And not, as we’re sure you’ve noticed, for the better.

So, Ted and I* are now posting at Simon-Jester.org, where we don’t just hold the line, we shove it right the hell back.  

It’s Side Choosing Time, people.

*I have been at LibertyGirl.org for months now, venting. NSFW/Language

After my first explosive reaction, I started to rant to Hazel.  While I was ranting I realized something: the same Constitution that allows these sycophantic idiots to do what they have done is the same one that I do NOT wish to have an amendment attached to forbidding burning or desecration of the Flag.

Freedom of speech.

The single most powerful and important right enumerated by the Bill of Rights.

That these idiots can actually not see the irony involved in plastering 44′s name and picture on the symbol of our country, the same flag that has been burned and pissed on by protesters who are strangely allowed to continue breathing because the United States doesn’t shoot protesters, is not lost on ME, however.  These sub-literate mouth breathers seem to think that the United States hasn’t done anything for them.  They don’t understand that just by being here, they are given a chance that no other subject or citizen of any other country is given.  They have given over their sense to a cult of personality led by an empty suit.  They have false expectations that will not be met, sad little Liberal agendas that will not unfold according to plan, and oddly enough, no idea that the rest of world ISN’T suddenly going to love us all and put down arms.  But they have the right to be that stupid.

As for agendas, mine has become simplified greatly: protect my family from the vandals-including the ones that run our school systems who are trying to brainwash our kids, call these people out publicly on their idiocy at every opportunity, make sure I only give my dollars to politicians or companies who have the same sensibilities I do, and to await the day when the first crack in the ice appears.

They are already putting 44′s face on our flag; how much longer until they put it on giant banners hanging from government buildings?  And when they start, I’m pretty sure us bitter clingers will have something to say about it.

Meanwhile, if anyone can figure out who printed those flags, please let me know so we can hold THEM up ridicule.

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.”

“A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

“Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.”

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

“This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”

“Let it [the Constitution] be taught in schools, seminaries and in colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, enforced in courts of justice. In short, let it become the political religion of the nation.”

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.”

“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.”

“I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from … the Declaration of Independence … that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence … I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”

“Ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections.”

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

“The Shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shephard as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as a destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.”

“When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest.”

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

All of the above are A. L. quotes.  I think B.O. gave us some things a little less inspiring, yes?

The organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it

Definition from Cambridge:

The group of people who officially control a country:

Definition from Dictionary.com:

The political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states; direction of the affairs of a state, community, etc.; political administration: Government is necessary to the existence of civilized society.

Mortimer J. Adler defines government thus:

“Government, with the authority to make laws, to adjudicate disputes, and to issue administrative decisions, and with a monopoly of authorized force where it fails to persuade, is an indispensable means, proximately, to the peace of communal life.”

So, in the English Language, we cannot quite agree what exactly “Government” means.  We can make moral judgments on what a government is supposed to do, what powers it has, and who controls it. We can have philosophical discussions about the extent of government reach, what limits the government has when applied to the daily lives of the governed, or how the government is allowed to enforce its will.  We could even debate by what moral code the government has actually achieved its place of power in the first place.

And it is all bullshit.

I am a pragmatist and a realist.
Government is simply this, according to Ted Bronson, not a philosopher, not a poly-sci major, and most days not even particularly interested in what the majority of people around the world do to occupy their time:

Government is the instrument that human beings create and use to control other people.

People want so very much to exert external control on the internal workings of the human mind that they create governments.  People have so little faith in their fellow man, that they want somebody, anybody, to keep them safe from the vandals at the gate.  People have so little faith in themselves that they create a mystical uberbody that they then empower to do the things that they themselves cannot do.  In other words, people want stability, safety, and order in an unstable, dangerous, and disorderly world.  For this they invent governments.

The rules that any given government operates under are as varied as there are countries, ya?  From Communist China to Canada, Zaire to Aden, the U.S. of A. to Mexico.  Not one governmental system on this planet is identical to another.  Some work better than others, most just do the best the can and struggle through.  Nazi Germany worked. The Pharaohnic dynasties worked.  Rome and Greece worked. I think it is safe to say that the value of the individual was pretty damn low on the totem pole in their list of priorities, but they all worked.  At least until they stopped working.

Regardless of how these governments came to power, via whatever form of cultural evolution or chicanery, divine right or logical thought, they all failed for one simple reason:

They broke faith with their populations.

They stopped listening to the people who had entrusted them with power. These governments failed to notice that they were no longer giving to their populations protections from predation, stability of commerce, or even an orderly progression of events that allowed them, the people, to raise their families without fear.

And now it is happening again.

When ACORN is actually empowered to count the votes in Minnesota, when Ohio has 200,000 ‘questionable’ registrations and election is decided by 200,000 votes, when racist thugs are standing outside the polling booth in Pennsylvania, I say that the order and safety of the election is probably in question.

When our current administration is hell bent on selling us down the river in order to ‘rescue’ the economy, heedless to the fact that there is no way in the nine hells of the Inferno that we could ever pay it back, I say that stability of commerce is in question.  Especially when one considers that the original “plan” puts a blank check in the hands of ONE man who is then charged with fixing everything but has no controls or oversight placed on him; and he then changes the plan that got rammed through the Legislature.

When our borders are a sieve through which the uneducated dregs or the violent zealots of the world pass through with impunity, and the guards who are charged with securing it are put in solitary confinement, I say that the predators are already amongst us.

The predators are inside the walls. Failure one.

Businesses cannot function without massive governmental interference. Failure two.

The very system that is supposed to create the orderly transfer of power from one officeholder to another has been corrupted. Failure three.

And here we sit, watching it happen.

A couple hundred years ago, some bright boy figured out that the purpose of government was to protect the ability of an individual to pursue Happiness.  The same guy said something about Liberty, rights being so obvious that they were self-evident, and that governments should be laid on a foundation of principles and organized to best effect such pursuit.  He also said a little something about the government deriving its power from those it served.

There might be something to all that.

We live in a Republic.  Meaning we all have a voice, but we hire people to carry out our will.

Is it our will that land and homes can be confiscated in order to make room for a higher taxable mega property?

Is it our will that we are barred from utilizing our own resources?

Is it our will that a moneyed minority can affect the transition of our elected offices?

Is it our will that laws passed by a majority of voters, changes to a state constitution no less, can be abrogated by a room full of lawyers and guys wearing robes? Or even that such laws be allowed to be placed on a ballot in the first place?  Or that a State’s governor won’t touch it but will encourage the courts to rule against it?

Is it our will that our government has reason one to poke its nose into what you and your doctor talk about behind the office door, or how you bargain for payment?

Is it our will that a labor union can bring an entire industry to it’s knees, and our government will only make it easier for unions to continue their stranglehold?

Is it our will that the federal government owns more real estate than any single private citizen, thereby preventing citizens from utilizing it?

Is it our will that our government deny us the ability to protect ourselves in our homes or places of business with the best or most effective tools available?

Is it our will that the fruits of our labor be divided forcibly between us and those who need an apple? How about when they come for the whole tree? The orchard?

Is it our will that the people we hire to represent us and hear our voices refuse to listen when we seek relief from what we see as injustice or even just poor management?

Is it our will to be “volunteered”?

Is it our will to send billions of our soon to be inflated/deflated/stagflated currency overseas in an effort to ‘combat worldwide poverty’?

Or is that above list of questions somewhat similar in tone to that list of grievances that same bright boy made a couple hundred years ago?

The current administration has shown no signs of being responsive to the people who put them office, nor has it fulfilled all of the basic tenets of what a government is supposed to do or not do. The next one that takes office in January has stated that not only will it continue said poor governance, but will heap further abuses upon us, the citizens of this country. 300 million people live here.  Less than half voted in the last election.  About eight million votes (three percent of the population) made the difference between winning and losing.

There are at least 23 million veterans in this country.  Vets who, like myself, took an oath to defend my country and my Constitution from ALL enemies, foreign and domestic.  If these continued abuses don’t stop, if my government continues to ignore the basic foundations of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, will we see the day when these vets will stand up and say, with one loud voice, that these scoundrels are no longer representing the citizenry, and we want our government back?

Our government has broken faith with us.

My city on the hill isn’t shining right now.

Is it time to turn the lights back on?