Well said

"I'm a Marine Corps vet. And, like you, I did swear an oath to defend my Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. ... Now, I heard you say tonight ... that you're going to let us keep our health insurance. Well, thank you. It's not your right to decide whether or not I keep my current plan or not. That's my decision. ... I've heard recently in the media you and some other people on the national political stage call us 'brown shirts' because we oppose [government health care]. ... A little history lesson: The Nazis were the National Socialist Party. They were leftists. They took over the finance. They took over the car industry. They took over health care in that country. If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika, maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve of her own arm. ... What I want to know is, as a Marine, as a disabled veteran that served this country, I've kept my oath. Do you ever intend to keep yours?" --Marine Corps vet David Hedrick at a town hall meeting in Clark County, Washington, speaking (with resounding applause) to Democrat Rep. Brian Baird

Exactly.

Liberty is Responsibility

I'm compelled to write that I'm concerned about ever-growing encroachments on my liberty and freedom.

That's right, it's mine. My freedom does not belong to any representative, congressman, justice, czar, general, or president. But, without my direct involvement, they will act as if it did.

Over time, a long time, time before I was born, time before my parents were born, my freedom has been slowly, incrementally removed. Sometimes, it has happened under the guise of security. Sometimes, under the veil of safety.

Until recently, I didn't think of it. I took my freedom as a human for granted, probably because I had never seen any of it physically removed. But more and more, the slow, incremental reduction in freedom is turning to bold, in-your-face attempts at removal. I am concerned to the point that action is called for.

If you see something on the web, read something in the paper, or see something on TV that you're not sure of, that sounds in opposition to our nation's fundamentals, do something. Call your senator. Call your representative. Ask them to explain to you the issue. Ask them to tell you their thoughts on the topic. Then tell them yours. Call your friends and family. Discuss these issues, no matter the difference of opinion. Discussion and constructive debate drive optimal results.

We can no longer sit by, apathetically watching our liberty being taken. We are blessed with a system in which we have the ability to participate. No, it's not an ability, it is a responsibility.

Thoughts on Our form of Representative Government

"Congressmen (and women), with due apologies to F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different from you and me. Privilege makes them soft where life teaches the prudent to be hard, cynical where their constituents must be trustful. The congressional entitlement to privilege, wrought not by talent or inheritance but by legislation, explains the typical congressman's blindness to tint and deafness to tone, revealed in the angry 'town hall' confrontations over health care legislation. Instead of reassuring frightened constituents, Democratic congressmen (and women) denounce the voters who sent them to Washington as Nazis, Brown Shirts and the 'un-American.' Harry Reid, the leader of the Senate Democrats, calls the critics 'evil-mongers.' Congress is dead to anything outside the bubble it has created for itself. ... The rage at the town halls is particularly irksome because congressmen are not accustomed to anyone talking back to them." --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

These Town Hall meetings are exactly how our republic is supposed to function, and the reaction by some representatives to passionate opposition should make it clear they are out of touch. If they were so opposed by well-connected lobbyist groups, I'm sure the reaction would be different.

Regardless of your stance on Universal Health Care, you should be concerned, if not appalled, at the behaviour of some of your elected officials. I am.

Inalienable Right...

To Healthcare? There is currently a push to have everyone in the US receive healthcare insurance. Let's put the cost of this, the track record of other government health care systems, and the regulations that currently bind up our private healthcare system aside, and answer this question:

Do you have a right to healthcare?

Question of the Day

I apologize for the abscence of posts lately, and I really have no excuse. Now, though, the question of the day:

What is patriotism?

Thought of the Day

"Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it." --Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204)

Our British Allies...in more than one sense

Why does it take Bishop Nazir-Ali to tell us how it really is?

Last updated at 7:16 PM on 31st May 2008

By Peter Hitchens

Why is it that nobody in our own elite actually likes or understands this country or its people or its traditions?

Why did we have to wait for Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, born and raised in Muslim Pakistan, to remind us that, as he put it, ‘the beliefs, values and virtues of Great Britain have been formed by the Christian faith’?

Just as important, why did we have to wait for him to urge us to do something about restoring that faith before we either sink into a yelling chaos of knives, fists and boots, or swoon into the strong, implacable arms of Islam?

Most of our homegrown prelates are more interested in homosexuality or in spreading doubt about the gospel or urging the adoption of Sharia law.

Then again, why did it take the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to explain to us that our parliamentary system was the best guarantee of liberty in the world and to remind us of the courage and valour of our people in war?

This is not what British leaders say or even think, not least because they are busy pulling the constitution to pieces.

It is not what our children are taught in schools.

In fact, any expression of national pride is viewed with suspicion by the state, by the education system and above all by the BBC.

It was not always so.

Half a century ago, we had churchmen, broadcasters, academics and military men who thought it normal to love their own country, normal to support the Christian faith which made us what we are, and were willing to defend it.

The question of what happened in the years between is one of the most interesting in history.

We know, thanks to their endless memoirs and the dramas about them, that this country’s foreign and intelligence services were maggoty with Communist penetration.
I am sometimes tempted to wonder if the same organisation targeted both political parties (especially the Unconservatives), the Church of England, the BBC, the Civil Service, the legal profession and the universities.

The Communist leader Harry Pollitt certainly urged his supporters back in the Forties to hide their true views and work their way into the establishment.

An organised conspiracy could not have done much more damage than whatever did happen.

We have a country demoralised in every sense, its people robbed of their own pride, its children deprived of stability and authority, terrifyingly ignorant of their own culture, its tottering economy largely owned from abroad, its armed forces weak, its justice system a sick joke, its masses distracted by pornography, drink and drugs, its constitution menaced, its elite in the grip of a destructive, intolerant atheism.

Ripe, in fact, for a foreign takeover.

The article above is written by Peter Hitchens for the Daily Mail of the UK. As an experiment, when you read it for a second time now, replace all reference to Britain with the USA. You'll find it eerily close in the result.

Aside from references to weak armed forces and Communist conspiracies and espionage, that is remarkably close to the situation we find ourselves in here in the US. What's the significance of that? I won't try to define it, but it warrants some thought.