South Carolina Goes For McCain?

I was a bit surprised to see John McCain win South Carolina, seeing as how there was no real indication that he was doing that well in the state (he lost in the primary in 2004 and didn't seem to be polling as well as the others). I am not surprised that Huckabee came in for a close second here in neoconland but McCain? Either the vote was rigged, the people here are totally ignorant, or they genuinely like this guy. Either way, this may not be a good indication for Buddy Witherspoon.

I know that Rick Quinn was running his campaign and all I can say is thanks a lot, scalawag. Quinn is a traitor to his home state and to the Constitution of the United States and is no better than the Yankees who come this way to build their summer homes. There seems to be no stopping the Quinn-McCain-Graham alliance.

I don't want to hear any SC republicans complain about the North American Union, the Amero, or amnesty for illegals during the course of this upcoming year. If SC wants McCain, they can have him.

Beware of the Busybody

I was browsing the LewRockwell.com blog and I stumbled upon this. I am so greatful that we live in a "free" country.

Vertical Huckabee

David Limbaugh is troubled by Huckabee

That's why it troubles me when the ostensibly conservative Mike Huckabee tells Jay Leno he wants us to abandon "horizontal politics. Everything in this country is not left, right, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican. I think the country is looking for somebody who is vertical, who is thinking, 'Let's take America up and not down.'"

It's perfectly fine for Mike Huckabee to make such pronouncements. I just hope conservatives understand that what takes America "up" are conservative principles – and that it will always be necessary to fight for those principles against those who don't fully understand them or who are committed to their defeat. read more

The idea that conservative principles do not apply to each and every decision we make in our public and private life is - well compromise of the sort we need no more of. It is simply incomprehensible that a true conservative would be willing to compromise on any matter of principle. Men and times change but principles never to paraphrase Stephens.

What does Huckabee mean by "going vertical" and what part of real conservative philosophy has ever taken America down? Huckabee continues to prove that the term Huckster is aptly applicable.

Paul's Family Values

Campaign for Children and Families, a leading West Coast pro-family organization that researches and advocates for the natural family, is pleased to announce the Report Card on the Natural Family to inform voters where the leading Republican presidential candidates stand on protecting the basic family unit.

“While all of the leading Republican candidates claim to embrace family values, let the record show that they’re marching to different drummers on marriage rights, adoption, schoolchildren, and the destructive ‘LGBT’ agenda,” said CCF President Randy Thomasson. “Many pro-family voters will be surprised with the results of this carefully-researched report card. But as always, what a candidate does means much more than what they say. Facts are stubborn things.” see the report

Paul and Huckabee scored 7, McCain 4, Thompson 3, Giulliani 1 and Romny 0. Family is the most important aspect of conservative philosophy. Who says that Ron Paul's brand of political philosophy is not truly conservative? He is the only real conservative in the race.

Silver Tounged Devil

As I sat and listened to Barack Obama's speech after winning the Iowa caucus I thought to myself (half-seriously actually) "this guy sounds exactly how I think the antichrist will sound when he shows up." Ok out of curiosity I googled 'Barack Obama antichrist' and good grief was I shocked. Apparently a lot of people have had this thought before; some have extensive websites with proof of their suspicions.

Well who knows, I seldom speculate on points of Biblical prophecy and I am very wary of those that do - particularly that make such a thing their trade. However, I suppose if I were going to write down a list of attributes Obama has the "silver tongue" required skill-set down pat.

I fear that despite the ideological holes in almost everything he stands for; granted it is hard to pin the man down on positions from his speeches but one can certainly get a picture of his ideological basis from his dancing words; the American polity will eat up what he is serving.

Nothing any of the GOP front-runners are saying will sell at all with anyone other than the lock-step GOP faithful in a general election. People are sick and tired - rightfully so - of the same old GOP story line related to a failed foreign policy. Continuing the course is not an option for the ordinary American - the Democrats are preaching "change" and the American public is ready to say 'amen".

The GOP had a chance to stop the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 (or at least run a candidate that really stood for what the American people really wanted and really needed). Patrick Buchanan (like him or not) stood firm for the change that America needed. The GOP faithful failed to see that and instead decided to try something old again. Bush the Elder represented everything that has always been wrong with the GOP - he was out of touch with conservatism, he represented not the people but special interest. His world view was akin to some profane merger of Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln. His economic policy was abysmal. George was the GOP's man - Pat's warnings were ignored.

We ended up with eight years of the Clinton dark years - forget the sexual exploits, - Clinton was a horrible president. You simply must recall Janet Reno and her gestapo troops in Waco, Ruby Ridge, down in Florida with the Gonzalez family. You must remember the North American Free Trade Agreement (not really free trade at all), Operation Desert Fox (the precedent for regime change in Iraq), the ridiculous war against Serbia, the Brady Bill, the Iraq Liberation Bill, and the silly 'Don't Ask Don't Tell".

We know now, if we are honest we should know, that America was indeed in the midst of a cultural war in 1992. Sixteen year later we see the results of unchecked illegal immigration, in the coming years we will see more and more the follow-on effects of the erosion of culture that this will have on our society. Ask yourself this, is America a more or less moral place today than it was in 1992. The answer to that, if honest, clearly shows that we have been involved in a war we are losing. In Pat's words:

But the cultural war is broader than two battlegrounds.
We see it in the altered calendar of holidays we are invited - nay, instructed - to celebrate. Washington's Birthday disappears into Presidents Day. States, like Arizona, that balk at declaring Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday face political censure and convention boycotts. Easter is displaced by Earth Day, Christmas becomes Winter break, Columbus day is now a day to reflect on the cultural imperialism and genocidal racism of the "dead white males" who raped this continent while exterminating its noblest inhabitants.

Secularism's Holy Days of Obligation were not demanded by us; they were imposed on us. And while Gov. Cuomo may plausibly plead ignorance of the culture war, the Hard Left has always understood its criticality. Give me the child for six years, Lenin reportedly said, quoting the Jesuits, and he will be a Marxist forever. J.V. Stalin, who was partial to Chicago gangster films, thought that if only he had control of Hollywood, he could control the world.

Too many conservatives, writes art critic James Cooper, "never read Mao Tse-tung on waging cultural war against the West. [Mao's] essays were prescribed reading for the Herbert Marcuse-generation of the 1960's, who now run our cultural institutions... Conservatives were oblivious to the fact that ... modern art - long ago
separated from the idealism of Monet, Degas, Cezanne, and Rodin - had become the purveyor of a destructive, degenerate, ugly, pornographic, Marxist, anti-American ideology." While we were off aiding the Contras, a Fifth Column inside our own country was capturing the culture.

The battle is lost and the few Republicans that still believe it can or should be fought at the national level are simply confused. Mike Huckabee is a glimmer of hope for these confused people - they believe supporting a man that claims evangelical Christian beliefs can right all that has occurred. Wrong - perhaps in 1992 there was a slim chance, no chance what-s0-ever exists for this possibility now at the national level.

The American people are ready for a change but what they are really interested in is change that benefits them personally. The only option at all to correct what is wrong is to attack the very core of the belief system that says it is ok to use the Federal government for "good". As we have seen power in the hands of the Federal government is never used for real good.

The only real counter-argument to the noxious touchy feel-good ideas spread by Obama, Edwards and Clinton is the dish Ron Paul is serving up. Everything every other GOP candidate is preaching is defeatism, the same oldism status quo that has failed so miserably thus far.

The only hope for America is to restore the republic, return all of these critical "hot-button" issues that Federal Government has no Constitutional power to act on back to the states. Let us salve the complicated social issues at the local level and keep the Federal Government out of the business of "doing good".

What of Huckabee?

I respect the fact that the man stands up for what he claims as his religious beliefs. I myself am a Christian of the Baptist persuasion (Southern Baptist to be exact). However - there is something significantly dangerous about some of the ideology that many evangelical politicians and "leaders" hold dear.

I know enough about how ordinary Christian folks think and vote to understand why good folks in Iowa placed their voted for Huckabee. I also know enough about the ideology that Huckabee represents and how dangerous it really is.

I will tell you this much, without the probably required data to support my position - Mike Huckabee is a dangerous man, dangerous in the way George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Romney, McCain and Guilliani are dangerous. It is simple enough to rip apart Huckabee from his ideological core - I think between my colleagues here we have done that more or less over time. (see CHRISTIANS NEED TO BEWARE OF MIKE HUCKABEE, The Huckster and Education , Totalitarians Among Us, Sound and Fury, Debate Round-Up to read some of the things we have said about the man).

I am not sure that Iowa means a lot - other than it is refreshing and encouraging that Paul seems to be set to place ahead of Gulliani, Thompson seems to be out of funds and momentum, McCain will self-destruct and Romney and Huckabee will invariably keep beating each other about.

Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate that can run a successful campaign against the Democrats - mark it down and put my name beside it!

National Treasure 2

Last night I saw this film - again because the wife wanted to. It was what I expected; filled with odes to the Lincoln mythology. The villain of the film is a Southerner, a descendant of General Albert Pike. (creative huh).

It is not worth discussing the film other than to comment on a couple of points. First, there are several points where the characters state something to the effect, "imagine if the Confederates had got their hands on all that gold".

Imagine what? Would it really have been so terrible for a new nation to gain its freedom because that is what the people of that nation wanted? I failed to get it each time one of the characters in the movie made such a silly statement. I guess secession got in the way of manifest destiny and all that.

The plot of the film revolves around the fabled city of gold. It ends up being located in the Black Hills, almost under Mt. Rushmore (Six Grandfathers before the Federal Government took it over). Apparently the entire Rushmore project was conceived (according to the story) to hide the city of gold. At one point the dialogue in the movie talks about finding this piece of Indian culture (the use the non-preferred "native american" term).

It is interesting to note that once they find it I did not notice one single Indian there cataloguing and collecting all of the treasure. I suppose it was all headed off to the Smithsonian for "safe-keeping". All of that gold sure would set up the Lakotah Nation up nicely don't you think?

Which of course brings us to sic semper tyranus, the idea that tyrants always should get the (knife, gun, bomb etc.) the only problem with that is that killing a tyrant only allows a worse tyrant to replace them. Killing Lincoln (clearly a tyrant by any real definition) simply allowed the most radical Republicans to implement their policies. Killing tyrant did not even work in Rome, they tried it, over and over and simply kept finding new tyrants ready and wiling to fill the job.

*Lincoln deserved to die, he should have been impeached, tied and hanged for prosecuting unjust war, suppressing Constitutional rights and subverting due process - that is the fate tyrants should face; not to be revered on coins and monuments.

The real problem in the acceptance of the precepts of tyranny. It is those concepts that must be killed to actually "kill" tyrants, i.e. keep them in their place.

A Majority in 32 States Agree

With Ron Paul that Lincoln was wrong to start and prosecute a war against the southern states when they seceded from the union. An act not prohibited to them by the Constitution - the act of going to war against states exercising their reserved rights is not a power delegated to the executive branch or the federal government in general. I challenge anyone to provide evidence to the contrary. Apparently the majority of folks in the less metropolitan states understand this concept.

Take a gander at the map of the poll results - everywhere that people still live with some degree of that quality that has been considered historically "American" the majority agree that Lincoln was wrong.

Samuel Chase (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) and Justice of the Suprime Court stated in Ware v. Hylton (3 Dallas 199 at 224 U.S. 1798)

In June, 1776, the convention on Virginia formaly declared that Virginia was a free, soveriegn and independent state and on the 4th of July 1776, following, the United States in Congress assembled declared the thirteen colonies free and independent States; and that as such they had full power to levy war, conclude peace etc. I consider this as a declaration, not that the United States jointly in a collective capacity were independent States etc. but that each of them was a soverign and independent State, that is each of them had a right to govern itself by its own authority and its own law, without any control from any other power on earth. [emphasis mine]

The Treaty of Paris 1783, concluding the American War of Independence, supports this conclusion:

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

Notice that Great Britian acknowledhes the independence of thirteen individual states as free and independent nations - not simply one joint government. The United States as a government was born from a contract between free and independent States and it was given only limited power to do specific things. As the 10th Amendment clearly states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The president did not and still does not have the power the use force against a state or states exercising their reserved rights - i.e. all rights of free and independent nations not specifically delegated to the Federal Government under the terms of the Constitution. Free and independent states are by definition free to enter into contracts and agreements and when they believe those agreements are no longer in their best interests they are free to leave those agreements. That is the meaning of being free and independent - any other definiton would inply that the states were captive and not free at all.

Alexis de Tocqueville the foremost observer of the creation of the American Republic, in Democracy in America, said:

The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States choose to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right.

President James Buchanan stated succinctly in a speech before Congress, December 1860 that the Constitution does not delegate to the Federal government the power to use force against a state:

The question fairly stated is, Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and to make war against a State. After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the Federal Government. It is manifest upon an inspection of the Constitution that this is not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress, and it is equally apparent that its exercise is not " necessary and proper for carrying into execution " any one of these powers. So far from this power having been delegated to Congress, it was expressly refused by the Convention which framed the Constitution.

Lincoln himself spoke highly of secession at one point in his career (when it was pragmatic and met his own ideological objectives)

Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one which suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right-a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit.

This excerpt is taken from Lincoln's "If You Can Secede You May" (Mexico) speech, cited in Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 450.

Clearly Mr. Lincoln was wrong to wage war against the South - he did not do it to free slaves for he never freed a single slave under his actual sphere of influence. Furthermore, slaver ended in every other Western nation without war, it was an intsitution destined to end in America as well without warfare. He invaded the South outside of his constitutional mandate and beyond his delegagted power to act. His actions caused the death of 400,000 Americans and in the minds of the uneducated and more nefariously those that wish to use the Federal Government for purposes that is was never created for changed our Republic into an empire.

Ron Paul was brave to answer Tim Russert correctly but it is more encouraging to see that many of my fellow Americans still understand history and the Constitution.