed is nothing less than turning the U.S. ship of state 180 degrees. We need to go back toward the shores of freedom we have been sailing away from for more than two generations.

If we do not reverse course, if we do not become again a nation that respects its own borders, insists on individual self-reliance – without which there can be no individual freedom – tolerates only a small federal government, promotes strong state governments, funds far fewer public sector programs and jobs, and insists upon a legal structure much more closely aligned to the Founders’ vision, then the only thing a return of Republican rule will do is slow the rate of decay and put off the day of national bankruptcy.

President Obama is betting the GOP will not have the courage to undo the structural changes he is putting in place. He has said he would rather be an effective one-term President than a two-term office holder who fails to carry through his core convictions. He believes that if he sticks to his vision, history will remember him as a modern hero even if he only serves four years.

In that sense, Obama is not a cynical politician. However much I disagree with him – and I do, profoundly – I believe that he is a man of principle who is prepared to stand and fall on his core convictions. He is a man with a vision, based on an ideology that he believes is historically destined to replace the antiquated 18^th century notions of our Founders; and he believes that if he carries through on reshaping the United States future generations will see him as an historically-necessary and heroic figure.

At the point of standing or falling on core principles, Obama is not the cynic most politicians prove to be. However, that does not mean he lacks cynicism. His cynicism is linked to his callous willingness to use tragedy to advance his ideology.

Determined not only to capitalize on any available crisis, he seems even willing to prolong or deepen crises if doing so helps his cause. Hence, Senator Kyl’s testimony that the President does not want to seal the borders because open borders and border chaos advance his desire to force Congress to tackle a “comprehensive” immigration reform policy. The continuing controversy and growing public upset helps pressure Congress to act. Never mind that his inaction causes hundreds of people – on both sides of the border – to become victims of opportunists and criminals. The ends justify the means, and a good crisis cannot be allowed to go to waste when it can be used to advance the Administration’s agenda.

Similarly, the continuation of the Gulf oil catastrophe and its consequent environmental devastation advances nobody’s interest except the current Administration’s. The growing anger and frustration helps the President push his commitment to ban oil drilling and push alternative energy solutions that are still incapable of coming even half way to meeting our current domestic energy needs. The destruction to the Gulf Coast flora and fauna, and economy of individuals and Gulf Coast states, and the possible migration of oil from the BP spill up the Eastern seaboard and even across the Atlantic to European shores – all of this harm is justified in Obama’s mind by the end he has his eyes set upon. On the way to creating a Utopian carbon-free future, Obama has no qualms about causing long-lasting, perhaps permanent, ecological and economic harm.

A good crisis cannot be allowed to go to waste when it can be used, and prolonged, to advance his agenda. That, I believe, is the real reason Obama’s administration has blocked the effective deployment of national and international resources that could, at a minimum, mitigate the harm. Instead, he consults Hollywood directors who are experts on filming undersea, and TV talk show hosts who advise him on talking points.

Yes, I do think Obama is that cynical and that ideologically-driven to achieve his vision of a better America. He knows his apparently-ineffective handling of this crisis may help cost him a second term, but if it helps him shift the United States away from its carbon-based, capitalism-oriented economy, he will consider it worth the price. And he believes he will be lifted high in the future pantheon of American statesmen because he was willing to sacrifice his own interests in pursuit of a better America.

The President is also betting the Republican Party, which stands to gain significant power in this Fall’s elections, will prove to be too cynical, too committed to its own power and longevity, to do more than tinker around the edges of the programs and policies he’s expending his presidential capital to put in place.

Obama believes that most politicians will buckle under the pressure of upset voter blocks when those blocks see their personal privileges and benefits put under threat, as they must be if the U.S. is going to turn back toward our founding values and vision. In other words, the President is betting that the American public is also by-and-large cynical. He believes we will not be willing to forgo our perks even as we call for changes in the “free loading” of others. And politicians who want to remain in office hate to upset voters.

Is the President right? That remains to be seen. I think Tea Party Americans are the only people who might force those they elect this Fall to rise to the historic needs of the day. The key – the necessary factor – is that Tea Party Americans guard against the twin evils of self-interest and their own cynicism. In the coming years, we need to foster and support in one another a mission to place the country’s needs ahead of our own personal wants. Like the founders of our country, we must sincerely pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to the cause of restoring our unique country.

There is a difference between the cynic’s willingness to make others pay a price for the cynic’s plans, and the patriot’s self-sacrifice for a sacred cause. The cynic, convinced that the ends justify the means, will force others to pay a heavy price for goals chosen by the cynic. The patriot, convinced that a noble end cannot be achieved without sacrifice, chooses for him- or herself to pay the price for a better future. One is imposed, the other is freely chosen, and in that distinction is all the difference between the best of the Obama administration and the best of the Tea Party movement.

Because it will cost us to be Americans of character and vision, we have to know if we are willing to take upon ourselves the price of restoring America’s unique Constitutional liberties. Obama is betting there are not enough of us with that kind of patriotism. He believes cynical self-interest and its twin, the cynicism born of battle fatigue, will defeat us.

Jesus warned those who thought to follow Him that they should first sit down and tally up the cost. There is nothing more ridiculous, He said, than the person who begins a construction project but, by failing to account for everything it will cost, must quit before finishing. Jesus did not want people to leave everything and follow Him if they could not pay the price in full. Following Christ could cost you your family, friends, livelihood, and even your life. If you cannot pay to the last penny, He said, don’t begin the project.

If we are going to restore our nation according to the vision and values of our Founders, we, too, must consider the cost. Our forefathers pledged their fortunes – knowing they could lose their business interests, bank accounts, and homes. They pledged their lives – knowing they faced imprisonment, banishment, or death. And they pledged their honor – which they held, in those more noble days, to be sacred: more valuable than life itself was a person’s reputation, his “face” in the community in which he lived.

Obama is betting that the modern American is more venal, more self-centered, and more superficial. Most of the professional political class, of both parties, would bet the same; that, after all, is what we have trained them to think of us. In part, they are cynical because they believe we are cynical.

If we are going to change the deeply-seated perceptions of politicians, we will need both to elect principled statesmen and stateswomen rather than mere politicians, and we will need to know and discipline ourselves better than we have heretofore done. Restoring the United States will require a long fight with many, many disappointments and set-backs. Some portion of that fight will be internal: coming to terms with our own spiritual decay and reversing it; for only a people with strong moral fiber can govern themselves. And a people with strong moral fiber cannot tolerate the imposition of authority from self-appointed political saviors.

In the end, it is only the persistent pressure of principled American citizens directed at our leadership class – sustained even when we personally pay a price in benefits, privileges and the ability to earn a living – that will result in the restoration of the American Way. We have to be that citizenry. For the rest of our lives.

1) President Nero Fiddles While Rome Burns. The best analysis of President Hussein’s Oil Crisis speech that I’ve heard came from Larry Gatlin, guest-hosting for Don Imus on “Imus in the Morning,” who said it amounted to Obama saying: “By G_d, I’m gonna tell you somethin’ son, and it starts with I’m’a gonna.”

That’s about all it amounts to, and that’s about all Hussein’s presidency has amounted to. As Dick Morris has said, Obama and his entire posse are academics and analysts; not a one of them knows how to manage. Hence, Obama probably had an early meeting in which he asked, “Are we addressing the oil spill? Are we making progress?” and got honest yeses in response.

But an experienced manager would have asked, “What progress are we making? How much containment? What resources are at our disposal? How many booms? How many ships? Who is the foremost expert in the world on oil leak remediation and how quickly can we get him/her on-scene?”

That’s the difference between someone who is ready to answer the phone at 3 a.m. and our current “leadership” corps (that’s pronounced “core”, by the way, not “corpse,” President smartest-man-in-the-room-ivy-league-graduate).

Penn Jillete, the Las Vegas magician of Penn & Teller fame, has become something of a political commentator in recent years. He said (also on an Imus show – I’m watching too much Imus…) that to have radio personalities inviting the general public to offer ideas on how to solve the oil leak crisis is equivalent to inviting the public to tell surgeons how to operate. He’s right. However, the problem is that the Hussein administration is not letting the surgeons run the operation they’re experts in – in fact, he’s made it perfectly clear that he doesn’t trust the oil spill surgeons. He trusts lawyers, academics and bureaucrats, and has inserted them between the surgeons and the surgery; between the doctor (drilling experts) and the patient (the oil pipe).

Come to think of it, he’s doing exactly the same with the economy and the new National Health Care plan. In all cases, the patient is bleeding out while Obama conducts studies, academic analyses and public opinion campaigns. And then heads off to play on the basketball court or to hobnob at one of his weekly or twice-weekly multi-million dollar, star-studded White House parties.

The neglect has got to be intentional. Hail Ceasar!

2) “Useful Idiot” Defined. In his “presidential” Address, Mr. O made a statement that left even committed Leftists nonplussed. He said: “What has defined us as a nation since our founding is the capacity to shape our destiny; our determination to fight for the America we want for our children, even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. And if we don’t know yet precisely how we’re going to get there, we know we’ll get there. It’s a faith in the future that sustains us as a people.” (Quote begins about 4 ½ minutes from the end of the speech.)

What bothered even Leftists was the vague nature of several phrases, such as: “Our determination to fight for the America we want…even if we’re unsure exactly what it looks like.” Even Leftists are wondering: Who among us doesn’t have a pretty clear picture of what future we want for our children?

Or the vagueness of: “And even if we don’t know yet precisely how we’re going to get there, we know we’ll get there.” That reminds me of the Yogi Berra saying, if you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there. Is that what the President is saying? That Americans typically have no idea how to get from here to the future they’d like for their children, but they’re confident that whatever road they take it will get them there?

Who is that stupid?

Yes, it’s true that if you don’t know what the future you want looks like, you can take any approach to get “there,” wherever “there” is. But if you do have an idea of what you want the future of America to look like for your children, you also know what road will get you there, and what roads will lead you off in wrong directions.

Is the President really so clueless that he doesn’t know what future he wants, or know that we have visions of our own that we want for our children? Even his Leftist buddies have trouble with that bit of rhetoric; even his Leftist buddies have an idea of the future they want for their children and hence what road(s) will take them there, and which won’t.

But this is precisely what makes them Useful Idiots: they think the President is heading for a specific future, like they are, and that his goals are at least aligned to theirs. They’re wrong – because he’s a Socialist/Communist True Believer, and such True Believers have a different agenda than do Useful Idiot Leftists.

True Socialists/Communists (like Alinsky and the Leninists of old) know that the socialist/communist revolution is a continual process of perfecting society. It’s never finished. And the population has to be kept in a state of perpetual unease and unsettledness in order to prevent old bourgeois patterns from re-asserting themselves if they are going to successfully refashion the minds of the masses.

See, from a True Believer perspective, any achieved goal creates contentment, and contentment with the status quo is bourgeois. Therefore, even the Useful Idiot Leftists are bourgeois at heart, and have to be taken in hand and forced along the radical path that’s at the heart of Progressivism.

Progressivism at its core is a process, not a target – because the perfect society is ultimately unachievable. Truly, for the Progressive the medium is the message, and the means is the end. There is no end of the road, no identifiable “there.” It is the movement of constant experimentation. That’s why it isn’t important to a Progressive whether a particular program makes things better or worse; the journey is the purpose. And Progressives don’t give up on their ideology even though they consistently fail to improve conditions, because the experiment is the agenda, not improved lives. In fact, failing to improve lives, creating conditions of sustained anxiety and deprivation, helps break down bourgeois sentimentality. And it’s not important how many lives are damaged or cut short, or whether the result of a program corresponds to its intention; individuals are expendable in the battle for social transformation.

But transformation toward what? “We’re unsure exactly what it looks like,” President Obama says, “or precisely how we’re going to get there.” But “we know we’ll get there.”

Really? How do we know we’ll get there if we don’t know what it looks like or what will get us there? Well, we have faith, “a faith in the future that sustains us.” A faith that looks an awful lot like blind stupidity, but is really a Marxist version of faith; it’s a materialist’s “faith” in the presumed dialectic of history that is believed to inexorably lead social evolution toward some unknown, but historically inevitable, future. The purpose of the True Believer is to prevent humanity from settling for anything less than that ultimate future, by destabilizing and destroying human social structures and traditional relationships.

There is nothing humane or sentimental about the Progressive agenda. It is finally nihilistic. True Progressives do not believe in conventional notions of “the good” or even of what we generally consider to be “moral.” For them morality is aligning oneself with the presumed historical process of social evolution toward an unknown and therefore ultimately unachievable social future. People will be hurt along the way; lives will necessarily be foreshortened; freedoms will be denied; coercion will be implemented. The self-anointed True Believers will practice purely utilitarian force to prevent sentimental attachments to “historically obsolete” values, relationships, and social structures in order to clear the way for the future: which is whatever comes next. And by virtue of coming next, it is automatically and necessarily “good.”

But the Useful Idiot Leftists are sentimentalists at heart: they want to do “good” things for the poor and dispossessed, for animals and the environment. And while that’s not the agenda of the True Believer, the True Socialist/Marxist will use the bourgeois sentimentality of Useful Idiots to help destabilize society – then turn on those idealistic fellow-travelers once their services are no longer needed.

Most of the media, cultural elite, and despisers of American Society are Useful Idiots – with an emphasis on idiot, because they’re really not all that useful in the long run, and can’t see that they will be dispossessed if the Socialist/Communist revolution succeeds.

Obama, however, is a True Believer surrounded by True Believers. If they seem detached it’s because they are. They don’t care about individual human life, only the march of history is sacred – and being among those who benefit from it, regardless of where it is going. They recognize no bourgeois moral boundaries; indeed, they trend toward the sociopathic.

3) You Do Not Have the Right to Express Yourself on My Time. In the news: two high school teachers protested at a school rally honoring a half dozen graduating Seniors who have decided to join the military. Faced with criticism, they claimed to be on an educational mission to show students the value and importance of free speech rights.

Of course, the self-justification is specious. They are engaged in an after-the-fact justification of their pre-event decision that they could not, in good Liberal conscience, allow students to celebrate war and American imperialism without a counter-note. The problem for them is that they engaged in “free speech” while not free to do so. They were at work at the time.

We in the private sector know that we do not have unbridled rights to free speech. When we are on our employers’ clocks, we represent the company and we are limited in what we can do and say. We cannot take stands or express ourselves in ways that harm our employers’ business interests or work contrary to the employer’s public “face.”  But as soon as we’re off the clock, we are free to have our say and engage in our protests and marches.

Public employees are public servants. When they are on the clock they are to serve the public’s interest, not their own. Teachers are not hired to promote a particular political viewpoint or a particular set of social values. They are hired to teach Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Because society is highly diverse, these teachers’ employers are highly diverse, and no segment of the public hires servants to bite the hands that feed them. While on the job, public employees need to keep their political and social opinions to themselves. They have all the freedom of any other citizen outside of their time and place of employment; they do not have special dispensation to work against the system that hires them while being paid by that system.

Similarly, I’m sick and tired of hearing performers bash the United States, conservatives, and Republicans in the middle of their performances. When criticized, they typically respond that they have the right to free speech, and they say so in the aggrieved tone of spoiled children who think that those who disagree with them – and perhaps shout them down – should not exercise their right to free speech in response. But when we purchase concert tickets we become the employers of the performers we’ve hired to entertain us, for the duration of the event. We do not have to give someone money and accept abuse in return. When audiences boo or protest the artist who denigrates them and what they hold sacred, they are doing what any business owner or manager would do: they are holding an errant employee accountable, and telling him or her that continuing such behavior will result in being fired.

I say: stop tolerating Useful Idiots. If a public employee or an entertainer insults you and your values while on your clock, let them know that you will not silently accept their put-down. In the case of an entertainer, you might even fire them by marching out to the ticket kiosk and demanding your money back. In the case of a public employee, head in to the Town Manager’s or School Superintendent’s office, or attend a public meeting of the Town or School Board and make your case that as long as an employee is on your dime, he or she doesn’t get to insult you or undermine your values without consequence. And that includes the Superintendent or Board members.

4) Give Me Radicalism, not Progressivism. Arizona stirred the hornet’s nest when the state’s legislature decided to take on border enforcement. Their thinking was simple: if the Feds aren’t going to fulfill their Constitutional duty to defend the national border, then the State would exercise its right to defend its own border. That’s a return, in principle, to the radical nature of the American Revolution, and I salute it.

As our Founders intended it, the Federal government would take on the limited duty of defending the national border because it would ultimately be unwieldy for each border state to defend its own boundaries. This was not a decision to forbid states their natural interest in strong borders, but to shift the burden in personnel and costs to the whole of the country. After all, not every state has a border that delimits the United States of America, and if each border state were left to defend its boundaries by itself, those border states would carry an unequal burden in protecting themselves as well as protecting internal states that would unequally benefit from the expense and risk undertaken by boundary states.

The result, according to The Federalist Papers, would be a tendency of regional states to cooperate together, forming alliances to the potential disunion of the nation. And foreign nations could find ways to exploit the differences in economic well-being of the various states to make war on a weak border state in order to establish a beachhead on the North American continent; or to make a private pact with a weak border state, also to the detriment of the integrity of continental independence from foreign intrigues. (Read Federalist Papers 3 – 8.)

But the refusal of the federal government to take up its Constitutional duty does not mean that states must become passively suicidal. Each state has the right to protect itself. In our Federal system, power flows from the bottom up, and each successively higher level of government faces greater limitations on its power and authority. Hence, the State was meant to be more powerful than the Federal government, except in the limited enumerated matters assigned to the Federal level. (Read Federalist Papers 39.)

On the same basis of State authority, Oklahoma has recognized an internal threat to its State Constitution, to the Federal Constitution, to the separation of Church and State, and to the Enlightenment principles upon which Western Civilization and individual liberty rest, in the trend of Muslim extremists and ideologues to promote Shari‘a law as a legitimate alternative to State and Federal constitutional law. In our system, Oklahoma has the right to govern itself internally, even over/against the desires of the federal government, so long as the limited powers enumerated to the federal government are not trounced as a consequence. Oklahoma has the right to limit non-Constitutional forms of law, and must do so if it is to bear faith with our foremothers and forefathers. (Read Federalist Papers 46.)

It is time for more states to reacquaint themselves with their Constitutional privileges and to act on them. Our Founders intended for the states to counterbalance the federal government in order to keep in check the foreseen tendency of federal office holders to want to accrete power at their rarefied and elevated remove from the People.

To prevent the accretion of power at the Federal level, our Founders intended the Congress to be made up of two kinds of representatives. The House was to be made up of representatives directly elected by the people they represent, the idea being that each representative would be more easily held accountable if they must face their constituents and answer for their actions in Washington DC. Hence, they would represent pockets of local citizens at the Federal level (Read Federalist Papers 52 and following.)

The Senate was to be made up of representatives appointed by each State government, so that the interests of each state would be upheld and promoted in Washington DC. Senators were to be official State representatives, accountable to the elected assembly of their home state, while Congress men and women were to represent the people directly, thus standing over-against the State’s interests, on behalf of their local constituents, at the Federal level even while the Senators stand over/against the Federal level on behalf of State leaders. (Read esp. Federalist Papers 62, but also before and after.)

As part of the Progressive movement to remake the U.S. according to European sentiments, in the early 20^th century Senators were transformed into additional representatives of the citizens of their home states, rather than representatives of the State governments. That move was both a consequence and contributor to the continued, gradual denigration of States rights, and needs to be reversed. If the States cannot advocate their independent interests in Washington DC, over/against Federal interests – if, instead, the States’ representatives become complicit in the machinations of the Federal government over/against the rights and powers of their home States qua States, then the current abuses of Federal power and the over-reaching of Federal authority are fore-gone conclusions.

The Federal government is intended to represent the United States to the rest of the world, it is not intended to rule over the States on domestic matters. We need to start moving back toward the truly revolutionary intention of our Founders: that power always move from the bottom up, from the people through their representatives to the States, and from the States to the Federal government; and that, as a consequence, the Federal government always be kept small and relatively impotent to govern within the national boundaries of the United States.

Power up means maximum individual freedom and personal autonomy; power down means limited individual freedom and the loss of personal autonomy. It’s time to reclaim our birthright – not as Van Jones wants, by advocating on the streets for more power to be put into the hands of the President, but as our Founders envisioned: we must reclaim our birthright by advocating for the restoration of the design upon which our nation was founded, which maximizes individual liberty and local government at the expense of Federal authority.

Is it true that Goldman Sachs and the Republicans are in cahoots to defraud the “little guy”?

Hmmm, no. Looks like it’s the Democrats who are in cahoots with big Wall Street money…if we want to point fingers. Turns out the Democrats have received about twice as much from Goldman Sachs over the last 20 years as have Republicans. See the data, going back to 1990, from OpenSecrets.org, which gathers and publishes the official numbers from the Federal Election Commission, here.

If you spend a little time on OpenSecrets.org, you’ll discover that the biggest givers, both as individuals and as companies, give far more to Democrats. Republicans both score less money, and score it in smaller individual contributions, than do Democrats. Which suggests the Republicans are closer to the “little guy,” and the Democrats more in the pocket of “fat cats” than popular media reporters and social opinion-makers want us to think. See here.

And let’s not forget that there are a bunch of former Goldman Sachs employees busily working away in the Obama Administration – just as there were in the Bush and Clinton Administrations. See here. (Note that at least two listed to Bush were Clinton employees, based on years of service.)

Surprisingly, the World Socialists have the analysis of this whole debacle just about perfect! Here. Their solution, however, argued in the last three paragraphs, is wrong.

They think the solution is for the people to rise up and create a socialist paradise. I demur: no version of socialism has proven itself either fiscally viable or fit for humans. On the contrary, every version of socialism results in declining productivity and innovation, and the demoralization of the human spirit. The more virulent versions produce death camps and slave-like conditions. You would think that people who claim to be big on historical analysis would recognize that history proves that, for all its good intentions, socialism is a miserable failure (emphasis on miserable). And the reason is the very one this article cites as a great good: socialism organizes the economy on “need” not profit. The result of organizing on need is a failure to innovate according to people’s “wants,” and it’s the pursuit of wants that leads to extra effort and achievement. Hence, to economic growth. Hence, to improving living conditions.

(Apologists for socialism’s miserable performances argue: (a) Stalinism is not “true communism,” therefore doesn’t count; (b) there has been no truly socialist experiment so we can’t say it doesn’t work. My responses: (a) how come you don’t allow democratic capitalism the same leeway: imperfectly implemented, it yields imperfect results and merely needs to be more perfectly implemented? And, (b) the real conversation needs to be about what works in the real world under less than utopian circumstances [since utopia is, by definition, not possible].)

In the real world, democratic capitalism – i.e., the American version of capitalism - does not kill people, even in its modern corrupted condition. It allows individuals to develop their full potential and expand their “things” (what the Founders called “happiness”). Our wars have been wars of defense, and wars to prevent the horrors of real-world socialist experiments and over-reaching thuggery.

Socialism, as manifested in the real world, has lead to tens of millions of deaths. Not only because socialist countries have started wars, but also because socialist countries have enslaved, dispossessed, and murdered millions of their own citizens in cold-blood – those very “little guys” they claim to love so dearly. (And yes, I am including National Socialism’s horrors in the category of socialist atrocities. Sorry: (a) it’s in the name; and (b) the “right-wing” characterization of Nazism was sponsored by Moscow because Stalin thought Hitler was “reactionary” for favoring national socialism over the much more liberal international socialism. That just doesn’t pass the “not-a-socialist” smell test. Mussolini’s facism, also socialist at its core [a better word for all of this would be "progressive"] organized on the “right wing” notion of nation, like nazism, but on a national economic, rather than on Hitler’s ”folk” [as in national race] basis.)

I agree with the World Socialists that the people need to rise up, at least in the U.S., but in order to re-establish the one system that has proven to produce economic growth and a steady improvement in the human condition: radical American Constitutional government, which leaves individuals free to pursue each their own version of “happiness.” That’s what produced the American miracle of rapid economic growth and material wealth, and propelled us to world stature. It involved hard work, self-sacrifice, and delayed gratification, and it allowed a humble nation to become great, while lifting the “little guy” toward wealth, and raising the whole world’s living standards along the way. (By 1820 – about 50 years after the Revolution — it was very common for people to be farmers for their basic survival, and manufacturers and merchants on the side as a way to produce extra family income that could be used to improve their “happiness.” For more on this, and for a good exploration of the very radical nature of the American enterprise, read the academic book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, by Gordon S. Wood.)

In other words: more people need to join the Tea Party revolution, which does not promote a party, but aims at a restoration of Constitutional government and individual liberty. Time to restore the Constitution to its original luster as a protection for the “little guy” against the machinations of well-meaning elites who want to “improve” our condition for us.

As Daniel Webster said, “Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”

We are either our own masters, each pursuing our own happiness, or we establish masters over us. There is no sustainable middle way of government because there is no leadership we can elect or collective we can establish that will be able to satiate our individual hungers or lead us to personal fulfillment.

How I Was Not Al Gored Into Submission

About ten days ago my mother-in-law received a letter from the Republican Party’s national chairman, Michael Steele, alerting her that she had been selected as an official representative of the Party for the state of Vermont. All they were asking, in return for the honor, was a small donation to the GOP. I found that quite amusing because she is a registered Independent, quite liberal, and a passionate supporter of Barak Obama. Her reaction was pricelessly funny.

However, a couple of days ago I received a similar letter. We live at the same address in Vermont, but I am a registered Republican. My letter let me know I had been selected to be a special representative for the state of Maryland. Odd: I have never lived in Maryland, and the only time I recall spending any time in that state was about 30 years ago when my wife and I camped on the Maryland shore for a week while our car’s radiator was repaired.

I didn’t find the letters so amusing after the second arrived, because the pattern worried me. I work with modern technology on a regular basis. Frankly, it’s a “second language” for me – though my children are “native speakers” – and I need a lot of help. As a result I am quite manic about presenting myself correctly and using technology accurately. Of course I make mistakes, and I am not surprised that the GOP made an error in identifying my mother-in-law. Nor am I surprised they erred in identifying my state (though I cannot fathom how they got my name correct but my state wrong in the letter, yet mailed it to the correct Vermont address). Mistakes happen; especially when you are not fluent in a new language. But when both correspondences to our address were so blatantly erroneous, it stopped being a laughing, learning matter. It begins to look like a problem.

The State of the GOP

These letters make the GOP look like they are playing a “catch up” game with the Democrat Party, and it doesn’t look good. It’s rather like watching mainline Protestant churches trying to ape the sophisticated use by evangelical churches of the technology that has become second-nature to young adults and their forward-looking elders. As someone who writes a blog devoted to helping mainline Protestant churches recognize how behind the curve they have allowed themselves to become, and to find ways to address their growing irrelevance, what I see is the Republican Party attempting and failing to use today’s technology in an effort to look “modern” to the increasingly tech-savvy public. Unfortunately, in my household the GOP’s weak adaptation has made it look stodgy and past-oriented, as well as desperate. (Don’t they have any staff or volunteers under the age of 45?)

This point was also made recently on PJTV, by Bill Whittle in his piece, “The Power and Danger of Iconography.” He shows how effective the Democrats have become at employing updated images and distribution methods to “brand” their party and President; and how poor the Republicans have been at the same task. Indeed, he suggests that the GOP doesn’t even understand the issues involved. I agree: that is how it seems.

In general, the GOP seems to be out of step on two fronts, despite their recent electoral successes. Firstly, they seem out of step with the general public, which is rapidly moving toward sophisticated social networking means of sharing information, motivating others, and communicating. Sarah Palin appears to be an exception to this largely-true claim. She has been very successful at responding to the Obama Administration and Democrat-controlled Congress through her Facebook page and frequent tweets. In the process, she has been successfully by-passing her derogatory portrayal in the mainstream media and the wish of GOP hacks to manage her. Her cache has been growing because of her effective use of Internet technology, while the GOP can’t get even one out of two snail mail correspondences to my home right.

The GOP also seems to be out of step with the “conservative” movement in the United States. I put conservative in quote marks because the term is being misused in common speech as a synonym for “right wing” and, now, for “tea partiers.” But, the Tea Party movement is not really conservative – at least, not in the classical sense of the term. Originally, the conservatives were those who favored the statism of kings over the autonomy of individual citizens. And in that sense, the Tea Party movement is classically liberal. It celebrates the liberal, historically-revolutionary values the Republican Party used to represent: the right of each individual to pursue life, liberty and happiness without either the interference of the heavy hand of government or the overarching shadow of bureaucracy. (The modern Democrat Party, seeking to reestablish a governing authority at the expense of individual liberty, is actually the conservative, right-wing, counter-revolutionary movement. Their agenda seeks to turn back the clock on the revolutionary freedom vouchsafed in our Constitution.)

The Tea Party Movement and the American Revolution

The Tea Party movement is not inherently aligned with the Republican Party. The Republican Party may be preferred by most Tea Party sympathizers, but that’s only because Republicans are less inclined to grow the power and reach of government than are Democrats. However, that’s a relative thing, and Tea Party people are looking for an absolute change in direction.

Tea Party sympathizers are registered Republicans, Democrats and Independents, as well as non-registered concerned citizens. We will vote for candidates of any party if they are committed to smaller government, to reduced spending, to the repeal of most entitlements, to the enhancement of individual freedoms, to making significant reductions in the regulations that limit entrepreneurialism, and to restoring a deep and abiding respect for the radical nature of our founding documents.

We Tea Party sympathizers are the true radicals. We understand how radical the American Revolution was. Our Constitution recognizes that the fundamental choice in forms of government is between a form in which elites direct the lives and fortunes of the masses, and a form that liberates the masses as individuals, not as a class, to pursue whatever makes them individually happy. And it enshrines the second. As such, it embraces a fundamentally Christian form of government – not because it establishes Christianity, or outlaws other faiths, but because it is the only form of government that believes the Protestant Christian doctrine of the right and God-given authority of the individual to make decisions of conscience for him- or herself, guided only by a personal sense of moral accountability to God.

Christianity does not believe that individuals are perfected by living in a perfect community, but the opposite: that redeemed individuals influence their communities toward greater holiness. That is why Christianity is so distinctly individualistic: no human construct has the right, or the ability, to stand between an individual conscience and Jesus Christ. But each person has the right and the responsibility to work out his or her own relationship with God, and to live into that relationship by the conduct of daily life. In the process, community is formed and the society is improved.

The notion that some few persons – or even a plurality of citizens in agreement – can determine what is the “right” or “just” way for all citizens to live is distinctly unChristian. And as such, it is immoral and fraudulent. Collectivist and statist movements are both anti-Christian and un-American. They run against the commitments of individual discipleship to Jesus Christ and to the principles of the U.S. Constitution.

The American Constitution does not care whether the elitists call themselves kings, parliaments, dictators, religious leaders, or elected representatives; any time the government moves toward limiting individual freedom in order to make society “better,” according to some humanly-constructed theory of what is “good” for people, the community, or the world, the U.S. Constitution is contravened. People who pursue those statist or collectivist agendas, however well-meaning they may be as compassionate persons, are un-American. They fail the test of patriotism.

Tea Party sympathizers are not, of course, the only patriots. Not all patriots have joined the movement. However, the Tea Party movement is the home of those who want to restore the founding principles, commitments and perspectives; it is the home of true patriots. And therefore, it is the home of the new American Revolution. As Sarah Palin said in her speech to the Tennessee meeting, “the Tea Party movement is the future of politics in America.”

Radical Constitutionality

The Republican Party needs to understand that though I have been invited by mail and phone to contribute to the Party’s 2010 and 2012 agenda to “take back the Congress and the White House,” I will not support the Republican Party until I see evidence that the Party has come home to the principles of the U.S. Constitution.

I will support individual Republicans whom I believe have the same fundamental loyalty to the radical, classically liberal ideals of individual freedom and restricted government that I have and that the Tea Party espouses. But I will also support Democrats and Independents who exhibit those commitments. The days of me falling in line behind the Republican candidates because Republicans are the lesser evil are over. The party-approved candidacy of John McCain put an end to that. (Yes, I am one of those who only voted Republican because Palin was on the ticket. Without her, I would have sat out the election.) Now, I am looking for those individual candidates who will put the Constitution above their venal interests, and who will go to Washington to fight the long, drawn-out battle to restore the vision of the Founders, and the responsibility and opportunity of the individual.

The wise class – pundits and prognosticators (including Rush Limbaugh) – warn that my approach will lead to lost elections and a perpetuation of the Democrat/Socialist rule in Washington. I think that’s only half-right.

Yes, such a course might fracture the Republican Party. But the truth is that if McCain had been elected we would be traveling down the same road, for the most part – only more slowly. Obama turned up the heat so we noticed we were being cooked, and that allowed us to jump out of the pot. Simply returning Republicans to power does not guarantee a change in direction.

I do not yet see a serious commitment to reversing course by the GOP. I see a Democrat President and Congressional leadership that are committed to pursuing their anti-American agenda even if that means they will not be re-elected. They are willing to throw in their lives and their fortunes to achieve their vision for a statist America. But I do not see a Republican Presidential candidate prepared to throw in life and fortune to restore the Constitutional limits on government; nor do I see a similar level of commitment among existing Republican senators and congressional members. Mostly, I see opportunism – and I am sick of opportunists.

I know that sometimes mainline Protestant churches become so fossilized that they cannot be remade. In those cases, church change leaders are encouraged to start a new congregation in the same building. In time, the old congregation will fade away, but by then the new congregation will have grown large and vital enough to take over the structure. Perhaps the Tea Party movement is the new congregation, destined to take over the structure of the Republican Party. That’s certainly the model I am holding out. But if the old GOP remains too potent for too long, I’ll be just as happy to migrate with the movement to a new house and to compete directly with both the Republican and Democrat parties for members and leadership power.

I would rather go down standing on my two feet and fighting for the American Revolution than fade away on my knees, accepting a slow betrayal by Republican political hacks simply because they are willing to draw out the death of America that the current Democrats want to end in a quick coup de grace.

No more living a half-life in this grey twilight of the Founders’ vision. I am not interested in either the quick death offered by Democrat progressives or the slow death offered by Republican progressives.  I want the freedom, responsibility and opportunity anchored in the Christian vision of humanity and the Protestant notion of morality, and encoded in the U.S. Constitution. That’s worth fighting for; that’s worth my life and fortune. Anything less is not worth defending. Or voting for.

Following on the British scandal about manipulated global warming data, now the evidence is coming out that US “experts” are similarly manipulating data. The Weather Channel’s founder, John Coleman, charges NASA with deliberate manipulation of climate data to emphasize global warming.

This is not really news to those who take the time to understand climate facts. And here are a few, with my own extrapolations and conclusions:

1) The world has been in a global warming phase for 50,000 years – ever since the middle of the last ice age, when temperatures started warming. According to long-term patterns, we should expect the earth to keep warming for at least another 10,000 years, which is the soonest the cycle is likely to turn back toward the next ice age.

This has nothing to do with human behavior, and human behavior has NO impact on the long-term trends. We MIGHT be able to change our local climates temporarily, but we are NOT the cause of long-term warming or the inevitable melting of ice caps – that’s happened many times through the Earth’s billions of years of history, and ice caps will come back again.

These patterns are caused by the Milankovitch cycles – three cosmic cycles that have to do with the TILT of the Earth on its axis( called obliquity), the WOBBLE (called precession) of the earth as it rotates on its axis, and the fact that the earth’s ORBIT around the sun varies from a near circle to an ellipse (called orbital eccentricity). Tilt varies over a 41,000 year cycle; wobble varies over a 23,000 cycle, and the orbit varies over a 100,000 year cycle. Currently, the wobble is favorable to glaciation, but tilt and orbit are not: hence, less glaciation, more melting.

2) The general warming trend is interrupted by cooling cycles. Those cycles can last for just a few decades, or for hundreds, even thousands of years. These cycle changes are not triggered by human carbon-release patterns, but by sunspot activity. This was well-known and part of the science taught in public schools in the early 1970s, when I was in high school. On the basis of sunspot cycles, we were warned that global cooling was just around the corner.

Today, while public media and politicians say warming is unending because of human behavior, the FULL data consistently doesn’t support that conclusion, and the recent reduction in sunspot activity indicates that for at least the next 50 years or so, the general climate trend will be cooler. The Russian equivalent to NASA says that recent warm trends were related to high sunspot activity over the last 100 years. But that’s now changing, and we will be in a deep freeze by about 2060, which will last until about 2110, when temperatures will begin rising again due to renewed sunspot activity.

3) As the Earth warms, more carbon dioxide is released BY THE EARTH into the atmosphere. That’s because carbon dioxide is less-easily trapped by algae, plants, and other trappers in warmer temperatures. That accounts for the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we are experiencing.

Even if humans burned every carbon-bearing plant on the Earth at once, our impact on this release-and-capture cycle would be minor and short-lived. Similarly, if we stopped all human carbon dioxide production – including through killing off all breathing animals, including ourselves – our impact on the cycle would be both minimal and short-lived. The problem humans have is to realize and accept the fact that we are really not all that significant in the natural course of things. We are only big and important in our own minds.

But apart from all of that, carbon dioxide release is not a bad thing. In fact, the release of captured carbon dioxide causes less of the sun’s rays to get to the Earth, causing a gradual increase in Earth-level cooling. At the same time, because carbon dioxide is a light element, it carries warmth to the upper atmosphere and released heat into space. In other words, carbon dioxide capture-and-release functions as a natural warming and cooling mechanism that helps to maintain the Earth in a life-sustaining range. When it’s captured at Earth level, it is a kind of chemical blanket, warming the Earth; when it is in the upper atmosphere, it is a kind of sun shade, cooling the Earth. Carbon dioxide functions like an increasingly-warm blanket when the Earth is getting colder, and as an increasingly-thicker sun shade when the Earth is getting warmer. That’s pretty amazing – and ought to be a cause of wonder, if not reverence; but not angst.

4) Finally, global warming and cooling is not a steady, gradual process. There are thresholds in both directions, when over a period of just a few thousand years, major changes take place. As the ice age came to an end roughly 20,000 years ago, the Earth went through nearly 10,000 years of very dramatic climate change. The weather was wild and life had to adapt to geologically-rapid changes in living conditions. Humans were able to successfully adapt, but many animals, insects and plants failed to adapt, and died out. They were replaced, however, by the flora and fauna we know today.

It is not unreasonable to expect that we will continue to have periods of wild weather that interrupt steady climate warming. Some of those wild periods will be caused by reverses in the general pattern – such as the current switch from warming to cooling that is now taking place because of the reduction in sun spot activity. Others will happen as we approach an average-temperature threshold that triggers changes in what flora and fauna can survive. Perhaps in time we will learn where those thresholds are, so we can predict wild weather and species depopulation; but we will not be able to stop it.

Both in times of gradual warming, and in times of climate drama, we will see the loss of animals and plants we have always had as companions. The thing to remember is that that’s NOT because of human activity; it’s part of the natural cycle and has happened many times in the Earth’s 4 billion-year life. And, we need to remember that those losses will be replaced by new forms of life. Most importantly, we need to understand that we CANNOT stop the process anymore than we can make the Earth stop in its tilt, wobble and orbital variation, or make the sun stop varying its sunspot activity – because that’s what it would take to stop the changing of the Earth’s climate.

What’s really pathetic is that all of this is known to the scientific community. Politics (in the form of job security and in the form of what governmental and non-governmental funding sources want to see in research proposals) causes scientists to be dishonest, as we have seen in Britain and, now, in the U.S. How weird is it that the Russians are being the most open, honest, and transparent about climate science??

Here is an editorial on the issue from Investor’s Business Daily.

A U.S. ClimateGate?
Posted 01/22/2010 07:33 PM ET

Hoaxes: Climate researchers and the Weather Channel’s founder accuse NASA of the same data manipulation as Britain’s Climate Research Unit. Were weather stations cherry-picked to hide the temperature drop?

We recently commented on how our space agency for two years refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has had to repeatedly correct its climate figures.

In a report on global warming on KUSI television by Weather Channel founder and iconic TV weatherman John Coleman, that reticence has been traced to the deliberate manipulation and distortion of climate data by NASA.

As Coleman noted in a KUSI press release, NASA’s two primary climate centers, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C., and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York City, are accused of “creating a strong bias toward warmer temperatures through a system that dramatically trimmed the number and cherry-picked the locations of weather observation stations they use to produce the data set on which temperature record reports are based.”

Joseph D’Aleo, of Icecap.us, said the analysis found NASA “systematically eliminated 75% of the world’s stations with a clear bias toward removing higher-latitude, high-altitude and rural locations.” The number of actual weather stations used to calculate average global temperatures was reduced from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,500 today. The number of reporting stations in Canada dropped from 600 to 35.

E. Michael Smith, a computer programming expert who worked with D’Aleo, said he found “patterns in the input data from NCDC that looked liked dramatic and selective deletions of thermometers from cold locations.” The more he looked, the more he found “patterns of deletion that could not be accidental.”

Stations in places such as the Andes and Bolivia have virtually vanished, meaning, according to D’Aleo, temperatures from these areas are now “determined by interpolation from stations hundreds of miles away on the coast or in the Amazon.” He says it’s as if Minneapolis stopped reporting and its average temperature was extrapolated from readings in St. Louis and Kansas City.

Smith argues that the decrease in stations used and the selectivity of locations make NASA’s data and conclusions suspect. D’Aleo goes further, saying such cherry-picking and data manipulation are a “scientific travesty” committed by activist scientists to advance the global warming agenda.

To us, it looks like just another example of ideologically driven climate deceit following the Climate Research Unit scandal and the fraudulent claim by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that Himalayan glaciers would soon vanish.

(Original IBD editorial, here. My prior article on milankovitch cycles and global warming, with source links, here.)

Sen. Bernie Sanders

Mr. Leahy has not responded to my missive. Nor, for that matter, has Representative Welch, my Congressman. Mr. Sanders, to his considerable credit, responded fairly quickly. Frankly, that impresses me.

On the other hand, we have a clear difference of perspective, and I think he’s “fudging” the Constitution, historical precedent, and simple clear-thinking logic. So far, he has only responded with liberal/White House talking points. I hope that following my response to his reply, I will receive something more substantive.

Here is my original missive, Senator Sanders’ reply, and my response to his reply. Should Mr. Sanders continue the discussion, I will update this post.

My contact via Congress.org:

Mr. Sanders,

I am STRONGLY opposed to extending citizen protections to enemy combatants from Guantanamo detention. Military trials are the only safe option to protect innocent citizens and intelligence secrets.

I URGE you to tell President Obama and Mr. Holder to REVERSE their decision, return these unlawful combatants to military incarceration, and give them the military trial they have earned and deserve.

Sincerely,

Terry Bascom

Mr. Sanders’ reply:

From: “Senator@sanders.senate.gov” Senator@sanders.senate.gov

Sent: Fri, December 11, 2009 3:28:43 PM
Subject: Email from Senator Sanders

Dear Terry:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the trial of September 11, 2001 terrorist suspects in New York City.  I value the opportunity to respond to you on this important issue.

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four others accused of orchestrating the September 11, terrorist attacks will be tried in New York City.  Holder is encouraging the attorneys in the Southern District of New York and Eastern District of Virginia to pursue the death penalty.  Clearly, President Obama takes the crimes of September 11th with the greatest of seriousness.

While I recognize the potential dangers of having terrorists on American soil, it is my strong view that we must not violate the very same civil liberties we seek to protect.  Instead, we must return to a system in which fair and independent courts can render due process of law on those accused of crimes against the United States. Although fighting the war on terrorism is serious business and something I hold as a top priority, I know we can fight and win the war on terrorism without destroying the Constitutional rights so fundamental to this country.

Again, thank you for contacting me about this important issue.  Feel free to contact me again in the future about this or any other subject of interest to you, or for up-to-date information on what my office is working on please visit http://www.sanders.senate.gov.  While there, I invite you to sign up for my e-newsletter, the Bernie Buzz, at http://sanders.senate.gov/buzz/.  Please be aware that due to security screening procedures, postal mail to my office experiences delays that will lengthen the time it takes me to get back to you.  The fastest way to contact my office is by calling 1-800-339-9834.

Sincerely,

BERNARD SANDERS
United States Senator

My response:

December 12, 2009

Senator Sanders,

Thank you for your response to my email. I appreciate that you have taken the time to do so.

We have a disagreement on the notion that a military trial for enemy combatants, and illegal combatants at that, somehow puts our civil liberties at risk.

Let me say, first, that I have complete confidence in our military’s ability to conduct a fair trial. Further, as has been pointed out in a number of public forums, keeping the trial in the military arena assures the protection of military secrets – a protection which not only enhances our national security but, because it does so, protects our civil liberties by sustaining the legal and political environment within which American-style liberties can function.

Additionally, it is important to draw a distinction between American citizens and non-American citizens. American civil liberties apply to American civils – that is, American civilians. Non-Americans do not qualify for our civil liberties because the United States does not, cannot, and should not think we can unilaterally extend our notions of government to citizens of other countries. I would think this would be of considerable concern to persons and legislators who object to U.S. “nation building” and hegemony in the world since extending American civil processes to non-US persons is an act of hegemony, and an effort to blanket other peoples and nations with our sense of what is “right” and “just.”

More importantly, extending American civil liberties to non-US persons actually threatens our civil rights by making our notion of Nationhood – not to mention our actual borders – more porous. It is particularly inappropriate when the non-citizen is a combatant whose stated and assumed goal is to destroy the very civil liberties we are protecting. That is what national borders – of the geophysical, political, and metaphysical kind – are really all about: identifying to whom national values, practices, and procedures apply, and to whom they do not. If there is no “not,” there is no nation. And if there is no nation, there are no national civil liberties and practices left to defend.

There is no risk to our civil liberties in treating foreigners intent on doing material harm to our country as military opponents. And, as we both know, since they are not fighting in uniform in a legally-declared war of one state against another, they do not even qualify for Geneva Convention safeguards. Indeed, if we summarily put them in front of a firing squad we would keep better faith with both our national tradition and the historic tradition of nations throughout time. We would also do more to protect our civic boundaries than we will do if we extend legally-inapplicable rights and privileges to those who neither warrant nor respect them.

For the record, I don’t care if the enemy respects our notion of rights and privileges, but I care mightily whether they warrant them. They do not.

It is already a kindness to treat illegal combatants as if they were legal combatants and therefore entitled to a military trial. In many nations and historical periods they would be treated as spies, and spies have no legal standing of any sort. But since treating these legal non-persons as legal combatants does not pose a risk to the United States, I have no objection to that kindness. I only object to treating these non-citizens as citizens, since that does put our nation’s values, laws, customs, practices, boundaries, and culture at risk.

Understanding the legal difference between those who do and do not qualify for various national and international laws and conventions is the surest way to protect and defend American civil liberties. Confusing classes of people and legal categories is a certain way to water down, and eventually eliminate, our distinctive civil liberties and practices.

Our domestic civil liberties are only at risk if we do not extend the full protection of the US Constitution to actual citizens and legal residents of the United States of America. This situation does not come even close to that danger. Therefore, I again encourage you to urge President Obama, Mr. Holder, and your fellow Senators to reverse the decision to try illegal enemy combatants, who are non-citizens, as if they were US citizens with rights under our Constitution.

Sincerely,

Terry Bascom

Mr. Sanders’ reply: stay tuned…

1) Here’s the graph, based on Rasmussen polling data:

2. And here’s the accompanying short article from Investors Business Daily online, which identifies who opposes this plan, and how it’s being bought – click here.