In Need of Masters

'Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.' ~ Ben Franklin

Inner city black neighborhoods are like war zones, with feral youth gangs raping and pillaging their own. Frightened residents, just wanting to be left alone, call the police. The police go in, and eventually somebody gets shot. The police amp up the force. 

'Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.' ~ Ben Franklin

Black Lives Matter go on the march against the police, and it seems looting and rioting is the result. The police amp up the force. 

'Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.' ~ Ben Franklin

Anti-Trump protesters show up to disrupt the peoples' right to hear a duly elected candidate for president. Looting, violence and rioting is the result. The police amp up the force. 

'Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.' ~ Ben Franklin

A bloodthirsty religious zealot shoots up a gay bar full of unarmed victims. Statists want to take the guns from the rest of us.

'Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.' ~ Ben Franklin

A candidate for president is guilty as hell, and if anyone else had done what she did, we'd be locked up like Martha Stewart. But Hillary walks.

'Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.' ~ Ben Franklin

Statists, community organizers, Cloward and Piven, Saul Alinsky, you know who I'm talking about, all want to stir the pot, because they know that when violence, chaos and dissent are prevalent, they can be our masters.

Government Control vs. Freedom

I believe that control is the opposite of freedom. How can it not? But I am not an anarchist. With no government, it would be up to us to stand at our front door with a shotgun, to ward off all aggressors, leaving no leisure time (and probably little time to mind our own business, in fact). Kind of like Walking Dead, without the zombies. So limited government -- just enough to secure the natural rights we were born with -- is necessary.

But today I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time defending my rights against the very regimes that were supposed to protect them. It is eating up my leisure time, and what goes on while I'm at work goes unmonitored. They steal from my pantry while I'm out plowing my fields. What's more, they use their plunder against me, giving my tax dollars to grant-grubbing special interests whom I oppose, who advocate enacting more policy that further reduces my freedom. The bulk of said plunder doesn't even go to help the people the pandering politicians pretend to want to help.

I attend city and county council meetings. State and federal legislature meetings are too far away and are too full time for me to monitor directly. But I've seen the sausage being made, and I think if you were really aware of what goes on in there, you'd be alarmed as well. Even some of the ones on "our side" (whichever side that happens to be) don't understand the proper role of government.

Don't even get me started on administrative bureaucracies that by definition, aren't responsible to the voters. They enact regulations having the force of law, but we have no recourse. We can't vote them out. That is not government by the consent of the governed! The fact is, the government we have bears no resemblance whatsoever to the mechanisms that were invented to keep us safe. It's Fahrenheit 451, without the fire trucks.

Petulant, Petty, Vindictive, Unstatesmanlike

Knowledge is Power, over at Sondrakistan posted the following image. See if you can guess what it is.

Cones are shown along the road to Mount Rushmore. The National Parks Service placed the
cones there to prevent viewers from stopping on the side of the road to view the monument.

Seriously? Is this the kind of unstatesmanlike conduct that we can expect from this regime?

Now before you pile on me about the "unstatesmanlike" conduct of the House "Tea Party" Republicans who "caused" this shutdown, let me remind you that many, if not most of those "Tea Party" Republicans were elected with a voter mandate to stop ObamaCare. They are now living up to their campaign promises - albeit much watered down at this point.

Our founders designed the separate branches of government and the bicameral legislature with checks and balances to discourage bad legislation from being enacted. Regardless of which side the issue you're on, or which piece of legislation you think is bad, that's what is happening today. The Constitution may be coughing up blood, but parts of it are still working.

The "Tea Party" Republicans had originally voted to fund all functions of government except ObamaCare. The senate Democrats rejected that out of hand. Now, all the "Tea Party" Republicans are asking is for ObamaCare to be implemented as written, equally for all citizens, with no exceptions. The senate Democrats rejected that out of hand.

The senate Democrats could have accepted either bill to keep the government from shutting down*, and then negotiate to fix whatever issues they have with ObamaCare. This whole thing had the potential of being a positive move for We the People by ironing out the truly bad elements of ObamaCare.

But instead, we get this petulant, vindictive "shut down" of services that require no actual service, limiting access to sites that we own. This isn't The King's Land, after all. This land is your land, this land is my land... This land was made for you and me.

So now, the NIST websites, including time services are closed. Are you kidding me? Those computers don't require any staff to operate them. And I'm pretty sure they're not powered down to save electricity during the "shut down". They're just reprogrammed to cause maximum inconvenience.

Barack Hussein Obama, you're the executive; these are your bureaucracies to manage. They're all closed to the public, but your ObamaCare sites are sort of working. You should be ashamed of yourself.

* Actually government isn't shut down; over 80% of it is still (dys)functioning quite nicely, thank you very much.

IRS Corruption

Apologists for the IRS targeting certain groups for audits and application delays (the ones having "tea party" or "patriot" in their descriptions) will tell you that the IRS was overwhelmed by a multitude of applications from groups like these in the days prior to the 2012 election. These were the groups who wanted to make sure Barack Obama did not win re-election. As the argument goes, so many applications were received, that the agency had to filter out fraudulent claims of non-partisanship and non-profit status. You have been profiled! I guess what's not OK to do in airports is just fine to do at the IRS. It depends on whose ox is being gored.

I have heard people say that everyone should be outraged by this corruption, because although this transgression targeted the right, a future regime could target the left, and no-one is immune as long as government agencies are allowed to run unconstrained. It's a good argument, and maybe some people will believe it. I don't, and here's why:

1. The IRS is populated by career bureaucrats whose future earnings depend on a growing government.
2. The IRS is populated by unionized bureaucrats who are opposed to the founding principles. 
3. Many 'progressives' are of the Chicago/Alinsky thugocracy model (cf., the current regime), which teaches that the end justifies the means. While they are in power, they will use and abuse that power to accomplish what they believe is necessary and right. Not all 'progressives' work this way, but enough do to keep things ratcheting in the wrong direction.
4. Classical Liberals (LibClassics) believe in the founding principles (including Judeo-Christian values), which teaches that it is wrong to take advantage of political power, even to accomplish what they believe is necessary and right. This is by definition in the principles they hold. (By this definition, Richard Nixon was not a LibClassic.) Classical Liberals aren't holier than thou, but those principles are what makes them LibClassics.

Lib Classics are a rare breed in government. I am afraid the deck is stacked for more tyrannical, illiberal, corrupt government. 

Operation Chaos

For the 2008 election, Rush Limbaugh invented something he called Operation Chaos, urging conservative voters, or more accurately, Republican voters, to cross over in the primaries and vote for Hillary Clinton. This was supposed to make Barack Obama have to work hard at something for the first time in his life.

Fast forward to 2012: I would never advocate using our official vote to disrupt the "other" side. However, I receive lots of calls and emails, polling me for my political views. My instinct is to proudly declare my preservative principles and honestly answer which issues and candidates I prefer in this election.

I propose that all preservatives submit the opposite answers. Skew the polls more than they already are. Make the 'progressives' think that they have more support than they actually do. It will make them complacent, and (we hope), make the preservatives work harder. When the 2012 election is a blow-out, they'll be completely flummoxed. They'll never know what hit them.

Polls are garbage, and we should not cooperate. The only poll that matters is the one in November.

Update: Better yet... Just don't participate in the media polls. You don't have to lie; you just let the 'progressives' over-represent themselves. If they have no response from people calling themselves "preservatives", the effect will be the same. Their data will be worthless.