Happy (Early) Fourth of July!

Thanks to the folks over at JibJab!, my two youngest boys, ages 5 and 3, are now starring in this tribute to the Founding Fathers.  I really had no idea that my 5-year old could rap, but the proof is in the pudding.  Enjoy, and have a great Fourth!

by Michael Naragon

The Crisis (2009), Part VI

In the final essay of The Crisis, I address a letter to our posterity.  How will they view our efforts against the slouch toward socialism and slavery to an out-of-control federal government?

by Michael Naragon

VI

TO OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN:

I write this to you on June 27, 2009, hoping this letter finds you well.  I hope this letter also finds you free, as the inheritors of Liberty and Freedom which you will be entrusted to pass on to your posterity.  So it has been since 1776, and so it will be, by God’s grace, for generations to come.

If you enjoy Freedom from an oppressive government, then it appears as though my generation managed to accomplish its mission.  At the time of my writing, the situation looks bleak.  So bleak, in fact, that I am reminded of the words attributed to General Ferdinand Foch, “Ma droite est enfoncée, ma gauche cède–tout va bien–j’attaque!”  In case your French is rusty, it is translated, “My right gives way, my left yields–everything goes well–I attack!”

In many ways, our situation in the United States resembles that which faced General Foch at the Marne.  Enemies surround us, both external and internal.  The North Koreans have threatened our annihilation.  Many in the Muslim world seek to destroy both the United States and Israel.  Our own president, sadly, refuses to support the Israeli government with any degree of conviction.  Europe is beginning a move to the right, a reaction against years of socialism, but Britain finds itself in dire economic difficulty, having nearly bankrupted herself with welfare, including a nationalized health care system that has forced their government to make decisions about who lives and dies.

In America, we have our own share of problems.  Our president, Barack Obama, appears bent on spending us into extinction.  Our national debt is nearly $11.4 trillion, and it grows by $3.7 billion every day.  Of course, if my generation has not been successful in returning the nation to a Constitutional focus, those numbers may not seem large to you.  In 2009, however, that’s a lot of money.  So much, in fact, that the chances are remote that we will ever pay it off.  If it were going to happen, the people we sent to Congress would have to commit themselves to balancing the budget.  Our politicians have no interest in real fiscal responsibility.  They have already spent your money and look for more, all in the interest of expanding government’s control, in the interest of breaking away from their Constitutionally defined limits.

The politicians, like Mr. Obama, are not overt in their designs.  They spend billions here, billions there, all in the name of helping us.  AIG is too important to fail.  General Motors must not go bankrupt.  50 million people in America do not have health insurance and must be protected.  Our environment must be saved.  There is, to the political class, a worthy cause for every trillion dollars spent, and, all the while, we continue our death spiral to insolvency.

Surely, you are asking why we continued to support such a government.  Why did we not elect new leaders?  Hopefully, in your time, you can still participate in actual free elections.  I wish I could produce a better answer for you to explain why.  Why did we allow our government to get to such a state?  It has been a slow process.  The federal government has expanded its role since Reconstruction–do schools still teach about the War Between the States in your time?  Under Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, Washington’s power increased a hundred fold.  Programs like Social Security were created to turn the federal government from a distant defender to a seemingly benevolent parent looking to spoil its children.  Once the American people accepted the idea of intrusive government–and they accepted it because of the difficulties of the Depression–it became easy to accept increasing degrees of government control.  Lyndon Johnson introduced nationalized medical insurance for the aged that quickly turned into nationalized medical insurance for millions more.  Jimmy Carter gave away the Panama Canal, betrayed the Iranian government, and worked with terrorists.  As the Cold War came to a close, the nation’s deficit snowballed with little resistance.  George W. Bush introduced the Patriot Act, allowing the government to subvert the Constitution in the interest of combating domestic terrorism.  And then Mr. Obama took office.

Our generation could be labeled as apathetic, but, in our defense, prosperity breeds apathy.  And we have woken from our deep sleep.  In February 2009, a few thousand patriots gathered across the country to protest the government’s reckless spending.  In April, on Tax Day, millions assembled for the same reason.  Hopefully, in your time, there is still only one Tax Day.  Or, if my generation has been wildly successful, you have none.  In July, those Americans who still believe in the Constitution and love the United States will gather once again, symbolically on Independence Day.  The news media, in most cases, have done their best to minimize the movement.  One comedian claimed we were racists who opposed Mr. Obama simply because he was black.  Other news personnel have used graphic sexual language when they referred to us.  Unconcerned with such antics, our movement grows.  Where it will end is simply a matter of our resolve, which I doubt not.

You have me at a disadvantage–you know the outcome of the narrative.  I can only see the end of the tunnel as a distant pinprick of light.  You are, I hope, bathed in its luminescent glory.  I will not ask the question of our success or failure.  We have no other option but success.  If we have managed to turn the tide and to restore our nation to its Constitutional principles, thank your God and His Providence.  Live your lives knowing they have been bought with a price.  Christ died for your eternal soul.  Millions of Americans have died for the Freedom to believe so.  The best thanks you could give them is to pass on this Republic, this America, to your own children and grandchildren with its principles intact and its way sure.  May God bless your efforts.

The Crisis (2009), Part IV

Moderate and liberal Republicans continue to call for the enlargement of the party’s “tent,” advising a move away from the conservative majority.  In a letter to those who traditionally vote Democrat, I appeal instead to the intellectual ties which bind all Americans together without compromising the principles of conservatism.

by Michael Naragon

IV

TO THOSE CALLING THEMSELVES DEMOCRATS:

Fellow Americans, consider this an olive branch.  I am writing not to the dogmatic elitists who write for the Daily Kos or work, say, in the Oval Office or the halls of Congress.  I am writing to those of you who have voted Democrat your entire life, with the possible exception of 1980 and 1984, when Ronald Reagan intrigued you.  I am writing to those of you who are traditional Democrats, who believe in God, family, America, and unions.  You labor every day to take care of your family, just as my wife and I do.  You understand the value of a good day’s work, but also the wonderful feeling of a few minutes on the couch when you arrive home, perhaps bouncing a child on your knee as he tells you about his day.

You and I will differ philosophically on some issues, to be sure.  But we also have many commonalities.  It is these beliefs we share that I wish to focus upon.  In our ideological struggles, people on both sides tend to ignore the fact that we are all Americans and that, by a large majority, Americans want to preserve our liberties for ourselves and our children.  We wish to bequeath a free America to our posterity.   I want my sons’ America to closely resemble the one in which I was raised.  I want them to have the same opportunities and freedoms I have enjoyed.  You, of course, want this, too.

Many of you voted for our current president.  You were, perhaps, caught up in the euphoria of a potential history-making moment.  Or you may have simply wanted to stir the pot, answering Mr. Obama’s call for a change.  Likely, you were dissatisfied with the presidency of George W. Bush.  Many conservatives were likewise frustrated.  The appeal of a young, dynamic speaker is undeniable, particularly if his words sound positive and his posture is of one who will actually bring a conscientious mood to Washington.

Unfortunately, you were duped.  Democrats must come to terms with the fact that they were, to use the vernacular, snookered.  Mr. Obama is not a moderate in any sense of the word.  His Leftist associations and ideology, the people and beliefs he denied vociferously during the campaign, have reared their notably unattractive heads now that he has attained power.  We are all now faced with a president who has as his ultimate goal the complete deconstruction of the United States as we have known it.

“Good!” some of you may proclaim, “We need a change.”  Change for change’s sake, my friends, is rarely a positive move.  In a chess game, randomly changing the positions of your pieces does not constitute a strategy.  Even so, I don’t believe that Mr. Obama’s true motive is simply change.  He is not blindly moving his rooks, knights, and pawns.  If you analyze the pattern, you can begin to see what is actually happening, and it is not something you would likely advocate.

Almost immediately upon taking office, Mr. Obama and his radical Congress passed a second stimulus bill, furthering the damage done by the Bush presidency.  The bill cost taxpayers nearly $800 billion.  Does the United States have this sort of money to throw at programs in the name of ending our financial crisis?  The short answer is no.  Our nation has run deficits off and on for generations.  The real problem with the American government in its current form is that our representatives now accept deficits with no real evidence of concern for what that overspending will do to the future of the United States.  And if our nation has no money with which to pay for such bills, from where does the money come?  Most comes from foreign countries–Saudi Arabia and China being our primary lenders.  China alone owns trillions of dollars of American debt.  You can see the problems that come from this sort of policy.  What happens when China makes a request of the United States?  Will our interaction with the Communists be tainted by our financial commitment to them?

And even China has begun to drastically slow its rate of investment in the United States.  They, being financially astute, see the handwriting on the wall, even laughing at our treasury secretary recently when he tried to assure them the dollar was strong.  As the Chinese have cut back their purchases of American debt, the Federal Reserve has stepped in to “solve” the problem.  The members of the Fed are unelected and unregulated by the government.  In essence, they are independent of the will of the People, yet they control our nation’s monetary policy.  The Fed’s recent solution to the unattractiveness of American debt has been to buy it themselves, using money newly printed for such a purpose.  Night and day, the Federal Reserve’s printing presses have run, flooding the market with crisp U.S. dollars.  In the very near future, you will see the fruits of this policy begin to ripen.  Already, prices have begun to rise, a trend that will accelerate as the months go by.  Even if the People were able somehow to put an end to this insanity today, much damage has already been done.

Is this the sort of change you were expecting when you voted for Mr. Obama?

After the successful passage of the stimulus, the president continued to push for more “help” to right our nation’s financial woes.  The result was the mortgage reform, the omnibus bill (referred to by conservatives as “porkulus,” a reference to the amount of Congressional pet projects contained within the bill), the bailouts of financial institutions and automakers, and the Obama budget.  Trillions of dollars have been thus pledged by our federal government.  Trillions that we do not have now, nor will we have that money for many years.  The Obama budget alone, which included a $650 billion down payment on health care, put the United States in the red for $1.8 trillion this year, $1.3 trillion next year, and over $10 trillion over the course of the next ten years.  And those numbers don’t take into account the economic slowdown that will result from Mr. Obama’s energy and health care policies.  We can all agree that Republicans and Democrats are equally responsible for our financial woes.  It is easy to lay the national debt, which at the moment is well above $11 trillion, at the feet of Mr. Obama while ignoring Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and their comrades in the Congress.  The Washington establishmentarians are equally guilty of this treason;  Mr. Obama has simply sped the process along.

Perhaps you, like many of us, carry credit card or student loan debt.  If you make the financial decision to climb out of debt–and, again, many of us have decided to do so–how would you go about doing that?  Obviously, you would cut your spending to minimum levels and pay down the debt as quickly and responsibly as possible.  You, being someone with common sense, would never consider opening more lines of credit and spending more money you do not have as part of the solution of your economic difficulty.  Our federal government, in fact, has done exactly that.  Rather than hold themselves to balanced budget and reduce spending at a time when the nation needs such a policy the most, our leaders in Washington have spent money like drunken pirates.  The last thing our representatives should consider responsible should be to spend even more of our money, to mortgage our future even further, but this is exactly what they have done.  Even with our nation trillions of dollars in debt, with our dollar weakened when compared to other global currencies, our government’s grand plan is to spend even more, as if spending money for its own sake will somehow magically yield an economic nirvana.  As a private citizen, you see the idiocy of this philosophy.  Why, then, do they pursue it?  Why, indeed.

In addition to his runaway spending policies, Mr. Obama’s government has also done the most in recent history to actually take control of various industries.  The federal government now has a hand in many of the financial institutions in America, the largest automaker in the country, the largest mortgage corporations in the country, and will likely soon control the health care industry and the energy industry through the cap-and-trade bill.  Why would anyone, Democrat or otherwise, support the federal government’s takeover of any industry?  Even in the areas that the Constitution allows them to govern, such as defense, they have proven themselves to be wasteful.  In the arena of social welfare, their irresponsibility is even worse.  Medicare is nearly bankrupt.  Studies and analyses come out regularly to update that program’s slouch toward desolation.  Social Security, which some would claim as a government success, has been an abject failure.  Not only is that program on the brink of bankruptcy as well, but it is also one of the greatest frauds perpetrated on the American people.  Social Security is billed as a savings account for you.  Your money is taken from your check and placed into your Social Security account.  When you retire, you draw from that amassed savings.  Right?  Hardly.

Your money is, indeed, taken from your check, and it does, indeed, go to the federal government.  Our leaders, however, in their grand wisdom will have spent your money long before you are ready to retrieve it.  Washington has taken your money like an unscrupulous parent who has robbed its child’s piggy bank.  They use your Social Security money to pad their numbers and pay for other social programs, then wail and gnash their teeth at the dire straits of Franklin Roosevelt’s most enduring welfare project.  Much has been made of Bernie Madoff’s swindle of investors, his Ponzi scheme that deprived many of their life savings.  Bernie Madoff is being prosecuted for his crimes.  The federal government–our representatives–are far more guilty of theft and fraud than Madoff.  They have bankrupted the Social Security system for their own aims, and they have left that program dependent upon new contributors.  They cover their failures by using our jealousies to create class warfare.  Many of us then blame the rich for our problems instead of directing our righteous anger toward those in Washington who deserve it, men like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and all those who continue to engineer our financial collapse.  Were they Wall Street brokers and not Washington politicians, they would be prosecuted and jailed.  Why, then, do we continue to send them back to the capital?  Why would we trust these people with our health care?  our finances?  our energy?  our children’s education?  They are utter failures and should be replaced.

You are not a Marxist.  You believe in the value of work.  You believe in justice.  Regardless of party affiliation, a large majority of us believe in American ideals.  Whether you’re Irish-American, African-American, Japanese-American, or from any other hyphenated group, we are all Americans.  All of us need to heed the warnings of our Founding Fathers and distance ourselves from partisanship.  In Washington, bipartisan usually means the party in power calls the shots and the other complains loudly.  Let us, as citizens, assume the role of leadership that our nation’s elites have discarded.  Let us find our similarities, work through our differences, and labor together to return the United States to its position of preeminence in the world.

The Crisis (2009), Part III

The State media is more responsible than groups such as ACORN for the election of our liberal government.  With our financial ruin on the horizon, they continue to run as lead blockers for the Obama administration’s disastrous policies.

by Michael Naragon

III

TO THE STATE-RUN PRESS:

What can one say to the indoctrinated?  How does it feel to be the mouthpiece for a Leftist government?  You have one of the greatest responsibilities bestowed upon free men, to inform the public, and you treat this almost sacred trust like Americans are now treating newspapers.  Like rubbish.

In the days of the American Revolution, newspapers were used extensively to promote the ideals of freedom and liberty.  The Constitutional protections for these publications did not yet exist, and those who worked in the newspaper business during the Revolution did so, oftentimes, at their own peril.

John Adams credited communication with much of the success of the Revolution as a movement.  “The complete accomplishment of it in so short a time and by such simple means was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind,” wrote Adams.  “Thirteen clocks were made to strike together: a perfection of mechanism which no artist had ever before effected.”

Now, the patriot journalists in those days were anything but objective.  We all understand that the idea of an unbiased journalist is a myth.  All writers, anchors, and reporters have personal leanings that will, from time to time, emerge in their reporting.  In the days of the Revolution, however, the bias was on the side of the nation, the side of Liberty.  The newspapers were so vital to the cause of freedom that Jefferson would later write, “I would rather live in a country with newspapers and without a government, than in a country with government but without newspapers.”

The difficulty with your biases is two-fold.  First, and most importantly, you are biased toward the wrong side.  No longer are journalists interested in reporting for the people.  You concern yourself with making the federal government, when it’s of your liking, palatable, almost attractive to the people.  When the Obama administration advances a spending bill, nearly every agency of the State-run media will tout the positives of the bill, what it will accomplish.  Hidden deep within the story, or missing altogether, is the cost.

You, like the government you now represent, appear content to push the party line on each issue, and this means keeping certain bits of information clouded.  This bias pervades nearly every news organization.  Even Mr. Obama himself recognizes the systemic lean to the Left.  At the Washington Press Dinner, he joked with those in attendance that “Many of you covered me, all of you voted for me.”  The quip brought laughs because the truth, at times, is humorous.  Not in this case.  Not to the American People.

The second problem with your bias is related to the first.  It is overt.  Before the advent of FOX News, the major networks and newspapers could push a Leftist agenda without a foil, making their preferential treatment of liberals more difficult to spot.  When Rupert Murdoch’s network launched, however, things changed.  In the interest of being “fair and balanced,” FOX leaned to the right.  Many of you hate them for doing so.  I do not argue that those on FOX show bias as well.  What made them problematic for you was that they showed how glaringly Leftist the “mainstream” media had become.  It was as though a light had been turned on in a kitchen at midnight, and the cockroaches, rather than scurry into the dark corners to hide themselves, attacked the one who had turned on the light.

One might have hoped that your reaction would have been one of introspection.  Instead, your reaction was insult, indignation, and inflammation.  You saw the FOX News Channel as an excuse to make your biases obvious.  As a result, The New York Times began running falsified stories, CBS’ venerable 60 Minutes ran a story with forged evidence, and ABC ran an informercial for Mr. Obama with no opportunity for informed opposition or debate.  ABC continues to deny the purpose of the program.  This is ridiculous.  The media has declared their love.  Embrace it so that all can know.  The pleasant quality of Tass and Pravda was the open nature of their support for the Soviet government.  No one had reason to question the perspective of those agencies.  One of the best things you could do is drop the facade of balance.  MSNBC has all but done this, and look at the success it has brought them.

In the latest public debates, the cap-and-trade bill and the president’s plan for nationalized medicine, you have fallen far short of the ideal when it comes to true reporting.  The cap-and-trade legislation was lightly covered, if at all.  Americans who, sadly, get their news only from the networks or major newspapers probably did not hear of the House vote.  If they did, they were led to believe that it is a wonderful piece of legislation that will punish big corporations for their eco-crimes, instantly develop wind and solar power, create cars that get seventy miles per gallon, and provide millions of new jobs.  Nancy Pelosi loved that lie so much she said it three times, “Jobs, jobs, jobs.”  If we had any Washington reporters willing to actually write a story the people needed to hear, we would be seeing several reports of the potential cost of the legislation.

Perhaps an intelligent journalist–a rarity, mind you–will figure out the validity of Mr. Obama’s claim that the bill will only cost the average family $175 each year.  Or, better still, ask the president why a family should have to feel any change at all, since he promised that only polluters would be punished by the law.  An enterprising reporter could dig in to the stories of bullying among Democrats in an attempt to blackmail freshman Representatives into voting the party line, despite their own apprehensions.  A newspaper looking to pull itself from the doldrums of financial difficulty could have run a front page story on the countries, such as Australia, that are pulling back from their former environmental regulations, citing numerous credible scientists that the global warming movement is nothing more than a pseudo-religion led by High Priest Al Gore.  None of this has been truly done in a national fashion.  If the news media had an interest in facts, they could have played a large role in stopping the bill from passing by a handful of votes.  Instead, every network and newspaper was far more interested in the death of a plastic pop singer than the future bankruptcy of what was the greatest nation on the planet.

The health care debate has gotten similar treatment from the State press.  The president and his minions in Congress continue to claim that the health care crisis is the real cause for economic difficulty in America.  They use the same tired rhetoric that “something” must be done, and done immediately or we face catastrophe.  A wily reporter would challenge that sort of claim and would compare Mr. Obama’s speeches on health care with his speeches on the stimulus and his speeches on the environment.  That reporter would find them eerily similar and would, perhaps, make the case that the president is simply using fear to pass a radical Marxist agenda.  An enterprising producer could run with the story and garner national attention.  Instead, the American people are short-changed with a block of shills for the liberal movement.  Any story concerning the government takeover of health care simply takes the president at his word without challenging his facts.  This same pattern will surely be followed in the reporting of all issues brought forth by the administration, and, in 2010, you in the State media will do your part to help the Democrats attempt to maintain their majorities.

In the interest of fairness, I will offer you some advice.  You will have a choice to make in the coming months, I believe.  Several of you are already facing an unsure future as ratings and subscriptions decline.  The New York Times and Boston Globe are both having very public financial difficulties.  The major networks’ evening news programs recently had their lowest ratings ever.  Surely you know why this is happening.  Many Americans are simply so apathetic that they don’t watch any news.  Congratulations on that, by the way, since you’re partially responsible.  The intelligent, engaged citizens, however, are increasingly finding their news online, through sites like the Drudge Report and Twitter, agencies that change and adapt much more quickly than even television news.  A majority of those people who are watching television news are, interestingly, watching FOX.  I am sure that those steeped in liberal ideology like yourselves would blame that fact on the growing stupidity or sheepish nature of the people.  I believe the opposite is true.  I think more people are finally reaching a point where they can see through to your Leftist core.  As a result, they are running in droves to news sources that they feel they can trust more fully.

As to my advice, I believe you should push the idea that has already been tossed around by more than a few media and government officials: allow the federal government to purchase you.  You work for them already; if it became official, you could drop the charade of balance.  You could also labor with the comfort that you are now a government employee–your mediocre work would then have no effect on your job security.

TEASER: Uncommon Sense, or Why Is It High Time to Draw the Line?

The following is a portion of the author’s current summer project: a modern version of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, designed to give those who value the Constitution a rallying cry and moral support for their conflict.

INTRODUCTION

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine in his pamphlet, The Crisis, in 1776.  He, of course was writing about the difficulties of a young America, struggling in its conflict for independence from Great Britain.  George Washington’s troops, crestfallen by retreat after retreat, would take great comfort in Paine’s words.

The American Revolution truly was a trial of the ideals held by those patriots who fought for liberty and freedom in the face of incredible odds.  Their sacrifice at places like Lexington, Concord, Breed’s Hill, Long Island, Saratoga, Trenton, Camden, Cowpens, and Yorktown, paved the way for their descendants to live under a government of their own making–a government which promised to secure the blessings of liberty for all those who would be called Americans.

Subsequent generations of Americans continued to preserve the freedom of limited government for which the Founding Fathers fought.  Though those who penned the words and codified the ideals contained in the Constitution were gifted by their Creator with such incredible ability, even their great system could be, and has been, corrupted.  The men who met in Philadelphia in 1787, in a culmination of the Age of Enlightenment, compiled the ideas of Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and other philosophes into a document that was the evolutionary result of the English parliamentary system.  Yet, they themselves knew the fragility of their work.  According to American legend, as the delegates of the Constitutional Convention filed out of the Hall, their work complete, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin.

“What sort of government have you given us?” she asked the elder American statesman.

“A Republic, Madam,” Franklin responded. “if you can keep it.”

The author’s work, this exhortation to fight for our liberty, is not Republican in nature.  It is not Democrat.  It is not Libertarian.  This document is designed to educate the reader in the ways in which our federal government, like the English monarchy in 1776, is on the pathway to tyranny and oppression.  Some would claim it has already reached that destination.  Regardless of your political party affiliation, you will find yourself, as you read, divided into one of two ideological camps: those who support the Constitution, and those who oppose it.

For those who support the Constitution, there is much work to be done.  Forces are at work that, if allowed to succeed, will strip Americans of their God-given rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by their own hand.  For those who oppose our founding principles and look to subject the free citizens of the United States to a condition of indentured servitude to a debt-ridden federal government, be forewarned.  The Minutemen are gathering.

Other sections will include:

Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, with Concise Remarks on the Constitution
Of Perpetual Growth and Educational Failure
Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs
Of the Present Unsustainability of America: with some Miscellaneous Reflections
Conclusion