Invasion of the ‘Dreamers’

What happens if a powerful, well respected U.S. Senator gives a press conference, and no press turns out?  I do not pose this question in a literary sense but rather figuratively since the media was present at last Thursday’s press conference, but neglected to report a piece of critical news item that affects the very sovereignty of this nation, just because it would undoubtedly have further seriously damaged the Administration’s already sullied image.

The substance of the press conference given by Senator Jeff Sessions was the scandalous behavior of the Administration – in this case the White House and the DHS – ever since President Obama signed the executive order to let a certain (large) segment of the illegal immigrant community escapedeportation.

This back door attempt to pass the failed DREAM Act is unconstitutional.  It is usurpation of power by the Executive Branch in violation of the Separation of Powers Act, and just the latest example of dying federalism.  It is also treason.

Among definitions of treason, one finds ‘a violation of allegiance to one’s sovereignty or one’s state’.  This usurpation of power and direct attack on the sovereignty of our nation is, therefore, treason.  Yet, this is not news according to the despicable U.S. media.  Nor is it alarming enough to the overwhelming majority of Republican congressmen who are quiet about it, as they do not wish to be portrayed as attacking our ‘first black’ president.  All the meanwhile, we Americans keep on incrementally losing our country.

The Obama Administration has been investigating and/or outright suing a plethora of states for enforcing existing federal immigration and election laws.  Now, the political game has been elevated to outright letting illegal immigrant criminals go scot-free in response to a simple statement by the offenders: I am a ‘dreamer’!

To be dreamer in the context of immigration used to refer to those immigrants who came here to better their lives through making use of the limitless opportunities America offers to anyone willing to work hard and make their American dream come true.  That is unfortunately no more the case.  Today’s dreamers are predominantly here to latch on to the government’s teet with the encouragement of our own government.

Make no mistake; here we are truly dealing with a GangsterGovernment!  They will do whatever is necessary to win; and that includes lying, dividing America along class and race lines, violating the U.S. Constitution by negating federalism and disregarding the other two co-equal branches of the government, and committing election fraud.

Obama’s re-election strategy is simple: shore up the base consisting of gays, pro-choice elements, environmentalists, Latinos, African Americans, and otherwise anti-capitalist collectivists.  Let’s hope that the calculus is not there, in the light of lacking Democrat enthusiasm, to carry him to a disastrous victory come November.  There is no alternative to preserving America!

Obama's "Perfectible" Union

On the heels of comments differentiating profits from jobs, and claiming that the collective is why some succeed, you would think President Obama would have learned a lesson.  Not.  Here he was yesterday, letting the cat out of the bag again. 
"And I confess the progress didn't come quickly, and it did not come easily," President Obama said about his time as a community organizer in Chicago. "Sometimes it didn't come at all. There were times where I thought about giving up and moving on. But what kept me going day in and day out was the same thing that has sustained the Urban League all these years. The same thing that sustains all of you. And that is the belief that in America, change is always possible. That our union may not be perfect, but it is perfectible."
"That we can strive over time, through effort and sweat and blood and tears until it is the place we imagine. It may come in fits and starts, at a pace that can be slow and frustrating, but if we are willing to push through all the doubt and the cynicism and the weariness, then yes, we can form that more perfect union,"
 
So, I got to wondering, how can our union be 'perfectible'?  Doesn't believing that our union is not perfect mean you do not believe in its foundational principles? 

Just what does he mean by our union being "perfectible" is clear to those of us who understood what context he was using the word "fundamental change" when he said in 2008 "we are eight days away from fundamentally changing this nation". 
 
Perfection for Obama is a collectivist state where there are no perceived injustices and perfect equality in poverty and misery.  Anybody who assails wealth, private sector, and individual effort as much as he does cannot possibly mean anything else.

But, shhhh..., don't tell your Democrat friends that he is not a collectivist!

True Colors of Progressives

Boston mayor Thomas Menino said to Boston Herald yesterday: “Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion.  That’s the Freedom Trail. That’s where it all started right here.  And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.”

This was no more a gaffe than president Obama's or Elizabeth Warren's words denigrating profits and the private sector.  No, this is what progressive liberals are all about!

Do you ever see a conservative mayor or a governor preventing Ben and Jerry - two former hippies who are active in just about every progressive cause from gay marriage to totally unrestricted abortions which, among others, account for the genocide of 50% of black babies - from doing business in their city or state?  Of course not!

Conservatives believe in the Constitution and its underlying philosophy of inalienable individual liberties, including believing in whatever you want to believe in no matter how disagreeable it may be.  Progressives on the other hand have no tolerance for other points of view, as mayor Menino clearly displayed once again.

Imagine an America where an official can ban a business from operating because that business does not agree with him.  Unimaginable?  Think again.  It is already here, America.

Delusions of Grandeur

Yesterday, Obama said to a group of veterans that his Administration has spearheaded a “new era of American leadership” that has made the U.S. “safer and stronger and more respected in the world.”  He later added: "America should never apologize."  Excuse me?  I must be living in a parallel universe because, like too many of his comments, this one displays chutzpah and a clear detachment from reality.  One has to start getting really nervous about his psychosis which apparently goes beyond a simple narcissistic personality disorder; more like bordering on that of a sociopath.

There is the world view, and then there is the demented view of Obama on America's standing in the world today. A country, like an individual, is only respected insofar as its commitment to rock solid principles and its stallwart backing of its allies. Just like someone who is not a man of his word is not respected, neither is a country that has no clearly defined direction or predictability.

It is ironic that shortly before Obama uttered these ridiculous words, the Australian foreign minister told Mitt Romney that the world sees America in decline.  Similar sentiments were expressed in the past by Prime Ministers of U.K., Israel, and several other allies.  How and why wouldn't they?  We have double crossed just about every close ally.  Remember selling out the security of central Europe (Czech Republic and Poland) when we literally gave away the missile defense shield to placate the Russians, who in turn made no concessions?  Then how about Taiwan, whom we refused to sell war planes to in order to placate the Chinese?  And the Israelis, who have continually been given the cold shoulder by this Administration just to get on Iran and the Muslim world's favors?  Remember the Hondurans, whose dictator Obama stood behind when he was deposed by his people?  The Colombians who were sacrified to placate Hugo Chavez would certainly agree.  The long list of those allies we have betrayed don't stop there, but you get the point.

Then, we have the non-apology (according to Barack) apologies.  Here are just ten of the many, courtesy of the Heritage Foundation:
1. Apology to France and Europe ("America Has Shown Arrogance")
2. Apology to the Muslim World ("We Have Not Been Perfect")
3. Apology to the Summit of the Americas ("At Times We Sought to Dictate Our Terms")
4. Apology at the G-20 Summit of World Leaders ("Some Restoration of America's Standing in the World")
5. Apology for the War on Terror ("We Went off Course")
6. Apology for Guantanamo in France ("Sacrificing Your Values")
7. Apology before the Turkish Parliament ("Our Own Darker Periods in Our History")
8. Apology for U.S. Policy toward the Americas ("The United States Has Not Pursued and Sustained Engagement with Our Neighbors")
9. Apology for the Mistakes of the CIA ("Potentially We've Made Some Mistakes")
10. Apology for Guantanamo in Washington ("A Rallying Cry for Our Enemies")

Neither a man nor a country can withstand the damage caused by losing the trust of your friends and the respect of your foes.  We have accomplished both under this president.  Is it any surprise that the man who has such delusions of his role on the economy, is also delusional about his foreign policy? 
Now we can add foreign policy disaster to the economic and cultural disasters Obama has unleashed on America.  November just can't get here soon enough!

Update: Myths About Hard Work - Americans Disagree

It is perhaps not too surprising to see that 72% of Americans', in the newest Rasmussen poll, do not agree with the President that entrepreneurs did not build their businesses themselves.  In fact, it is downright encouraging to see that the American spirit is still alive in many.....that is if polls are to be believed at an age when the typical American is demonstrably confused about their ideology as witnessed by conflicting poll results that indicate Americans are conservative by a 2:1 margin, while nearly 70% agree have a positive opinion of progressivism.  All thanks to our failing educational system and the dishonest media!

I have one more thing to add to my earlier rant for the economic illiterate in the White House:
Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb and his many other inventions because the power grid was built by the government waiting for the complimentary inventions to follow.  Henry Ford did not mass produce cars because the national highway system (built in the 1950s) was already built.  Wright brothers did not invent the plane because airports were waiting empty for the plane to be invented.  On and on the examples go.

The government does not create jobs.  The government only reacts to the private sector.  If roads and bridges were the only required ingredient (as Obama tried to spin his words later) for success, than no business would be a failure since every business is fronted by a road. 

I doubt that progressives like Obama and the rest of the Democrat party will ever understand that government is only an impediment to growth and prosperity these days.  As the President's words clearly show, they believe deeply that government must be the center of all economic activity in order to ensure "equality and social justice" (two words I use loosely). 

Like with his words earlier (that, as the president, his job is to think about people, not profits), attributing the success of entrepreneurs to everyone else is also symptomatic of one, and only one, ideology: communism.  As no one can be viewed to be responsible for, or control, their outcomes in life, it is only the collective that matters.  That is pure communism and not unexpected from the neo Marxists that pass themselves as Democrats. 

Come November, I am more convinced than ever that Americans will be showing the President the door.  We can only hope that he takes as many Democrat congressmen as possible with him and they do not let the door hit them on their way out.

Democrats' DISCLOSE Dishonesty

Senator Schumer, one of the most bitterly partisan progressive hacks in the Congress, gave a speech on the U.S. Senate floor reminiscing something out of the Third Reich.  The subject being debated: the DISCLOSE Act.

The DISCLOSE Act is the legislation Democrats are attempting to pass in response to the 2010 Citizens United v. F.E.C. decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, when the Court rightly decided that it was unconstitutional to ban free speech through the limitation of independent communications by corporations, associations and unions.  This did not sit well with the Democrats since the game must be rigged so that their constituents, like the labor unions, are the only organized, powerful force left in the political arena.  So, strategically, legislative action was the only avenue left, thus the introduction of the DISCLOSE Act in Congress.

Summary of the legislation reads as follows:
"To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to prohibit foreign influence in Federal elections, to prohibit government contractors from making expenditures with respect to such elections, and to establish additional disclosure requirements with respect to spending in such elections, and for other purposes."

The language in the DISCLOSE Act include banning U.S. corporations controlled by foreign governments from influencing election outcomes through the use of campaign contributions; preventing Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) recipients from making political contributions; giving shareholders, organization members, and the general public access to information regarding corporate and interest group campaign expenditures; and creating transparency mechanisms for organizations with more than 500,000 members to stand by political ads.  Although reasonable sounding, the spirit of the legislation is anything but.

The lightening rod for this misguided legislation being Citizens United ruling, from the beginning, it was purposefully misinterpreted as permitting corporations and unions to donate to political campaigns, or permitting foreign associations to donate to campaigns, or else removing limits on how much a donor can contribute to a campaign.  These claims are incorrect, as the ruling did not affect the 1907 Tillman Act's specific ban on corporate campaign donations (as the Court noted explicitly in its decision), nor the prohibition on foreign corporate donations to American campaigns, nor did it concern campaign contribution limits.

Perhaps even more insidiously, the bill may be used for purposes of squashing free speech in the blogosphere if the government deems it necessary. There is specific wording in the Disclose Act relating to communication. In current federal campaign regulations, public communication is defined explicitly to exclude internet communications, which keeps exchanges among citizens on all political blogs from coming under prohibitive campaign speech regulations of the federal government. In the Disclose Act, where the bill addresses what would be covered by a host of the bill's new federal campaign regulations, the term "communication" is used, not "public communication." This means internet communications are not protected, which could eventually lead to posts by bloggers being deemed campaign contributions.


Senator Schumer and his colleques on the left have further demagogued this issue by ignoring all the loopholes carved out for special interests and then proposed changes on the Senate floor to the bill to win over Senator Olympia Snowe, after having drafted the bill behind closed doors with lobbyists. The problems with the bill really started when the House of Representatives added a carveout in the bill for membership groups like the NRA. This move allowed the bill’s opponents to argue that it was the result of a corrupt process and was not a pure transparency initiative. And among the other prominent major groups exempted from disclosing their contributions were, of course, the labor unions which explicitly support the Democrat party to the tune of over $300 million per election cycle.
--
In his outrageous floor speech on Wednesday, Senator Schumer said:
"I believe there ought to be limits because the First Amendment is not absolute. No amendment is absolute. You can’t scream ‘fire’ falsely in a crowded theater. We have libel laws. We have anti-pornography laws. All of those are limits on the First Amendment. Well, what could be more important than the wellspring of our democracy? And certain limits on First Amendment rights that if left unfettered, destroy the equality — any semblance of equality in our democracy — of course would be allowed by the Constitution. And the new theorists on the Supreme Court who don’t believe that, I am not sure where their motivation comes from, but they are just so wrong."

It is quite obvious that Sen. Schumer has no regard for either the SCOTUS or the U.S. Constitution.  Notice how he is not asking for banning all money and influence of any other type from politics?!  That is because he owes his whole existence to those powerful interests that have kept him in the Congress for umpteen years.  It is astonishing that Mr. Schumer did not seem bothered by corporate influence as a top recipient of Fannie and Freddie, as well as Wall Street cash ever since his election in 1998, prior to the DISCLOSE Act.

Mr. Schumer and his progressive ilk have continuously demagogued the issue by lying and demonizing corporations and certain (conservative) groups by inventing slogans like 'corporations are not people'.  I've got news for you, Mr. Schumer.  They have a First Amendment right to political expression as much as any labor union or other entity.  And yes, they ARE people.  Inanimate objects cannot conduct business - people do.  As such, they have the right to express their opinions as much as the next guy does.

As a side note, little did the good Senator realize that the sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse had slipped out during the speech to - what else - attend a political fundraiser.  I somehow doubt that the irony of that would have escaped the good Senator even if he knew about it!

Dems Ready to Drive America Off the Fiscal Cliff

Remember the "lie of the year" for 2010?  As PolitiFact called it, Republicans pushing a wheel chair bound grandma off the cliff (in their opposition to Obamacare) took the honors that year.  But in 2013, someone is about to be thrown off the cliff alright - this time for real - and it is the American economy!

Yes America, we are the latest pawns in a game of political chicken.  As Senator Murray (D-WA) echoed the President's sentiment, Democrats are ready to let all the Bush tax rates expire if Republicans do not relent on the top bracket being sacrificed at the alter of collectivism.  Despite the CBO and Fed's warnings that letting the Bush cuts expire is forecast to cost upwards of nearly a million jobs and 3% in GDP growth (and remember that the economy has barely been growing 2%), Democrat demagogues are willing to cause a catastrophe in order to score what they perceive to be political points in their pursuit of fostering class warfare.

It is in holding with expected Democrat hypocrisy that the President himself had said a couple of years ago "the last thing you want to do when the economy is barely breathing is to raise taxes".  Yet, when the economy is struggling even more than when those words by uttered by Obama, the Democrat mantra has changed thanks solely to political convenience.  The question remains whether the Republicans will blink first.

Republicans need to hold strong here and make Obama veto a bill keeping all of the Bush rates in place.  Then, once again, they need to point out that the so-called rich, making over $200,000 per year, already carry more than their weight as far as tax revenues are concerned.  Those Americans who are still uninformed of the fact (thanks to the complicit media) that the top 1% who make 17% of the national income already pay 37% of the federal income taxes, or that the bottom half who make 13% of the national income pay only 2% of the taxes, or for that matter the inescapable fact that the higher taxes will hit 900,000 small businesses by the Administration's own estimates, will know who to hold responsible when the economy goes off the cliff come 2013.  And it won't be the Republicans provided that they can effectively get their message out!

It is high time for conservative voices to draw distinctive lines between their individual freedom oriented philosophy and the collectivist philosophy of Democrats that is antithetical to our founding principles that has allowed us to be the most powerful, prosperous, and generous nation on earth.

A Tale of Two Campaigns

Obama and Romney campaigns are symptomatic of the ideologies that they represent.  According to a New York Times article on Sunday, Obama campaign not heavily censores what gets printed by the media outlets following them, but also is downright vulgar.  Romney campaign, on the other hand, is far more accessible, polite, and highly intellectual.

As amazing as this admission is from a progressive lapdog like the NYT, it should come as no surprise to the readers.  Obama campaign represents the same collectivist ideology around the globe that is tyrannical (and downright violent as is the OWS movement), propagandizes constantly using lies, and strictly controls the message that gets out.  Romney campaign, on the other hand, represents an ideology centered around individual freedoms and, thus, is philosophical and honest in its very nature (based on Western classicism).

Just as the Clintonistas trashed the White House when they found out that G.W. Bush had won the 2000 election, Obama campaign has degenerated in to new lows that are anything but befitting of the highest office in the land.  Apparently the decency of the Romney campaign, on the other hand, is not earning them any brownie points with the shamelessly biased media.  Afterall, there aren't too many forces in nature that are stronger than ideology!

This clear distinction should be - but sadly won't be - noted by all Americans.  It is yet another occasion when the collectivists among us are telegraphing their true colors to the rest of us.

Myths About Hardwork: Reality Turned Upside Down (or The World According to Obama)

A certain character out of 'World According to Garp', famous John Irving novel, seems to represent an odd proxy for how our President sees the world.  In the novel, Jenny Fields - T.S'. dysfunctional mother, has a surreal relationship with a severely brain damaged army sergeant, and ends up having his child - the main character - who represents a contradiction to the views of his feminist mother.  The twisted relationship and the contradiction between the characters of Jenny and T.S. is somewhat analogous to Obama's relationship with true Americans - those who believe in rugged individualism over collectivism.

The most recent demonstration of this came this past Saturday in Roanoke, Virginia, where the president extolled the virtues of government's role in people's successes while attacking capitalism.  We have all come to expect that rhetoric from the President, but it was some other things he said that once again let the cat out of the bag:

"They think that the economy grows from the top down. So their basic theory is, if wealthy investors are doing well then everybody does well."

"Now, we don’t need more top-down economics. I’ve got a different view. I believe that the way you grow the economy is from the middle out."

"look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there."

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. "

"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

Obviously the president shares the same Marxist speech writer with Elizabeth Warren, who uttered the exact same sentiments a few months back.  But, what I find amazing the most is how, still, so many supposedly intelligent (and educated) folks still try to argue that he is just like any other president before him.  Excuse me?  Please name one president, including FDR, who has spewed so much neo Marxist rhetoric?

So, according to our dear leader, it is those welfare queens that the Administration is recruiting so actively, the 47% of the labor force that pays no federal income taxes, and the permanent couch dwellers who make this country what it is.  It is them who have helped the producers of the society get to where they are.  So, lets just spread the wealth and all will be fine again!

Since technically everything in life has been touched one way or another by others, no one is responsible for their own successes or failures, therefore the individual is irrelevant; there is only the collective!  Get it?
And that, folks, is the World According to Obama.

Obama Spews More Anti-American (Free Market) Sentiment

We all know that the Obama Administration is all about dismantling free market capitalism.  Every policy, without exception, is geared toward that rigidly ideological goal - one designed to rescue us from the clutches of evil capitalism and deliver us to utopian collectivism where everything is free and there are no consequences.

Yesterday, the President, staying in character, made an outrageous statement about Romney:

“When some people question why I would challenge his Bain record, the point I’ve made there in the past is, if you’re a head of a large private equity firm or hedge fund, your job is to make money. It’s not to create jobs. It’s not even to create a successful business — it’s to make sure that you’re maximizing returns for your investor. Now that’s appropriate. That’s part of the American way. That’s part of the system. But that doesn’t necessarily make you qualified to think about the economy as a whole, because as president, my job is to think about the workers. My job is to think about communities, where jobs have been outsourced."

Once again, the President demonstrated amply that he is like a fish out of water when it comes to economic affairs.  The community-organizer-in-chief obviously thinks that 'making money' and 'creating jobs' are two unrelated matters.  What better demonstration that he is a class warring Marxist ideologue?!

Mr. President, no business undertakes any activity that is not solely based on the feasibility and profitability of that activity over a given horizon.  Jobs are created as a byproduct only - not as the central goal of the business activity.  Food stamps do not create jobs - they only inhibit the initiative necessary for the recipients to take meaningful action.  I understand that it is extremely hard, if not impossible, for you to grasp this reality, but this will not change any more than anything else in nature no matter what your ilk thinks.

This is exactly the reason businesses are not expanding or investing.  Poll after poll, NFIB, NAM, and Chamber of Commerce member businesses are saying the same: 'as long as the uncertainty and costs imposed by Obamacare, burdensome environmental and labor regulations, and the fiscal cliff remain, they are not willing to gamble'.  Why is it that this message does not get through your thick skull?  I'll tell you why, Mr. President.  You certainly are smart enough to get the message (as any 10 year old would) but your goal is not to see us pull out of this malaise; it is to destroy this system as you plainly stated in 2008.

Your game plan is simple: destroy the remnants of the free market system while wilfully demolishing the U.S. Constitution.  Destroying federalism, the Seperation of Powers, challenging states on laws designed to defend their sovereignty and the integrity of their borders and elections, assaulting one sector after another (whether it is the financial services, insurance, oil, or whichever is the targeted sector of the moment), assaulting traditional culture, dumping tens of millions of unfortunate Americans on the welfare system whose Clinton era reforms you have undone, cozying up to our enemies while undermining our national interests elsewhere,......whatever; all your actions are designed carefully with that singular goal.

We are wise to you, Mr. President, and doing the best that we can to inform the uninformed masses so that you cannot carry on with your assault on freedom.  Failure is not an option.  However, should we fail, you do not want to see the extremes us god fearing, freedom loving Americans will go to in order to salvage the only shining city on the hill top that we lovingly call America.  This is not a threat.  It is simply a warning to those who do not remember history, which has a way of repeating itself.

Secession: A Necessity Borne Out of Progressive Tyranny?

Over the past couple of weeks, I have drawn the friendly criticisms of several fellow conservatives for what seemed to them as advocating what is still considered to be taboo: Secession.  In every case, there was no immediate opportunity to explain my reasoning due to the complexities involved in arriving at such a grave conclusion, as preliminary as such a conclusion may be in its very nature.   

Just what is the philosophical justification for a new secessionist movement, and what are the realities as well as legalities involved, is a complex subject matter that requires insight to where I am coming from and the painstaking process I have gone through before arriving at this improbable conclusion.  I call it the harsh light of reality I was desperately trying to avoid most of my adult life. 

Who Am I and Why Even Read Just Another Opinion?

We are all products of our upbringing.  Our families, education, life experiences and environment as a whole determine to a great extent who we are and what makes us tick.  Why is this important?  I will answer that by posing another question.  If you knew that someone had mediocre education, no sign of intellectual curiosity, and little diversity of life experience, would you value their opinions as much as you would someone with the opposite qualities?  The answer is a resounding no.  The following, therefore, is not an exercise in self-aggrandizing; to the contrary it is an open window to my perspectives.

First of all, I am a naturalized U.S. citizen.  As such, I have a different level of appreciation for America than your typical second or later generation American.  Having lived in several countries and travelled to over 40, many in my formative years, I have experienced what few have.  I have seen the pros and cons in every culture and appreciated their differences.  I have learned about their governmental structures and weighed their constitutions throughout years, and arrived at the inescapable conclusion that the United States is by far superior to any other nation around the world in its foundation.  I did not arrive at this conclusion because I read it from other sources or was influenced by others’ opinions.  I arrived at it because, like others before me – famously including Alexis de Tocqueville in the 18^th century as well as countless lesser known mortals like me that followed – I observed the alternatives and formed my opinions after an extensive amount of firsthand experience.  That is true knowledge in its classical sense.

I am a classicist by training (I can assure you that very few students today in America would survive the rigors of my Swiss boarding school decades ago).  As such, I believe that a strong foundation in liberal arts and logic is the only one that allows us to truly comprehend the deep philosophical underpinnings of the issues that are at stake today.                        

Why is classicism critical to the central issue we are discussing?  The short answer is that we have gradually abandoned this approach to solving our problems over the past century.  Yes, we are still advancing but mostly thanks to the momentum of all the advances before.  The reason why western civilization became the greatest and drove along humanity in to modern ages is because of classicism.  Mankind existed for a million years as various species, without any meaningful advancement.  It was western classicism that was born in ancient Greece that ignited the true renaissance of man two and a half millennium ago.  Since man’s natural intellectual evolution cannot in itself explain why mankind advanced so much in about 2500 years whereas they had been pretty stagnant for a million, classicism is the only inescapable answer. 

We must constantly ask ourselves whether our views are consistent with logic and supported by empirical evidence.  Since available historical context and evidence is constantly changing as new history is made, this is a continuous process that one must adopt for all their lives.  I believe that this type of a philosophical approach is the only consistent one with a high level of intellectual integrity.  As a result of this ongoing process, I have arrived at a set of conclusions.  Although I sympathize with the spirit of what seemingly more level headed conservatives are saying, I am now skeptical about taking the high road to our salvation (by that I mean through conventionally accepted political means). 

At a certain point, I discovered that there are really only two kinds of human beings.  One kind believes in self reliance and responsibility.  This is our kind - the kind that founded the greatest nation ever devised by man in modern times.  The other kind believes in what they perceive to be the humanitarian qualities of a collectivist system that sacrifices God given individual rights for sake of rights of the society as a whole.  Wholesale rights attributed to the masses can only come at the expense of individual rights because nothing is free and everything must be earned in life.

As a result of my life of travelling and experiencing different countries of the world, my education both in academia as well as life, becoming intimately familiar with our (U.S.) founding, and interacting with people of differing political philosophies, I have reached nirvana of sorts. Here it is:

Individualists (call them conservatives or classical liberals) and collectivists (call them progressive liberals, socialists, Marxists, whatever) cannot coexist.  Progressivism must feed from the fruits of individualism in order to survive, therefore it must dominate it.  Each side must simply win over the other or perish in the long run.  We are in the latter stages of this struggle that has been ongoing for a long time now.

Our individual rights are but a speed bump to progressives.  They reject all notion of God given rights because the moment they accept such natural rights attributable to the individual, their positions become untenable; thus their rejection of morality and embracing of moral relativism and utilitarianism.  There is so much to discuss here, but in the interest of time, we’ll skip it.

So what can be done if coexistence is long term impossibility?  Surely, as civilized people, we cannot even momentarily entertain despotic measures, though collectivists have historically proven to have no reservations about employing extreme measures themselves.  Isn’t our only solution, then, self segregation of sorts?  Looking at history and following a series of logical conclusions, does secession still sound like a non-starter as an alternative? 

Legality Issues Surrounding Secession:

First, let’s be clear about one thing: There is absolutely nothing in the U.S. Constitution that either outright recognizes or denies the right of secession. The very nature of the Constitution is that it was ratified by states with the understanding that it was the voluntary consent of sovereign states to be governed by a central government, for the benefit of all, and if that is true, then a state can (theoretically) voluntarily withdraw its consent to be a part of the Union that no longer is beneficial to said State(s).  In America, we believe that the laws should rule the government, not the people, and that the government is the servant of the people, yet today, in America, it is the other way around. Just look at how this Administration has circumvented the separation of powers by nullifying existing laws like DOMA, ignoring court orders, etc., etc. 

Currently the federal government has or is in the process of suing several states over issues concerning immigration and election laws.  In every case, the states are trying to enforce the laws that are in the books already while the federal government is trying to circumvent these laws just because it politically benefits the Administration.  The situation has escalated to the point where the State of Arizona has filed a ballot initiative declaring that voters could get the right to overrule federal laws and mandates.  It simply states that a federal document may not be violated by any government -- including the federal government.  This, my friends, is the direct result of federalism being choked off by the left, and will further escalate as time goes on.  These are the first baby steps in the direction of secession, make no mistake about it. 

My conclusion is not one of whether starting afresh is an option but rather whether it is doable.  Our forefathers did it when despotism of their masters reached an unacceptable level.  Later, both President James Buchanan and Thomas Jefferson stated that the basis of the United States is the consent of its citizens to be part of the Union. Should any state desire to secede, it should be allowed to do so.  Some scholars claim that the right of secession is built into the Constitution while others claim that it is the natural right for revolution as envisaged and acted upon by the founders of the United States.

Moreover, historical context also argues that secession is not illegal. When the Union forced the Confederate forces to surrender at Appomattox, they insisted that these states also surrender their right to secede from the Union. Therefore, it can be stated that the USG admitted that the Confederate States did have that right in the first place because how can they surrender a right, unless they had the right to secede in the first place?

Furthermore, Chief Justice John Marshall, in Gibbons v. Ogden stated “limitations of a power furnish a strong argument in favor of the existence of that power [secession].”

Also, consider this famous passage: “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.” Thus it can be inferred that some sort of right of secession is legal as this comes from the Declaration of Independence, and in the writings of both John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.

Finally (among many more examples), Abraham Lincoln said “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 that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.” What he was talking about should not be interpreted as being through elections only, because rising up connotes clearly something different than elections. 

As far as legal precedence is concerned, the track record is not necessarily all disappointing.  The SCOTUS has commented that revolution or consent of the states could lead to a successful secession.  It is only unilateral secession that has been deemed unlawful.  With over half the states being red states, the road all of a sudden does not seem as steep.

Going back, in 1860, prior to the Civil War, there were no SCOTUS decisions claiming secession to be illegal. There were no laws regarding it. Even President Buchanan admitted he had no power to stop southern states from seceding. He clearly said he had no authority to stop them.  If constitutionally it was illegal to secede, would that make sense?  Because of that reason, many still rightly argue that the civil war was unjustified on the part of the North.  That being said, economics of the day and slavery, which had been tearing the union apart for many decades, played a big part. The dynamics today are as different as day and night.  For one, we are more civilized in our approach to things.  Our economy is a lot more diverse as well.  There are no slavery type issues (other than us becoming slaves of sorts).

So, in the absence of solid anti-secessionist references in the Constitution or in current law, and completely different dynamics, I believe that secession would not lead to any violence. And perhaps, the biggest reason for that belief is that I reject the thought that any soldier in modern day America, would fire on a fellow American.  We are infinitely more sophisticated than we were as a nation in the 1860s.  I however admit it would be a long and hard road filled with rhetoric.

So, how might a U.S. that has divorced its ideologies look like?  I will venture a guess that within 20 years, the red union that has reaffirmed its belief in the original constitution will be once again a global leader while the blue union that sticks to its collectivist ideology will resemble East Germany of old.

To secede or not to secede? I will answer with a question of my own.  What is more moral – oppressing others who believe otherwise, or being a part of a country that reflects your philosophy, by your own free will?

It is a simple question with a complex answer.  All I can ask of you is to think long and hard the implications of taking no action at all.

A Short Video of Earth From Space

Just because we need a break from somber politics once in a while!
Watch it full screen with the sound up high.  Enjoy.